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Tales of Mundane Magic: Volume Three!
I’m very excited to announce that Tales of Mundane Magic: Volume Three will be available for purchase on July 31, 2020 and is available for pre-order now! Volume Three follows Gertie and Bridget as they deliver a mysterious magical artifact for a buyer, which turns into a whimsical, Dungeons-and-Dragons-inspired road trip. Below is the blurb for the book, and keep reading for an additional release announcement! Gertie and Bridget have a mission. After sorting through the odds and ends they found at a yard sale, they’ve found a buyer for an unusual statue. The only problem is the buyer is on the other side of the country. With no alternative…
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How to Self-Publish a Book
Recently I spoke at the CCA Writers Conference about the process of self-publishing a book. In the interest of not letting this information disappear into the ether, I thought I’d record what I said in blog form. To start with, this is not a comprehensive walk through. This is merely a guide where I explained to the attendees the various options one has when self-publishing. I will point out which options I used and how well they worked for me. At the end, I’ll provide a list of resources that I’ve used or found that will shed more light on how to self-publish. Self-Publishing House First, authors who self publish…
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How to Create Realistic Characters (Without Putting Your Friends in Your Novel)
When I was twelve, I started writing my first “real” book (that is, a book that was over 50,000 words). It was about a girl and her group of middle school friends who somehow got transported to another realm and had to defeat a bad guy who had kidnapped another friend of theirs. It wasn’t good. There were many issues, but the most glaring was that the lead character was obviously based on myself, the friend characters were based on my views of my friends, and the villain was based off of another student I didn’t like very much. They say “write what you know”, but there are a lot…
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How to go from Story to Plot
So you have a story idea. Awesome! But how do you take that story idea and make it a story? Today, I’m going to outline the steps I take to create a plot of my story from my first idea. Gertie and Bridget go to graduation This is a story I’ve already written, but I remember my process because it took a while. I had this idea roaming in my mind while I was writing Volume Two, but as it was the “volume finale,” I had some time to work on it. The first thing I do when going from idea to plot is figure out the big chunks of…
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How to Come Up with Ideas
Do you want to write a book/tv show/video game/movie/play, but you don’t know what to write about? Fear not! I’m writing a short story series, and with every short story having a different plot (barring three two-part stories) I need to come up with a lot of plot ideas. Here’s just some of the ways that I figure out my next story or character. 1. Write everything down The first way to get the most out of creating ideas is to write every idea down when you have them, even if you don’t need them right away. Create a single ideas document or break it out into Setting Ideas versus…