Tag: WANA

The Real Problem with Abercrombie & Fitch—How Jeffries' Message Hurts Us ALL

No designer label could give them what they so desperately needed—love, meaning, and genuine connection. I was guilty. I’d bought into the marketing lie—that these kids with these clothes have everything. Now, being older and wiser, I am deeply saddened. What if I’d had the courage to cross the A&F line and realize that “cool guy” was hurting? Would he still be alive?

The Secret Recipe for Writing a Perfect Pitch

Writing a book is easy…at least when compared to what we need to do after we finish. We had 50,000 to 100,000 words to write our novel, and now we have to condense that down into a couple of paragraphs for an agent pitch, query letter, Amazon description, or back cover copy.

I LOST THREE Followers—Twitter & Tips to Keep from Going CRAZY

There are all kinds of services out there willing to get you a zillion followers for a fee. When you see someone has 25,000 followers, maybe they worked to get that following, but they also could have paid for it. Means NOTHING.

DFWWWCon, Swine Flu, Zombies & WINNING! in the Changing Paradigm

Yes, they will have traditionally published authors (big ones), but they generally offer a lot for the indie and self-pub crowd. There are classes on craft, marketing, business, etc. And they have a really great selection of agents to hear pitches. Some conferences lean too heavily on only traditional. Others are better for the indie and self-pub author. DFWWW has enough to make BOTH happy.

Ways to Create Multi-Dimensional Characters–Tip #1

One key factor we must appreciate is that every strength has a flaw. A loyal person is noble, but they are also often naive. A strong leader gets the job done, but often is a control-freak who fails to rely on a team and sucks at delegating. A tender-hearted person is kind, loving, but often used. Part of creating conflict is to place the character in situations where the strength becomes a fatal flaw. The character’s arc is to learn to address this flaw and change.