How to Win at Instagram Hashtags for Authors

To conclude my series on promoting yourself as an author on Instagram (read PART 1 read Part 2), I want to get on to hashtags. Do I really need to tell you about #hashtags? They are the lifeblood of the social media post. They are the mechanism by which you can categorise your posts. They …

How to Maximise Instagram Engagement For Authors [Long Post]

Last week I wrote a post extolling the virtues of Instagram and why, as authors, it is a worthwhile platform to be on, as far as social media goes. Hopefully I convinced you to give it a try if you haven't already, or perhaps I gave you some ideas of things to work on to …

Using Instagram to Promote Your Book [Long Post]

Please forgive me for being late to the party, but I have recently joined Instagram. What took me so long you ask? Well, it's just not something I had ever considered as being helpful in my goal of promoting my work. It's mostly photo sharing, so it won't be useful in that goal. Right? I …

First Person, Present Tense. Is it the Devil in Disguise?

The First-Person, Present Tense Devil I sit in my misery for some considerable time. Time enough for the shadows in the office to lengthen. Quitting time is right around the corner. The flyer sits on my desk in front of me, ready for my assessment. It sucks. That’s my assessment. It’s a huge waste of …

Road to a Comic: Week 1

Last time I spoke about my desire to turn one of my short stories into a comic. Today marks the end of my first week and here is my first progress update. I am at the very early stages of learning this new skill, although not the absolute beginning, as I would say I at …

Writing Tight — Story Empire [reblog]

Hi, SEers! It’s time for another Mae Day on Story Empire. I’m going to preface this post by saying I’m not an editor or expert, but I do make an effort to write tight when composing. Part of that involves eliminating filler words such as that, just, really, very, slightly, and only among others. Most […]Writing …

Writing Uncomfortable Characters – Exploding Semen Man

Okay, so this is another interesting one for you. I think the image says it all. This post contains themes of an adult nature Last time I talked about writing a paedophile character and the difficulties I had with it. This time it's a character, or rather a set of characters that I've had floating …

Diary of an Author with Multiple Sclerosis

March is here already. I truly cannot believe the pace at which this year is moving. I think it could just be a sign that I’m getting old… On to this month’s happenings, as usual, writing first… Writing In the first part of the month, I continued on with my novel, which now has a …

I’ve Got No Novel – Am I a Bad Author?

I’ve written short stories for a long time now, and surprisingly, I’m even quite fond of some of them! My first published work was my collection A Sinister Six , which contains six (surprisingly) of my favourites (plus a couple of bonus ones, but don’t tell anyone - A Sinister Eight doesn’t work as well). You should get …

Writing Uncomfortable Characters – Paedophiles

It’s International Women’s Day next week! At work, I’ve been trying to organise a photo competition, photographs of women which help break stereotypes and broaden perception, while celebrating the strength and diversity of women worldwide. So I’m trying to write something for a Facebook post, but it all seems to sound creepy: ‘We are looking …