Are you top notch or are you egotistical?

As a writer and as a reader?

Are you the absolute best at what you do and no one, anywhere, anytime, in any manner is qualified to give you advice of any type?

Are you open to hearing advice because any little tidbit can help you grow and improve?

This sprung into my mind because I've been seeing a trend lately. A bad trend. We've always had a few writers in our community that have the elitist mentality. They believe they are better than everyone else, period. And, although there's a ton of trash in our community, which hurts our community overall, the elitist mentality does NOT help our cause, either.

Some countries actually very much discourage this type of thinking, and we can all learn a bit from that. There's nothing wrong with being humble. Nothing at all. Who knows, you may actually make another friend or two if you're a bit more humble. 

There's also nothing wrong with having pride in your work...but then there's pride and there's ego. Two different things. No matter what country you're in, from Australia to Japan to Russia to Europe to South America to Canada to the U.S.A., ego is the same everywhere. And ego is not a good thing.

I admit, this does not just affect indie writers. Some of the biggest branded big names have big egos as well. However, that affects them. That affects the major companies. Indie authors have enough going against them as it is. Why add an over-inflated ego to that equation?

So, are you top notch or are you egotistical?

Welcome to your daily therapy session with the Doctor. Wait...I'm not a doctor for therapy...only dating. Oh yes, I'm supposed to introduce you to today's guest speaker, er blogger, er writer. Well, you know what I mean. So, without further adieu....hereeeeee's Marcia!

Marcia Singer Byerly

I am an artist and author living in North Carolina. "Aquilla, Indian Captive" is a Young Adult historical fiction book that was actually written by my mother who was not able to have it published in her lifetime. I had typed and edited this inspiring story and so yearned for it to be read by many people, but had no idea how to go about that until self-publishing became a possibility. I was so excited and learned what I needed to have this story made into an eBook. I'm pleased that it has been selling well. Aquilla is a bright, spunky 15-year old girl living in the 1700's in Bath, NC who is captured by Indians. The story is based on true events and my mother did a lot of research in writing this novel.

After Aquilla was done, I had a dream and woke up with the vivid memory of it and thought, "This would make a great story!" and so I began to write about Jonny "Dimbo" Dimborowski and to date have a series of 5 books with him as the main character. I am currently working on Book 6.

I never thought of myself as a writer, but found that writing is a way to take my vivid imagination and creative talents into something that I enjoy making and others enjoy reading. It is, indeed, good therapy too!

Marcia Singer Byerly


As always, if you like what this author has to say in their guest spot, please patronize them by clicking on their book on the sidebar. I make absolutely nothing off your purchase through this site. I'm just glad to have them stop by and hope you get some pleasure from meeting another author.

Yes, you heard me. More free books. But I'm not giving them away, personally, just yet.

Actually, I've created a page on this site so that authors can submit their free promo books to be listed and readers can look on here to find something they may like.

You've heard of Pixel of Ink or Ereader News Today? Yep, same principle, but better. Eventually.

Hope you enjoy this new feature. Please, spread the word. Bring the customers/hits to this site and we'll be able to build it up much faster with free books!

And now, time to introduce Seumas...fully clothed:

Seumas Gallacher
IT”S AS MUCH FUN AS YOU CAN HAVE WITH YOUR CLOTHES ON

Now I’m on the tiger, I can’t get off..
  … and I really don’t want to get off. You know these crazy bucket lists, somewhere between ‘saving Africa from Justin Beiber’ and ‘getting everybody in France to speak English'? I’ve had tons of them. As a kid I wanted to be a drummer, then a football player, Scottish style (very elegant ball dribbler). That was superseded by a yearn to make tons of money as a gambling bookie. Next up came the Stones and Eric Clapton and Freddy Mercury…all change again, front man in a great band it had to be. Then along came that thing that John Lennon spoke about, ‘life happening when you’re busy doing other things..’ Oh, yeah, life. That thing. Well that thing triggered off with the standard Glasgow practice issue of punching my father out when I was fifteen, and off I went with a duffle bag and an old acoustic guitar, into that big wonderful world out there.

Now, over forty years on, the history I look back on astounds me. That surely wasn’t me becoming a bank employee, then a bank officer, then, Oh God help us, the man in charge running banks all over the planet. Sounds too proper, too correct, too boring. Well it would’ve been except… except along came a twenty year war with booze that I didn’t win. I hammered it in Europe and Asia, got my licks into it in London, Hong Kong, Singapore, but bugger me, it never gave up…by the time we got to round fifteen in Singapore, it had me beat on a points
count. I declared a truce. Round about then I was sent (a slum lad no less) to Harvard to re-tread the brain box. To get their money back, my employers made me corporate Mr Fixit, jumping on planes to this, that and the other mess that needed the surgery applied. Why I am I telling you all this? Because that’s where the boredom stopped and all the great experiences started to pile in. Hong Kong has its own magic for any foreigner. Asia gave a range of cultures…Bangkok, Seoul, Japan, China, Kuala Lumpur, Taipei,…and the characters that zone in and out of these places are just that…characters that you’d normally only see in books and the movies. I loved all of it.

I’ve been in Abu Dhabi since 2004 but the workout before that was a stricken ferry company in Manila in the Philippines. The first thing I did was fire 600 trade union dockside workers. That got me to the top of the Christmas Card list, and a present of an armoured car with half a dozen armed body guards. These lads were SAS-trained, and so were born the guts of the characters in my debut novel THE VIOLIN MAN”S LEGACY. There’s things which work within the law, but the stuff that goes on under the radar is always more fascinating.

So, back to the ride on the tiger…the writing. The book was finished three years ago and was promptly despatched to forty agents. Just as swiftly it attracted forty rejection slips. So, what to do? Give up there? No bloody way. This was my baby. There was too much of me in it not to let it see the light of day properly. I got it appraised professionally, then re-edited a couple of times. Now what? The 'now what?' was amazing. In the middle of last year, someone suggested Kindle. Now, understand this. As a 24 carat computer Jurassic, I’d never heard of
Kindle. It was explained to me single syllable words. On to Kindle it went. In the first three weeks it got 80 downloads and I thought “Karamba, I’m a published author!” I then started asking email pals, to get email pals, to pass it on. Within the next three months it exceeded 7,000 downloads, and at the last count it’s now tracking well over 16,000 paid hits. The writing‘s the easy part, getting the mother out there is the real work. As a businessman, the decision for me is easy. It calls for a proper campaign of blogs, review sites, Twitter, visibility, visibility, visibility, and oh, by the way, write a decent piece of work. 

The second novel, VENGEANCE WEARS BLACK, is well in progress with three other story concepts to follow, all in the same series, all about the ex-SAS guys taking on a host of various criminals, using their black operations skills. It’s a helluva blast, and I don’t see it being any less fun for the foreseeable future.


As always, if this author intrigues you, please patronize their work by clicking on their book cover to the right, which will take you to their Amazon page.

More specifically...what's a book worth to YOU, the reader?

Some writers believe that each of their works should be priced as high as the sky...because it's their art and their art is special. Their time is special. They deserve to be paid for their time. With each book sale.

I won't say that their art isn't special, because it is. I believe that each author has an audience. The trick is FINDING that audience. Plus, the audience for Sally just may be bigger than the audience for Tom. Who knows?

Some writers believe that their work should be priced in the gutter...so they can attract that many more readers. They believe that selling 6,000 is better than selling 1,000, even if selling  6,000 copies makes them the exact same profit as selling 1,000 copies would. But, with 6,000, they have 6,000 more readers and potential fans than the author that only sells 1,000.

I won't say this is faulty either, simply because we all know that when businesses have a loss leader or even a freebie, it tends to WORK. It does it's job and brings in more customers. That's the whole idea behind the promotion. If it didn't work businesses wouldn't continue doing that.

With the high priced books, obviously not everyone will spend money on their art. Especially if you're not familiar with that particular author. The majority of people that I've talked to and listened to have the same thought process with this. If you don't know an author, you're afraid to spend more than a few bucks on them. You're only willing to spend a few bucks or MORE if you know AND TRUST that author. Perfectly reasonable sounding to me. We work hard for our money...unless Uncle Sam gave it to you for free.

With gutter priced books, some people believe that undervalues the author's work and therefore undervalues the author. They believe that .99 and free books devalue books in general, lowering the actual value of every other author out there. But, I figure, if that were true, we wouldn't have James Patterson, Stephen King, Janet Evanovich, Nora Roberts, etc on the top of the best-seller lists. Those books sure aren't .99 or free.

See, the idea with this idea is, if you give your book away for free, your book makes another author's book worth less. So, if they feel they should get 4.99 per copy, suddenly, because yours is free, they can now only get 2.99 per copy.

I kinda think that those that are willing to pay for quality, will pay regardless of how many free books are out there. I kinda also think that those that aren't willing to pay for anything, wouldn't pay regardless, even if there were no free or cheap books out there.

But, what do I know?

Either way, if the work sells, you WILL make a lot of money. Either way, there are legitimate reasons that will scare away some readers.

So, as a reader, how much is a book worth to YOU?

I scoured the net for guest posters for my blog. I searched far and wide for authors ranging from the cream of the crap to the cream of the crop. I figure, maybe my little blog/site can give each of us a sporting chance at a sale or two.

So if you, as a reader, are at all intrigued about a guest post I have featured, please click on their book link on my sidebar and patronize their work. Don't worry, I don't get a single red cent for any copies of their work sold through my website. None. And I'm OK with that. If I can connect an author with a new reader, I've accomplished my goal.

And now, a word from Mr. Doug Nelson:

I was born in North Dakota. When my Dad got out of the Army Air Core we moved to the Chicago area. As a young teen, I and 4 of my closest friends were responsible for more than a few gray hairs on my Dad’s head. We were not Bad kids, but we managed to entertain ourselves quite well, without the Nintendo or X-Box. My book ‘The Crazy Things We Did’ gives you a glimpse of what that was like. 

My childhood sweetheart, Sandy, up and married some guy I didn’t know, so I joined the Air Force to get even. “Go Figure.” The crazy stuff didn’t end, and Biloxi Mississippi was a hoot, Beach parties, building a 34 foot boat, fast cars and, you thought I was going to say Fast Women, didn’t you? I was way too shy talk to a girl, let alone kiss one. In retrospect that’s probably why Sandy married someone else. 

One day I got orders for Thailand and I figured ‘So this is how it all ends’ and ‘Jack Brass In Country’ is what resulted from 18 months in Southeast Asia. Here again, looking back it wasn’t so bad, but it was plenty scary at the time.

After my 6 years were up with Uncle Sam I took a job with IBM before settling on a career in Electronics. After an enjoyable 40 years as an industrial engineer I tried my hand at gardening and contracting for a while then In 2007 I went out to eat with my family at a Chinese restaurant. After dinner the server brought the bill and 3 fortune cookies. I don’t normally put a lot of stock in what fortune cookies say, but I read them anyway. This particular Fortune cookie didn’t look any different than the hundreds I have opened before. There was some Chinese scrimshaw on the back along with the English translation. I turned it over and read, YOU HAVE SO MANY STORIES, YOU SHOULD WRITE A BOOK, so I did. I enjoyed it so much I wrote a bunch more.

All in all I have had a very enjoyable life, a loving family, and a fantastic cook for a wife. When it finally comes my time to see what lies beyond I will not be in a hurry but I have no regrets, I think of anything I wish I had done.


Douglas L Nelson

As a writer, I know why we offer free books.

However, I want to know, as a reader, how do you feel about them?

Do you like, or maybe even love, free ebooks? Do you HATE them? Why?

Some argue that free ebooks make ebooks that cost money, worth less. Some argue that free ebooks make ebooks that cost money, worth more.

I know, as authors, we obviously don't make any money on a book that we give away 10,000 copies of. Not on that particular book, we don't, anyway. However, if it helps to promote our name, our brand, our work, then it's "cheap" advertising.

But again, what about you, the reader? How do you feel about an author that gives away some of their work? How do you feel about the particular book that they give away?

Do you value that work or that author? Or do you view it as a disposable resource?

And, if you don't like free ebooks...how do you feel about sites like Pixel of Ink and Ereader News Today (ENT) which help an author reach a new audience via free ebooks?

As writers, we need to understand the power of the written AND spoken word. We also need to understand the power of the LACK of words.

To do that, let's consider things from a reader's point of view for a moment. And even from the point of view of someone who is simply speaking.

We have it pounded into our heads that our words, whether written or spoken, can hurt, so we need to watch our words. This is true. Sometimes, every now and then, on rare occasions, we also hear that our words can serve to build others up. This is also true.

However, how many of us realize the FULL power of our words?

When we are trying to make a point while speaking, what do most of us do? We yell or put MAJOR emphasis on what we're trying to make a point of. The rare individual actually uses something called...a pause...to emphasize something specific. In speech this sets off whatever is paused from everything around it. In writing, there is actually the same effect.

We have tools when writing that allow us, for the most part, to duplicate what our spoken words can do. As writers, we should learn each of these tools.

Now, as a speaker, some people just have what we call diarrhea of the mouth. In other words, they don't shut up, for anything, regardless, even if they have made their point already, it doesn't matter, they just keep spurting, and spurting, and don't get the clue, whether you speak up or not, whether their own brain tells them to stop...they DON'T stop.

You don't want to talk like that AND you don't want to write like that. Get your point made as succinctly and beautifully as possible. Nothing more, nothing less.

That brings us to our LACK of words. Sometimes less really IS more. We can describe one thing ten different ways and it has NO GREATER IMPACT just because it's been described ten different ways.

Say something ONE way. The most efficient, most dramatic way. The way that will impact the listener or the reader the most, ONE time. That way it STICKS WITH THEM. When you repeating, you actually end up softening the impact.

And yes, I'm guilty of this myself. So don't click on my books...to the right...or you may be disappointed :P

As writers and as readers, we need to make our speech as tight as possible. As to the point as possible. Have as much impact as possible. Just think, not many people have 20 minutes to hear something you can say in 2 minutes.

So get it done. You'll be happy you did ;)

Are you one of those readers that will gloss over killing and dead bodies in a book but will cringe or even yell at the author if there is so much as a hint of a curse word?

Are you one of those readers that will allow all types of sex and bondage and alternative lifestyles but will blast an author for one typo?

Are you one of those readers that is so holy that the hint of even a kiss will send your lust drive over the cliff?

Or are you a reader that has the philosophy "anything goes"?

What kind of reader are you?

Do you gloss over the occasional blip in the editing process? Or do you leave a scathing review because "in" should have been "on" on page 223.

Do you get lost in the story or does the story get lost on you?

I don't know. I'm confused. I don't see how a person can raise their ire about "fuck" being in a story yet not bat an eyelash about a dead body being on page 1. With blood and guts spilled. And even some semen left behind from the brutal rape. By a vampire. That sparkles. And then that vampire is the good guy and the woman that is no longer around is the villain. No offense toward Twighlight fans. I'm one of you.

Just sayin....

Ever had a good head-bashing from an editor? Take your medicine. You'll be glad you did. Whether you're a writer or a reader, this will interest you. A word from editor extraordinaire, Laura Clark:


I’ve been doing a lot of proofreading and editing lately for indie authors. It’s something I’m good at, and it gives me a valid reason to stay up all night reading novels. For the most part, I enjoy proofreading and editing, but there are times when it makes me want to slam my head into the nearest hard surface. This happens when I see a good or great story buried under a pile of errors. There are a lot of variables that factor into a writer’s ability to properly use the nuts and bolts of his trade, and I don’t intend to go into those here. Instead, I mean to give writers – both established and aspiring–a few tips on how to use some of those nuts and bolts.

There have been many, many, books written on grammar, style, and punctuation. Some are incomplete, and some are hard to follow, but any of them can be useful--if a writer has one and takes the time to study it. These books have a much larger scope than this blog post. I highly recommend finding such a book and becoming friends with it.

So now, on with the show: a few tips to keep your editor and/or publisher from going stark-raving mad and/or strangling you. This is by no means an all-inclusive list, but it should help a little.

Semi-colons

The semi-colon only has two purposes: to separate list items that contain commas, and to connect two closely related independent clauses (sentences) without a conjunction.

I went to the store; I needed milk.

I wrote a long letter full of gossip: the latest news about Uncle Joe, Aunt Patty, and their thirteen kids; chit-chat about my job, school, and my friends; and the big scandal over at Colony High.

Commas

There are specific rules for the use of commas. They should not be placed anywhere you feel there should be a pause. Find a book about punctuation and learn the basic rules for comma usage. You'll be glad you did.

Dialogue Attribution

Dialogue attribution tells the reader who is speaking. Take care when using words or phrases other than "said" or "asked". Do NOT include adverbs in dialogue attribution.

Bad

"I love you," Jane said sadly.

Better

"I love you," Jane said, her voice cracking as tears spilled down her cheeks.

Ellipsis

An ellipsis is that little string of dots that denotes hesitation or missing words. There should be only three dots in an ellipsis. If the ellipsis falls at the end of a sentence, then it should be followed by proper punctuation.

"I...I don't know what to do," June said.

"What...what do I do?" June asked.

"But I.... You know what, never mind," June said.

Direct Address

Direct address is when one of your characters calls another character by his or her name, a nickname, or a title. Anytime one character directly addresses another, the name should be set off by a comma.

"Jane, please look at me," Joe said.

"Please look at me, Jane," Joe said.

"Ma'am, look at me, please," Joe said.

"Please look at me, ma'am," Joe said.

Run-on sentences

Run-on sentences are a very bad idea because they are hard to understand and can make the reader lose track of what you are trying to say in a sentence and this can make them want to stop reading. See what I mean?

Song Lyrics

Do NOT use song lyrics in your work unless you have a written agreement allowing you to use them. ASCAP or the rights-holder will find out about it sooner or later and come after you. They will take your house, your car, your wife, your dog, and your neighbor’s dog and then bludgeon you to death with your own foot.

Loose/Lose

There is no reason why folks should confuse these two words. They do not look alike nor sound alike, and they have different meanings.

Loose – Adjective meaning "not tight."

Her hair came loose from its tie.

Lose – Verb meaning "misplace."

I often lose my keys.

Homophones

Homophones are words that sound alike but are spelled differently and have different meanings and usages. Learn them!

To/Too/Two

To – Preposition meaning such things as "toward", "until", or "as far as".

I want to go to bed.

Too – Adverb meaning "also", "excessively", or "very."

I am too tired; my eyes won't stay open.

Two – A number that is one more than one.

There are two wheels on a bicycle.

Their/There/They’re

Their – Possessive pronoun meaning "belonging to them."

That is their truck, not mine.

There – Adverb meaning "that place." Also used as an introductory element.

There is a big stack of pancakes on his plate.

Let's go over there now.

They're – Contraction of "they are."

They're coming to dinner tomorrow.

It’s/Its

It's – Contraction of "it is."

It's time to go to bed.

Its – Possessive preposition meaning "belonging to it."

The cat licked its whiskers.

Your/You're

Your – Possessive preposition belonging to you.

It is your turn.

You're – Contraction of "you are."

You're going to be late for work if you don't get up soon.


She's available, and affordable, for those aspiring or established authors looking for help. Don't be afraid to contact her. [email protected] Or if you just have a college class or employment project and want to make a GREAT impression ;)