My Storytelling 101 Quick Read series answers all of your writing, self-publishing, and book marketing questions in brief, easy to understand guidebooks. Each book draws from advice given to my many clients and hundreds of other authors … authors who’ve asked the exact same questions as you about writing and publishing. The Quick Read guidebooks cut to the chase and provide practical, useful information that can be followed step-by-step.
With the Quick Read series, you no longer have to remain a wannabe author or a published writer with low sales. Let Quick Read help you become the successful author you’ve always dreamed of becoming! Books in the series include:
WRITING
Devise Your Story’s Plot
This book helps you understand the basic rules for constructing your story. It examines plot’s role in storytelling, the importance of conflict in plotting, and the five traditional elements of a plot. It also looks at some common plot pitfalls. The structural guidelines outlined in the book work for any genre, whether you’re writing a serious literary piece or penning in any of the escapist genres from romance or science fiction to mystery or fantasy. By the end of this book, with a little imagination tossed in, you should be able to construct an impressive plot.
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Write Your Story’s First Page
This title looks at the 11 must-have components of your story’s first 250 words. These include starting in the middle of your story, writing a killer first line, introducing your protagonist, and more. Being aware of what readers need and expect from the first page of the book – even though they often aren’t aware themselves of those elements – is vital to ensuring you make the most of your story’s opener.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Mastering Point of View
This book examines the three main points of view – first, third and second – and the different forms each one can take. It looks at when using a specific point of view is to a story’s benefit and when it’s to the story’s detriment. Tips are provided about how to select your viewpoint character and why a consistent point of view is vital.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Write Engaging, Natural Dialogue
The volume is all about helping beginning writers better understand how to pen conversations between characters. If you’ve already written a story and know the dialogue is weak, the tips in this book can help you diagnose and fix the problem.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Mastering Show Don’t Tell
Mastering Show Don’t Tell looks at how to identify and fix all the places where telling – or exposition – rears up in your writing: backstory; info dumps; backfill; vague descriptions; irrelevant character details; emotional states; motivational tells; narration; summarizing; poorly written dialogue; and more!
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Overcoming Writer’s Block
There are many reasons people get writer’s block – their mind is preoccupied, the environment they’re writing in isn’t conducive to creating, the idea they’ve come up with isn’t particularly good, a lack of imagination or skill to develop the story, coming to the laptop with no idea to write about, and many more. Overcoming Writer’s Block helps you understand the cause of your writer’s block then goes into detail on strategies for overcoming each one.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
SELF-PUBLISHING
Format Your Ebook
Among the many topics covered in this title are your table of contents, headers, footers, page numbers, text, designing the cover, and uploading the ebook. Information is presented in brief, easy to understand explanations and written by a professional editor who has formatted hundreds of ebooks.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Design Your Ebook Cover
How do you create an ebook cover? This volume answers that question. Using easy to understand and short explanations, it describes what software/apps you need, moves on to the cover’s various elements, and looks at uploading it to a print on demand company like Kindle Direct Publishing.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Upload Your Ebook to KindleDP
The explanations in this book make the process of getting your book up for sale on Amazon.com easy to understand and to follow. After all, you just want to get your book uploaded so it’s available for purchase, not wonder if you wasted your time writing it because of error messages!
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Self-Publish Your Ebook Bundle
This is a collection of Quick Read guidebooks and includes Format Your Ebook, Design Your Ebook Cover, and Upload Your Ebook to KindleDP. With it, you’ll be able to go through the self-publishing process for your ebook from start to finish!
ORDER: Kindle, Audiobook
Format Your Paperback
This book covers how to use Microsoft Word to format your self-published paperback and is good for both fiction and nonfiction titles. Using easy to understand and short explanations, it describes how to create a copyright page, a table of contents, the main text, page numbers, and much more.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Design Your Paperback Cover
How do you create a great cover for your book? This volume answers that question. It starts with what software/apps you need to design a cover, moves on to the cover’s various elements, and finally looks at uploading it to a print on demand company like Kindle Direct Publishing.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Upload Your Paperback to KindleDP
The explanations in this book make the process of getting your paperback up for sale on Amazon.com easy to understand and to follow. After all, you just want to get your book uploaded so it’s available for purchase, not wonder if you wasted your time writing it because of error messages!
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Self-Publish Your Paperback Bundle
This is a collection of Quick Read guidebooks and includes Format Your Paperback, Design Your Paperback Cover, and Upload Your Paperback to KindleDP. With it, you’ll be able to go through the self-publishing process for your paperback from start to finish!
ORDER: Kindle, Audiobook
Create Your Author’s Platform
This book helps you build those tools to promote your books. Using practical, easy-to-understand explanations, it covers constructing a website, blogging, mailing lists, newsletters, social media, press releases, and book readings/signings. The tips come from a professional author and editor who has built a platform for his own books and has advised hundreds of other writers about how to do so.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Build Your Author’s Website
This title covers such diverse topics as finding a website host, deciding what your website will look like, pages needed for your website, share buttons, pictures, your website text’s readability, and driving traffic to your website. The tips here come from an author and professional editor who began building websites more than two decades ago and has advised hundreds of his writing clients about the process.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Nail Your Book Reading and Signing
This volume addresses: potential locations for a book presentation; arranging, preparing and promoting your presentation; creating visuals for the presentation; avoiding stage fright during a presentation; setting up back of room sales, and more. The tips come from a long-time author who has done dozens of book readings and signings as well as advised hundreds of his writing clients about how to give a presentation.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Sell Your Book with Amazon Ads
This title explains how the Amazon ad system works, how to build an ad, how to read Amazon’s ad reports, how to optimize your ad, and more.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
OTHER GREAT WRITING GUIDEBOOKS
Here are some older writing guides I’ve written…
7 Minutes a Day to Your Bestseller
Novel writers receive expert advice on topics like motivating yourself to write, starting your story with exciting opening lines, creating intriguing characters, mastering the craft of writing to elevate your style, and pitching your story to potential publishers.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Nook, iBook, Kobo, Audiobook
7 Minutes a Day to Mastering the Craft of Writing
Craft is as important to storytelling as a good plot or interesting characters. This book gives you 50 tried-and-true techniques to improve your writing craftsmanship, including using active voice, showing not telling, ramping up dramatic tension, and being more descriptive.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
7 Minutes a Day to a Self-Published Book
Whether writing a novel or nonfiction, whether planning to print a paperback or an ebook, this book guides you through the self-publishing process, from the title page to the index, from designing a cover to formatting your text.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
7 Minutes a Day to Promoting Your Book
You’ll develop a strategy that will get articles about your self-published book in newspapers, magazines, on radio and television programs, posted on blogs, and linked to on websites, while landing you book signings and readings, all at virtually no cost.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Writing Affirmations: A Collection of Positive Messages to Inspire Writers
Suffering from writer’s block? Self-doubt about your talent? Has creative writing lost its joy? Reclaim the pleasure of writing and pen the book you’ve always dreamed of through uplifting, meaningful phrases that can be read aloud or internalized weekly over the course of a year. Writing prompts and tips follow each affirmation, giving you the inspiration and motivation to keep writing.
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Storystarters: 200+ Writing Prompts That Lead To Stories
Storystarters presents more than 200 writing prompts centered on exciting and interesting conflicts for your protagonist to solve. The prompts are divided among more than 50 topics and pit your story’s hero against nature, another person, society, God and himself in various scenarios.
ORDER: Paperback, Kindle, Audiobook
Other Books
Windmill: A Novel
For fifteen years, Carl Steinar and his sons, Peter and Lyle, have maintained a tenuous balance, keeping together their family and farm on the western plains of Nebraska. Like blades in a well-oiled windmill, each works in harmony with the other. But when Abbie Blaire, the new reporter in town comes to write a story about them, a monkey wrench is thrown into their perfect machine: She is the spitting image of the wife and mother the Steinar men lost years ago. They soon find themselves on new trajectories in which their needs and goals can only collide.
ORDER: Paperback