My Courses

Even after running a successful promotional campaign to get media attention for your book, it may not have been enough to generate the book sales you desire or to create interest in your private business that your volume promotes. If that’s the case, you may need to consider advertising. There are a lot of different ways…

When you set down a road, you’re not limited to that one highway. There will be intersecting roads – some gravel, some narrow streets, others wide boulevards and multi-lane freeways – that in turn lead to many, many other roads. A few of these roads will be similar to the one you started out on, but…

Self-publishing always sounds appealing: It’s a quick way to get your book in print, you don’t have to deal with literary agents, editors and publishers who want to rewrite your book so it fits their idea of marketability, and you almost certainly will reap a higher percentage of profits from your book sale. The downside, though,…

Most stories unfold in the same way: The main character encounters a problem, he attempts in various ways to overcome the problem, and ultimately he succeeds. For example, in the “Star Trek: The Original Series” episode “Devil in the Dark”, Captain Kirk faces the problem of stopping what appears to be a monster that is killing…

“If it has horses and swords in it, it’s a fantasy, unless it also has a rocketship in it, in which case it becomes science fiction. The only thing that’ll turn a story with a rocketship in it back into fantasy is the Holy Grail.” – Debra Doyle “To write good SF today…you must push further and…

Among the best ways to ramp up dramatic tension in your story is through a reversal. This occurs when something in the narrative suddenly shifts the reader’s perspective or the story’s direction in an entirely unexpected yet plausible way. For characters, this usually involves turning on its ear the reader’s understanding of why a character behaves…

Making a personal connection with your readers marks a great way to sell your books – and one solid way to do that is to use audio on your website. When website visitors hear your voice, they’re more likely to pay attention than if they simply read text that they know is polished. Further, speech allows…

Once you’ve got your book with the front and back matter completed, the next step is to place all of that text into a form that can be uploaded and printing. Essentially, you’re creating on file on the computer that looks exactly like how the book will appear when printed. This is called formatting. You can…

After you’ve brainstormed some ideas and made an outline of how you might organize those thoughts into a story or nonfiction piece, the next step is get busy “drafting.” A draft is the placement of your thoughts into complete sentences and paragraphs. This might be done in longhand on paper or typed using a word processing…