drunk rock star banner

Your Publisher Isn’t Going To Make You A Rockstar

I’ve heard this too many times. “My publisher doesn’t give me enough promotion and my books don’t sell!”

Wah.

I’m going to tell you a hard truth. Sit down, grab a cold one, or a lollipop, and listen. Your publisher is not responsible for making you a rock star.

Now before you throw things at the screen and cursing my name, hear me out.

Waterstones-book-promotio-001Your book publisher is in the business of making money. They do that by taking a chance on an author and signing them to a book deal. The author gets an advance (hopefully!) and then they turn in a shiny manuscript, get it hacked to pieces by an editor, cry for a few hours, author-up, and fix their book. Continue reading…

13-38_rough_draft

Drafts: Everything you ever needed to know about writing the “puke-draft”

first draftEvery writer sits down, pours their heart onto the page, bleeds for their words, and then offers them to their readership. This is nothing new. What may surprise you is the amount of work that goes into refining those words. When I was a kid, I used to think that writers like Stephen King plopped down for a few months, spewed a book onto the word processor, and then sent the unedited manuscript to someone else to edit and publish while he rolled around on a mattress covered in hundred dollar bills and gold nuggets.

But that’s not even close to how it works. Any writer worth his or her salt wouldn’t send a first draft to their worst enemy. Writers, for the most part, take a lot of pride in what they do with the craft. Sure, there’s that piece of shit book on Amazon, you’ve seen it; this thing was written like a high school project and should have been burned. But it’s out there complete with a cover created in MS Paint and a review from the author’s mother. Continue reading…

Stephen-Kings-Everything-You-Need-to-Know-About-Writing-Successfully-in-Ten-Minutes

Stephen King’s “Everything You Need to Know About Writing Successfully – in Ten Minutes”

I’m not much for reblogging but I felt like this was an article worth promoting. I’ve been working on a series of blog posts about how to write, market, and sell zombie books (or horror or <insert favorite genre here>) as well as some pointers regarding the craft of writing. I’m a happy former student of Gotham Writer’s Workshop but you better believe my education didn’t stop there. I read books and articles on writing and I stay abreast of what my respective writer associations are doing/talking about. Continue reading…

trope banner

Creating your world

Welcome! I’m partaking in the 26 week blog challenge that was prompted by a post from my friend, and fellow author, Tonia Brown. Over the next half year I will do my best to post one new blog entry per week based on ABC’s. So without further ado – C is for Creating your World.

How to start creating your world

When you begin working on your zombie (or horror, this blog works for just about any genre) world, you may be tempted to go crazy and put every zombie trope under the sun in your book. I did this, I call my first book, Among the Living, a kitchen sink zombie book. It’s got fast zombies, slow zombies, military, crazy doctors trying to cure cancer, a journalist, and even a serial killer. So pretty much everything I’ve enjoyed about the genre for the last decade. Continue reading…

branding smaller

Branding: How to build your author brand

make stuff up

So you are writing or have written your first book. Congratulations because now the easy part is over. What’s that you say? Writing is hard? But it’s cool because you KNOW that your first book is going to sell a metric shit ton of copies and you’re going to sit around and revel in the adoration of countless fans and have your royalty checks delivered in solid gold checks? You’re also going to be an overnight New York Times best seller and the talk of the town. You know this to be true.

Good fucking luck with all of that. Continue reading…

26 week blog challenge

So you want to write a zombie novel? Awesome.

Welcome! I’m partaking in the 26 week blog challenge that was prompted by a post from my friend, and fellow author, Tonia Brown. Over the next half year I will do my best to post one new blog entry per week based on ABC’s. So without further ado – A is for Awesome.

write a book catI get asked at least once a week how much longer the current zombie craze is going to last. I’m also told, with great certainty, that the love of zombies will die out, like the pet rock, or fad diets. Maybe the genre is doomed, but I know one thing is for certain. If we authors keep innovating and finding new stories or new ways to tell stories, the zombie genre isn’t going anywhere and neither are its fans. Continue reading…