Grimoire

Over the years I've written and published over a million words of publishing and book marketing resources for authors, and I make almost everything free. Here are three additional books you can grab right now.

The basic structure for Book Craft came from a 12-week summer writing program I taught to over 1000 students. Making the weekly videos helped me flesh out some complex discoveries I'd been making working with author clients and training editors and ghostwriters. I'm...

If you've already read the book, you probably know far too much about me already, so this is just a quick recap. I focused on personal stories rather than bragging about accomplishments - and the truth is, I haven't had that many. Success never came as easily as I'd...

On Christmas I got my inevitable first 1-star review. I don't disagree with any of it: nor was I surprised... the review notes it's basically a blabbering, self-important mess of a book with no clear headings or topics. Though I was surprised at the "no useful...

LEARNING TO SPELL One time I brought a magic trick to elementary school. It was a coloring book, where the pages would show as blank, then illustrated, then full color, depending on how it was displayed. I performed a few times, astounding my friends. But then at...

https://youtu.be/8uHUIL8KAWY I need to flesh this out, but you can watch the video or scan quickly. Some of these are pretty similar to issues I raised in Book Craft. SCENE/SETTING Frame entrance, show reactionNice view, slow down, pretty musicForce characters onto...

In a lot of YA books, the sexy love interest has captivating magical powers over mortal women. But for some reason, they don’t work on the protagonist. She’s immune. He can hear everybody’s thoughts… but hers. She’s a mystery, a puzzle, that drives him crazy, because...

This is the missing "how this book is organized" section that I removed from the front of Book Craft because it felt too stagnant and uninspiring. You'll have noticed, in this bare-bones original outline, I use clearer language and focus on each step, without the fun...

The first chapter of Book Craft - chapter 0, on courage - used to be 25K of fascinating historical trivia, but it tended to veer mostly towards creative confidence and then got pretty deep into alternative, questionable suggestions, so I'll keep this super brief for...

Some people need more help with the details of actually getting words on the page, so here are some pointers. Keep in mind I’m an expert, neuro-atypical procrastinator with ADHD. I’ll spend 5 hours avoiding for every 20 minutes of writing. But that also means I’ve had...

FIRST CHAPTER MISTAKES What follows are some insights I’ve collected, after providing feedback on hundreds of first drafts. I’ve tried to only share general examples that I notice frequently in the majority of inexperienced manuscripts. There is nothing implicitly or...