Search results

There seems to be a lot of weight in Chapter 1. Have you considered breaking that into two chapters? Have Chapter 1 introduce your protagonist, the plot, and an MC, then have Chapter 2 introduce the villain. Or, you could have a hooky chapter 1 with the villain doing something villain-like that...

I have to do this to my own manuscripts too. I filter with the best of them. lol! And I have to go on a "that" search and destroy. It never ceases to amaze me how often I use the word "that" in some places.

I think there is a difference if the flashback is given enough screen time, so to speak. In the case of my UF novel, the flashback is the entire first chapter. It's almost a prologue without calling it a prologue. And the flashback has a clear beginning, middle, and end. That's important. The...

I think you can get rid of the opening sentence. Your opening sentence should be "she heard the straining of metal..." (And recognize the "she heard" is a filter. Maybe, "The metal screamed and strained as the bus slanted sideways.") Start with the flashback, but make it a clear part of the...

I'm waiting on edits to book one of my UF series. It's 140k, and she got it on the first. I have a few more days to wait. I should be working in the romance novel that I'm 36k into, but I'm fixing up my author website instead.

I have a thing for secrets and secrecy. I love to explore what a secret can do on the psyche of a character, both on the holder of the secret and the ones the secret is being kept from. A secret can fester and drive somebody mad. It can destroy relationships, families, entire countries. From a...

I have a Writing Music Spotify, and I listen to it sometimes. It's mainly movie soundtracks and music without words. Anything with lyrics is distracting. But lately, I've taken to buying a specific-scented candle. I bought it on a whim at a specialty grocery store a while back, and I lit it...

My worldview comes through to a degree. I don't let it overwhelm a story. I'm not preaching to my audience. But it shows up in how I write my characters, in how they react to others in the world of the story. And honestly, I make no apologies for it. Fiction has the power to change people's...

All I have to say after watching the mid-season finale is that Madison is a badass. :ninja: I got as excited about this episode as I used to on some of the old Walking Dead episodes. It was a great way to close out this half of the season!

The thing is, Amazon is doing exactly what they said they don't want to do, but doing it a little bit sideways. They've recently introduced a system that allows Verified Purchase reviews to rise to the top and non-verified reviews to be all but suppressed unless a user clicks on a link that...

Yup. That's what I was saying. I was agreeing with you. It's law that you have to note if you're receiving a product in order to give a review. The FTC even has a whole page that lays out what you can and cannot do online with regards to reviews and endorsements: The FTC’s Endorsement Guides...

I'm one who is driven to distraction constantly. When I'm on the computer, I would be surprised if I didn't check off every box for some adult ADD checklist. I'm easily distracted, I procrastinate, whatever. And I will whittle away hours doing that. What's worked for me to get myself going is...

I thought it was odd that they were suggesting that too. It's an FTC law, I think, that says someone reviewing a product has to inform when they've received something to do a review. Most indie authors nowadays tell their reviewers to indicate that they are willingly reviewing a product received...

That's odd. It's showing for me. Are you buyin from the .com store? Maybe it's automatically switching to a region where the book isn't available. Try switching to the Amazon.[whatever] to Amazon.com and see if it shows up for you.

Here's a book you might find helpful: Relaunch Your Novel by Chris Fox https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVZD1G/?tag=id2100-20 I think he even has some videos about relaunching a novel on his YouTube channel - Chris Fox

And refreshing your KDP dashboard reports over...and over...and over...and over and over and over. Just work in about two hours out of every day now for the next month or so to account for refresh time to see if you made another sale. :P

Yeah, I should have mentioned above in my post that anything that looks like you're buying reviews is bad, what Amazon refers to as "incentivized reviews". Amazon has even banned accounts for that in the past. (Excessive buying of reviews, that is.) At the very least, they'll remove the traded...

I agree with a lot of what's been said above. My main comment is that it seems like this might be better as a chapter 2. I don't quite get a sense of what the big deal is for this story yet. There is no real conflict here. Look at this as a reader. Is there enough here to keep a reader turning...

Those covers are great, @tinkerdan! (And I didn't know Tanya Huff had a new one out. *goes to one-click-buy*) What I gathered, though, since the book is more of a technothriller set not too incredibly far into the future, these covers might be more to the style of the novel.

Do you have access to a list of ARC readers? Here's a podcast on how to build an ARC list for SFF: SFFMP 94: Putting Together an ARC Team, Getting Lots of Reviews, and Publishing More Often with Anna Hackett – Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast If you get more reviews, that seems to...