Nuggets for May
What basics should be on your website?
http://janefriedman.com/2015/03/26/author-website-components/
A few advanced features for your website
http://janefriedman.com/2013/04/15/improve-your-author-website/
http://janefriedman.com/2013/11/24/wordpress-plug-ins-cant-live-without/
On Self-hosting your website
http://janefriedman.com/2014/09/09/website-self-hosting/
Pinch points in story structure
http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/what-are-pinch-points-and-how-can-they-make-your-book-easier-to-write/
This is one of my favorite examples of how men and women think differently by brain scientist Livia Blackburn
http://blog.liviablackburne.com/2011/02/on-writing-realistic-male-characters.html
The climax is crucial to a story. This is a good post to measure yours against.
http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/want-readers-to-adore-your-book-learn-how-to-ace-your-climactic-moment/
Good things to think about when writing your hero/ine
http://moodywriting.blogspot.com/2015/03/tricks-of-trade-4-hero-upgrade.html
http://moodywriting.blogspot.com/2015/03/tricks-of-trade-4-hero-upgrade.html
More help for blurb writing
http://www.selfpublishingreview.com/2015/04/how-to-write-a-book-blurb/
If you have or are thinking about a website, this is an interesting comparison of BNA websites
http://www.writersandauthors.info/2015/04/a-closer-look-at-author-websites.html
It seems like these round-up posts get longer every month. Does this work for y'all or would you prefer shorter lists more often?
Thursday Writing Quote ~ Philip Gerard
Never write a love scene that is only about love, a sex scene that is only about sex, or a scene of violence that is only about violence. The key to writing scenes that might otherwise be trite, lurid, or sentimental is subtext: the crucial action happening under the scene. ~ Philip Gerard
Tuesday Teaser/Opening ~ Survival of the Sickest
I picked up Survival of the Sickest
by Dr. Sharon Moalem because I love the title. It's one of those fun books that tricks you into learning while it entertains you. Those are some of my favorite kinds of books.
Blurb
Was diabetes evolution's response to the last Ice Age? Did a deadly genetic disease help our ancestors survive the bubonic plagues of Europe? Will a visit to the tanning salon help lower your cholesterol? Why do we age? Why are some people immune to HIV? Can your genes be turned on -- or off?
Joining the ranks of modern myth busters, Dr. Sharon Moalem turns our current understanding of illness on its head and challenges us to fundamentally change the way we think about our bodies, our health, and our relationship to just about every other living thing on earth, from plants and animals to insects and bacteria.
Through a fresh and engaging examination of our evolutionary history, Dr. Moalem reveals how many of the conditions that are diseases today actually gave our ancestors a leg up in the survival sweepstakes. When the option is a long life with a disease or a short one without it, evolution opts for disease almost every time.
Everything from the climate our ancestors lived in to the crops they planted and ate to their beverage of choice can be seen in our genetic inheritance. But Survival of the Sickest doesn't stop there. It goes on to demonstrate just how little modern medicine really understands about human health, and offers a new way of thinking that can help all of us live longer, healthier lives.
Opening:
Aran Gordon is a born competitor. He's a top financial executive, a competitive swimmer since he was six years old, and a natural long-distance runner. A little more than a dozen years after he ran his first marathon in 1984 he set his sights on the Mount Everest of marathons--the Marathon des Sables, a 150-mile race across the Sahara Desert, all brutal heat and endless sand that test endurance runners like nothing else.
As he began to train he experienced something he'd never really had to deal with before--physical difficulty. He was tired all the time. His joints hurt. His heart seemed to skip a funny beat. He told his running partner he wasn't sure he could go on with training, with running at all. And he went to the doctor.
Actually, he went to doctors. Doctor after doctor--they couldn't account for his symptoms, or they drew the wrong conclusion. When his illness left him depressed, they told him it was stress and recommended he talk to a therapist. When blood tests revealed a liver problem, they told him he was drinking too much. Finally, after three years, his doctors uncovered the real problem. New tests revealed massive amounts of iron in his blood and liver--off-the-charts amounts of iron.
Aran Gordon was rusting to death.
Teaser:
There's a curious correlation between these sunspot peaks and flu epidemics. In the twentieth century, six of the nine sunspot peaks occurred in tandem with massive flu outbreaks.
Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current readOpen to a random pageShare two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! To see what others are sharing on the Teaser Tuesdays, check the comments at: http://adailyrhythm.com/
Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea
by Dr. Sharon Moalem because I love the title. It's one of those fun books that tricks you into learning while it entertains you. Those are some of my favorite kinds of books.BlurbWas diabetes evolution's response to the last Ice Age? Did a deadly genetic disease help our ancestors survive the bubonic plagues of Europe? Will a visit to the tanning salon help lower your cholesterol? Why do we age? Why are some people immune to HIV? Can your genes be turned on -- or off?
Joining the ranks of modern myth busters, Dr. Sharon Moalem turns our current understanding of illness on its head and challenges us to fundamentally change the way we think about our bodies, our health, and our relationship to just about every other living thing on earth, from plants and animals to insects and bacteria.
Through a fresh and engaging examination of our evolutionary history, Dr. Moalem reveals how many of the conditions that are diseases today actually gave our ancestors a leg up in the survival sweepstakes. When the option is a long life with a disease or a short one without it, evolution opts for disease almost every time.
Everything from the climate our ancestors lived in to the crops they planted and ate to their beverage of choice can be seen in our genetic inheritance. But Survival of the Sickest doesn't stop there. It goes on to demonstrate just how little modern medicine really understands about human health, and offers a new way of thinking that can help all of us live longer, healthier lives.
Opening:
Aran Gordon is a born competitor. He's a top financial executive, a competitive swimmer since he was six years old, and a natural long-distance runner. A little more than a dozen years after he ran his first marathon in 1984 he set his sights on the Mount Everest of marathons--the Marathon des Sables, a 150-mile race across the Sahara Desert, all brutal heat and endless sand that test endurance runners like nothing else.
As he began to train he experienced something he'd never really had to deal with before--physical difficulty. He was tired all the time. His joints hurt. His heart seemed to skip a funny beat. He told his running partner he wasn't sure he could go on with training, with running at all. And he went to the doctor.
Actually, he went to doctors. Doctor after doctor--they couldn't account for his symptoms, or they drew the wrong conclusion. When his illness left him depressed, they told him it was stress and recommended he talk to a therapist. When blood tests revealed a liver problem, they told him he was drinking too much. Finally, after three years, his doctors uncovered the real problem. New tests revealed massive amounts of iron in his blood and liver--off-the-charts amounts of iron.
Aran Gordon was rusting to death.
Teaser:
There's a curious correlation between these sunspot peaks and flu epidemics. In the twentieth century, six of the nine sunspot peaks occurred in tandem with massive flu outbreaks.
Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current readOpen to a random pageShare two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! To see what others are sharing on the Teaser Tuesdays, check the comments at: http://adailyrhythm.com/
Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea
Thursday Writing Quotes ~ V. Moody
Most characters in fiction act like they’ve never read a book or seen a movie. They take things at face value, go along with whatever other people want, and are taken by surprise when the obvious happens. ~ V. MoodyTuesday Teaser ~ King of the Cowboys
I don't think of myself as a big reader of biographies, but I guess it depends on the person. This week, I'm reading King of the Cowboys
by Ty Murray. This is written with a lot of humor and I'm enjoying it tremendously. Plus, he gets extra points for acknowledging his ghost writer on the cover. (You don't really think most of those autobiographies of famous people are actually written by them, do you?)
Blurb:
The most famous rodeo champion of all time tells his amazing true story -- and opens a fascinating window into the world of the professional cowboy.
Ty Murray was born to be a rodeo star -- in fact, his first words were "I'm a bull rider." Before he was even out of diapers, he was climbing atop his mother's Singer sewing machine case, which just so happened to be the perfect mechanical bull for a 13-month-old. Before long, Ty was winning peewee events by the hatful, and his special talent was obvious...obvious even to a man called Larry Mahan. At the time the greatest living rodeo legend, six-time champion Mahan invited a teenaged Ty Murray to spend a summer on his ranch learning not just rodeoing but also some life lessons. Those lessons prepared Ty for a career that eventually surpassed even Mahan's own -- Ty's seven All-Around Championships.
In King of the Cowboys, Ty Murray invites us into the daredevil world of rodeo and the life of the cowboy. Along the way, he details a life spent constantly on the road, heading to the next event; the tragic death of his friend and fellow rodeo star Lane Frost; and the years of debilitating injuries that led some to say Ty Murray was finished.
He wasn't. In fact, Ty Murray has brought the world of rodeo into the twenty-first century, through his unparalleled achievements in the ring, through advancing the case for the sport as a television color-commentator, and through the Professional Bull Riders, an organization he helped to build.
In the end, though, Ty Murray is first and foremost a cowboy, and now that he's retired from competition, he takes this chance to reflect on his remarkable life and career. In King of the Cowboys, Ty Murray opens up his world as never before.
Opening:
It all comes down to this. All the work, all the dreams, all the sweat, tears, blood, mud, fear, doubt, sacrifices, and victories boil down to this one moment in this dirt-filled arena. Everything I've dreamed of, everything I've worked for my entire life, comes down to these final eight seconds, which is how long I hope to stay on the back of a 2,200-pound brindle called Hard Copy.
Teaser:
The horse was old and smart, the kind of animal that tries to teach all new kids a thing or two. Later in my career we joked that horses like that had been around so long they could hum the national anthem.
Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current readOpen to a random pageShare two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! To see what others are sharing on the Teaser Tuesdays, check the comments at: http://adailyrhythm.com/
Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea
by Ty Murray. This is written with a lot of humor and I'm enjoying it tremendously. Plus, he gets extra points for acknowledging his ghost writer on the cover. (You don't really think most of those autobiographies of famous people are actually written by them, do you?)Blurb: The most famous rodeo champion of all time tells his amazing true story -- and opens a fascinating window into the world of the professional cowboy.
Ty Murray was born to be a rodeo star -- in fact, his first words were "I'm a bull rider." Before he was even out of diapers, he was climbing atop his mother's Singer sewing machine case, which just so happened to be the perfect mechanical bull for a 13-month-old. Before long, Ty was winning peewee events by the hatful, and his special talent was obvious...obvious even to a man called Larry Mahan. At the time the greatest living rodeo legend, six-time champion Mahan invited a teenaged Ty Murray to spend a summer on his ranch learning not just rodeoing but also some life lessons. Those lessons prepared Ty for a career that eventually surpassed even Mahan's own -- Ty's seven All-Around Championships.
In King of the Cowboys, Ty Murray invites us into the daredevil world of rodeo and the life of the cowboy. Along the way, he details a life spent constantly on the road, heading to the next event; the tragic death of his friend and fellow rodeo star Lane Frost; and the years of debilitating injuries that led some to say Ty Murray was finished.
He wasn't. In fact, Ty Murray has brought the world of rodeo into the twenty-first century, through his unparalleled achievements in the ring, through advancing the case for the sport as a television color-commentator, and through the Professional Bull Riders, an organization he helped to build.
In the end, though, Ty Murray is first and foremost a cowboy, and now that he's retired from competition, he takes this chance to reflect on his remarkable life and career. In King of the Cowboys, Ty Murray opens up his world as never before.
Opening:
It all comes down to this. All the work, all the dreams, all the sweat, tears, blood, mud, fear, doubt, sacrifices, and victories boil down to this one moment in this dirt-filled arena. Everything I've dreamed of, everything I've worked for my entire life, comes down to these final eight seconds, which is how long I hope to stay on the back of a 2,200-pound brindle called Hard Copy.
Teaser:
The horse was old and smart, the kind of animal that tries to teach all new kids a thing or two. Later in my career we joked that horses like that had been around so long they could hum the national anthem.
Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current readOpen to a random pageShare two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! To see what others are sharing on the Teaser Tuesdays, check the comments at: http://adailyrhythm.com/Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea
Dan Wells on Story Structure
If you're as impatient as I am, you can skip the first 2:50 minutes
Story structure as it applies to the genres of romance, tragedy, and horror
I love the way he weaves the different plot types together
Thursday Writing Quote ~ George R R Martin
I get up every day and work in the morning. I have my coffee and get to work. On good days I look up and it’s dark outside and the whole day has gone by and I don’t know where it’s gone. But there’s bad days, too. Where I struggle and sweat and a half hour creeps by and I’ve written three words. And half a day creeps by and I’ve written a sentence and a half and then I quit for the day and play computer games. You know, sometimes you eat the bear and sometimes the bear eats you. ~ George R R Martin
Tuesday Teaser ~ Missing You
I'm an avid reader of Harlan Coben's books, so of course, the second I laid my hands on Missing You
, I knew it would be next up.
Blurb:Surfing an online dating site, NYPD detective Kat Donovan feels her whole world explode. Staring back at her is her ex-fiancé, the man who shattered her heart—and whom she hasn’t seen in eighteen years.
But when Kat reaches out to the man in the profile, an unspeakable conspiracy comes to light. As Kat begins to investigate, her feelings are challenged about everyone she’s ever loved—even her father, whose cruel murder so long ago has never been fully explained.
With lives on the line, including her own, Kat must venture deeper into the darkness than she ever has before and discover if she has the strength to survive what she finds there.
Opening:
Kat Donovan spun off her father's old stool, readying to leave O'Malley"s Pub, when Stacy said, "You're not going to like what I did."
Teaser:
As a cop, Kat had learned firsthand, the power of persuasion, of want, of the unreliability of the eyes when it came to full-on suggestion. She had seen witnesses pick out the person in a lineup that they, the cops, wanted them to pick out.
No one does suspense like Harlan. Have you ever tried his books?
Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current readOpen to a random pageShare two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! To see what others are sharing on the Teaser Tuesdays, check the comments at: http://adailyrhythm.com/
Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea
Thursday Writing Quote ~ John Long
Using another writer's words is like wearing someone else's shoes: they'll never fit because they've been broken in on someone else's feet. ~ John Long
Tuesday Teaser ~ Blood Horses
This week, I'm reading Blood Horses: Notes of a Sportswriter's Son
by John Jeremiah Sullivan.
Blurb:
One evening late in his life, veteran sportswriter Mike Sullivan was asked by his son what he remembered best from his three decades in the press box. The answer came as a surprise. "I was at Secretariat's Derby, in '73. That was . . . just beauty, you know?"
Sullivan didn't know, not really: the track had always been a place his father disappeared to once a year on business, a source of souvenir glasses and inscrutable passions in his Kentucky relatives. But in 2000, Sullivan, an editor and essayist for Harper's, decided to educate himself. He spent two years following the horse-both across the country, as he watched one season's juvenile crop prepare for the Triple Crown, and through time, as he tracked the animal's constant evolution in literature and art, from the ponies that appeared on the walls of European caves 30,000 years ago, to the mounts that carried the Indo-European language to the edges of the Old World, to the finely tuned but fragile yearlings that are auctioned off for millions of dollars apiece every spring and fall.
The result is a witty, encyclopedic, and in the end profound meditation on what Edwin Muir called our "long-lost archaic companionship" with the horse. Incorporating elements of memoir and reportage, the Wunderkammer and the picture gallery, Blood Horses lets us see--as we have never seen before--the animal that, more than any other, made us who we are.
Opening:
It was in the month of May, three years ago, by a hospital bed in Columbus, Ohio, where my father was recovering from what was supposed to have been a quintuple bypass operation but became, on the surgeon's actual seeing the heart, a sextuple. His face, my father's face, was pale. He was thinner than I had seen him in years. A stuffed bear that the nurses had loaned him lay crooked in his lap; they told him to hug it whenever he stood or sat down, to keep the stitches in his chest from tearing. I complimented him on the bear when I walked in, and he gave me one of those looks, dropping his jaw and crossing his eyes as he rolled them back in their sockets. It was a look he assumed in all kinds of situations but that always meant the same thing: Can you believe this?
Teaser:
What has surprised me most, at the sale, has been realizing that the cultish emphasis placed on pedigree by many bettors and most racing journalist is shared, to an overwhelming extent, by the trainers themselves. Studies of the heritability factors involved in speed and endurance (or of the frequency, in plain English, with which these traits recur in offspring) find them "modest," and the argument has been made that even these figures can be largely accounted for by nurture, not nature.
Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current readOpen to a random pageShare two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! To see what others are sharing on the Teaser Tuesdays, check the comments at: http://adailyrhythm.com/
Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea
by John Jeremiah Sullivan.Blurb:One evening late in his life, veteran sportswriter Mike Sullivan was asked by his son what he remembered best from his three decades in the press box. The answer came as a surprise. "I was at Secretariat's Derby, in '73. That was . . . just beauty, you know?"
Sullivan didn't know, not really: the track had always been a place his father disappeared to once a year on business, a source of souvenir glasses and inscrutable passions in his Kentucky relatives. But in 2000, Sullivan, an editor and essayist for Harper's, decided to educate himself. He spent two years following the horse-both across the country, as he watched one season's juvenile crop prepare for the Triple Crown, and through time, as he tracked the animal's constant evolution in literature and art, from the ponies that appeared on the walls of European caves 30,000 years ago, to the mounts that carried the Indo-European language to the edges of the Old World, to the finely tuned but fragile yearlings that are auctioned off for millions of dollars apiece every spring and fall.
The result is a witty, encyclopedic, and in the end profound meditation on what Edwin Muir called our "long-lost archaic companionship" with the horse. Incorporating elements of memoir and reportage, the Wunderkammer and the picture gallery, Blood Horses lets us see--as we have never seen before--the animal that, more than any other, made us who we are.
Opening:
It was in the month of May, three years ago, by a hospital bed in Columbus, Ohio, where my father was recovering from what was supposed to have been a quintuple bypass operation but became, on the surgeon's actual seeing the heart, a sextuple. His face, my father's face, was pale. He was thinner than I had seen him in years. A stuffed bear that the nurses had loaned him lay crooked in his lap; they told him to hug it whenever he stood or sat down, to keep the stitches in his chest from tearing. I complimented him on the bear when I walked in, and he gave me one of those looks, dropping his jaw and crossing his eyes as he rolled them back in their sockets. It was a look he assumed in all kinds of situations but that always meant the same thing: Can you believe this?
Teaser:
What has surprised me most, at the sale, has been realizing that the cultish emphasis placed on pedigree by many bettors and most racing journalist is shared, to an overwhelming extent, by the trainers themselves. Studies of the heritability factors involved in speed and endurance (or of the frequency, in plain English, with which these traits recur in offspring) find them "modest," and the argument has been made that even these figures can be largely accounted for by nurture, not nature.
Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following: Grab your current readOpen to a random pageShare two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page. BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! To see what others are sharing on the Teaser Tuesdays, check the comments at: http://adailyrhythm.com/Share the first paragraph (or a few) from a book you are reading. Here's the link: Bibliophile By The Sea
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)