Ah, “the horror of the holidays are upon us,” as my grandfather used to say. One common theme, no matter your culture or beliefs, are the strong emotions we feel during these days. CC and I remember two of our strongest Christmas memories, and we use them to illustrate how to transcribe those memories intoContinue reading “Christmas Memories”
Category Archives: Love
What Did You Say?
Writing believable dialogue is one of the biggest challenges in prose because “dialogue is character,” and characters are what drive our books. We discuss dialogue at length with examples from famous movies, and we provide ideas on how to improve your own written dialogue (spoiler: “listen”). We bring you up to speed on our ownContinue reading “What Did You Say?”
We Did This To Ourselves
A little bit longer post for this week’s podcast. Tomorrow, Monday, November 21 starts the presale of our new book on Amazon. (Edit: the pre-sale is live.) This week, we discuss kicking off our marketing campaign with all sorts of plans and incentives. We’re doing the title reveal this week and the cover reveal nextContinue reading “We Did This To Ourselves”
Writing for the Holidays
Flickr image made available from Steve McFarland via Creative Commons. We chat about writing about the holidays, why Hollywood keep making holiday movies, and why people keep watching them. Themes include family, winter, and love. Minor spoilers of Love Hard, Die Hard, A Christmas Carol, and other holiday classics. And we don’t make the rules.Continue reading “Writing for the Holidays”
Life Advice
I read Quora from time to time because I like to see people break the old rule of “there’s no such thing as a stupid question.” If you follow the Big Q, you know better. One particular question-and-answer hit home because not only is the answer is perfect, it reflects my philosophy on life. Granted,Continue reading “Life Advice”
Comedy is Hard
Welcome to the podcast where we misquote actor Edwin Guinn and others when we say, “Life is easy. Comedy is hard.” We discuss our mutual work in progress (WIP), and we agree that while we got the “Rom” part right, we misfired on the “Com” part. How did that happen? And what can we doContinue reading “Comedy is Hard”
Storytelling
Busy writers podcast this week, so let’s dive in: Book covers w @99designs Editing with @RAPublishing Lessons learned from writing together The status of our individual WIPs Pixar Storytelling rules via @lawnrocket Karma. Be Kind. Always. Here’s the source of the Pixar storytelling rules. Listen to the podcast! Love it? Hate it? Let us knowContinue reading “Storytelling”
Chapter One
What hooks a reader into buying and reading a book? Heck if we know, but we try to examine that “hook” that pulls readers into our books. I read the first chapter of my latest book as an example. (Adult content warning) We also talk about finishing the first draft of our latest book, andContinue reading “Chapter One”
Plot Prompts
Two weeks ago, CC gave me random prompts and had me make up a story on the fly, testing me as a pantser. CC took her turn as a plotter with these three prompts: Dropped into an alien worldHigh school romanceTeenage girl superhero (Giving credit, the prompts came from https://www.servicescape.com/writing-prompt-generator) We had an interesting conversationContinue reading “Plot Prompts”
Thank You, All
I’m in the local Starbucks working on CC’s and my latest book with an eye on my Kindle bookshelf’s activity. I am humbled. This last weekend’s giveaway was wildly successful with dozens of books heading out the door. I am incredibly grateful. If you were one of the downloaders, thank you and I hope theyContinue reading “Thank You, All”