On Writing
Renegade Profiles: Space Marine Author J.R. Handley
Author: J.R. Handley JV: Tell me a little about “Team Handley” and how you work together. JR: I come up with the ideas and flesh them out with my wife and mother. We tweak them so they flow and make sense and lately to ensure continuity. Mostly we do this...
I Gained 10x More Readers Standing On The Shoulders of Giants
I’m active in a few writer groups on Facebook. The other day a video by an author who had hit the NYT and USA Today bestseller list 33 times was making the rounds. This video was of her presentation entitled “Capturing the Golden Goose: How to Sell a Bazillion...
Make It Rain: How to Sell a Bazillion Books According to Bestselling Author H.M. Ward
H.M. Ward is an unquestionably successful indie author. Her extensive backlist of YA and New Adult romance novels have sold 13 million books worldwide and she's hit the NYT and USA Today bestseller list a combined 33 times. She shares her thoughts on how to make it...
Want to Speed up Your Next Writing Session? Try This One Simple Thing.
Write yourself a letter. What do I mean by that? When I finish my writing session, I leave myself a note at the bottom of the scene with bullet points of what I want to accomplish the next time I sit down to write. That's it. Nothing magical. It's like David Allen...
The 13th Doughnut – Cold Call by Richard Fox, a Legacy Fleet novella
You know how some bakeries give you that bonus donut if you buy a dozen? There's actually a word for it--lagniappe. That's what I feel like I'm getting when I read a short story set in a universe I already know and enjoy. So when I got that email from Nick Webb...
Wrote Your Hero Into A Corner? You Need A Quinjet For The Rescue
I was stuck. I needed to write a scene to get my protagonist out of a sticky situation and I didn't know what to do. It was literally the "man in the hole" scenario where I had made my alien stronger and stronger and the situation was getting more and more dire for...
Gain Superior Writing Skills With Decisive, Attainable Objectives
When I write, I am waging war. Carving out the time to write is a daily battle (as I write this, my 5 year old is having a raging tantrum), sitting in the chair is a daily battle, and the long term objective is to win the war and write the books. All the books. So I...
Making Money On Your Writing – Following Heinlein’s Rules
I had never heard of Heinlein's Rules until I started reading Dean Wesley Smith's blog. The five rules are pretty straight forward and I paraphrase them here: Write. Finish what you start. Don't rewrite except to editorial order. Market your writing. Keep marketing...
How To Write An Assassination Story In 5 Steps
A writing group I’m in came up with a plan. We were all going to write an assassin’s tale in our respective worlds as part of an omnibus. I write military sci fi set in the near future. How hard could this be? Ok, so it was hard. My title was total clickbait. Anyone...
Is It Time To Take A Writing Class?
For the folks who build houses, repair complex machinery, or bake wedding cakes, they spend years to learn, and train, and master their craft. (For my dayjob, I had three years of graduate school, a grueling multi-day certification exam, and then years of...
A Tribute To The Old School Classics of Alien Invasion Space Marine Sci-Fi
I try to feature indie pub authors here because I feel like I personally had so little exposure to them until recently and now that I have been enjoying indie works, I want to help amplify their reach to readers. However, my "research" into the Alien Invasion/Space...
![[First Contact: Alien Encounters] Earth Alone by Daniel Arenson](https://juliavee.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/alien-encounter-e1490050531904.jpg)
[First Contact: Alien Encounters] Earth Alone by Daniel Arenson
I've fallen in love with reading First Contact, Alien Invasion themed science fiction. Originally it started out as "research" since my co-writer and I had been brainstorming a prequel to our Cold War series. This led to a deep dive into all things alien and I...