Help a Family Out... Get a Crit

I'm not the sort to beg, but I'm not above bribing you to do a little good if you can.

Kevin Zelnio (@kzelnio on Twitter) is a marine biologist and freelance author with a six-year-old son in the hospital. The kiddo had surgery yesterday, and the family has no health insurance to cover the bill. You can read the whole story HERE at Scientific American.

The crew over at #IAmScience has started a PayPal fund to help Kevin's family out.

I'll sweeten the pot. Send me a screen shot of your donation and I'll give you a crit. Zero to ten dollars for 1000 word crit, 10 to 20 dollars for a 2000 word crit and so on.

CLICK HERE to go straight to the PayPal page, and thank you for being generous. :o) Trust me, helping a little kid is worth skipping the Starbucks latte today.

ETA - The email button is on the left side under my bio, but if that's not working for you, liana (dot) brooks1 (at) gmail (dot) com

ETA 2- Yes, this includes non-fiction, queries, synopsis, ect. I won't fact-check for non-fiction, just correct basic spelling and grammar.

Welcome to Base Camp

When you head out for a serious expedition - say climbing Mt. Everest or invading a foreign country - one of the first things you do is establish a base camp. This camp serves as a staging ground, an area of retreat, and the place of protection for your support team. Without a base camp you are permanently behind enemy lines.

Guess what? Your blog is your base camp. Those followers on your side-bar are your support team.

A blog is your base of operations on the internet. When people Google your name you want them to hit your blog. It needs to have all the major information (contact, where they can buy your book, bio, you know the drill).

What it doesn't need - and what many people don't seem to understand - is that a blog should not be a three-ring circus.

Unless you are a professional blogger (i.e. someone who is paid to run a blog) you shouldn't be devoting hours of your day to blogging and blog-bling. \

Let's look at the difference...

PROFESSIONAL BLOGGER - Tom and Lorenzo - a fashion blog updated 3-5 times daily with relevant content. They make money on the ads. They have an established online persona and use the same style and word choice for all their posts.


Professional Review Blog - Fantasy & SciFi Lovin' News & Reviews - a review blog for the sci-fi and fantasy genres. What (if any) money is made from the site I don't know. There are ads and the books are review copies meaning they are free. There are 10+ posts weekly and the author has an established reputation in the review/reader community.

Professional Lit Agent's Blog - PubRants - Notice this is not a professional blog, but the blog of a professional. There is a difference. This is the personal blog of Lit Agent Kristin Nelson. She writes about all things related to publishing, what she's acquiring, and tips for authors. Note the simple background and the personal style. This is where you go to stalk an agent for information about them. New posts 4-5 times a week.


Professional Author's Blog - Lisa Shearin - personal blog of fantasy author Lisa Shearin. No ads. Background is genre/series relevant. Book covers are there and easily clickable. There is a simple list to make navigating the web easy. Blog posts once or twice a week between books, more frequent when a new book is headed to the shelf.


Casual Blog - The Southern Experiment - the personal blog of a college student. Created, used for a week for college class, abandoned.


Do you see the difference here? A Professional Blogger is making a career out of blogging. The blog is store-front, office, and ad all in one. Unless your goal is to turn your blog into a cash machine you don't need to do that.

If you are an author you want a personal site that gives people a clue what genre you write and what style they can expect from your books. People aren't going to read the blog daily.

Did I say that loud enough?

An author's blog needs to be updated enough to give fans updates and keep them interested. If you want to write more because blogging is how you wake up, or you need to think out loud, or you just can't fit a thought into the 140 character allowance on Twitter that's fine. But it isn't compulsory. Especially if you don't have a book to sell.

Worry about your book first.

If you are a casual blogger you need to worry about the blog even less. Put up a post often enough to keep friends from calling to ask if you died.

But wait! There's more!

Unless your job is a professional tallier of blog posts and someone pays you cold hard cash to find tidbits from the blogosphere you don't need to read five billion blogs daily. Not even this one. That's why Goggle was invented.

Go ahead and try it. Google a blog's name and subject. "Liana Brooks editing" Hey! Look! Old blog posts you may have never read but that are relevant to what you need! And over on the side-bar, what's that? Why it's a search engine and the labels so you can easily dissect this blog and find whatever you need whenever you need it.

CONFESSION: I do this all the time. Blogs are a wonderful resource. I love being able to find an author and their books with ease. I adore the agents who blog and have an updated wish list sitting next to a link for submissions. It makes to easy to find places to submit my work to.

A blog is your base camp. It's a place where people can find information about you. It is not where you come to linger. Get out on Twitter, Google +, or Face Book to network. Get to conferences to meet people. Get your book written. Let your blog be what it's meant to be and not the battlefield.

Failure IS An Option...

KD Sarge has an amazing post called Failure IS An Option. Love it!

And I agree 100%. Life is about choices. It's about choosing what you want to happen. No one will hand you the world on a platter. Dodging consequences is immature. By age 18 you should know all the rules. You should know that driving too fast on icy roads and texting leads to car wrecks. You should know sex without birth control leads to pregnancy and STDs. You should know that skipping school or work won't get you good grades or a steady job.

On the other hand, hard work pays off, and that's a consequence you should understand too. It doesn't always pay off right away, and often not as soon as you want, but hard work always pays off. Putting your butt in the chair and typing every day will get a book written. Going to work every day and doing your job even when your co-workers make your eye twitch will earn you a paycheck. Sanding, and hammering, and measuring, and painting will turn raw wood (or broken tables) into working furniture.

You can fail; but only if you choose to fail by quitting. In the meantime, fairness has nothing to do with it. Decide where you want to go in life, then make the choices that will get you there.

Weekend Projects... because authors can have hobbies too!

Allison Winn Scotch posed a very thoughtful question to her readers Thursday: What Else Do You Do? That's a very good question. Most of us have full-time jobs, we juggle careers, parenting, bill paying, and writing. Many authors struggle to find time to write their novels! So who has time for hobbies?

Um... that would be me again.

I feel so guilty. I was whining the other week about how horrible life was treating me, only to take a deep breath and realize I'm a very lucky girl. In the chaos I sometimes forget to be thankful that I have a roof over my head, wonderful children, a loving husband, the world's greatest beta-readers (yes I am sucking up - don't judge me), and the chance to pursue my career in writing without putting my life on hold. That makes me one in a million.

And since I've been jabbering on Twitter about all the projects currently hiding in my barn I figured I better do the promised blog post on all my work that has absolutely nothing to do with writing (really).

Project 1... A New Kitchen Table (cue the theme music for A New Hope)


Remember my blog post about the state park? This is the wood I gleefully collected for the tabletop. Off to the side I have a stack of timbers to make benches, table legs, and book cases! I need book cases!!! We've found ten more plastic tubs filled with books in the garage while we were unpacking. I swear books multiple if you read them after midnight. They're worse than gremlins!

Project 2... Decorating My Work Space


You think I'd post photos of my study in it's current state? Aren't you adorable! Not going to happen. Right now my study looks like the AFTER picture of a natural disaster. Boxes, wreckage, a dead dog... oh, wait, the dog is alive. He just sleeps like the dead.

We move a lot. Six official moves in the past ten years. Every time we pick up and go we run into a storage problem. As in: Why didn't anybody put a closet in this house??? I dream of having a perfectly organized, perfectly portable house. Built-in shelves that can travel as much as we do. These shelves were built using Ana White's $10 Ledge design and are the first step to achieving my dream. It also means having a shelf so high Bambino can't reach, but I digress...


Project 3... Somewhere to Hang the Fan Mail


My last kitchen table didn't survive the move. Glass table tops and incompetent movers don't mix. The frame arrived at our new house, but the glass game in a million sharp slivers. Being the Eco-concious, penny-pinching person that I am I stuffed the frame in the barn and hoped I wound find a use for it someday. We considered buying new glass, but Bambino likes to jump on the table after dinner and I'd rather he use the reincarnated foot bridge for his antics than a glass top that might slice his legs to ribbons. And then I found a tutorial by Megan Brooke on making chicken wire frames (with a photo by Lemonade Makin' Mama that I am happy to share).

Perfect for hanging everything from kid's art projects to outlining paraphernalia to fan mail (in case I feel like printing out an email I guess?). I'm enchanted by the teal color here. It matches some Moroccan lanterns I have.


That's what's in my wood pile right now. The shelves need about three hours to go from start to finish, and it's taken me a month to put them together. They aren't even on my wall yet! The framing project means sanding, painting, and stapling... And the table is a monster project. I don't expect to finish either any time soon, but they're there. Slowly but surely, here a little bit and there a little bit, I get things done.

What are you up to?

A Random Assortment of Tidbits for a Rainy Friday

Let's start with the fun stuff. You all know I have this minor obsession with colorful socks. So, naturally, what happens? Someone gave me a link to a website full of colorful socks!

SOCK DREAMS - Where all my money not spent on books will go.


THE DINNER GARDEN - is full of helpful suggestions, recipes, and seeds (free to a good home!) for those who are doing subsistence gardening. That is, people who are trying to live off of what they grow. The free seeds program ensures that no one is too poor to start a garden, even if it means dirt in empty milk jugs lined up on the windowsill of your apartment.


SENSUAL WORDS - by Annette Blair might not be what you think it is. It isn't the title to a spicy new romance novel (although it really should be), it's a list of sensual words that will help cure the overdose of "sexy" your WIP may be suffering from.


3 SIGNS YOU'RE RENOVATING A CONDEMNED NOVEL - Not sure if your novel is going to stand the test of time? Worried it's about to collapse no matter how much you edit? Don't worry. We've all been there. Stagger on over to Write it Sideways and get some advice on how to rebuild a plot with a shaky foundation.

Thoughts From Around the Blogosphere

There's a lot of chatter in the blogosphere today and I don't have to time to cover it all, so here's the quick and dirty round-up.

IT'S A TRAP: The Easy Ending by Maybe Genius Steph Sinkhorn
This is an well-thought out look at endings of books, the kinds of endings, and what can go horribly wrong. Endings are almost as hard as writing Chapter 3 for me. Many of my stories *cough*EVFiL*cough* don't have endings because they are just that hard to write.

Whether your editing your final draft, or working on your first draft, give this article a look-see. You'll thank me later.


7 Ways to Create Powerful Conflict by Lynnette Labelle at Chatterbox ChitChat
This article really deserves a full post because I don't see eye to eye with Lynnette. Her opening comment is this:

The best conflict comes from your main character’s worst fear coming true at the worst possible moment.

And my first instinct was to rear go back and go, "Nuh-uh! That's not true!" I wasn't even sure why I thought that, so I finished the article and thought about it for the better part of the morning.

Lynnette has a point, conflict doesn't come from giving a character what they want, but her focus for this article is on character driven plots. There's a heavy bias towards the romance genre in her thoughts (go figure, she edits the RWA online newsletter Lovebytes). Whatever your take on this, it's a good jumping off point for a discussion on conflict and why your book needs some.


The Thing That REALLY Pisses Me Off by Zoe Winters
This is a non nonsense letter about piracy. Zoe says:

If someone says: “This is mine and I don’t want you to take it without paying” then taking it is WRONG. How hard is that? Why is there a mental disconnect here for anyone?

And I can't agree more. It's not a new topic, but since we still have idiots committing piracy we still need to discuss this.


Raymond Benson guest blogs over at A Newbie's Guide to Publishing
E-books are the pot of gold at the end of the publishing rainbow. Anybody can put out an ebook! Do you have a novella malingering in the depths of your files? Slap a cover on that sucker and sell it on Amazon! The money will just roll in!

Or not.

Benson breaks down what happened when he moved from traditional print format to selling his back list in the ebook format. Even with all the right moves and author can go wrong. Yes, more books are selling as ebooks (which is great for those of us who move every six months because print books are heavy), but there are a lot of titles out there and a majority of them aren't selling as well as they should.



Did I miss any amazing publishing news today? If so, leave me a link in the comments box!

Made of Awesome Contest

Shelly Watters is hosting a First Page contest with guest agent Judith Engracia of Liza Dawson and Associates!

Liza is building her client list so this is a great chance for new authors to find an excited young agent who is going to hit the ground running.


Hhere's how the contest will work:

1. Sign up on the link.
2. On May 28th, post your title, genre, word count and the first 250 words on your blog for critique.
3. From May 28th through May 30th, hop around to the other contestant's blogs and critique their first 250 words.
4. On May 31st, come back to my blog and post your final entry on my dedicated contest entry blog post. Be sure to include:
1. Your email address
2. Title, genre, wordcount
3. Your polished first page (250 words) Don't stop in the middle of a sentence.
4. Where you follow me
5. Where you spread the word

The Rules for Short Science Fiction

If you write science fiction I recommend reading through this list of 60 Rules for short sci-fi.

Even if you don't write short fiction I think the rules are a good set of guidelines to familirize yourself with.

I think #16 is very important. READ THE GENRE!!!

Chuck Wendig Says You Should Write

Consider this your homework for the weekend. Why are you writing a book? According to Chuck Wendig:

Not a lot of jobs:

a) Let you make shit up

b) Let you work without pants

c) Pay you fifty bucks an hour.

I’m sorry, why wouldn’t you want to be a writer again?

After a very tragic Friday morning, much stress, and to much reality people need fiction to escape into. Consider writing your way of helping your fellow man, at $50 an hour.

And, I'm really he said not a lot of jobs, because I can think of three off the top of my head that let you work pants-less. If you can guess what they are, let me know!

Wednesday Linky Love

The sky may fall at any moment! I just found time to actually READ blogs. I'm pretty sure that's a sign of the apocalypse.

And on that cheery note :o)

The Graveyard Shift has a post on postmortem decomposition. That's important for everyone who wants realistic zombies, or keeps a skeleton in the closet.

Nathan Bransford asks a very important questions: Do you spend more time writing or reading?

I was a little surprised at the number of people who write more than they read. Granted, Nathan is a literary agent and most the comments come from aspiring authors who are hoping Nathan will notice their pithy comment and demand to see their manuscript (or maybe that's why I leave comments....). Either way, I spend more time reading, especially with the kids home.

Have you ever tried to juggle a laptop while you chase three kids across a playground? It's just not worth the abuse! Paperback books can handle the abuse. Ergo, I spend more time with a book in hand than I do applying the butt-in-chair method of writing.


Ron's Doom Factory has a series of three posts about writers block, characters, and believable writing that is worth checking out. Especially if you're suffering from Creative Fatigue. (have a cookie)

Do you have anything to add to the list?