Category: Musings

Writing blog

Inspiration Isn’t Action

I love the New Year. It’s invigorating and inspiring to be starting over, getting a fresh take on things, and recommitting to goals and dreams that maybe didn’t quite see their fruition last year. I’m big on office supplies, so one of my favorite ways to kick off the new year is with a new …

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Writing Creative Nonfiction

In my prior life as a university English professor, all I did was nonfiction writing. I taught it. I wrote it. I lived it. And I discovered something in the process: there is a strong tendency to want to divorce creativity from nonfiction writing. When you take a “creative writing” class in school, no one …

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Vivid vs. Violet Verbiage — The Vivid

Now that we’ve cleared up the meaning of purple prose, I can talk a little bit about what makes great prose so beautifully vivid. Please note that, for all I’m warning you to avoid the overly-ostentatious verbiage, I’m not recommending reducing your vocabulary to the grade-school level.  No, your writing should always bring some challenge …

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Vivid vs. Violet Verbiage — The Violet

As S.K. noted in her last blog post…it’s been a crazy end to the old year and an even crazier start to the new year for us around here.  Apologies for being MIA… At any rate, today I want to talk about something I’ve said I want to talk about many times in the past …

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Jazzing up the Editing Process

Hi all! Goodness…the holidays and the New Year obviously swallowed up the SisterMuses! We have both been busily writing…just invisibly. I am feverishly working on The Artifex (Book III of the Silesia Trilogy), which will be released on August 31, 2013. J. Leigh is immersed in the world of The Madness Project, which she plans …

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The Lords of Askalon…Now Available!!!

It’s finally here, everyone!  So excited to announce the release of The Lords of Askalon, Book II in the Silesia Trilogy!  The ebook is available today on Smashwords!  The Kindle version should be out tomorrow and the paperback will follow shortly! A few words of thanks are in order… To my amazing husband and kids …

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Formatting Your Print Manuscript

Well, here we are…almost a week into NaNoWriMo…and I have zero words on my NaNo novel.  At this point, it’s a NO novel. Ha. But it’s for a good reason.  I’ve been getting The Lords of Askalon all ready to go to press.  Formatting, my friends, formatting.  And that’s our topic for today.  I’ll lay …

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How to Make a Book Trailer

As promised, here’s my post on how to make a book trailer!  I hope you’ve had a chance to view my Lords of Askalon trailer on the SisterMuses YouTube channel, but if not, here it is again… [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdUypj4Cagg] So, now that you’ve finished watching it, I’ll explain how I put this trailer together so …

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Lords of Askalon Book Trailer

I’m so excited to share this with you!  Here is the book trailer for The Lords of Askalon!  Tomorrow, I’ll be doing a step-by-step tutorial on how to create a book trailer like this for your own work! Enjoy! [youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QdUypj4Cagg&w=560&h=315]

Editing Focus 4: Syllabic Editing

Okay.  So.  Long overdue editing blog post: check. This is the last Editing Focus blog post we’ll have for our Fall Blog Fest…so…hope you enjoy it!  It’s my personal favorite, as far as annoying things like editing are concerned.  😉 Syllabic editing isn’t something you’ll hear talked about a whole lot.  I first heard about …

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