One of the most common mistakes I find in books by new authors is the tendency to put in the wrong things:  they spend pages on things that should be left out, then jump right over the things that should be included.  The result is a work that feels unbalanced, giving weight to stuff the [...]

One of the questions I’m frequently asked is how you go about creating, not a single book, but a coherent series. Fantasy readers love series books.  Once they get excited about a world and its inhabitants, they like to go inside and shut the door, living in there for book after book:  as long as [...]

Handsome Heroes THE TEXAS RANGER’S DAUGHTER goes on sale in February 2013, but you get a sneak peek here and also a look at what goes into introducing your hero. We all expect a romance hero to be handsome.  That’s part of his job and an author’s description of a hero is very important.  But [...]

Look up process on Wikipedia and you’ll see over forty definitions. The one I think most clearly relates to us as authors defines process as “activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product for customers.” In our case, that product is the story, the manuscript. Like the word process, there are different methods [...]