All Blog Posts Tagged 'tips' (174)

Top Life Coaching Tips is a self-help book that offers multiple ways to live life with more peace, passion, energy, and joy. It is a book that everyone could benefit from, because any one of us could use more of those traits in our lives.

The book has 31 tips on how to live a better life. It…

I ended my last blog post with the promise to write about my process for developing fully viable characters. It's pretty simple, really. For me, what works best is to conjure up the personality types that I know from real life and embellish from there. I have read many tips about how you should draw from what you know. My new book,…

You might ask how I came to develop the 7 Characteristics of Good Fiction Writers.  It all started early one morning when I was reading tweets from other authors;  I realized fiction writer’s are a diverse group.  I had an intuitive insight that there are some common characteristics that  good writers share.  I came up with the 7 characteristics of good fiction writers:

1. First good writers are born with a talent for writing.  As with most things in life,…

Your audience is the key to your writing. Don't just ask yourself what you audience wants to read, feel, accomplish, do, dream, plan, want, have, and grow in, All of these things you NEED to know about your audience, but you also need to ask yourself, "will my audience fall in love with my characters, story, plot, etc?…

Having a direction for your stories isn't the same as not having any options. Even when you do have a steady plot you're following, keep your options open just enough so that, if you may have a change of heart, you don't have to start writting again from the beginning.

For Example: your main character is with the reader, and you have no idea what your secondary character is doing. You can tell the readers eventually, and eventually can be a long time from now. If you…

If you've reached 50, Happy Birthday to you.

I've hit that magical number in my life. I'm over 50, 51 to be exact and I've applied for and received my membership to the AARP. I keep my card in my wallet because it gets me discounts on all kinds of things.

But, other things happen to a person when they hit the 50 years old mark. Suddenly certain foods are no longer good for you and some are. There are activities we're no longer…

As you can tell, I’ve been into reading fitness books lately. Since I’ve got my eating under control and consistent, I’ve reserved more focus on my workouts. And since there is no end with how fit you can get, I’ve been increasing the length and intensity of my workouts (gradually). It’s been a very…

The Beginner's Guide to Bodybuilding by Cameron Hall and James Surtees has two main parts: nutrition and exercise. In the nutrition section, the authors explain macronutrients, fluids, nutritional myths, and they share all different healthy recipes. In the exercise section, the authors…

Here I go! I just spent the most ever on a huge promotion blitz for SILENT INVASION and DROP OUT (my two best sellers). I did it through blogads.com. I’ve read other posts about the effectiveness of such ads and most said that author’s sales increased because of them. I booked on nine different sites with a combined reach of 312,000 avid readers. These are people who actively read the blogs. My ads will feature the cover, a blurb, and the link to buy the book. The blitz will run on…

My latest novel is off to my formatter and should be ready for sale in a few days. I’m ready to go with publicizing it once it is live and plan on doing all that right after Christmas. It’s been nearly a full week that I haven’t written any new fiction material. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been writing (I wrote the back jacket copy for IMAGINATION and I am posting this blog) just not doing the kind of writing I love most. Though I have been marketing and will continue to reserve…

Once again, I’ve reach the elusive milestone of finishing a book. My latest novel (my eleventh to date) is now complete and awaiting the formatting process. The novel took exactly 374 days from first sentence until the final read. A lot has happened in the past year and a lot of changes have taken place both in my life and the world. So, as I sit here on this first day of non-novel writing I find myself feeling quite odd and at a loss of how I should spend my morning. I could market…

Fellow/author and fan from the U.K. is promoting me on her blog. Please check it out and also check out her books.

http://amymahvampire.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/neil-ostroff-drop-out-degenerates.html

I’m posting the results for my Kindle Boards book of the day sponsorship. One sale of SILENT INVASION. Yep, that’s right. One sale. But, all is not lost. Strangely enough, sales of my other books went up. I even sold a few copies of PULP, my ultra-noir thriller. I also got invited to promote SILENT INVASION for free on a few blogs and two websites. So, that’s good. I have another Kindle Boards sponsorship tomorrow for AFTER so we’ll see how that goes. All in all, the Kindle Boards…

Please check out SILENT INVASION as Kindle Boards book of the day. Enjoy a great sci-fi adventure!

http://www.kindleboards.com/…

Healthy Living by Elisabeth Wilson is a nonfiction book with tips and insight into multiple aspects of healthy living. I have read dozens of health books, but most of her tips were new to me or I at least gained further knowledge from them. I found that most of them were very insightful, helpful, and…

If you read my blog you know I’ve been dealing with some family health issues related to the dreaded C. Doing my final read for IMAGINATION has helped ease the boredom of fifteen-hour hospital room waits. Of course, waiting is nothing compared to what the patient must endure. It was during one of these interminable waits that I had my sudden, ‘ah ha’ moment. I realized, as my wrist and fingers grew sore from typing on my laptop sitting literally on my lap, that I’ve spent my life…

Master Your Metabolism by Jillian Michaels is an insightful and thorough book about how hormones work in the body and how to help the hormones in order to achieve your health and fitness goals. It is a nonfiction book that covers a lot of information, but it goes into just enough detail so that…

Now that my Kindle Fire Department.com sponsorship has officially ended I can now look back on it as a success. I sold enough copies of DROP OUT to break even but what most important is that so many new people have now been exposed to my stuff. It also got my ranking down below 10,000 which according to the Amazon algorithms, means that the site will give me a little more promotion than a book that hasn’t sold so well. As of this post I’m still below the 20,000 rank. As I’ve mentioned…

Please check out my latest novel. It's book of the day on Kindle Fire Department.

Thanks.

http://fireapps.blogspot.com/2012/11/drop-out-kindle-book-of-day-1130.html…

I’m at the absolute most fun time in the novel writing process for me. The plot of IMAGINATION is complete and tight and coherent. The characters have all been fleshed out and the settings are all detailed. Now, I spend the next few days reading fast and tweaking the tiniest details. Once that is complete I give one final, very quick read and send it off to my editor/formatter. I just contacted my cover artist and we are about to begin the process of designing a cover. I have a tagline for…