Sandy Fussell's Blog, page 23

Guest Blog Post - George Ivanoff

#2 son and I are reading Gamer's Quest by George Ivanoff. #2 is not all that open to non-Goosebump books at the moment but the cover caught his eye. He gave it the 'one chapter read-aloud-by-mum' test. I stopped at the end of Chapter 1 and asked, "Well?" "Keep going", he waved me on. Instead of Goosebumps? High recommendation indeed. Today George joins me to talk about promoting Gamer's Quest .

Promoting Gamer's Quest
These days, it seems that authors need to be more than just authors… they...

Can a Guest Blog Post Sell a Book?

Yes it can. I read a blog post this week and just had to have the book. The book was The Strange Case of Origami Yoda by Tom Angelberger and I found it on author Cynthia Leitich Smith's blog Cynsations.

First the cover grabbed me. I'm a Star wars fan ever since I sneaked out to see the first movie back in 1977. I love origami and the idea of Origami Yoda had me reaching for my pad of paper squares. But the final nail in the book order was Tom's blog post account of how the book made it's way t...

Friday Websites for Writers

Stephen King's article Everything You Need to Know about Writing Successfully in Ten Minutes is a great read. Full of excellent advice.

But I wanted to remove two sentences. Stephen said: Any word you have to hunt for in a thesaurus is the wrong word. There are no exceptions to this rule. While I agree with the intent, I think there is room for an exception. It depends what you want to do with the word.

I love my thesaurus. But I don't look up words to add them 'plug and play' into my manuscr...

Scrolling down

Sometimes you scroll down to the end of a web page and find... treasure! Booktopia supports Australian authors and yours truly. Thanks guys.

Cyberlaunching

Today I have my fancy dress on - the one with the shiny things on the front, my coloured glass jewellery (more shiny things) and gold sandals - OK I'm not much of a fashion follower - but I do have an important job today. I'm launching a book. Not just any book. A book by a very talented Australian writer who is also a friend. A wonderful verse novel by the author of one of my favourites, Pearl Verses the World.

So drop in here to attend the cyber launch of Sally Murphy's Toppling. We're...

Friday Websites for Writers

I read Call My Agent all the time. It's clever, witty, entertaining and full of useful information. Can't ask for more than that! Some of the information might be obvious to more experienced writers - but then again how easy is it to forget or overlook the obvious. I regularly learn something I never knew or had forgotten.

Here are some of my favourite recent posts:
Advice from James Patterson A reminder that writers must be storytellers.
The Commonwealth of StoriesA thought-provoking post...

Friday Websites for Writers

This is a site I found particularly useful in the early stages of my writing when I wanted to get a physical feel for word counts. I wanted to know what 85,000 words looked and felt like. I wanted to know how many words were in specific titles like Tamar by Mal Peet. You can find out here at Renaissance Learning (an on-line store) by doing a search on author or title. Included in the information returned is the word count.

It's not an Australian site so you won't find any titles only...

Just Imagine 2010

I'm very excited to be part of Wollongong City Gallery's Just Imagine 2010 project. I'm a sort-of author in residence - opening the exhibition and running writing workshops for students and teachers. The program "encourages children's creative writing skills by the exploration of real and imagined worlds experienced through close engagement with art" to plagiarise the Gallery website. I couldn't have put it better myself and I'm the writer!

It's exciting stuff. Twelve exhibits - paintings...

Tuesday Writing Tips Blog Tour

Today I am talking with Dee White as part of her Tuesday Writing Tips Blog Tour. Dee is the author of the excellent YA novel Letters to Leonardo and blogs a weekly writing tip every Tuesday at Dee Scribe Writing.

Dee: Hi Sandy, it's great to be here. I'm wondering if you can tell me what you like to read and why?
I'm a rabid reader – anything with words on it attracts my attention. I am that awful person who reads over your shoulder on the train. I can't help it but I know it's annoying (and r...

There Was an Old Sailor Blog Tour

I'll never be a romance writer. When kids ask me 'what's the deal between Kyoko and Niya?' (two of the chracters in Samurai Kids) and 'are you ever going to write the romantic bits?' I always answer 'yuk' and the room erupts in giggles and guffaws.

So today, on Valentine's Day, I'm celebrating fish. Seems appropriate to me, after all I do love sushi. But specifically I'm celebrating the launch of Claire Saxby's beautiful new picture book, There Was an Old Sailor. The illustrations are...