Jami Gold's Blog: Jami Gold, Paranormal Author, page 32

Writing Your Worldview: Biases and Beyond

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

This past weekend, an interesting thread made its way through Twitter. The Ask an Entomologist account (@BugQuestions) shared the history of our understanding of queen bees.

Queen bees? Yep, and the thread was more insightful than you’d guess.

Turns out that for thousands of years, queen bees were known as king bees due to sexism. Aristotle’s The History of Animals was the defacto biology “textbook” until the 1600s, and as the thread expla...

Branding 101: What’s the Voice of Your Brand?

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

In my posts, I often try to point out nuances and exceptions that might get missed in our “you must do X” and “you should do Y” world. We can probably all think of advice we’ve heard that assumed a black-and-white situation that didn’t work in the face of reality, such as “write every day.”

One of those posts a few years back explored how there’s no always right approach to our brand and marketing voice. Given the current highly politicize...

Writing Styles: Transitioning from Nonfiction to Fiction — Guest: Elizabeth Randolph

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

Many writers change writing styles over the course of their career. We might start off writing fan fiction and transition to original fiction. Or we might find success with short stories and later expand our imagination into novels. Or we might flip from nonfiction to fiction and back.

Every storyteller with a blog (unless it’s strictly a platform for posting stories) also engages in nonfiction. Some of us write nonfiction articles to furt...

Tapping into Strong Emotions with Memories

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

The art of storytelling is often about creating connections between our readers and our stories. Readers want to care about our characters, root for them to succeed, and worry about the stakes hanging over their head. In other words, connections come down to emotions.

But sometimes as writers, we’re not sure how to find the deep emotions we want in our stories. Luckily, we all have access to a lifetime’s worth of memories—and many of those...

What to Write Next: Playing Favorites

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

The vast majority of us will write more than one story during our writing career. Even if we think we have just one “story of our heart” that we’re eager to get onto the page, we’re likely to get bitten by the writing bug during that experience and discover we have more to say.

That means at some point in our career, we’ll have to decide what we’re going to write next. The question then becomes, how do we decide?

The Logical Approach to Ma...

Calling All Scrivener-Using Over Achievers!

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

A quick look at my sidebar reveals that many of my most popular posts involve the various beat sheets, worksheets, and Scrivener templates I’ve developed to help writers.

I’m honored that so many have found my tools useful. That thought makes my pathologically helpful heart fill with warm fuzzies. *smile*

Recently, an author who goes by the Twitter name of Cypher Rich contacted me to ask:

“Your master beat sheet is awesome, do you think yo...

Happy New Year! Time to Leave Guilt Behind…

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

I’m back from my Christmas trip to see the extended family, where we enjoyed each other’s company but the entire family got sick again…because…of course? I hope everyone’s holidays were at least as good as mine. *smile*

Thanks go out to Elizabeth Randolph who filled in for me last week! I hope you all caught her guest posts on tapping into our story’s universal and primal aspects and on her insights for marketing locally.

This time of year...

Author Marketing: Insights and Ideas for Local Promotion — Guest: Elizabeth Randolph

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

For most authors, marketing and promotion is low on the list of activities we enjoy. We might feel uncomfortable “pimping” our books. Or we might not know how best to spend our marketing time or money to get results. Or sometimes, we might lack for ideas or be uncertain how to implement our ideas.

For many introvert-type authors, the only marketing or promotion we can see ourselves doing is online, where we don’t have to face people. Howev...

Storytelling: It’s about Going Primal — Guest: Elizabeth Randolph

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

When we first start writing, we often have to learn new skills to improve our writing craft. We hear lots of new “rules” to do this and don’t do that. And that knowledge is all good and necessary—even if we later decide to ignore those rules.

However, that close-up focus often means that we, as writers, can get lost in the “trees” of writing craft nitpickiness and lose sight of the “forest” of good storytelling. The best constructed senten...

Holidays and Writing: Chaos, Inspiration, or Both?

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

I don’t know about anyone else, but this year’s holiday schedule is messing me up. Christmas coming after the weekend is making it hard for me to plan out how to get my to-do list done.

One second I think “Eh, Christmas isn’t until next week, I’m fine,” and the next second, I’m freaking out about having only a few days left. I’m done with shopping and most of the decorating, but the tree doesn’t have many ornaments yet, and I still have wr...