Jami Gold's Blog: Jami Gold, Paranormal Author, page 56

Shining a Light on Diversity Issues

I’m gearing up for the release of my second full-length novel, Pure Sacrifice, on August 12th. This book was difficult for me in many ways, mostly because of the revision process, but one frustrating aspect was beyond my control.

I’ve written before about how we shouldn’t assume our characters belong to a straight, white, middle-class defaultbecause that’s lazy writing:

“The fastest, easiest way to create more diverse stories is to start with ablank slate.Don’t have a “default” character.”

I...

Why Is Our Journey So Hard?

Sometimes the posts I write are like challenges for us to do better or try harder. But as I’ve talked about before, we don’t always need the same kind of advice.

Some days, we might need pushy advice, and some days, we might need sympathetic advice. Both can work, and both can be harmful depending on our situation, our mindset, or our mental health. (And I’ve written both kinds of posts here. *smile*)

Others can’t know what we need from day to day, so it’s on us to understand ourselves enoug...

Are You Dreaming or Doing?

Schools around the U.S. recently let out for summer, and that means the clichés of graduation speeches were echoing across the land. Variations of “this is only the beginning,” “seize your future,” “be true to yourself,” etc. resonate because they’re all true.

However, every time we start a new journey, whether that’s graduating or starting a new job or project, we’re likely full of dreams based on the potential of that new phase. We imagine how awesome our life might become, now that we’ve...

What 5 Years of Blogging Has Taught Me about Writing

This past weekend, I passed five years of blogging. That’s about four years more than I ever thought possible way back when. *smile*

People tend to like nice round numbers like 5s and 10s, so reaching this five-year point feels like a major milestone. As I’m still deep into vacation and sickness-brain, I figured now might be a good time to look back at what I’ve learned over those five years, and share what those lessons might tell us about the rest of our writing career…

How Our Careers Gro...

Blogiversary Winners & Writing Flexibility

Yay!I’m back from my vacation break, and I want to give a humongous shout out to all my guest bloggers: Rachel, Tamar, Rhoda, and Amy.(And a bonus shout out to Kerry, who filled in ahead of time to give me a chanceto pack.) Weren’t they fantastic?

Ialso want to thank all of you for helping spread the word about their posts. I didn’t get to thank people for tweets and mentions like I usually try to do since my internet access was spotty at best, but I greatly appreciate everyone’s involvement...

Audiobooks: Getting Started with ACX — Guest: Amy Patrick

I’ve shared the advice before that slow writers can be more successful by creating more income streams for each book. In other words, for each book we slowly pound out and release, we can maximize our income by adding more versions.

Sometimes that means adding a print version. Sometimes we might re-release several completed books in a bundle. And sometimes we might release an audio version.

I don’t know about you, but audiobooks seem like a foreign process to me. First of all, my audio proce...

7 Tips for Adding Humor — Guest: Rhoda Baxter

I’m not naturally a funny person. I’m more likely to be the one who blurts out an unintentional double entendre (who then has to rewind in my head what I said to figure out why everyone else is laughing *grin*) than to be the one making a joke on purpose.

However, I like including humor in my stories, and I love reading stories that contain a fair amount of humor. Most genres benefit from including touches of humor here or there—even the dark and angsty stories.

So I jumped at the chance to...

Planning a Book Launch Party (Online or Off!) — Guest: Tamar Hela

When many of us first start writing, we might have dreams about what our life as an Author will be like. We might imagine our life changing, being more dramatic, or that we’ll become famous.

Of course as we get more involved with the writing community, we learn that’s not how it usually goes. In fact, most authors say their release day is much like any other. Some tweet and Facebook their news and promo with unwashed hair and an unfashionable T-shirt. (Not that I have any personal experience...

Revising without Tears — Guest: Rachel Funk Heller

I’m heading out for vacation this week and next, but don’t worry. I have a great selection of guest posts ready to fill in for me that I’m super excited to get to share with you. *smile*

First up, let’s talk about revision. Ack! If you’re anything like me, you might have a love/hate relationship with revisions.

I love seeing my story strengthen and improve. But sometimes I hate the struggle to make the ideas of the first draft fit into a solid story.

Today’s guest wants to help us find the i...

Print-on-Demand: Introduction to IngramSpark — Guest: Kerry Gans

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how we can offera print version of our book, even if we’re self-published. I have Treasured Claim available at Amazon through their CreateSpace service, but my plan for other retailers is to use IngramSpark for distribution.

Many authorsstick with CreateSpace because, as with much of their business approach, Amazon makes things easy and user-friendly. If we check off “Expanded Distribution” in our account, CreateSpace can distribute to other channels, su...