Jami Gold's Blog: Jami Gold, Paranormal Author, page 57

5th Annual Blogiversary Contest — Prize: Me! Wait…er, What?

It’s that time of year again. My five-year blogiversary is coming up on July 12th. And I’m once again amazed by the fact that I’ve been writing this blog for five years. How can something feel like yesterday and forever at the same time?

Mostly, I’m amazed I found that much to blog about, not just in the number of posts (over 500!) but the length of my posts. (I can’t begin to count the number of times I’ve come up with a blog topic and said, “Oh, thisone will be short,” and ended up between...

Save Money by Designing Your Own Promo

Yesterday on social media, I shared a link to a sale going on for DepositPhotos, one of the stock photo sites. I mentioned that I’d picked up that same deal when it was offered last year (and I bought another package this year because I love hoarding never-expire photo credits *smile*).

Those shares led to several conversations on both Facebook and Twitter about how I used those images. For example, the cover models for Treasured Claim and Pure Sacrifice, as well as the basis for the backgro...

Character Psychology: 9 Common Errors — Guest: Kassandra Lamb

If we don’t want to write characters who are too perfect, we have to layer in a few flaws. The Negative Trait Thesaurus by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi is full of ideas for how to make our characters seem more real with a mix of traits, including weaknesses.

That goal of avoiding the too-perfect character means that we might be writing characters who are “broken” in some way. They might be trauma survivors or suffering from depression, etc.

While psychological issues can be great for ro...

Romance Writers: New Scrivener Template!

A quick look at my sidebar reveals that one of my most popular posts is for my Romance Beat Sheet. Romance authors are well-connected and huge proponents of the “pay it forward” idea I mentioned last time, so when they find something helpful, they share the news.

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

Recently, one of those romance writers contacted me. Evolet Yvaine asked:

“I downloaded yo...

The Writing Community: What’s Your Expertise?

A writing career often doesn’t pay well. We might spend thousands of unpaid hours learning our craft, more time learning the business, and still more time getting our stories out to the world. And let’s not even talk about the issue of how most books—traditional or indie published—don’t sell all that well.

Because of that difficulty in getting established, many of us have day jobs. Or if we don’t have one now, it’s likely that writing is a second (or third or more) career for us (even if tha...

Point of View: What Does Your Character Know?

Yesterday, I happened upon a blog post about head-hopping and the confusion we can feel when told our writing suffers from this problem. It doesn’t help when half the information out there about head-hopping is confusing as well, not to mention contradictory.

Some call head-hopping the worst ever, others defend it because the big authors can get away with it, and still others say there’s no such thing. Sometimes the feedback is outright wrong, as some confuse head-hopping with multiple point...

Formatting: From Manuscript to a Print Book with MS Word

This past weekend I shared a photo on Facebook of my box of print books for Treasured Claim. Yay! There’s nothing like being able to hold your book in your hands to make this “being published” thing feel real. *smile*

I love how my print edition turned out, and since I did it myself, I figured I’d share a few pointers and highlight a few potential problems. I’m too much of a newbie to write up The Perfectionist’s Guide to Print Formatting for those of us self-publishing, but maybe this will...

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

In the U.S., the traditional advice for keeping the peace with family or friends is to avoid talking about religion or politics. That “rule” goes back to at least the 1800s, when it was presented as an etiquette tip for genial conversation.

The idea was further popularized by the character of Linus in the Peanuts comic strip (which was later expanded into It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, an even more popular animated TV special that’s still broadcast annually before Halloween).

Linus s...

How Can Guest Posting Help Us?

As writers, we have to be a one-man band for many aspects of our career. Those of us who self-publish have to direct everything, from the editing and cover design to the publication of our work.

Those of us going the traditional route can turn over some of the jobs to others, but even if we traditionally publish, we still have to do the majority of our marketing. And that can be a problem.

No matter how we publish, there’s a limit to how much marketing we can accomplish on our own. We might...

What Does It Mean to Give Up?

I know this is an odd topic for the post right after my debut novel release yesterday, as my release proves that I didn’t give up. *smile* But I also had a guest post at the fantastic Adventures in YA Publishing blog yesterday that talked about the danger of discouragement.

The context of the guest post was mostly about the kind of discouragement we can encounter if we start writing young. In that post, I share a story about how I was discouraged from writing as a teenager when others treate...