Beth Martin's Blog, page 9

How to be a Writer

This past week I had the pleasure of hosting a writing workshop with fellow writer, Rebecca Toro. I’m pleased with how well the event went. And since we gathered a ton of really great information for the workshop, I thought I’d share it here with you.


Start Your Writing Career Today!
A brief guide by Beth Martin & Rebecca Toro


What is a writer?

A writer is simply someone who writes. As

I Now Have A Patron

I have wanted to do this for a while and kept putting it off, but I’m excited to finally announce that I’ve set up a Patreon. If you enjoy my content and are able to help support my writing, please consider pledging!


Become a patron

All the money I receive from Patreon will go directly to table fees and travel costs for upcoming events. I really enjoy meeting fans in person and getting to

Book Review: The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

The 7 1/2 Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart TurtonMy rating: ★★★☆☆Aiden Bishop wakes up with no memories, no idea where he is, and no idea how he ended up in Blackheath. In fact, he doesn't even know he's Aiden Biship. Instead, he's trapped inside of the body of a doctor and when the day is done, he's thrown into another person and another. The common thread is that all these people are at

New Events

I’ve added two new events to my calendar this year:
Fairfax Comic Con


August 24-25, 2019


The Dukes Expo, Chantilly, VA



Fairfax Comic Con is a new annual comic convention brought to you by Tidewater Comicon and the diehard comic fans of Fairfax County, Virginia. Our first year (2018) we plan on a smaller show with a strong focus on comic book creators and a few surprise guests. We want to

Why I'm Mad at the Library

While my in-laws were visiting from out of town, we decided to go to the public library. Our local library has been recently renovated and has tons of sitting areas, excellent AC, not much noise, and a fun children’s section complete with a playroom. Basically, everything needed to appease a crowd of all ages. As soon as we entered, my father-in-law asked, “Do they have your books here?”

A

Some Things I Learned from Galactic Con

I had a really fun time on Saturday at Galactic Con. The event went pretty well, although I think there are some simple changes which could make the next one even better. But even though there wasn’t the turnout I’d hoped for, overall, the event was a pretty big success.



If you saw my Instagram story with the photo of my suitcase, you know I brought an obscene number of books—way more than I

Release Day for my First Puzzle Book: Mystery of the Spaceship and the Missing Crew

As always, I’ve piled too many things into too small a time frame. I’m doing the big launch of my first Puzzling Escapes book at Galactic-Con on Saturday, June 15th, but I didn’t want to roll both the book launch and my post-mortem of the con into one mega post. And since I had to make my puzzle book available in advance in order to stock up copies for the convention this weekend, I thought I’d

Detroit: Become Human and the Future of Androids

I recently finished my first
playthrough of Detroit: Becoming Human. Another writer recommended I check out the game when I told him the
book I was working on had androids. However, the robots in my books
are very different than the ones in Detroit. I really enjoyed the
gameplay, and since David Cage created the game, the focus is on the ideas and story.

From the title alone, you get the

Book Review: The Conjurer's Almanaq

I may have gone a little overboard ordering cool puzzles recently. I wanted to scope out the other items that people who might enjoy my puzzle book would also want to read. OK, let’s be honest: I used it as an excuse to finally purchase the cool indie puzzle books accumulating in my Amazon cart. For some reason, I never thought to write up a review for a logic games or interactive book. If you

A Guide to Front and Back Matter

I’ve become quite proficient at putting together a book, and I’m not just talking about writing and editing a manuscript. There are actually a lot of elements which are included between the covers which authors and publishers need to think about. For indie authors, it’s up to us to create all of these elements, even if we have no clue how to go about doing that.

I thought I’d demystify all of