Lazarus Black's Blog, page 2

Lazarus Black Goes Indie!

LOL! Yes, this is kind of a joke.

But I was recently chided by a famous author for calling myself "Self-Published" because I was degrading myself. I actually AM a publisher. I have published numerous books - both my own and my wife's. I have won awards for my self-published works, and there is no reason to reduce the power of my works by suggesting I am anything less than a professional author.

So, I am a multi-award-winning author, published by Echo-X, LLC - a publisher independent of any co...

How to Write Great Pitches.

by Lazarus Black

With a long career in advertising, I have distilled almost everything I know about writing pitches into this 37-page document. While it is written for authors, it can be universally applied to sell most things.

How to Write Great Pitches by Lazarus Black


Click to Download
"How to Write Great Pitches"
by Lazarus Black

Beware advice from anyone
demonstrating only one way of doing a thing.

The correct use of Venn diagrams

How to Write a Great Pitch.

by Lazarus Black

With a long career in advertising, I have distilled almost everything I know about writing pitches into this 37-page document. While it is written for authors, it can be universally applied to sell most things.

Click to Download
"How to Write Great Pitches"
by Lazarus Black

Beware advice from anyone
demonstrating only one way of doing a thing . . .

The Language of Empathy, Love, and Truth

by Lazarus Black

I just learned that Russian does not have a word for "Empathy", specifically the ability to imagine oneself in another's life and experience their emotions in their situation.

There are many confusing articles on the subject, but this contains the clearest explanation: https://carnegieendowment.org/...

The words "sochuvstvie" ("сочувствие") and "soboleznovanie" ("сопереживание") are closer to sympathy. The word "sostrandanie" ("сострадание") means compassion. But empathy, the...

On Writing the Senses

by Lazarus Black

The human body can experience more than 12 senses.

This is not a how-to.

The human body can experience more than 12 senses. Years ago, children were taught about less than half of them: Sight, Hearing, Touch, Taste, and Smell. But there is also Temperature, Pain, Hunger, Emotions, Energy Levels, Imagination, Proprioception, and many more. But not all humans are alike in how they experience these, either in intensity or complexity.

Some humans are color-blind or blind and oth...

How to Identify a Good Critique

by Lazarus Black

First, this is NOT a rant telling writers to not argue with a critique. There are bad critics out there who insist that they are allowed to say whatever they want - no matter how rude and/or ignorant - and writers need to just sit quietly and take the abuse. There are other bad critics who take a position that the critic is allowed to espouse vagueries, poorly defined cliche's, ill-coined terms, etc. as if they are gospel to be "grokked" by the author who meditates upon them un...

Progress Update on Book 2

Book 1 is technically titled The Bell of the True Dragon, with The True Dragon of Atlanta being the series title.

Book 2 has the working title of The Gates of the True Dragon and is continues the story of May's growth, asking the ever important question "Now what?"

Personally, I abhore the types of sequels that try to recapture the same magic of the original plot. In Hollywood, you see this happen all the time, where the first Act of the sequel is solely intended to strip everything away from wh...

My first annual ratings are out!

It's been two years since Writers of the Future and one years since publishing my anthology and nearly a year after publishing my debut novel, and despite my reserved level of marketing until book 2 comes out, I have apparently earned some decent ratings and reviews.

Thank you!

However... I am seriously confused about how these ratings are calculated because the numbers don't add up (14 ratings = 20 ratings and 0 reviews = 13 reviews?

Emerald City Comic Con '24 - Writer's Block, Table 22

Identifying and Representing Prejudice

I've been relatively quiet on my blog for several months as I work and take care of ill family and prepare for massive projects in the very near future. But something just happened that I feel needs to be made public - especially to the writing community.

Good writers and artists are - inherently - observers. Bad writers and artists exclusively write what they imagine, but audiences need to connect to the work through some shared experience. This can be exaggerated, of course. One doesn't need ...