Tara Maya's Blog, page 28

Copywriting for the Rest of Us

I picked up Copywriting for the Rest of Us free last night and read it this morning. It's short but useful. Although it's not targeted specifically at authors, I recommend it to authors who need to write blurbs or queries. In other words, all authors with a book to publish. 

Coincidentally, I just read this advice again, in a different source. This book is on copyrighting (writing ad copy), and it's free on Amazon right now (Aug 10): Copywriting For The Rest Of Us (Marketing For The Rest...

Five New Facts about the Book Industry

1.  "Online book retail, including ebooks, accounted for 44% of all spending by consumers on books in the U.S." 2.  "Women increased their lead over men in book buying, accounting for 58 percent of overall book spending in 2012, up from 55 percent in 2011. However, men are bigger hardcover buyers – the only area where their buying outpaces women’s."3. "The slowly improving economy has improved the climate for purchasing books. By the close of 2012, 53 percent of consumers said...

The Art of Elysium

One of the cool things about cinema as an art form is that thousands of artists of all types collaborate together to produce one work of art. If you happen to be in the Pasadena area today, you can come meet some of the artists for Elysium in person.

Elysium is a highly anticipated science fiction film staring Matt Damon. In the year 2154, the very wealthy live on Elysium, a standford torus high-tech utopian metropolis located in orbit around Earth that is free of crime, war, poverty, hun...

Three Problems With Middle Novels

The Unfinished Song series is half-way through. Not coincidentally, I've been obsessing lately about how to write solid "middles."
Haven't you noticed how sometimes, especially in a long series, some of the middle novels end up falling flat? Here are the three biggest ways I've seen series fall on their face in later novels:
1. Filler
When the middle novel/s seem like mostly "filler," the problem is that the characters are basically treading water in terms of plot. Sometimes, they characters lit...

Render by Heidi C. Vlach

In a far distant land, where magic flows and legends bloom, three races face their troubles together.

A TROUBLED COMMUNITY

The insect-like aemets built new homes under mountain maples, and they wished for luck. But the years brought them much work and meagre reward. After poor harvests and a brush with forest fire, now wolves are striking down aemets who venture into the forest. Wolves have never menaced peoplekind in any of the teaching legends. Always a non-violent people, all the aemets...

Shadowhero by Jacob Dunn

Ninth-grader Jared Brooks is tortured by the shadows of his life. The shadows distract him during tests, they keep him up at night, they bring out the worst in him. And they give him so much power that he almost never loses in a fight.

Sadie knows what Jared is and what he can do. When she invites him to join a group of high school students who carry out questionable tasks for the secretive Shadowcouncil, Jared begins to hope he can use the darkness inside himself for something better.

After di...

7 Things I'll Be Blogging About

This is going to be one of those blogging about blogging posts. 

Over in the Archive of my blog, is a list which reminds me how often I've posted a month. The last year looks like this:

►  July(5) ►  June(20) ►  May(4) ►  April(2) ►  March(1) ►  February(6) ►  January(11)
Seriously, Tara? That's pathetic. I can do better than that.

Plus, I noticed that I haven't updated my cover art blog in two years. Now, the strange thing is, this is not because I haven...

Book Trailer: STYXX by Sherrilyn Kenyon (Update)

Sherrilyn Kenyon is one of the few authors I can honestly say I found through her book trailers. She has a lot of them, and they are always fun.

I read here that it was no coincidence I found Kenyon through her trailer. There was a huge campaign associated with her first book trailer.

With a summer release for the paranormal romance, St. Martin's had a huge investment in a 350,000-copy first printing. They hired professionals to create a 33-second book trailer, Dark-Hunter Acheron, then hired...

Sharknado in Two Minutes

My son is having a birthday party this month. He's turning seven. Water slide, kiddie pool, water guns and inflatable sharks. The theme: Sharknado!

If you still haven't seen this glorious masterpiece, here's the movie in a nutshell:

Kindred by Nicola Claire

"You may not be aware, ma douce, but not all vampyre have a kindred, some will live out their existence without such beauty in their lives. I have waited five hundred years for you." 

Vampires, shape shifters, ghouls and magic users abound in a world where the Norms, (those humans without paranormal abilities) are ignorant of the creatures of the night and the supernatural species that live alongside them.

Lucinda Monk is a bank teller by day and a vampire hunter by night, but she wasn't a...