Laurel Garver's Blog, page 4

Good guest guidelines for guest blogging

Being a guest on someone's blog can be a wonderful way to expand audience. But you won't get much traction with your posts if you can't give the visits proper attention.

I've had lots of guest bloggers here, some of whom did extraordinarily well in terms of page views and gaining new fans, and others who got little attention or engagement.

I've also been on the other side of the table, writing posts for others' blogs, in one-off visits, tours I organized for myself, and in a tour someone else o...

Choosing a frontier life in the flapper era: interview with DiVoran Lites

Interview with guest DiVoran Lites
Image credit: https://morguefile.com/creative/ranbud
Tell us a little about your story and the story world you've created.

Aldon and Ellie are the main characters of Go West. Aldon lives on a ranch in Colorado. Ellie works at her grandparents’ department store in Chicago. Both are veterans of the First World War, he as a pilot, and she as an ambulance driver. Ellie wants freedom and independence, so her grandfather helps her find a job on a ranch in Colora...

Truth behind the fiction: A close call that became story fodder

By guest author Elise Abram

Photo by Talesin for MorguefileWhen I was a teenager, my family business had a booth at the Canadian National Exhibition in the Food Building. My brother and I ran the booth during the day and my cousins at night.

I was very insecure as a teenager. I wasn't popular, I didn't like the way I looked, I didn't like who I was, and I didn't date. So when a cute boy approached me to strike up a conversation at the counter one day, I was incredibly flattered. When he left, h...

Happy Anniversary Harry Potter: a blogging retrospective

This week marks the 20th anniversary of the publication of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (know in the US as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone because publishers assume American readers are too dumb to pick up anything with philosopher in the title, or know anything about medieval history or alchemy...but I digress).

Dumbledore's costume, WB studio tour, London (my photo)I was first introduced to the series shortly after the first two books became available through Scholastic in...

The dilemma of "contemporary" fiction and one possible solution

I write stories about teens facing real-world problems in a today-ish setting. I say today-ish, because the biggest dilemma of writing a contemporary story is this:

The world doesn't stand still while you write. Major changes happen every day, to cultures, to landmarks, to technology.

Those unanticipated changes can make your story absolutely laughable.

I'll give an example from one of my books. I started writing it after a trip to the UK in 2006, and had spent the weeks doing heavy on-the-groun...

Mystery blogger: nine things about me

When I first started this blog in 2009, blog "awards" were all the rage. I think 2010-11 was a peak period, in which I received and passed along more than a dozen. By 2013 no one was doing them any more, and it made me a little sad. I can see how they might seem like public chain letters, but by golly they are fun. They give you something entertaining to blog about when all your creativity has gone into finishing a fantastic chapter the night before.

So I will not be joining the anti-blog-awar...

Candles, moonlight, and...yawn

True confession. I feel like I ought to like reading romances. I generally prefer a happy ending to a sad one. But each time I've tried one--especially the Kindle First offerings to Prime members--I've been disappointed.

The romance plot model has become so entrenched, it no longer allows room for any genuine surprises. I know there will be some dumb thing that separates heroine and hero at roughly the midpoint and that dumb thing will clear up in a matter of chapters. I know the heroine will...

Building great characters through research

Research often gets a bad rap in fiction-writing circles. Everyone seems to know at least one aspiring author who got lost on the Planet Library, having followed one interesting tidbit after another deep into the stacks, never to return. Never to actually turn the acquired knowledge into a story.

No one wants to become that guy.

One the other extreme, some consider doing any research a waste of time, since fiction is supposed to be "all make believe." But make believe that doesn't have som...

Why you should stop trying to get motivated

image credit: Felicia Santos for morguefileAs the school year enters its final weeks and summer fun is so close around the corner, homework is about the last thing kids feel like doing. I don't know about you other parents out there, but homework battles in my house have gone from bad to worse in my home of late.

Research nerd that I am, I went on the hunt for advice about how to get through the final marking period, ending strong without bloodshed. I tripped across a short e-book by life coac...

In a creative slump? Six tips for recovery

Creative slumps can happen to anyone who strives to bring creative works into the world, be they written works, visual art, music, or handicrafts. Slumps can come on slowly or all at once. Often you aren't entirely aware you're in a slump until you've spent some time there, stuck and unmotivated.

Slump thinking sounds like this:

"I'm so stressed out, I can't focus."
"My brain is so full of noise, I can't hear my characters."
"These ideas are just a big mess."
"This project feels rangy and shapeles...