Alexander M. Zoltai's Blog, page 185

Author Interview ~ Ali Noel Vyain

Regular readers of this blog know I’m the Events Manager on Book Island in the virtual world Second Life. One of the loyal attendees of our Writers’ Chat has been gracious enough to visit for an interview :-) ~~~~~~~~~ Let’s get rolling with where you’re from, how old you are, and is Ali Noel Vyain [...]

A Blast from The Past, To Calm This Writer’s Mind, by Blowing It to The Musical Max :-)

BONUS POST: I have this strict schedule—Monday thru Friday—Five Posts a week… The last post was about Scrivener—best writing software I’ve ever used—made me stay up so late it was early, for three days in a row. Needed something to take me so high I could lay this body down in Peace… My Muse tapped [...]

The Best Writing Software *Ever* ?

I’ve used a tremendous number of software tools (and other aids) for writing. Check out these two past posts to see just a few of them: Free Software for Writers Free Resources forWriters I now have a piece of software that certainly seems like it could be the ONLY one I need. Big, bold, brave [...]

A Review of Amazon Reviews . . .

I don’t usually respond to news in the Book-World that has the taint of controversy. Not that controversies shouldn’t be addressed but, often, they’re full of so much radical personal opinion I can’t find clear issues—I want to provide useful information here, not spectacle… So, I’m treading a narrow path today—this issue may clear itself [...]

Overview of The New World of Reading, Writing, and Publishing

Reblogged from Notes from An Alien: I’ve written many posts about new opportunities for readers, new challenges for writers, and new business models for publishers. I’ve linked to many other sites to give a rounded view of the transformation we’re going through in the Book-World. I’ve found a wonderful article that’s a great summary of [...]

The Most Important Writing Prompt In The World?

Writers need Prompts—Incentives to set themselves to the task of Creation… Back in April I wrote a post called World Peace ~ Fiction or Reality? There’s a video in that post and the man in the video begins with the words of A. E. Houseman: High upon the hill of summer, Lazy with the flow [...]

The End of The World for Writers . . .

We’re still here—Doomsday fizzled—still… Somewhere around 30,000 people will die in our world today… But… How many writers will give up on their dreams today—how many will put the manuscript away and forget where they put it—how many will drink themselves to death—how many will just cry a bit and suck it up and look [...]

Figures of Speech ~or~ Figurative Writing ~~or~~ Fun with Words :-)

This post is for Readers and Writers. Readers because it’s good to know that what you read might be saying more than you think it says. Writers because it’s always good to know if your figurative language actually says what you intend to say. Some folks call all words used in non-literal ways Tropes. And, [...]

The Various Flavors of Publishing . . .

So many ways to publish these days… Actually, more than I can keep up with, other than a few broad categories—each general method having multiple options. Naturally, there’s still “traditional” or “legacy” publishing—Click Here for 17 previous posts on this topic. Then there’s what I call working with a “Publishing-Aid Company” like FastPencil, which I [...]

Blooming Words ! ~~ A Thesaurus That Offers Articles On Writing :-)

In case you didn’t know, a thesaurus is “a book that lists words in groups of synonyms and related concepts” and it comes from roots that mean “storehouse” and “treasure”… This image is from the Visual Thesaurus. I encourage you to go there and put your own words in to try it out but you [...]