Alexander M. Zoltai's Blog, page 52
June 30, 2017
Practice Over Passion: A Freelancer’s Writing Life
From today’s re-blog:
“Writing is not just the words you put down, but the entire process—from finding ideas to write about to producing a final, edited finished product.”
By Allison Futterman
I write human interest, travel, profile, craft and food pieces for a variety of magazines. As a freelancer, I’m constantly pitching stories in search of that elusive “yes” from an editor. I suggest stories that are interesting to me and that I believe will also be interesting t...
June 29, 2017
Friday Story Bazaar ~ Tale Fifty
Relating
by
Alexander M Zoltai
~~~~~~~~~
She was yelling again and he was walking out the door…
He loved her dearly; but, when she wasn’t herself, he just had to leave…
His thoughts roiled: Am I too sensitive? Should I just stand there and take it? But, the times she starts hitting me—she snaps and starts slugging… So? no blood drawn… Still… Weird… Damn!
He went to his friend’s house—his very understanding friend—and, they had their usual chat:
“She’s at it again, eh?”
“Yeah…”
“I think you’re...
June 28, 2017
Pace and story structure: a blueprint for keeping the reader gripped
Today’s re-blog is by Roz Morris — ‘nuf said…
I’ve had an interesting question from Josephine of the blog Muscat Tales:
Can you talk about pace? How to speed up/slow down the action/plot – and when? Is there a general blueprint for this or does the story type dictate the peaks and troughs of emotion, action and change?
There’s much to chew on here. And I think I can provide a few blueprints.
In order to answer, I’ll reorder the questions.
First, a definition. What’s pace? Put...
Yet Another {Unique} #Free #Ebook Site
Last week I published the post, 10 Sites with #Free #Ebooks…
[image error]Image courtesy of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bouquin_%C3%A9lectronique_iLiad_sur_une_pile_de_livre_dehors_au_soleil.jpg
In the meantime, I discovered an 11th one…
Very unique place:
“The Standard Ebooks project is a volunteer driven, not-for-profit effort to produce a collection of high quality, carefully formatted, accessible, open source, and free public domain ebooks that meet or exceed the quality of commercially produced...
June 26, 2017
How to Get Your Book into Libraries as an Independent Publisher…
Today we have a re-blog of a re-blog — ain’t blogging fun? :-)
Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog
Thinking about how to get your book into libraries as an independent publisher? It struck me the best person to ask would be someone who works in the library service.
Eve Merrier is a Libraries Manager just on the outskirts of London, UK and south of the beautiful Surrey Hills. In the photo here, she’s getting ready for “story time” in one of her libraries.
As well as managin...
2017 Survey of Ebook Trends and Data
Both Smashwords and its Founder Mark Coker have been on this blog many times…
[image error]Image Courtesy of Wagner Magni ~ http://www.freeimages.com/photographer/wmagni-53579
Here’s what Smashwords has to say for itself:
“Smashwords is the world’s largest distributor of indie ebooks {over 430,000}. We make it fast, free and easy for any author or publisher, anywhere in the world, to publish and distribute ebooks to the major retailers and thousands of libraries.”
And, here are some of the introductory...
June 25, 2017
The Importance of Readers
Honest writers always appreciate readers — they may not write “for” them; but they do “depend” on them…
Today’s re-blog is short but could easily spin out a feast of Ponderables :-)
Tonight a friend invited me over for dinner with her book group. All eleven of them have read my books, and Marianna invited me over for dinner and discussion. I am so looking forward to this, and to meeting with folks to talk about Clock and Dagger. I am also so grateful for the oppo...
June 24, 2017
The World Is Still A Pretty Awesome Place Photos…
2nd Re-blog today, ’cause it’s just so good :-)
Chris The Story Reading Ape's Blog
How Politically Correct Should Writers Be?
Bold opinions in today’s re-blog — definitely something to ponder…
A while ago a well-known author published a book about a rich, handsome man who pretty much had anything anyone could wish for becoming paralyzed in an accident. He and the woman hired to care for him then fell in love, but at the end he chose to commit suicide rather than carry on. This caused quite a few disabled people to be deeply offended, and this was pretty obvious in the reviews. Several suggested...
June 22, 2017
Friday Story Bazaar ~ Tale Forty-Nine
Love and Unity
by
Alexander M Zoltai
Dedicated to
Audra Michelle Kee
~~~~~~~~~
When Sam’s parents died, he’d moved in with his grandfather.
Two more different males would be hard to find.
Grandfather let Sam do whatever he wanted when outside the home, since Sam was indeed a young adult; but, inside the home, Sam had to learn a few rules. The hardest one to follow was to not talk people down, which Grandfather called “backbiting”.
Today had witnessed one of their most intense discussions abou...
