Bev Pettersen's Blog, page 79

What Makes A Reader Close Your Book?

“I loved your book. I couldn’t put it down. I stayed up all night reading it.” As writers, these comments are music to our ears. If creating a book that readers can’t put down is the blue ribbon, we need to understand what makes a reader close a book, so we can avoid it. So I asked – What makes you close a book that you’re reading?I polled as many people as I could this past week, my book club, family members, twitter peeps, FB folks, moms at my daughter’s pre-dawn drama club festival… And he...

Fangirl Friday

It’s Friday again, and you know what that means–it’s time to find that perfect weekend read. Here are some Ruby books I’ll be spending some quality time with soon:

HYPNOTIC SEDUCTION

by L.L. Kellogg

Discounted to 99 cents!

She has a problem relaxing with men
Frumpy wallflower Hannah Oliver is nearly thirty and has a serious self-image problem. Growing up in her centerfold mother’s shadow and being raised by her pious grandparents has left her so self-conscious about her matronly, D-cup figure...

Entering the Twilight Zone

Cue the Twilight music….

On a November day one month into the future, a writer will step outside her comfort zone to release a book she’d never thought she’d write. She’s entering – da da da- the Twilight Zone.

Okay, so it’s not that dramatic, but in some way it is. Come November I will be a Blaze writer. Well, for a little while.

Confession time: I’ve never read a Harlequin Blaze (Shhh! Don’t tell my editor) and mostly it’s because I don’t prefer a lot of sexy with my romance. A little? yes....

Show and Tell Wednesday: Infographics

In honor of the Ruby Accountability Group as well as upcoming NanoWriMo season, I thought this infographic was appropriate:

by Anna Vital at fundersandfounders.com

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and never was this more true than now in the age of Facebook and Pinterest and Instagram and Visual.ly the list goes on…. And in this fast world of information overload, the power of the infographic cannot be denied.

Infographics can educate and inspire:

Illustration created by Evelin...

Celebrating Release Day with Jennifer Bray-Weber

I am absolutely thrilled to celebrate the release of Ruby Sister Jennifer Bray-Weber’s fifth book in her Romancing the Pirate series, DEAD MAN’S KISS.

Jenn’s known for writing some incredible pirate romances (which there are FAR too few of in this world!!) and has written another incredible entry into her series with Valeryn and Catalina’s story.

Forced to make a bargain…

One drunken night in Cuba lands Captain Valeryn Barone in a life or death situation. To escape the gallows, Valeryn must...

Our Hour-a-Day Writing Accountability Group Lives On for October!!

I’m going to make this short and sweet, since time is very short for me today (as I’m sure it is for many of you).

A hardy band of Rubies and Friends of Rubies started a Writing an Hour a Day Accountability Challenge for September, and just like last year, there’s interest in carrying on through October as well. It’s a simple deal: we have a Facebook group with a daily post to check in to, to let the group know if you made your hour or not.

I admit I didn’t have the best September….the teachi...

Fangirl Friday

Okay, so it’s only October, but I’m already looking forward to Thanksgiving and winter break, when I’ll have tons of time, in between wrangling children and cooking, to read (hey, a girl can dream). Here are some Ruby books I can’t wait to dig into:

JAGUAR’S KISS (Lone Pine Pride #1)

by Vivi Andrews

FREE from October 1-15!

To get what he wants, he’ll have to rattle her cage…

Lila Fallon, the Lone Pine Pride Alpha’s only daughter, has been betrothed since childhood to marry her father’s chose...

Make It Golden 2015 Winners Announced!

All the votes are all in, and it’s time to name our winners! Every year, the ten finalists make our choice very, very, very difficult, and this year was probably the hardest yet. The expanded entries were AWESOME, and we wish we could just keep reading the entire books!

For those of you who may just be joining us, the Make It Golden Contest celebrates excellent beginnings in unpublished romance novel manuscripts. Round 1 asks for entries of the first 50 words (max) of the very opening of the...

Show and Tell Wednesday: Baseball. Just Baseball.

At an ice cream social for my twinsies’ school, they had a silent auction. I made a tactical error and bid on two sets of Cardinals’ tickets, hoping to win one. Guess who ended up with two sets of tickets the same week?

Things have been so crazy around here with the house stuff and the work stuff and the kid stuff (And deadline stuff. That’s just me, but I do feel that when momma’s on deadline, everyone suffers). At first we debated whether we could sell the tickets to someone or find someone...

Demystifying HTML – part 1

The web has become the medium that most of us use to read just about anything these days. We go to the internet for blogs, newspapers, magazines, websites, and e-books. Since HTML is the standard way to format and present web pages, it helps to have familiarity with how this “language” works. Here’s the first post in a series of articles where I hope to demystify HTML for you.

It is likely that you already use WordPress or Blogspot or a web designer to create web pages. That’s what I do, too...