Linzé Brandon's Blog, page 62

Guest Post: Revenge by Francis H Powell

"Vengeance is mine," sayeth the Lord
Revenge has to be cold and calculated and has to have the ultimate impact. The better you know the victim of your revenge, the better. What are some of the ultimate true life “pay backs”. There’s a new phenomenon, posting photos or videos of former partners on the internet, naked or doing sexually compromising things. This seems tasteless…mind you who recalls the infamous severing of John Wayne Bobbitt’s penis by his wife Lorena…as a man this makes me squir...

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 11: Planning for Pantsers - scene setting

As pantsers we tend to write our stories chronologically. To be able to do this, we sit down and read what we wrote the previous day and then simply continue where we left off. This is a simple process when you write every day and keep the story and characters alive in your head while you are writing.But what if you did not write yesterday? Or the day before? What if you had to work overtime for two weeks and was simply too exhausted to look at your story? How far do you go back to pick up th...

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 10: 6 Easy SEO tips for bloggers

Linzé's Google ResultSearch Engine Optimisation or SEO is the technique used for websites, and blogs, to be found by Google or any of the other search engines. While most people know about keywords, it is one of many algorithms used by the search engines to find your blog and list it on the results page if someone searched for something.For authors the one thing that we want others to see is our books, isn't it? Whether the searcher types in the title you want yours to be listed first. Proble...

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 9: Planning for Pantsers - backstory

Photograph and cross stitching by LinzéPlanning for pantsers might sound like a contradiction in terms, and to some extent is it. However, without at least some planning the amount of editing that a pantser has to do, is exponentially more than that of a writer that plans her story in detail.As a fiction pantser, and a non-fiction planner, I have learned that there is a way for a pantser to plan without going into details about the story. I am a pantser because I don't want to know how the st...

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 8: Make it a good morning, and a great day

Earlier in the year I started reading The Artist's Way with the intention to follow the program this year. To my shame, I have to admit that I have not progressed further than Chapter 4. The one thing I did start, and am still doing is what the author calls morning pages.
While I have been keeping a diary since I was very young, the idea of morning pages struck me as a better approach and I have since converted to the practice.
For those of you not familiar with the term, morning pages is...

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 7: Review a book (part 1)

Photograph by LinzéThis is the first of three posts about book reviews. The second will be aimed specifically at reviewing erotica or erotic romance, so watch out for that if you need some guidance. The third will be about reviewing non-fiction.

I am a blog host for two websites, and every now and then I volunteer to read and review books for them. While my first choice of genre is romance, I also read and review mysteries.
So how do you review a book that you liked?
That is the easy...

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 6: Another Follow Me Tour

One thing that I love about blogging is that I can show you my country as I travel for work or pleasure. Or in this case a writers' conference. Yep, I am grinning like an idiot, as it will be my first local conference. Local as in the same country, but not the same province. I live in Pretoria in the Gauteng province and the conference is in Stellenbosch which is in the Western Cape province. For my non-South African friends - if you can find Cape Town on a map, you will see that Stellenbosch...

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 5: Suddenly the challenge is too much, or is it?

Linzé Brandon (photograph Francois A Venter)Most writers work full-time to pay the bills and write after hours to indulge in their passion. I do the same. Only writing to me is not just a passion, it is an escape from the stressful hours I call work obligations.I have often heard that people say they didn’t write or have stopped writing because real life interfered. And I think, seriously? If your writing is not part of real life, then what is it a part of? A fantasy? A dream? Of course, bad...

Book Tour: Made in India by Biddu

As a child, Biddu dreamt of going west and making it big as a composer. At the age of sixteen, he formed a band and started playing in a cafe in Bangalore, his home town, At eighteen, he was part of a popular act at Trinca's, a nightclub in Calcutta devoted to food, wine and music, At nineteen, he had college students in Bombay dancing to his music. In his early twenties, he left the country and ended up hitchhiking across the Middle East before arriving in London with only the clothes o...

35 Day Blog Challenge - Day 4: That creativity thing: myth, magic or something else entirely

I will not give myself out as an expert on creativity, but this subject is close to my heart (it is my blog theme for this year). It describes the essence of what we as writers aim to achieve: a creative life. Creativity comes in many forms, but for a writer the words are our paint brushes and the computer screens our blank canvasses.

If you are fortunate enough, to be able to either write/paint/design or do some other creative activity full-time, count your blessings. On the other hand,...