R.J. Blain's Blog, page 3

#150Daysto100k – Assignment #9: Show Vs Tell, Passive Voice, and Other Tricks of the Trade

Today is one part editorial assignment, one part drafting assignment, and one part teaching moment.

For those of you who are comfortable with show vs tell, passive voice, and controlling tone, vibe, and mood, you can skip on to the actual assignment:

Write your second chapter.

I know authors who write 1,000 word chapters. I know authors who write 10,000 chapters. I know plenty of authors who are somewhere in between. (Personally, I like between 4,000 to 6,000 words, but I’ve done 1,000 ...

#150Daysto100k – Assignment #8: Write your Next Scene

Today is the first day in almost a week I haven’t been completely plagued with a headache (or migraine.) Bleh. As such, I’m a big bad 500 words into Rise of the Rift King, but that’s 500 more words than I had before, which is great. (I am still on Assignment #6, in case it isn’t obvious. Hah!) But this is the nature of books. Sometimes, it takes you x5 times longer than someone else to progress.

The real lesson here is sticking with it even when you’re slow. Slow and steady gets the job done....

Upcoming Publication Schedule (2025 – 2026)

A few things before I present the list:

1: This is tentative unless the book is available for preorder. Life happens. Should life happen and what you want doesn’t show up when you want, keep it a you problem.

I’m human, and I absolutely will prioritize my health, family, and happiness over books. Being creative is hard. (Please, let’s not make it any harder.) (This is where I say ‘If you don’t like how I write my books or when I publish them, go write your own with your own ideas, your own...

#150Daysto100k – Assignment #7: Reflect On Your Opener

Writing a book is hard. Let’s just get that truth out of the way. The people who make it look easy are either really good at their sales pitch, are lying, or have zero care about their final quality. (Even the skilled and talented have to work hard to make a good book come to life.)

Today, we’re dipping our toes into facing off (and ultimately conquering) the challenges of writing.

Step 1: Read what you wrote.

Step 2: Pat yourself on the back. You have written something, and the first s...

#150Daysto100K – Assignment #6: Write Your Opener!

I meant to do this yesterday, but it turns out yesterday and day were sick days. (I was sick with some unknown aliment yesterday, and I am having a chronic pain episode involving a very old knee injury, which is bad enough it has disrupted my ability to do anything.)

I got the right type of knee brace/sleeve, so hopefully that will be tolerable by tomorrow… or tolerable in the sense that I’ve adapted to the pain and can function through it.

Anyway, today is all about starting to write your...

#150Daysto100k Assignment #5: Identify Your Starting Place!

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Photographed: the moment before the tortie decided the calico (A cat weighing five pounds more than her, mind you) needed to be attacked most viciously.

This is the visual form of where to start a story, because in the next few moments, this happened, and the story of a viciously cute kitty on kitty battle began.

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This is the last assignment before we dive in an begin actually writing the book. Hooray!

Today, I want you to think about where your book begins. A good beginning for ...

The Prince of New York is a B&N Top Indie Title! Also, some updates on audiobooks, answering a bunch of questions recently, general news!

Hello, folks! In the past week or two, I’ve gotten a lot of questions about the background economics of books (thus the series of posts, adjustments to the chart, etc), and I wanted to take the time to dig through the question archive and answer some of them. (If I tried to answer all of them, we’d be here for months.)

But before I begin, Barnes & Noble curated The Prince of New York as a June / July Top Indie Favorite! Hooray! Good job, baby book!!! I’m so proud of you. It is under the Scien...

#150Daysto100k Assignment #4: Create Conflict.

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Pictured: Zazzle coping with the terrible conflict of being on the wrong side of the fence and unable to capture the bird she very much wishes to hunt.

In an earlier post, I discussed that your character(s) needed a destination. (And I’m not talking about a final one, although your vibe may very well result in them doing the equivalent of driving behind a log truck…) Today, your assignment is to identify the primary conflicts that are preventing your main characters from getting to where ...

#150Daysto100K Assignment 3: Identify (and Create) Your Main Character

In my section of the universe, good characters are the foundation of a good book. Compelling plot lines mean absolutely nothing to me if they aren’t backed with engaging and interesting characters.

So, today’s assignment is all about the main character. Who is this story REALLY about? Why is the story about this specific character?

In the case of a romance novel, you’re going to have two main characters, so you would identify both of them now.

In Rise of the Rift King (which will be the...

How to Follow Me Without the Extras! (Plus a correction re: economics post) (AKA, how you can dodge future #150Daysto100k Posts)

Before anyone becomes upset, freaks out, etc, I understood when I started the writing challenge that there would be those who simply have zero interest in the behind the scenes work that goes into a book, those who simply have zero interest in writing, and those who just want news and nothing but news.

News regarding what is coming up after the preorder titles is located at the end of this post. (Read or not as you desire.)

As I will be doing a post or two a day moving forward, I wanted to...