Scarlett Van Dijk's Blog, page 3

Guest Post: Caroline Reid - Preparing for Performance

With the proliferation of open mic nights and spoke word events, there are now many opportunities for writers to perform their work. Even if you would rather drink battery acid than read for an audience, I encourage you think again. Reading your work is a wonderful way to reach a wider audience, doubling as an occasion to develop confidence in yourself and in your writing.

I first began my writing career as a playwright, and am a great fan of actors. In my experience, the reading nights that...

Guest Post: Dean Mayes - Going Social

It used to be the case that I actively sought out every single social networking platform available ifit had the potential for me to sell my books. WhenI was first published back in 2010, I took on thistask enthusiastically, occupying every single spaceI could and I shouted – Oh Man Did I Shout –because I thought that was what you had to do in order to be successful.

But I quickly learned that, aside from the fact that there are millions of others out there shouting justas loudly, having a pr...

Guest Post: A J Le Roy - Suspension of Disbelief

As a fiction writer, I feel incredibly lucky being able to let my imagination run free. I can stretch the limitations of reality and take my reader on journeys through distant places and times. I create characters and communities and have even conjured up the odd planet or two. But amidst all of this wonderment and fantasy, I do still have a responsibility to my reader: to consciously support their suspension of disbelief. The moment their curious mind suggests that something in my story does...

Guest Post: Christine Campbell - #NaNoWriMo and Going With the Flow

By now it will be all over.
The winners will have won, the losers … well, they’ll have won too.
I don’t believe there are any losers in NaNoWriMo. Everyone who enters National Novel Writing Month is a winner. They have all taken the plunge. They have decided to do something that many people talk about, even more people think about, but not so many actually do. They will have committed to writing a novel.

The idea of writing a novel in a month may seem a bit far fetched, and, in actuality, it wou...

Finding Time to Write: A Discovery

I get asked often: How do you find time to write? For a while, it was with great difficulty. Trying to force myself to write when I didn’t want to made the task feel like work. I seemed to have so much on my plate with my paid job and other commitments that there was no time for it. Lately however, I found my mojo again and writing is a part of my down-time. I think the trick is to make writing fun, not a chore.

No one likes to work. No one wants to put time aside for work unless it is necess...

Guest Post: Francis Powell - Publishing and Promotion Dilemmas

I wonder how many authors there are like me…

You go through the long haul of finding a publisher to publish your book, in my case a book of 22 short stories.It’s a euphoric feeling when you have news that your manuscript that you have sweated over, finally has a home, is finally going to see light of day. For me what happened afterwards was perplexing and frustrating.Sending e mails back and forth to somebody I have never met, in the USA, who would alter MY work, to such an extent I felt like...

The Rail Road Walker

A short story I wrote as a part of the Halloween Blog Hop, 'Share A Scare'. Hope you enjoy my first attempt at a scary story, 'The Rail Road Walker'. Most people ignored the broadcast. That means there are only a small number of us left. I can't blame those who stayed in their homes, turned off the radio; it was a strange command after all.

“Walk the rail roads. Don't turn back no matter what. Avoid the injured and dead. Sleep during the day and walk at night for they will not appear in...

Guest Post: John Sanders - Why Do I Tell Stories?

Once upon a time, there lived a boy who dreamed of fighting dragons on a far away planet. He read every last book ever written about this planet and loved the heroines of the stories. Yes, there were also heroes, but it was the women heroes that inspired him.

I am John Sanders, and I write programs by day, to make big dangerous machines behave, and write science and speculative fiction by night to entertain. I pay tribute to one of the greatest female authors I have had the pleasure to have r...

Guest Post: Basel Dayyani - Some Thoughts on Writing

Start the first sentence and thoughts will spring out from the factory of thoughts, your mind. Once the first words started to come to existence, other thoughts fight fiercely for your attention. The intellect starts selecting them from amongst thousands of competing thoughts like rays of light bouncing off a rare exquisite diamond. My story of the first novel I wrote, Kingdom Infinitum, started by a lecture that a few ladies from Australia and England and other countries like so much. The l...

Guest Author Interview - Andy Peloquin

Today I am introducing Andy Peloquin, a speculative fiction author. For something different I asked Andy a series of questions and he has given some wonderful answers! Read on to find out about Andy, his writing, and learn from his experiences.

So, what have you written, Andy?

Two things:

1)A fantasy/sci-fi/historical/metaphysical fiction set in Atlantis, called In the Days: A Tale of the Forgotten Continent. I had a lot of fun writing it, and I know it's a rollicking fun time of a read. (I'm...