Capitalizing Dialogue

Written by on November 21, 2017 in blog, editing, grammar, self-publishing, writing with 0 Comments
Capitalizing Dialogue

Capitalizing Dialogue You’ve already learned about dialogue tags—I hope. Now learn how capitalizing dialogue is easy. Read on to find out how to capitalize dialogue—when to do it and when not to. Capitalizing Dialogue Capitalizing dialogue is one of the areas that makes authors stumble, especially new authors. Don’t let it. It’s not that difficult. […]

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Are Pre Words Redundant?

Written by on November 2, 2017 in blog, grammar, writing with 0 Comments
Are Pre Words Redundant?

Are Pre Words Redundant? Pre is a prefix that means before. It’s fairly easy to understand and everyone I know of uses pre in one way or another. But are pre words redundant? preorder preboard preview prerecord pre-announce pre-arrange These are but a few of the pre words. There are many more. The problem I have with […]

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eBook Distribution — Why I Hate Using Pronoun

Written by on October 12, 2017 in blog, distributors, ebooks, self-publishing with 3 Comments
eBook Distribution — Why I Hate Using Pronoun

eBook Distribution There is a new player in the eBook distribution game or somewhat new. Pronoun is the name of the company who used to be Vook. Now Pronoun has been purchased by Macmillan, one of the big traditional publishers. I’ve covered this extensively in my new book eBook Distribution, but I felt a few details […]

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Absolutely Is Absolutely Wrong

Written by on September 5, 2017 in blog, grammar, writing with 0 Comments
Absolutely Is Absolutely Wrong

Absolutely Is Absolutely Wrong It’s a well-known fact that absolutely is absolutely wrong. Well, for some people it is. And what makes it worse, is that people often use it as an intensifier for another absolute. I wrote about absolutes before. You can read about them here. Even the dictionaries have succumbed to popular and […]

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The Best Mystery Book

Written by on August 29, 2017 in blog, ebooks, self-publishing, writing with 0 Comments
The Best Mystery Book

The Best Mystery Book What makes the best mystery book? Ask ten people and you’ll likely get some overlap, but I’d be willing to bet you’d get at least 7 different opinions. Some might say it’s the dialogue that keeps them turning pages; others would swear it’s the character development; while a few may proclaim […]

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Am I Grateful or Thankful

Written by on August 22, 2017 in blog, education, grammar, writing with 0 Comments
Am I Grateful or Thankful

Am I Grateful or Thankful I’ve had several people write to me about whether to use grateful or thankful, wondering when to use each word. My typical response of verifying my thoughts with a good dictionary and then presenting those people with answers didn’t work, mostly because the dictionaries seemed as confused as those people […]

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How Other Languages Affect Ours

Written by on August 17, 2017 in blog, grammar, writing with 0 Comments
How Other Languages Affect Ours

How Other Languages Affect Ours If you’ve ever wondered how other languages affect ours—wonder no more. All you have to do is look at a calendar, or think about it when you wonder “Where do the months of the year names come from?” Did you ever wonder where we got the names for the months […]

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Dead to Rights

Written by on August 8, 2017 in blog with 0 Comments
Dead to Rights

Dead to Rights I don’t know how many of you have even heard of this expression. But where I grew up, dead to rights was common usage—everyone knew what it meant. But it wasn’t until I used the saying in one of my books that my editor flagged it, as she didn’t know what the […]

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Sell More Books Using Vellum and Pronoun

Sell More Books Using Vellum and Pronoun

Using Vellum and Pronoun to Sell More Books All authors are continually on the lookout for ways to sell more books. The bad news is that it’s damn difficult. The good news is that there are clever and innovative people looking for new ways to make it easier to sell more books. I’m not referring […]

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Compare to versus Compare With

Written by on June 27, 2017 in blog, grammar, writing with 0 Comments
Compare to versus Compare With

Compare to and Compare With Some authors claim that compare to versus compare with is a useless argument–that they mean essentially the same thing, but this is not supported by actual data. The verb compare has several different meanings, some of which take the preposition “to”, while the others take “with”: Compare A to B […]

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