Determining your career strategy before you publish may seem premature. But if you follow the advice of many writers and have at least one book in edits, one book in draft and one book in outline, you’ve got the content that will take you into being a “mid-career” author in …
Does A YA Protagonist Have To Be A Teen? Are there exceptions? What about the immortal protagonist? I’ve mentioned this topic in passing in other posts—but it’s the current thorn under my skin so I figured it deserves its own article to mull over. One of the key attributes of …
So, recently I got to have dinner with some actual teens to learn more about their tastes in YA books & entertainment. Teen entertainment tastes will have significant bearing on the success of my writing. I only realized in the last few months that my books would be categorized as …
Once upon a time adults didn’t read children’s books—well, except to their children, of course, when the children were small and you hoped for them to become readers one day. My mother read me children’s books- The Secret Garden, Little House on the Prairie, A Girl of the Limberlost. She …
That is the question… Or at least the one that suddenly occurred to me to wrestle with. I’d been watching a YouTube recording of one of Brandon Sanderson’s lectures on writing at BYU that focused on genre and parsed out YA (Young Adult) from other writing in a way I …
Constraints of Genre Complexity Are some genre better suited for self-publishing? Yes, yes they are. There are several key considerations—but your first question needs to be, “Am I eventually planning on supporting myself with my fiction writing as my sole income?” If the answer is no—then you may not need …
In my prior article, Neptune’s Sandbox II—The Benefits of Being Boxed we talked about the benefits of staying in your genre, and the costs of venturing out of bounds. Today we’re going to talk about how to position your first book when you know you’re planning a career that crosses …
Rejected Terrible Titles Your titles can make or break you as an author—they are the first thing a reader sees about a book—and the first bar most books fail. Waxing Dark actually went through multiple title changes. It started out as Ending Academy, which was unbelievably dull. Deciding I needed …
Sugar Pyramids in Sugar Sand—You Know You Want It! Last time in Neptune’s Sandbox I—The Sand You Want we talked about the desire to write beyond the bounds of one genre. Today we are going to cover why that might not be a good idea. There are benefits to being …
Genre is the sandbox you choose—but I don’t want to. I want to claim my realm like a force of nature. Like Neptune god of the sea, I want to stride forth from the waves and plant my trident—encompassing the sand as far as the horizon only my mind views. …
