Author Toolbox: The Wonders of World Building

Since Alice has made her debut in the world, I have learned many things. Some lessons have not been the best experiences of my life (case in point: #CSLewisCarroll), but others have been incredibly exciting.

One such lesson was the discovery that I might just have a knack for world building. I found out when my dear friend Rebecca Cahill asked me to write a guest post for her blog, The Page Unbound.  I was more than happy to oblige, until she told me the topic she’d like me to write about:  World Building.

<insert video-tape screech>

Author Toolbox: Let’s Talk About Typos

I’ll be the first to admit it:  autocorrect and I have a love/hate relationship. It LOVES to ‘correct’ my sh*t, and I absolutely HATE it. If you follow me on Twitter, you are probably well aware of this fact.

However, that does not mean all editing is bad. In fact, solid editing is probably one of the most important aspects of publishing your work. Unfortunately, the process can be long and (after what feels like the 700th time through your manuscript,) tedious. But, regardless of how arduous the process is, you should never, EVER discredit the edit.

Which is a lesson I learned the very hard way.

October Reads

Sometimes in the busyness of all my ‘writerly’ duties, I forget the most basic rule.
If you want to be a good writer, you also need to be a good reader.  Consider it research. I’ll be honest, I’ve been a bad reader lately, but this month, I told myself I was going to pick up my ‘studies’ again.  And I’m so glad I did.

It’s funny how you can go for a while without doing something and not realize how much you missed it until you start back up again. Now, I don’t want you to think that I haven’t been reading ANYTHING, but between school, writing, building an author platform, and life in general, I haven’t really been reading much along the lines of quality literature. So this month I made a conscious effort to pick out and finish a few good books. Here’s what I found:

October #RdgWl

Once I got the news that Alice was going to be published in 2017, one of the first things I wanted to do was to figure out where my competition would be. 

As a retelling, Alice already has some big contenders- Sisters Red, The Lunar Chronicles, and  Beastly, to name a few, but I wanted to focus on the stories that revisit Wonderland to see where MY Alice will sit in the world. That being said, my #RDGWL theme for this month is: