Nearly seventy years ago, Rio started to do her bit for vulnerable children, one child at a time. While she was still in school, she thought nothing of bringing home a schoolmate who needed refuge. It was the start of opening her home and her heart to children in need. She has never stopped. A Heart So Big is the astonishing and moving story of Rio's life and how she has tried to make a difference. She has fostered over 140 children and in 2010, in an award created especially for her, she was named Mother of the Year at the annual People of the Year Awards. It includes stories of trauma - Rio has rescued children from the direst of circumstances and seen the price they pay for the failures of adults. And Rio has had her share of heartache along the way. But it is also a story full of humour, searing honesty and good old-fashioned fighting spirit. Rio Hogarty's A Heart So Big is an uplifting account of an amazing and inspiring life. 'She is instinctively protective of children in need, and doesn't take "no" for an answer. She's also fearless.' The Herald

    Now this critically acclaimed author and writing instructor offers an inspiring, practical handbook on the joys, challenges, and creative possibilities inherent in the writing life.Both autobiography and primer, Escaping into the Open interweaves Elizabeth Berg's story of her own journey from working mother to published novelist with encouraging advice on how to create stories that spring from deep within the heart.With wit and honesty, Elizabeth Berg provides numerous exercises that will unleash individual creativity and access and utilize all of the senses. Most important, she tells how to fire passion -- emotion -- into writing itself; to break through personal barriers and reach one's own outer limits and beyond.

    As soon as you name an emotion, readers go into thinking mode. And when they think about an emotion, they distance themselves from feeling it. A great way to show anger, fear, indifference, and the whole range of emotions that characterize the human experience, is through beats. These action snippets that pepper dialogue can help describe a wide range of emotions while avoiding lazy writing. The power of beats lies in their innate ability to create richer, more immediate, deeper writing. This emotional thesaurus includes hundreds of examples that you can use for your inspiration, so that you, too, can harness this technique to easily convert your writing into palpable feelings. Genre fiction authors can use Emotional Beat as a feeling thesaurus and watch their writing take off! Emotional Beats was an award-winning Finalist in the IPA 2017 Awards.

    Create Complex CharactersHow do you create a main character readers won't forget? How do you write a book in multiple-third-person point of view without confusing your readers (or yourself)? How do you plant essential information about a character's past into a story?Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint by award-winning author Nancy Kress answers all of these questions and more! This accessible book is filled with interactive exercises and valuable advice that teaches you how to: •Choose and execute the best point of view for your story•Create three-dimensional and believable characters•Develop your characters' emotions•Create realistic love, fight, and death scenes•Use frustration to motivate your characters and drive your storyWith dozens of excerpts from some of today's most popular writers, Write Great Fiction: Characters, Emotion & Viewpoint provides you with the techniques you need to create characters and stories sure to linger in the hearts and minds of agents, editors, and readers long after they've finished your book.

    The next month Amazon posted a press release revealing that Crosbie had made $46,000 in one month, with one book. Previously to this, his novel was rejected one hundred and thirty times by traditional publishers and agents.In the months that followed, My Temporary Life and its sequel have been consistent sellers, often sitting atop Amazon’s rankings. Crosbie’s story has been mentioned in Publisher’s Weekly, Forbes online, and other media outlets around the world. In fact, Amazon referred to him as one of their 2012 success stories in their year-end press release.How I Sold 30,000 eBooks on Amazon’s Kindle-An Easy-To-Follow Self-Publishing Guidebook tells the story of how he became a full-time writer, detailing the specific steps he took to find and connect with his readers. Plus, it describes how to adjust and tweak your strategy as Amazon changes their systems.

    4 is an elucidation of the writer's craft by a master practitioner. In a series of playful but expertly wrought essays, John McPhee shares insights he's gathered over his career and refined during his long-running course at Princeton University, where he has launched some of the most esteemed writers of several generations. McPhee offers a definitive guide to the crucial decisions regarding structure, diction, and tone that shape nonfiction pieces, and presents extracts from some of his best-loved work, subjecting them to wry scrutiny. The result is a vivid depiction of the writing process, from reporting to drafting to revising and revising, and revising.More than a compendium of advice, Draft No. 4 is enriched by personal detail and charming reflections on the life of a writer. McPhee describes his enduring relationships with The New Yorker and Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and recalls his early years at Time magazine. Enlivened by his keen sense of writing as a way of being in the world, Draft No. 4 is the long-awaited master class given by America's most renowned writing instructor.

    Baxter's experience from decades as a career martial artist make this book a valuable resource for writers who want to understand what fighting is all about - what it really feels like and what does and doesn't work - and how to factor those things into their writing to make their fight scenes visceral, realistic page turners. Baxter won't tell you how to write, but he will tell you what makes a great fight scene.

    Le Guin generously shares the accumulated wisdom of a lifetime's work.

    Who want to do it the cheapest and easiest way possible while still producing a quality product. Who understand that much like Starbucks outlets and Nespresso coffee machines, traditional and self-publishing can peacefully co-exist. Who know that they don't have to sell a million copies of their book to start earning a living from their writing, but that they do have to work hard and treat it like a business. Who are blessed with common sense and live in the real world at least most of the time. Who find my jokes funny.  If this sounds like you, then SELF-PRINTED: THE SANE PERSON'S GUIDE TO SELF-PUBLISHING may be just the "How To..." guide you were looking for. It will tell you everything you need to know in order to publish a Print On Demand paperback and e-book, and - crucially - sell them, without sounding like anti-Big Publishing propaganda produced by the Ministry of Truth.  Be warned: you are now entering a No Saying "Gatekeepers" Zone...  Visit SelfPrintedbook.com to see the full table of contents.  ABOUT CATHERINE: Catherine Ryan Howard is the coffee-guzzling twenty-something behind the popular blog, Catherine, Caffeinated. In March 2010 she self-published her travel memoir, Mousetrapped: A Year and A Bit in Orlando, Florida, using the Print-On-Demand service CreateSpace, Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing and Smashwords. Using free promotional tools like blogging, Twitter and Facebook, she managed to make Mousetrapped an Amazon bestseller and sell 4,000 copies of it in a year. Her success story has been featured in The Sunday Times and The Sunday Independent newspapers, and Catherine has been interviewed on BBC Radio Ulster, Newstalk and RTÉ Radio's Marian Finucane Show. She lives in Cork, Ireland, where she divides her time between her desk and the sofa. She wants to be a NASA astronaut when she grows up. (She's 28.)

    And while there are many resources out there on the "craft" of writing or how to find your creative voice as an "artist," there is little by way of practical advice on how to actually set about writing genre fiction for a career. Fiona McIntosh, one of Australia's most successful commercial authors across a range of genres, is here to set the record straight, and set aspiring novelists on a realistic path. She believes that if you have a tough hide and a philosophical attitude—as well as a damn strong work ethic—anyone can make a living from popular writing. And she's here to show you how.

    Great storytelling is making readers care about your characters, the choices they make, and what happens to them. It's making your audience feel the tension and emotion of a situation right alongside your protagonist. And to tell a damn fine story, you need to understand why and how that caring happens. Using a mix of personal stories, pop fiction examples, and traditional storytelling terms, New York Times best-selling author Chuck Wendig will help you internalize the feel of powerful storytelling. In Damn Fine Story, you'll explore:Fretytag's Pyramid for visualizing story structure--and when to break away from traditional storytelling formsCharacter relationships and interactions as the basis of every strong plot--no matter the form or genreRising and falling tension that pulls the audience through to the climax and conclusion of the storyDeveloping themes as a way to craft characters with depthWhether you're writing a novel, screenplay, video game, comic, or even if you just like to tell stories to your friends and family over dinner, this funny and informative guide is chock-full of examples about the art and craft of storytelling--and how to write a damn fine story of your own.

    "You need tools, not rules." His book distills decades of experience into 50 tools that will help any writer become more fluent and effective. WRITING TOOLS covers everything from the most basic ("Tool 5: Watch those adverbs") to the more complex ("Tool 34: Turn your notebook into a camera") and provides more than 200 examples from literature and journalism to illustrate the concepts. For students, aspiring novelists, and writers of memos, e-mails, PowerPoint presentations, and love letters, here are 50 indispensable, memorable, and usable tools. "Pull out a favorite novel or short story, and read it with the guidance of Clark's ideas. . . . Readers will find new worlds in familiar places. And writers will be inspired to pick up their pens." -Boston Globe"For all the aspiring writers out there-whether you're writing a novel or a technical report-a respected scholar pulls back the curtain on the art." -Atlanta Journal-Constitution"This is a useful tool for writers at all levels of experience, and it's entertainingly written, with plenty of helpful examples." -Booklist

    Z came to expect a certain alchemical, trademark blend: words which were caustic and wry, at times self-deprecating or even puzzling, but always devilishly smart with arresting honesty. A complex package, that's the Doctor.  The one-time sparring partner of Ernest Hemingway, Paul Zimmerman is one of the modern era's groundbreaking football minds, a man who methodically charted every play while generating copious notes, a human precursor to the data analytics websites of today. In 2008, Zimmerman had nearly completed work on his personal memoirs when a series of strokes left him largely unable to speak, read, or write. Compiled and edited by longtime SI colleague Peter King, these are the stories he still wants to see told.  Dr. Z’s memoir is a rich package of personalities, stories never shared about such characters as Vince Lombardi, Walter Payton, Lawrence Taylor, and Johnny Unitas. Even Joe Namath, with whom Zimmerman had a legendary and well-documented 23-year feud, saw fit to eventually unburden himself to the remarkable scribe.  Also included are Zimmerman's encounters with luminaries and larger-than-life figures outside of sports, notably Donald Trump, Rupert Murdoch, and Hunter S. Thompson. But not to be missed are Zimmerman's quieter observations on his own life and writing, witticisms and anecdotes which sway between the poignant and hilarious. No matter the topic, Dr. Z: the Lost Memoirs of an Irreverent Football Writer proves essential, compelling reading for sports fans old and new.

    We are in an era where entire businesses are built on Instagram; kids in their bedrooms are racking up tens of millions of YouTube views; bloggers are becoming millionaires from their kitchen tables, and businesses are getting more attention from a viral video than a Super Bowl ad. But in a space that moves so fast, how can businesses keep up - let alone compete? And how do you make sure that your activity is profitable? Whether it’s building a targeted fanbase, selling more of your products & services or serving customers, every piece of your social media marketing campaign should be making you money. Combining the ‘holy grail’ marketing principles from some of history’s most successful marketers with the very latest social media strategies gives savvy businesses of all size a chance to ‘do’ social media in an entirely new way. Gone are the days of fumbling around in the dark. The new era is about testing, measuring and profit. From the psychological triggers that make us buy; employing social proof to stand out; using (and faking) controversy to sell more or just simply demonstrating your true competitive advantage, profitable social media marketing is here. As Head Ninja at Exposure Ninja, Tim Cameron-Kitchen has personally worked with hundreds of businesses of all shapes and sizes, and seen first hand how doing the right things on social media can transform a business. Yvonne Ivanescu came to Exposure Ninja from one of the world’s highest profile marketing agencies, and brought her brand experience to help business on the front line. This book is the distillation of everything that makes a profitable campaign, laid out in step-by-step instructions for you to follow and apply to your own business - whatever your size or market. So whether you’re a local plumber looking to pick up leads from Twitter, or an independent e-commerce site wanting the attention of influential bloggers, the strategies and profitable shortcuts for entrepreneur-run businesses in this book will give you a chance to compete in competitive markets where time and budget is of the essence.

    When they’re not nodding, they roll their eyes.Time to slash the Pinocchio strings and turn them into real people. Award-winning author Kathy Steinemann provides the tools. She cuts through the so-called rules and offers simple solutions.Too many repetitions of “little”? There’s a cure for that. Do you rely on “very” too often? There’s a cure for that too. You’ll find the remedies in this book’s dispensary.Should you ever use anything other than “said” to attribute dialogue? Are exclamation points taboo? The answers might surprise you.Learn how to harness body language, purge hackneyed adjectives, and draw on the environment for ambience. No more wooden characters. You’ll transform them into believable personalities that your readers will learn to love. Or hate.Get in the driver’s seat, relax, and enjoy your journey—with Kathy Steinemann’s book as your GPS.