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Writing Romance: The Ultimate Guide on Craft, Creation and Industry Connections by San Francisco Area Romance Writers of Am
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In a Moment
Caroline Finnerty - 2012
Their relationship is only held together by a thread. As their marriage disintegrates around them, Adam tries desperately to salvage it – while Emma does everything in her power, not only to avoid the issue, but to avoid him. But what has brought them to this point? Why is Emma traumatised by the very sight of him? And why is Adam having recurring nightmares? Jean McParland has long been living her own nightmare, battling with her son Paul whose violent outbursts have terrorised her and his younger siblings in their own home. Torn between her love for her eldest son and fears for the other children, Jean has shied away from taking decisive action . . . while their lives continued to spin out of control. Then, in just one moment, Adam, Emma and Jean’s lives became inextricably linked and were changed forever.
The Modern Library Writer's Workshop: A Guide to the Craft of Fiction
Stephen Koch - 2003
Characters paralyzed by the meaninglessness of modern life still have to drink water from time to time.” —Kurt Vonnegut“‘The cat sat on the mat’ is not the beginning of a story, but ‘the cat sat on the dog’s mat’ is.” —John Le CarréNothing is more inspiring for a beginning writer than listening to masters of the craft talk about the writing life. But if you can’t get Vladimir Nabokov, Virginia Woolf, and Gabriel García Márquez together at the Algonquin, The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop gives you the next best thing. Stephen Koch, former chair of Columbia University’s graduate creative writing program, presents a unique guide to the craft of fiction. Along with his own lucid observations and commonsense techniques, he weaves together wisdom, advice, and inspiring commentary from some of our greatest writers. Taking you from the moment of inspiration (keep a notebook with you at all times), to writing a first draft (do it quickly! you can always revise later), to figuring out a plot (plot always serves the story, not vice versa), Koch is a benevolent mentor, glad to dispense sound advice when you need it most. The Modern Library Writer’s Workshop belongs on every writer’s shelf, to be picked up and pored over for those moments when the muse needs a little help finding her way.
Simplify Your Life: Waste Less, Value More, Go Minimalist
Mary Conroy - 2020
Minimalism can be a beautiful, enriching and life-transforming practice that, at its core, is all about re-establishing what holds value in your life and letting go of what does not. It's not about having your groceries displayed in glass jars or having chic, Scandinavian furniture - it's a way of life that allows us to strip away the clutter that stands in the way of us achieving our goals. Simplify Your Life is about exactly that: bringing simplicity back into your life, and with it, joy in the everyday. Dispelling the myths that minimalism is for either hardcore environmentalists or the privileged few, this book shows how minimalism is more relevant and necessary than ever, not least because it's the most accessible way to achieve a state of contentment in all aspects of life. Minimalism is for you if you want to: • stop mindlessly scrolling and start living with intention and purpose • spend more time on the things and people you love and less on what you "have to be/do" • take control of your finances and stop mindless spending • learn more about conscious consumption and reducing your waste • experience freedom and pride in your home instead of feeling trapped by your stuffAlthough minimalism is ostensibly about taking things away from our cluttered lives, it is really about adding richness, color, and meaning to our lives. It's about identifying the aspects of our life that we truly love and that nourish us. It's about trusting ourselves and leading the life we always wanted.
Good Prose: The Art of Nonfiction
Tracy Kidder - 2013
The story begins in 1973, in the offices of The Atlantic Monthly, in Boston, where a young freelance writer named Tracy Kidder came looking for an assignment. Richard Todd was the editor who encouraged him. From that article grew a lifelong association. Before long, Kidder’s The Soul of a New Machine, the first book the two worked on together, had won the Pulitzer Prize. It was a heady moment, but for Kidder and Todd it was only the beginning of an education in the art of nonfiction.Good Prose explores three major nonfiction forms: narratives, essays, and memoirs. Kidder and Todd draw candidly, sometimes comically, on their own experience—their mistakes as well as accomplishments—to demonstrate the pragmatic ways in which creative problems get solved. They also turn to the works of a wide range of writers, novelists as well as nonfiction writers, for models and instruction. They talk about narrative strategies (and about how to find a story, sometimes in surprising places), about the ethical challenges of nonfiction, and about the realities of making a living as a writer. They offer some tart and emphatic opinions on the current state of language. And they take a clear stand against playing loose with the facts. Their advice is always grounded in the practical world of writing and publishing.Good Prose—like Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style—is a succinct, authoritative, and entertaining arbiter of standards in contemporary writing, offering guidance for the professional writer and the beginner alike. This wise and useful book is the perfect companion for anyone who loves to read good books and longs to write one.
Scrivener Superpowers: How to Use Cutting-Edge Software to Energize Your Creative Writing Practice
M.G. Herron - 2016
It's an entertaining, easy-to-read, and deeply helpful guide to take your story from concept to completion using the most cutting-edge writing program available.Yes, it will teach you how to use many of Scrivener's features with screenshots and illustrations. More importantly, however, it will show you how each feature can be applied to the creative writing process to maximize results, increase your productivity, and help you finish your books faster.The tutorial is packed with advice from other successful authors, so you can pick and choose what works for you, and leave the rest alone.If you're ready to gain access to your writerly superpowers, get the sample and try the book today.
None of the Above
Rick Edwards - 2015
What with broken promises, complicated jargon and a lack of simple and clear information, is it any wonder that voter turnout is plummeting? It's not that you don't care about the way the country is run - it's that you don't think you can change it. Well, you can. And this book aims to show you how, by setting out basic politics and answering questions we've all asked, like: Why do politicians lie? What do UKIP stand for? And what's going to happen to the NHS? You have a decision to make in the countdown to the May 2015 General Election. You have something politicians want. Your vote. An ambassador for #SwingtheVote and the presenter of Free Speech, Rick Edwards has written a pithy and succinct book explaining the power of your vote. A refreshing counterpoint to Russell Brand's sentiments on voting in his latest book, Revolution, it will make you think about politics in a completely new way.
2042: The Great Cataclysm
Melisande Mason - 2011
Australian oceanographer Nick Torrens working for the US government finds a massive new fault line in Pacific Ocean. These tectonic plates are about to subduct causing a global chain reaction of undersea earthquakes. A nuclear dump in the Bering sea threatens to escalate the disaster by creating huge underwater explosions, triggering the eruption of dormant volcanoes in the region, leading to the destruction of the North Pole. New islands rise from the seabed displacing the oceans creating huge tsunami and unprecedented sea levels that no amount of dykes can hold back. International press bans for seven days are ordered to allow governments to prepare evacuation plans before major panic begins. The CIA tries to prevent Nick from releasing the news prematurely. It’s a race against time as Nick escapes the CIA and has only a few days to return to Australia before all international flights are grounded. He joins his family and they are forced to experience the event when they are trapped by looters in a skyscraper on the oceanfront as massive tidal waves approach. The devastation is total and climates are changed as the earth tilts on it’s axis and people struggle to survive.
Writing & Selling Short Stories & Personal Essays: The Essential Guide to Getting Your Work Published
Windy Lynn Harris - 2017
Earning bylines in magazines and literary journals is a terrific way to get noticed and earn future opportunities in both short- and long-form writing.Writing & Selling Short Stories & Personal Essays capitalizes on the popularity of these genres by instructing on the two key steps to publishing short works: crafting excellent pieces and successfully submitting them. You'll learn how to:Develop different craft elements--including point of view, character, dialogue, scene writing, and more--specifically for short stories and essays.Recognize the qualities of excellent short works, using examples from recently published stories and essays in major journals.Understand the business of writing short, from categorizing your work and meeting submission guidelines to networking and submitting to writing contests.Master the five-step process for submitting and selling like a pro.Featuring advice and examples from a multitude of published authors, Writing & Selling Short Stories & Personal Essays is a must-have for any writer's bookshelf.
Nourish Glow: The 10-Day Plan: Kickstart a lifetime of healthy eating
Amelia Freer - 2017
She will empower you to challenge any negative stories or attitudes you might have towards food and transform them into a positive lifelong love affair with eating well. The exclusive 10 day plan included in this book is a version of the plan Amelia gives to her clients, which has been developed and refined over her decade of work as a nutritional therapist. It is NOT about deprivation. It is a liberating, energising plan that will equip you with the building blocks needed to develop and implement a lifetime of balanced eating that is unique to you. Leaving behind all the confusion and negativity surrounding diets and healthy eating, this book helps you find out exactly how and what it means to eat well for you, for the rest of your life.This ultimate guide includes over 50 exclusive gluten, dairy and refined sugar free recipes, complete with vegan and vegetarian alternatives. Together with a unique and exclusively curated tool - Amelia's Positive Nutrition Pyramid - which will ensure you are unequivocally nourishing yourself with all of the essential ingredients needed for a happy, healthy body and mind.Give Amelia ten days and she will change how you think about food for life.
Pictures on Kindle: Self Publishing Your Kindle Book with Photos, Art, or Graphics, or Tips on Formatting Your Ebook's Images to Make Them Look Great
Aaron Shepard - 2013
Almost everything you've read about formatting pictures for Kindle is wrong. The advice offered by Kindle experts and even Amazon itself can give images that are tiny, blocky, noisy, or wildly inconsistent on different Kindles. Aaron Shepard, author of acclaimed books on both Kindle and print publishing, brings his years of experience in book design, webmastering, and photography to bear on a single question: How do you make pictures look great on the Kindle? He answers that question, while also providing beginners a basic course in picture editing. Along the way, he discusses how to keep Microsoft Word from sneakily degrading your pictures; how to adjust HTML code to show images at their best; how to make part of a picture transparent against colored backgrounds; how to boost the power of your cover image as a marketing tool; and how to create anything from children's books to photography books to poetry books within minutes with the Kindle Comic Creator. Nowhere else will you find such in-depth info on working with Kindle images. Whatever kind you're using -- photos, paintings, drawings, diagrams, tables, screenshots -- you'll find -Pictures on Kindle- an essential guide. ///////////////////////////////////////////////// Aaron Shepard is a foremost proponent of the new business of profitable self publishing, which he has practiced and helped develop since 1998. He is the author of -Aiming at Amazon, - -POD for Profit, - -Perfect Pages, - and -From Word to Kindle, - Amazon's #1 bestselling paid book on Kindle formatting. ///////////////////////////////////////////////// REVIEWS -Far and away the best resource I know for self publishers who plan to include photos or other graphics in their Kindle books. From tips on taking photos, through sizing, optimizing, and placing, this book wastes no space in giving you exactly the information you need. Highly recommended.- -- Joel Friedlander, TheBookDesigner.com -A detailed, comprehensive guide to getting the best out of your images on Kindle. From taking photos, to scanning, to optimizing, Aaron covers every possible step in making sure your images display well in Kindle format. In addition, he provides very useful explanations of the Kindle's image handling, for those of us who like to understand the reasons behind the steps. I for one will be adding this to my list of reference materials.- -- Jim Brown, JimandZetta.com (ebook services) ///////////////////////////////////////////////// CONTENTS Getting Started 1 PICTURE BASICS File Formats Resolution Color Mode Color Space 2 PICTURE SOURCES Photography Scanning 3 PICTURE EDITING Cleanup and Repair Cropping Contrast, Brightness, Tint Sizing Sharpening Transparency Lines and Letters 4 PICTURE HANDLING Positioning Pictures in Word Pictures in HTML Fixed Format 5 PICTURE PUBLISHING Submitting and Previewing Cover Images Production FAQ
Romance Your Brand: Building a Marketable Genre Fiction Series
Zoe York - 2019
For many, they make the difference between a writing dream and a writing career.” Zoe York/Ainsley Booth, USA Today and New York Times bestselling author For the first time ever in print, Zoe York breaks down how she plans a series—something she has done ten times over. Romance Your Brand is an adaptation of an intensive four-week course, now available to authors everywhere. This book covers:
• high-concept pitches
• world-building
• taglines and blurbs
• building a cast of characters
• writing the first book in a series
• finding comparable series
• covers
• how to write towards future marketing
• and why ALL OF THE ABOVE should be considered before you write a single word
The Lost Pilot
T.S. Paul - 2016
Before Athena Lee and the worlds that she knew there was an embattled Earth. Earth was in turmoil before the first colony ship was launched. The Cyber Wars raged across the planet as country battled country. The war was fought until only the Major Powers were victorious. In the aftermath, the United Nations came into it's own. Warriors, trained and bred to be the best the world had ever seen emerged from the shadows, bringing order and control out of the chaos of the Cyber Wars. Sam was one such warrior. Born and bred to serve he followed his orders and became one of the best pilots in the service. The future of man lay in the stars. Colonization was a good way to rid society of the undesirables of Earth. He volunteered to start a new colony and spread Earth's power.
The Weekend Novelist
Robert J. Ray - 1993
Ray and co-author Bret Norris can help readers do just that, with this practical and accessible step-by-step guide to completing a novel in just a year's worth of weekends.THE WEEKEND NOVELIST shows writers at all levels how to divide their writing time into weekend work sessions, and how to handle character, scene, and plot. This new, revised version is far more skills-based than its predecessor, and includes both classic and contemporary literature models, contains a sample Novel in Progress, and at the end offers readers the choice to rewrite their novel, draft a memoir, or turn their rough draft into a screenplay.Readers for a decade have been instructed and inspired by THE WEEKEND NOVELIST.This new edition will help many more strive to realize their writing potential.
The APA Pocket Handbook: Rules for Format & Documentation [Conforms to 6th Edition APA]
Jill Rossiter - 2010
of the APA manual (2nd printing) < < < This handbook is ideal for preparing undergraduate essays. It was specifically designed with the average student's needs in mind. The book is intended to cover the vast majority of situations that the normal student will encounter while writing a college essay. Organized for speed and brevity, the book is primarily a concentrated, up-to-date guide on APA format (11 pages) and documentation requirements (12 pages In-Text, 19 pages References) with a heavy emphasis on examples and visual aids (90 to be exact). Additionally the book contains pointers on how to get started, what to document, what notes to take (by source type), and how to handle quotes of varying length. All of this in a book designed to fit in a shirt pocket. Product Dimensions: 60 Pages - 5 5/16" x 3 3/4" x .166 " Continuously Updated - Coincides with most recent APA standards (APA Manual 6th Edition) Last Update 6/2/10