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What to do when your first draft is a huge dumpster fire
With the release of Family Binds just 16 days away, it’s time to start working on book 3 in The Journey Missions series, Thicker Than Blood. In book 3 Crystal, Desi, Justin, Grady, and Tyler are sent to Earth to speak in a military hearing on the benefits of the officer exchange program to try…
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Alligator Season by Tyler Hanson Review
Alligator Season: A Faction Story (The Redacted Files) by Tyler Hanson is an edge of your seat novella. It follows Catalina, a monster hunter, as she tries to find and eliminate the monster terrorizing a small village. The monsters in this story are based on real animals though they do have characteristics that kick the…
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Personality Tests and Characterization
Have you ever taken a personality test? They are one of my side interests and I’ve spent countless hours taking them and researching the different personality types. It really helps me to understand how different people take in information and interact with the world. My favorite resource for this is 16 Personalities which follows the…
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The Chaos Circus by R. Dugan Review
The Chaos Circus by R. Dugan tells the story of Tessa, a young woman who desperately wants to live a normal ordinary life, but when her most prized possession is stolen from her Tessa must risk everything to get it back. She follows Nicolai to the Mirror Lands and the home of The Chaos Circus…
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How a Story Changes: A Look Back at the First Draft of Crystal and Flint
I was preparing to speak at a career day a few months ago and was trying to pull together a visual to use to show just how much work goes into getting a book ready for publication. In digging through all the printed drafts I had, I stumbled upon the very first draft for Crystal…
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Oh hey there, remember me
I do this to myself every year. Every December, while I’m still riding high off of my nano win in November, I make a plan for what I want to accomplish the next year, complete with deadlines. Deadlines that I end up not being able to meet once the new year starts. This year is…
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Author Interview Crystal and Flint
Originally posted on Editor Charlene: Author Interview 1) How do you plot novels? Do you outline? I don’t do a lot of planning for the first draft. I’ll have a general idea of what the story is about and maybe a few key moments, but that’s it. I use the first draft to figure out…
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A Valentine’s Gift: Sneak peak of Family Binds
In honor of Valentine’s Day I thought it would be fun to share this cute scene between Justin and Crystal from Family Binds coming out later this year. *** Crystal tried to work on analyzing the bio-skin data, but she couldn’t focus. She had been able to shut down her feelings while she was talking…
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When things don’t go according to plan
If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m a planner. I have spreadsheets to help me organize every aspect of my life. I set goals and deadlines for myself, especially when it comes to my writing. But sometimes those plans fall apart and once they do it’s really hard for me to get back…
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What it means to be an Indie Author
For those of you not intimately familiar with how the publishing world works these days, there are two main paths to publication, traditional publishing and self-publishing. Traditional publishing is what people typical think about when talking about publishing a book. In the simplest of terms, it’s finding an agent, who then tries to sell your…
Holly Ash 