Jade Varden Official Blog

Many self-published authors, and even those who aren't, are largely responsible for their own marketing. Promoting one's own books takes up a lot of time, so much in fact that many say it takes up more time than actually writing. For every four hours the self-published author spends on marketing, they might spend just one on writing books. So when should you start promoting that very first book, or even your second? When is it time to shut down the Word program and fire up Twitter instead? Promoting Books When should self-published authors start promoting their books? The answer to that one is pretty simple: immediately. Begin building your brand even before that first book is released. Start creating a buzz for your new book while you're still working on the first draft. And once you start promoting your books, you never stop promoting . After that first day of marketing, it becomes your every day job.  Welcome to the life of a self-published author. You b...

The title of the post pretty much describes the past week, though not necessarily in that order. I started out feeling strong and firm in my decisions last weekend. By Monday night, I was in a state of panic.  Second Guessing Last week, I mentioned that one of my big flaws is being indecisive . I don't mean to brag, but I actually have more flaws than most. I've got lots of them to talk about, and another one of the really ugly ones turned up last week to mess with me. After I decided which idea to pursue for my next book, I felt good about it.  Then, I started second guessing it. I started asking myself questions. I started thinking that maybe nobody wants to read about the particular subject matter that I've decided to write about. Should I write something else instead?  It was Monday night when I freaked out like this. The questions just started playing through my mind on a loop, until about twenty minutes went by and I got a grip on myself. Final...

Recently, I wrote a guest post for the Gym Instructor , authored by a friend of the blog. Go check it out to read about an important day in my life, and everything that happened because of it.

Few stories are as widely recognized and well-known as Romeo and Juliet . It's a story so famous, the two names have become synonymous with young love, and doomed love, and particularly love that is both young and doomed. Romeo and Juliet is one of the most tragic stories ever penned, and one of the most filmed stories to date. The Book Maybe that's because Romeo and Juliet was written to be performed, not read. It's one of Shakespeare's plays, one of his most notable, and it's assigned reading for just about everybody who gets to a certain level of high school. It's about two young people on opposite sides of a long-standing family feud. Romeo is mooning over the loss of Rosaline, an attractive girl who has spurned him. In an attempt to cheer him, his friends Benvolio and Mercutio sneak into the grand ball being held at the Capulet house. Romeo is a Montague, mortal enemy of all Capulets. At the ball, he forgets all about Rosaline. He ...

I've recently been engaging myself with an effort to be more active in writing and reading forums, so I've been confronted with the topic of asking for help a lot lately. And I've got to say, a lot of writers are doing it way too often. Ask, and Ye Shall Receive Let me be clear. Asking for help actually takes some courage, and it can do you good to learn how to trust in the kindness of strangers. But there's a line between asking fir help and being lazy...not to put too fine a point on it. Because, while there is some nobility in the asking, there is much, much more to be gained from finding the answers yourself. And maybe all this beseeching isn't from laziness st all. I'm hoping it's simply because too many people don't know how ti find the answers. They're in luck, because I'm really good at finding them. And if you already know how to ask for help, you are well on your way to becoming a master as well. You just need to kn...

I know it seems silly. Best an easy word, with only four letters and a single syllable. But plenty of people end up using it the wrong way...a lot . It's irregular, and it can be easy to confuse with another word that's similar. Make sure you know how to use the word best properly, because using it the wrong way looks really, really bad. Better Your Writing with Proper 'Bests'  Good. Better. Best. We were all forced to write it during primary school years; I had to draw corresponding pictures to go with. Special attention is called to the word best because it's irregular; there is no bestest . People only say this colloquially, it's not actually proper English. The word best simply means most excellent , something that stands above and beyond whatever else it is being compared with. For example: This is the best blog I have ever seen , or Jade is the best blogger!   But like I said, it's irregular. Bested is actually a word, but it migh...

Have you ever told a lie? Had a drink before you were legally allowed to do it? Taken something that wasn't yours? Did it make you a completely evil person? Have you ever met a completely bad person?  So why would you write a character that way? If you're writing in black and white, you're not writing at your best. The world, and every person in it, is filled with shades of grey.  Good vs. Evil Novels often pit a hero, a good guy, against a villain, a bad guy. This is the oldest literary plot device, the most basic foundation of many stories, and there's no reason you can't use it in your novels. Just remember not to get too literal about it. Rarely are people all bad, so inherently evil that they have no spark of human kindness or compassion, guilt or regret, anywhere inside them. Writing a villain that's totally evil is going to make that villain feel two-dimensional, a caricature rather than a character. But you can get away with it. Villai...

I'm being featured on Spotlight Monday at Goodreads . Visit to find out some of my writing secrets, and how I like to relax when I'm not writing!

Author Joann Pence gave me a list of books to potentially review, and I selected Dance With a Gunfighter right away. The title immediately brings to mind an incongruous image of a hardened bad guy...dancing to the sound of fiddles. I figured this couldn't possibly be what takes place -- the "dance" referred to has got to mean some sort of exciting Western shoot-out occurs. I was wrong about that, but this book didn't disappoint.  There are a lot of dances in this book. There is the very real, literal dance referenced by the title. It's a romantic little scene: young girl, sweet sixteen, at her first dance. She's a wallflower, and doesn't expect to get asked to dance. Something about her touches the hardest man in the room, a gunfighter by the name of Jess.  This is where the book gets confusing right away. The girl's name is Gabriella, but she's a tomboy so she goes by Gabe. The guy's name is Jess. It's two neutral names, an...

Being indecisive is one of my biggest flaws. I can be tenacious once I set my mind on something...but getting to that space can be a tough journey. What Am I Writing? For example, my newest book project. Like many writers, I get lots of ideas. They aren't necessarily any good, but I write them all down anyway. So when I finished the Deck of Lies , of course I pulled up my idea notes. One of them struck me right away, a story that's really different for me because I settled on the idea of a male protagonist. I don't know, maybe I was feeling brave. So for over a week I worked on two pages of this new novel, as yet unnamed. I thought about it and pictured it and made up all my cast lists and notes and all the crap I collect when I'm working on a book. Then last night, I got to being indecisive again. I pulled up some old notes that I put together over a year ago, while I was still writing Justice. And I started working on a totally different nove...

Find out what happened when River Scott, from the Deck of Lies series, visited Mia Darien's blog for a character interview!

Mommie Dearest was the very first book of its kind, and since it was printed it's been highly debated, studied, quoted and called into question. Depending on where you stand in the argument, it's either the very first non-fiction Book on Film I've featured...or it's not. The Book No one knows for certain whether or not the events depicted in Mommie Dearest are true in entirety, embellished for dramatic effect, or fabricated in whole. One person who would know is dead, and has been since before the story was released. The other person swears it's true...but then she would, because she authored it. Mommie Dearest was the very first tell-all book written by someone close to a celebrity, and relationships don't get closer than this. It was penned by Christina Crawford, daughter to the mega-star Joan Crawford. She was on Hollywood's A-list before it had an A-list, married into its most famous family, and ruled the screen for so long they were...

It already sounds scary, right? Split infinitives -- they're a grammar no-no, but most people have no idea what the heck they are. Some writers wouldn't even know one if it fell right out of their own books. The truth is, most people write with split infinitives. Try to observe this outdated grammar rule, and I can just about guarantee that you'll make yourself crazy. Splitting Infinitives, and Other Grammar Rules to Ignore My favorite example of a split infinitive is to boldly go . It's a common phrase, thanks to Captain Kirk, and by strict rules of proper English it's totally wrong. An infinitive is an unmarked form of a verb -- and go is a verb. You split an infinitive when you put an adverb between the verb and its companion to . Need some examples? Split infinitive look a little something like this: To quickly walk To forcefully push To uncharacteristically yell Any of these phrases might appear in a sentence that reads well, and s...

Every English teacher cautions against using run-on sentences. It's the writer's job to totally ignore them. A little extra prose is to be expected in novels, where description reigns and dialogue is meant to sing. But there's always a line that any author can cross. Are your sentences too long...and do you know how to tell?  Running On and On Novels are supposed to be descriptive. You are supposed to literally paint a picture, only with keystrokes instead of brush strokes. It's not always easy to find the right words to use to describe events, places and people. It's even harder to put those words into the proper structure, and long sentences are a perfect example. She looked out over a horizon painted in shades of red and gold, an endless sea of color in hues of danger, a warning that she was running out of time and the bandits were drawing closer and closer.  That sentence is pretty descriptive. It's also too darned long. Many authors struggle...

It's one of the easiest pieces of advice in the world to tell an author to read great books. Want to learn how to be a better writer? Read great books! Read authors in your genre, read the bestsellers, read, read, read. I'm not going to tell you to do that. I want you to do something else. I want you to seek out bad writing. You need it. You just might not know it. Bad Writing is Good Have you ever come across a really old piece of your own writing? Exactly how long did you stare at it in bug-eyed horror before you quickly thrust it away from yourself and make an attempt to disassociate?  Mozart was a musical prodigy; he composed "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" at age 5. Bobby Fischer was a chess prodigy; he competed in the Game of the Century at age 13. As far as I've ever known, there are no writing prodigies. Nobody sits down at age 11 and writes an epic novel that becomes an instant hit -- not even the likes of Mark Twain. Many authors, even the...

If you've self-published on Amazon, you know you have the option for checking a little box that allows you to add DRM protection to your books. DRM stands for Digital Rights Management, and many authors read Amazon's brief description and decide to check the box. After all, it protects your rights as the author. What you may not realize is that it also makes things difficult for your readers. As a self-published author, that might be something you just can't afford.  Why Use DRM?  Digital Rights Management is included in most movies and music you download online -- at least, the stuff you download legally (like through iTunes and such). It's a sort of encryption that's embedded into the file, and it makes it exceedingly difficult for you to copy these digital files -- like in case you want to give them to your friends or re-sell them. And DRM is commonly used in ebooks as well, to prevent ebook piracy. There's no question that ebook piracy happens...bu...

I've been thinking a lot about 2012, and wondering what the new year will hold. I was a little surprised when I thought about everything that happened in 2012. A Look Back On this day one year ago, I was anxious, unhealthy, and didn't really want to leave my apartment. One year ago, I didn't have much reason to. But things are different now, because I made some things happen over the past 12 months:  I published four books in 2012. True, they are not long books, but the page counts are respectable. Accomplishing this was a big deal for me because I had to overcome my writer's block to do it. I spent two years being literally unable to write any fiction whatsoever, and in 2012 I decided it wasn't going to beat me. It didn't. I finished the Deck of Lies series , and now I've started something new. In 2013, I hope to publish FIVE books! I lost 50 pounds. It's true. In February, I noticed that I could no longer wear any of my cl...

Much of the eastern world is still shrouded by a curtain of mystery. It's a world steeped in traditions and culture that only one born to it can hope to understand. It's a world that an American named Arthur Golden revealed in his 1997 book Memoirs of a Geisha . Hidden inside this tale of tradition and uncontrollable circumstance, there's a really beautiful love story. The Book The reader meets young Chiyo Saramoto at the beginning of the book. She lives in a poor family, in a poor fishing village near the Sea of Japan. Along with her older sister Satsu, she's sold to an okiya in the large city of Kyoto. The okiya she's sold to is located in Gion, the best-known geisha district in the city. Chiyo is taken into the okiya; Satsu is not. She is taken away to parts unknown instead, and Chiyo is left alone at age 9. There is a girl her age, nicknamed Pumpkin, already living there. In the okiya, Chiyo is surrounded by Granny, an old woman who complains ab...

"Everything gets more complicated in this book...but I LOVED IT!" "It was like a story book version of Desperate Housewives or a very tense soap drama filled with dirty family secrets." Death (Deck of Lies #3) has been reviewed at BookAThon Freak . It's pretty spoiler-free, so feel free to read the whole review and see if you agree with the reviewer!

I'm convinced that irregular verbs exist only to annoy writers. They always show up at the most inopportune times, right when you're in the zone and your fingers are flying. One moment, your creativity is pouring out of you. The next, you're staring at the word burned and wondering if it ought to be burnt instead. Verbs, Adjectives, Words That Don't Make Sense The verb to burn is irregular. It has two past tenses: burned, and burnt. When something is burned , it's been scorched by heat and/or flame. Your skin may get burned by the sun or even hot water.  Burned is easy to use, because it's an example of classic past tense. Just add ed to burn , and you're ready to go. You could always add a t instead. Then, the word becomes burnt . When something is burnt , it's been scorched by heat and/or flame. Your skin may get burnt by the sun or even hot water. No need to check that twice. Burned and burnt mean exactly the same thing, and...

Listen, I can get as flowery as the next guy. I'll wax poetic about the sky if you want me to, and I'll bet I could come up with some adjectives you've never even imagined before. But really, what's the point? The most beloved books aren't necessarily the most thrilling, the most frightening or the funniest stories ever written...but they are easy to read. Want to be a writer? You need to understand the merits of simple English.  Verbosity He strolled forward with the night wind on his shoulder, propelled by a steady tread that squeaked just so with each new stride. The dead foliage on the trees made crackling sounds, shivering with the frigid mistral that came sweeping down the mountain. The refuse storage loomed in front of him like a spectre, a hungry maw waiting to swallow his offering whole. Do you know what I was describing with the above? I'm talking about a guy taking out the trash on a chilly fall evening. If you didn't get that right a...

Writers pour their very souls onto the page. They sweat, they bleed, they cry, they laugh right out loud...they scare their family members, frankly. When you put all of that into your work, it's hard to take that work and destroy it. But sometimes, that's just what you've got to do. Starting fresh is scary, but sometimes that's the only option. Starting Fresh It's a New Year, and everyone's thinking about fresh starts. You know who doesn't like starting over from scratch? Writers. Nothing is more horrifying than a blank page. It sits there, and it stares at you...and it knows exactly where you are weakest.  Erasing text is even more horrifying. Many writers will attempt to endlessly edit their past book projects, no matter how error-stuffed or poorly-written. A good idea is a good idea, and bad writing can always be fixed...right?  No. Sometimes, starting fresh is your only option -- and incidentally, today is the perfect day to make that le...