Jade Varden Official Blog

Let's face it: ereaders are awesome. They're lightweight, they're easy to hold, they can store thousands of books...they totally look like those electronic pads the characters on Star Trek walked around with all the time. I'm practically having a relationship with my Kindle. But if there's anything about reading ebooks that's not-so-awesome, it's the navigation. You can fix all that, and make the best parts of your book more accessible, by including a table of contents. The TOC in the Modern Age Many authors and readers consider the Table of Contents to be a bit of a wasted page in print books. Why tell me the names and location of every chapter, if I'm obviously going to find them while I'm reading anyway? But in the world of ebooks, the TOC is anything but a waste. For navigation's sake alone, you need to include it. In ebooks, each entry in the TOC also acts as a link. Readers can very quickly and easily access a specific chapte...

 "I liked how thrilling and mysterious everything really was." Justice (Deck of Lies, #1) recently received a rating of "loved it!" at Livin' Life Through Books . Read the full review for more tidbits about the first book in the Deck of Lies series.

 It has come to my attention, during my various adventures in writer and reader forums around the Internet, that lots people -- even some authors -- don't actually know what a dystopian society is. It's not really a big deal...until you start incorrectly marketing your work as something it's not. It's true that a lot of readers might not know the difference, but plenty of them will. The readers aren't the ones who are going to look bad for not understanding the genre...you are. It's time to find out just exactly what makes a dystopian book dystopian. Don't assume you already know; you might be one of the people who made me sigh recently with a forum post.  Dystopian Society  If you want to get technical about it, calling something "dystopian" isn't altogether accurate anyway. More properly it ought to be referred to as a dystopian society , and that's the first piece of really important information you need to know. Dystopian book...

 Okay, I Google myself. I'll go ahead and admit it. It's not narcissism, it's a really good idea for indie authors and bloggers of all kinds. You want to know what people are responding to, what they're not responding to, what's working and what isn't. But even if you don't want to know all that, you should still Google yourself. How else are you going to know that someone out there is stealing your content?  Content Theft Content theft is incredibly common on the Internet, though you may not be aware of it until it actually happens to you. And if you aren't actively checking for it, you may never become aware of it. Some thefty site out there might be copying every single one of your blog posts, verbatim, and reaping the benefits of your hard work. Unless you're doing regular checks, they're going to get away with it. Copyscape . Check your URLs through copyscape. Always run your recent URLs through the site, not just the main URL of...

Now, I am not a scientist. I'm a writer, so I tend to look at every situation from a writer's point of view. Maybe I'm obsessed with typos lately because I've been hunting them (I'm working on editing Death, Book 3 in the Deck of Lies series, right now), but in moments of obsessive-compulsive behavior sometimes true insight is born. And lately, I've been thinking about typos and muscle memory -- and I've decided that typos just aren't my fault or yours, either. We can blame them on our fingers. More specifically, our finger muscles. Muscle Memory Scientists have studied the way muscles work, and if you're into science it's actually pretty remarkable. When you build your muscles through exercise, they create new nuclei, DNA-rich little particles, that don't diminish even after muscles atrophy.The nuclei forms a muscle memory that makes it easier for once-muscular people to re-build their bodies after muscles have atrophied. Muscle mem...

So, I haven't posted a book review in a while, I know. Lately I've only been adding new books to the list instead of subtracting them, which is not good (because I happen to be massively behind as of the writing of this post). I've been sitting on The Super Spies and the Cat Lady Killer for weeks and weeks now, which in no way is a reflection of the talents of author Lisa Orchard. What I've read of her book is quite good, in fact, and really I wish I was reading it...because at this point, it's preferable to how I've been spending the little reading time I do get. I don't know why, exactly, but I decided that I was going to create print editions of the Deck of Lies books. Because I have tunnel vision when I'm set on a goal, and because I'm such an exacting perfectionist, this naturally meant that I had to re-read all of Justice (Book 1) and The Tower (Book 2)...twice. This was quite necessary before I could approve the proofs, which I have ...

One of the blogs I follow is celebrating a one-year blogoversary, and I'm participating by giving away half the Deck of Lies series during the month of June. Sign up to win Justice (Book 1) and The Tower (Book 2) for free, and catch up on all the lies before Death comes out this summer!

Most of the time, you're supposed to use who in writing...but there are those rare sentences when you're better served with a fancier-sounding whom instead. It's difficult for many writers to know when to use which, but get it wrong and suddenly every reader is a language expert. Know when it's necessary to use whom , and you'll always sound like you know just what you're writing about. The Subject-Verb Love Affair To know when a whom is called for, first you've got to know how to identify the subject of your sentence. It's difficult, because who and whom are both pronouns -- but confusingly, they aren't both subjects. You'll know it's a subject if the verb depends upon it to function. For example, if I write Sally searched for the answer online , the word searched is the verb. But without Sally, nothing makes any sense. Just try it: Searched for the answer online . Who did? Sally did; and that's the subject of the sentence...