Jade Varden Official Blog

"If you have an idea what this book is about you will be rushing to download a copy too...Every chapter bought fresh excitement, and even more questions to light, and I just had to keep reading." -on Justice (Deck of Lies, #1) "The question still remains though; who had the means and will to murder one of her classmates? And what were they trying to hide?...I really enjoyed this book. I picked this one up straight after finishing the first one, cause I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next!" -on The Tower (Deck of Lies, #2) The Deck of Lies has found a home on Sarah Elizabeth's bookshelf this week. She's kindly reviewed the entire first half of the series. Read both her reviews, and don't stop there! If you keep going, you'll find a new interview with me where I reveal what I think about the characters in the Deck of Lies and what you can expect to find in the fourth and final book of the series. Check out the giveaway at the...

I love a good prologue. My first favorite writer always included them, and even when they read more like a first chapter than a novel introduction, I was always down. It wasn't until I started reading writing forums and looking at writer blogs that I realized some people hate them -- passionately, vehemently, unendingly. And if you start looking for writing tips at will, you're going to find a lot of know-it-alls who will tell you, over and over again, that prologues are anathema in fiction.  I don't agree...and I'm here to defend prologues.  Prologues, a History Prologues have a long history as an integral part of fiction. Shakespeare and other playwrights opened their stories with prologues, generally delivered in a monologue, in order to set the stage for the audience. The prologue from Romeo and Juliet is famous ("In fair Verona, where we lay our scene..."). Since those early days of fiction writing, novelists have adopted their own v...

 "I fell in love with this book. It pulled me in very quickly, and I did not want to put it down." "There are many great YA authors out there, but Varden's style stands out." Justice (Deck of Lies, #1) has been reviewed by The Eager Reader, and I'm eager for you to read the whole thing !

Are you writing from all five senses...or just one? It's standard to describe what your characters are seeing, but there's a lot more to living life than that. If you really want to immerse your readers in your world, you're going to have to let them know what it's like to be there. You're going to have to write from all five senses. The Five Senses Many book characters have all five senses, but how often do writers acknowledge that? To make your writing really descriptive , you've got to write from all five of those senses and really make every page come alive for your readers. Sight The easiest sense to capture in print is sight. It's standard to describe what your characters look like, where they are, everything they can see. It's so common to focus on the sense of sight, in fact, that you might end up neglecting the other senses -- which are just as important. Sound The sense of sound is often captured in books in dialogue . Ev...

A story we've all heard almost didn't make it, because the author trying to publish it was rejected so many times. She heard the word "no" from publishers so much, in fact, that she decided to self-publish -- just like so many of today's authors. The thing is, she did it way back in 1902...more than a hundred years before the Kindle existed.  Beatrix Potter started writing as a child. She invented her own secret writing code and started recording the events of her life as young as 15 years old. As a girl, she often secretly brought small animals into her house. She loved writing stories, but Beatrix Potter also has a scientific mind. She tried to publish a paper about fungi and algae, but because she was female she couldn't submit it. Her parents tried to find suitors for Beatrix as she became of an age to marry, but she rejected them all and retained her single status against their wishes. Her Own Way She wanted to be a writer. Beatrix submitt...

Would you read a novel with more than a thousand pages? Could you even pick it up? In a modern world where any question can be answered in seconds and entertainment is accessible from a dozen different electronic devices, how long is too long when you're writing a book? Lots of writers struggle with writing full-length novels, because there's a whole lot of words involved, but at the opposite end of the spectrum you have a few who do something that's even worse: they write too much. If you're going to extreme lengths in your books, it might actually be a serious problem you need to address. Book Length I saw a forum thread, the other day, where a writer was asking how many words you have to write to technically create a book. I've addressed the question of book length before, but I didn't address a big book problem that some writers don't even realize exists: going to extreme lengths.  When is a Book Too Long?  The longest actual novel eve...

The official trailer for Death (Deck of Lies, #3) is here! I'm unveiling it here first, but soon you'll be able to find it on Smashwords, Goodreads and Twitter. As always, you can tell me what you think of it in the comments section. 

How many errors have snuck past you in editing? No author can get through an entire book without making a mistake (and I personally can't seem to get through a single paragraph without them), but it's not entirely your fault. Words are confusing, and they have lots of different forms that only adds fuel to the fires of bafflement. But if the wrong usage of a word sneaked past you in the past, you can prevent it in the future -- just learn which one's right. In the epic battle of sneaked vs. snuck, which word will win? Sneaking in the Past By and large, books are written in the past tense. Some authors do create their books using present tense, but past tense is the most popular...and this makes it difficult to chose the right word forms. Words like sneak , which have more than one past tense form, really only exist to make your job difficult (that's my theory, anyway).  So, which one's right? Both of them. Whether you're using sneaked or snuck , e...