Jade Varden Official Blog

I blog a lot, and work on my books a lot, and a I tweet a lot . Sometimes people ask me, how do you manage to do so much? Well, I'm finally ready to shatter the illusion and give you some answers. Read my guest post, How Do You Find the Time , to learn all my scheduling and time-saving secrets. It's not possible to do it all...but you can make it look like you are.

The Outsiders was one of the very few books I was forced to read that I actually really loved (and actually read all the way through). At least, I thought I loved it...but then I saw the movie. Sure the story's great, but when you add the likes of Rob Lowe to it the whole thing gets turned up several notches. On film, The Outsiders is a parade of up-and-comers in sleeveless shirts, and there's nothing wrong with that. The Book   S. E. Hinton started writing The Outsiders at age 15, and Viking Press published it when she was only 18. That was way back in 1967, but it still sells half a million copies every year. Hinton wrote the book about the two rival gangs at her high school: the Greasers and the Socials (shorted to Socs and pronounced soshes ). The book became iconic and extremely popular right away, solidifying S. E. Hinton as a beloved YA author. The story of The Outsiders , a group of poor greasers who are endlessly pitted against the rich and priv...

Justice is being featured next week  on one of my favorite book blogs. Take a look at this introductory post to find out what sorts of fun things you can expect and to participate in a discussion about assigned school reading.

Creativity is chaotic by nature. Inspiration may strike at any time, even when it's inconvenient, and you may think of the ending for a book long before you come up with a viable beginning. Sometimes, a setting might strike you first and you end up building a story around it. No matter what your process might be, staying organized is the only way you're going to write a book without making yourself completely crazy (or turning your book into a big mess).  How to Do It Ideas don't arrive in a neat, orderly fashion, and all the pieces of a book probably aren't going to come together in order. That means you have to make notes as they come to you, and figure out how all of them come to together while you're writing. If you're unorganized, you're going to lose your great ideas. You're going to have trouble finding all your notes and remembering all your information, and wind up wasting a bunch of time looking back through your book to figure it ...

"I LOVED every minute of it!!" "The plot itself was utterly gripping. There’s a lot of mystery at every turn." Justice has just been reviewed at BookAThonFreak ! Visit the blog to read the whole thing, and don't forget that the book is available free from Smashwords for just a few more days. If you haven't already got your copy, get it before the July release celebration for Death is over! 

If you spend any significant amount of time writing, the question is going to come up: when is it okay to consecutively repeat words? Most often, this question will arise in sentences where the word that appears. It might sounds silly at first blush -- who would write a sentence with that that in it? -- but I've seen it...a lot . And under any and all circumstances, no matter which big-selling author does it in their bestselling book, it is wrong . At times it may feel unavoidable, but it never is. Repetition I've blogged about over-use of the word that in the past, but it bears repeating. What doesn't need to be repeated is words. Always remember this: twice in a row is too many.  Scoff if you will, but that that actually crops up more often than you might think. In fact, when I went looking for examples of the dreaded that that , I found too many:  "I tell you, I gotta plead ignorance on this thing, because if anyone had said anything to me at ...

It's important to write rich and descriptive text, a fact I've expounded upon more than once, but you also have to learn how to edit out all the uninteresting details, too. In any book, there are several plot points you need to hit to make your story work. All of those scenes should be vivid and embellished, so the readers can see all the events unfolding in their mind's eye. But there are always additional moments that happen in-between the action...and I really don't want to know a whole lot about them. If you're going to write books, you'd better learn how to summarize the boring moments and skip ahead in the narrative.  Details, Details, Details Lots of readers love long books, and I used to. Half of the enjoyment of the later Harry Potter books lies in the fact that they're massive. But no one wants to read a whole bunch of nothing. Some details aren't important.  Your characters live a life on the page...but let's face it, ever...

I've written posts about getting reviews, swapping reviews and writing reviews, but I'm still learning new things all the time. In my admittedly brief experience with reviewing other authors, I've figured out a few things the hard way. To help you avoid some of the mess I've struggled with, I'm offering up some tips that you need to know if you're going to open yourself up to doing reviews.  Review Tips At this point, you might be thinking but you don't do reviews . I know I give that illusion; I haven't posted a new review in over a month. This is quite deceptive, however. In spite of what it looks like, I've been working on reading a book I'm committed to review this entire time. And that brings us straight to what I now believe is the most important review tip:  Check the length. Every new ebook is a mystery. Unless the author has also published a print version of their book, you probably won't find a helpful little page count...