Jade Varden Official Blog

Some books are so good, they can't be adapted only once. They come around again, and again...and again and again. And while I'm not an expert on the book version of Little Women , having read it once and not liking it very much, I am an expert on the various film adaptations that followed -- and I'm about to save you 800 pages of reading. The Book Louisa May Alcott based Little Women on her own home life. Like the character Jo, Louisa had three sisters and lived in her family home, Orchard House, in Concord, Massachusetts. And it is a ponderous book, so big in fact it was published in two volumes in 1868 and 1869.  Little Women follows the lives of sisters Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy, the March girls, and it was an immediate hit among readers. Margaret March, or Meg, is the oldest and quite a beauty. Meg is a perfect little lady, with a pretty face and pretty manners to match. She is something of a substitute mother to the others, assuming control of the house ...

Why did I start writing? Who are my favorite authors? Find out -- and get lots of other stuff about me -- in my interview at the Indie Writer Showcase .

Bestselling books have a way of becoming their own self-propelling machines. Once readers hear that other readers are in love with a certain book, they run out to buy it. Everyone has bought a book simply because everyone else was talking about it. But the question is: did you read it?  Are People Really Reading Bestsellers? Some books have a way of becoming fashionable. Right now, the book everyone's talking about is Fifty Shades of Gray . Some swear it's the greatest piece of writing ever produced by the hand of man, while many critics have deemed it practically unreadable. The point is, they all bought it . When it seems like everyone's got a certain book, it's the in thing to go out and get that same book. How else can you join the conversation?  Some studies suggest that bestsellers may get inflated sales numbers for just this reason. Instead of being read, bestsellers are getting purchased to serve as shelf and table decoration. One bookstore that wan...

Visit Little Book Star to read my most recent interview, and find out which character's been giving me the most trouble during the writing of the Deck of Lies series. The interviewer asked some great questions about Justice, the first book in the series, and writing in general. Go check it out! 

It struck me today while I was working with my eyes closed that, in all the many Writing 101 topics I've posted, I've been neglecting perhaps the most important of all: proper typing. If you don't know how to do it and you're hunting and pecking your way across the keyboard, you've got to stop. Don't write another word. Before you ever create a book, or even think about creating a book, you need to learn how to type -- the right way.  Getting Back to Basics Everybody's got their own way of doing things, and it's important for every writer to develop their own writing style and their own habits. You need to feel comfortable when you're writing. All of this is very true. But it's also true that, no matter what, you'd better be typing the right way whenever you're writing. You might have your own system that works for you, and that's great...but you still need to learn the proper, tried-and-true method of typing. Why? Carpal...

The Deck of Lies Diva Challenge is over, and a winning outfit for Rain has been picked! Diva crystalstone32 designed this stylish number to win herself a free copy of Justice (Deck of Lies, #1). Thanks to everyone who played the Diva Challenge at Fashion Fantasy Game. All of the outfits looked great.  For everyone who didn't win the giveaway, you still have a chance to grab a free copy of the book. Look to the left of the blog to find a link to a new giveaway, and sign up for your chance to win!

When I went to type the title of this post, I misspelled both words. Conscious and conscience are both hard to spell all the time, and that's not even their biggest problem. They sound alike and they have similar meanings -- but they're different enough to make it a terrible writing faux pas if you put one where the other ought to be. There are a few tricks to keeping them straight, so you don't have to pull up reference material every time you want to use one or the other.  Conscious The word conscious can be used in a lot of ways, which only adds fuel to the fire of writing confusion. In the main, it really means aware . You can be conscious of the fact that you're reading a blog, you can be conscious of your surroundings, you can feel conscious guilt. But you also have a conscience .  Conscience It's that inner voice that tells you something is wrong. When you feel bad about something you've done, it's your conscience making...

Everyone has their own ideas about what makes writing "good" or "bad," but if your pacing is off there isn't going to be much of a competition between the two. Pacing is incredibly important...yet it goes ignored by many indie authors. If your characters make the decision to take a trip, buy the ticket and board the plane all in one paragraph, you really need to learn more about pacing in your writing.  What Is It?  Okay, so what is pacing? Every book has a pace, and usually it falls somewhere between two extremes: fast and slow. You can tell the difference when you read, even if you don't think about it consciously. Some books feel like a quick read -- you start them and them finish them and don't even know where the last 6 hours went. Other books that may take the same amount of reading time feel like they're dragggggging by; you look at the clock every hour, wondering how it's possible that five or six haven't passed since the la...