Jade Varden Official Blog

"Rain's life only becomes more and more turbid , more tangled , more mysterious...an excelent sequel." "Jade Varden has created another EXCELLENT book...with drama, mystery, friendship, self-discovery, redemption and one of my favorite characters." The Tower (Deck of Lies, #2) has been awarded 5/5 stars at Reading...Dreaming. The review is spoiler-free, so feel free to read it at will.

Webster's Dictionary (the standard for American English) contains more than 400,000 entries. That's a whole lot of words for writers to try and track, and it's one of the reasons grammar is so difficult to master. Knowing which word goes where is pretty much impossible -- unless you memorize everything about all 400,000 of those words (including the correct spelling). Know your parts of speech instead, and you'll have an easier time making perfect sentences that won't confuse your readers.  Articles   Technically, there are just two articles in the entire English language: a and the . Sometimes, a turns into an , but they're considered to be the same word (vowels like to confuse everyone). Articles are only used with nouns. A sentence using an article with no noun would look something like this: The blue wandered past. Somewhere inside your head, a voice ought to be screaming the blue what ? That's how you know there's a missing noun.  ...

Death (Deck of Lies, #3) is now available in print! You'll get a full cover and 206 lovely paper pages filled with lies, secrets and conspiracies when you order your copy from Amazon. Praise for Death "Rain continues her quest for the truth - but what truth that is continues to change: her hunt for her identity led to a murder, her hunt for a murderer led her to more of her own secrets... Death delivers a good dose of reflection on the previous rollercoaster of events from Books 1 and 2, whilst continuing to throw up more surprises.... "Deck of Lies is a fantastic YA mystery series, with plenty of twists and fans of soaps like Dallas , Days of Our Lives and Sunset Beach , will love the mad hookups and random family relationship relevations. Jade's writing is style is vivid and concise, helping you to completely immerse yourself in her stories." -author Melanie Cusick-Jones  "Once again I wasn't able to put the series down. I love t...

Most indie authors head straight for Amazon's KDP program when they want to self-publish a book, and for good reason. Amazon is the leader in the ebook market, and their system is incredibly user-friendly. Personally, I don't advocate this -- for formatting reasons, I always advise going to Smashwords first. Some indie authors can't go to Smashwords first, or at all, because of KDP Select. Some indie authors swear by KDP Select; they think it's great. Before you sign up for it, learn the truth about KDP Select, and make sure you know what you're getting into.  What's KDP Select? When you go to Amazon to present your ebook to the world, you're going to find something called KDP Select. This is a special program for indie authors that allows you to run free promotions on your books, and if you spend any amount of time on the Kindle forums you'll learn that many indies love it.  The program certainly has its merits. Listing your book on A...

Some words are so common, we never think twice about using them -- and that's a big problem. Three of the most common words are mixed up and misplaced very often in writing. It's time for that to stop. There's a way to master using their , there and they're , and once you do your grammar will instantly improve.  Their Their is probably the most difficult word in this homonym set, and that's why it's the first one of the group that writers have to master. Right out of the gate, their is hard to spell. It's an ugly word, and defies all spelling logic. In a proper word world, the i would come before the e , the way it ought, and everyone would be happy. Not possible. Their is actually a form of the word they (as if the group wasn't confusing enough), therefore it's got to be spelled with the e first -- according to expert grammarians. The word their is possessive, which means it's always used to denote ownership. It belongs in th...

 "Justice is full of mystery, problems, and drama." "There was always something happening and there is still a lot that needs to be solved." Justice has been reviewed at Pages of Forbidden Love , and I love the review! Go and read the whole thing. Get your free copy of Justice after you enter the giveaway -- just look to the left to find the link!

Some writers find their calling at a young age, and begin scribbling on pages as soon as they can hold a pen. Other writers get that urge, and don't follow it -- maybe because they're afraid, or they're busy, or it just feels too hard to try. One famous writer found that she couldn't ignore the urge any longer, and began writing children's books when other women her age were grandmothers. Good thing she did, or else re-runs would be seriously lacking some seriously good period TV. Laura Ingalls Wilder probably never thought of having her own career. She was a daughter, a wife, a mother, and a pioneer...and none of it left very much time for writing. But she felt the itch that all writers feel, and when she saw her daughter, Rose, making a go of writing Wilder decided she would try it herself. And so she did, and the entire world fell in love with a family that lived in a Little House. Little House, Big Dreams Laura Elizabeth Ingalls was born in the wi...

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 ...