Jade Varden Official Blog

It's just one little letter, but it gets confused all the time. Change the a in than , and you've created then -- and then, you've got grammar problems. Knowing the difference between then and than is essential to good writing, because the two are as different as night and day. The trouble is, you can't change day to night with a single letter...but a wrong then can totally destroy all your good writing work. Then Most of the time, then is an adverb or a noun . It means at that time or even next , which are two pretty unrelated sentiments. This is why the word is confusing. I might say Well, that was back then and clearly I'm referring to some past time, and things have now changed. But it's also correct if I say We dated for awhile, then I learned he was a jerk , which would still have the same meaning if I type next instead of then -- in this case, it's used to refer to the future past (truly the worst tense in the whole of the writ...

The word gotten just sounds wrong to me sometimes, yet it always comes out of me naturally. I noticed it earlier when I was writing an email to someone; I typed out that I had gotten something, then quickly backspaced and put in the more majestic received instead. Then I realized, I don't actually know if gotten is good grammar or not. It sounds like slang and somehow seems wrong when I see it on my screen, but it still has its place in the English language. In fact, I've quite recently learned all about it.  Have Got Gotten is a past tense form of the verb to get . Get just means have, hold, receive. It can also be used to mean to experience ("I got sick"). The past tense form of get is got; the past participle of got is gotten . A past participle is a word that's used with had, have or has.  Therefore, it's perfectly acceptable to use gotten if it's being used with its companion word. I have gotten sick before . ...Unless, of course, ...

"There are so many twist and turns that you really can’t be sure what will happen next."  "A page turner and keeps you guessing all the way through to the very end." A very lively review of Justice (Deck of Lies, #1) was posted at Book Pusher recently, and I want you to read it! Make sure you check out the 3 Reasons to Read while you're there.

Most of the rules of English are pretty clear. When you want to make something plural, you add s or es . When you want to put something in the past, you add an ed . But when you want to write perfectly, you'll take time out to pay attention to your irregular verbs. These words defy all logic, and they know no rules...so you pretty much have to know exactly what to do for each one of them. Irregular Writing and Reading Irregular verbs are a big problem. Normal verbs are pretty easy to deal with in fiction writing -- instead of typing that Shelley walks away , you type Shelley walked away to transform your book into past tense. But some verbs refuse to play by the rules. Shelley can't awake in the past; she awoke instead. Many irregular verbs operate like whole new words; writers have to change a letter within the word instead of adding a suffix. Begin and begun , blow and blew, and forget and forgot are all examples of this type of irregular verb. Makes th...

In the past, I've blogged about how indie authors can get reviews . I even blogged about tips for writing reviews. But what indie authors really need to know is how to properly ask for reviews, in order to use their time more efficiently and avoid making enemies out of book bloggers.  Review Requests I've advocated, more than once, that indie authors send out review requests. Self-published books need a lot of marketing, and book review blogs are a great way to get it. The good news is, there's a ton of them out there. The bad news is...there's a ton of them out there. Knowing how to send out review requests is every bit as important as the sending itself. Learn how to ask the right way, and you'll get a lot more positive responses.  Twitter . Twitter is a convenient and easy method of communication, and plenty of book reviewers are on it. But no reviewer posts book reviews on Twitter. They have a blog somewhere, so do not contact them through Twitte...

I'm giving away Justice, the first book in the Deck of Lies series, at Reading 24x7 . Now's your chance to start the search for the truth free. And if you don't want to wait out the giveaway, you can find Justice at Amazon , B&N , Smashwords and Kobo .

 I dedicate a lot of my blog posts to writers in particular, but even those who aren't writers self-publish books just like any indie author. Books don't always have to contain a bunch of original text and a complicated storyline to be marketable.  Other Types of Books Not everyone's cut out to be a storyteller, but they may still have something to share. Believe it or not, non-writers make up a rich and vast portion of the self-publishing ebook market.  Picture books . Though perhaps much less glamorous on my black-and-white Kindle, picture books do make pretty good ebooks. In fact, indies who want to turn beautiful photos into a great picture book have whole lot more formatting work to do than the average fiction author. It's very difficult to pull off, but some brave illustrators, photographers and artists have managed to figure it out.  Cookbooks .  Essentially, cookbooks are a collection of recipes -- and writing one isn't at all lik...

Lots of readers make the argument that books, which are so rich and full, cannot possibly fit into a movie that offers only a few hours of entertainment at best. There is perhaps one book that makes this argument more eloquently than any other: The Bell Jar . The trouble is, someone did try to turn it into a movie...and all the book fans just hated it . The Book The only book Sylvia Plath ever wrote, The Bell Jar was published very close to the time of her suicide in 1963. From what we know about Plath's short life, most critics speculate that she was writing about many of the personal experiences she had during the summer of 1953. That's the setting of the book. It's hot in New York City, and Esther Greenwood is a young writer full of dreams. The story opens as Esther is thinking about the execution of the Rosenbergs, convicted communists. She's in the big city for the first time, seemingly with the world at her feet...and she's terrified. She...