Jade Varden Official Blog

"Jade Varden really has a way with bringing her story to life, I could easily picture everything that was happening and I was never bored."  "You really can't go wrong, especially if you're looking for a quick, light YA read filled with intrigue and mystery." Justice (Deck of Lies, #1) has been reviewed at Panda Reads and approved for even non-bear readers.  Visit the blog to read the whole thing, and find out which well-known author the reviewer compared me to!

It is the job of all authors to bring their characters to life. Most well-loved characters have a distinct look, noticeable characteristics, great flaws and strengths. Some authors even take things one step further, and create a distinct style for their leading ladies. To honor some of the great fiction fashion icons that I've read over the years, I'm introducing a new feature with one of my most favorite characters: Cathy Dollanganger. Fashionable Femme Fatale  Cathy Dollanganger is the main protagonist of the Dollanganger series, which spanned five books. The series was introduced in a debut novel from V.C. Andrews, Flowers in the Attic . It became an instant hit, though the movie didn't fare quite so well, and launched a career that has, phenomenonally, continued with new novels even beyond the author's death.   It all began with Cathy. Through the series, she goes from age 9 to age 59 (or thereabouts), and that's a whole lot of clothes. For some s...

Writing in the first person takes a lot of skill. When it's done well, it can really bring the main character and the story to life. Readers will truly feel and think like that character, truly live inside your fictional world. But when it's done badly, your writing will feel distracting, confusing...and sometimes, even silly.  It's My World, You're Just Reading in It  Writing in the first person takes a very delicate hand. You don't want to over-load the book with "I." It gets boring when every sentence or paragraph starts out that way, and the last thing you want to create in your writing is repetition. You have to make sure you describe the character to the audience somehow, and that's tricky. You have to remember to see everything through the character's eyes; they probably can't read minds or hear thoughts, so they have to rely on observation alone to figure out what's going on.  But you also have to remember something e...

Ever told someone about a song you like, and they didn't recognize it, so you had to sing a few lines? Ever mention a great line you heard on that TV show you love? Ever told a friend what another friend said about them, word for word? Yeah, there are lots of reasons why you might need to use quotes within quotes when you're writing. Don't ignore the simple punctuation rules that dictate exactly how you're allowed to do it.  Double Punctuation, and Other Disasters Lots of things have to be enclosed in quotation marks when you're writing. Proper titles of magazine articles, exact quotes, clever nicknames, popular sayings -- you might use quotes around all that stuff. But if you're already using quotes because you're mentioning these things in dialogue, then you've got to use a form of double punctuation: quotes within quotes. It's really easy to get them wrong. It doesn't help that there's a lot of confusion surrounding proper q...

Some of the greatest fiction characters ever written have wonderful monologues where they reveal some inner truth or meaningful plot point. Fancier folks might call the long-winded, solo speech known as the monologue a soliloquy instead, but it amounts to the same thing. One of the most famous monologues ever written begins with the phrase "to be, or not to be." Lots of authors want to write a great one, and use them to create dramatic scenes. But writing the monologue is an art form, and it's not something you should be doing at all lightly. Talking with Myself  The monologue is just a one-sided speech. A single character takes center stage, so to speak, to reveal something important. A monologue can be an actual speech that's being delivered to one or more characters, but some writers have their characters speak aloud to themselves. In the same vein, monologues can be internal speech -- the character "talking" to themselves inside their own thou...

I'm being featured this week on Ramblings of a Book Junkie. Don't worry -- you don't have to be a book addict to enjoy the interview (but it can't hurt). What don't you already know about me? Why do I write mysteries? Am I anything like my main character, Rain? And what is my favorite TV show, after all? Get all the answers -- and a lot more -- when you read the interview! 

Add a letter to a word, and you could change everything. Even if both words are extremely similar, they aren't interchangeable. Before you use one or the other, know the difference between person and persona . Person Person simply means human being. It can be any man, woman or child. When there's more than one person , it becomes the plural people . It's a noun. Synonyms include body, character, individual and personage -- not persona , which is sometimes mixed up with person . They aren't the same. Persona A persona means essentially the same thing as image , but it can also mean a role that's being played (like by an actor). If you're greatly upset by something but pretending to be fine, you're presenting the persona of an untroubled person . Like person , this word is also a noun. A persona is a public image that one wears. The Difference It's easy to use persona and person incorrectly; they're both nouns used to des...

What's your idea of perfection? The Stepford Wives explores this topic, and the original novel did so in chilling fashion. Two notable remakes later, some of the original message might be lost, but it's still a pretty scary story. The Book Ire Levin wrote The Stepford Wives in 1972, and it became a hit. It's a pretty quick read, and it's written in a wonderful off-the-page style where much of the horror takes place in the reader's imagination.  The story begins with photographer Joanna Eberhart, who's a modern woman with a career. She's moving with her family (husband and kids) to Stepford, Connecticut. She has trouble fitting in right away. The women in Stepford have immaculate homes, but that's because they spend tons of time waxing and dusting and wiping and scrubbing. Yet they do so with a smile, as if keeping a clean house is their greatest joy in the world. To make matters worse, the women in Stepford are knockouts. They're fi...