Jade Varden Official Blog

You know how they say that no matter what you write, it's all been done before? They're 100% correct. Pygmalion , you will find, is a plot line that still appears in modern story all the time...and it was written two thousand years ago. The Book Chances are pretty good that no matter what you want to write about, your main theme was already written into a play by the Greeks, or Shakespeare, and likely both. Such is the case with Pygmalion , which revolves around a now-classic plot. It appears as one in a series of epic poems written by Ovid back in BC. In this early version, it's about a sculptor who falls in love with his own creation. I can relate to that. Don't all writers fall in love with certain books, certain characters, maybe even just a paragraph? In the story, the sculptor (he's the title character) takes his love to the alter of Venus, and she is transformed into flesh. It ends happily. And it's a familiar theme. Remember Pino...

Love is a big focus of February, and it commonly crops up in books. By no means is love limited to the romance genre (though this genre is dedicated to the emotion). It appears in mysteries, horror novels, suspense tales, science fiction, YA...well, we don't have all day. When characters fall in love, you've got to write it in a believable way. Otherwise, I won't feel the love...and then, what the heck is the point of having it in the book?  Lovely Stereotypes When characters fall in love on the page, authors are always taking a risk. Love is perhaps the hardest of all emotions to define, and it's certainly difficult to recreate in fiction. How does one describe the euphoria...and the unspeakable pain? The deep longing for togetherness...and the desperate fear of losing one's own independence?  Yeah, it's hard to write about love. I know this because I've seen so many authors get it totally wrong. Look out for common love traps in your ow...

"I was on the edge of my seat by the end and I stayed up until one am to finish it then immediately downloaded book two."  "There are many more interesting characters to round out the cast, each with their own secrets and mysteries. To be honest I'm not sure our main character can trust a single one of them." Justice (Deck of Lies, #1) has been reviewed at A Thousand Lives. Read it to find out why the reviewer gave the book the highest possible rating!

Do you know how to interpret the rejection letters you get? Figure out what agents really mean when they say your book "isn't the right fit" or "doesn't meet our current needs," and figure out what you need to do to start getting some different answers.  Interpreting the Literary Agents Literary agents speak in a polite code couched in metaphors...and it practically takes a degree to figure out. I myself have received many, many hundreds of rejection letters, so I can speak with some authority when I say that rejections are all very similar. You'll see the same vague phrases over and over, and it's easy for authors to make themselves crazy staring again and again at those words. Stop staring. It's time to decipher those polite phrases, and figure out what agents actually mean when they say what they say.  Form Rejections Just about every author has received form rejection letters. These are generic slips of paper or ema...

It adds a lot of depth when you add sound effects to your books. Known in the literary world as onomatopoeia, it's the act of writing out a word that resembles a sound. Wheeze , for example. But like all good things, too many sound effects can ruin any story. Whizz, Bang, Boom   Sound effects are fun, even when they appear in print. A sneeze is executed with a kerchew , a laugh becomes a hearty har har . You might even get wild and throw in a splunk or two. Some scenes almost require a word effect or two, something to really bring the events on the page to life. You want the reader to be able to hear the coins drop in the fountain, not just see them.  Just don't make it a distraction. Your readers don't want to be treated to a splat or a buzz every third paragraph. When onomatopoeia is used too much, it brings attention away from the story instead of adding to it. Use it judiciously, and those sound effects will have a much bigger impact.

"The character development and scandalous plot left over from the first novel is picked up, shaken, and completely twisted." "Young readers everywhere will enjoy this book as much as I did." The Tower (Deck of Lies, #2) has been reviewed at Julie's Book Review . Read the whole thing to find out what reviewer Kris Myslin thought about the book.

Author, blogger and friend of the blog Annalisa Crawford dropped by yesterday to talk about why Twitter matters . Now, I'm going to tell you how to make it easier to use. When I finally figured this trick out, I wanted to kick myself for not thinking of it way sooner. Save Your Review Quotes Many authors, myself included, send out tweets that contain snippets of reviews. If someone writes that your book is amazing, great to read, or 5 stars, it's exactly the sort of stuff you want to show off. I used to sit and work on tweets for extended periods of time, seeking out usable review quotes after combing through my Amazon and Goodreads pages.  Then one day, inspiration struck. Why not just take the time to ferret out all the good review lines and save them in a single document? Why not add lines from new reviews as they appear, and keep this updated document handy when it's time to tweet? Why didn't I think of this before?  I don't have an answer fo...

It's been a year since my novella Cat and The Dreamer was published! There have been lots of changes in my own life in that time, and I started to wonder what else had changed... Thank you Jade for inviting me over today! Today's topic: Twitter! When Cat and The Dreamer was published I didn't have a Twitter account - everyone else in the world did, everyone else used their accounts to tell each other about their new book releases... I relied on a solitary tweet by Hubby. I was on Facebook, I had a blog - why did I need Twitter too? I succumbed in June, and it wasn't even with professional reasons in mind. I'm not sure what swayed me, but I've been having a blast ever since. I can now tell the world all those witty things I think during the day that would be otherwise lost. I can (and did ) share my thoughts about the Olympic opening ceremony, along with the rest of the world. In fact, it was that was the evening I unfollowed my first person, bec...