Jade Varden Official Blog

Do you have to be famous to write an autobiography? How old do you have to be to write an autobiography? What actually makes a book an autobiography? Let's get the answers. A Song of Myself An autobiography is a very specific type of book, and must meet certain criteria before the name applies. A book is an autobiography when, and only when, it is a life story written by the person who lived that life. If I write a book about Jade Varden's life, it's an autobiography because I'm her. But if I write a book about Harry Truman's life, it's called a biography because I'm not him.  On biographies, they're a bear to write. You have to get the person's permission (otherwise you have to bill the book as an "unauthorized" biography, and you have to make darn sure that every single fact is absolutely accurate).  And all you have to do to write an autobiography is simply to be you. Authors have written them while very young and ve...

I remember very distinctly editing one of my very early manuscripts, only the second or third one I'd ever written. I sent the main character off in one scene, and this was a fantasy book so she was really gone and unreachable at that point. Then I noticed that I had her sitting with someone else just a few scenes later, because I had messed it up. Continuity is so important, you have to edit your book just for that at least once -- and stop getting bogged down in the minutia of looking for out-of-place commas.  For Every Action... Continuity is one of the most important elements of any book, and too often I see it ignored. There are many ways in which you can screw up continuity, and I know because I've made most of these mistakes myself:  Injury: Authors injure their main characters all the time. We've all been hurt and had accidents, so we can identify. It's also a good way to make the character vulnerable. Drawing sympathy can make a character seem m...

Haven't we all been fascinated by dinosaurs, at one time or another? I remember that, as a child, I was always very concerned about what happened to them. It caused me great distress that scientists couldn't figure it out exactly. And I remember the very first time I saw Jurassic Park on the big screen. You wouldn't think that reading a book about dinosaurs would be as satisfying as watching them up there, but you'd be wrong. The Book Jurassic Park was a bestseller n 1990, and so popular it became Michael Crichton's signature book. For an author with a career like his, that's really saying something. The story was always destined to become a movie. Crichton originally envisioned it as a screenplay about graduate students who recreate dinosaurs. As the project developed, Crichton tweaked this original idea. As it stands now, the story opens in 1989 after a series of strange attacks on Isla Nublar in Costa Rica. In a different part of the wo...

If you're an Amazon customer (and I suspect that you are), you've probably already been spammed with emails regarding the new #AmazonCart hashtag. But if you're like me, you erased those emails. I don't read spam emails, but I do research things that interest me. And if you're an indie author, like me, #AmazonCart should interest you, too. Not Another Hashtag In a new partnership with Twitter, Amazon has unveiled yet another way to sell their products: #AmazonCart . If Amazon tweets a link to one of their products, you can simply reply to it with #AmazonCart. Through the magic of the Internet, that item will be added to your Amazon account. But here's the beauty of it: you can reply to anyone who posts a link to anything on Amazon. Yes...including indie books. You don't even have to click a link, just hit reply and you're shopping without leaving Twitter.

If there's anything that will put me off a novel or book series, it's loose ends. I want every question to be answered, and where appropriate I'd really like to learn the ultimate fate of every single character, ideally. And that's why I don't truck with stories that contain unresolved subplots. Here's why it ought to matter to you: I'm not the only reader who feels this way.  But What About the Dog?  Subplots are used to add meat to the main story. They're around to provide excitement, or perhaps mystery, maybe even romance. In the best stories, I find, the subplots are intricately woven around the main plot and all the threads interconnect somehow. When subplots are just hanging out there for no reason, I always feel a bit like my time is being wasted so I appreciate it when everything ties together.

As an indie author, you're in charge. You decide what to publish, when to publish, how the cover will look and how the promotion will go. You're the boss...but you're also your own employee. And every once in a while you need to stop and ask yourself if you're being way too hard on yourself. As an indie author, it's really easy to become your own worst enemy.  Evil Twin I'm not a good boss . I know, because I make my only employee work 10 hour days and 7 days a week. She doesn't get holidays off. In fact, she hardly gets any days off -- one a month, so far, in 2014. She has to eat while working and generally only gets negative feedback from me, the boss. My only employee is myself, and I have a habit of being way too hard on myself.

Everybody likes laugh, and that's why writers who can be funny can also do very well. So now it's time to ask yourself: what do you know about being funny?  So Why Don't You? Being able to tell a joke well doesn't necessarily make you funny, but it sure as heck doesn't hurt. So if you can tell a joke and other people laugh, then you've got a shot at being funny in your books. You don't have to be a stand-up comedian to be capable of writing a book -- or at least, a book with some funny stuff in it. But you do have to know what it takes to be funny, because some of the same qualities that make comedians good can be translated onto the page.

As I've mentioned before, I go looking for writing tips all the time. It never hurts to have help, and I don't care who you are. But there's one tip that I just keep on seeing, and seeing, and now I have to address it. Because everybody says you have to read, too. I'm going to tell you what's wrong in that tip.  When Enough is Enough I'm not saying that the tip is wrong in entirety. Yes, you should read. It's very important that one understands the mechanics of a novel if one is going to write a novel, this much is clear. And I'll take it even further by saying that you ought to read books across several different genres. It's not at all a bad idea to read classics, mysteries, romances, YA novels, horror novels, fantasy novels and any other darned thing that strikes your fancy. If you're a lover of words, you're probably going to do all of this anyway. And if you become an indie author, you're probably going to read self-...