Jade Varden Official Blog

If you haven't already heard of Grammarly, where have you been? This is a browser app that advertises heavily and has managed to spread through the online writing community like wildfire. So as an author...should you be using it? Built-In Grammar Help If I'm being honest, I'd make lots more mistakes if it wasn't for built-in spellchecking. Sometimes, I feel when I make a mistake and ignore it because I know the spellcheck will pick it up. But does that mean using apps and built-in help is always a good idea for writers? Take a look at the light side and the dark side of using Grammarly. The Grammarly extension catches much more than your standard auto spellchecker. It highlights many ore grammar errors than Google Drive, Word or any of the other popular word processing programs. It can even help you with punctuation. Once you've got the extension installed and enabled, you can simply forget about it and do all the writing you want. The extension will ca...

There are certain things that every fan knows about zombies, vampires and werewolves. You probably have some ideas about what elves are supposed to be. Everybody knows what a hobbit should look like. And if you imagine a dragon, it's probably going to breathe fire at some point. There are certain creatures and creations that have their own lore and mythology. But here's the thing: some writer made all that junk up. So if you're going to include a mythical creature or human-like thing in one of your books...who says you can't re-write all the rules? Sparkly Vampires There are certain accepted "facts" about mythical creatures and beings. For instance, everyone knows that sunlight kills vampires. But here's the deal: vampires are made up! Vampires were the invention of a writer. Doesn't that mean that new generations of writers can re-write those rules? After all, it has been done before. In the uber-popular "Twilight" series of...

"Kill your darlings" is common advice that people who don't write give to writers. What does this expression mean...and should you be following it? There's a lot of different advice out there for writers. Apparently, just about everybody knows how you should be writing your novels. "Kill your darlings" is one extremely common expression that's told to writers all the time. Basically, it means that you should kill off your favorite characters. Killing Characters The philosophy behind it is that the plot will make a bigger impact on readers when you kill off your favorites, because your favorite characters will be the audience's favorites, too.  It's true that the death of a character should create a visceral reaction in readers. You want them to feel it. You even want them to cry...at least a little. But when it comes to writing, nothing is ever as easy as a cute little motto or a pat piece of advice. Killing Them Softly Becau...

"Jade Varden’s imaginative and creative description of the underwater living world is to be praised, especially for her unique War and Battle in the ocean approach opposing most of the fairytale stories about mermaids and their lands." "Song of the Sea" has been expertly photographed and reviewed at Bookidote. Visit the site to read the whole review! Get your print copy of "Song of the Sea" at Amazon .

First-person narratives directly connect the main character of a book with the audience. I am telling you these things, I am relating my story to you as the first-person narrator. But sometimes, the narrator will talk to you, as a reader, even when they aren't a character in the story itself. It can get a little tricky to pull this off, but it can be an effective tool for certain types of stories. The Way I Heard It... In a first-person narrative, the main character is directly relating events that happened ( or are happening ) to them. But you can also directly address the reader using a narrator who isn't even in the story. These narrators are relaying events that they know about, but didn't experience. And yes, it can be pretty hard to write. But there are reasons why you might want to try it.

It can be really hard to get reviews for a book, and self-published authors are the type of people who take things into their own hands. That’s why some authors go ahead and take the next step on their own, and write author reviews of their own books. Should you...or shouldn’t you?  Your Own Drum Many self-published authors also review books. I’ve done it before, myself. It’s a good way to get more exposure for indie authors of all kinds, and it’s something to blog about. So what’s to stop an indie author, any kind of author, from reviewing their own book? There are reasons why you shouldn’t, clearly...but there is a way you can do it with a touch of class, too.

Unless you're one of them, it's hard to know what the life of a really big-time author is like. Imagine having 20 bestsellers on your bookshelf and tons of fans tweeting you all day long. Now imagine that you've got all that...and you still can't really write what you want. One famous author had to keep trying, for 20 years, to create the one project he felt passionate about. His name was Michael Crichton, and his project was a little TV series called "ER." This author knew the art of being stubborn. He Knew He Could You know Michael Crichton. He's the guy who wrote "Jurassic Park," "Congo," "The Andromeda Strain" and like several other books that were made into bigtime feature films. But he's also the guy that's ultimately behind "ER," a project that he tried to get going for about 20 years.

Death and the Deep is finally here!  Amazon Smashwords Use the links above to get your own copy of Death and the Deep .