Jade Varden Official Blog

October is swiftly approaching, and with it Halloween. It's one of my favorite holidays, and it's all about being scared. That's why I'm going to (attempt to) feature only scary books on film all month long. The first installment begins with, of course, Stephen King. After a fashion, anyway. King wrote Thinner as Richard Bachman, the worst-kept secret pen name in the entire history of the written word. But the jig is definitely up, and the novel moved easily to film. Was it any better in the second medium? The Book When King first started in the writing biz, many publishers believed that authors shouldn't release more than one book a year; they thought it might over-saturate the market. According to literary legend, King invented his pseudonym Richard Bachman for this reason -- and because he wanted to see if readers were buying his words, or his name. Supposedly. As I've mentioned, the secret wasn't kept very well, and fans aren't dum...

What does it take to be an award-winning, best-selling, much-loved author? In looking at the stories of those who have walked the path of success (without falling on their faces), certain qualities shine through: grit, stubbornness, hard work...and luck.  It helps to write something new and interesting and great...but a stroke of luck can completely change your fate. Just ask one award-winner who came within inches of never being published at all.  A Wrinkle in a Perfect Plan Madeleine L'Engle was born in 1918 and spent most of her childhood in New York City, where many writers have been inspired. She wasn't much of a student, and received poor grades. Madeleine preferred writing in her journal, creating poems and making up stories. It was a habit she took with her to the French Alps, where her family moved when she was 12. She studied English in depth at Smith College, where she continued working on her own writing. Upon graduation, Madeleine moved to Gre...

As an author, it's essential to also be a reader. Authors are influenced and inspired by other greats who have taken pen to page to pour out prose. Every writer should have a reading habit bordering on addiction, because it's important to continuously build upon your craft. Reading is really research for new writing styles, new punctuation usage, tone and wordsmithery (not a word technically, but I like it).  So if you want to write a bestseller someday, doesn't it follow that you should study bestsellers of the past? Take a look at the most popular books ever written (at least, to date) and see how your work compares to the best of the bestsellers.  Still the One The trouble is, it's hard to determine just which books are actually the best . How do you determine what makes a book great? Is it good reviews? Sales? The number of people who have read it? As it turns out, the best book in one of those categories usually ranks pretty high in the others, too...

Adding dates and date-specific events to your book will make it feel more like reality, but it will also put a pretty clear expiration date on its relevancy. At some point, every contemporary book ever written stops being relevant and starts being history. There are all sorts of little things you might be adding that are dating your book. What should you do about it?  Please Sell By... Sometimes, there's just no other way to get certain plot points across, and an exact date is necessary. If there's some question of a character's age or birth place, or if someone goes to look at a grave, exact dates are going to come up. Sometimes, an exact date suits the circumstance. A character appearing in court before a judge, for example, may hear a long litany of charges and a docket number and specific dates. If the police are asking questions about a crime, they're going to use exact dates. For some writers, it's just unavoidable. But even if you're ter...

Double-spacing after a period.  Like this.  Is wrong.  But so many people have so many different opinions about double-spacing and single-spacing after punctuation, it's difficult to point to just one reason why it's wrong. I'm going to try anyway.   Single and Fabulous? The number of spaces that should be placed after a period is actually a hot point of contention among writers, editors and typographers. This is the kind of stuff that gets word nerds all kinds of hot and bothered, and I guess I'm no exception. I passionately believe that only one space should be used following any sentence, and the general school of typography agrees with me.  Typesetters are the people who actually put the words on the page. They're responsible for making everything fit together and using all the space they've got in an economical fashion. Since the early 20th century, it's been an industry standard in Europe and the Americas to use a single space, not a do...

Can't wait until Judgment (Deck of Lies, #4) comes out in November? You don't have to! Death, the third book in the Deck of Lies series, now has an exclusive preview of Judgment.  Blog readers can get Death free in any electronic format at Smashwords all week long. Use the coupon code PZ96Z to get 100% off, and get a sneak peek of what's coming up in the fourth (and final) installment of the Deck of Lies series.

You may not even know that you've got bad writing habits. I didn't know that I had one until after I got rejected hundreds of times, and finally took it upon myself to figure out why. You've got to figure out how to spot, and stop, your own bad writing habits. Everybody's got them.  Got a Bad Habit I've briefly mentioned the rejection letter that marked a severe turning point in my writing life, and my discovery of my own bad writing habit can be traced right back to this source. It wasn't until I had an actual mystery to solve that I managed to find out one of the things I do wrong when I sit down to write. It helps that I actually write mysteries, but any writer can figure out how to spot their own bad habits.  The one criticism the letter had for me was ambiguous at best: too repetitive. The word stuck out to me, and bothered me, and made me fret. So I sat down to re-read the book that got rejected, which is a massive epic of more than 240,00...

Every writer who wants to unmistakably make a character southern uses it...and at least half of them get it wrong. It's y'all , and it's been offending southern readers since the first author used it the wrong way. Before you attempt to insert it into one of your books, make sure you understand proper use of the word y'all ...or you'll end up hearing about it from me.  We're in the South, Y'all I touched on the topic of y'all briefly in my apostrophes post, but it's so commonly mis-used it deserves to have its very own spotlight. First, let's all get clear on the meaning of y'all right here and now. If you read my post, you know how to use apostrophes , and you know that y'all is really you all . The apostrophe takes the place of the o and the u to create this contraction. So every time you see y'all , think you all . The phrase means the same thing as all of you or (as Yankees might say) you guys .  It...

At some point, everyone gets exposed to the heroic tale of Robin Hood. Everyone's heard at least one version of it, or seen one of the many movie adaptations. The story of the bandit who robs from the rich and gives to the poor is so old, and it's been re-told so much, no one really know just where it comes from...or whether or not it's true. But a great many brave souls have written books, and turned them into films, in order to depict this hero. Only a few have done it well.  The Story The oldest recorded mention of Robin Hood can be found in a 15th century poem. It references "Robyn hode in scherewode stod," which becomes Robin Hood of Sherwood Forest. A 16th century reference places Robin in Loxley near South Yorkshire, an area that's been associated with Robin dating as far back as 1422. Records do indicate that a man named Robin Hood lived around Wakefield, Yorkshire, in the 13th and 14th centuries. Piers Plowman created the first ...

Being great doesn't mean you're going to be successful. There have been lots of great writers who still had to work hard before their words were read. Sometimes, it takes a long time for everyone else to realize just how great you are.  Walt Whitman had something to share, and he decided that he was going to share it. He's arguably the most famous American poet...and he was a self-published author.  Lighting the Fire Walt Whitman was born Walter in 1819 Long Island. He was one of 9, and called Walt so he wouldn't be confused with his father. They had severe financial difficulties, and Walt would later recall his childhood as being unhappy. He finished his school at age 11 and began working for a living.  Young Walt worked for lawyers as an office boy, and later worked on the printing machines for local newspapers. He learned how the machines worked and picked up typesetting. Whitman continued to gravitate toward the written word when looking for wo...

Think you're ready to self-publish your book? You may have checked all the punctuation and proofread all the grammar and done all the careful converting...that doesn't mean you're ready. Maybe you've got a great cover and a winning blurb, a fantastic trailer and an amazing marketing game plan. And I say you're still not ready. You're not ready to self-publish until you're tough enough to take it.  Are you?  Sticks and Stones... "Good God, I can't publish this!"  One publisher wrote these words in a rejection letter sent to William Faulkner, celebrated novelist and frequent Jeopardy answer. Some rejection letters aren't even this nice.  "The author of this book is beyond psychiatric help." This was in a letter sent to J.G. Ballard, author of Empire of the Sun and one of the Times Greatest 50 British Writers Since 1945. Here's the rub: neither of those authors self-published. If you think rejection le...

As a modern indie author, it's easy to get bogged down in the online community. The Internet allows self-published authors all over the world to connect and share, to offer up excerpts and promote themselves 24/7. It's important to use social media and other online methods to spread the word about your books, but you shouldn't limit your marketing scope. When you want to sell more books and spread the word about what you've got to offer...think smaller . Local marketing is a great way to promote your work and get more experience with being a self-published author. What's Nearby?  We all love Twitter, and I personally spend way too much time there. But every so often you've got to log out and get up. Go outside, and look around. You'll find lots of local marketing opportunities. And don't worry -- I'm only kidding. You can still do some of it while you're sitting on the couch.  Local libraries . Contact your local library about p...

I've made no secret of the fact that I think strong research is the cornerstone of any book. I've written about map-making, and learning about your setting , and making an effort to get details that bring added realism to books.  But I've never told you how to do it. Learn how to research to use your writing time efficiently, and to avoid gathering a bunch of facts that aren't actually true.  How to Research Anything Thanks to the Internet, there's pretty much no question you can't answer -- and thanks to my varied writing style and somewhat morbid curiosity, I know that to be true. I once went on an odyssey to learn about writing tools during the 1800s (because who knows when the pen was invented, right off the top of their head?), so I've already been through every painful research experience you might imagine.  Phrasing . Obviously your first stop is your favorite search engine, but once you get there things can start to get out of cont...

Some writers use epilogues like final chapters in their books...but this is an abuse. Like prologues , epilogues are entities unto themselves. Treat them that way, and you'll end up writing them the right way. At the End... By the time you get to the epilogue, the book is essentially over. The story should already have its own beginning and ending that takes place within the chapters of your tale. An epilogue shouldn't be tacked on at the end to bring resolution to the story -- because you should have done that already in your final scene, within the pages of the book. Epilogues are there to do something more than finish the story. The longer ending . If the book ends on a particularly abrupt note -- a character dies, for example -- you may wish to include an epilogue to provide a lengthier wrap-up of the aftermath. This is especially important if the end of the story doesn't provide a conclusion or follow-up. For example, what happens to the characters left...

 Whether you're aware of it or not, you're sort of reviewing every single book you've ever read, whether in whole or in part. Don't you form an opinion about the writing, the pace, the characters and the plot as you're flipping pages? You may never tell anyone what you thought of the book, but you're still creating a review in your head for yourself -- notes and remembrances that will spring to mind every time you think of that book in the future. If you're an indie author, there's a good chance that the review you create will take a much more literal form. You can easily find yourself with a long TBR (to-be reviewed) list and a lot of responsibiliies and agreements to read other self-published books.  And believe me, I know that it's tempting to cut corners. But there are some really good reasons why you have to read the whole book if you're going to review it and share that review with others. I know there are good reasons, because I...

I was wasting time on Goodreads one day when, somehow or other, I ended up reading the blurb for The Gaze . It was amazing! I was so drawn to the story upon reading it, I sent the author a message right then and there and actually asked him if he would let me review the book. That was at the beginning of the summer. I started the book in June and finished it last night...just a few days before autumn will officially begin.  The Gaze is beautifully written. Javier Robayo definitely knows how to turn a phrase, so to speak. The dialogue is smooth and true; I can actually hear the characters talking when I'm reading it. The narrative is powerful and strong. Robayo knows which words to choose. But, he does choose too many. It took me a long time to read The Gaze because The Gaze is just too long. There are a lot of scenes that flash back to the past and a lot of scenes of the main character doing nothing much at all. For a rather hefty chunk of the story, I felt like I h...