Jade Varden Official Blog

"How would you like to live in a world where you would be judged just by your hair color?" "I was always curious about the characters, history, events and everything else going on in the novel at all times." Hope's Rebellion has been reviewed at It's a Book Life . Read the whole thing to find out what the reviewer didn't like about my newest book, and see if you agree!  Get your copy of Hope's Rebellion at Amazon, Smashwords or B&N.

Do you write in the passive voice? Do you know what that means? If you don't, that's okay. I still have trouble with distinguishing passive language myself. It's one of those ephermal writing characteristics that can, very subtly, alter the tone of your book. I'm not one of those writers who are against writing in the passive voice, because every author should strike their own tone when writing their own work. But I do feel that writers ought to know the difference between active and passive voice...because how can you decide if you don't understand both choices?  We Were Writers Now, I could get really technical with the forthcoming description of passive voice. In my research for this post, I've discovered that this is the most common approach. But when writing about something that's complicated, taking a highly technical approach isn't likely to help most people. So I'm going to do my best to put it in plain English. 

It happens every single day without fail. I get on Facebook to link a post or put up a photo, and I see it: your . And every time I see it, the word is being used the wrong way . As an author, you should always be ever-aware of word possessiveness -- whether you're Tweeting or Facebooking or writing a novel (or writing an email to your own spouse). If I see you using your the wrong way, I'll never read any of your books. And I'm going to start a movement to get others to join me on this blanket ban. And I'm going to succeed...because I'm right.  Yore Don't get me wrong; I understand why it's confusing. Your isn't an easy word to know. It's possessive, but it doesn't have an apostrophe . That could blow anybody's mind. Then there's you're , spelled almost the same way and pronounced exactly the same. Neither of these words have anything to do with yore , but that word exists as well. I'm pointing it out because it s...

In case you haven't noticed, I've been making a big deal about the Petals on the Wind adaptation for a few days now. Last night it finally aired. So how does this long-awaited movie match up to its book? Not very well. In case you weren't enjoying my live Twitter session last night while the movie was on, I ought to warn you: I'm pretty angry about the adaptation.  Faded Buttercups  The movie begins 10 years after the events of Flowers in the Attic , which is already wrong. The book actually begins right where Flowers left off. Seriously, the reader misses a few hours (at best) of Cathy's life. Cathy is 15 when she leaves the attic. This means that in the advanced timeline, Cathy is already 25. And in the movie, Paul Sheffield is dead. This is an insult to the fans, because Paul figures prominently in Cathy's adult life. She marries him, after all. As a girl just meeting Paul, Cathy sets out to seduce him almost immediately. She's alr...

Is there a specific book or author who made you want to be a writer? For many who pursue this path, the answer is yes. Lots of authors today can tell you stories about their yesterdays, days filled with reading other people's words...until soon, those days became filled with writing their own.  And my origin story, like this holiday weekend , begins with V. C. Andrews. In the Beginning... I was a bit of a precocious child. I was never much interested in children's books. And besides, I didn't have a whole lot of access to children's books anyway. When I was growing up, I was always the only kid around unless I was in school. Around any of my family members, I was the lone kid. So it was perfectly natural for me to go off and do things by myself. What, was I going to hang around the adults? No way. And since being by yourself isn't always fun but reading is, I was a reader.  That's how I discovered V.C. Andrews . It was Thanksgiving, and I wa...

In case you haven't heard, it's Petals on the Wind weekend here at the blog. So instead of indie news, this week it's all about POTW news. What can you expect from the adaptation that airs tomorrow night?  Sex scenes.  At least, that's what the trailer indicates. Of course there's more than sex in the film. The trailers and stills are very limited, but to me it looks as though Corinne's role has been somewhat extended for the Lifetime movie . I could be wrong, of course, but since the entire book is told from Cathy's perspective the reader sees very little of Corinne throughout. Contrarywise, Heather Graham is peppered throughout the trailers.

Petals on the Wind was the first follow-up book to the massively successful Flowers in the Attic . And like its predecessor,  Petals was picked to become a big screen adaptation. It was meant to happen about 25 years ago. It finally will happen this weekend. The Book POTW picks up right where Flowers left off, with the three surviving Dolls on a bus headed south. They plan to go all the way to Florida. They won't ever get there. Carrie is violently sick on the bus, and they're kicked (literally) to the curb. Also on the bus is Henrietta Beech, and though she can't talk she takes matters into her own capable hands.

It's Petals on the Wind weekend here at Jade's blog! The movie premieres on Lifetime this Memorial Day, and we're going to celebrate with special blog posts all weekend long. But what good is a holiday weekend without freebies?  Deck of Lies FamiLIES     Use the link above any time this weekend to get your free digital copy of Deck of Lies: The Full Deck . That's Books 1 through 4, the entire series. If you like Petals , you'll enjoy this tale of family deception. Can you uncover all the secrets?

Ever wondered what's going on behind the scenes of my blog? Well, I'll tell you: it's a damn mess . I have like 40 half-written blog posts, and at least 6 of them are all about how I have trouble writing blog posts. Sort of like this one. It's another one of my attempts to explain this problem I have: when I write, it's difficult for me to open up. And since I am a writer, this is a fatal flaw. Have you got it, too?  It Ain't Easy Being Green Some time ago, I made a big deal about my New Year's resolution . The resolution was that I was going to get more personal with my blog posts, in the style of another blogger that I admire. This goal quickly deteriorated into several rambling blog posts, each worse than the next, which have never been published. You see, I have difficulty opening up about things -- particularly with anonymous strangers I don't actually know. And since I'm a writer, that's a really big problem. Writers have to o...

"This certainly turned out to be a great read." "There are still a lot of lies to uncover...I am excited to find out more." Justice (Deck of Lies #1) has been reviewed at Random Things in Action . Visit the blog to read the entire review, and then go get your copy of the book!

When you're an indie author, the ebook market is where you live. And if you're going to be a part of the digital market, you're going to have to stay well-versed in all the trends, gadgets and gimmicks that are being used in the mobile world. So if you don't already know how to use QR codes, now's the time to learn. Quick Response QR codes look like graphic representations of bar codes, and in a way they are similar. QR codes, Quick Response codes , can be read by cell phone and tablet cameras. They're used to take users instantly to a web page, so no one has to go to Google or type in a long web address.

As a self-published author, you have to be your own publicist. But you don't necessarily have to do all the marketing yourself. There are ways to encourage others to do your marketing for you .  Marketing, Pass it On  It's more possible than it sounds, and there are no loaded guns or weird ransom notes required. In fact, you still have to do most of the work (which is always going to be the case).

Critical feedback is essential for each and every single author, and sometimes truth is harsh. On the other hand, criticism can cross the line. With one wrong word or turn of phrase, it turns into bullying. So when you read those scathing reviews and biting comments, you have to make a decision: are you being bullied...or criticized? Indie Authors and Bullying This is a touchy subject, and I'll do my best to tread lightly. There's been a recent outcry regarding indie authors and bullying, and it's gained so much momentum that non-indie authors are sounding off on the subject. But to call every single negative review or harsh remark a form of bullying is incorrect, because they simply are not. If we start to scream "bully" about everything, then that word begins to lose its power and then we've all got problems.  So it's your job to learn how to differentiate between bullying and ordinary criticism that's just hard to deal with. In mat...

"The Princess Diaries" is one of those ever-popular Disney movies everyone has seen. It introduced movie star Anne Hathaway to the world, reminded us that Julie Andrews is amazing and spawned a sequel. But before all that, it was the beginning of a 10-book series. The Book Meg Cabot's story revolves around Mia Thermopolis, ninth grader. She lives in Greenwich Village in New York with her single mom, a free-spirited artist. Mia has a crush on senior Josh, and she's pretty normal. Until her dad comes to town to drop a bombshell: he's secretly a prince. Mia is his only child, and the new crown princess of a little country called Genovia.  So she isn't so normal after all. Mia's life becomes even more complicated. Paparazzi show up at school, her mom is dating Mia's Algebra teacher, and she has a big fight with BFF Lily. As if that isn't bad enough, she has to take "princess lessons" with her grandmother (the queen). ...

Sometimes when I'm writing, I'll fall into an alternate reality where I know just what to say. There are times when I know I'm not even telling the story; the story is letting me tell it. But those stories always end up being the very hardest to shake. Are you having trouble with letting go of a book that you already finished? Easy Come... Some books speak really strongly to authors..and don't stop speaking. You'll continue thinking about the characters, even after you're supposed to be working on another project. And no matter how hard you try, you just can't devote yourself to that new project. How can you? The old one is still captivating all your attention.  Letting go is one of the hardest parts of being an author, and this will manifest itself in a variety of ways. I'm pretty sure I've experienced all of them.

So, I ran out of TV shows on Netflix and found myself watching "Just One of the Guys" the other day. It's a gender-swapping story featuring an actress named Joyce Hyser in the lead. I've also seen the same movie starring Amanda Bynes, Cameron Diaz and countless others. Some plots are repeated, and re-repeated, a hundred times or more. Have you ever wondered why? It's because copyrights expire.  Much Ado About Plagiarism  Seriously, the story of the girl who dresses like a boy and falls in love with this new boy she meets is as old as time. Well, that's not precisely true -- but it is as old as the Elizabethan era. I know that because Shakespeare is the one who wrote that story. He called it "Twelfth Night." 

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.