Jade Varden Official Blog

How do I overcome writer's block? What do I love about being an author? Find out in my newest interview!  I answered some in-depth questions about writing and reading at Confessions of a Book Addict . Visit the blog to read the entire interview, and find out which direction I'm taking with my next project.

I'm participating in the vacation extravaganza at Blkosiner's book blog! Enter the giveaway to win a copy of the first book in the Deck of Lies series in any electronic format of your choice.  You'll also get a $5 (USD) gift card to Amazon so you can buy more books (the rest of the Deck of Lies, maybe?). Don't miss your chance to win!

"Jade Varden HAS to be one of the best indie writers and yes guys she blew me away again with her second book in the Deck of Lies series!" "Just brace yourself for a jaw dropping storyline." BookAThonFreak has posted a new review of The Tower (Deck of Lies, #2), and I want you to read it! It's spoiler-free, so feel free to go check it out. While you're there, watch the official trailer for The Tower at the bottom of the post.

Writers have always used the best technology possible to create their books. Do you think anyone welcomed the invention of the fountain pen more than the authors of the day, who had drawers filled with empty ink bottles and used-up quills? Do you question at all that writers were the first to try out typewriters, and felt deep longing the first time the electric typewriter became available? No! Technology is even more sophisticated today, and it's even more useful for today's writers. But app-hunting takes up some pretty serious time, and you need your time for writing. So I've hunted out the apps for you to make things a little easier. Apps for Writers Even web browsers have apps and add-ons, and there's no reason not to use them. Anything that can help you save time or get things done more efficiently is worth pursuing.  Blogging . You never know when you're going to get a great idea for your next blog post. The Blogger app is available on the Android m...

"Rain is down the rabbit hole again, seeking out the truth in the thicket of lies and secrecy." "More twists, turns, and secrets exposed. It was a fun ride." Death (Deck of Lies, #3) has been reviewed at Quirky Girls Read . Visit the blog to read the entire review.  Use the links above the post to get the first three books in the series, and get caught up on the story before I release book four!

If you're a writer, there are times when you have to learn how to leave your opinions out of what you're writing. Even fiction authors who largely focus on novels might be asked to write an article or blog post, and it's definitely a good idea to do so. Any piece of writing can help you promote yourself as an author and make more people aware of who you are. But if you can't write objectively, you may end up hurting your sales and your image instead.  Shhhh... Believe it or not, I'm very good at keeping certain opinions to myself. Sure, I've passionately talked about certain words and I'm very clear about grammar rules and how I feel about them...but you definitely can't tell me if I vote, if I'm religious or how I happen to feel about any issue outside of writing whatsoever. Authors have to learn how to write objectively not just in blog posts and articles, they've got to learn how to do it in social media and forum groups, too. Th...

Every kid has a dream, right? Mine was to be a writer, and I spent a lot of time imagining how it'd be. I would sit in some beautiful room somewhere, in front of a window overlooking an idyllic garden perhaps, quietly tapping away on my keyboard at rapid speeds. No one would ever bother me. I would complete my books and send them off to some huge publishers, who would turn the pages into a perfect book with a fabulous cover and all of that. Everyone would buy the books, and I would continue writing. Now, I am a writer...and I realize how foolish every bit of that imagery really is.  I hardly ever have the time to write. It's the last thing I add to the list and the first one I take off when things get dicey, the task I wish I could get to but rarely do. And some of the time I'm not writing and yet still fully engaged in the job of being a writer, I'm dealing with other authors other than myself.  And if you're self-publishing, you're going to h...

Why did I become a writer? What's my greatest weakness? And if I could live anywhere, where would I go? Get these answers -- and a whole lot more -- in my newest author interview !

The difference between its and it's is as tiny as a single apostrophe, and yet the punctuation is fraught with so much meaning. The words are said the same way, they're pretty much spelled the same way and they appear in just about every book. But writers still get them mixed up all the time.  Apostrophes, No Rules Edition There's a reason that its and it's are confusing, and one culprit is to blame: the apostrophe . Sure it looks benign, inviting even, but when it comes to its and it's the apostrophe breaks all of its own rules.  Oftentimes, the apostrophe shows up to give possession to something. If I buy a purse, that purse is Jade's . But apostrophes serve a different function in it's : they represent a missing i . And when it comes to possession in it ? There's no apostrophe at all.  Confusing, right? It's It's actually means it is or it has . It is a pretty common expression, but it is sounds a little formal ...

I was lucky enough to discover the book version of Freaky Friday first. It was in my school library, and the title seemed interesting enough. Little did I know that through the years, I would eventually become exhausted with what's become one of the most over-used plot devices in the whole of fiction writing. But when I first read the book, it was brand-new and unique. I think that's how author Mary Rodgers intended it. The Book Freaky Friday was published in 1972, and adapted into film almost immediately. The story quickly caught on with young readers. They probably identified with Annabelle Andrews, like I did. Annabelle wakes one Friday morning after arguing with her mother, and discovers she now is her mother -- at least, she's in her mother's body instead of in her own. Freaky indeed. Now, Annabelle has to run the house and take care of her brother Ben, whom she calls Ape Face. As it turns out, being a homemaker is one adventure after the next...

Do you automatically conjure up an image of the authors you like? I used to love imagining what the authors behind the words looked like; then I discovered paperbacks, which commonly find a way to plaster a bio picture on a glossy cover somewhere. Everyone has some vision of what authors look like, and what the are like: dramatic, wordy creatures who sit hunched over a keyboard pouring out flowery words all day. The vision is almost never the same as the reality. Sometimes, when the reality doesn't fit that vision writers just can't get published. In the Victorian Era, three women had to pretend to be men before anyone would pay any attention to their words. Today, millions have read at least one of their books -- which are always printed with their real names. Creative Spirit Literature was always a big part of the Bronte household, but tragedy would leave its mark as well. The family had six children in all, but their mother and the two oldest sisters would ...

It's just one little letter, but it gets confused all the time. Change the a in than , and you've created then -- and then, you've got grammar problems. Knowing the difference between then and than is essential to good writing, because the two are as different as night and day. The trouble is, you can't change day to night with a single letter...but a wrong then can totally destroy all your good writing work. Then Most of the time, then is an adverb or a noun . It means at that time or even next , which are two pretty unrelated sentiments. This is why the word is confusing. I might say Well, that was back then and clearly I'm referring to some past time, and things have now changed. But it's also correct if I say We dated for awhile, then I learned he was a jerk , which would still have the same meaning if I type next instead of then -- in this case, it's used to refer to the future past (truly the worst tense in the whole of the writ...

The word gotten just sounds wrong to me sometimes, yet it always comes out of me naturally. I noticed it earlier when I was writing an email to someone; I typed out that I had gotten something, then quickly backspaced and put in the more majestic received instead. Then I realized, I don't actually know if gotten is good grammar or not. It sounds like slang and somehow seems wrong when I see it on my screen, but it still has its place in the English language. In fact, I've quite recently learned all about it.  Have Got Gotten is a past tense form of the verb to get . Get just means have, hold, receive. It can also be used to mean to experience ("I got sick"). The past tense form of get is got; the past participle of got is gotten . A past participle is a word that's used with had, have or has.  Therefore, it's perfectly acceptable to use gotten if it's being used with its companion word. I have gotten sick before . ...Unless, of course, ...

"There are so many twist and turns that you really can’t be sure what will happen next."  "A page turner and keeps you guessing all the way through to the very end." A very lively review of Justice (Deck of Lies, #1) was posted at Book Pusher recently, and I want you to read it! Make sure you check out the 3 Reasons to Read while you're there.

Most of the rules of English are pretty clear. When you want to make something plural, you add s or es . When you want to put something in the past, you add an ed . But when you want to write perfectly, you'll take time out to pay attention to your irregular verbs. These words defy all logic, and they know no rules...so you pretty much have to know exactly what to do for each one of them. Irregular Writing and Reading Irregular verbs are a big problem. Normal verbs are pretty easy to deal with in fiction writing -- instead of typing that Shelley walks away , you type Shelley walked away to transform your book into past tense. But some verbs refuse to play by the rules. Shelley can't awake in the past; she awoke instead. Many irregular verbs operate like whole new words; writers have to change a letter within the word instead of adding a suffix. Begin and begun , blow and blew, and forget and forgot are all examples of this type of irregular verb. Makes th...

In the past, I've blogged about how indie authors can get reviews . I even blogged about tips for writing reviews. But what indie authors really need to know is how to properly ask for reviews, in order to use their time more efficiently and avoid making enemies out of book bloggers.  Review Requests I've advocated, more than once, that indie authors send out review requests. Self-published books need a lot of marketing, and book review blogs are a great way to get it. The good news is, there's a ton of them out there. The bad news is...there's a ton of them out there. Knowing how to send out review requests is every bit as important as the sending itself. Learn how to ask the right way, and you'll get a lot more positive responses.  Twitter . Twitter is a convenient and easy method of communication, and plenty of book reviewers are on it. But no reviewer posts book reviews on Twitter. They have a blog somewhere, so do not contact them through Twitte...

I'm giving away Justice, the first book in the Deck of Lies series, at Reading 24x7 . Now's your chance to start the search for the truth free. And if you don't want to wait out the giveaway, you can find Justice at Amazon , B&N , Smashwords and Kobo .

 I dedicate a lot of my blog posts to writers in particular, but even those who aren't writers self-publish books just like any indie author. Books don't always have to contain a bunch of original text and a complicated storyline to be marketable.  Other Types of Books Not everyone's cut out to be a storyteller, but they may still have something to share. Believe it or not, non-writers make up a rich and vast portion of the self-publishing ebook market.  Picture books . Though perhaps much less glamorous on my black-and-white Kindle, picture books do make pretty good ebooks. In fact, indies who want to turn beautiful photos into a great picture book have whole lot more formatting work to do than the average fiction author. It's very difficult to pull off, but some brave illustrators, photographers and artists have managed to figure it out.  Cookbooks .  Essentially, cookbooks are a collection of recipes -- and writing one isn't at all lik...

Lots of readers make the argument that books, which are so rich and full, cannot possibly fit into a movie that offers only a few hours of entertainment at best. There is perhaps one book that makes this argument more eloquently than any other: The Bell Jar . The trouble is, someone did try to turn it into a movie...and all the book fans just hated it . The Book The only book Sylvia Plath ever wrote, The Bell Jar was published very close to the time of her suicide in 1963. From what we know about Plath's short life, most critics speculate that she was writing about many of the personal experiences she had during the summer of 1953. That's the setting of the book. It's hot in New York City, and Esther Greenwood is a young writer full of dreams. The story opens as Esther is thinking about the execution of the Rosenbergs, convicted communists. She's in the big city for the first time, seemingly with the world at her feet...and she's terrified. She...

"Jade Varden does it again!  There's just something about her writing style that makes you want to read more and more and more."  "There is never a moment where I find myself skimming, or wanting to fall asleep."  Erin at Bookluvrs Haven has posted her review of The Tower, and it's spoiler-free so feel free to go and check it out. You'll find links to the entire Deck of Lies series while you're there!