Day 50 - Interview with Tristi Pinkston, Blog Bash Winner, and More! - Writing Wisdom

Alright, so there are four major things to cover today, but one one is lengthy: 1) It finally happened. For the first time since this blog was created, I missed a blog post! Yesterday, day 49, I simply could not get an interview quick enough. However, the ever awesome an wonderful Tristi Pinkston, author of 6 books and the Secret Sisters mystery series agreed to do an interview. As I knew the interview was in progress, I made the decision to post it today. So yes, I missed a day... but I was working on it, so I count it as a tardy! 2) Interview with Tristi will be below. She has some really great answers and in the midst of my hard day today, she made me laugh. So thanks a million Tristi! 3) Blog Bash Winner! I am two days late, and I apologize. I think me saying it's...

Day 48 - Scheduling Interviews - Monday Musings

So I have a confession to make. I haven't done an interview for tomorrow. To be honest, I have yet to schedule an interview for tomorrow's blog. To be completely truthful, I haven't even thought about it all week. *breathe* It's true, I forgot. Somehow though I am going to pull through. I know lots of great authors and bloggers, and I know I'll get a great interview. I have some extra time to do it tomorrow too. So who will be interviewed? It's a surprise... even to me! This is definitely the biggest thing I am trying to work on. I don't mean just the interview scheduling. I mean working ahead in general. We'll see how it goes as I take steps to get ahead on all the blog days I can! ***Cindy Hogan Blog Bash Winners: I am running behind. The winner will be announced tomorr...

Day 47 - Blog Tweaks - Self Improvement

My wife kept pointing out that I had failed to update the progress meter on the blog, so I went ahead and made the adjustments today. I also made some slight modifications to the original coding to make it easier in the future to make adjustments, plus I added the commas for sets of threes in large digits. Minor things, but still long term time-savers. Also, after much searching and trial and error I have rectified the worst of the stretched image issues on the front/summary post page. Now book covers and similarly sized images look clean and are small. Unfortunately, wide images, such as panoramic photos, are now squished. I have some ideas on how to resolve it, but after spending 20 minutes figuring out how, I am done for the night. If anyone has any ideas, I appreciate it. Here is the...

Day 46 - So Sleepy - Week End Report

About to pass out here, so let me simply update on writing progress: 9,172/80,000 as of my writing today. That puts progress at 11.47%. Not bad....

Day 45 - Writer's Weekly World Review - Week Ending June 24, 2011

Welcome to Writer's Weekly World Review for the week ending June 24, 2011. It was hard to narrow it down to just the top five for the week this time around, but check out what's happening below: 1) What happens when you combine low eBook prices and a great review in a newspaper? Try a 2,000 % increase in sales over just a few days: http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/newspaper-review-boosts-ebooks-amazon-sales-rank-2000_b32857. 2) Many of us don't have the time nor ability to go to myriads of writing seminars, conventions, and more. Writer's Digest however has just announced they are bringing back their tutorials, which are online. Continue you education, broaden your literary ability, and all from the comfort of your pajamas! Note, it's not cheap, but compared to conferences, pretty...

Day 44 - Tweet Deck and Book Lights - Hard Knocks

Okay, so normally I post on Thursday's about some difficulty I have faced, some challenge I need to overcome. Today though, I thought I would briefly talk about how little things have made a big difference in my time this week, giving me a few less knocks. The first is that if you read my Sunday post, you would know I signed up for Twitter, then installed TweetDeck. This software is, to put it simply, awesome. I have it on my laptop and my phone. Now, rather than go to multiple sites and view extended versions of items, I have this great one stop shop for all of my social media (which at this point in time is Twitter and Facebook), and everything is in shorter form and list views, making it super easy for me to get all of my updates. Before I spent more time than I liked trying to read through Facebook, and twitter...

Day 43 - How Morals Affect Our Use of Technique: Part II - Writing Wisdom

I finished off last week's Writing Wisdom with the following: The question with all of these techniques is when and how do we use them in our own writing? Should it always be purely what suits us at the moment or what will get the most sales or start the most conversations? I believe that after a story forms itself in our minds, the very next step we should take is to decide if it can fit within our moral framework. This is not to say that the world, characters, and storyline need to be set in Christian or Muslim setting. It is saying that if you believe in the importance of chastity, you won't be promoting infidelity and teen sex even if your characters may engage in it. Continuing on this path, after we decide if the story fits within our moral (or lack thereof)...

Day 42 - PRIZES and Blog Blast with Cindy M. Hogan!

Cindy M. Hogan, who was interview last Tuesday, is doing a special Blog Blast with many prizes involved for participants in celebration of her book release for Watched and it's amazing success. Support a new author in Cindy and let's keep her momentum going! You could win lots of awesome prizes and learn about the hottest new teen novel while making new friends! The following is the contest summary from Cindy herself! Oh, FYI... comment about my blog on her...

Day 41 - Learning to be More - Monday Musings

To add to the complications of life, I began night classes today. It's Monday and Wednesday, 5-7 PM. Then add in about 3-4 hours of homework and an hour of travel. Now, if you aren't aware of why I am still in school, I assure you it is not because I am finishing up my doctoral thesis. I am still working on my Bachelor's degree. Eight years and I am almost done.  The reality is that I have always been a worker. I tried the full-time student thing while my wife worked, which made sense up until she had our son. Bills were to high, we were going to lose her insurance, etc. Plus I am one of the many sad people who have the habit of treating fake "free" money like it's really free, and so wasn't always being judicious in its use. I also blame that last part on the foibles of youth....

Day 40 - Learning to use Twitter - Self Improvement

Today I am learning how to use Twitter. I am logging the process in this post from signing up to my first post and anything else I do with it today. 7:00 PM - Go to twitter.com to sign up for an account. 7:35 PM - Finally have a user name. Don't laugh, it was hard to choose. All normal variations of my name were taken. MattTandy, MTandy, MatthewTandy, MJTandy, Matt_Tandy, etc. Read a blog post about Twitter Handles Dos and Don'ts. Settled on: MatthewJTandy. It's a bit longer than I would like, but it maintains the branding of my name I am going for. 8:23 PM - Finished looking for things/people to follow. Tried to be selective. BradThor (one of my favorite thriller authors). Also SarahW, who is connected to Publisher's Marketpalce, WSJ, etc. The Blaze (a conservative...

Day 39 - Blogger Friends, Tough Progress, and Prize Winner! - Week End Summary

Another long week behind us! Progress has been spotty in terms of writing and blogging this week. For writing, I literally had to force myself most of the time by sheer willpower I didn't even know I had just to write a single line. I actually lost track of where I was at in the story, realized a few timeline issues, and spent most nights making corrections and additions to the brief novel outline for the Militia. All was not muddy waters however! I still had some great...

Day 38 - Writer's Weekly World Review - And Last Contest day!

Today (well, Saturday really) is the last day of the contest! Who will win? Last chance for comments! I am short on time, so I won't do much stumping on the news items, but here are the major pieces I found this week. 1) What is the biggest selling genre in eBooks? Think chiseled chests, heaving bosoms, and lots of euphemisms. http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/06/14/force-behind-kindle-nook-ebook-sales-heaving-bosoms/?test=faces 2) What happens when you take a classic childhood storybook style and art, then lace it with profanity and make it relatable to nearly every single parent? You get this: http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7370193n. Now, I am not a fan of profanity, especially excessive. But the concept is brilliant. I first saw this with a Dr. Seuss...

Day 37 - Stress, the Beast of Many Faces - Hard Knocks

By now, it must be apparent I live a rather stressful life in many respects with crazy things happening at work at any hour, long hours of work no matter what, and am in a period of transition with home and church. Last night was no exception, but it reminded me of an ever important lesson: Write it down. Here's what happened. About a month and a half ago, a renter called and said they were sorry, they would have to break their lease. They were very urgent about the need to move. I explained that was fine, they would lose their deposit and would need to assist in finding a new tenant. Within an hour it seems they had the ad I used with them before up on the internet, but with their contact info and the availability date of June 15. Fantastic! They get lots of calls, several...

Day 36 - How Morals Affect Our Use of Technique - Writing Wisdom

Last week we discussed Hyper-Fantasy, that over-the-top technique of describing that which is not real in a very lucid way, often involving as many senses as possible. As I said in the comments, it's like reality on LSD. It can give a very false and dangerous notion of how things in real life actually are, and it can also be used to immerse us in alien worlds. Think of the wonder when you saw the world of Pandora in Cameron's Avatar for the first time in all of its stunning detail. Then convey that in the written word and add in equally vivid descriptions of the tastes, the smells, etc. Go over the top. That's Hyper-Fantasy. If you can pull it off, make something seem truly fantastical and yet believable even in its excesses, you've got great talent. So far, we have discussed...

Day 35 - Cindy M. Hogan - Author Interview

Today is our first author interview! To celebrate this debut, I am interviewing a debut author who is currently on cloud nine with her fantastic start: Cindy M. Hogan, originally a self-published author of the newly released Watched, the first in a series, who picked up a distributor when they saw great potential in her work. You will see more from Cindy here next week, where this blog will be participating in a Blog Blast in honor of this major milestone in her writing career. There will be prizes...

Monday Musings - Like Ariel, I want more - Day 34

*** Day 3 of the Contest is Today! Remember, each time you comment, you get an entry. Invite someone to follow and you get two entries. Contest ends Midnight on Friday! *** Today I was driving with some co-workers through one of my favorite areas of Utah County, being the western rural area of Lehi. There's some great land that has been farmed for generations there, classic style homes, and space for everything I want in life: farm animals, crops, a wood shop, a pond, and generally a quiet home not too far from and not to near the major urban centers. Like Ariel in the Little Mermaid, I have various pretty things and even visits to the country, but I want more. I want to be there, to live that life, even at the cost of much of the conveniences of living in the city or suburbia. More than...