Blogger: Mary Keeley
Last week a client received a request to do an advertisement to help promote a good cause. She wondered if it would be wise because it didn’t appear to relate to the books she writes. She was …
Readers
Author, Check Your Online Presence
Blogger: Mary Keeley
When your book proposal interests agents and editors, the first thing they’ll do is investigate your website, blog, and social media activity. That’s why it’s so important that each area of your online presence compliments the others …
How to Get the Most from Your Beta Readers
Blogger: Mary Keeley
I highly recommend participating in a critique group. You can improve your own craft as you critique your partners’ work often as much as you can by receiving their feedback on your work. But this can’t replace …
Secondary Characters: Their Purpose for Being
Blogger: Mary Keeley
Are you using your story’s secondary characters to their full purpose? They can make your book stand out from the crowd of other books in your genre. Practically as many ways to use these characters exist as …
In Search of Inspiration and New Ideas
Blogger: Mary Keeley
It’s been a few years since I blogged about where to get inspiration for your writing. One suggestion I gave for engaging readers back then was to relate to current events and the cultural issues they illicit. …
Lessons for Writers from Business Giants
Blogger: Mary Keeley
What do Amazon, Apple, Walt Disney, Google, Harley Davidson, Hewlett Packard, and Yankee Candle Company have in common? Each entrepreneur launched his multibillion-dollar company from someone’s garage with nothing but knowledge and a willingness to work hard …
Sound Bytes on Writing Well
Blogger: Mary Keeley
When you Google books on writing, you’ll see a plethora of excellent books by writing experts. It can be overwhelming. How can writers absorb all those volumes at the same time they’re being encouraged to write, write, …
Identify Your Book’s Unique Angle: One Approach
Blogger: Mary Keeley
Last Sunday a church friend and I found ourselves in a conversation about the recent presidential election and potential ramifications thereof. They’re hard to avoid lately unless you’re a mole. The service was about to begin and …
Signs
Blogger: Mary Keeley
With the promise of hope that a new year holds, I start pretty quickly to look for signs that my hopes have grounding. Happily, there are several already. The genre news won’t make every author’s hopes soar …
Engaging Our Culture–Part 2
Blogger: Mary Keeley
As promised in last week’s blog post today I’ll give you Michael Boyle’s last four charges on engaging our culture. The gulf between a Christian worldview and the prevalent views on life, culture, and biblical truth seems …