Do Women Writers Face an Uphill Battle? How Women’s Writing Communities Can Help

by Marylee MacDonald in Online communities

You’d think that in this day and age, women writers would have it made. After all, women buy more books than men. At writing conferences I’ve attended, women far outnumber men. Whether we’ve devoted our lives to our careers or families, I sense in women writers a pent up desire to explore their creativity. But, […]

A Productive Rant About Building An Author Platform

How do writers in general, but particularly late-life writers, establish an author platform? By “late life” I mean writers over sixty. By “author platform” I mean a soapbox that is slightly elevated above the crowd and that allows authors to shout to passersby that our books exist. That doesn’t mean the crowd will necessarily buy […]

Twitter Marketing for New Authors

Twitter marketing won’t suit everyone, but if you’d like to cast a net beyond your circle of family  and friends, Twitter marketing can help. Please welcome Decima Blake, author of the crime mystery novel, Hingston’s Box. Decima and I met each other on Twitter, and she kindly agreed to write about how she’s using Twitter to […]

Does A Pen Name Protect An Author?

by Marylee MacDonald in For Beginning Writers

Does the pen name Richard Bauchman mean anything to you? How about Robert Galbraith? Okay, here’s a third: Rosamond Smith. The true names of the authors above are Stephen King, JK Rowling, and Joyce Carol Oates. Unlike most new authors, these famous writers didn’t write under a pen name because they were afraid of getting […]