What are you looking for?
FINDING YOUR AUDIENCE. How long tail keywords can help.
Are the right people looking at your website? Using long tail keywords can help you build the right information to ensure the right people can find your website. If you put Justin Bieber in your search bar, you’ll get thousands of different websites to choose...
Simple steps to boost user engagement
Use these simple and easy to implement steps to boost blog engagement. Building a bigger audience, increasing conversions and maximizing visibility are important. Engagement isn’t just something twenty-five year old men are scared of. It’s an important metric...
Four reasons your blog is going nowhere – Steps to help you build an audience
Blogging is one of the top ways for people to build an online presence, create name recognition (if needed) and make money. As an author, it is a fantastic way to build an audience. Okay, let’s face it. Anyone can start a blog for any reason. All you need is...
Build an audience for AUTHORS and BLOGGERS – A couple ways to improve SEO
These are some tips I’ve come across and utilized with great success to help drive traffic to my blog and build an audience. The first step is getting them to your website. Next, have people find your content useful. Finally, you have to give them a reason and...
Understanding SEO for Authors – Improve SEO ranking
As a writer, building an audience is a difficult and daunting task if you don’t have a publisher backing you up. Nowadays, publishers and agents like to see an audience already built in the digital world. Having a website, email list and social media presence...
Raise the Stakes – Fiction Writing Tips
Raising the stakes - Fiction Writing Tips to keep your reader engaged Readers, and I'm sure you are one of them have simple needs. We need to be invested in what happens in a story. Not just what is happening right now, but what will happen...
Modern Magical Characters – Character Development
A list of the best modern day magical characters. Find out which one you like best and use the list to help with your own character development. Find out if your character measures up against some of the best out there. Harry Dresden He’s Jim Butcher’s main...
Writing is a Journey – Novel writing tips
There’s a book called THE WRITER’S JOURNEY. It’s a great guide for parts of hero construction, story construction and plot arc. If you want to write, and haven’t read it, I suggest you pick it up and burn through it… several times. It’ll offer tons of writing help...
The Rear Naked Choke And Motivation
I was teaching Jiu Jitsu recently. While teaching,I thought a lot about how my internal drives and motivation are sometimes used in the wrong way. We were going over the most iconic of moves in combative wrestling. The Rear Naked Choke. For the uninitiated, it’s...
Magic in your novel? – Fantasy writing tips
There are plenty of fantasy writing tips out there. Here are five key points to think about when you put magic into your novel. 1.Make it useful. Let’s say your character is able to make little sparky things fly from his/her hand in the beginning of the book. By...
Fiction Writing Tips, Own the Story – Not the words
Fiction Writing Tips, Own the Story - Not the words"Own the story. Words are like shades of paint. Get too hung up on them and you’re just turning everything shades of blue and that sucks… unless you’re Van Gogh. Here are some good fiction writing tips...
Voice and Story – Writing Tips From a Writer’s Conference
We’ve all heard it before, but what does it reallymean? It’s a good question to ask because I heard something at a writer’s conference this year that was frightening. Read about the writing tips I picked up. But first, a quick tangent to understand the importance of...
Creating a Character Grid – Editing for character development
Using a character grid is a method some editors use to determine the necessity, effectiveness and depth of a character within a given story. It will help the author with character development. Think of it like a tool for you as a writer to help ‘trim the...
Break your reader’s heart – Writing tips
Break your reader's heart - Writing tips Heartbreak equals loss. When we tell a story, we have to ensure that the reader/listener is invested. We create investment through connection. Using these writing tips will help you connect to your audience better. ...
Types Of Fairy Magic – Fiction Writing Tips
Anyone who writes fiction has a penchant for rascally little fairies. I discuss different types of Fairy Magic and Lore to offer some fiction writing tips. Fairies are evil, they’re kind, they’re ugly, they’re benevolent and beautiful. Depending on where you...
Writing with feeling – Mental writing help
Love in motion - Writing help for authors and bloggers. Having a thought process that becomes a mental writing tool for emotional writing is important. Writing help with tools like this allow us to dodge the pitfalls of literary traps that will bore or...
How To Write With More Emotion – Three Steps
Do you cry? Silly question I know, but it’s important. Instead of wearing your heart ‘on your sleeve’, you’ll be wearing it on your fingertips. To write with more emotion (heart) is a special skill the greatest poets chase after every day. After all, writing is many...
Crafiting a Chapter – Four Writing Tips
Want help creating a chapter in your book? Here are four easy steps to help you on your journey. These writing tips have helped me many times and I'd love to share them with you. Crafting a chapter shouldn't be an overwhelming task. Step 1. Start with a question....
Writing Through Pain – Using Writing as Help
I’m a paramedic.Doctors give us training on pain. They say it’s subjective and there is no way to measure it accurately. Sometimes there is a physiological (your bodies) response to it. Your pulse may quicken and your blood pressure might raise up. This...
Short Story? Writing Help To Get It Done Well
Writing Help For Crafting Your Short Story (Or First Chapter) When was the last time you read a short story? Not a novella, middle-grade book or anything like that, but a true short story. They are truly a niche in the literary world and often overlooked outside of...
How I made my own magic, Part 2
How I made my own magic, Part 2 You read about the connection between my world and quantum physics, right? If not, go HERE first. This blog is about the creatures within the ‘bleed’. As you know, the bleed is this place between realities. It exists because when the...
How I created my magical world with quantum physics
How I created my magical world with quantum physics It’s an interesting question for a lot of writers. Mine is one that has a basis around common magical thought, quantum physics (which is magical in its own right), and some of my own flare. I had to start big, then...
Character Development Writing Tips
As a writer, we are also avid readers. A beautiful part of writing is seeing how the bonds are created and shown to us on paper. I take a hard look at one relationship in particular because it's close to my heart. Through this you can pull out some important character...
Angel of Assassins, The Reign of Terror and our own beliefs.
Angel of Assassins, The Reign of Terror and our own beliefs I was reading this book I got from my grandmother Great Men and Famous Women, Volume III Workmen and Heroes. It was published in 1894. So it’s wordy, sexist and full of interesting facts shown from a wildly...
Who is Jonathon Stonebinder?
Who is Jonathon Stonebinder? Jonathon is 400 years old and not from Earth. Well, he is, but it’s just a different version of Earth. In his reality, there was a great war that destroyed the entire planet. During the war, he befriended a mysterious soldier who spent...
Expanded view of religion and god- Mona lisa and a Straw
I remember the first time I saw a dead body. Two of my friends were killed by a drunk driver and I had to identify them. It was a head on collision where both vehicles were going around seventy miles per hour. It took a long time of staring at their mangled corpses to...
Bad-Assery is a thing
Roy P. Benavidez is a bad ass mother fucker. On May 2nd, 1968 he spent six hours in hell. He was shot seven times. One time was in the back, and the bullet exited his chest just below his heart. He had 28 pieces of shrapnel in his body and he had been stabbed no less...
Flames that melted my heart
I've written about my son in the past. Maybe it’s because he’s a conflagration of love, pride and hope for the future. Maybe it’s because children are the bright and shiny embodiment of possibility in every parent’s eyes. Or, maybe it’s because he is the thing we...
Ten-speed vs. a quarter pipe
I tried to ride a ten speed off a skateboard ramp once. We had just moved into the crappy rental house on the street. It was kind of exciting because living in a house was not something we always got to do. I was ten years old, and the kids who lived on the street...
War Is Never Over – PTSD and its effects
For years I thought the idea of saying I had PTSD was bad. I viewed it as a term of weakness. I didn’t live through Vietnam so what I saw and went through wasn’t bad enough to warrant something so horrible. Sounds silly, but it was what I thought and what many...
I’m sorry son, the world isn’t good enough for you.
I hit a deer the other day. My son walked out to the driveway to survey the damage. He looked at the deer fur and deer poop splattered across the broken grill of my SUV. Then he sat down in the driveway and started crying. “Dadda, I love deers and ladybugs. I’m so sad...
The Dead Miss Us – Suicide From Drugs
The dead miss us. I know. My best friend comes to say hi more often than he should. I don’t know how it works, or if it’s really him, but he’s there. I think. His name is Angel. Well, Angel Cruz Lee. People called him Cruz. He really wasn’t much of an angel, but he’s...
Chekhov’s Gun
Anton Chekhov eloquently stated years ago a simple fact with respect to story construction. If you have a gun leaning against the wall during the first act of a play, you better use it in the second act. Otherwise, get rid of the gun. This is an important ideal, it...
Confidence
My last post was about getting bullied and how it took years for me to realize how it hurt my own confidence. I've spent the past few weeks thinking about the source of confidence in more detail. I'm doing this project at work right now. Most people love it, some...
Punch me in the face, it’s good for me.
Growing up, I wasn't very good at fighting. I didn't do it often and if I did, I lost. I was a decent wrestler for a few years, but outside of a matted floor, I wasn't much. I remember the first time I was bullied badly. There was this kid named Noel...
Working on Septic
So this poem thing I wrote is interesting. I don't write poetry. I certainly don't read it either. This thing hits me hard though. Hell, I wrote it and it kicks my butt every time I read it. I guess there's something to it. I went on a cruise with my wife and...
Steps I Took To Finish My Novel – Help For You Too.
I sat down with a great guy today. He's been a writer for years. We have a lot in common. He's a Firefighter, so am I. He's cool. I'm cool (maybe). He wanted to ask me what it took to finish my Novel. Basically, we're like twins. The main differences being...
A lesson in story writing from A.O.D.
First of all A.O.D. is Army of Darkness. It doesn't matter if you've seen the movie or not. The lesson is important. Story writing has basic hooks to it and there are some great take aways from an old school comedy-horror. And yeah, it was the first of it's kind. ...
Top 8 Must Have Books for Fantasy Writing
Of course there's more than eight books. But, in my short time on this earth I've found some gems that have helped me greatly. These are the top 8 must have books for fantasy writing. The Writer's Journey By: Christopher Vogler If you get nothing else, get this...