Celebrating Independent Authors
Today we’re pleased to announce Brianna Lee McKenzie as the winner of the Indies Unlimited weekly Flash Fiction competition.
The winning entry is rewarded with a special feature here today and a place in our collection of winners which will be published as an e-book at year end.
Congratulations to Brianna, and thanks to everyone who participated – excellent entries! Now, without further ado, here’s the winning entry: Continue reading “Congrats to Brianna Lee McKenzie”
Happy Friday the 13th everybody, and in honor of this spooky date…okay, it has nothing to do with the spooky date.
Instead, we now resume our regularly scheduled programming to count down The Novel 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels of All Time by Daniel S. Burt, accompanied by real one-star reviews from real readers. Last week we went from #100 to 76, so today we’ll take it to halftime.
Just to reiterate, I am not doing this to make fun of the reviewers, and actually there are more than a few reviews here I agree with completely. My only point, cheerfully offered, is to remind us all as authors that reviews (at least in this social media world), are nothing more than one reader’s opinion. And for absolutely any book ever written, someone is going to be of the opinion that it sucks eggs. Continue reading “One-star Reviews of the Hundred Greatest Novels: 75-51”
We are pleased to announce that Lynne Cantwell is joining the staff of Indies Unlimited as a contributing author.
Lynne worked as a broadcast journalist for many years; she has written for CNN, the late lamented Mutual/NBC Radio News, and a whole bunch of radio and TV news outlets. Lynne’s education includes a journalism degree from Indiana University, and a master’s degree in fiction writing from Johns Hopkins University.
She has been writing fiction since the second grade, when the kid who sat in front of her showed her a book he had written, and she thought, “I could do that.” Come to think of it, that other kid might have been me. Lynne, did we trade pudding cups?
We are sure you will enjoy Lynne’s wit and wisdom. Please join us in extending a warm Indies Unlimited welcome to Lynne Cantwell.
A lot of people ask me for advice on writing. That’s not completely true, but it sounds badass. And some people do. I’ve posted recently about some of the exercises I do. Now, I am going to tell you the ultimate secret to my method. Cross training.
Remember when all the shoe companies came out with ‘cross trainers’. They looked kind of like a running shoe, a hiking boot, and a tennis shoe had spent a turbulent and shameful night in a bedbug-ridden motel with six bottles of Boones Farm wine and an eight ball. The idea was that you could run, hike, climb a mountain, bicycle, fight a lion, insult a pageant mom, do wind sprints, fly, seduce a hippo, and hang-glide without changing shoes. Or something to that effect.
Well, that’s basically the approach I take to writing now, and I do believe it has sharpened my game up a bit.
