Setting (and reaching) goals. I had one New Year’s resolution for 2011: to read more. Plain and simple. And I’m happy to say that I reached that goal. I was shooting for a modest one book a month and wound up reading 16: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson (fiction) Battle Hymn [...]
Archive for December, 2011
Writing Tip #63
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Amy Chua, Darin Strauss, Girl With Dragon Tattoo, Hunger Games, New Year's resolution, Stieg Larsson, Suzanne Collins, Sweet Valley High, Young-adult fiction on December 31, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
The Author Who Wrote with Fire
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged Daniel Craig, David Fincher, Girl Who Played With Fire, Girl With Dragon Tattoo, Lisbeth Salander, Rooney Mara, Stieg Larsson, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest on December 28, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
I just started reading The Girl Who Played with Fire, and I cannot put it down. Like its predecessor, The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the prologue sucked me in immediately, but unlike the first book, the action starts pretty quickly. (I remember a friend wholeheartedly recommending Tattoo to me with this one caveat: “You [...]
Writing Tip #62
Posted in Writing Tips, tagged Apostrophe, Arts, Grammar, Grammar Girl's Quick and Dirty Tips for Better Writing, Grinch, Plural, Style guide, Writers Resources on December 18, 2011 | Leave a Comment »
Never use an apostrophe to make a name plural. This time of year can turn the grammarphile in me into a bit of a Grinch. At least one or two Christmas cards is sure to arrive in my mailbox with a misplaced apostrophe, such as “Happy Holidays from the Smith’s” or “Season’s Greetings from the [...]
Writing Tip #61
Posted in Writing Tips, tagged Albany New York, baby grand novel, Goethals Bridge, New Jersey, New York, Outerbridge Crossing, writing tip on December 11, 2011 | 1 Comment »
Building bridges. We took a quick family vacation this weekend into New Jersey, and as we were making our way over the Outerbridge Crossing, affectionately called the “Outerbridge,” I mentioned to my husband how I used the bridge as a model for a fictitious upstate New York bridge I created for my book Baby Grand. [...]
Writing Tip #60
Posted in Writing Tips, tagged baby grand novel, Nathan Bransford, Word count on December 4, 2011 | 1 Comment »
How long should your novel be? As long as it needs to be. I remember when I first contracted with my agent, she mentioned that novels typically run between 75,000 and 90,000 words. And as I wrote Baby Grand, I kept those numbers in my mind as a guideline. Something to shoot for. My first [...]
Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged reading, Take Your Child to a Bookstore on December 3, 2011 | 2 Comments »
Today is apparently “Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day,” and there are hundreds of stores around the world participating with all kinds of special events and discounts to celebrate the day. Personally, I think we should be taking our kids to bookstores all the time, but if this is a way to get just [...]
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