 Every story has a back story. The massive skill required to write good flash fiction is primarily the skill of crafting backstory in the fewest words possible. In longer fiction there is more room for play but that room is fraught with challenges. Adria J. Cimino addresses several of the more common ones HERE.
Comments
 Everyone who has ever had the privilege of belonging to a local library has experienced that dreadful moment. You are sorting through a pile of books at home, or digging under the back seat of your car, or possible just moving a shelf and then you see it; a book with the familiar marking of your library. A book that is quite a long time over due. Take it in, pay the late fee, do what needs to be done. But for a parton of a Portland, OR library, it was a little more than that.
Fifty-two years after this parton checked out "Principles of Speech" and "Preface to Critical Reading" (such practical books) they returned the to the Oregon State University Library with a note. The patron "Borrowed" them in 1963 for a high school speech class and had carried them around all the intervening decades. Now they are home and the library is deciding their fate.  As many of you may have noticed the layout for Betty Adams Tall Tales has changed dramatically recently. This is due to my wonderful publisher and most specifically Brian (thanks man!) who thought my page could use a facelift. Now in this day and age there are far more venues for publishing than there used to be. For myself I chose MQuills both for the convenience it offered and their sheer bulk buying power. There was also the added benefit that they seem to have shielded me from the worst of the scammers that usually plague new authors. Now there are a fascinating number of ways the unscrupulous have to relieve you of your money but Writer's Weekly has managed to corral the most common into a list.
 History has served as fuel for writers of both fiction and non-fiction since time untold. Real life provides the best fodder for stories and the real lives of people long dead and cultures now defunct is a refreshingly safe place to get a tale that won't likely bring controversy. But even with a gripping, well written story there is always an element of luck in getting a story published. I suppose that there is an element of luck in everything. Just ask Billy the Kid. He and his Regulators survived a range war only to meet with various, usually bloody ends. But for one brief and luck time there was a wedding and a game of croquet. Someone snapped a tintype picture of that moment and developed it. That picture was passed around for decades until it languished in a junk shop where it was purchased with a box of other such things for $2. Then the buyer figured out what it was through a series of lucky events and now it is looking to sell for $5,000,000. National Geographic will be airing a documentary October 18.  One of my Tweets was retweeted by the Oregon Daily! There I am in black and white right next to the superquake article and the bit about the good hearted retired judge!
 The Library of Congress has decided to digitizes some amazing old photos. According to KGW Portland - An incredible window into our nation's past is now web-friendly and live online. At the center of it all are thousands and thousands of photos, taken during the Great Depression. They were commissioned by the government and stored in the Library of Congress, but researchers at Yale University decided they could do more. So they created a website. The photographs show an older and less developed city that is still distinctly the Portland that Oregonians know and love.  Well maybe the changes are not too big. But my publisher has some idea about how to make the website better and get some more traffic on the site. So here is what it looks like now to remember my first effort by.
 There is a new festival in town. From elegant New England towns in Pennsylvania to the hipster capital of Seattle libraries and pubs are joining hands to celebrate books and great places to read them. From the Seattle Beer News (yes that is a real news outlet) the coalition will sport such events as -
It is a good time to be in the Pacific Northwest!  Marketing....uggg..this is one author who has come to despise that word and the concept it represents. Some isn't so bad. Shaking hands at a chapter reading at the local library is kind of nice. Surviving a three day convention is bearable. But it all gets tiring after a while. Then someone tells you you are doing it all wrong. So now I am going to experiment with .....HASHTAGS!
#hashtag #newideas #ihatemarketing #whyohwhy  "Dying Embers" is officially on the shelves of the Chemeketa Cooperative Regional Library System!
|
 Teespring Store
Buy COOL Merch
AuthorBetty Adams is an up and coming author with a bent for science and Sci-fi. Archives
December 2022
 
 |
RSS Feed