Prime Day Double Feature!

For Prime Day I give two of my books for the price of one!

 

I have always loved to write. From the time I could put two words together I’ve been writing stories. My first story ever was a play based on Star Wars. I made props out of paper grocery bags, and boxes much to my parents delight, when they would have to step over my cardboard X-Wing fighter just to get into the bathroom. My play would be great! I wrote the script on a spiral notebook complete with lines and exit stage lefts. It was quite an undertaking for a 6 year old. Alas, my play never saw the stage. Maybe I should have started with something a little less technical, like a Goonies play, or a Indiana Jones remake…
The cardboard X-Wing gathered dust in the basement, and the paper sack Storm Trooper helmets met their fate in a land fill in a Galaxy far far away. Over the years I had many fits and starts with stories, much like my Star Wars play. I would write 50 plus pages and either get discouraged, or something would happen in my life and I would forget about the pages that piled up on the kitchen table, destined to be put in a box and forgotten.
Fast forward to about two years ago. My life had gone through some major changes in the previous year. I ended one relationship, and moved back to Nevada, and started my last with my wife and her sons. My own son was on the way, snuggled nicely in my wife’s belly, (she looked beautiful by the way.) One night I was looking at my wife and step sons when I was overcome with gratefulness. I was so happy in that moment. Me being a writer though my good feelings were soon replaced by a sense of foreboding. What if I lost all of this. A World Without came flooding out of me and onto the paper. I barely had to try to write it. It focuses on a man who lost exactly what I myself love. My family. I wrote about my greatest fear, losing my wife and sons. I think most of my writing comes from a place of fear, and loss. I ask myself a What if question and then try to write about it with honesty. I published it through KDP on Amazon, and boom! I had put out my first published work!
The other story, Walter came from dark memories of remembering what it was like to be an outcast in Junior High School. I moved to Las Vegas when I was 11 years old. I was from a small Minnesota farming town with a population of 700 hundred people, and I was moving to sin city. To say I didn’t fit in was an understatement!
There was an explosion right before I moved close to the Junior High School I went to. A rocket fuel plant called Pepcon blew up leveling everything within a 2 mile radius, and damaging the junior high school I went to. In my 11 year old brain I thought my parents were crazy to move us to a place like that. I would think about the Pepcon explosion as I got kicked under lunch tables, and called names in the halls. I would fantasize about the whole damn school getting leveled and me coming out unscathed. My parents would eventually come to their senses and we would move back to Minnesota. I know this is dark, but again I try to write as honest as I can. My imagination got me through that awkward stage of my life. I think anyone who has gone to junior high school, not to mention a new school, in a new state will give me a pass. Things did get better for me.
So there you have it. The origins of these two stories. I did this Double Feature in honor of Amazon Prime day. Amazon over the years has been a big part of this reader, and writers life. It has given me the opportunity to realize a dream. To be a published writer. I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Get them now here

Trailer for The Light Through the Water

My New book The Light Through the Water is available for Pre-Order on Amazon.
This is the book trailer. Pre-Order Here

5 Resources for Self-Editing

Editing... Ugh! Editing anything can be a daunting task. As a indie writer on a tight budget I have to edit all of my own stuff first before I send it to anyone else. I do this to cut costs, and to not look like the blithering, grammar challenged ding dong that I am behind closed doors. Putting out your writing can be a very scary task when you don't know if all of your letters on the page are in the right order, and have all of their little symbols in the right spot.
It has been said  that editing is the most important part of the writing process, and I couldn't agree more. If you're into percentages, I would say your actual writing is about 15 percent of the process, and editing takes up the other 85 percent. I spend more time editing than I do actually writing my stories. Fortunately we live in a time where the Internet is chock full of resources for our problems. Yes guys it's true. The Internet isn't just for cat videos, and porn anymore. Who Knew!

I am not saying you don't need to have an editor, but Self-editing will help in the process, and save you lots of money.

I found a ton of information for writers who are feeling over burdened by editing like I was. Here's a list of five.

1) I found a site that has cut my editing time in half. It's called Pro Writing Aid. This site is awesome for the story writer like me, or for the person that needs to write a blog post, or hell even a business letter. And get this, it's will cost you the big F word! Yes you heard me! No not that F word Captain Dirty Mouth! The F word meaning FREE! However, if you want to use their more complex editing tools packages start out at only 35 dollars a year. Here are some of the features with Pro Writing Aid.

• Check for hidden and passive verbs
• Identify overuse of adverbs and glue words
• Locate repetitive sentence structure
• Replace commonly overused words
• Reveal repeated words and phrases
• Eliminate vague, abstract and complex words
• Remove clichés and redundancies

2) The book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne & Dave King is a must have for anyone that wants to learn more about the craft of writing. Renni Browne was once the senior editor at William Morrow, and has founded The Editorial Department , which is a national book-editing company. Dave King is a contributing editor at Writer's Digest, and is an independent editor. So these two know what they are talking about when it comes to the written word. You can pick it up on amazon for a few dollars. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers description.

"Hundreds of books have been written on the art of writing. Here at last is a book by two professional editors to teach writers the techniques of the editing trade that turn promising manuscripts into published novels and short stories.

In this completely revised and updated second edition, Renni Browne and Dave King teach you, the writer, how to apply the editing techniques they have developed to your own work. Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue, and other techniques take you through the same processes an expert editor would go through to perfect your manuscript. Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited."

3) Scrivener is writing software, but it does have some editing capabilities. I use scrivener to write everything. With it's ability to move chunks of text around, and the cork-board feature, it's like having another brain. If you are serious about writing, Scrivener is a must have. The software cost $40 dollars and you can get it here.

• Cork board - In Scrivener, every document is attached to a virtual index card onto which you can jot a synopsis; moving the cards on Scrivener’s cork board rearranges their associated text in your draft.
• Outliner - View and edit the synopses and meta-data of your documents in Scrivener’s powerful outliner. Organise your ideas using as many or few levels as you want and drag and drop to restructure your work.
• Scrivenings - Scrivener’s innovative “Scrivenings” mode allows you to move smoothly between editing your document one piece at a time or together as a whole.
• Statistics and Targets - A live word and character count of the current section is always in view at the bottom of the screen, and you can set a word or character count target for each section.
• Full-Screen - Because sometimes you want to blank out the rest of the world while you write - or at least the rest of the screen. One click in Scrivener’s toolbar and you can leave the rest of your desktop behind and write distraction free.

4) After The deadline is editing software that is free for personal use. It checks spelling, style, and grammar, among other things. It also has tips on how to become better at editing. http://www.afterthedeadline.com/

5) NewNovelist Version 3 Second Edition (Windows 8.1/8/7/Vista) Is affordable writing software for beginners. 

• Help and advice on how to write a novel
• Tried and proven writing methodology with creative writing advice
• Dedicated novel writers word processor with voice recognition dictation and read-back
• Facilities to build up plots and characters to implement into your novel
• Advanced review and publishing tools

I Hope this helped all my writing friends. If you find any other resources please let me know in the comments below. I look forward to your feedback. As always you can find my writing on Amazon. I'd wish you luck, but you don't need it. By the way I am sure there are editing mistakes in this post. Thank you for noticing. :)