Here’s another flash fiction challenge from Chuck Wendig. You can find that here. This one was simple, it starts with a knock at the door. (So much possibility!) The story below is actually a continuation from a previous story. This one. It should still stand on it’s own though, so don’t feel you need to read the earlier one just to get this. Continue reading “A Mistake Made Twice”
The Blood Lottery
Yes, it’s been awhile. That’s okay. So, today I’ve got something from another one of Chuck Wendig’s flash fiction challenges. This time, he chose ten titles from the previous one and made us choose one to write the story to. The challenge can be found here. Clearly, I chose The Blood Lottery. It’s a bit of a return to form for me as I’ve been rather uncreative as of late. Hopefully, it passes muster. Continue reading “The Blood Lottery”
We’ve Moved!
Modern Authors has finally been moved to a real domain! Welcome to modernauthors.org. Same great taste, new place. Honestly, this is something I should have done awhile ago, i just never got around to it. But we’re here now, and here’s where we’ll stay! The modernauthors.wordpress.com address will still work, so if that’s the main way you get here, there should be no issues. That is all. Carry on.
The Road to Self Publishing- First Draft Done, Now What?
Well, that’s an incredibly lengthy title. Welcome to the first post in The Road to Self Publishing series. As the title suggests, this post will concentrate on what happens after you’re done with the first draft of your work; the revision process. I realize that this isn’t strictly related to self-publishing, but it is still part of the same process that eventually leads to a published work. Plus, I want to help dispel the idea that self-published books are less good, that they don’t have the amount of work put into them that traditionally published books have. So, I’m going to show you every step of the process, not just the publishing steps. Continue reading “The Road to Self Publishing- First Draft Done, Now What?”
The Road to Self Publishing
Welcome to The Road to Self Publishing! This isn’t really the first official post for it, that should come in a week or two. This is more of a meta-post to, sort of, explain what The Road to Self Publishing is and isn’t.
The main thing this series is going to be covering is my experience (good or bad) with attempting to self-publish my NaNoWriMo novel The Forgotten. These will be posted more-or-less alongside my actual experiences. This means it will not only be a very long series, but it will be inconsistent as well. There may be multiple posts very close to each other one month and then multiple months without a post as I go through the process. There will, of course be other posts interspersed with The Road to Self Publishing posts, the blog won’t become all about them.
The second thing it will be about is comparing options available to writers looking to self-publish. There are so many ways to do things at pretty much every step of the process, figuring out what options work best for you can be overwhelming. Hopefully, this series can help tame that by giving an in-depth comparison of the many options I find during my experience and research.
The combination of these two things means posts in this series will probably be a little longer than you might be used to from me. I personally think this is a good thing as I will endeavor to give you as much about my experience and the choices someone might face when self-publishing as possible.
Every post in this series will be tagged with The Road to Self Publishing and titled with it as well. In addition, this post will be continually updated with each post added to the list below. This post will serve as a permanent explanation of the series as well as a convenient way to access any single post in order. I’ll link to this post at the end of each new post. I will add posts below as I begin working on them, and links will be added once they’re posted.
The Road to Self Publishing
First Draft Done, Now What?– Explains techniques for going from first draft to second draft. Gives the basics for creating readable ebooks and PDFs for revision.
What’s a Revision Anyway?– Talks about the process of revisions from prep to the actual writing.
The Afterdraft– Talks about what needs to be done after you’ve hit your “final” draft and can’t make it any better on your own. Mostly about beta-reading.
The Hardest Writing– Discusses one of the hardest bits of writing for most authors; the back of the book blurb. Not too many tips/tricks, mostly discussion. Feel free to post in the comments even if it’s been awhile since it was published.
“Modern” Authors
So, I’ve been thinking. Besides some news updates, this place has been exclusively stories. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. I love writing them, and I hope you guys love reading them. The thing is, I kind of want to do something… More. Maybe try to put the “modern” in Modern Authors.
So, with that in mind, sometime this month, I’ll be introducing a series to this blog called The Road to Self-Publishing. What’s more modern for an author than self publishing?
As I’ve said here before, my project for NaNoWriMo was The Forgotten. I’m currently working on self publishing it. This series will take us from first draft to published and (hopefully) selling. The first post will concentrate on organization for editing and software choices.
So, tell me. What does everyone think about this? Is this something you’re interested in me talking about? Is there something else you’d like to see? Or are you only here for the stories? Let me know.
The Seventh
Another week, another flash fiction challenge from Chuck Wendig. This time it centers around the seven deadly sins. You know which ones. We had to pick a sin and write a story based off our interpretation of it. I won’t tell you which sin I chose, hopefully you can pull it from the story (but it’s hopefully not too obvious). So, enough stalling, the story’s after the break. Continue reading “The Seventh”
My Lucky Coin Toss
So, I’m back. (Whether I’m also better than ever, I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.) I’ve decided to use my return to do one of Chuck Wendig’s flash fiction challenges. The challenge this time was to pick a sentence and use it as the opening sentence to a story. I won’t tell you what I picked, as it’s the first sentence of my story (duh), but I will give you a link to the challenge, here. The story is after the break. Continue reading “My Lucky Coin Toss”
The Forgotten- Redux
I’ve been much busier than usual this week, so I don’t have a story for you. I know I promised that regular posts would be returning this weekend, and I intend to keep that promise. So, with that in mind, I’ve prepared something a little different.
Instead of a story, I’m posting and excerpt from my work-in-progress, tentatively titled The Forgotten. For anyone who didn’t read my pre-NaNoWriMo posts, this is based on an earlier story I wrote by the same name. You can read that one here. So, without further ado, I present to you, and excerpt from The Forgotten. Continue reading “The Forgotten- Redux”
December
So, it’s officially December first. NaNoWriMo has come and gone. How did you all do? I am proud to announce that I won. It will be quite some time before there is an actual book from this, but I’ll let everyone know when I do have one.
In the meantime, regular weekly posts will resume this weekend. Is there anything you’d like to see here? Let me know.
Modern Authors 