come to the dark side – SE White Author

Adding AllAuthor to Your Author Toolbox

2023-02-08

Author Toolbox Blog Hop Post, Blogging, Recommendations

Yes, there is BookBub.com. It’s right up there with the ginormous Goodreads as a top spot for recommendations and book lists. Pretty much every post or anecdote I’ve heard about BookBub emphasizes how amazing it is when it comes to promotion. I believe those posts, and I’m happy for those authors but . . . BookBub will promote you, and it will work, but it’s also common knowledge that it will cost you roughly an entire month’s worth of income. At least. If you’re…

The Basics of Romance, for Your Author Toolbox

2022-05-18

SE White

Author Toolbox Blog Hop Post, Blogging, My Books, Romance Tropes, Romance Writers of America, Writing Process

*Sings* Do you want to write a romance? If you do, you’re in good company. Millions of books printed and sold every year (and probably hundreds of millions of Ebooks downloaded. I haven’t done the research, but I’m feeling pretty confident with that guess.) Thousands of authors. HUGE part of the publishing market share. But . . . where to start? How is a romance different from any other fiction novel? What defines “romance”? At the basic level: A romance…

Top Ten Please Just Stop the Series

2022-03-17

SE White

Blogging, Critique, Silliness, Top 10 Lists, Top Ten Tuesdays

Slightly cheating for this week’s top ten, but I hope you’ll forgive me. Waaay back in October, 2017 I wrote a post for Books Rock My World that has a lot to do with the chosen topic for this week. If you didn’t know I write for that site, now you do know. [Unless you hated one of my articles, in which case haha, NO, that’s totally another SE White. It’s a very common name. Don’t flame me.] Anyway. Leaving a series…

10 Books That Have All the Sensory Feels

2022-03-10

SE White

Blogging, Recommendations, Reviews, Silliness, Top 10 Lists, Top Ten Tuesdays

This is all about the trip down memory lane. It sounds strange at first to think a book, dead leaves stuffed full of inky imprints of soul, could come with a strong sensory memory attached to anything other than your eyes. But if you think about it, a lot of different things combine to be part of the reading experience. Where you were, what you were going through at the time, your environment, even what you were eating. Most of…

My Bookworm Life Gets Controversial

2021-03-24

SE White

Blogging, Book Reviews, Friday Favorites, Reviews, Silliness, Top 10 Lists

As we all know, one of the Ten Bookworm Commandments is: Thou shalt never be satisfied with a movie adaptation because THE BOOK IS ALWAYS BETTER. Obviously, the prompter for this blog post (Kibby of The Dark Forest Co) just wanted to fling that match and watch the bookworm world burn. While standing there looking cool, backlit by the flames, walking away in slow motion. I approve, which is why I wrote this post defying one of the cardinal bookworm…

Book Tropes: A Mail-Order Happily Ever After

2021-01-13

SE White

Blogging, Recommendations, Reviews, Romance Tropes, Top 10 Lists

Another trope rec post! This time the specific mood I’m in is that carefully arranged, sometimes mail-ordered happily ever after. I’ve always loved mail-order bride books (despite knowing arranged marriage is much more complicated in real life). This isn’t reality, this is fiction, and in fiction picking a partner like you’re ordering an entrée from a menu ends perfectly every time. For this list I’m focusing on the mail-order trope but including some of the more standard arranged-marriage books because…

The Social Media Beast Requires Regular Feeding from Your Author Toolbox

2020-09-16

SE White

Author Toolbox Blog Hop Post, Blogging, Goals and Hopes, Recommendations, Silliness

This is an author toolbox blog post. The toolbox is a group of authors who come together to learn, share resources, and grow. Non-author friends who are in publishing are also welcome to join in. We’re going on three years strong now! Come check our group out and see what you think. In this day and age authors have to put ourselves out there, hanging weightless in cyberspace with multiple tentacles dangling into the ether. We need a platform. We’ve…

A Tool for Detecting Passive Voice: Author Toolbox

2019-05-15

SE White

Author Toolbox Blog Hop Post, My Books, Plotters vs. Pantsers, Writing Process

There are some generally accepted Golden Rules for authors (which, okay, change from century to century, genre to genre, and are not so much rules as guidelines?) One of them is DEATH to All Adverbs, which I am personally fighting against because I love me a good adverb. Another is Conflict is King. Too bad no one can really decide on the definitive definition of “conflict” for any given novel since it’s pretty much subjective and changes depending on what…

Friday Favorites is an Enabler

2019-05-10

SE White

Blogging, Friday Favorites, Recommendations, Silliness

May 10: Favorite Books that were recommended to you Where would I be without #bookstagram and all of the wonderful, plentiful recommendations I find there? Well, for a start, I’d be in a house with about 150 less books. Also, not buried under the weight of a TBR equivalent to most small libraries. I add about two books a week to my wishlist and my “note to self, check these out, they might be good” reminder list grows by leaps and…

Add Some Great First Lines to Your Author Toolbox

2019-04-17

SE White

Author Toolbox Blog Hop Post, Blogging, Writing Process

You know what’s the hardest part of writing a book? Besides the writing and the outlining and the scene construction and editing and . . . okay . . . every other part. This bit is really the most intimidating, I promise. The hardest part is making yourself start. Prevailing advice, endless online articles, and the image of the latest huge seller, hang over your head like a constant cloud. And the cloud isn’t merely decorative. As your mind goes…