I’m taking a break from blogging on Aliventures over the summer – I’ll be back in late September with a spruced-up blog design and plenty of posts lined up for the rest of 2018.

In the meantime, I wanted to share plenty of resources and reading that you might want to enjoy over the summer…

The Blogger’s Guides (Especially The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing)

If you’re a blogger or would-be blogger, you’ll want to check out my four Blogger’s Guides. They’re premium ebooks packed with examples to help you get the most from your blog.

I’ve just (as in, half an hour ago as I type this ;-)) updated The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing. It’s now fully up-to-date for 2018 – and eeesh, there were a lot of examples and links to update!

To celebrate:

• The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing will be $14.50 instead of $29 for the next month.
• The four-pack of Blogger’s Guides – the whole set – will be $44 instead of $66 for the next month.

The sale on both of these will finish at the end of Thursday 6^th September … so take advantage now.

Important: If you already have an older version of The Blogger’s Guide to Effective Writing, don’t buy it again! You may already have an email from me with a link to download the new version, but if not, just email me and I’ll send it straight to you.

Alternatively, if you login to the Effective Writing “extras” page (the link and password should be in your current version of the Guide), you can download the new Guide there.

The Self-Study Packs

A couple of months ago, I put together a bunch of self-study seminar packs, pulling together some of my favourite seminars from Writers’ Huddle (my membership site which ran Feb 2012 – Apr 2018).

If you’d like to dig deeper into a particular aspect of writing, take a look through the packs. They’re just $19.99 each: for that, you get four seminars (audio or video), plus full, nicely edited transcripts, and handy worksheets to help you turn learning into action.

Blog Posts You May Have Missed

If you’re not ready to dig into an ebook or a seminar right now, how about a blog post? Here are a six you might enjoy, covering the first half of 2018:

(Jan 2018) Your Website is Always a Work in Progress – this post is on my mind because I’m going ahead with yet another redesign of Aliventures. And I’m happy about it! Websites continue to evolve, as do the tools for making them ever better.

(Feb 2018) Seven Ways to Market Your Self-Published Novel – this post takes a look at seven different marketing methods, with a quote or useful resource, plus a “further reading” suggestion for each one.

(Mar 2018) The Three Stages of Editing (and Nine Handy Do-it-Yourself Tips) – this post is an updated version of one I wrote back in 2014. If you edit your own work – and almost all writers do, at least to some degree! – then it’s packed with useful tips for you.

(Apr 2018) Why You Should Stick to One Name for Each Character in Your Novel – this post tackles a common writing mistake that writers commit with the best of intentions! You don’t need to vary how your character is named in the narrative: pick one way to refer to them, and stick with it.

(May 2018) Everything You Need to Know About Writing Brilliant Blog Posts – this post is a handy list collecting together five posts I’ve written about blogging, covering ideas, building an audience, starting and ending your blog posts, and blogging as a novelist.

(June 2018) Three Things to Do Before You Start Freelance Writing … and Three Things Not to Bother With – this post takes a look at what you do, and don’t, need to do before you launch your freelancing career. If you’re thinking about freelancing – especially if you feel a bit daunted – then give it a read.

My Novels ($2.99/£1.99 Until the End of the Summer)

Finally, if you’d like to escape the world of writing and blogging advice for a bit … I have novels, too!

They’re contemporary fantasy (think “modern world with demons”) – they’re not too heavy on the fantasy elements, though, so even if you’re not normally a fantasy reader, feel free to give them a try. 😉

Lycopolis, Oblivion and Dominion form a trilogy, and the books very much follow on from one another so I highly recommend reading them in order, starting with Lycopolis.

Here’s the blurb for Lycopolis:

A GRIPPING CONTEMPORARY FANTASY.

Seth has created a tiny, retro online world where he can play god … and Hallowe’en is an excuse to deliver a chilling twist in the story he’s been orchastrating.

Sacrifice a girl. Summon a demon. End the nightmares.

He’s not expecting anything to happen, not really. The demon-summoning is just words on a computer screen; just lines of code.

But it does work – far better than he dared imagine.

As the demon gathers power in the real world, the only person to realise what Seth’s done – and stand against him – is shy first-year student Kay. And she has a dark secret of her own …

Looking for a gripping book with characters you’ll grow to love … plus a good dollop of the supernatural? Try Lycopolis today.

What Readers Say About Lycopolis:

★★★★★ “From beginning to end Lycopolis had me gripped.”

★★★★★ “Lycopolis is a masterful roller-coaster ride of dark and light, secrets and truth, danger and refuge, reality and fantasy.”

★★★★★ “There are few books where the characters are so expertly drawn.”

★★★★★ “You just want to keep turning the pages to see what happens next.”

★★★★★ “Brilliant book that hooked me from the start and kept me entertained until the end.”

★★★★★ “If you like well-written, engaging stories with compelling plots, get yourself a copy of Lycopolis.”

You can get Lycopolis from Amazon here.

Currently, all three novels in the trilogy are $2.99/£1.99. I’m going to be raising the price at the end of the summer, though, to $3.99/£2.99. So if you want a bargain, grab them now! (They’re also available free via Kindle Unlimited, if you’re enrolled in that.)

If you’ve already read one or more of my novels, can I ask for a very kind favour?

I would be SUPER grateful for a review! I love getting reviews because it’s always a thrill (and occasionally eye-opening) to hear what people thought about my writing … but also because reviews help other readers to decide whether or not my novels are for them.

If you’re able to review Lycopolis (or the others!) on your local version of Amazon, or on Goodreads, that would be really lovely. Thank you!

Whew! I hope that’s enough reading to keep you busy for the summer … and I’m looking forward to showing you the new-look Aliventures in September. 🙂

Note: This post was first published in 2011, and updated in July 2018.

Do you struggle to focus when you’re writing, or do you find yourself starting and stopping a lot? It might be because you’re skipping certain stages of the writing process without even realising.

In my post, 7 Habits of Serious Writers, I cover the importance of actually writing, plus the need to redraft. But writing and redrafting aren’t the only stages you need to go through to produce an effective piece of writing.

Every finished writing project, big or small, passes through four stages:

• Planning
• Drafting
• Rewriting
• Editing

Sure, you could potentially publish a blog post without doing any planning, or any rewriting and editing. Unless you’re very lucky, though (or writing something extremely short), you’ll be lacking a clear focus, the structure won’t quite work, and there’ll be clumsy sentences all over the place.

It wouldn’t really be a finished piece. It would be a draft.

The four stages don’t always have to be tackled in order. Sometimes, you’ll find that they can be combined – rewriting and editing, for instance. They don’t necessarily have to be carried out by the same person. (When freelancing, I’ve written blog posts based on other people’s plans, and I’ve often had my work edited by others.)

But it’s crucial to be clear about what each stage involves. If you’re struggling with a particular piece of writing, there’s a good chance that you’ve skipped a step somewhere – or that you’ve tried to do everything at once.

.

Note: This post was originally published in 2012, and was updated in June 2018.

One common issue that standard writing advice covers is how to cut down your first draft.

And this advice comes up time and time again for a good reason. It’s easy to over-write, perhaps telling the reader things that you’ve already shown them, or using five words where one would do, or repeating yourself unintentionally.

But under-writing is a problem too – and one that I don’t often see tackled.

Under-writing often shows up in a failed attempt to reach a word-count:

• You were supposed to write a 1,500 word essay for school, but you finished in 800 words.
• You’re entering a 2,000 word short story competition, but your story is over after 1,000.
• You know that novels in your genre should be at least 80,000 words, but yours is only 50,000.
• You want your blog posts to be at least 500 words, but they keep coming out at 300.

So what can you do about it?

Over the last eight years, I’ve written hundreds (probably thousands!) of blog posts for dozens of different blogs.

I’ve also written quite a bit about blogging. Today, I wanted to share five of my favourite pieces about blogging, all published here on Aliventures over the past couple of years: