I've talked about backing up your data before. In that discussion, I outlined some of the methods I was using at the time to insure my data was always safe. Chief amongst those were:

1. Make a new copy of the file in question at regular intervals.
2. If your application supports a "make backup copy" feature (like Microsoft Word), use it.
3. Periodically copy your data files to a secondary hard drive or other device.
4. Make backups to removable media, like a DVD, and take that media to an off-site location.
5. Use cloud storage.

That was 2008, and here we are in 2012. Fours years might not seem like a lot of time, and, in tru... [More]

Surprise. Shock. Pity. Scorn.

Those were the range of emotions I felt once I'd read through what amounts to the complete and absolute implosion of an indie writer's career.

It all started with an unfavorable book review on BigAl's Books and Pals site where Big Al reviews indie novels. The book is The Greek Seaman. Its author, Jacqueline Howett. Big Al rated the novel 2 stars out of 5, not because of the story itself, but because of the numerous grammatical and spelling errors. He actually makes it a point to say that the story itself is interesting, but that the numerous errors create too many stumbling points for the r... [More]

This is a reference post providing some links to resources that discuss manuscript formatting with a few notes of my own at the end. I'll update as needed.

If you have any resources of your own, feel free to post a comment below. I'd love to make this a more comprehensive resource.

Here are the links:

• Holly Lisle's How to Format a Manuscript
• Wikipedia: Manuscript format
• Mary Soon Lee's Standard Manuscript Format
• Writing World: A Quick Guide to Manuscript Format
• Pam McCutcheon's Manuscript Format for Fiction Novels
• Robert J. Sawyer's Manuscript Format Checklist
• SFWA ... [More]

I'm wrapping up my second novel, a fantasy/steampunk adventure novel which I'll likely blog about in more detail soon. But as I begin to think about my next novel, I already know there's some things that I want to stay away from and some things I want to try. I'm calling these my "story rules". Think of them as guidelines; not necessarily set in stone, but I'm going to look to them as I start outlining. If and when I violate one of them, I'm going to have to rationalize such rule breaking (only to myself, of course).

As an example of a rule, a writer of fantasy might have one called "No elves". Anot... [More]