Author Archive: Sandra Herner
I help writers with professional editing that helps them turn their stories (particularly: mysteries, SF/F and series) into published books that engage readers.
The Overlooked Key to Selling a Book – Blurbs
It is called a blurb, which doesn’t even start to give this package of words the respect it should! It would need to be called “The Almighty” or “Atom Bomb” to give it a title with the impact of its…
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Character Ages in Children’s Stories
If you write for children, have you clearly indicated the age of your characters somewhere early in the story? Writers sometimes think that leaving that fact vague allows the young readers to believe the characters are their own age, whether…
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Guest Blogger Interview – a Worthwhile Promotion?
Many of my writers who have their books already published are looking for ways to promote their books. Sometimes they find themselves invited to be interviewed in someone’s blog and they feel flattered (as rightly they should). This is called…
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Elevator Pitches – Summer Conference Mistakes!
It’s time for the infamous Summer Writing Conferences! Stellar speakers, anxious agents, popular publishers and the masses of winsome writers. (I’m feeling alliterative today!) The fact is that I’ve been to numerous conferences, back when I was actively writing versus…
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The Best Advice for Any Fiction Writer
My first piece of writing advice came from an unlikely (and a NOT recommended) source: my husband. Why I was inspired to suddenly write a story, I don’t know. It was one of those “do it now!” needs that bubble…
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The Squiggles of Punctuation: Colons and Semicolons
Don’t be afraid of punctuation marks! They are just squiggles on a page that are special tools made just for you: the writer. Two punctuation marks seem to be a particular bug-a-boo for writers.
COLONS
A colon allows writers…
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Creating the Perfect Novel Title–or Not
Two of my writer-clients recently had the same problem: They chose the perfect title for their book, only to discover it already graces the cover of a published book. Others are agonizing over finding ANY title! What to do?
And…
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Financial Chaos: Is This the Time to Submit to Publishers?
A writer-client, who just finished her book manuscript, asked: “What are your personal thoughts about submitting a manuscript anywhere at the present time? I was going to wait until life might be more settled. What would you do if you…
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Writers – Green Lights, Red Lights (and how to turn them green again!)
Congratulations to every writer who weathered the social, political and climatic storms of 2012 and kept writing in the face of it all. It is that ability (or is it need?) to write that helps us all to get through…
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