The First Sentence of your Book

I once read that the first sentence of a book is powerful. Yes the cover and blurb are what pulls the reader in to buy the book, but the first sentence is what first grabs on and doesn't let go. It should set the stage, get the reader ready to go, let them know "This is how it is, and this is how it's going to continue to be." Hopefully, that message will be that the story is going to be awesome.



Sorry to sound so poetic. Bear with me here.

So, here are some first sentences from books I own:

I'd been waiting for the vampire for years when he walked into the bar.

The day I died started out bad and got worse in a hurry.

I've never given much thought to how I would die.

I never used to keep close track of the phases of the moon.

It rained toads the day the White Council came to town.

The building was on fire, and it wasn't my fault.

Blood leaves no stain on a Warden's grey cloak.

Life is hard, dying is easy.

Mommy forgot to warn the babysitter about the basement.

There is one mirror in my house.

Just when I thought my day couldn't get any worse, I saw the dead guy standing next to my locker.

Ash fell from the sky.

I was sitting at the edge of the clearing, trying not to stare at the body on the ground in front of me.

The funny thing about facing imminent death is that it really snaps everything else into perspective.

The sky was the color of cat vomit.

Part of the problem is that I can't keep my mouth shut.

Wind howled through the night, carrying a scent that would change the world.

She discovered the door a little while after they moved into the house.

I once believed that life was a gift.

Now that I found the way to fly, which direction should I go into the night?

Look, I didn't want to be a half-blood.

My mother used to tell me about the ocean.


Poetic, funny, ominous. All of them say one thing: Something interesting is about to happen. I have taken this lesson about first sentences to heart with my own writing:

A werewolf, a vampire, and a witch all walked into a bar.

This was, literally, the first thing that gave birth to the entire story of Dusted. The phrase had popped into my head when I was thinking about all the paranormal novels cropping up recently. From that point on, Dusted formed from a spark to an idea to a wholly-realized story. It was a perfect first sentence, too. It set up that the story was going to be paranormal, but one that didn't take itself too seriously at times.

Here are more examples of my own:

The house was on fire.

There was something empty about the old man's eyes.

Fourteen years old and her life had come to an end.

Something was moving.

Werewolves growl, vampires hiss, and witches curse.

Some are rather plain, some launch right in, some may change before you see the rest in its completed form, and others won't ever see the light of day.

Still, first sentences are the first step into a long, dedicated journey, whether you're reading it or writing it.

Signs You're Not Ready to be a Professional Writer

Here are a handful of examples that show you either aren't a writer, or that your current manuscript will be going nowhere. Some are actual examples from people I've helped out, others are from my own learning, and some are, hopefully, common sense. Don't fret though! This isn't written so much to poke fun at people (except maybe myself), rather it's a list that you want to use to evaluate and see if there's a mindset you need to change if you want to continue writing.


1. You fantasize more about writing than you actually write.

2. You don't even have a name for it yet.

3. You slam something out and then immediately ask someone to read it.




"Who is she insult Untitled. the epic I wrote in only two hours?

4. You have picked out the actors who will play the main roles of the movie adaptation.

5. You think it will be the next X (X being whatever is a best-seller. Twilight, Harry Potter, Hunger Games.)

6. You refuse to make any edits. This book is your baby!

7. You refuse to change any characters. They are your children!

8. You spend more time watching your Sim write a novel than you do actually writing a novel.

She wrote a bestseller!...but you still have only 5 pages on your own work. 

9. Writing feels too much like homework, and you never do your homework.

10. You will only accept your single short story to be published by an actual publisher, in hardback, no exceptions.

11. When someone critiques your story, you are crushed when they point out something wrong with it.

12. u r a bad speler

13. u hav bad gramer 2

14. You write in a genre because it's currently popular.

15. You write because you want to make gobs of money.

16. Once you finished writing, you're done, no changes needed at all.

17. You assume an editor will just fix everything.

18. You don't read.

Happy Birthday, Dusted! (Freebie Event!)

Dusted was published on June 22nd, 2012. Let's look at some statistics for fun.

Statistics? I'm so excited...

After an hour's work I was able to crunch the numbers provided to me by Amazon. Even though technically some of the money is in Euros and Yen and all that fun currency, I lumped it together because it would take much longer than an hour to figure out conversion rates. So, here they are, over the entire year I have come up with these three numbers.

Copies Sold: 92

Freebie Copies sold: 1,818

Money Made: $47.92

That's it. That's what has been said to me and what I have been passing along to other writers. That is the reality of income you should expect from writing. I bet lemonade stands make more money than that.

Those  little twerps...

Granted, sales of Dusted have slowly been gaining steam as the year has rolled along. For example, I made absolutely no sales in August 2012, whereas in February 2013 I sold 15 copies (and 3 Lender's Library Copies) and made $12.18. That's more than a fourth of my entire sales for the entire year that I made in a single month.

Here are some things I learned:

Cheap is Good

I used to sell Dusted for $1.99 and barely got any sales. Then I lowered it to $1.29. It wasn't until I started selling it for $.99 that I started to get a somewhat steady trickle of sales. One at a time. No one is going to want to pay more than $.99 for an indie author. Why should they? There are a ton of books out there just as indie as yours for only $.99, and they won't give yours a second look if its a penny more.


Free is Better

Every time I gave Dusted away for free I would suddenly get a rise in sales. I would get one or two for a week and, after a freebie event, they would rise up into the tens. If giving it away for free gets me more copies sold, so be it. Not only does it cause an initial rise, ever since my first freebie event, the steady trickle of sales have actually increased.

Set Freebie Events for Weekends

My first freebie event was over the course of 5 days, passing through a weekend. People got about as many freebie copies as the times I have had freebie events for only 2 or 3 days Friday through Sunday. Why? Because people are more likely to have time off on the weekend and that's when they will want to pick up a book, or even just "window shop" on the Internet.

When thinking about Weekends, consider holidays, too. If your book is of a certain genre that can be geared toward a specific holiday, use that to your advantage. I set Dusted to have a freebie event during Halloween last year because it was a paranormal book, and people tend to get in the mood to read certain genres at certain times of the year. You don't see people reading a Christmas Romance on the Fourth of July. However, if your book manages to hold its own without being holiday dependent, you can consider making a freebie event on any holiday. Dusted would work just as well during Thanksgiving weekend as it would on Easter.

So here's to some good luck, and continued sales, for another year, and to celebrate, Dusted will be free today and Saturday (June 22 - 23) Enjoy!

What's in a Name?

Character names are a big deal, some have become incredibly well known (Harry Potter, Katniss Everdeen, Bella Swan), but how do they come about?

When a writer friend and I were talking about our character names it made me really sit down and think about them, as well as think of some advice if you find yourself needing to come up with one. Here are a few examples of how I came up with some names.

When I began writing Dusted I wasn't sure what I would name any of the characters (except for Gemma). The name Crystal had been bouncing in my head for a while to use as a character in one of my stories, so I began with that. Only moments later did I think having the last name as Ball would be hilarious. A witch named Crystal Ball was perfect, and it set the tone nicely for the kind of occasional-comedy I wanted Dusted to be.

Jaden was a little lazy and on the fly for a name, I'll admit, so there's not too much backstory to it. The only thing I wanted was a non-werewolf kind of name. The problem with names is that they're too fitting for the character sometimes, but when you think about it, your name is more of a reflection of your parents and their choices for you. The name Jaden is an example of their mother's New Age rearing of them.

Gemma, meanwhile, was a name I knew I was going to have for a vampire. Gemma is actually the screen name of a friend I met in an MMO game. She was a die-hard, Team Edward, Twilight fan from the south where people say "Pee-can pie" and watch NASCAR while eating fried chicken (her words, not mine). I seriously considered making Gemma (the character) Southern as a nod to her, but a Southern vampire already existed in both the House of Night series and the Sookie Stackhouse/True Blood series, so it would not only be unoriginal these days, but an outright rip off in the eyes of readers.

Moonbeam, Crystal and Jaden's mom, was probably the most fun to come up with. I mentioned before that sometimes names can be too fitting, and I wanted the perfect name for their mom that would be not only be silly, but outright eye roll-inducing. In the first couple of drafts she was actually named Skystar, but it was too awkward. After throwing some ideas around the family, my own mom threw out the idea for Moonbeam, and it stuck. Later, I realized it was fantastic because then it gave me the opportunity for the nickname Moony, which is incredibly fitting.

Although it is never mentioned in Dusted, Gemma's mother is named Joy. This is meant as somewhat black humor on my part.

Rarely, I use a name with an actual meaning. Ophelia is a derivative of the Greek word for "help" and was a name I used for a guardian angel character in a story that will likely never see the light of day.

In a yet-unnamed story I have twin sisters, Sophia and Minerva, they are the names of the Greek and Roman goddesses of Wisdom.

The best advice I can offer for names is this: Keep it Simple.

When I was growing up any pets we had were limited by a naming rule: It had to be 2 syllables at the most. Mister Muffin Pants is a bit of a mouthful for calling your cat, for example, and when naming characters, it will be equally a handful when you're typing it out all day.

The more main the character is, the simpler the name you want to have. If you must have a long, complicated name, consider having a quick nickname. Sir Durand Vaughn Elias isn't just nicknamed Durry because Crystal is trying to press his buttons, let me tell you (but at the same time his long, elaborate name suggests his haughty nature.)

Limit the first letter of names to one per character

The Host by Stephanie Meyer is a good example of why you should do this. In The Host you have Jared, Jamie and Jeb, which, though not quite main, are all pretty major characters. I often found myself getting confused as to which character was which.

Rhyming names are also bad. Dess, Jess, and Melissa are unintentional rhymes in the Midnighters series by Scott Westerfield, of which he addresses.

Finally, don't be afraid to use a random name generator.

Seriously, not every character you make is going to be a Special Snowflake that needs a totally fitting or original name. Some of my best names have been from random name generators, and you can always use it as a place-card until you find a better one.

Never Annoy a Writer on a Bad Day

You might just get a really honest answer...

Consider selling merchandise that will not go out of style in 5 days. The Internet meme merchandizing of recent times has caused me to visit this business less and less often, while the climbing prices only add insult to injury. "Tasteful" has never been a word to describe this business, and I never minded that, but in the last few years the term "Dignity" not only died, its corpse was dug back up, beaten with a shovel, and then slapped on an ironic T-shirt that costs $25 or more.

Although, when I think about it, maybe I should have switched dignity and tasteful.

Twilight: How I learned to enjoy it

Now, you've probably never heard the phrase "I used to hate Twilight" but I'm sure it's happened.

For me, it was when I read another terrible book.

A friend let me borrow a book called Crank, by Ellen Hopkins. It was, hands down, the worst book I have ever read. Not so much with grammar or the flow of the story, but the subject matter itself. It's about a girl who gets addicted to crystal meth and other such substances. One part in particular has stuck in my mind where she smokes a cigarette for the first time, after coughing and hacking she says (I paraphrase here): "I did the sensible thing: I took another drag." I think eventually she gets raped and has a crack-addicted baby. The end.

No, seriously, the end. That's the end of the book.

And then my face was stuck like this for three days.

Bad books stick with you about as well as good ones, and you can't help but think "This book was actually worse than X!" (in my case X=Twilight). You then begin to compare and contrast the level of suckitude. However, I stated blending the ideas of both books when I realized the character's withdrawal from crystal meth in Crank sounded eerily like Bella's feelings and actions when she was away from Edward in Twilight.


I've heard some people describe Edward as less of a vampire and more of an incubus, so let's take a side-step here for some learning (which I will keep at PG-13 for my own sake) and some references so I can try and get you into the right mindframe for a theory.

An incubus is the male equivalent of a succubus. The incubus in folklore are known to seduce and "lie with women" in order to produce offspring. Enough horizontal mambo and the woman starts to get ill and, eventually, die.

In The Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher there are three different types of vampire: Black Court, Red Court, and White Court. For the sake of discussion I'm just going to focus on just certain aspects of the Red and White. Red Court a very narcotic and addictive saliva, which make humans enjoy every moment of their oncoming death, and the White Court are basically incubi and succubi that feed on human emotions and desires. Humans get addicted to White Court vampires as well, and keep coming back for more until, eventually, they're totally consumed and die (though they enjoy every moment of it.)

Combining the crystal meth, incubus folklore, and White and Red Court vampires from those sources, I suddenly had a very interesting take on Twilight. Here it is:

At some point Edward says vampires "sparkle" to attract their prey, but that's just silly. No one is just going to go "Shiny!" and walk right into a pit of spikes where a diamond was dangling from. However, what if the sparkly vampires had a less obvious means of making themselves attractive to humans?

Stephanie Meyer explains a lot of the Twilight-verse in her website that she was either too lazy to explain about in her so-called "saga" or else didn't think about it until people started bugging her about it. One of those questions being how their eyes manage to move around in their heads despite pretty much being made of solid rock. The answer is that they're made entirely of stone and venom (the venom that causes other people to become infected) their eyes are rocks that float in the venom. That means all of their bodily fluids are venom.

Now, logically, the first kiss from Edward would have Bella rolling around and screaming because she'd gotten infected from the saliva in his mouth. Or, later, she'd have certainly gotten infected, erm, on her honeymoon night.

My theory is that, in small doses, Smeyer's vampire venom acts as a highly addictive narcotic. Only in large doses does it cause full-blown vampirism.

I read the book, keeping all this in mind, and it's got some pretty sound evidence to it.

When Bella first meets Edward, sure she's going to watch him, he's a pretty boy. Still, at her first description she does describe the Cullens as the skin around their eyes looking dark like they were all recovering from broken noses. With every description after that, Bella's description of Edward is "Perfect" in one word or another.

I took some notes, so you can even look it up yourself it you want.

Page 45 is when they first touch. Bella describes it as an "Electric hand sting" it's not pleasant to her, it's actually a little painful. We come back to the "All bodily fluids are venom" thing that Meyer herself has confirmed, along with my "Narcotic venom" theory. If all fluids are venom, then that means sweat would be, too, as well as the natural oils on the skin. Edward is, literally, covered in a small amount of venom. When Bella touches him she's coming into contact with the venom for the first time, it would explain the sting she feels as some things can be absorbed though the skin.

By page 56 she's already anxious to see him. You've probably heard of some drugs that take only one use to become addicted. Maybe vampire venom is the same.



Hey Steve, I'm gonna need about 3 more ounces
of Edward Cullen's underarm sweat

The more body contact there is, the more skin absorption Bella has of Edward's sweet, addictive substance.

On page 56, there's full-blown half-body contact while Team Tyler's Van cheers one determined Forks highschooler tries to shorten the series an entire four books by running over Bella and Edward pretty much smothers Bella all over trying to keep the Van of Awesome away from her.

That night, she dreams about him.



Zzzz...Heroin...Er I mean....Edward.

By page 70 she's become incredibly depressed when he ignores her. A few pages later her hands are shaky.

Page 74: "I couldn't allow him to have this level of influence over me. It was pathetic. It was more than pathetic, it was unhealthy." Sounds more like an anti-fan than Bella herself, right? Go check, I'll wait right here...

Are you back? Good...then Ha! I knew you had a copy, too! You're never gonna live this down! I'm going to tell everyone you're Team Jacob and you make out with your Siberian Husky and-

Oh, sorry, got a little off track there. Let's move on.

Of course, by page 79 she's calling him perfect. Page 92 her mind just goes blank. Shaking hands, thinking constantly about getting a fix, and losing her thought processes at the drop of a hat? Hmm, sounds like withdrawal symptoms.

Page 138 and continuing into 139, she's considering Edwards advice that she avoid him and she feels a "Sudden agony of despair" and her mind "rejects the pain." Not bad for knowing him for less than a month.

Page 139: "I didn't know if there ever was a choice. I was already in too deep. Now that I know, if I knew, I could do nothing about my frightening secret. Because when I thought of him, of his voice, his hypnotic eyes, the magnetic force of his personality, I wanted nothing more than to be with him right now."

Replace all mentions of a person with a substance, and if you're like me, it sounds creepy.

Page 141: "I couldn't feel the right kind of fear."  If people are smart, they know the drug they're addicted to is bad, it's wrong, they're aware it's going to kill them.

At page 145, Bella's been having a great day, but all it takes is not seeing Edward at lunch for her to think this: "Desolation hit me with crippling strength" so either she's trying to be poetic by using large words, she's overreaction, or she's freaking out because she can't get her fix, which is becoming more and more needed.

There's the whole alley scene where Bella's rescued by Edward, and he gives her his jacket. She takes a big ol' whiff. Now, I don't have to quote anything for you to know there are inhaled addictive substances.

Page 175, he freaks her out a bit, but her "Spasm of fear" is "stifled by a sense of safety." She has alarm bells going off in her head but there's something tamping them down. Again, we come back to the fact that people are aware that a drug is bad for them and they use it anyway. Also, she's wearing his jacket at the time, the one probably just dripping in venom from being worn so often (sorry, too gross?)

Page 190, Bella says "Not seeing you. It makes me anxious, too." I can understand Edward being anxious, his food (ie: Bella) is off wandering around being stupid. You'd be worried too if you had a delicious bucket of chicken wandering around a city full of cats and dogs (You attached wheels to the bottom of it...I have no idea why.)

On page 193 she smells his breath and notices it smells the same as his jacket. I don't know about you, but I would never want my breath to smell like my jacket or my jacket to smell like my breath. The only explanation is that venom has a smell to it.

By page 195 she's totally in love.

Page 211 "If I had to, I supposed I could purposefully put myself in danger to keep him close." That's certainly a far cry from the previous "I couldn't allow him to have this level of influence over me." Although she discards the idea of putting herself in danger, she does so for the wrong reasons, not because it's stupid or even a sick idea, it's because she knows she'd get in trouble....It's also pretty impressive what people will do to get another hit of their addiction. You know...just saying...

Page 219, she's got an "Overpowering craving to touch him."

This is only half of the book. I didn't manage to read it all in time to make this post. It's just slow and I had other books occupying my time.



A satyr in a wedding dress. How could I resist?

Anyway, I didn't really need to finish it. I've made my point. I'm loving every moment of my reread because it's not the loving story of an air-headed moron falling for a bi-polar prettyboy. It's the dark, sick story of a normal girl who becomes addicted to a narcotic substance that causes her to fall out of touch with her friends, school, family, the real world and eventually ends with her death (and subsequent rebirth into a venom-producing monster to lure more hapless humans.) This doesn't even count all the eye-gaze-induced brain-scrambling Edward does to control Bella and everyone else around them.

So remember kids, don't do drugs.

...And don't lick Edward Cullen.

Twilight: The Upside

Everything has an upside, even if you hate everything about Twilight with a burning passion, you really should stop and think about it.

I think what started the spark was Meyer's The Host. I was hearing that people who hated Twilight actually liked The Host. I was curious, but also terrified. I felt like someone feeding a treat to a dog that had bitten off three of my fingers a month ago. Had it not been for a good friend loaning it to me, I probably never would have read it.

The book still sat on my end table for a long time, gathering dust (If you ever read this: Sorry Olive! Nobody likes a dusty book!) because I was actually too scared to read it. The book I was reading at the time, though, eventually ran out of pages and The Host still beckoned, so I decided to read it.

I was actually pretty impressed. It had its problems, like how many character's names start with J that it starts to get confusing about who said what, and it's a little drawn out, but I can say I enjoyed it. Enough to buy my own copy, even.

That was when I realized I didn't hate Stephanie Meyer, I hated Twilight. It happened again when I read The Short Second Life of Bree Tanner. As long as Meyer's golden boy Edward wasn't in a story, it did well. Even then, I have to admit that when I read the Twilight series, and later watched the movies, that there's something there buried under the dung heap of the story. Meyer's writing has a spark, a really good potential, but it's bogged down in a poor choice of content and may never truly see the light of day.

It also took someone telling me that Twilight opened the door for a lot of first-time authors to get published for it to really sink in. When new authors loved Twilight they wrote a book because they loved it so much, when new authors hated Twilight they wrote a book because they hated it so much. "I can do better than that," has been the beginning of a lot of amazing books.

Including Dusted.

Twilight may not have started Dusted, I'm not even quite sure any more, but I can certainly say my disgust at the series certainly provided a good motivator. It has also allowed for the resurrection of books. Most notably L.J. Smith's Vampire Diaries and Nightworld series.

Here are a handful of books that I'm absolutely certain wouldn't have gone far without Twilight's help (and these are just the ones I'm aware of)

Blue Bloods series by Melissa De La Cruz

Hush Hush by Becca Fitzpatrick

House of Night series by P.C. Cast

Darkest Powers and Darkness Rising series by Kelly Armstrong

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Mortal Instruments series by Cassandra Clare

Unearthly trilogy by Cynthia Hand

Hex Hall series by Rachel Hawkins

Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl


These days I think you're seeing less and less of the supernatural  because now the next gold rush authors are running for is the dystopian overdrive from The Hunger Games (that is, perhaps, another post for another day.)

You also have to give Stephanie Meyer some credit for taking a lot of flak and hatred. Sure, she is probably the most well-known author for having childish hissy-fits, but she's never lashed out very badly at her fans, and she doesn't hate what she's created (jaded actors and rude musicians, please take note)

Taking a step back and analyzing Twilight let me see some very interesting aspects of it and even taught me how to read something in an entirely different light of what is intended in the otherwise shallow meaning. One that I will share with you soon.