Last Indie Author Appreciation Day I brought you horror writer extraordinaire, Harvey Click. Today, I’m in the mood for something (someone?) substantially less… gory.

Introducing Lynda Wilcox, author of the Verity Long Mysteries — charming books to cozy up to in the wee hours, while the hubby’s sonorous snoring, once so endearing, now brings thoughts of murder to mind. Thank goodness you have a murder to solve, and not to perpetrate!

For those of you who don’t know, a “cozy” is a mystery in which the crime is solved by someone other than the police, the FBI, or even a private investigator — a private citizen with a tendency to trip over bodies, and a keen eye for the facts. In some cases, it’s an old lady who could out-sleuth the pros with two knitting needles tied behind her back. (Agatha Christie’s Miss Marple, the ultimate cozy crime solver, for example.) In the Verity Long Mysteries, our heroine  (um…

Thanks to the rain, it’s time to start picking basil leaves and make some tasty pesto.

Guess what I made today. I love pesto and thanks to all the rain we’ve had lately, my basil plants are growing like gang-busters. I had enough basil leaves for two cups of delicious pesto!

Pesto is a great low-carb topper for chicken breasts and fish. I’ve even used it in place of salad dressing too. For lunch I’m using on fresh mozzarella and tomatoes. Yum!

Unlike most pesto recipes, I use walnuts instead of pine nuts. Pine nuts are way too expensive and frankly, I prefer the walnut flavor. The wonderful thing about pesto is you can experiment with the types of nuts (and sometimes seeds). For this batch, I used both walnuts and macadamias.  When it’s time for the 2nd basil picking, I plan to use pistachios (that should make the green…

Yesterday, I read this:

The Top Ten Storytelling Cliches that Need to Disappear Forever

Did you read it? Or did you skip to here? If you skipped, that’s okay. Who’s gonna know? But the rest of this post will make more sense if you click on the link and at least skim the list of cliches, m’kay?

Now: Here’s what I think about that post:

“I agree! And I’m dancing with glee!”

“Huh?” you say. “How can you agree that a writer shouldn’t use this list of cliches? For fuck’s sake, Hyperlink from Hell is loaded with them!”

To which I say: “You bet it is! It’s front-end loaded! It’s satire, remember? I can’t begin to say how thrilled I am to have hit the bullseye on 7 out of 10 of these!”

But listen: Hyperlink isn’t JUST satire. It isn’t just Pinocchio, poking his little (and sometimes not-so-little) nose into society’s blowhole to see where…

How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy By: Orson Scott Card

From one of the all-time bestselling authors of science fiction and fantasy writing comes an excellent resource for beginners or pros. How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy by Orson Scott Card covers topics such as the creation of worlds and alien societies and the use and rules of magic, topics specific to the genre. Learn creative science fiction and fantasy writing from one of the masters.

Review:

Whatever you think of Orson Scott Card’s beliefs he is known for his science fiction so I thought it would be interesting to read his book.

I learned some things that I should have done with my Amelia Bennett Chronicles books, though I don’t think they’ve suffered and I can certainly use what I learned in future episodes.

I decided that I never wanted to write hard sci-fi.

I was just…

I have free coupon codes for potential reviewers of the audiobook version of The Girl on the Mountain. The code is to be redeemed on the Audible.com site, and the review posted on my page there.

Check out the listening sample on Audible.com, and tell me of your interest in a comment here (or email me – see the Contact page). If you’re in the UK, I can provide a code for the UK site.

Listen to the sample:  http://bit.ly/RcVtK6

Siamese-twin brains. Viruses that eat patients’ memories. Blind people who “see” through their tongues. Stroke victims who can’t speak but can still sing…

The Tale of the Dueling Neurosurgeons: The History of the Human Brain as Revealed by True Stories of Trauma, Madness, and Recovery 

Breaking news…A suspenseful, “hearty [and hardy] historical” novel today made its first appearance as an Audible book.  You may check out the audio sample at

 http://bit.ly/RcVtK6

Audio versions will soon be available at iTunes and at Amazon.com.

My thriller, The Golden Grave (http://goo.gl/lBwn6k), which is set in the old battlefields of post-World War One Flanders, is FREE for the next three days (April 25-27).

It’s a tale of lust, greed and double-dealing (they say write what you know!) which follows Liam Mannion, the character from my previous novel, Tan. The synopsis for The Golden Grave is below, to give you an idea of what it’s about.

I’d love you to download the book (click on the link above), and I hope you enjoy it. If you would, please share this post.

Thanks,

David

SYNOPSIS: 1920 – Former British soldier turned republican fighter Liam Mannion is on the run with a price on his head. He looks up with old comrade Ernie Wood, who is being lured back to the battlefields on the Western Front in search of lost gold.

The source of the story is Liam’s former…

Last time I did this, a whole lot less of the world was colored in.  But now? 

BOOYAH!!  Check that out:

You could almost circumnavigate off that map.  The Improbable Author has now had over 10,000 views, which I realize are merely a single afternoon’s numbers for John Scalzi, but I’m geeking out about it pretty hard nonetheless.  Most of my readership (and most of my ASID sales) are in the ol’ USA, naturally, followed in a distant second by the UK, then Canada, Australia, and Germany.  Sweden is next, which is a bit of a surprise, but then you’ve got Brazil, which is a HUGE surprise.  My wife is Portuguese-American, but not the South/Brazil brand of either of those ethnicities, and I’m a northern European – Native American mutt.  No ties there other than a love of kick-ass science fiction and pithy blogging, one supposes.  Either way, I’ve got a…

It’s Indie Author Appreciation Day! (Yes, I just made that up.) Today, I’m appreciating Mark Capell, author of Cafe Insomniac and much, much more, including this guest post:

Will Audiobooks Change Writing Styles?

by Mark Capell

Recently, Audible.com brokered a deal with the author David Hewson to publish his latest book, Flood, well ahead of its print run. As audiobooks rise in popularity, will the way they’re written change?

As David pointed out, audio “is the original form of storytelling. It’s what Homer did. Homer was not a writer, he was a storyteller”. I’ve always had a fondness for aural storytelling. I once met one of the few traditional storytellers still working the pubs in the UK, in the old folk tradition. He was such a vibrant performer, living the story he was telling, sometimes veering off into the melodramatic, but always finding a way to convey his enthusiasm. I asked him if…