Lowrywrites.com

5000 word tip for your 50,000 word novel As far as writing your first novel goes, a lot of people are concerned about length.  Let's admit it's mostly men.  A lot of men are very obsessed with length.  Maybe it's a competitive holdover from caveman days when Grog would glance over to Og and grunt, "My novel is bigger than yours."  Ugh. So let's get it straight.  Length does not matter in indie publishing. It's all about the story man.  Be fun, be fast and be interesting. That's the way to get it done. Make your first page a page turner, build little story arc's into each chapter, add some cliffhanger situations so folks will want to keep reading and you've hit upon the golden formula.  Oh yeah, your hero needs to be redeemed, and learn something and be kinda likable, and your bad guy needs to have more than one dimension.   Unless your bad guy is the kind of villain where only one dimension is needed.  Pinky and the Brain o...

How often do you ask for help? One of the biggest problems I have is asking for help for anything.  I remember when my ex-wife and I decided to move back from California after my first daughter was born.  I flew her and the baby back to her parents house in Arkansas, then flew back to California, rented a 27 foot truck and proceeded to load an entire 3 bedroom duplex into the back of the truck by myself.  After a day of loading, I climbed in the truck and started the 2000 mile cross country trek alone.  And when we arrived, I would have unloaded by myself until a back spasm hit and knocked me to the ground.  Even then I still limped around picking up lighter boxes and smaller things all the while favoring my right side. It's crazy and I wish I knew where it came from. It's a fear, I know, almost a phobia.  Maybe I'm afriad people will see me as weak.  Maybe I'm afraid that by asking for help, I'll owe something.  I've spent some time meditat...

I'm after what we're all after, which is to make a decent living writing.  Yes, I've read/heard and even lived the statistics.  It's tough work, very tough work, and you may have to adjust your definition of "decent living" to accommodate.  But hope springs eternal and all of that... I've been in marketing and sales for years, and I know some of the tips and techniques.  Promotion for Kindle ebooks and Kindle Unlimited is sometimes a different beast.  I won't lament the level of shite on the electronic bookshelves, hell, I've even read some of it and enjoyed. But no F#cking wonder it's so hard for any writer to get noticed. Which is why you should find someone, like JA KONRATH , and study what they do, then use their business model and career as your business model. I made a little money in Sept: and Oct is starting off with the same trend.  But as I mentioned before I want to be like you and make a decent living as an indie author-pr...

On April 30, I was let go from my corporate job.  It was a pretty sweet director's position, one I had created especially for me through years of hard work and dedication.  In fact, the team I led was so successful, the company used our practices and business model for the majority of segments in the remainder of 2015 and planning for 2016.  It was all about growth. I think it was Spider Man's uncle who said, with great growth comes great accountability.  Or something like that.  It's kind of hard to hear an old man gurgling out his last words when he's bleeding out in an alley.  RIP Ben Parker.  Now pour your 40 on the ground. Back to my growth.  The bosses higher up wanted someone in charge of my segment to oversee all the growing we were planning.  So in Sept 2014, they brought in a guy who instantly decided I had to go.  There's something inherently wrong about companies that allow this sort of culling to go on.  You have ...

Send my Free Book For Email Newsletters you can trust. As you know there are three steps to becoming a best selling author, Write it, Publish it, and Promote it.  Sounds pretty simple, right?   It is simple, but it's not always easy.  Unless you have a map and a blueprint. They say a fool learns from his own mistakes, a wise man learn's from another's.  I've been both a fool and a wise man, especially when it comes to hacking KDP shortcuts. I wrote a book teaching you how to write your very own book in 14 days.  I wrote a guide on how to publish your new book to KDP, and most important, I've written the Best Seller HOW TO LIFEHACK KDP Publishing and Dominate your Niche, so you make money from your book. I used this blueprint step by step to take 3 books to #1 in 3 different categories!   And it's yours at no cost.  Just click sign up for my newsletter below and I'll send you a pdf copy for free!  I'll also share some boo...

Like most authors, I have done a ton of writing over the years.  The unlucky part for me is that I like to write by hand with a pen and notebook, which means I have to spit it all out onto the blank page, and then turn around and type it up. I've tried writing at the typrewriter, and I can, but it lacks some of the emotional urgency that I think handwriting can.  Or maybe it's less sensual than the pen, and who on earth would think writing every genre BUT adult writing would be sensual. As I start type up, talk to text and hire out the thousands of pages of scribbled words, I keep running across little "gems" or stories I wrote a long time ago, but never followed up with.  What's a guy to do?  Dust 'em off, type 'em up and turn 'em into anthologies, or novellas or small ebooks and market them on Kindle. In the month of September, I put 5 new titles up on Kindle, which brings my total to 7.  In Sci Fi, I had a top 20 bestseller, and the sale...

I'm watching Popemania running wild in news updates.  It's amazing the reach this man has, and how people respond to him.  One headline suggested Congress was in tears over his talk to politicians.  Which left me wondering: What would you say if you could reach a BILLION PEOPLE? Soem suggest the power of the Vatican is waning as the number of Catholics fall.  There are still a billion though, scattered in South America, Africa and across Western Europe.  And many of them listen to the Pope. My familiarity with Vatican politics extends just a little beyond the DA VINCI CODE and other conspiracy theories regarding suppression, oppression and commission throughout history.  Heck, I know for a fact that Pope Innocent had a couple hundred Templars rounded up, tortured and killed because he wanted their power and treasure.  When Popes team up with kings, it changes the world. There are so few Kings left that this Pope may find it hard to tag team a...