A Pratfall to Avoid When Writing Short and a BOOK FREE through Friday!

Write Short to Succeed Just Released in Audio! Read on for how to get a FREE EBOOK or AUDIO BOOK copy!

Much of the reason for my success in writing short stories comes from my avid reading of short stories. Recently, I've noticed a disturbing and major flaw in many of the short stories I read. 

They're too long. They're padded. This is bad for a novel and much worse for a short story. This happens most often in anthologies or collections from a number of authors.

I've wondered about why this might be occurring so often and come up with a possible explanation. In this era of eBooks, publishers of anthologies, whether they be traditional or authors in a collective, sometimes focus on word count of the individual stories to the detriment of the collection.

Now I've submitted and published in many anthologies over, um, a number of years. Since I'm now focused on several other writing projects, I don't submit as often as I used to. However, I still check anthology calls.

A number of them now have strict limits on words. No less than 3500 words is common.  In romance, often the short stories must be longer, no less than say 5000 or 6000 words.

Why? I believe it may be because the publishers are attempting to have a large number of pages. Because of eBooks, readers expect a lot of reading for their money. In order for a publisher to be able to set a good price for an eBook, there have to be quite a few pages. Or so many of the publishers seem to think.

I may be wrong in this, if so please mention it in the comments! Whether I'm wrong or right, there's an easy solution: have your stories the length they're meant to be. Resist the urge to pad to be able to submit. Realize that a satisfactory read is far better than one that slogs. Remember that a well written story will sell.

Now: FREEBIES! Today through this Friday Write Short to Succeed is FREE on Amazon!
AND: If you comment and give me your email address I will send you a code for a FREE download of the Write Short to Succeed from Audible. (Comments with addresses will not be published.)

ENJOY!

How to Fail Perfectly and FREE EBOOK!

Perfectionism is a sneaky, underhanded destroyer of creativity. A powerful energy suck.

Now, I can hear all you creative people out in Creative Land shouting: "I know all about the pitfalls of perfectionism! I've read the articles! I don't do that anymore. I'm perfect at not doing that anymore!"

Re-read my last exclamation. That's why I called perfectionism sneaky and underhanded. Even if we recognize how attempting to be perfect in any endeavor leads to frustration and failure, still we struggle. An example? I just rewrote the last sentence five times. In a first draft.

If you're an artist, do you find yourself starting a project over again before you finish? As a dancer do you find yourself practicing a step even after you know you're doing it "well enough" to move on? For a musician, do you get stuck on a piece?

And of course, for myself as an author, I rewrite and rewrite before I finish the draft.

Why? Why does this happen?

The simple answer: perfectionism sneaking in, that little monster.

For one simple reason: creative people want to be the best ever with their creations.

That's a good and powerful thing. That is to be commended. Celebrated. We work at our craft. We know we must try and try again to improve our craft.

Except. Except. Perfectionism rears its ugly, ugly head--as in, look, a cliche! In writers, it crawls in under the guise of the all-powerful editor.  "That's an awkward sentence..," the editor whispers.

So, what to do?

One trick: recognize and gently, gently escort the critic out of your mind. Recognize that the impulse to perfectionism is only the impulse to improve--gone a little wild. Accept the gift of the impulse without giving in to it.

When you catch yourself in perfectionism mode, work to not beat yourself up about it. Instead see the steps above and exercises below.

Exercises:

1. Keep a list of what sets you off into perfectionism. Jot down when it happens. Are you tired? Are you trying to force the work? Is it a new work? An old one you haven't been able to finish? Don't try to change/fix/judge the list as in "I'll finish the old work or die trying!" Just observe.

2. When perfectionism is whispering or even shouting, answer it, gently, with reasons. "Yes, that is an awkward sentence. They happen. I'm not perfect." And then move on.

3. OR: shout at it, argue with it, be totally ridiculous with it. "I love my awkward sentences! They're perfect!"

3. If the perfectionism blocks you completely, it's okay to let it win, for that moment. Switch projects. Go play on another project. Take a total break and walk away.

Now for some FREEBIE fun! Through Thursday, June 22, 2017, Mild West Mysteries: 13 Idaho Tales of Murder and Mayhem is FREE! Enjoy!

FREE now in eBook! Go here: Mild West Mysteries. 

Three Awesome Books for a teaser of Book Sale coming August 6th!

Fun, Fun, Fun!

There will be over 20! authors selling their books at the Book Extravaganza this August 6th. A wide range of genres and styles will be represented, enough for any reader to find much to read! 

Many will be on sale or offering other specials. Here's three to tease.

Register to win a FREE copy!

Finding hope in all the wrong places.

Rebecca is a well published author. In her Christian romances she demonstrates why. 

And all her titles at the book sale will be ON SALE for only $10 each! Plus you can register to win a free copy of her latest work, Winds of Change. Find out more about Rebecca and her wonderful writing at her Amazon author page.

One Brick at a Time, a heart wrenching and heart warming biography you won't want to put down.

One Brick at a Time is Elaine Oostra's life story. She shares her fond and sometimes humorous memories of childhood as well as the struggles and pain of growing up with a mom who suffered from mental illness. 

Want some fun, fast reading? Mild West Mysteries abounds in thirteen cozy mystery short stories of the West as never seen before. 

Also, I'll be running a Buy One Get One of Same or Lesser Price HALF OFF with all my four titles: Starke Naked Dead, Mild West Mysteries, The Mall Fairies: Exile and Write Short to Succeed. 

For more about me and my wacky Idaho adventures, visit my Amazon author page.

Hope to see you Saturday!

One Reason Amazon Rules the Book Publishing World and an Opportunity for Great Free Reads!

Foul Wind by Kathy McIntosh is a humorous mystery set in wacky North Idaho. Want an opportunity to read it for free? Then read on!

The publishing world keeps changing and Amazon keeps coming up with excellent ideas that are part of that change. One of Amazon's newest publishing ventures is KindleScout, in which the readers act as acquiring editors and pick the titles to be published! I think this is a brilliant idea. Who better to pick books they want to read than the readers? And Amazon came up with a great idea to "pay" those readers, if a title you nominate is bought and published by Amazon, you get that title for FREE when it's published! Woot! 

Plus, it's easy to do. Just head over to KindleScout and sign in with your Amazon account. The site is easy to navigate and each book has a cover, a blurb and the first three chapters for you to peruse. You can only nominate three books at a time and they are only up on KindleScout for 30 days so I usually go to "Ending Soon" first and take a look.

Except when I know the book is something I want to read! Foul Wind by Kathy McIntosh is such a book! Here's the blurb: 

Noses wrinkle in Hancock, Idaho, when a foul wind blows from the new wind turbine at a nearby hog farm. When a blackmailer threatens to reveal secrets about the development and its investors, suspicion falls on Feather Sullivan and her sister, compelling their mother to meddle. Interfering moms on a hog farm get messy—and deadly—fast! When the blackmailer ends up murdered, Feather and a mouth-watering PI seek answers while she tries to keep her snooping mother from becoming another victim.

Just my type of humorous mystery, perfect for an cup of tea and cozy chair afternoon. If it's your cup of tea too, head over to Foul Wind soon as there is only 8 days left to nominate this title!

Dear readers, what do you think of KindleScout? Love it? Hate it? Or?

Carrot Cake Muffin Recipe, A Free Cookbook, and a Link to Bottlecap Jewelry Making! Summer Fun!

Hopefully this kinda unappetizing photo of a Carrot Cake Muffin will give you a smile, for this Smile Power Day! Recipe follows.

It's time for summer fun, so let's start out with what to take on a picnic. These muffins are gluten, soy, egg and dairy free and delicious, I promise! They also travel and freeze well.

Gluten Free, Egg Free, Soy Free, Dairy Free Carrot Cake Muffins

Crusty outside, moist inside

Makes 6 good sized muffins

Ingredients:

1 ½ cups gluten free flour mix (consistency will differ a little depending on mix)

¼ cup dark brown sugar or molasses (muffins will not be very sweet, can add more sugar if you prefer, molasses will make a bit sticky)

2 teas bicarbonate of soda

2 teas baking powder

2-3 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1 ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg

¾  to 1 cup food processed until fine carrots

½ cup sultana raisins (may be omitted, I always omit these because I don’t like raisins in food)

1 cup nuts, walnuts or pecans (may be omitted)

¼ cup vegetable oil (coconut oil works best)

 2 teas apple cider vinegar or white vinegar

1 cup applesauce plus ¼ cup coconut, almond, cashew or rice milk

2-3 teas vanilla

Directions:

Add the ingredients into a mixing bowl in the same order as listed.

Mix well. Mixture will not be terribly thin, if it is add flour

Place muffin papers in a large muffin pan.

Scoop mixture into papers until well filled. Gently tap down until you have a imperfect “muffin top.”

Bake at 350 degrees for 15-20 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean.

More easy, cheap and "regular" dessert recipes can be found in The Mall Fairies Sweet Tooth Recipes, along with short stories of the fairies from my Mall Fairies  series FREE today only here.

Bottle Cap Jewelry are fast, cheap and easy to make gifts, here are a few ideas for Christmas ones.

Visit my post on Lois Winston's blog Killer Crafts and Crafty Killers for how to make cheap, easy bottle cap jewelry, great for summer fun for kids and adults alike! Lois is the editor of Bake, Love, Write: 105 Authors Share Dessert Recipes and Advice on Love and Writing. On page 99, you'll find my recipe for Soda Cracker Pie, another easy recipe and cool and delicious for those long hot summer nights!

Enjoy! Celebrate! And what's your favorite thing about summer?
.

   

In Honor of Tell A Fairy Tale Day today, a FREE book with Fairy Tales and Recipes!

FREE today and full of fun stories and recipes!

It's Tell A Fairy Tale Day! What better than The Mall Fairies Sweet Tooth Cookbook, full of tales of my Mall Fairies? And to give you a taste, here's a story and a recipe from the cookbook, with our heroine, Swoop. Enjoy!

SWOOP SAVES THE COOKIE LADY

Now, I don’t like humans. Overall, they’re not a good thing for fairies. Overall, they’re dangerous for fairies. Overall, they’re fatal for fairies. Yeah, sure, we fairies live in the attic of a shopping mall that is full of humans, but they don’t know we’re here. If they manage to spot us, they think we’re birds or, ugh, bats. And that includes the Cookie Lady. We sure know the Cookie Lady exists, though. Her store in the mall’s Food Court is our favorite. Or it was. A couple of weeks ago, a sign showed up in her window saying the Cookie Lady would close soon.

We fairies panicked. No more snickerdoodles (my favorite), chocolate toffee squares or even the chocolate peanut butter no-bake oatmeal cookies? Unthinkable. So I snuck into the air conditioning vent to spy. And while almost freezing to death, I discovered that the Cookie Lady’s sales had fallen way off. The stupid humans had gotten bored with her selection. Who could get bored with snickerdoodles?

At first, I believed we were doomed to be cookie-less forever more, but then when I spotted the Cookie Lady working on the her computer and leaving it up and running, I got a great idea. It took three hours of me surfing the Internet by jumping up and down on the keys (I’m only five and a half inches tall) but I found a great new recipe for the Cookie Lady to try. I added directions for a “cookie launch” and left the printout where she’d be sure to find it. She took the idea and added more new cookie selections including mine, and now all the fairies and humans are gaining weight from eating all her cookies. And the Cookie Lady’s store is saved!

Here’s the recipe I found:

 WALNUT SHORTBREAD

Ingredients:

1/2 cup walnuts                                    

1 cup white flour

1 stick (1/2 cup) unsalted butter, or baking margarine, room temperature, plus more for pan

1/2 cup chocolate bits (mini baking choc. bits work best, but any chocolate is great)

1/4 cup powdered sugar

1 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat oven to 325. Pulse walnuts in grinder until finely ground. Transfer to bowl, add flour & stir thoroughly. Beat butter, sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy, add flour mix and beat until combined. Stir in chocolate bits. Butter 8 inch round cake pan, place dough in pan, cover with plastic wrap and press until dough is spread evenly in pan. Cut with sharp knife into eight wedges, prick all over with fork. Bake until golden and firm in center, 30-35 minutes. Re-cut into wedges and prick again. Done!

VARIATIONS: This works well with other nuts, especially pecans. But cashews, Brazil nuts and macadamia nuts may be used. Be sure the nuts are unsalted and not roasted and check the shortbread often to make sure it's not getting overdone. May also substitute coconut oil for the butter.

If you've enjoyed this story, check out my 3 in 1 book bundle, The Mall Fairies and save a bundle on these two novels and stand alone short story!

And to my readers, what's your favorite shortbread recipe? Mine is the one above, as it's simple and easy, two of my favorites!

 

Leftovers? An Easy, Money Saving, Healthy Recipe, Plus a Cookbook Free Today!

Slumgullion is one featured recipe in Starke Deadly Delicious Recipes, FREE today!

 Don't know what to do with all those lovely leftovers? Slumguillion to the rescue! 

My of-Scots-descent mom always made slumgullion for Sunday Dinner because it was always different and always delicious. What is slumgullion, you ask? Simple: mixed up leftovers. Not so simple, because if you mix up the wrong leftovers you get ... cooked garbage. Aunt Maddie does this when she makes this dish in my Starke Dead mystery series. But if you follow a few simple rules, slumgullion will become a Sunday Dinner staple in your home too!

RULES:

Think of like with like and ingredients you'd use together in dishes. In the example pictured above, I took leftover chili (steak, chili sauce, tomatoes), leftover Mexican casserole (hamburger, corn, chilis and carrots) and leftover pasta and combined. Yum!

If you have a lot of one leftover and a little of another, and not quite enough to make a meal consider another item that would combine well with your ingredients. I might add beans or some spaghetti squash to the recipe above. Or add a side dish too, a salad, perhaps.

Avoid mixing too strong of flavors, sweets and sours, for example. If Aunt Maddie was making the recipe above, she'd add apple pie! Okay, an extreme example, but Aunt Maddie is pretty extreme herself. Also avoid too many different added spices. Both these mistakes will make the food taste strange and murky.

If you have "simple" leftovers, such as cooked vegetables and chicken, consider which spices to use and try different ones for a "refreshed" dish. (I might use coriander, thyme and pepper for the vegetables and chicken, for example.)

Avoid mixing tomatoes, vinegar or lemon juice with peas, green beans and/or broccoli as the green vegetables will turn brown and bitter.

One last trick: You can always pour gravy over everything, yum! My favorite gravy recipe follows this recipe in Starke Deadly Delicious Recipes.

Sirens on Death Starke Blvd, another money saver with five authors and four books!

And my mom would be cross if I didn't mention another great deal, the first novel in my Starke Dead series, Starke Naked Dead, is in a book bundle right now! Sirens on Death Starke Blvd has five authors and four books for $1.99, for a limited time. So if you enjoy the free today Starke Deadly Delicious Recipes, head on over to get this bundle and read more of Dora Starke and her ongoing problems, one of which is named Aunt Maddie!

So dear readers, got any leftover recipes for us?