Will a Casual Profile Picture Doom Me To Mediocrity? When I first uploaded my profile picture on LinkedIn, I had a number of friends and associates tell me, in no uncertain terms, that I should use a different one. “Something more professional,” they said. I’m not one to ignore advice without checking, so I looked […]
A Late Thank You for a Father’s Day Gift Being a person who cherishes a well-prepared meal—and being Catholic besides—I have often wondered what food is served in heaven. And that is making a huge assumption that I earn my way there. I know homemade ricotta is there, but what else? Sure-Fire Menu Items I know […]
What Do Newspapers, Money Clips, and Garlic Have To Do With Life? I lost my father when I was still a young man of 27. That’s a lot more time than many people get, but it was too early for him to go. I still had a lot to learn. But every year on father’s […]
CreateSpace VS Ingram Spark Print Book Distribution Last week I did the first part of this comparison. You can view it here. This week concludes the post. Weighing the Other Factors Any time that you are comparing services and products, it turns out to be far more complex than you thought it was going to […]
CreateSpace VS Ingram Spark Print Book Distribution I’ve seen a lot of comparisons between CreateSpace (CS) and Ingram (either Lightning Source or Spark). In almost every instance I walk away thinking that it wasn’t a fair comparison. And almost every discussion I’ve seen tends to be the same. The one common ground is that many […]
What Do You Know About Your Characters Character development is the most important aspect of a novel. You might get a few arguments about this statement, but surely almost everyone will place the importance of characters at the first or second position. We’re not going to discuss how you develop your characters, but rather what […]
Punctuation Sometimes I think writers don’t read their own work. If they do, I wonder if they read it with an objective eye or ear. Many people before me have offered this same advice, but I think too many writers ignore it. What advice? To read your work out loud, or have someone else do […]
Email Is Still the Best Marketing Tool This post is for anyone who needs to build an email marketing/subscriber list. I’m an author, so it is written from that point of view. I think that most authors are finally seeing the light and are starting to wonder, “how do I build an email list?” And […]
Talking Dogs and Good Storytelling What Makes Good Storytelling No matter the media, good storytelling requires good material. It doesn’t matter if it’s a book, a movie, or a joke—the material has to be good. But even good material isn’t enough. Any comedian can tell you horror tales of jokes that fell flat or audiences […]
New Interview Book I’m writing to announce the launch of my new book: No Mistakes Interviews: How to Get the Job You Want. It is the second book in the No Mistakes Careers Series. Far too often the people who should get the job, don’t. And the reason they don’t is because they aren’t prepared, or, they make mistakes during the interview process. […]
