D L Richardson

Christmas is almost upon us. Promoting a book online during this time of year is hard work, mostly because book sales comes from the book stores. Nobody can get a book to you by the time you're wrapping your presents under the tree. It's impossible to compete with the big publishers.

So I thought I'd do a fun post this week.

Top 50 Curious facts.

BUT, I can't let you know the top 50 curious facts without telling you the reason for collecting them. My three YA novels were bundled together last Christmas. As part of the forthcoming promotion I searched for 50 curious facts.

So here they are. Which fact is your favourite curious fact?


1.Cats can’t taste sweets
2.Winter lasts for 21 years on Uranus
3.A speck of blood contains about five million red cells
4.In the Chronicles of Narnia, Aslan’s name is Turkish for lion
5.Many cave-dwelling fish don’t have eyes
6.One type of wildflower smells like chocolate (Great to know but which one?)
7.The human body contains a tiny amount of go…

Hello and welcome to the end of the year. Each end of year I like to read over my diary and have a look at my achievements. Why? Because one of the easiest ways to stay inspired in this writing game is to CELEBRATE THE SMALL WINS. So here goes: January 2015 Little Red Gem went on a book tour. Do book tours work? The jury is still out on this one. They're a lot of work for little exposure. But they're also very cost effective and for an author without a big budget they do get you a small amount of exposure. So for $60 you can do a virtual book tour where something like BookBub is $270 with no guarantee of acceptance or sales.  The Bird With The Broken Wing and Feedback were given makeovers with a new cover. This was due rights reverting back to me and the publisher owns the cover. Website was overhauled. Yes this is a part of the job. Updating the website. I try to do it monthly to stay on top of it. February 2015 Short story "Slip Stream" was submitted to an anthology. E…

Through certain circumstances, for the past four months I've been a full time writer. I began by doing a major edit of a novel and resubmitting to an agent and launched myself into the waiting game which comes from querying. But there's no holiday for me, I immediately picked up another novel and started editing. It's been like this all year. Every day I write. Every day I do a little promotion via blogs and social media. Earlier this year two of my books went on a virtual book tour. I've presented at a few writer workshops. I've taken my books down to the local markets to sell them to tourists and locals. I'm always doing something!

Yet I'm still not earning enough to do this writing gig full time. In a few weeks the savings will have run out and I'll be looking for a part time day job. No biggie, a lot of writers also have day jobs. But I was asked if this delay in achieving my goals was frustrating me.

I paused to consider this. Of course it's fr…

Anyone who has just finished NaNoWriMo this year might be tempted to think that self publishing is a short cut to publication. And it isn't. Your book needs to be edited properly. It needs to be structured. Needs a great cover. Character arc. Compelling narrative. Engage readers. The list is long.

NaNoWriMo is timed perfectly in November, so writers can then use the dead months of the publishing industry to edit. December and January are so busy at agencies and publishers with them wrapping things up for the year that there really isn't any point in pitching until mid January of the following year.

So you write your first draft in one month, spend two months editing, and then some writers will choose the long road to publication by pitching to agents and publishers. I say this is a long road because I've walked it and I'm still on it, it can take anything from 2 weeks to 12 months for a reply. But I want to do the top down approach. For me, self publishing is the final…

Today's post is about avoiding clichés in characters. Publishers and editors receive a stack loads of unsolicited manuscripts, and they need only one reason to pass on your novel. Poor writing is one reason. A saturated market is another. But perhaps one of the major reasons for a rejection is that you have clichéd characters. Why give them any reason to pass?

What is a cliché? It is a phrase or opinion that is overused and betrays a lack of original thought.

A cliche isn't just phrases such as 'old as the hills' or 'sent a shiver down my spine' or 'love at first sight'. While these expressions may be true, they're overused and a writer of creative fiction ought to be able to come up with something more creative. Or we fail. It's as simple as that. Give the reader something that isn't creative, and you've failed as a writer of creative fiction.

Character traits and situations can also be overused. These also signal that the author is st…