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Book Review & Contest Insights from Real Reviews and Submissions

What separates great books from the rest? Below are articles with insights from real reviews and contest submissions—what works, what doesn’t, and how to improve your book. Below that are hundreds of articles on topics all authors face in today’s literary landscape. Get help and advice on Writing, Marketing, Publishing, Social Networking and more. Each article has a Comments section so you can read advice from other authors and leave your own.

Why Some Books Win Awards (And Most Don’t) — Insights From Real Contest Submissions New!

What separates award-winning books from the rest? After evaluating contest submissions across a wide range of genres, certain patterns become clear. Some books consistently rise to the top. Others, even with strong ideas and clear effort behind them, fall short. The difference is rarely dramatic—it...

What We’ve Learned From Reviewing Hundreds of Thousands of Books (And Why Most Don’t Stand Out) New!

After reviewing and evaluating books across thousands of submissions over the past two decades, certain patterns become impossible to ignore. Some books immediately stand out to reviewers. Others—even well-intentioned ones—fade into the middle or fall short. The difference is rarely luck. It comes down to...

The Literary Delights of the Heartbeat

Do you know the feeling of being in a loved one’s arms? When you’re just surrounded by the warmth of someone you care about, and you feel completely and utterly safe from the world? Do you ever find yourself listening to their heartbeat, and feeling...

The Beauty of Obsession

Whenever we think about characters like Frollo from Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, or the immature lovers of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, or even the twisted love story of Lucian and Livia from S.L.Baron’s Vanilla Blood, there’s a certain element that makes the story...

Australian Monsters Part 1

In How to Write a Unique Spooky Story, I wrote about how to write a unique spooky story by either creating your own monster, creature, or horror yourself or by finding a monster that is not well known. I advised finding a monster by researching...

Steps to Writing Mental Illness in Fictional Characters

One area that many fiction writers struggle with is accurately portraying mental illness in their characters. This difficulty often stems from the writer not truly understanding what mental illness actually is. According to Merriam-Webster dictionary, (2018) mental illness is defined as “any of a broad...

The Beauty of the Nightshade

The deadly nightshade, or atropa belladonna, is no doubt a beautiful flower. According to Penny Dreadful, it lures you in with an intoxicating scent, just daring you to pluck it from the ground and claim it as your own. And despite the fact you know...

The Famous Urban Legend of the Headless Horseman

A few days ago, my boyfriend decided to download a modification for a game we both loved: Skyrim. It was supposed to introduce new monsters that we could fight against. However, as we were playing, I couldn’t help but notice that there was one monster...

What to Know About West Palm Beach Florida as a Setting

In my article “Setting: Elements of Towns and Cities,” I wrote about how many writers believe a setting is merely a location; however, setting is not just a location, but everything that would define a location as a place. The seven elements that a writer...

Don't Think That You Should Never Tell!

Books expounding on the necessity of showing and not telling abound. But, it’s almost clichéd, or so oft quoted that it’s assumed that every writer knows what “show, don’t tell” means. What it doesn’t mean is that telling is never appropriate. Here’s a quotation from one of my...

Creating A Character With Schizophrenia

When you are creating the characters for your novel, it is vital that you give them some depth and make them as realistic to the reader as possible. If you are going to give them a mental condition, then it is absolutely vital you do...

Setting: Elements of Towns and Cities

Setting is one of the key elements of any story not reliant on the story being fictional or non-fictional. Many writers believe a setting is merely a location but, in this simplistic definition, they fail to truly understand what a setting is. The setting of...