KELLY J MASSEY

In the world of Flidais, a great empire rose on the Saskian continent. This empire created advanced technologies that no one on the other continents had ever dreamed about. They pursued their technological dream for so long and so hard that they forgot about the balance of things. On their continent the elements of water, earth, and air suffered, while the strength of the fiery sun grew stronger. It was only when the Saskian Empire pushed off from their continent to begin to

It seems when writers start out they feel as though they must write the perfect sentence, followed by another perfect sentence, that in turn will lead to a valuable plot point while carefully crafting your book's world along the way. It doesn't work like that. Often your first draft is simply you telling yourself the story. Don't be surprised when you reread it to yourself if you still don't understand everything you were trying to say. Use the parts that are golden and rewri

I've been introduced to the Hemingway App this week and it is fantastic. (Thank you Twitter for broadening my horizons.) It has also made me acutely aware of how many adverbs I use to describe a character's tone of voice or action. (Or how aware I am of my adverb usage.) It is easy to get started. A writer goes to the web address www.hemingwayapp.com and pastes their prose in the big white box. Since I'm working on a novel I've only pasted up to three pages of manuscript at a

It seems that once a novel is completed people outside of the author automatically expect a publication date. A date a few weeks from completion wherein they can toddle on down to their bookstore (preferably local) and your book will magically appear on shelves with a shiny, eye-catching cover. Here's the thing: authors wish that could happen as well. Here's the issue: first drafts are no where near ready for publication. So what is an author to do once they have written a no