Category: Writing
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Rot – An Illness Based on the Bubonic Plague
A major plot arc in A Study of Ash & Smoke is about a mysterious plague that breaks out in the kingdom of Aelland. Under normal circumstances, it shouldn’t be strange that an unknown illness spreads to a new kingdom, except Aelland is closed off from the rest of the world by an impenetrable forcefield,…
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This Post Comes to You in Four Parts
Totally paraphrasing John Green there. 🙂 DFTBA, people. Anyway. Part One – Writing By last Tuesday, I had five complete chapters written for Book 3. By last Friday, I’d rewritten all five. That’s all fine and dandy, but now I’m stuck on chapter 6, which I’ve rewritten no less than three times, and poor chapter…
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A Study of Ash & Smoke – 7th Annual WD Self-Pub e-Book Awards
Sometime around September last year, I got an email about the Writer’s Digest Self-Published e-Book Awards (I’m subscribed to WD’s newsletters). I made the mistake of opening this email in front of my husband, who was immediately of the opinion that I should enter. I didn’t want to. My feelings of inadequacy make these kinds…
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Five Easy Ways to Combat Writer’s Block
Ah, writer’s block. The bane of many a writer’s existence. It’s that feeling of shock and having no direction when the inspiration suddenly runs out. It happens to all of us at one point or another, so we all know it’s real. Personally, I just don’t believe in it. Yes, having no inspiration is a…
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A Trial of Sparks & Kindling Cover Reveal
I should probably have waited with this until a bit closer to publishing day, but hey, who cares. I can haz cover, and it is glorious. That glorious, BTW, sounds in my head as Varvatos Vex would say it. For the design of this cover, I once again teamed up with the endlessly talented and…
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We Want Spoilers! A Trial of Sparks & Kindling Edition
So, recently, quite a few folks have been asking me for anything I can tell them about my upcoming novel, A Trial of Sparks & Kindling. Anything at all. And this is where it gets super tricky, because there are literally spoilers from the first chapter. Now, since I don’t want to put a bullet…
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On Perspective
Just the other day, my fellow blogger and author, SM Mitchell, asked me for my thoughts on impostor syndrome for a blog post. This is the quote she included from yours truly: “No critic can tell you how much is wrong with what I’ve written better than I can. It’s so hard for me to…
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Spot the Differences – Writer vs Main Character
I posted an excerpt from A Study of Ash & Smoke over on Instagram yesterday, and wrote a bit about the anxieties that Cara and I share. Which got me thinking. People often assume that authors base protagonists on their own personalities. While I suspect there are loads of authors out there who do just…
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Behind the Scenes – Editing
I figure I might as well clue you all in on how it goes behind the scenes. You know, the stuff you don’t see on my posed and filtered Instagram feed. Everybody who knows me knows I’m currently editing A Trial of Sparks & Kindling. I haven’t been shy about that fact so far. But…
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How AHA moments changed A Study of Ash & Smoke
We all have little aha moments while writing. Those moments come to us either through brainstorming, talking to others about our work, feedback from betas or editors–heck, even the most random of places–but those aha moments spark the changes in the story that pull everything together. You could probably guess I had plenty of aha…
Yolandie Horak 