I recently received an email from author Ben Sandmel announcing that he is the recipient of the Keeping The Blues Alive award in Literature for 2015, presented by the Memphis-based Blues Foundation. Congratulations, Ben! If you, dear readers, are at all interested in history, biography, New Orleans, rhythm and blues, music in general, or evenContinue reading “Reading to Keep the Blues Alive”
Author Archives: marialberg
Mother Nature Wouldn’t Let Me Post: A Three-Stomached Blob Monster
Actually, Mother Nature is being mean! I woke up yesterday morning to a tree branch, brandished as a projectile by the wind like an arrow, through the rear windshield of my car. Shortly thereafter, the power went out and stayed out until around midnight. This morning, a huge tree branch had completely removed the rearContinue reading “Mother Nature Wouldn’t Let Me Post: A Three-Stomached Blob Monster”
A Good Reads Give Away for Gator McBumpypants Hears a Scary Noise
Happy Monday! This is the second week of my new posting strategy and I want to thank all of my new followers and commenters for making this part of my writing life so much fun! I’m enjoying these targeted daily posts: They are not only fun to write, they inspire me. So as a thankContinue reading “A Good Reads Give Away for Gator McBumpypants Hears a Scary Noise”
Exploring: Collective Nouns
Yesterday’s writing group was incredibly fun, thanks to Ralph Cornish presenting an exploration of collective nouns. We’re all familiar with at least a few collective nouns that we use in regular speech: a hill of beans, a mountain of debt, a litter of pups. But there are so many more fun and interesting collective nouns.Continue reading “Exploring: Collective Nouns”
Reading to Feed Your Wanderlust
This morning I have something very exciting to share. I found a wonderful website called A Year of Reading the World. In 2012 Ann Morgan read her way through the countries of the world–196 independent countries and one extra territory–reading one novel from each country. She wrote a book about her experience that comes outContinue reading “Reading to Feed Your Wanderlust”
Revision: Exploring my characters’ motivations
I love playing with simple photo editing software. All of those fabulous colors were in my photo just waiting for me to draw them out–slough off a bit of brightness, delete a bit of shadow, redefine the contrast and saturate the hues. Now, to apply the same principal (drawing out the good stuff) to myContinue reading “Revision: Exploring my characters’ motivations”
Agent Query Progress
For once, I felt I was making some progress in my search to find agents to query. Then, the moment I was sure I had found someone and would get my first query letter out today, to my complete horror, her blog said she wasn’t accepting queries at this time. I clicked back to herContinue reading “Agent Query Progress”
Creating a Marketing Plan for Gator McBumpypants Hears a Scary Noise
After publishing Gator McBumpypants Hears a Scary Noise, I focused my marketing plan exclusively on creating an internet presence. I created author pages, joined good reads, sent out email announcements and created a Gator McBumpypants page on my website. Now, I feel ready to expand my marketing plan. To do that I need to knowContinue reading “Creating a Marketing Plan for Gator McBumpypants Hears a Scary Noise”
Happy Halloween! Friday Exploring
Looking for rare, collectable, hard to find books? Try Turn The Page Books, an online bookstore with a huge collection of well preserved treasures. Happy exploring and have a great Halloween. I’m already in my luchador costume and plan on playing the theremin and ghost hunting until dawn.
Changing my approach to posting
Hi everyone, I think I’ve figured out a better way to share everything I’m learning in my writing life. So far, I’ve had trouble keeping up with a weekly blog because I’ll have ideas during the week, but when I finally sit down to write, I’m overwhelmed by how many things are happening in myContinue reading “Changing my approach to posting”
Experience Writing 