Image via Drew Coffman courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons

Today, we’re going to do something a little different. You want to know one thing I love probably more than anything in the world? Spotting great talent and getting to share it. Thus, today I would like to introduce you to one of my followers who snagged my attention over the holidays and I asked her to come and share her wisdom today because I think we can all gain something from her (even me because am always learning BAY-BEE!).

I would like to introduce, Britt Skrabanek!

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Indie Author Britt Skrabanek

A lot of you may be wondering how I ended up on Kristen’s blog in the first place. She’s pretty big-time, an influencer—she’s worked her tail off to build her brand presence. Many of us look to her for writing tips we can actually use, knowing some esoteric BS like…

Don’t you just love the internet!

It’s so easy to spend hours reading article after article on how to do any and everything from, publishing an ebook to refinishing a table.

First off, let me start by saying I am not an expert. I’m still learning, but I’ve learned a lot over the last few years. A lot about writing, publishing and blogging. The world-wide web is a wonderful place. And with the help of other writers, editors and bloggers learning more every day. One thing I’ve learned. There is only so much editing a writer can do on their own. 

Unless you are a professional editor, hire one. This is one thing, it’s best not to do yourself. At least not all of it. For a book to be edited to a polished spit shine it takes a professional. 

So If you’re looking for an editor here are a few tips.

First, a couple of don’ts.

1. For…

Toby Neal’s Lei Crime series

Writing a long series is hard work: how do you churn out book after book while keeping it all fresh and avoiding repetition?

Author Toby Neal had some interesting thoughts on the subject, which she shared in her post, Writing more than ten books in a series and staying fresh. You can read my highlights below.

9 Tips to Keeping Your Series Fresh

• Write an archetypal main character, and preferably secondary characters too. Doing this will hook readers and generate lots of great mine-able material.

• Develop a big, strong, overarching character development arc. Toby had that, and it took the first five books to achieve. After that, she did another, smaller arc. And then another. All of them still fit under the original, main umbrella.

• Just writing plots and recycling the characters will not end up satisfying you. Torture the main characters with some…