Skull Honey
A website from a serious writer. Her posts are thoughtful and provide insight into her journey as a writer. Well worth a visit, especially for short-story writers.
She wrote an interesting post on self-publishing that is worth a look.
And why the name Skull Honey? Explained here.
Dear Reader, I can explain...
This is a blog of a friend who writes. I’ve beta read a couple of her stories and I can attest that they are well-written. The blog is full of thoughtful pieces that are as well-written as her stories.
It’s worth a visit.
The answer to the question, well the implied question anyhow, of “What Words are Worth” that you see in that thumbnail above she answers as such:
To me, based on hours spent, inspirational and training costs (academic & cultural fees, book & magazine purchases, etc.), and chocolate/coffee expenses divided by number of original ideas someone’s read and connected with : every blessed penny.
See? Thoughtful.
The new novel ‘Cog’ has an unmistakable steampunk influence. I suppose it even fits in the steampunk sub-genre of fantasy, which makes me happy because I didn’t really think it up as fitting into that sub-genre; but it’s a great fit and I have a lot of places to go for inspiration in creating the world.
One thing I like to do is put wallpapers on my computer desktop that reflect what I’m working on, gathering the wallpapers sometimes can spark ideas especially since steampunk is such a visual aesthetic.
A lot of these I find via a Google image search, but one comes across sites that aggregate wallpapers and a useful one is http://www.steampunkwallpaper.com. An easy address to remember. Okay, there’s only a small fraction that I like enough to pick up, but it’s better than nothing.
Maybe I should aggregate the fantasy and steampunk wallpapers I’ve picked out. I never thought of that until now 
.
I’ve heard about Dropbox before. Many times before, really. However, I never checked it out. It’s some online storage, useful sure, but not a big deal. I have other places I can store things online, and I’ve backed up manuscripts by mailing them to my gmail account.
Well, I went ahead and signed up for syncing another program and I discovered that it’s actually pretty great. To use it, you download a program and install it. The result is a folder on your computer. Anything you put into that folder gets synced to your online storage.
If you are a writer, this means you can put your documents in that folder and it’s backed up online automatically. Better yet, it’s backed up the moment you save that file. And you can also install it on a second computer and it’s folder gets synced too, making the use of multiple computers for writing easy to manage.
You get 2GB of free storage which doesn’t sound like much when 2 terrabyte drives carry a two digit price, but for word processor documents that’s a bottomless pit. You can buy more storage, but my online storage needs are easily met by the free space.
Anyhow, this is a great tool.
This is a useful book by Noah Lukeman, a literary agent, has plenty of great information about how to put together a query letter. It covers formatting and the basic structure a letter should follow. I don’t know that this should be the final word on how to create a query letter, but I still think it is a valuable resource well worth a read.
I don’t think Lukeman believes it’s the final word either since he makes reference to another book of his ‘How to Land (and keep) a Literary Agent’ for more detailed information.
Still, you can’t go wrong taking a look at this book and it’s free.
http://www.feedbooks.com/userbook/6676/how-to-write-a-great-query-letter