Recent content by LeslieRWaggonerIII

Ecclesiastes 1:9: “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.” Even the subversion of tropes and plots will always be an amalgamation of past experiences and others work half remembered and colored with your life experiences. (basic...

A lot of what we do post publishing, especially when self-publishing, is encourage and cultivate reviews. I encourage both good and bad, because we will always be faced with that one person who picked up the book that was ill suited for what they encountered. With this focus on getting others to...

I edited at least a score of times and republished my ebook four times, and still find errors. I finally realized that with any complex writing you will invariably continue to find errors and typos. With each deep dive into my novel I reworded some things and introduced errors and typos that...

I spent about 4 months creating grammar, a syllabic script, a font, and a 500+ word lexicon for my first conlang. My second and third will be less extensive, but will be integrated into the second and third books in the series. I will probably not create a font for the last two, as the...

If you are still open for ideas. I think the layout is good. Text should be a solid single color, I think the outline on the font detracts from the overall feel. A high proportion of cover fonts will be single color unless it needs a stroke to offset a similar colored background. I am a big...

Learning... day by day. Making choices that effect my entire life and the lives of those around me is both exciting and absolutely terrifying.

Thank you for the welcome! I have decided that I will self-publish all of my own novels prior to seeking someone to help market them. That means that I will have full control over the first... and THEN I will edit and water down depending on publishers and editors. As long as I have my own...

I have two approaches, I am a pantser, at least I was in my first novel. The sequel has to hit certain areas for me to approach what I feel might be the end of the story... so I have evolved into more of a plantser. For the most part, I approach writing like a vacation. I will either wing it...

I recently finished the first novel in a trilogy, and with writing, editing, layout, and publishing now behind me... I have decided to mull over my book and evaluate the degree to which my imposter syndrome has correctly labeled me. I have faced this entire journey alone thus far and have put...

A drop of blood in the water supply... or several... it depends on how you want to play the benevolence. I can see it as not being specifically healing, but more of a health and long life.

I was 80k into my first... then I realized my protagonist was buried in his own head... all of the time. I went back to the beginning and wrote a companion into the entire piece. The companion became an integrally cosmic necessity for the story by the time I finished.

From someone who just finished a journey to self-publish, I never realized how much I might love writing, nor how hard many seem to find it. I hated high school English and English Lit. Forty-three years later... I literally started my novel with... Emanrasu trudged down the road. The trail...

Honestly? I think darkness hits hardest when it's personal. Not the big evil empires or nameless monsters tearing things apart, those can be dramatic, sure—but what really gets me, what really hurts, is when someone meaningful gets violated. Not just attacked or wounded, but VIOLATED—in dignity...

From a new writer standpoint... I flesh my world out as a write. Everything the POV touches... is expanded out to why and what has happened to make the scene happen. A dead bandits pack in chapter two... dig deep... daggers and knives, of course... a cryptic journal, an ornate folding grapple...