A Short Story With A Twist

April 26, 2013April 26, 2013 ~ Rosemary Armel ~ Leave a comment

With Mother’s Day just around the corner I thought I would share a short story I wrote called Mother

I hope you enjoy it and remember Mother’s Day is May 12th.

Reference Tools For Writers

March 29, 2013March 29, 2013 ~ Rosemary Armel ~ Leave a comment

It’s good to have a few reference tools at your fingertips when you are writing. When you include accurate details to your story, the story becomes more vivid and feels more authentic.

There is nothing more exciting to a reader than to find something they can relate to because they have experienced, saw, or remembered something similar in their own life. Below are three resources that I find useful from time to time.

Purdue OWL

http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/owlprint/738/
This site has links to dictionaries, manuals, handbooks, libraries, journal and online magazines.
This page contains links and short descriptions of writing resources including dictionaries, style manuals, grammar handbooks, and editing resources. It also contains a list of online reference sites, indexes for writers, online libraries, books and e-texts, as well as links to newspapers, news services, journals, and online magazines.

Refdesk
http://www.refdesk.com
This site has links from soup to nuts information. The list goes on and on. Automated news feeds, facts at a glance, dictionaries, calculators and a large list of other categories.
The American Society for Indexing

http://www.asindexing.org
This site has gathered many reference resources and list has them listed in an A to Z format.

Editing

March 23, 2013March 23, 2013 ~ Rosemary Armel ~ Leave a comment

You finally finished that book and it looks perfect. You’ve reread it so many times you couldn’t change a word and now your mind is in a whirl. What can I do to make it shine? Am I missing something? I found a free online editor that helps. Their premium service is $35.00 per year which still isn’t too bad for the help you get. You can find it at http://prowritingaid.com/

Names

March 15, 2013March 16, 2013 ~ Rosemary Armel ~ Leave a comment

Have you ever been at lost for a character’s name?

or maybe a pen name for yourself?. I found a website

where you can pick the nationality, size of the family

and then pick first, middle and last names and even

suggest what career they might have.

There have been times when I have created a family

and then used them as writing prompt for a story.

Try it for yourself at http://www.fakenamegenerator.com/the-sims.php

Book Cover

March 12, 2013March 12, 2013 ~ Rosemary Armel ~ Leave a comment

I found a fun online drawing program that could be used to design a book cover. I used it recently for my ebook on Amazon. Check it out at http://www.gamesgames.com/game/Pencil-Madness.html. The image below shows a sampling of what it has it offer.

What I really like about it, is the fact that you can down load the picture as a jpeg to your computer.