You’ve written a blog post that you’re proud of. You’ve read, re-read, edited, re-edited and then edited again once after you’ve inevitably discovered lots of mistakes that were missed. You’ve created a pinnable picture and included all your social media links.

Then the little-one starts to cry. Dinner needs to be made. The laundry needs to be hung out to dry. In my world, papers need to be marked.

For those of us that want our blogs to be seen, but have busy schedules, children, jobs and homes to maintain, we often find it difficult to promote ourselves to the biggest possible audience. Time is always our biggest barrier and in the blogging world it is highly unlikely that a post will receive lots of views simply by pressing the publish button.

When researching this post, I found lots of blogs that were offering lots of advice that I didn’t…

I often hear from writers who ask how to infuse faith elements without making a story sound preachy. This is a crucial skill to learn. The moment your story starts preaching, many readers will be turned off.

Readers usually don’t mind following a character’s spiritual journey and taking in what the character learns along the way, but they usually don’t appreciate being told what they should learn and do as a result. Few people enjoy an author’s wagging finger.

Still, faith elements can abound, and such themes can be the most memorable parts of a story.

Here are some tips on how to infuse faith elements while avoiding the pulpit:

• Make sure that faith is a natural expression of a character’s being, that is, don’t make someone speak about faith without developing that this is an inherent part of the character’s nature.
• Show God’s intervention by having circumstances come together…

Quick, think of a picture book with a long title!

DUH, I KNOW.

Of course, Judith Viorst and Ray Cruz’s classic sports a long title for hyperbole purposes. The author wants you to know that Alexander’s day was straight-up disastrous…and that Alexander is perhaps a tad overdramatic. The title sets up the plot and character perfectly.

However, you don’t see long picture book titles like this one too often. Why?

Picture books tend to sell on concept. That concept must be communicated succinctly in order to capture a young child’s (and a parent’s) imagination. Yes, people really do judge a book by its cover.

If your picture book manuscript has an overly long title, it may suggest your concept is either too vague or too complicated for the format. You want to nail down your concept and make it snappy, catchy. BAM! SELL THAT BOOK!

Even though character name titles are short, I personally tend to shy…

While I know I am lacking a few vital components that the native French are born with, usually I think I understand French society. As a general rule I know how to behave in most situations. I can swear at bad drivers and cyclists, using the right gestures to get the message across. I talk to unknown old ladies, people with dogs, the person standing behind me in the queue at the supermarket. I know the correct, polite way to address shop-keepers, the old crone who’s just shoved in out of turn in said supermarket queue, bank managers, soldiers with assault rifles, policemen sitting at café tables—all the usual sort of chance meetings.

I don’t question the extraordinary number of religious holidays we have for a secular republic, the protocol for getting onto buses (shove the competition out of the way), the impossibility of getting anything done by anybody on…

I proudly present a guest post on Sally Cronin. Here are her answers to a questionnaire I submitted to her.

She kindly did a five star treatment on my five books, particularly ‘A Twist of Fairy Tales’. If anyone hasn’t seen the blog here is the link. https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2015/05/04/five-star-treatment-a-twist-of-fairy-tales-by-k-j-rollinson/

Questionnaire.

1. Please tell us something about yourself.

I was in a number of industries including hospitality, retail, advertising and telecommunications and by the time I was 43 I was at a crossroads. I decided to retrain in something that I was very interested in which was health and nutrition and for the last 18 years I have been working in that field. To ease the frustrations of self-publishing we formed Moyhill Publishing back in 2004 with the aim of working on a one to one basis with other authors too. We currently live in Madrid and write about health and good…