When I wrote my debut novel I was surprised to discover how different the styling of Australian novels was from that used in other countries, such as America. What do I mean by ‘styling’? I’m talking about things like spelling and punctuation, such as whether or not the full stop (period) goes before or after quotation marks, or whether there’s a space before and after an ellipsis (the three little dots), and whether double or single quotation marks are used for dialogue. When I was doing journalism, I knew there was a particular style (usually leaning towards the American style) […]

When I wrote my debut novel I could already write pretty well. However, I was oblivious to the fact that, when it comes to writing a novel (or even a work of non-fiction, for that matter) there are rules I had to follow. Rules for writing? I thought I already knew about those – use correct spelling, grammar and punctuation; don’t make your paragraphs too long; have plenty of action. What I didn’t know was that there were a myriad of other ones that publishers demand today – show don’t tell; strict rules about point of view; not too many […]

It is becoming more and more difficult for authors to get their books to a traditional publisher, especially if they don’t have an agent. And even if they do submit to a traditional publisher, so few are taking risks on them. So it’s not surprising that many authors are turning to self-publishing, especially as costs, particularly when only producing an e-book, are so low and the return on an author’s hard work can be immediate and gratifying. That’s the wonderful thing about the self-publishing phenomenon. Not only do you retain full control over your product, but you can get it […]

The Writer’s Circle recently posted an article on some famous authors and their pseudonyms. It made for interesting reading. The article is here if you’d like to read it. I think the only one I’d heard of in a significant way was JK Rowling’s, especially seeing as it happened since I became a published author. But the others weren’t that familiar to me, and in spite of enjoying his books, I never knew what Dr Seuss’ full name was. It was nice to discover that ‘Seuss’ was actually part of his name. It would have seemed odd if he was […]

Last Monday was not a good day. Most of you will be aware that (until recently) I had two websites. One is my lynnestringer.com site (where you’re reading this right now). The other was verindon.com, a page dedicated to my trilogy, which linked to the individual pages for all three of the books in the Verindon trilogy. I had it set up nicely and the website address was printed on my bookmarks and t-shirts, providing a wonderful way for people to find out about the Verindon trilogy. But the internet can be a pain in the neck. And because of […]