Author Archive > sandrawickham

Serious Thoughts for Serious People

I’d like to thank Sam Sykes for taking time out of his busy life of writing, pillaging and plunging the entire internet into painful bouts of laughter, to do this guest post for us. Who is Sam? Sam Sykes is the author of The Aeons’ Gate trilogy, a vast and sprawling story of adventure, demons, […]

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Motivational Quotes for Writers

When I competed in fitness competitions, I used motivational quotes to help me put my best effort into every training session, to stick to the strict diet and to keep my enthusiasm high. I had them all over the place, in my workout journal, in my competitoin scrapbook, on the fridge and in my travel […]

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Satisfactory Sub-plots, Now With Pictures

Howard Tayler is the writer and illustrator behind Schlock Mercenary, the Hugo-nominated science fiction comic strip. Howard is also featured on the Parsec award-winning “Writing Excuses” podcast, a weekly ‘cast for genre-fiction writers. Howard’s artwork is featured in XDM X-Treme Dungeon Mastery, a role-playing supplement by Tracy and Curtis Hickman, as well as in the […]

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Where’s Your Head At?

Ready, set, WRITE! Right? When you sit down to your writing session, do you jump right in and start typing furiously? Or do you sit down, check emails, check Facebook, send a few tweets, visit a couple blogs, then get up to make a snack, clean your desk, then sit back down only to repeat […]

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Writing Groups

Myke Cole is the author of the military fantasy SHADOW OPS series. The first novel, CONTROL POINT, will be published by Ace (Penguin) at the end of this month. As a secu­rity con­tractor, gov­ern­ment civilian and mil­i­tary officer, Myke Cole’s career has run the gamut from Coun­tert­er­rorism to Cyber War­fare to Fed­eral Law Enforce­ment. He’s […]

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Write a Bad Book

Earlier this year, I finished my third novel. After feedback from different beta readers, I’ve decided I need to start over from scratch, keeping the same premise and main characters, but making a lot of major changes. Am I discouraged? Hell, yeah. Do I want to just be done with it and be published already? […]

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The World According to Lou

  Lou Anders is the editorial director of Prometheus Books’ science fiction and fantasy imprint Pyr as well as several anthologies. He’s been nominated for multiple awards multiple times, including the Locus Awards, Shirley Jackson Award, Philip K. Dick Award, Chelsey Award, World Fantasy Award and the Hugo Award. He’s won the Chesley Award and […]

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So You Want to Write for Pay?

Making a living as a writer is not easy. Financially, there are almost any other careers that would be a better choice, yet most of us dream of one day being paid solely to write. Have you ever thought about writing for one of those Write-for-Pay websites? A member of my writing workshop, *Julie Downsbrough […]

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A Year in the Inkpunks

It’s been a year since I proposed the idea for this blog and the Inkpunks were formed. A whole year and while the time has flown by, we also can’t believe how much has happened for all us within that year. We thought we’d take some time to reflect back on the year with the […]

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A Novel in Ninety Days

When I started my first novel in 2009, I emailed my mentor Diana Rowland and told her I was writing 1000 wds a day and was that enough? I remember her saying, “1000 words is good, but you might want to try for more.” That set me off on a new mission to write 1500 […]

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