For Writers

When you think about children’s games, what comes to mind? Nintendo Wii or Game Boy? World of Warcraft or Battleship? But what about backyard games like ‘kick the can’ or ‘ghosts in the graveyard’? Shouldn’t these be included too? For Marlene Byrne, a children’s author and mother of two from Chicago’s Edgebrook neighborhood, the answer is YES, they should. For the first time at Laura Reviews, I’m happy to feature a children’s book author and share our conversation about the creation of... Read Full Story

In the spirit of including all types of authors and artists who have changed the world of words, I'm excited to launch the inaugural edition of Interviews with Awesome Musicians , featuring award winning singer and songwriter Dayna Malow . With a long career as a musician, Dayna has produced three fantastic albums: "Anywhere But Here, "Tangled Up in You," and recently released "What's the Worst That Could Happen." She regularly performs throughout the Midwest and also has opened for numerous... Read Full Story

Finding the right article spinner software reviews can be a difficult process, you would think it would be easy because there are so many, but it isn’t precisely because of this.  It is difficult because almost all article spinner software is paid and there isn’t any way of figuring out whether it is a good program withouth paying first. Most of these article spinning software companies don’t offer any trials and require the money up front, and when you try to find out something about the... Read Full Story

The number of Internet users, 1.5 billion, surpasses the combined populations of North America and Europe, and that number is growing. Estimates put the total number of websites currently online at over 162 million. Facebook, the web’s dominate social network, marked it’s 200 millionth registered user a scant eight months after it’s 100 millionth user joined, and a measly five years after it was founded. Twitter, which recently reported a year-to-year increase of over 1300%, has helped to... Read Full Story

Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. -Vonnegut Photo by Lauren Baker I’ve done a great deal of thinking on this very subject over the past few weeks, and that mental wrangling was one of the reasons why I ended up taking a small publishing vacation recently. Of all the rules Mr. Vonnegut has provided so far, this one shows the highest level of information crammed into a relatively small space. It... Read Full Story

I’ve used the phrase “take away” in connection to pieces of writing for quite some time. Yet, I ran into a small issue when I sat down to find the exact definition so I could write this article. I couldn’t find that writing connection, not in definition form, not in context, not in relation to fiction, journalism, or even blogging. This is a shame, as the concept of take away is a rather important when it comes to shaping your writing. To fix this, I’ve gone and made up my own definition... Read Full Story

There is a great deal of talk right now about changes coming to the publishing industry as it transitions to eBooks and a world of digital, non-scarcity economics. However, this is precious little talk about the changes that will happen to writing as it too enters a new medium. To help improve that, here’s a little peek around the bend of what might happen to writing when literature moves fully into the Digital Age. First a point of clarification. My definition of the Digital Age is one in... Read Full Story

There is a lot of talk online about self-publishing. Thanks to advances in technology, books can now be printed on demand. Thanks to Amazon, self-published books can now appear right next to New York Times best sellers. Thanks to the advent of social media, marketing is a grass roots event. At least, that’s how self publishing works in theory. The reality is much more infirm, with success in self publishing seemingly being marked by the author landing a traditional publisher. So, if you’re... Read Full Story

Be a sadist. No matter sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of. -Vonnegut Photo by BarbaraDin In Vonnegut’s second rule, he urges us to give the reader at least one character to root for. My personal interpretation of that rule revolved around a distaste for Mary Sue characters - characters whom everything comes naturally to. Characters who succeed at everything. Well, as I stated out in that... Read Full Story

Start as close to the end as possible. -Vonnegut As I was looking over this particular rule, I couldn’t help but think that the rule could easily be argued to have two meanings. The first meaning deals with the timeline of your particular story. The second deals with your story’s mechanics. Photo by Ted Cabanes The First Interpretation Arguably, the end of a book is as important as the other parts. The conflicts and challenges that make up a stories plot are all building to one... Read Full Story