The Fiction Factory Blog

If you’re an indie author, here’s how to avoid being conned by so-called self-publishing companies.

Time to dive into the subject of self-publishing, and we’re going straight in at the deep-end with how NOT to self-publish. In this episode, I show you how to dodge a mistake a lot of authors have made: trusting in companies run by Author Solutions.

Time for another How To. This time, I’m sharing some tips for stimulating that imagination when it comes to fantasy character names. In this episode I go through a few methods for generating ideas for names, and a few rules I try to follow to get the right name for the right fantasy character.

Building an entire fantasy world? Is that crazy? Not at all. Every author builds a world for a book, no matter how small, and for fantasy authors, it’s a great excuse to dream big.

In this How To Write video, find out about my Funhouse Mirror approach, which makes fantasy worlds rich and detailed, and makes your fantasy worldbuilding structured, but most of all, FUN.

I’m back with some more tips for writing a fantasy novel. In the last vid we looked at what makes a great fantasy novel. This week, we’re all about that Unfinished Syndrome: dropping a book or running out of steam 3-4 chapters in, and then abandoning it. Here’s how I defeat the dreaded unfinished nonsense and keep pushing through a fantasy novel.

Part Two of How to Write a Fantasy Novel is UP!

In this second episode, I dig into what I believe makes a great fantasy novel, how you can learn to write by reading, and that sometimes, the best way to start writing your novel is just to start bloody writing it 😁

So you wanna be an author, do ya? Well, here’s the first in a new series of rapidfire videos all about how to write and self-publish the simplest way. Here’s the very first instalment: HOW TO WRITE A FANTASY NOVEL – Part 1.