Category Archives: Guests

May28

Guest Post: 5 Real-Life Elements that will Make your Author Website Appeal to Real-Life Readers, by Web Design Relief

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This article has been reprinted with the permission of Web Design Relief.  Whether you’re just starting out or a best-selling author, Web Design Relief will improve your existing website or build you an affordable, custom author website to support your author platform, boost your online presence, and act as a hub for your social media outreach. Web Design Relief is a division of Writer’s Relief, a highly recommended author’s submission service. Sign up for their free e-publication for writers, Submit Write Now! Visit the site today to learn more.

Rather than relying on overused marketing concepts, your author website should be designed with one goal in mind: to connect with the right audience for your work. At Web Design Relief, we know that once you’ve determined who your real-life readers are, you can then offer better, more targeted content. Don’t be afraid to share your personality with website visitors—they want to know more about the real-life YOU! (Discover your web personality here.) Sharing some personal details can help readers form a bond with you and keep them coming back for the long term.

How Featuring The Real-Life You Helps Your Author Website Appeal To Readers

Tell Your Story

Your author website is the best place to showcase your books, poetry, and short stories. But don’t stop there! When you also share personal moments, thoughts, and inspiration on your website (and your blog), visitors will see you more as an actual living, breathing person and less as an anonymous face on a book cover. Sharing personal anecdotes is one of the best ways to build your personal brand, create a following, and increase book sales!

Update Your Headshot

Standard headshots are often…well, standard! There is nothing wrong with a headshot that shows you in business casual wear in front of a plain background. But this is your author website, not your LinkedIn profile shot. Post a fun headshot, or even a series of photos that captures your personality. Website visitors will want to see your playful side, not just the let’s-get-down-to-business side. Help your audience connect with you on a personal level. If you write horror stories or serious nonfiction, you might want to choose a headshot that reflects your genre. But you can still crack a smile in another photo to show the person behind the pen (or behind the vampire fangs, if that’s the case).

Uncomfortable in front of the camera? Well, say cheese, because we’ve got you covered with Headshot 101.

Integrate Social Media

Do you often find yourself tweeting, scrolling through Facebook, or uploading your new selfie or food photo on Instagram? Odds are, your followers do this too! Integrate your social media into your author website through widgets and live feeds so that visitors can learn more about the real you and share your posts—helping to expand your reach with more opportunities to market your writing.

Share A Video

Clearly, your author website visitors love to read. But if you have a video camera, a GoPro, or a smartphone, you can also share a video on your website. This can be a vlog or welcome video, a guide to your writing process, a tour of your writing space, a reading of your favorite passage, and more. Your audience will feel more allied with you if they have a face and a voice to put with your words!

Write A Dear Reader Letter

If your website comes across as too generic or just the opposite, too over-marketed, maybe a Dear Reader letter is just what you need. This welcome letter can be the place to share insight into your writing process and/or what’s going on in your life in a personal, relatable way. For more tips on writing a letter that stands out, check out the anatomy of the Dear Reader Letter.

Don’t Overdo It

While sharing personal stories and information can be a great way to connect with your audience, don’t put every aspect of your life on display. It’s always best to keep your website tasteful and secure, and your identity safe. Here’s how to steer clear of getting too personal:

  • Don’t share anything you wouldn’t tell a stranger.
  • Don’t post photos while you’re on vacation, letting people know your house is empty.
  • Avoid the gross and grand aspects of your life (no pics of your recent appendectomy).
  • Details matter, but skip the second-by-second updates of your life (nobody needs to know that you are eating toast).
  • Never, EVER share your personal address or phone number, or email address (use a contact form instead).
  • This goes double for your social security and credit card numbers: Do NOT give them out.

Final Thoughts On Appealing To Your Audience With Real-Life Elements

Sharing some parts of your life with your audience is great! It shows that you are willing to connect with them as real-life people, not just as unknown readers or potential sales. Author website visitors prefer author websites that aren’t heavy-handed with marketing buttons and purchase links. Be smart about what you share with your visitors—but don’t be afraid to have a little fun either!

Question: Which personal aspect of your favorite author’s website do you most like?

Jun27

Guest Post: “The Night Café” by Vincent van Gogh from Joy of Museums

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Thanks to Joy of Museums for this commentary on The Night Café, a painting by Van Gogh that I’ve never seen before.

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“The Night Café” by Vincent van Gogh depicts the interior of Café de la Gare, in Arles. Five customers are sitting at tables, and a waiter in a light coat is standing and facing the viewer.  A half-curtained doorway in the centre background is leading to more private quarters.  The title of this painting is inscribed lower right beneath the signature. In highly contrasting and vivid colours, the paint is applied thickly, with the perspective leading toward the door in the back.

Van Gogh stayed up for three consecutive nights to paint the picture, sleeping during the day. Van Gogh wrote to his brother about the Café:

“… staying open all night. “Night prowlers” can take refuge there when they have no money to pay for a lodging or are too drunk to be taken in. ”

To continue reading this article, click here.

May23

Guest Post: “The Gates of Hell” by Auguste Rodin from Joy of Museums

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Thank you to Joy of Museums for this wonderful commentary on The Gates of Hell.

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“The Gates of Hell” by Auguste Rodin

The Gates of Hell is a sculptural group created by Auguste Rodin that depicts a scene from “The Inferno” from Dante Alighieri’s book the Divine Comedy. The sculpture was commissioned in 1880; it became Rodin’s life work as he continued to work on and off on this project for 37 years, until his death in 1917.

Many of the characters were modeled and cast separately as stand-alone art sculptures. This is one of the reasons Rodin took so long with this masterpiece. Many of the original small-scale sculptures used on the Gate were enlarged and reworked and became stand-alone works of art of their own. Examples of  include:

To continue reading this article, click here.

Apr18

Guest Post: “The Last Supper” by Ugolino di Nerio from Joy of Museums

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Thank you to Joy of Museums for this insightful discussion of The Last Supper.

1024px-1г_Ugolino_di_Nerio._The_Last_Supper_Metropolitan_mus._N-Y“The Last Supper” by Ugolino di Nerio

“The Last Supper” by Ugolino di Nerio shows the scene of the Last Supper of Jesus with his apostles, as it is told in the Gospel of John. This painting formed part of the predella, which is the lowermost horizontal part, of a dismembered altarpiece. In this scene, Christ, on the left, informs his disciples that one of them will betray him, a prophecy that was fulfilled by Judas, who is positioned at Christ’s right without a halo. In this painting, we can also see how Ugolino explored how to paint perspective as seen with the ceiling and the table settings. Leonardo da Vinci was born over 100 years after this painting was made in Florence.

To continue reading this article, click here.

Mar28

Guest Post: Black St. George Icon by Joy of Museums

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Thank you to Joy of Museums for the following article discussing this beautiful St. George icon.

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Black Saint George Icon

This icon of Saint George has become known as ‘The Black George’ because the horse is painted black rather than the white horse that has traditionally been used for St George Icons. Russia converted to Christianity in 988, and much of its religious art was inspired by the Byzantine tradition. This icon made in 1400 was discovered in 1959 in a village in northern Russia where it was being used as a window-shutter.

The Black George icon depicts Saint George and the Dragon which legends describe the saint slaying a dragon that demanded human sacrifices and thereby rescuing the princess chosen as the next offering. Some icons depicting the saint as a horseman killing the dragon date to the 12th century. The motif became popular especially in Greek, Georgian and Russian icon traditions. The saint is depicted in the style of a Roman cavalryman, and the saint is mostly shown on a white horse, facing right, but sometimes also on a black horse, or facing left. From its Eastern origins, it was introduced into the Western Christian tradition by the Crusades.

To continue reading this article, click HERE. 

Feb21

Guest Post: “Water Lilies” by Claude Monet from The Joy of Museums

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Thank you to The Joy of Museums for insights into Claude Monet’s mastery of the subject of water lilies.

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“Water Lilies” by Claude Monet shows a water-lily pond, from Monet’s garden in Giverny, with the sky, clouds and light reflecting on the lily pond. Monet attempted to capture the continually changing qualities of light, colour, water, sky and lilies by dissolving all the elements in what he expressed as:

“the refuge of peaceful meditation in the centre of a flowering aquarium.”

Claude Monet painted nearly 250 painting in his series of “Water Lilies”.  The paintings depict Monet’s flower garden at his home in Giverny which was the primary focus of Monet’s artistic endeavours during the last thirty years of his life. Monet painted many of his later works while suffering from cataracts.

To continue reading this article, click here.

Jan10

Guest Post: “Salvator Mundi” by Albrecht Dürer from The Joy of Museums

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Thank you to The Joy of Museums for this discussion of Salvator Mundi.

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“Salvator Mundi” by Albrecht Dürer is an unfinished painting showing Christ as Savior of the World, who raises his right hand in blessing and his left holds a crystal orb representing the earth. Dürer began this work before he departed for Italy in 1505 and only completed the painting of the richly coloured drapery.  The unfinished picture of the face and hands show Dürer’s detailed preparatory drawings. This painting shows Dürer’s extensive and meticulous drawing skills.

To read the rest of this article, click here.

Dec27

Guest Post: 11 Poetry Forms You’ve Never Heard Of (But Should Have)

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This article has been reprinted with the permission of Writer’s Relief, a highly recommended author’s submission service. We assist writers with preparing their submissions and researching the best markets. We have a service for every budget, as well as a free e-publication for writers, Submit Write Now! Visit our site today to learn more.

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Even if you spent most of high school English class staring out the window or at the clock, you’ve probably heard of haiku. And quatrains. And sonnets. Of course, the sonnets.

 

But there’s more to poetry than free verse and couplets. In fact, there are almost as many forms of poetry as there are actual poems!

How many of the poetry terms on this list have you heard of? Leave a note in our comments section.

11 Obscure Or Little-Known Types Of Poetry Forms

1. Aubade: A poem that ponders lovers separating at dawn. Example: John Donne’s “The Sun Rising”

2. Concrete: Poems that form shapes with words. Example: George Herbert’s “Easter Wings”

3. Didactic: Poems meant to instruct. Example: Alexander Pope’s “The Rape of the Lock”

4. Eclogue: A poem set in a bucolic place (that often discusses urban, social, or political issues). Example: Louis MacNeice’s “Eclogue by a Five-Barred Gate”

5. Ekphrasis: Poetry that echoes specific artwork in another medium (poems about paintings or music, etc.). Example: An excerpt from Homer’s The Iliad

6. Found: A poem created from existing text. See many examples at The Found Poetry Review

 7. Ghazal: Carefully rhymed couplets musing on erotic/mystic longing. Example: Patricia Smith’s “Hip-Hop Ghazal”

8. Gnomic: Poetry that embraces aphorisms, proverbs, and maxims. Example: Robert Creeley’s “Gnomic Verses”

9. Occasional: Poem written to commemorate an event or moment in time. Example: Emily Dickinson’s “The Birds begun at Four o’clock”

10. Palinode: A poem that retracts something said in a previous poem. Example: Chaucer’s “Retraction”

11. Sestina: Six stanzas consisting of six lines each, composed in fixed verse form. A repeating set of six words ends the lines of each of the six-line stanzas, but in a different order with each repetition. Example: Elizabeth Bishop’s “Sestina”

Want to learn more about obscure poetry forms? Visit this fantastic website curated by The Poetry Foundation.

Dec13

Guest Post: Host Your Own Writers’ Retreat by Fae Rowen

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Thank you to Fae Rowen for this article, which was first published on Writers in the Storm.

 

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It’s been almost ten years since I hosted my first writers’ retreat. It was a low-key get together for my five-person critique group, which had been meeting for just a few months.

We already met weekly for face-to-face chapter critiques, but we wanted time to discuss writing, trade ideas and things we’d learned from books, conferences, and hard work. I volunteered my house and the food (breakfast and lunch).

I made sure all the food was prepared—a quiche and fruit salad for breakfast and a salad bar for lunch, with chocolate goodies for dessert. I wouldn’t have to spend any time “in the kitchen” other than to set out our meals, and I knew everyone would help.

It turned out that life interrupted and only two of us ended up spending our writers’ retreat day together. That turned out to be a really good thing. At that time, Laura Drake and I didn’t know each other that well.

I’d gone through my library and pulled out the craft books that I had duplicates of. I also had a Goal-Motivation-Conflict poster board, gridded off for placing sticky notes for plotting. I piled up my stack of RWA chapter newsletters, a couple of thesauruses, a dictionary and notes with craft and industry tips. Laura brought craft books she no longer needed and magazines, along with books she really liked.

We looked through each other’s offerings and pulled out things we wanted to keep. Actually I think I took all her stuff and she took all mine. It was like an exciting yard sale, because we got to share what we loved and convince each other of the value of our reference books. We talked about plotting—we’re both still pantsers—and GMC. We shared our dreams of getting agents and publishing lots of books.

To continue reading this article, click here.

Dec6

Guest Post: “The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon” by Edward Poynter from The Joy of Museums

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Thank you to The Joy of Museums for the wonderful explanation of this painting:

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“The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon” by Edward Poynter

“The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon” by Edward Poynter depicts the story from the Hebrew Bible in which the Queen of Sheba visits Solomon the King of Israel and a son of King David. The Bible describes how the fame of Solomon’s wisdom and wealth had spread so far and wide, that the Queen of Sheba decided to visit and see for herself if the stories were real.

The queen came bearing gifts including gold, spices, and precious stones and King Solomon responded in kind and gave her “all her desire, whatsoever she asked,” and she left satisfied (1 Kings 10:10). Nearly 3,000 years later, the visit of the Queen of Sheba continues to inspire the creative imagination and has become the subject of many stories that have inspired many artists.

The land of Sheba has been identified as Saba, a nation on the coast of the Red Sea and was part of what are now Eritrea, Somalia, Ethiopia, and Yemen. An Ethiopian account from the 14th-century purports that the Queen of Sheba had sexual relations with King Solomon and gave birth to a son. Ethiopian tradition holds that the son grew up to become King Menelik I, and to found a dynasty that would reign for nearly 3,000 years until Haile Selassie was overthrown in 1974. King Menelik was said to be a practicing Jew who was given a replica of the Ark of the Covenant by King Solomon. Ethiopian tradition states that the original Ark was switched and went to Ethiopia, and is still there, guarded by the Christian Church. The Ethiopian government and church deny all requests to view the alleged ark.

To continue reading this article, please click here.

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