Author Spotlight Interview: Laura Powers
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 29, 2019
Today’s interview is with celebrity psychic and author Laura Powers, who pens delightful books on spirituality and the divine while traveling the world. We caught her on a brief moment between travels and asked about her ideas, inspirations, and how she puts words onto the page. HG: I’m interviewing you about your books, but I have to start off with the total Laura package! It seems like your writing is a seamless part of your business and passion. So, to start off – how would you describe yourself to our readers who might not be that familiar with you? LP: I am a psychic medium, entertainer, and explorer and I love to use my gifts and abilities to help people lead the best life possible. Ever since I was little I have sensed ghosts and the spiritual realm and now I use my abilities to see what others aren’t and… Read More >
Stretching Your Ad Budget (Part 2) – Gaining Subscribers
By: Ginger | Posted on October 25, 2019
In part one of this series, we discussed using your ad budget to sell more books, but there are other goals that successful authors use advertising for, such as growing the core group of fans that they can reach regularly via their mailing list. Instead of spending your ad dollars on selling a book once to a random person, you can instead spend those same dollars to have that person join your list so that you can sell to them over and over again in the future – without any additional costs. That makes gaining subscribers one of the most effective investments you can make. In part one, we discussed the challenge of getting the most value from your advertising budget – and how important the concept of strategy was. Tactics are the specific things you do to achieve your goals – which platforms you use, for example – whereas… Read More >
5 Top Children’s Books for Fall 2019
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 22, 2019
There’s nothing better than curling up with your kids on a crisp, autumn night and reading them a story – and Hidden Gems subscribers received a ton of free top children’s books in August and September of this year. With so many great books to read and review, it was difficult to narrow the list down – but here are five favorites, as rated by our subscribers! Detective Trigger and the Ruby Collar by M.A. Owens A four-legged gumshoe is the star of this paw-fect read for middle grade kids, introducing private eye Trigger as he hunts down a deviously crooked cat. Part of the Detective Trigger series, this book is a great chapter book to encourage reading, and filled with evocative characters that’ll keep supervising adults equally entertained. Reviewer kympossible gave the book 5-stars, writing: “In this fun private eye story for middle grade readers, all the characters are dogs… Read More >
The Most Important Part of Your Story Is the Dialogue
By: Hollie Jones | Posted on October 18, 2019
Writing great dialogue is just as important as creating the imaginary world or colorful characters of your book, and so it shouldn’t be ignored or rushed through. In fact, when done right, your dialogue will not only make your characters seem more authentic, but can help with the rest of your world building as well. Not convinced? Today’s guest author Hollie Jones breaks down why dialogue is so important and how, when done well, it can improve so many aspects of your story. I’m no great fan of silent movies, but I acknowledge that they offer value to the cinematic world. In the absence of the spoken word, the visuals step up to shape perception, with deliberate framing and subtleties in body language conveying the intended themes. But think for a second about what people remember of the classic movies — in Gone With The Wind, is it the pause… Read More >
Author Spotlight Interview: J.C. Paulson
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 15, 2019
This week we continue our series of Author Spotlight interviews by speaking with Canadian mystery writer J.C. Paulson, author of Adam’s Witness and two more titles in the Adam and Grace series. Hailing from the prairies of Saskatchewan, Paulson’s writing blends the crisp prose of her journalistic background with the optimistic promise of a satisfying ‘ever after’. HG: I’ll start with the basics! Who is JC Paulson? When you’re not crafting mysteries, what do you do? Where do you live? How do you take your coffee? How do you describe yourself? JCP: Right. How long would you like me to go? HG: Longer than a Tweet, but shorter than Atlas Shrugged? JCP: I can handle that! I’ve been a writer for my entire career. I started by writing ad copy — needed a job! and I did like it — before becoming a journalist, first with the daily paper in my… Read More >
Stretching Your Ad Budget (Part 1) – Selling Books
By: Ginger | Posted on October 11, 2019
As an independent author without a large publisher with deep marketing pockets bankrolling your book, how you spend your limited advertising budget is something you have to think carefully about. Not only do you need to consider how and where to spend your money, but what your overall marketing goals are in the first place. Sure, selling more books is the obvious one and certainly provides the most immediate results – but there are some longer term strategies that advertising can also be used for, such as growing your mailing list or promoting free copies of your book (which itself can increase sales). In this three part series, we’ll go over how to get the most out of your advertising dollar for each of these strategies, starting with the one all of us are most interested in – selling more copies! (And don’t forget to take part in the survey… Read More >
5 Fabulous Mysteries for the Fall
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 8, 2019
Everybody loves a good whodunnit, and subscribers to Hidden Gems get to pick and choose from new titles offered to them each and every day, for FREE. We looked back over the past two months and selected some of the top-ranked mysteries, as picked by our readers. Adam’s Witness by J.C. Paulson Former journalist J.C. Paulson turned bad news into hopeful optimism when she shifted careers and moved into the world of fiction. With a writing style in the tone of Dorothy Sayers, P.D. James and Louise Penny, Paulson’s taut prose breathes life into the Adam and Grace series, which follows the investigations of sassy reporter Grace Rampling and brilliant detective Adam Davis as they uncover murder most foul – and find unlikely love along the way. “I read it in one long sitting,” writes Gloria Antypowich in her 5-star review. “The plot has many twists and turns—the romance fraught with… Read More >
What Goes Into Choosing Your Genre?
By: Sloan Quinn & Katherine Stark | Posted on October 4, 2019
In your spare time you may read a number of different types of books for pleasure, but as an author, you need to focus on a particular genre to write in. For some, that’s a fairly simple decision, but for others it may not be so easy. So how do you decide? What factors go into choosing your genre, or your sub genre? There are many ways to do it, but in today’s guest post authors Sloan Quinn and Katherine Stark offer up a few ideas based on the process they used. Romance as a genre is huge. There are so many different sub-genres contained within it: paranormal romance, contemporary erotica, thrillers and romantic suspense, romantic comedies… the list could go on for ages. We both are newer romance writers: Sloan Quinn writes the Dirty series, enemies-to-lovers romances centered around the criminal underground in Philadelphia (where she went to college);… Read More >
Author Spotlight Interview: Julie C. Gardner
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on October 1, 2019
This week, we got the chance to speak to Julie C. Gardner, a #1 Amazon best-selling author, and writer of beautifully crafted women’s literature titles like Forgetting Ophelia and Letters for Scarlet. We asked Julie about her inspirations and ideas, and how she helps her narrative flow into the written word. HG: First off, for readers who might not be familiar with you, who IS Julie C. Gardner? JG: Good question. I wish I knew the answer – ha! I guess I can say the most important thing to me is family — my husband, two kids, and two rescue dogs (we’re rescuing a third in two weeks — a Labrador puppy)! But outside of the home, my life has always revolved around books: reading them, teaching them, writing them, and now lending them out. This is because my three careers have been as a high school English teacher, an… Read More >
