James D. Best

Steed and Peel J oe Bunting has a good article on literary foils at The Write Practice. Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock, John Steed and E...

Mark Twain didn't like James Fenimore Cooper’s writing. Wait, that was far too mild of a sentence. In his article “Fenimore Cooper'...

We're about to drive to Garnerville, Nevada with friends. We'll stay with other friends who happen to be relatives. It looks lik...

Frank. A true black hat villain. Characterization is a crucial aspect of fiction. We know this because it's drilled into us a...

I love editors. The reason I love editors is they save me from embarrassment. I make errors and typos with punctuation and seem to miss ...

I just spent a week writing and surfing in San Diego. The writing went well, the surfing not so much. The weather was crappy for three day...

Hemingway ... presumably editing Emily Temple has posted on article on Flavorwire titled "Bad Writing Advice from Famous Authors....

My wife has flown to Omaha to do some tasks that have to do with spa colors, soothing music, and aromatherapy.  She’s helping my daughter op...

Huffington Post Books published an article titled " Bad Reviews Of Great Authors. "   When you get a bad review of your work, i...

Sometimes we forget that American genre fiction is popular overseas—Westerns included. And why not? We might think of the Wild West as u...

Elmore Leonard In 2009, The Western Writers of America presented Elmore Leonard with their prestigious Owen Wister Award for lifetim...

It is the superfluous things for which men sweat. Seneca (c. 5 BC-AD c. 65), Roman writer A friend of mine unintentionally ch...

A few days ago, I posted an article titled “How do you pick your next book to read?” I received a couple questions on a throwaway co...

When I get stuck writing, I find myself wandering over to Pinterest. What is it about this site that's so fascinating?  First, it'...

Last Friday, I received my annual statement from my large-print publisher. When I entered the sales into my ledger, the total copies of my b...

I made a significant error when writing  Principled Action, Lessons from the Origins of the American Republic . I attributed a quote to Jame...

Robert Newton Writing good dialog is hard. It’s especially hard for historical fiction. How did people talk in some long ago period? A...

In the olden days—like maybe four years ago—Kindle and Nook readers were fairly tolerant of formatting errors. The technology was brand span...

How to Stand Out in the Biggest Bookstore in the World Amazon is a vast book market. The size is a magnificent opportunity and a huge ...

I'm conducting a webinar today at 2:00 PM PST at Book Street Cafe. This is a new membership site for publishers, authors, and publishi...