Quotes from James Scott Bell

The Prince of Wurttemberg has been kidnapped." The Great Detective bounded from his chair as if he had been kicked from below. A prince stolen! Evidently a Bourbon! The scion of one of the oldest families in Europe kidnapped. Here was a mystery indeed worthy of his analytical brain. His mind began to move like lightning.

With the Great Detective to think was to act, and to act was to think. Frequently he could do both together.

He was preaching about expectations, that new Christians sometimes had the expectation that life with Christ was going to be smooth and happy and without obstacle from now on. That there would be no major problems, no confrontation with evil, no valley of the shadow ever again. Not so, he said, not so. There would be tribulation in the world. That was certain. But the other certainty was that Jesus has overcome the world.

The feeling was that just when things seemed all right, something bad was about to happen.

To be quite honest with you, I haven't known many Christians as articulate as you.

Winston Churchill: "Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm.

A great short story is about the fallout from one, shattering moment.

A chef's genius is not to create a dish from original ingredients, but to combine standard ingredients in original ways. The diner recognizes the pattern established in the foundation of a baked stuffed turkey, and we look for the variation, the twist that will surprise and delight

The copy editor looks for inconsistencies in content (does your character have blue eyes in Chapter 1, and green eyes in Chapter 30?

Pay for a cover. There are abundant sources out there now for getting a good cover design. Do a little Google searching. Check out a website called 99Designs.com. The basic range for a pro cover is around $ 200-$ 500. If you want something more complex and specific, you might pay an artist a bit more.

My preferred method is to be able to suggest a concept and get two preliminary sketches or renderings. Then choose one and have two rounds of modifications and a final polish.

Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.

That makes it harder to run an ad on a book-deal service like Bookbub, BookGorilla, BookSends, eBookSoda and so on.

Is there an alternative to blogging? There is. Build relationships with four or five highly-trafficked blogs.

Write what you love. That's really the most important thing—and believe it or not, the most important thing to making a living.

And since this is a business, let me say I encourage self-publishing writers to set up their own publishing company as a corporation. It's not hard to do. Consider LegalZoom.com as a starting point.

To forget things I like getting lost in the smell of old books, the scent of the gods.

the mind does not distinguish between reality and what is vividly imagined. It puts all of that stimuli to work in shaping your reality and your future. So it's a good idea to think right.

Today I resolve to take writing seriously, to keep going and never stop, to learn everything I can and make it as a writer.

Write down the POV character in the scene, the objective, and a list of possible obstacles. Write a tentative outcome. Spend a couple of minutes making a list of unexpected things. Go wild. One of them will please you. Then you're ready to write.

Third: Act first, explain later. Stamp this axiom on your writer's brain. Or put it on a note and tape it where you can see it. This advice never fails.

Self-publishing is a volume business. The more quality (key word!) work you put out there, the better your chances of an increasing income stream. How good are the chances? Better than if you put all your hopes on one or two books. Don't fall into that trap.

A good story transports the reader to a new place via experience. Not through arguments or facts, but through the illusion that life is taking place on the page. Not

In your first ten pages you can have three sentences of backstory, used all at once or spread out. In your second ten pages you can have three paragraphs of backstory, used all at once or spread out. But if you put backstory or exposition into dialogue, then you're free to use your own discretion. Just be sure the dialogue is truly what the characters would say and doesn't come off as a none-too-clever info dump.