Maria Murnane News & Updates

Recent Updates

Word-of-mouth is a powerful force, and there’s nothing wrong with encouraging your fans to tell their friends about your book. The key word here is fans. It’s clear that a...

A blog tour, also sometimes called a virtual book tour, is when a number of book blogs post a review of a title during a set period of time, for example a couple weeks or a...

One of the most common capitalization errors I see is regarding family members, especially parents. Here’s a refresher on the rule: If the “Mom/mom” or “Dad/dad” is replacing...

In previous posts I’ve discussed the importance of putting obstacles in front of characters as a way to bring conflict into your story. Another way to create conflict is to...

More than once in the past few weeks I’ve heard the word “reactionary” used to describe someone who reacts or has reacted to something. I flinch each time this happens, because...

You never know when you’re going to meet someone who wants to buy your book, so it’s always smart to have a copy handy. But not everyone carries around cash or a checkbook, so I...

There’s so much more that goes into being an “author” than just writing. There’s also rewriting, researching, editing, proofreading, etc. Then there’s the marketing side of...

My editor once told me that the way to write an interesting novel is to put a series of obstacles in front of the main character. A successful author offered similar advice: Put...

If you want people to discover your books, you should do everything you can to make yourself easy to find online. I frequently receive emails from authors who are despondent...

I get that many (most?) people are convinced they’ll never understand the difference between “who” and “whom.” If you fall into that group, here’s a way to look at “who vs....

I recently completed a screenwriting program to learn how to adapt one of my novels for film. One night the instructor brought up the concept of outlines, and I found myself...

In a recent post I explained that the seasons of the year should not be capitalized, nor should job titles that don’t come directly before a person’s name. Here are two other...