ANDREW BISS

I'm currently hard at work on my latest book, which has the working title of either "A Mouth Full of Ashes" or "Mouth Full of Ashes", depending on how I feel that day. This has become one of those things that I find enormously burdensome. To include the "A" or not include the "A". I'm currently leaning towards including the "A". But that's right now. It's a difficult book to write in some ways, because - as much as I love and am very connected with the characters and the storyline - it requires me to delve into a very dark place every time I revisit these characters. Coming home after a hard day's work and diving into someone else's personal hell isn't always easy. Maybe I should just turn on the TV and relax with an episode of "The Real Housewives of... Or maybe hell is just a relative term. Incidentally, should hell be capitalized? Heaven always is. And let's face it, they're both pretty big. I...

Author Eloise J. Knapp, the niece of one of my fellow KBers, has put together a little Youtube video entitled " Author's Lament: 5 Emotional Stages of a Bad Review ". She'd asked that it be shared around and I'm more than happy to help do just that as I think it's hilarious and rather brilliant. Yes, negative reviews, 1 star reviews, they are, unfortunately a part of a writer's life. They come with the territory...that territory being the land where you'll never please everybody, no matter how much you wish that were possible. Sometimes, your work will end up in the hands of someone who is not part of your target audience (especially true when doing giveaways or low price promotions), and when that happens...well, it's often not pretty. Here's part of a 1 star review I recently read on Amazon: ""None of the characters were likable, there was no character growth, and it rambled." What was this particular critique aimed at, you ask...

Conventional wisdom (which, from my experience, is usually anything but) has it that writers should write in one genre and stick with it, gradually building an audience who enjoy that particular genre and who will eagerly await each new release, all the while knowing exactly what to expect. And of course, this does work very well indeed for the Stephen Kings and John Grishams of this world. But that same "wisdom" would have it that to do otherwise is sheer folly, confusing your readers at best, angering them at worst, and making brand building nigh impossible. This thought has troubled me in the past, not least because not only have I never written in strictly one genre before, I also don't think I ever could. But I have come to the conclusion that, for me at least, this will not be a problem, despite the dire warnings from above (the above paragraph, that is, not the Almighty). Everything I have ever written or ever will write comes from a point of inspiration that has (...

It may not be the most romantic gift for an anniversary - although The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills would probably disagree - but that's what I've given The End of the World . Yes, it's been almost a year (on Monday, to be exact) since it was published, and I decided to celebrate it by giving it a makeover. That book's cover has never been a simple thing for me. When I first started out I really didn't have any idea what I was doing. Then I learned the rules of what you were "supposed" to do. Then I threw out the rules and did what I wanted to do, which is what you see here. The difficulty in trying to find the right cover for the book is as difficult as trying to categorize it. I generally list it as a contemporary fantasy, which, by strict definition of the genre, it essentially is. However, most books in that genre are nothing like The End of the World. But trying to place it somewhere else is nigh impossible, as it simply doesn't fit anywhere ...

"Going to hell in a handbasket", "going to hell in a handcart", "going to hell in a handbag" and "sending something to hell in a handbasket" are variations on an American alliterative locution of unclear origin, which describes a situation headed for disaster without effort or in great haste. That's from Wikipedia, and it's where I'm probably going (not Wikipedia, in case there was any confusion), since my New Year's resolution was to post more often about real life matters and shill my books far, far less. But you know, the thing is, I've always maintained that rules were made to be broken. Is that an out? I guess it depends on your definition of it. Or your definition of "it" as Uncle Bill used to say. Either way, "Hell in a Handbasket" is also the name of the latest album from Meat Loaf, and since he sold around 43 million copies of "Bat Out of Hell"...well, no arguing here.