The HBS Author's Spotlight SHOWCASES C. S. Lakin New Book: Say What? The Fiction Writer’s Handy Guide to Grammar, Punctuation, and Word Usage.
Say What? The Fiction Writer's Handy Guide to Grammar, Punctuation, and Word Usage
Author: Susanne Lakin
AVAILABLE
Amazon
Finally! A grammar guide specifically designed for fiction writers!
WRITING CORRECTLY DOESN’T HAVE TO BE HARD
Great writers write well. Grammatical errors mark a manuscript as unprofessional and the author as sloppy or an amateur. But you don’t have to memorize the myriad of grammar, punctuation, and usage rules to have a well-written book. If you’re a novelist or write creative nonfiction, this handy guide is essential—giving you the most common and applicable rules and tips to make your book shine—minus the pain!
Inside you’ll find
•Short, concise, and often humorous explanations of important grammar, punctuation, and word usage rules as featured on the award-winning blog Live Write Thrive.
•Bonus fiction-writing tips to help you tighten your prose and say what you mean in fewer, more appropriate words.
•Easy-to-navigate sections and a comprehensive index so you can find the answer to your grammar question right away.
Whether you’re a novice or experienced writer, you’ll benefit from these clear and helpful explanations of grammar and usage based on The Chicago Manual of Style—the US book publishing industry’s authoritative reference guide. You no longer need to search the web or thumb through a stack of grammar books to find simple answers to your grammar questions. With Say What? at your fingertips, you’ll spend less time fretting over grammar and more time writing. And you’ll become a better writer in the process!
Here's what writing instructors say about this handy grammar book:
“Good, concise and easily accessible reference books on grammar and usage is hard to find. I mean, are hard to find. This is one of them.”
—James Scott Bell, bestselling novelist, writing coach, and author of Revision and Self-Editing for Publication
“This handy, user-friendly reference book, presented with style and humor, is a must for any writer serious about honing their craft and garnering respect for their works. An essential resource, the e-book will save you time with all its quick links to the short, snappy topics, and the print version is small enough to stay within reach beside your computer, so I highly recommend getting both. Respected editor and writer Susanne Lakin succeeds in making a dry topic interesting and meaningful! And using this book will also help you reduce your editing costs.”
—Jodie Renner, editor and author of Style That Sizzles
“As a self-professed grammar nerd, let me just say this: The world needs more grammar nerds. Editor Lakin is doing her part to make this happen with her pithy, fun, and supremely useful guide to the everyday writing mistakes most of us don't even realize we're making. Her book is conversational and approachable enough to make for enjoyable reading. But its true value is in its ‘lookupability.’ This is the perfect guide to keep on your desk, next to your computer, for those moments when you're just not sure which word is right.”
—K. M. Weiland, author of Structuring Your Novel and Outlining Your Novel
Amazon categories for Say What? The Fiction Writer's Guide:
>Education and Reference Guides
>Writing, Research, and Publishing Guides
>Grammar Reference Books
>Novel Writing Instruction
Say What? is a compilation of three years’ blog posts on grammar from the award-winning blog for writers Live Write Thrive. Dozens of writing tips have been added that are specifically aimed at helping fiction writers tighten and improve their writing. Grammar doesn’t have to be boring or difficult! Although Say What? is aimed at fiction writers, anyone seeking to improve grammar and write better and clearer will benefit from reading the short, snappy entries designed to make learning these sometimes-difficult rules a lot of fun.
BIO:
C. S. Lakin is a multipublished novelist and writing coach. She works full-time as a copyeditor and critiques about two hundred manuscripts a year. She teaches writing workshops and gives instruction on her award-winning blog Live Write Thrive. Her new book—Say What? The Fiction Writer’s Handy Guide to Grammar, Punctuation, and Word Usage—is designed to help writers get a painless grasp on grammar. You can buy it in print here or as an ebook here.
Author Genre: Mystery & Thrillers, Science Fiction, Fantasy
Website: C. S. Lakin - a novel life
Author's Blog: C. S. Lakin - a novel life
Blog: Live Write Thrive
Twitter: @CSLakin
Goodreads: Check Out Goodreads
Facebook: Check Out Facebook
Pinterest: Check Out Pinterest
Author Description: C. S. Lakin is a novelist and professional copyeditor who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, dog, and three cats. The first four books in her seven-book fantasy series, The Gates of Heaven, have been released: The Wolf of Tebron, The Map across Time, The Land of Darkness, and The Unraveling of Wentwater (July 2012), allegorical fairy tales drawing from classic tales we all read in our childhood.
Lakin's relational drama/mystery, Someone to Blame, won the 2009 Zondervan First Novel award, released October 2010. She just completed writing her eleventh novel, a modern-day take on the biblical story of Jacob called Intended for Harm and her twelfth: The Crystal Scepter (book five in The Gates of Heaven series). Also available on eBook are two mystery/psychological dramas: Innocent Little Crimes (top 100 in the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest) and Conundrum. Don't miss Time Sniffers: a wild young adult sci-fi romance that will entangle you in time!
Lakin has two websites for writers: www.livewritethrive.com with deep writing instruction and posts on industry trends. Her site www.CritiqueMyMaunscript.com features her critique services.
Author's Book List
The Crystal Scepter
- The Gates of Heaven SeriesWhen Pythius, the wicked young king of Paladya, learns of the hidden realm of Elysiel and the crystal scepter that protects that northern land, he journeys to kill the Keeper and steal the scepter. But his defiant act unleashes a terrible curse, and the Seer foretells his death one day at the hand of his son, now a newborn babe. To thwart the prophecy, he attempts to murder his child, but the queen escapes and sends the babe off in a trunk across the sea, where he is found and raised by a humble fisherman.
Years later, Perthin, the cast-off babe now grown, hears his call of destiny, and is visited by a specter who tells him of the land of Elysiel and of the Gorgon—the evil creature fomenting war in the Northern Wastes. Perthin’s village of Tolpuddle is being ravaged by a monstrous sea beast sent by this enemy, and Perthin accepts the challenge to kill the creature by cutting off its head—although anyone who looks upon it turns to stone. Armed with magical shoes and a legendary sword, Perthin arrives in Elysiel, where the trolls lead him to the ice cavern where the sacred site made of crystal slabs awaits him to show him his future. Perthin feels a strange connection to this land, unaware that he is the heir to Elysiel’s throne.
With the help of heaven’s army, Perthin bests the enemy and returns to stop the sea monster as the beast is ravaging the kingdom of Paladya. He rescues the princess, who has been set out in the harbor as a sacrifice for the beast, and then stops the sea monster by exposing it to the Gorgon’s head, yet through his heroic efforts he unknowingly fulfills the prophecy foretold by the Seer. He returns to Tolpuddle a hero, where many surprising revelations await him as to his heritage and legacy, for he learns he is not truly a fisherman’s son but a king foretold. The Crystal Scepter is an adventurous retelling of the classic story of Perseus and Medusa with a twist, as the heart of the story involves the gates of heaven—the sacred sites erected by heaven to prevent evil from taking over the world of mankind. It also has parallels to the story or Oedipus Rex, the 17th-century play by Spanish playwright Pedro Calderón de la Barca entitled Life is a Dream, and Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors.
Order the Book From: Amazon
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- Christian Books
Conundrum
A happily married man with three small children decides one day he no longer wants to live. He gives himself leukemia and nine months later is dead. This is the conundrum Lisa Sitteroff is determined to solve regarding her dead father—the tale her mother, Ruth, told Lisa and her two brothers, Rafferty and Neal, throughout their childhood. But Lisa, now thirty and watching Raff suffer from the ravages of bipolar illness, believes if she can solve this puzzle, she might somehow save her brother. For Raff’s pain is intrinsically tied up with feelings of parental abandonment. What starts as a noble goal for Lisa soon grows into a vicious family war, wreaking destruction on Lisa’s marriage. Lisa discovers details of her parents’ relationship that her mother has long hidden.
Shocking clues appear as Lisa reads a letter her father, Nathan, wrote before he died, prompting her to visit Nathan’s former boss, Ed Hutchinson. From him, Lisa learns that her engineer father helped design a generator run by radioactive materials. Ed lets slip that Nathan participated in a dangerous secret experiment, a fact her mother discounts as Nathan’s cause of death. Accusations and excuses fly. Yet, how much of what Lisa uncovers is true? Is truth solely subjective? Lisa sifts through layers of lies as she journeys into her father’s story, seeking to understand this man she never knew.
Meanwhile, her mother responds in fury and tries to destroy Lisa’s life, determined to keep Lisa from uncovering her dark secrets.
Conundrum explores the rocky landscape of betrayal and truth, asking whether a search for truth is worth the price, and showing how separating from toxic family members might sometimes be the only recourse for survival. Lisa pays a high price for truth, but in the end finds it worthwhile.
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Innocent Little Crimes
Six naïve guests plus revenge served cold equals a recipe for disaster…
Lila Carmichael may be a rich and famous comedienne, but she’s hidden her greatest talent from her adoring fans--her ability to simmer, spice and serve a carefully constructed tour de force at a cozy reunion on her private island in the Pacific Northwest.
Six unsuspecting guests have forgotten the innocent little crimes they committed against poor, gullible Lila fifteen years ago in college. All are teetering on the brink of ruin, hoping the famous Lila will come to their rescue. But their desperation plays them right into her hand.
One by one, Lila's guests are figuratively killed off in a vicious parlor game called Wolves. And revenge turns bittersweet when the weekend is over…and one guest is dead for real.
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The Unraveling of Wentwater
- The Gates of Heaven SeriesWhen the simple, backward village of Wentwater begins disappearing one word at a time, no one can figure out how to stop it. Not the learned men living up in the Heights nor the superstitious leaders of the village. But those who had attended the baby naming ceremony seventeen years earlier remember the words of the marsh witch, and her pronouncement that the babe would one day cause the unraveling of Wentwater. In their fear, the villagers banish the parents and set their cottage on fire, and the babe was thought to have perished in the flames. But . . . did she?
Teralyn lives in the Heights and wants nothing more than to create beautiful music on her lap harp. When she comes down to the village for a festival, she falls in love with a villager named Fromer, much to the fury of Fromer’s brother, Justyn. Justyn’s jealousy moves him to make a deal with the witch, and when Wentwater vanishes due to a backfiring spell, it leaves Teralyn, the only person left in the kingdom, with a terrible choice. She must leave her life and forget Wentwater, or she can spend seven long years restoring everything back to the way it was, by spinning nettle into thread and stitching the world back . . . one word at a time.
The Unraveling of Wentwater explores love, jealousy, mercy, and judgment. It spins a tale about the power and magic of words, and as the marsh witch, who keeps words in a jar, warns, “Be careful with your words, they have consequences!” Secrets and superstitions abound in the kingdom, but only a water creature who lives at the bottom of the lake and guards the sacred site knows the truth and can help Teralyn restore all.
In this fourth installment of The Gates of Heaven fantasy series, readers will learn of the fourth of seven sacred sites heaven set up on earth to prevent evil from gaining a stronghold over the hearts of men. Inspired by the traditional fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, readers will be taken on a journey that will leave them, in a word . . . Speechless.
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- Christian Books
A Thin Film Of Lies
Fran Anders is a dedicated, no-frills homicide detective who takes her job seriously but has a wry sense of humor. She suffers from the unbearable heat, from unrelenting allergies, but does not suffer fools. As much as she wants to please her superiors, she knows her true boss is—God—and she answers first and foremost to his leading, which sometimes takes her beyond the call of duty, often to the ire of those around her. A middle-aged, divorced, single parent with two teens, Fran hopes someday to find a great man and remarry, but she’s not holding her breath. Right now, she just wants to be a good cop and mother, and use her faith to help those she encounters in her line of work learn there’s someone “up there” who truly cares for them.
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- Smashwords
Intended for Harm
At the height of the Vietnam War in 1971, Jake Abrams is desperate to leave his oppressive home in Colorado and begin a new life in college in LA, but his dreams are waylaid when he meets Leah, an antiwar protester who pushes him into marriage and family. Jake tries to juggle school, his job, and raising four children, but Leah turns to drugs and drinking, and finally runs off with her rock band, leaving Jake reeling.
When he falls for Rachel and marries her, his children rebel. And when Joseph, their love child is born, Jake makes the same fatal mistake his own father did--he shows favoritism to this divinely gifted boy who has the power of healing. After Rachel dies in childbirth, bringing Ben into the world, Jake turns his back on God and buried himself in denial. His children are wild weeds, and as they grow, the older sons' resentment of Joseph's gifts fester until they can take it no longer. The family hides a dark secret of murder, which Joey threatens to spill out of righteous indignation and fear of God, and the only way to stop him is to kill him. The intend harm for him, but God has other plans for Joseph, and in a divinely orchestrated twist, years later Joseph confronts his brothers, who do not recognize him. True to the Bible story this is patterned after, Joseph is reunited with his estranged brothers, and Jake finally welcomes his long-lost son back into his arms, which brings closure and healing to his hurting family.
Written in a contemporary flash-fiction style, Intended for Harm covers forty years, each chapter a year, with a theme from a hit song for that year. Each scene is a fifteen-minute snapshot of the Abrams family, a "photo album" of Jake's life of wandering "through the wilderness" and coming home to faith at the end of his life. Anyone familiar with the Bible will recognize many similarities to the famous story of Jacob and his son Joseph. At the heart of this story is an exploration of fathers and sons, of loyalty and betrayal. And mostly, how we often intend harm to others because of wounds we carry in our souls, often without our knowing.
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- Smashwords
The Land of Darkness
- The Gates of Heaven Series“It is not the land that is dangerous, Callen. The danger lies in your heart. Others have lost their lives searching for the bridge. Are you certain you are prepared to pay that price?”
Jadiel is twelve and things couldn’t get much worse—or could they? Not long after her mother is killed in a tragic accident, her father, Ka’rel, marries a vile and abusive woman named Huldah, but Jadiel sees how he simmers under Huldah’s intoxicating enchantment. Jadiel’s wicked stepmother means to get rid of Jadiel, and sends her off with a threat and an impossible task: bring back the leaves from the Eternal Tree by the next full moon or her father will die. Heartsick and hopeless, Jadiel sets out alone and afraid.
Callen, a woodworking apprentice for Jadiel’s uncle in Wolcreek Vale, discovers some weathered drawings of an exquisitely detailed bridge made entirely of wood and embellished with mysterious symbols that appear to be ancient script. Obsessed with finding this bridge, he sets off seeking clues to its possible existence, unknowingly beginning a perilous and mystifying undertaking. On his journey, he rescues Jadiel from brigands and learns their quests are linked—as the elusive bridge Callen seeks is crafted from the rare tree Jadiel must find. The trail of clues leads them to the forbidden Land of Darkness, where they must face the greatest dangers of all—what lies in their hearts.
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- Christian Books
Time Sniffers (Shadow World)
An explosion at a secret laboratory. A rift in space-time. Alien dogs that can camouflage and sniff rips in time with their supervac noses. Be prepared to traverse shifting time streams and deeply entrenched shadow worlds in a wild and crazy fantasy/sci-fi near-future that will make your head spin and your heart pound.
Chockful of science and romance (yes, the two are compatible!), follow Bria Harrison, brilliant teenage daughter of two prominent scientists, as she searches for her mother, whom she insists is alive, despite the devastating explosion at the National Laboratory. While re-creating her mother’s last experiment in her basement, Bria, her autistic brother Dylan, and four friends cause a rip in time-space—and out of the resultant black hole tumbles K-Six, a time sniffer who has come to get them.
This doglike alien takes them back through the rip to his training world, where the teens must be altered to adapt to dangerous time confluences and worlds they must traverse to save the scientists trapped in a time eddy. If the scientists cannot be rescued soon, dark energy, now streaming into the galaxy at an alarming rate, will cause horrific destruction—including the end of all life on earth.
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The Map Across Time
- The Gates of Heaven SeriesMapAcrossTime.com The Map across Time, a sweeping epic of unfailing love and trust, shows how those who feel they are insignificant and unworthy have merit and serve heaven s purpose, even if that purpose is hidden.
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- Christian Books
Someone to Blame: A Novel
In the wake of heartrending family tragedies, Matt and Irene Moore move with their fourteen-year-old daughter, Casey, to a small town. Their goal is to get far away from the daily reminders that leave each of them raw and guilt-ridden. Their hope is to find redemption, repair, and renewal. Instead, the threads that hold them together unravel even more.
Breakers, a small community perched on the rocky coast of the Pacific Northwest, is draped with cold isolation that seems to mirror the hearts. As they settle into their new life, old grief settles with them. Matt is always on edge and easily angered, Irene is sad and pensive, and Casey is confused and defiant. They've once more set the stage for calamity. Into this mix comes Billy Thurber, a young drifter with his own conflicts, whose life unexpectedly entangles with the Moores'. His arrival in Breakers parallels a rash of hateful and senseless crimes, and soon the whole town -- eager for someone to blame -- goes after Thurber with murderous intent.
Out of this dangerous chaos, however, the Moores find unexpected grace and healing in a most unlikely way. Author C. S. Lakin explores our need to assign reason and fix blame for the pain and grief in our lives. Though the circumstances are fictional, the emotions are real and universal, making Someone to Blame a great and inspiring read.
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- Christian Books
The Wolf of Tebron (Book1) in The Gates of Heaven Series
A young blacksmith must undertake a perilous journey to the four ends of the world to rescue his wife, who is held captive by the Moon. Along the way, he befriends a powerful wolf who encourages, protects, and ultimately sacrifices his life to save his human friend. A stirring allegory of Gods love in classic fairy tale tradition.
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- ChristianBooks
Author Recommended by: HBSystems Publications
Publisher of ebooks, writing industry blogger and the sponsor of the following blogs:
eBook Author’s Corner
Mystery Reader’s Circle
Check out the index of other Spotlight authors. Spotlight Index.
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