Crossword Puzzle - August 2013

Welcome to the crossword puzzle for August 2013! Can you believe that it's been a month already?

As per usual (or if you're new here), the answers to the puzzle below will be posted next week Tuesday, 3 September 2013. If you'd like to be mentioned in that post, then play the game! Print the crossword out, or scribble on it electronically, and submit your answers (either the completed image, or just a list of question numbers and answers) to me via either Twitter mention or a message on my Facebook Page. Do not enter your answers in the comments below, or punch them onto my Facebook wall: you'll spoil the fun for everybody else!

I will post the name of the first person to give me the answers correctly before next Tuesday. Good luck!

Oh and P.S., if you'd like to receive the crossword puzzle each month, as soon as it's posted, then enter your e-mail address in the box on the Contact page, to subscribe to my free monthly newsletter.

So without further ado, here's this month's puzzle:

Across
1 Kind of clay used as a building material, typically in the form of sun-dried bricks (5)
4 Praise and honor received for an achievement (5)
7 Irritate or annoy (3)
8 Lover of Queen Guinevere (8)
9 Person who leads prayers in a mosque (4)
11 Professional fool at medieval court (6)
13 Book of financial accounts (6)
14 Holiday celebrating the birth of Christ (4)
18 Defensive walls (8)
19 Shout of welcome or farewell (3)
20 Person who tunes pianos (5)
21 Board used to spell out supernatural messages (5)
Down
1 Offer an excuse or defense (5)
2 Industrial city in California (7)
3 Software license agreement (4)
4 More exciting or fashionable (7)
5 Stupid person (4)
6 Large, long-haired breed of dog (6)
10 Creature with torso of man and legs of horse (7)
12 Kettle Drums (7)
13 Comitted to memory (6)
15 Biblical name of Saba (5)
16 Event regarded as a portent of good or evil (4)
17 Capital of Norway (4)

Bubbling Books?

This past weekend, somebody suggested in a writers group that I belong to, that I upload my book to a new site, called Bublish. I clicked, and had a look.

It seems like a pretty good idea, although creating my bubble wasn't as straightforward as I'd have liked. The service is still in Beta though, so I'm sure it'll get better and better.

The site allows readers to browse through book "bubbles", containing cover art, excerpts, insights from the authors, and buy links to take them directly to the book's page at the top-rated retailers.

Here's my bubble on the site:

The site also does a lot of work marketing their bubbles. I was featured twice yesterday in their tweet timeline, and again today in their "floating bookshelf".

I'm yet to see if it'll help me to sell more copies, but it's a novel concept, and I hope it takes off!

Update: To listen to me speaking about Bublish, click the Play button below:

Review: Author 2.0 Blueprint

So I finally got around to reading the Author 2.0 Blueprint by Joanna Penn. You can get it for free just by subscribing to her blog at http://www.thecreativepenn.com/.

I'm afraid that I gushed. A lot.

I can't think of anything more to say, than what I already said in my review over on Goodreads, so I'm just going to copy that:

Wow! There's a lot of information in here to digest!

Joanna Penn talks candidly about what it takes to be an author in this brave new world of the Internet, in which we find ourselves. She calls the author of this Web 2.0 world the "Author 2.0", quite aptly, I'd say.

This short book explains everything you need to do to make a successful career out of writing, from writing (duh) to marketing, to business management. There are tons of links throughout, to useful articles, blog posts, podcasts and videos, most of them free. She also advertises her paid courses, for more indepth coverage of certain topics, but I'll forgive those plugs because the manual that she has written stands on its own perfectly well without them.

I'll definitely be going back to it time and time again as I progress on my journey as an author, and I'll be clicking on all those links that I simply didn't have time to click!

I really think that this free volume should be required reading for anyone serious about their writing journey!

Honestly, you wanna be a writer? Read this book!

Update: To listen to me speaking about the Author 2.0 Blueprint, click the Play button below:

Crossword Puzzle - July 2013 Answers

Herewith, the answers for the July 2013 crossword puzzle.

I was told that this month's clues were a bit "esoteric". Who else feels that way? how did you all do? Hope at least a few people got close! Please add your comments below; I'd love to hear how you enjoyed this month's puzzle!

Crossword Puzzle - July 2013

I was speaking to a friend the other day, and she was complaining that she always seems to miss my crossword puzzles. She's obviously not checking Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn at the time I post them. I should probably post them more often during the week, but I would also like to point out the newsletter sign-up box on the top-right of this page. If you sign up for my free monthly newsletter, you will be notified via e-mail whenever new puzzles are added. :)

Anyway, on to this month's crossword puzzle. I believe it's quite a difficult one this month, so kudos to you if you get the answers. If you'd like me to mention you in next week's post, then be the first to submit your answers to me by either my Twitter account or Facebook fan page.

Without further ado, here's this month's puzzle:

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

Across
1 Owner of indieBerries blog, first name (3)
3 Mineral used in jewellery (6)
6 Sikly sediment (3)
7 Quaint hotel (3)
9 Address for woman of authority (4)
12 Excrement (4)
15 Award craved by actors (5)
17 Unfasten (5)
18 Comprehend (5)
20 17, 3-5-7-5 (5)
23 Centres to edges of circles (5)
24 Deer in love (5)
26 Habitual repetition (4)
29 Russian emperor (4)
32 Nintendo games console (3)
33 Israeli submachine gun (3)
34 Summary of information (6)
35 Land where sleepers go (3)
Down
1 A man (4)
2 Kellog's waffles (4)
3 City in central Iran (3)
4 American actress Gardner, died 1990 (3)
5 Commonly found in batteries (4)
8 Grammatical conjunction, neither (3)
10 Tool like an axe (4)
11 Use these to clean floors (4)
13 Capital of Canada (6)
14 Alter-ego of Bruce Banner (4)
16 Christmas season (6)
19 An Arab ruler (4)
21 Acid obtained from urine (4)
22 A thought (4)
24 Stringed weapon (3)
25 Unmarried young woman (4)
27 Norse creator god (4)
28 Made a living (4)
30 British actress Lister (3)
31 Track made by a cart (3)

Good luck!

3 Stars: Do you Like it or Not?

When rating a book on any given retailer's site, what do the number of stars actually mean to you?

I've been thinking about this for a while lately, and I got into a discussion with someone about it the other day.

My favourite book review site at the moment is Goodreads. Goodreads is a community of book lovers. It's completely free to join and participate in, and it doesn't try to (directly) sell you anything. You can't buy books there (although you can find links where to buy them); you just rate and review them. Every other member of the community can see your ratings and reviews, and they affect the average ratings of the various books. Based on your ratings, the site also recommends books that you might be interested in.

In order to rate a book, you need to give it a number of stars, from one to five. They offer guidelines to help you decide, and their suggested scale is as follows:

• 1 Star = did not like it
• 2 Stars = it was ok
• 3 Stars = liked it
• 4 Stars = really liked it, and
• 5 Stars = it was amazing

Now, Amazon, who are arguably the biggest book retailer in the world right now, also asks you to rate books that you find there. Their suggested scale, though, is slightly different:

• 1 Star = I hate it
• 2 Stars = I don't like it
• 3 Stars = It's OK
• 4 Stars = I like it
• 5 Stars = I love it

So, in my opinion, Amazon's scale assumes that more people who review books aren't going to particularly like them (a negative view), whereas Goodreads' one assumes that people are generally likely to pick books to read that they're going to like in the first place (a positive view).

Be that as it may, my short story, A Petition to Magic currently has an average rating on Goodreads of 3.00 exactly, which I would consider good, and that on average, people like it. On Amazon, however, the average is 3.20. That's slightly higher than on Goodreads, so on the face of it, that would be a good thing. Based on Amazon's suggested scale, though, it's worse, and indicates that the average reader thinks my story is "just okay."

Then again, I would think that most seasoned reviewers develop their own scale, and use it everywhere. So a 3-star rating to one person might mean something completely different to a different person.

What about you? Do you have your own opinion of what the various star-ratings mean to you, and use them everywhere? Or would you rate (for example) the same book 3-stars on Goodreads, but 4-stars on Amazon?

Please add your comments below.

Update: To listen to this blog post as a video, click the Play button below:

Secrets to a Great Author Biography

I happened to be on Smashwords last week, and I came across this book. It was free, so I grabbed it thinking perhaps it had some gems in it that I hadn't thought of, yet.

I was rather disappointed.

Secrets to a Great Author Biography certainly jumps straight into it! There's no introduction to what you're about to learn, or why it's important. It's an information dump: "this is what you need to do." Period. There are very few non-obvious things to think about, but mostly it's a wall of text that culminates in an advertisement for Fireblade Publishing, and that advertisement is as long as the content leading up to it!

It's a real pity, because I honestly think that lots of authors could benefit from a better biography. I'm not even sure I'm doing it right yet, and I'll love to learn more.

What are your tips and tricks for writing your biography, if you're an author? If you're a reader, what author bio's have you read that really stood out, and made you want to buy their books?

Update: To listen to this post as a podcast, click the Play button below!