Today’s Xulon Press Successful Author Spotlight features Michael Zigarelli, Ph.D. Michael is Associate Professor of Management at Messiah College and the former dean of the Regent University School of Business. He has written written ten books, ranging in topics from school soccer to cultivating Christian character.
Like a fluffy, well-placed ribbon cascading down a vase of fresh flowers, adding poetry into a manuscript is a small touch which adds a lot of beauty—if done correctly. If done incorrectly, it can clash with, distract from, or (worse) obliterate any view of the original masterpiece. How do you make sure that you’re using poetry in a way that enhances your book? Think theater: if your book was a play, poetry is used to set the stage for the audience. 1) Raising the Curtain. Poetry can be used as a dramatic introduction at the beginning of a chapter. Write…
We know that God helped you write your book and now He’ll help you finance it. Jeremiah 29:11 says that He knows the plans He has for you, plans of profit, for an expected end. That includes financing your first book! One of the hardest things to do is raise money. One possibility for financing publishing your book is to look for opportunities to use an established fund raising vehicle. Consider the benefits, then motivate yourself to go for it! I was introduced to kickstarter.com while watching RockCenter on NBC. They ran a piece on this benevolent team of Internet…
Let me take you back to an 8th grade English class. The teacher is saying something about commas, semicolons and conjunctions. You’re pretty much lost, spacing out a bit or writing a note to your crush three seats back. Why is it so hard to remember punctuation rules? It’s probably because technical terms are not the best way to have a long-lasting impact on pre-teens. Semicolons separate things, usually two main clauses that are closely related to each other, but could stand on their own as individual sentences. Many writers use them to add variety to the text after a…