Debbie Burke

27th ANNUAL FLATHEAD RIVER WRITERS CONFERENCE IS SEPT 23-24, 2017

September 19, 2017 September 19, 2017Articles, Writing Conferences

Do you love to write? Need some inspiration? How about up-to-date information on publishing and marketing? If so, join me at the Flathead River Writers Conference on September 23-24, 2017 in Kalispell, Montana. Two days of fun, education, camaraderie, and energy with bestselling authors, literary agents, and writers helping writers. The price is a bargain $160 for both days, including lunch, or $90 single day attendance. For complete details and to register online, visit: Authors of the Flathead. Or just…

INSTRUMENT OF THE DEVIL – LIVE ON AMAZON

September 12, 2017 September 12, 2017Articles

Instrument of the Devil is available for pre-order at Amazon and will be released October 10, 2017. Here’s the link. If you’re one of the wonderful folks who nominated it in the Kindle Scout contest, you should receive an email from Amazon for your free book. I hope you have as much fun reading Instrument of the Devil as I did writing it.

Life Is Just a Bowl of Cherries

August 21, 2017 August 23, 2017Articles

Similes, Metaphors, and Food A few days ago, after a brief but welcome rain shower washed the choking wildfire smoke from the Big Skies of Montana, I visited a friend’s cherry orchard on Flathead Lake. Because a glut on the market resulted in low prices, tons of fat glossy sweet cherries remained unharvested on the trees. As I walked among the heavily laden branches bowing to the ground, a cliché popped into my head: low-hanging fruit. According to John Bagnell, “Low…

Kindle Scout – Step Inside for a Tour

July 27, 2017 April 2, 2018Articles

UPDATE: As of 4/3/18, Kindle Scout is no longer accepting submissions. An interesting experiment but, sadly, it didn’t survive. My guest post about winning the Scout publishing contract appears today on my favorite writing blog, The Kill Zone.

Instrument of the Devil to be published by Kindle Press

July 9, 2017 July 9, 2017Articles

[Sound of champagne cork popping] My suspense/thriller Instrument of the Devil “won” the Kindle Scout campaign! The eBook will be published by Kindle Press this summer. Here’s a thank-you toast to all the terrific readers who voted for the book! I couldn’t have done it without your wonderful help and support. When it’s available, everyone who voted for it will receive the eBook for FREE. Hope you have as much fun reading it as I did writing it.

Win a FREE eBook-Instrument of the Devil

June 6, 2017 June 26, 2017Articles

HOT NEWS! I entered my suspense/thriller Instrument of the Devil in the Kindle Scout contest, where readers choose which books they’d like to see published. A sample is online for thirty days, starting June 7. If you like the story, please nominate it. If Instrument of the Devil “wins” and Kindle Press selects it for publication, everyone who voted for it receives the eBook for FREE! That’s a win/win for you and me! Voting opens June 7 and ends July 7, 2017. Check it out here. Thanks for your…

Eavesdroppers, Beware!

May 20, 2017 May 31, 2017Articles, Craft of Writing

We might as well confess. As writers, we’ve been known to eavesdrop on conversations. We wonder, what is that couple at the next table squabbling about? Or we listen over the dressing room partition to young women anticipating their lovers’ reactions to lingerie they’re trying on. Or we’re stuck on a plane beside a gnarly guy with strange tattoos who’s swearing at the unfortunate soul on the other end of his cell phone. Writers can’t help being incurably nosy,…

Kindle Scout – A Two Year Performance Review

March 31, 2017 April 2, 2018Articles

UPDATE: As of 4/3/18, Kindle Scout is no longer accepting submissions. An interesting experiment but, sadly, it didn’t survive. By Debbie Burke Kindle Scout has been called American Idol for authors or a Slush Pile Popularity Contest. Amazon defines it as “reader-powered publishing.” Scout has now been around for a couple of years, with nearly 250 books published so far, making it a good time to review its performance. How Scout works: Authors submit a 50,000+ word book to…

NaNoWriMo or Bust!

October 27, 2016 October 30, 2016Articles, Craft of Writing

The saying goes, everyone has a book inside them. Here’s your chance to get it out of imagination and down on paper because November is National Novel Writing Month. Last year’s NaNoWriMo included 431,626 participants in 633 different regions on six continents. Of these, more than 40,000 met the goal of writing 50,000 words in a month. Especially meaningful for me is the opportunity for thousands of young writers who participate through schools, libraries, and community programs. You never know what child…

Writers meeting writers

September 22, 2016 October 19, 2016Craft of Writing, Writing Conferences

There are writers and there are civilians (AKA normal people). Civilians look at us fiction writers as objects of curiosity…a little odd, but probably not dangerous. They don’t understand how we can happily spend hours chasing imaginary people around in our imaginations. Come to think of it, that does sound quite odd. Like any group that shares a common affinity, writers love to get together with each other. The best place to do this is at a writers conference. Coming…