Mystery Adventures: A Writers Guide

This is a work in progress and a rough draft of my third novel in the Jonas Watcher Series. You get an opportunity to read the Novel as it is being developed. Please leave any comments, like all writers I appreciate honest feedback. My desire is to be the best writer I can be. I hope you enjoy the book. If you prefer to leave a private comment, you may email me at grposchman@gmail.com. The chapters that do not have a link attached have not been completed. Table of Contents An Incident at Central Station .............................................................. Chapter 1 The Challenger to San Francisco .......................................................... Chapter 2 No Good Deed Goes Unpunished .......................................................... Chapter 3 All Roads Lead To China Town ............................................................ Chapter 4 An Empress, an Artisan, a Thief and a Dragon  ................................... Chapter 5

What Kind of Writer are You? Writers come in all sorts of categories. And categories have a broad range also; There are Genres  Fiction and Non-Fiction, those who wordsmith in Poetry or Prose, Screenwriters and Novelists, Journalists and Fabricators, and there are a plethora of other ways to identify a writer. They all have one thing in common, they write. How is that for stating the obvious? My interest in this article breaks writers into three groups; those who have gone the traditional route of getting published, independently published authors, and everyone else. Everyone else as a group is either not interested in getting published or they have found another route to getting their work noticed. Writers in this group may eventually join one of the other two groups or not. They simply haven't made the move because they do not know how they want to go. Independently published authors may eventually enter the traditional route, but once they're there is no going back. I do

Full Disclosure I am a self-published author and I am not rolling in money because I know the secrets of how to self-publish. I have completed four novels, two have been self-published and two are sitting in my drawer, perhaps for another day. I am working on my third novel and I may self-publish it or not. It depends... I am retired living on Social Security and while I do not require an income from my writing, it would be very nice if I could develop enough of a following to provide me some additional income. I am working on a series of detective stories circa 1930, I characterize them as being light film noir with adventure, some mystery highlighting the style of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. The series is Jonas Watcher. I have been actively writing for about three years and while writing, I have designed my own book covers and done my own promotion online, with newspapers and posters for book signings. And whether I was involved with traditional publishing or self-p

The Case of the Jade Dragon Book Cover I am about two-thirds of the way through writing my first draft of The Case of the Jade Dragon. I started working on a book cover when I had started working on the outline for the novel. I had a number of pictures to choose from. The story is a third in the series with Jonas Watcher being hired to transport a bride from St. Louis to San Francisco. Two Chinese families who have been feuding for generations have finally come to an agreement that was going to be sealed with a marriage between the two families. There are a number of people who both support and oppose the agreed end to hostilities with the two families uniting in wedlock. When creating a cover there are a number of considerations I take into account. I try to create an element of the story on the page. I try to tie the cover graphically to the title, and an arbitrary decision upon my part to include a shadowed image representing Jonas Watcher. For this cover, I used a movie pos

CreateSpace Cover Creator I have two articles here that are dealing with book covers. The first I was looking for feedback on book covers for "The Case of the Jade Dragon" the third book in the Jonas Watcher series. The first five chapters of the book in rough draft mode are on my Goodreads blog . I had a number of book covers that I was thinking about for  "The Case of the Jade Dragon". While a couple of covers were very popular, a fifth one I had come up with was even better received, but it was lacking. I have improved upon the cover (I think) and I would like your feedback. Here is the cover below. The primary complaint in the previous article was that the image was not complete. So I offer up this cover. If you click on it will expand to the full size.

Trying to Solved My Book Cover Dilemma If you are James Patterson, Steven King, or John Grisham, book covers probably don't really matter that much. As I have been working on the book cover for my third novel in the Jonas Watcher series, I have been sharing my cover choices and activities with other writers and readers. One woman sort of clarified the matter for me. She said that for unknown writers, the book cover was the first thing would draw her to a book. But if she saw the name of a writer she liked and read, the cover could be a brown wrapper and she would buy it as soon as she saw the author's name. What that meant for me, an unknown writer, was that an intriguing Title and an engaging Cover were the two elements that I needed to have that would catch a reader's attention. Getting those tow things in front of eyes is another issue I hope to conquer. A great title is subjective, and not the subject of this series of articles. Creating a cover is. I am no