VS Grenier ~ Award-Winning Author, Speaker & Podcaster

This week’s show is a hot topic in the publishing industry. Alan Kalar is the editor for AKW books, an eBook publisher. He does exactly what the traditional publishers do; he finds a talented author with something important to say and publishes them. The only difference is the books come out as an eBook. This is one of the fastest growing Industries in the business. The discussion will be very informative on all the new ways new authors can get noticed. What a difference five years makes ... five years ago this was just starting to take off and now it's an industry that HIT THE JACK POT! If you're a writer that won't quit until you get published this is the show you will want to listen to. Callers are welcome -Please call(646)595-4478

J.M. Levi grew up in the state of Arizona. Her parents’ who avidly read and worked crossword puzzles daily fostered her love of writing; her father encouraged her at an early age to keep a journal. Creating her first love of poetry followed by short stories “Little steps lead to big accomplishments” thus her first novel ‘MoonZeLent’ was created. VS - I want to thank you J.M. for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today. I know being a parent and writer can be hard and I find myself asking if I giving my three children enough attention throughout the day. I am sure you have been in my shoes from time to time. So to start can you share with us a little bit about your family? J.M . - Why, certainly, VS. I am the mother of four children – ages 17, 16, 7 and 2. One is potty training and the other starting college. VS - Wow! And I thought my kids were spaced out (14, 5 and 7 months). You must be pretty buys as a mom. What do you do to help balance your writing life w

One of the best ways to increase productivity is to consolidate and better coordinate your efforts at every opportunity. Every day in almost every way each of us is looking for ways to make life easier and boost own personal productivity. It seems that every day more is added to our 'to do list' which leads to a negative impact on our personal performance. This growing frustration calls for a need by each of us to assume personal responsibility for developing some method or approach enabling us to handle larger workloads. Since we cannot create more time, the need to make better use of the time we got seems to be the answer. Here is a 5-step categorization process anybody can use to better organize their time, efforts and increase their personal productivity. Determine Daily 'Demands' Take all those tasks and assigned responsibilities you are faced with and determine which need to be done every day. Simply categorize these as part of your daily chores or task

Brigitte A. Thompson is the founder and President of Datamaster Accounting Services, LLC in Vermont. She has been active in the field of accounting since 1986 and is a member of the American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers and the Vermont Tax Practitioners Association. She is the author of several recordkeeping books for business owners, contributing author and freelance writer, whose articles have appeared nationally in print and online publications. VS: I want to thank you Brigitte for being my guest here on The Writing Mama today. I know being a parent and writer can be hard. I am sure you have been in my shoes from time to time trying to balance the writing life with family life. So to start, here is the first question, how many children do you have and what are their ages? Brigitte: Thank you for inviting me to your blog. I have three children as well and do often wonder if I’m spending enough quality time with them. My daughter Sarah is 17, Jacob is 13 and Ka

Come visit me today on the Educationtipster blog. I'm sharing tips on how to get young children interested in reading and writing, some news on Stories for Children Magazine, and a bit about my picture book Babysitting SugarPaw. You also can get two FREE back issues of Stories for Children Magazine. Come find out how and I look forward to your comments. http://educationtipster.blogspot.com/2010/09/welcome-authorpublisher-vs-grenier.html

Many writers confuse word usage mostly because of past and present tense. So today, I have a fun word usage game using ‘Lay’ and ‘Lie’. No, I did not come up with this. I actually did this at a writing brunch a few months back, but before we jump into the game, I would love to share a great way to avoid using either of these words. Why? Because trying to remember which one to use can be annoying so why do it to yourself. I understand there will be times you cannot get away from not using one or even both of them in your writing, but here is a trick to help you. Replace the word (lay or lie) with ‘place.’ If that does not work try ‘rest.’ Place is for use when the object is physically disconnected from the person doing the action. Problem: LAY is both the past tense of LIE and it its own base form. This is why many writers have a hard time knowing which one to use. You can try memorizing the following, which was shared with me at the writer’s brunch: LIE Present tense: Lie