Recent Entries

• Using Gimp for Your Book Artwork

  by LS Admin April 3, 2014
  The free program for working with images, creating icons, etc called Gimp is similar to Photoshop and is what we've used for years to create various icons and things, resize images and make animated .gifs. We review free programs as not everyone can afford $300-400 programs to do what is needed f...
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• LibreOffice

  by LS Admin March 20, 2014
  We accidentally stumbled upon LibreOffice when we were looking for good writing software. OpenOffice had been our choice of MS Office alternative for the past few years and so we were surprised to learn about this other program. It's been around for a few years so we should have noticed it earlier b...
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• Scrivener

  by LS Admin March 14, 2014
  We had seen a lot of good reviews for Scrivener and so we decided to download the demo version and try it ourselves. This writing software has a great introductory tutorial and a full 30 day trial period to try before you buy. For anyone needing help organizing their writing research, character ...
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• Open Office, a Great Alternative to MS Office

  by LS Admin March 8, 2014
  We use OpenOffice for all of our documents, spreadsheets, etc. as opposed to the rather expensive MS Office. This free program packs a lot in its goodie bag. We've not found anything we needed to do that we could not do with this program. It opens and saves in multiple formats, including pdf and...
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• Promoting Your Books in Blogs, Part 2

  by LS Admin March 6, 2014
  You may have a Wordpress or other blog that you are using to promote your work. That's a great tool to use and blogs index well with Google, Bing and other search engines provided you post good content. If you don't have a blog started, it's a good idea to either start one there or start writing som...
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• Review - On Writing, a Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King

  by LS Admin March 5, 2014
  Stephen King has always been one of my favorite writers. As such, it was a given that one of the first books reviewed would be his On Writing, a Memoir of the Craft . The copy I just got was the anniversary edition. In the back are books he's read over that year or several years that he found worth ...
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• Video Lectures and Video Book Readings

  by LS Admin February 22, 2014
  We have added videos to our site. We felt that this would be a good addition for Literary Social so that our members will have additional resources for writing tips and samples. The lectures will be some that our staff and members find around the net and that feature published authors. We hope t...
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• Critiques

  by LS Admin February 4, 2014
  Authors can ask for critiques of their work either in the comments of the article or we also or in this forum section if they don't want the critiques in the comments of their work. We did this both ways because some authors might want comments just for basic comments about the story and want mor...
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• Book Promotions

  by LS Admin February 2, 2014
  We do allow book promotions here. Please follow these guidelines when submitting a book promotion. You can submit to both places for more ranking in Google and other search engines but please make each submission different. Sample Chapters When submitting sample chapters, please do so in the A...

• Exploring Characters - Part 2

  by LS Admin January 30, 2014
  We started with this exercise and now have some characters to choose from for this next exercise. Please use this article again and go to the section Emotional Triggers. Take at least one of your characters from the first exercise and fill in the emotional incidents mentioned in the linked article...
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• Exploring Characters - Part 1

  by LS Admin January 29, 2014
  Great characters that come to life for the reader are essential for the success of your book or short story. The reader needs to form some sort of bond with the character in order to want to read through to the end to see the final outcome. They want someone to cheer, or jeer, to laugh with or cry w...
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• What is Your Favorite Genre and Why?

  by LS Admin January 28, 2014
  Today we look at genres. Where does your writing fit? Is it Horror, Mystery, Erotica, etc? When you write, having a main genre of interest does help to focus your writing and establish you as an author of "x" genre. However, you don't have to be stuck in any one genre of interest. Perhaps your ma...
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