Hachette's Double Standard: Taylor Swift vs Mia Ballard Memoir Controversy

A lovely review received over the weekend😊 Makailah was a joy to work with and I am delighted I was able to make a positive contribution on her publication journey. "I hired Kelly to provide beta reading feedback on my debut fantasy novel and I cannot recommend her service highly enough! The feedback I received was detailed, honest, and genuinely useful. Rather than vague impressions, every section was specific from what was working in my opening chapters to precise moments where pacing or clarity needed attention.  Kelly's critique was balanced: clear about what wasn't landing and equally clear about what was, which gave me confidence as well as direction. What impressed me most was the quality of engagement. This wasn't a surface read. Kelly understood my characters, tracked my plot threads, and picked up on intentional foreshadowing which told me immediately that she was reading carefully and not just skimming. Her feedback on my fight scenes, dialogue, and multiple POV structure was particularly valuable, and her observations about my protagonist relatability and the slow-burn romance showed a real understanding of what I was trying to achieve. The turnaround was remarkably fast. Kelly completed a 126,000 word manuscript in four days without any sacrifice in depth or quality. For any writer looking for a beta reader who will treat your work with seriousness and give you the kind of honest, thoughtful feedback that actually helps you improve, I would not hesitate to recommend Kelly at KMacdonald Editing." — Makailah Avalos (April 2026)

Paul Ricoeur wrote about narrative identity — the idea that the self is not a fixed substance but a story we are always in the middle of telling. The past provides the characters and the setting. The present is the scene we are currently writing. You are always the author. The pen never leaves your hand. What are you writing today? 🌿 #MindsetMastery #PaulRicoeur #NarrativeIdentity #Philosophy #SelfAuthorship

Sylvia Uzochukwu recently posted about a common struggle writers face: topic selection Reading it, I couldn’t agree more. I've saved a lot of good ideas. But I haven't written them. Not because they're bad. But I’ve seen variations of them already out there. So I pause, and move on to the next "better" idea. However in her words: "Have I seen a piece exactly like the one I just wrote? The answer was no. So I continued." That made a shift in my thinking. Yes, it has been written too many times. But, my angle hasn't been said yet. I’m still sitting on those ideas but not for long.😉 PS: I'm looking forward to Sylvia's full piece on this. I have a feeling it’ll be one that a lot of writers need.

Hemingway rewrote the ending of A Farewell to Arms 47 times. Toni Morrison spent years revising Beloved. Oscar Wilde said he spent all morning putting in a comma—and all afternoon taking it out. The work behind the work is the real work. → Hemingway wasn’t chasing perfection. He was chasing the version that felt true. Forty-seven tries to find it. → Morrison called revision “the best part.” She didn’t rush to publish. She waited until every sentence held weight. → Wilde’s quip sounds like a joke, but every writer knows the agony of a sentence that’s almost right. First drafts are for getting it down. Revision is what you actually meant to say. Most readers will never see the mess, the false starts, or the versions you threw away. They’ll only see the one that worked. That’s the craft. That’s the job. How many drafts does it take you to get it right? #BookEditing #WritingCommunity #NonfictionWriting #SelfPublishing #FreelanceEditor

What does it take to write a character whose physical limitation raises the stakes at every single turn? In "Before the Lights Go Out," Jafe Danbury builds a thriller around a protagonist facing progressive blindness, navigating foreign streets with tunnel vision while outrunning a real threat. The pacing matches the urgency, and the emotional weight builds convincingly right through the final page. For writers thinking about how physical vulnerability can deepen suspense, this is a compelling study. What's a novel where a character's limitation made the tension more effective for you? #IndiePublishing #WritingCommunity #BookReview #Authors https://buff.ly/fQZ4hIN

Saddlebag Dispatches co-founder and Western publisher Casey W. Cowan and New York Times bestselling author Reavis Z. Wortham, takes aim at the genre’s status quo, challenging authors to stop writing for yesterday’s audience and start confronting today’s realities, with tips and tricks from Morrell, Craig Johnson, Marc Cameron, and other industry insiders. See full issue at bit.ly/SaddlebagDispatches

What does it take to build a science fiction world that feels real enough to walk through? In this episode of Writers With Purpose, I sat down with award-winning author Aaron Ryan to discuss his Dissonance Series—a gripping alien invasion saga where 85% of humanity is wiped out in just three months without explosions, without warning, and without mercy. What stood out in this conversation wasn’t just the scale of the story, but the discipline behind it. Aaron didn’t just write a sci-fi series. He built a six-book universe grounded in realism, emotional depth, and intentional craft. From using real-world locations to strengthen immersion, to mastering first-person present tense, to adapting his work for a streaming-ready pilot, his journey reflects what it truly means to commit to the vision. We also touched on: • The importance of believable world-building in fiction • Writing characters that carry emotional weight • The reality of indie publishing and creative control • Why readers still judge a book by its cover • Staying focused on the story that won’t leave your mind This is a conversation for authors who are serious about their craft and readers who appreciate stories that don’t just entertain but resonate. If you’re building something meaningful, this one will speak to you. https://lnkd.in/ggKwZ8aQ #ScienceFiction #Storytelling #CreativeProcess #WorldBuilding #AuthorInterview

I spent years as a merchant mariner — working 12-hour shifts in engine rooms, months away from family, in ports most people will never see. At some point, I started bringing books. Not novels. Not escapism. I wanted to understand something: why do some stories stick and others disappear? I read the screenwriters. Campbell and Vogler for structure. McKee for scene work. Mary Karr for the raw truth of memoir. Then I started looking at the science — how neuroscientists explain why narrative bypasses our defenses in a way that logic can't. Here's what I concluded after thousands of hours of this: A great story isn't constructed. It's excavated. You don't build the hero's journey from scratch. You find it in what already happened and name it. You surface the thing that was always there but buried under the noise of daily life. That's the work of memoir. And that's why I eventually wrote a book about it — because the frameworks exist, but nobody had put them together into a system a real person could follow. That's what MemoirMaster is. Not a creativity course. A system.

I'm fascinated by other authors' writing process and with each of us following a slightly different path to publication, there is always so much to learn by hearing the experiences of others. For the EMCCUK members in my network, come along this Friday to hear us discuss traditional, hybrid, and independent publishing, the different writing methods we used, and the lessons we learnt along the way.

I’ve found fiction useful for exploring questions that are harder to hold in straightforward prose. Power, legitimacy, identity, and fracture behave differently once they are placed inside a story. That has been part of the draw for me writing under Taza Silva.