Linda Barnett-Johnson

New store opens - BJ'S GIFTS. You can find what you need, at discounts, for your author/writer needs. Daily price changes, so check back often. Check the 'DEAL OF THE DAY' and see what is being offered at a tremendous saving. BJ'S GIFTS   The store you can't live without. Thanks for visiting. Make sure you share, subscribe and promote for free gifts. Linda

By Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning  The Frugal Editor   ,  http://bit.ly/FrugalEditor I recently read  one of my favorite grammar and editing columns in the Glendale News-Press, my local newspaper. In  “A Word Please,” June Casagrande noted the sad (or not so sad) loss of the hyphen due to the influence of the Web. Technology has thrust all manner of bad grammar habits onto those who love correct English. Many of these habits are enumerated in my multi award-winning  The Frugal Editor, and I can tell you there are enough of them to give the average author who pulled down As in English some really big headaches! June mentioned that the Brits don't agree with Americans on some points of hyphen-using, that style guides can't agree, and that dictionaries don't either. Some are worried that the hyphen may go extinct! Well, I for one will cheer. But there are a whole bunch of other grammatical things to worry about and...

  Feather Schwartz Foster, author of "THE FIRST LADIES" …  & "LADIES:  A Conjecture of Personalities"  …. And one more  still  looking for a publisher!  ***** Upcoming signings Friday, July 3  -  10 a.m. - 2 p.m.   – William & Mary Bookstore (B&N), Merchants Sq., Williamsburg,  V A.  If you are in the area, stop in and say hello! Check out my latest blog articles at www.featherfoster.wordpress.com   http://wp.me/p3z3zl-yE                                                             Mrs. Herbert Hoover's Bad Habit… The Surprise Supreme! http://wp.me/p3z3zl-z3       ...

Thanks to Linda Barnett-Johnson for the opportunity to blog about IT HAD TO BE US , the award-winning romantic memoir my husband and I co-wrote under the pen names of Harry and Elizabeth Lawrence. Romantic miracles do happen in real life!  After being divorced and estranged from each other for nearly two decades, we accidentally met again and began a journey to rediscover our lost love. In IT HAD TO BE US, we use a “Harry Remembers/Elizabeth Remembers” format to share our feelings about the poignant -- and often humorous -- events that brought us back together. Much to our surprise, this memoir received rave reviews and is now in the early stage of film adaptation. It also won first place in the E-book category at the 2006 Hollywood Book Festival and a coveted Psyche Award nomination from The Romance Studio the following year.    Entertainment journalist and publisher Diana Saenger calls IT HAD TO BE US “the little book that could.” I think she’s referring...

Top 5 Reasons as To Why Businesses Need To Outsource Their Contact Centre Services When your customers call you to inform you about the issue they are facing or ask questions, the contact centre representatives they speak to is responsible for handling their concerns and improving the view of their company so do make that your calls are handled smoothly. These professionals also serve as the spokesperson for their businesses while interacting with their customers, and when this department has a problem in talking calls then it is time to hire an outsourcing company. Given here are five important reasons as to why the business owners need to turn towards contact centre outsourcing. Customer’s complaints increase: If a business receives complaints and does not stop them then the number of calls would continue to increase. Contact centre professionals are here not just to hear the complaints of their customers but also to defence against the negative comments that could have affe...

When did you first know you were destined to be a writer? LOL, I never realized I was destined to be a writer -- I fell into it. I'd written poetry for years, collecting it in notebooks stacked in my attic when I wrote one I wanted to keep. This led me to several online sites and ultimately to discovering the Muse Online Writers Conference where I hooked up with Linda Barnett Johnson and joined her writers forums. She required everyone to write both fiction and poetry, so, with much trepidation, I started writing fiction. Then I got hooked on it, wrote a chapter book, took the ICL course and actually learned how to write it. Then in 2010, I was seized by a desire to write a sci fi novel, so I spent six weeks or so on world building, mostly, with a bit of plotting thrown in for good measure. Who would you cite as your influences? I'm a way-back sci-fi fan, and Robert A. Heinlein influenced me heavily. I took a lot away from his writing, notably the value of surpris...

Recall a time when you felt sad about reaching the end of a book. You wanted to stay longer in the world inhabited by the book’s characters. In other words, you had experienced positive feelings while reading that particular publication. When a reader experiences such positive feelings, that same person has acquired something of real value from what he or she has read. The delivery of positive feelings represents one of five basic ways by which an author can offer something of real value to readers. A blog can be used to offer readers a taste of the valuable nature of an author’s work. A blog might also be used to demonstrate a book’s possession of other characteristics that would seem valuable in a reader’s mind. For instance, an author’s recollections might trigger pleasant memories in the mind of the reader. Hence, recollections that mirror those in a book can demonstrate the value of the volume that contains those same recollections. In that way, a recollection on a blog can...