Tool for creating a clever book trailer

One of my students recently wrote and self published a contemporary novel that he offers for sale on Amazon.  Like most students, he is on a tight budget.  So, when it came time to create an animated book trailer, he used the free web tool xtranormal Movie Maker.  I won’t link to my student’s trailer in this blog post because it contains a few cuss words, but really, the movie is quite clever.  The site allows the user to choose character avatars and settings.  Then the user simply types in the dialogue, and the site converts the package into a movie the user can upload to YouTube. My student chose two characters from his book and created a movie from a piece of dialogue from the book.

Documentaries as research

I must admit that I am a big fan of documentaries, which can be great informers of historical events.  Recently I found a rich source of free documentaries on the web. DocumentaryZ  is a portal for documentaries on a variety of topics, including biography, science, health, military, and history.  At the history link, I found videos about U. S. and World history, including a great documentary on the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, which yielded some useful information for a post Civil War novel I’m working on. The site has a search bar, but when I entered the term “Lincoln,” I only got the one result.  Nevertheless, the site could be useful for a researcher who prefers a multimedia approach to historical research rather than straight print.

Use Google Alerts for Research

Is there a topic, person or location that you frequently search for when you are writing?  Create a Google alert for the search term.  When your search term appears on the web, Google will send you an alert to your choice of email or RSS feeder. 

Think this isn’t useful to a historical researcher?  Think again.  Most local newspapers carry columns from historical societies.   I entered a regional search term into Google alerts, and I regularly receive emailed links to articles written by local historians.  It is true that Google alerts might be more useful if you were, say, trying to keep up with the news on your favorite athlete or monitoring a developing news story.  But every historical researcher knows that the best info sometimes comes from unlikely sources.  As a historical researcher, cast your nets wide and see what you can haul in!

New Year's Resolutions

Here we are at the end of January, the month of New Year’s resolutions.  Did you make any resolutions about writing for 2012?  Plan to start a new project? Market something you’ve already written? Begin a blog? Update your website?

I use a free daily reminder tool called iDoneThisToday. I may have written about this tool before. I am a big fan.

Every day at 3:30, the site sends me an email asking me what I got done today.  I reply to the email (well, let’s say I reply if I have something to report) and the site records it on a monthly calendar.  In November, I pledged to write something five days a week.  I took December off. This month I resolved to take at least 5000 steps per day (I use a pedometer for this)—writers need to stay healthy to produce their best work, right? At the end of the month, I can look at the calendar to see how much or how little I accomplished toward my resolution.  I think I will pledge to write 1000 words a day in February.  What about you?

Send personal documents to your Kindle Library

I have completed a first draft of a historical manuscript and have let it sit long enough so that I can look it over with a fresh eye.  I could print it out of course, but I am a big fan of the Kindle as a reading device.  I also have a Kindle app on my iPad and iPhone, so I can read my Kindle collection anywhere, anytime. So how to get my Word manuscript to my Kindle device?

Send to Kindle is a free Windows program from Amazon that lets you send a document from your computer to your Kindle Library.  First, you install Send to Kindle on your computer.  Then when you click on a saved document, you have an option to “send to kindle” so that you can read it on your mobile device.  That is what I did with my story draft, and I was able to read through the ms without having to sit at my desk to read it on the computer screen.

Beware Anachronisms

A writer friend of mine recently told me that one of her readers called to tell her she had mistakenly used a word in her historical novel that was not in usage in the particular place and time about which she wrote.  Of course, she was embarrassed.  We all would be.  Her anecdote put me in mind of a warning I included in my book, Writing Historical Fiction: Digital Age Advice.  It appears in chapter 3:


 Be wary of anachronisms.  Anachronisms place people, events and things in the wrong time. Would your character have a wrist watch in 1800?  Was Maine a state in 1820? How many prisoners did General Robert E. Lee take during the incident at Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia in 1859? (None. Lee was not yet a General in 1859; he was a Col.  Also, Harper’s Ferry was in Virginia in 1859.  West Virginia broke off and became a state in 1863, taking Harper’s Ferry with it. See how easy it is to make mistakes when doing historical research?)

Make your own word cloud poster

Want to make a promotional poster or logo for your book?  Try the free tool at http://www.wordle.net/

Type in a list of words or cut and paste a piece of text from your book into the tool and click “go.”  According to the website, “You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends.”

Here is a word cloud I created using this toy: