by Ragini Werner | 25 November 2024 | Real life, Sapphic
Em Buckman is the award-winning author of Bent Is Not Broken (LGBTQIA+ history/memoir). She is currently working on a new novel, Women Of Note (historical fiction). In this guest blog, Em explains why she—a cis-het person—is an outspoken ally of our demonised,...
by Ragini Werner | 18 November 2024 | Writing
If you’ve never been hit by writer’s block, either by luck or because you’re stuck in… a river in Egypt, this blog is not for you. For the rest of us, read on! Here some survivors of the block, writers found mainly on Facebook, share their thoughts on how to beat it....
by Ragini Werner | 4 November 2024 | Marketing, Writing
Do you have music on while you work? I usually play instrumental stuff cos I find lyrics distracting. Either way, as editor or author, I’m focused on language and the Wernicke’s area in my brain can’t handle both spoken (sung) and written words at the same time....
by Ragini Werner | 29 October 2024 | Marketing, Real life
Hey indie author, do you suck at selling your book? Come on, be honest. You’re a writer so, ipso facto, selling is not your favorite pursuit. If you’re like me, you’d rather get on with writing instead of faffing about on social media, desperately trying to make...
by Ragini Werner | 21 October 2024 | Writing
One of my favorite advertising slogans is The Economist’s “Great minds like a think.” I like it not only because it’s clever wordplay, but also because the familiar phrase it plays with applies to a great bunch of likeminded writers. We call ourselves the Writers...
by Ragini Werner | 14 October 2024 | Writing
Back when I was editor of eSense, a magazine-style newsletter published by SENSE, the society for English-language professionals based in the Netherlands, one of my colleagues posted a question on the SENSE forum. “I need to crowdsource a copywriting term,” she wrote....
by Ragini Werner | 7 October 2024 | Real life
One capital pleasure of my real life is the license my day job—English language editor for Dutch academics—gives me to goof off on Google. Or, to put it in terms the taxman will accept: the time I spend online looking up terminology is justified. For sad nerdlings...
by Ragini Werner | 29 September 2024 | Editing, Sapphic
Lara Zielinsky has been a journalist, technical writer, educator, and fiction editor for more than 30 years. A member of the LGBTQ+ community, Lara is also an award-winning author of five sapphic novels. When I chanced upon her business site, LZ Edits, I knew her...
by Ragini Werner | 23 September 2024 | News, Review
Please join me this week in giving a warm welcome to a couple of newcomers to the Rogues’ Gallery of Janice Readers. First up is Ineke Sterringa. Her snapshot shows her relaxing in her garden in the far north of the Netherlands with a somewhat caustic companion,...
by Ragini Werner | 16 September 2024 | Real life, Review, Writing
Lisa Day loves books—owning them, reading them, writing about them and talking about them. She carries at least one, maybe two or three books with her at all times and when she isn’t reading, she is writing about them. Based in Toronto, Ontario, Lisa is a former...