The Fiction Writer’s Guide to Creative Success

From that first story idea to publication and beyond, being a novelist is an evolving process. The Constant Art of Being a Writer helps you discover the mindset and skills you need to grow as an artist and confidently approach each aspect of writing and publishing.

Award-winning novelist and short story writer N.M. Kelby explores core fiction-writing techniques like idea generation, outlining, character development, and the use of black comedic moments and magic realism, as well as essential business-related topics like getting an agent, self-promotion, crafting a bestseller, the ins and outs of a successful author tour, and much more.

With lively instruction, innovative writing tips, and original exercises, The Constant Art of Being a Writer is a guide you can count on every step of the way....

Take a slasher-movie actress, a Scottish circus clown, an FBI school dropout, a blind heiress, a junk-food-loving millionaire developer, and a Buddha-quoting bluesman, add a couple of murders in a normally sedate retirement community in south Florida, and you get an irresistible tale that’s part Carl Hiaasen and part Gabriel García Márquez. It all goes down as easy as a Key lime pie martini, the signature drink of the Bad Girl’s Bar & Grill.

N. M. Kelby’s last three novels have received glowing reviews in the New York Times, Entertainment Weekly, People, and the Atlantic Monthly. Carl Hiaasen has called her “a natural-born writer,” and Kirkus praised her “black humor that sizzles.” Sit back, put up your feet, and get ready to lose yourself in a rollicking good story....