...

Novel Shortcuts gives you a unique take on “speed depth in fiction writing,” showing you how to write a fast first draft that’s also rich and engrossing (it’s really possible!). With examples from published works and detailed instruction, this helpful guide addresses everything from premise development to scene building to tone and much, much more....

...

Someone was looking at me, a disturbing sensation if you’re dead.
Though I could not feel paper between my fingers, smell ink, or taste the tip of a pencil, I could see and hear the world with all the clarity of the Living. They, on the other hand, did not see me as a shadow or a floating vapor. To the Quick, I was empty air.
Or so I thought.

In the class of the high school English teacher she has been haunting, Helen feels them: For the first time in 130 years, human eyes are looking at her. They belong to a boy, a boy who has not seemed remarkable until now. And Helen–terrified, but intrigued–is drawn to him. The fact that he is in a body and she is not presents this unlikely couple with their first challenge. But as the lovers struggle to find a way to be together, they begin to discover the secrets of their former lives and of the young people they come to possess....