Lesa Boutin

In my previous post, Writing My Way Out of the Darkness, I shared how I was diving back into writing as a means of healing after my...

Using personification in writing.

Ideas for writing a better villain.

How to develop characters in a novel.

Not to offend anyone, but the truth is, I don’t like verbose writing. I didn’t say I don’t like a long book, and I’m not talking about...

Loser: 1: a person or thing that loses especially consistently 2: a person who is incompetent or unable to succeed 3: something doomed to...

I started this site in fall of 2019. I’d been having fun creating some videos and decided to share them here. But within a short time, my...

As a self-published author, I'm always looking for efficient ways to promote and market my work. So, while exploring options for best...

Sometimes life doles out a departure from the norm. The summer of 2017 was that for me, in more ways than one, and the Novel Starter...

My adventures in book covers continued with the next book in the Amanda Noble series. I’d gotten lucky with the first book since I needed...

When I decided not to use the cover mock-up with the Steve Irwin caricature for my first book, Amanda Noble, Zookeeper Extraordinaire, I...

In my last post, I mentioned working in a middle school library when I wrote Amanda Noble, Zookeeper Extraordinaire, now called Amanda...

Recently, while rummaging through old photos, I started thinking about the evolution of the Amanda Noble covers, how much fun it’s been...

In my last post, I wrote about using poetry in my creative writing classrooms, and how that changed my fiction writing. I'm continuing my...

By definition, prose is dull. Look it up. Merriam-Webster defines it as: 1.) ordinary language people use in speaking or writing. 2.) a...