Product Review Archives - New Frontier Books

9 Dec 2014

20 Gifts For Writers Under $20 – 2014 Edition

As a follow up to my super popular 2014 post, I’ve dusted off some of my favorites and added some new treasures to find.

If you’re anything like me, I always get the best shopping ideas from the gift buying lists! Here’s a list of gifts for writers that that are sure to thrill any writer on your list. Or maybe you’ll pick up a gift or two for yourself!

With the exception of my HIGHLY recommended leather journal, all items on this list are $25 or less!

Great gifts for #writers! Click To Tweet

And to make your shopping for the perfect writer’s gift a bit easier, just click on the name of the item to be taken directly to where you can purchase it!

D’Vyne Wrytes Leather Journal

I thought long and hard about suggesting a blank journal for the writer in your life. Frankly, we all have something that is “the perfect journal” and I always get a little cranky when I get a journal that doesn’t match that ideal. But Leslie’s stuff is just fantastic and I can’t recommend it enough. I have three or four of her journals!

This isn’t under $25 BUT it is 100% worth the investment!

Stephen King’s On Writing: 10th Anniversary Edition: A Memoir of the Craft

I have a much loved, much dog eared version of the original. Even if you don’t like King’s terrifying stories, he offers fantastic insights into writing novels that can be applied to any type of writing.

Writer’s Block Mug

Writer’s Block: when your imaginary friends stop talking to you
Because writers drink copious amounts of ~~booze~~! (I mean coffee!)

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11 Nov 2014

Kim Recommends, Product Review product review

Product Review: Evernote

111114-Evernote

I don’t remember who exactly turned me on to Evernote – but whoever it was, I sincerely thank you! Evernote has become an integral tool to my business and was especially helpful when I was working full-time in the tax office. I was finally able to stop emailing myself links for resources and articles I wanted to read, but instead, add them to a Note.

About Evernote

Here’s how Evernote describes itself:

As one workspace that lives across your phone, tablet, and computer, Evernote is the place you write free from distraction, collect information, find what you need, and present your ideas to the world.

Which is a fancy way of saying, it’s a piece of software that you can load across all your platforms (smartphone, tablet, and multiple computers) that you can use just like a word processor to create documents, called Notes. And then these Notes instantly sync up across all devices.

I’ll be the first to admit, I don’t use Evernote to its full capacity! Since I now (thankfully!) work from a single work-space at my home desktop computer, I’m less worried about syncing information between different devices and locations. Right now, I don’t even have Evernote installed on my phone!

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4 Mar 2014

Kim Recommends, Product Review product review, story ideas, writing

Product Review: Writer’s Blocks

I’m a HUGE fan of anything that will spark creativity, storytelling, and basically just get me unstuck in my writing. Even though I primarily write non-fiction, sometimes taking an hour or so to work on a fiction piece can just get the words flowing.

And sometimes just THINKING about fiction stories will do it!

Just so we’re 100% clear: I think fiction is way harder than non-fiction. I have the greatest respect for fiction authors. And since my video project is within a week of being completely finished, I’m rapidly running out of excuses to avoid starting the novel.

So when I got an email from Writer’s Digest saying that they had these little six-sided dice guaranteed to get your writing juices flowing, I was all in.

They are very similar to a tool I made a million years ago called a story machine. Basically you come up with two decks of index cards, one with occupations and one with situations. Pull a card from each deck and whamo! write a story about it. The problem was that I had to come up with the ideas for both decks of cards. AND, after playing with it for a while, it wasn’t really a “random” story. It just wasn’t easy enough to create permutations.

Enter “Writer’s Blocks”