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Books On Writing from the Shelves of Elements Members

Top Ten for Beginners

1. The RWA booklets - you can download them from the RWA site. They include: Keys to Success

• On the Brink (2 volumes)
• Promotions (2 volumes)
• Business Basics (2 volumes)
• Professional Relationships

2. For Inspiration - Take Joy: A Writer's Guide to Loving the Craft by Jane Yolen

3. Writer's Digest Grammar Desk Reference by Gary Lutz & Diane Stevenson - not as thorough as Chicago Manual of Style, but much easier to read and understand

4. 45 Master Characters by Victoria Schmidt

5. Character Naming Sourcebook by Sherrilyn Kenyon

6. Self-editing for Fiction Writers - by Renni Browne & Dave King

7. From First Draft to Finished Novel by Karen Wiesner (also her "First Draft in 30 Days)

8. Any good dictionary! And Thesaurus

9. The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman

10. Any of the genre specific books from Writer's Digest (Deadly Doses; Armed and Dangerous; Everyday life in the 1800s, etc.)

Books We Can't Live Without . . .

The Romance Writer's Phrase Book

Character-Naming Sourcebook

Building Believable Characters.

Stein On Writing by Sol Stein

Scene & Structure by Jack M. Bickham

Good Books to Cheer You Up...

Sandra Brown's Bed and Breakfast

Any of Susan Elizabeth Phillips's books -- "Ain't She Sweet"

Kasey Michaels This Can't Be Love or This Must Be love

Susan Wiggs (any)

Susan Malley (any)

Linnea Sinclair's (sci fi romance) books

Linda Howard

Historical, try Julia Quinn

Tamora Pierce's YA books - the circle series and the circle opens series are good. mysteries, try Aaron
Elkins

Other Sci fi series by Mike Shepherd - Kris Longknife series.

David Weber's Honor Harrington series

Anguished English by William Lederer

More Anguished English, and others

Judi McCoy's Goddess Series

Heidi Bett's Knitting Series

Too Good to be True by Kristan Higgins

Hot Wheels and High Heels by Jane Graves

The Stephanie Plum books by Janet Evanovich

Evanovich's "How I Write"

Lauren Willig series - "The Pink Carnation"

Lisa Norato's "I Only Want to Be With You"

Stardust by Neil Gaiman

Other Resources

The Brief Handbook for Writers

Harbrace College Handbook

Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain

On Writing by Stephen King

Complete Wordfinder (combo dictionary and thesaurus)

An Incomplete Education (kind of a one-book encyclopedia)

The Dictionary of the Bible (from a college classe - might help when writing paranormals about angels and demons etc)

How to Write a Romance Novel for Dummies by Sil editor Leslie Wainger

Mrs. Astor's New York (I want to someday write a book set in the Gilded Age)

American Eve ( a novel about the famous Gilded Age murder of Evelyn Nesbit)