Blood from Your Own Pen: A Practical Guide on Self-Editing and Common Mistakes, For Beginning Authors Who Intend to Survive to Publication (ePub)

A Colorado native, Sam Knight spent ten years in California's wine country before returning to the Rockies. When asked if he misses California he gets a wistful look in his eyes and replies he misses the green mountains in the winter, but he is glad to be back home.
His grandfather and mother are avid readers and Sam says his own passion started when he pressed his grandfather to find out what was so interesting. His grandfather handed him a book and he has been an avid reader ever since. He claims to have finished the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings trilogy in fourth grade and says he can still remember the look, feel, and smell of some of those early books. (He has been spotted sniffing books as he ruffles the pages.)
While doing research for a Western novel, Sam was not surprised to find out that, once upon a time, half of his family had been on the wrong side of the law. It stands to reason that when your great-great-grandfather was a marshal in Cripple Creek, Colorado, someone in the family had to be a horse thief. Sam was, however, surprised to find the family name had originally been McKnight and that the thieves had taken the 'Mc' part of the name with them. (Or the lawmen let them have it to distance themselves from that side of the family.) Having served a stint working in a correctional facility, he has often wondered if being a lawman runs in the blood. His great grandfather upheld the law in Mooreland, OK, as well as Springfield and Florence CO, among other places, with his grandfather occasionally deputized to assist.
When asked why he would want to become a writer, Sam recounts a time when he was in fifth grade. Illness stuck him in bed for two weeks with only books for companions. (This was a bit before video game phone implants were in common use.) He burned through the Xanth trilogy (back before it expanded into thirty some books), the Riddle of Stars trilogy, a couple of John Carter of Mars books, and several Pip and Flinx novels, relishing