Welcome to The Unvarnished Author

On this site we will be giving you the completely raw and, as the name says, unvarnished truth about being an author. All the opinions here are ours and ours alone. Everything written is from the personal experiences of published authors.

What we are providing you is advice that, like all advice, should be taken with a grain of salt. Our experiences may not be and, hopefully, never will be, yours. But we've been through this a few times and we want to help new authors looking to be published for the very first time know what to look for when approaching publishers.

We will have lists, tips and random trivia about the world of being an author. It should be taken in the vein we are offering it, as help and not in a hurtful manner. We should also warn you that we all write books ranging from general up to the super spicy erotic so the language, at times, might be more than a PG-13 rating.

That being said, we do have one rule for commenting that all must abide by. And it is:

1) Be nice. Rule of thumb is, if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. We live by this. While we may get a little heated we are not going to be attacking authors or publishers - that leads to lawsuits.

So, if you can not play nice with others know that we have a zero tolerance policy here. You will be removed/banned and in all ways sent to the corner if you step over the line. Debates are welcome, conflicts and name calling are not.

That being said, if you have additional tips or something to say that you'd like to see in one of our posts, you can send it to us and we will give you full credit. But it must be constructive, helpful and, unlike us, 120% polite. And we will post it EXACTLY as you send it to us, so make sure you like how it reads, it shall be eternal. We are all here to gain wisdom and help everyone avoid the same pitfalls we all encountered.

So, have something you want to pass along and have forever memorialised on the site, you can send it to our Gmail account at:  the-unvarnished-author@gmail.com and send along the name you'd like it attributed to.

All right, enough of this, I heard a rumor that it's National Cake Day (and even if it's not) I'm going to go and get some cake.

The Moderator