I hate reading those articles that insist “Every writer needs to do THIS!” or “If you’re not doing X, you’re doomed to fail as a writer!” But I may have just written that article. About two years ago, when I was on a research trip with my wife, I read a book that I have had my eye on for years. It’s one of those books about writing that kept popping up on my radar, called [affiliate link throughout this article] The War of Art, by Steven Pressfield.

I’m talking about about this today at SleuthSayers, the mystery blog, in a post entitled,

The Pressfield Synchronicities!

As I explain in the post, once I read the book, which I found fascinating, I kept running into people who either had read it or have been meaning to read it, or needed to read it. You probably need to read it, too. Here’s why..

Are you a writer? Why not turn your book cover or covers into irresistible matchbook art?

A few years ago, I started seeing a cute item in gift shops around town: matchbooks designed to look like vintage book covers. Somehow two of these ended up in our house, lingering near our stash of candles in the living room. At $7 or $8 a pop, I hate to think we bought them. Maybe they were gifts.

But upon close inspection, I saw that they were handmade and thus theoretically makeable by, well, me. Specifically, I wanted to be able to make matchbooks featuring my books, and not John Steinbeck’s or Margaret Mitchell’s or F. Scott Fitzgerald’s.

I tinkered around at the craft bench, and produced a few using my covers and a few covers of books written by my crime fiction writer friends. Here’s how you can do the same…