I am completely overwhelmed. Not because I just finished teaching a week-long workshop. Not because one of my novels decided to become triplets. Not because it’s about to become November. Because I have too much to read. Seriously. I preorder a lot of books, and pick up the rest from my favorite local bookseller. One week before the workshop, I put a spending freeze on […]
The Business Rusch: Priests and Mathematicians
I’m a political junkie. I read everything on politics I can get my hands on—and no, I will not allow political discussions on my blog. This is a politics-free zone. So if you put your political viewpoints in the comments, I will not approve that post. I start this way, because this blog post comes from one of the Washington Post’s political bloggers. Chris Cillizza […]
The Business Rusch: Carrots And Sticks
Once upon a time, maybe five years ago, I used to wake up and figure in my head which deadlines I needed to tackle that day. The most critical, the hardest, or the ones with the most cache/money/interest always got put in line first, and then I would build everything else around those. I had several systems for this, including one on my paper calendar, […]
The Business Rusch: Pen Names
At least one per week, I get e-mails from writers who ask me if they need a pen name. The question used to be really easy to answer. If you wrote in multiple genres at the same time, you needed a pen name. Now, the answer—like the answer to everything else in publishing— is it depends. I suppose it’s only sensible to ask me about […]
The Business Rusch: Addendums, Rights Grabs & Agents (Yet Again)
Recently, I got e-mail from another career writer, talking about a rights grab from a traditional publisher. I saw the document in question; it’s egregious. I do not have permission to talk about this particular document nor would I, since it’s proprietary, but it’s the kind of document I’ve seen at least six times in the last two years. These documents are addendums to publishing […]
The Business Rusch: Story Demands
I am currently writing three books at once. I know, I know, some of you believe that’s not unusual for me, but it is. Usually I focus on one thing and wrestle it to the ground before moving onto something else. These three books are one thing. They’re in one of my series, and for a few weeks, I was struggling to write the next […]
The Business Rusch: We Don’t Know What We Don’t Know
I had a lot of marvelous, thoughtful comments on last week’s blog. I didn’t respond, in part because I was extremely busy this past week, but mostly because I would have been expressing my opinion on the commenter’s life and career choices. I try not to do that, particularly in public. We’re all different, and because of the new world of publishing, we all have […]
The Business Rusch: A Career Versus Publication
I was a bit stunned at the response to last week’s blog, not because the response was negative—it wasn’t—but because so many of you said that you had no idea that writing was a career choice. On a gut level, many of you knew that some of us had made careers as writers, but over the years—decades, maybe—the idea that a writer could not just […]
Ten Little Fen: A Spade/Paladin Novel
Spade and Paladin find themselves snowed in at a remote sf convention, with a killer on the loose! Get your copy here.
The Chase
The Chase, the latest Diving novel, answers a lot of your questions about the series. It also might cause you to ask a few more. Click here to find out more.
Get Early Copies of the Thursday Business Blog and More!
Rethinking The Writing Business
All the licensing blogs in one volume. Learn how to think about your writing business in a way that will enable you to work smarter, not harder. Get yours here.
A New Edition of A Dangerous Road
For book clubs and reading groups, complete with questions! Go here to order.
