One of the major reasons I write a lot about contracts and negotiation is because in the entertainment field, which is where we writers work, contracts are a nightmare. They’re often written by people who are not lawyers (agent contracts with writers) or negotiated by people who are not lawyers (publishing contracts negotiated by an agent for a writer) or are based on “accepted practices” […]
Business Musings: Popcorn Bunnies (A Process Blog)
I could spend the next seven days on promotion and feel like I’m working at my writing full time. Seriously. I have the Fiction River Kickstarter to promote. I’m in a Storybundle with a Diving novella that might get more readers to the next book in the series, which will appear in mid-September. I have a brand new story in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine that’s […]
Recommended Reading List: August, 2018
Typos abound, even here on my website. I had this labeled August 2019 for the longest time. Who knew that I would be able to recommend books I would read a year from now? Seriously, though, August started out well, with the Amanda Quick book that I just devoured. I had a lot of other reading to do, and much of it was fun. I […]
Business Musings: An Example of Writerly Cluelessness (Negotiation/Contracts)
The universe keeps giving me excellent examples of things I try to teach on this blog. When I wrote a recent post titled “Knowing What You Want,” that example was one of the first positive examples I had found on how to negotiate. Today’s post does not contain a positive example, I’m afraid. It’s an example of something I stress over and over again, but […]
Business Musings: Website Issues
Note: I wrote this post weeks ago, when my website went down…again. I posted this on Patreon, but waited to post here until I had moved out of the hosting service that was causing all of the issues. I’m out now, but the website is still settling. The migration will take a bit more time to shake out, so please be a bit patient with […]
Business Musings: Writers And The Hamster Wheel Of Doom
The problem with the hamster wheel school of writing is that at a certain point all of that love of writing, all of that joy in storytelling, goes out the window, and writing becomes drudgery. It’s not fun to write the same story over and over again. It’s not fun to write stories on topics you hate. It’s not fun to write in genres you loathe.
So many writers are doing that, though, and have no idea how to quit…
Business Musings: Knowing What You Want (Agents/Negotiation)
In the late 1980s, some functionary at a record label fielded a call about a song called “Private Idaho,” by the B-52s. The song was never a major hit, although by the time that phone call got made, the B-52s were topping the charts with a song called “Love Shack.” The caller wanted to use the song in an upcoming movie written and directed by […]
Recommended Reading List: July, 2018
I turned off the TV much of the month, and decreased my consumption of news, out of necessity. I can’t watch the images of my country doing things I so deeply hate. I do read about these things on my phone (thank heavens for notifications!) so I’m not uninformed. I’m just not losing myself in the imagery, which is probably good for my mental health. […]
Business Musings: Over Capitalization and Hamster Wheels
Well, you see, I’ve still been noodling the question I asked last week about the writers trying to game Amazon’s algorithms and seem to have lost the heart of their writing. What motivates them?
I know a lot of real writers—and you probably do too—who are still trying to game those algorithms. Those are the people I’m trying to figure out.
And Chef’d and MoviePass helped explain them to me.
Business Musings: Sometimes I Just React…
I don’t get it. I really don’t. You’d think they all started out wanting to tell their own stories. You’d think they identified themselves as writers first, not book stuffers or algorithm gamers. But I have no idea, really, and I’ve been part of the indie movement almost from the beginning. You see, at lunch today, I finally had a chance to read Sarah Jeong’s […]
A New Mystery Story
Spade and Paladin return in “Unity Con.” Read an excerpt here!
A New Adventure SF Story
Read “Once On The Blue Moon,” along with some other wonderful fiction in Jonathan Strahan’s newest Infinity anthology.
The Adventure Storybundle
Thirteeen adventurous ebooks for $15! Get yours now, since the deal disappears on 9/19.
Get Early Copies of the Thursday Business Blog and More!
Sample The Diving Universe…
…with the novella that started it all, Diving Into The Wreck.Neil Clarke’s latest, Final Frontier. You can read it and lots of other wonderful space opera in
A New Coop Story in The Diving Universe
Want to know what Coop was like before he became captain of the Ivoire? Read this.
A New Kris Nelscott Novel
My latest Kris Nelscott novel begins a new series, following the adventures of three strong women as they protect their world, one person at a time. A crime novel set in 1969. Available in ebook, trade paper, hardback, and limited edition. For more information, click here.
Best Mystery Stories of The Year!
“The heroine of Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s ‘Christmas Eve at the Exit’ struggles to make the holiday meaningful for her 10-year-old daughter while the pair are on the run….There isn’t enough Xanax in anyone’s medicine cabinet to calm the jitters these 20 skillful stories will unleash on a worried world.” —Kirkus