So much of the writing advice we get comes from a set of assumptions that are no longer true. I’m not sure if they were ever true. But that’s for another blog post. (Or maybe I’ve written that post already.) Anyway, the assumption is that our culture is monolithic, that we all read the same […]
Continue ReadingToward the end of a pretty good Entertainment Weekly article about the romance side of the publishing industry, this sentence appears: [Bella Andre]’s a naturally fast writer — on average she churns out four to six books a year — and she released the first one in June 2011. Before we get to the reason […]
Continue ReadingHere’s how writers decide to market their books: They read blogs and articles, which tell them the best thing to do. Or, they mimic what they’ve seen other authors do. Or, they try to act like big traditional publishers, by funding their own book tours and doing signings. I’d say that’s no way to run […]
Continue ReadingThis week, I finished reading a bad book by one of my favorite authors. Well, “finished reading” isn’t accurate. “Paged through the last half” is probably better. The book was astoundingly bad. The author decided to go 50 Shades of Grey on me when she’d never written more than a fade-to-black sex scene before. But […]
Continue ReadingThe last two weeks have been quite a revelation for me. My post on perfection led to last week’s post about writing workshops/writing culture, and even then, it wasn’t until the comment sections of both blogs that I realized just how prevalent the whole writing problem thing is. What I consider to be “the whole writing […]
Continue ReadingI was extremely busy in March, but somehow I managed to read a lot of good stuff as well. Some of my reading came at a workshop at the end of February, beginning of March. If the stories that I liked appear in print, I told the students to contact me with that information. So […]
Continue ReadingThe Business Rusch: Why Not? Kristine Kathryn Rusch On TV’s most popular drama series, NCIS, the main character, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, walks through the office, and if he hears a stupid statement, he slaps the speaker on the back of the head. Now, this is fiction, mind you. In any real office, military or not, […]
Continue ReadingThe Business Rusch: The Holiday Surprise Kristine Kathryn Rusch I’m starting this column on Boxing Day because I’m absolutely and utterly buried. December had a lot of real life bumps, including illness, spousal illness, more estate stuff, and some other business things that got in the way of writing. And you should realize: Usually nothing […]
Continue ReadingThe Business Rusch: Comparisons Kristine Kathryn Rusch I have spent a lot of time with other writers in the past three months, and I have seen this scenario over and over and over again: Writers are talking about indie publishing e-books at a dinner or a lunch or over drinks. A newer writer, maybe one […]
Continue ReadingThe Business Rusch: More Modern Writer Survival Skills (Changing Times Part Nineteen) Kristine Kathryn Rusch This week hasn’t been quite as heady as last week was in publishing, but part of that is because the industry is trying to face the reality of the Borders bankruptcy filing. Most of the publishing blogs that I’ve read […]
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