I am having a wonderful, marvelous, totally nifty year. Or maybe I had that year in 2015. Hard to say, really. Just depends on how you look at things. Here’s what I mean. My novella, “Inhuman Garbage,” appeared in two best of the year volumes in July. Depending on what you prefer to read, you […]
Continue ReadingA lot of the stories I read this past year had wonderful plots. They had great characters and lovely twists. The stories were published, remember, and so they all had something unusual, something strong.
But that something generally wasn’t voice….
Continue ReadingBeing offline has put me behind on the news. First, and most important, as of today, you can get the final book in the Interim Fates trilogy. Brittany Bends takes place in my old hometown of Superior, Wisconsin….
Continue ReadingFor years, I’ve enjoyed the Chicks in Chainmail anthologies, edited by Esther M. Friesner. Humor, fantasy, warrior women…what’s not to love? A year or so ago, she asked me to be in the latest volume, Chicks and Balances, which she edited with John Helfers. I thought about it, wasn’t really inspired by actual chainmail, so I thought about what armor really is, and when it’s needed…and somehow, I ended up at the Academy Awards, on the red carpet, with demons. Yeah, that makes sense—in a Rusch kinda way.
Continue ReadingI read 250 manuscripts by professional writers this month. All of the stories were good. Some fit anthologies better than others. We held a writing workshop where six of us edited for Fiction River. You will see some tremendous upcoming stories, not just in FR, but in other magazines as well. Because once the editing […]
Continue ReadingWhen we set up the anthology workshop that we held last week, Dean Wesley Smith told everyone that they would have a great opportunity to network. After all, 50 professional writers whose work runs the gamut of the fiction genres would be there from all over the world. A few of the new attendees worried […]
Continue ReadingAs I got deep into this discoverability series, I promised that I would examine marketing strategies from passive to active. I have to abandon that promise now, because most everything we’ll discuss from here on out will be active. By active, I mean you’ll have to do something—write something, design something, or pay for something—and […]
Continue ReadingFiction River #2 will be coming out in about a month. I can share both the final cover for the trade paper and the list of names in the volume. John Helfers did a fantastic job editing this issue. It’s got some edgy stories, and powerful stories (which are, sometimes, one and the same). I’m really […]
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 ReadingI got a lot of reading done in February, and I’m not sure how. I was writing every minute I could and I also co-taught a workshop with Dean, Denise Little, and John Helfers. Did lots of reading there, but you won’t see those stories until they hit print. Very good stories they were too. […]
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