Business Musings: The Branding Surprise

Over the weekend, I headed to traditional publishers’ websites and look at their paranormal romance covers only to discover…that the damn books are branded like urban fantasy or like an E.L. James knockoff or like a cookbook or travelogue. All of this points out a huge problem in the paranormal romance genre. There’s nothing that screams modern paranormal romance. Believe me when I tell you that readers look for such things.

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Business Musings: Indispensable

I’m having a fascinating spring. I’m watching two of our employees make themselves indispensable. Dean and I have owned businesses, together and separately, for decades. Not just our writing businesses, but publishing businesses, retail businesses, and a host of other businesses. When we ran Pulphouse Publishing, we had one employee who was indispensable—Debb De Noux, […]

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A New Short Story, A Holiday Bundle, And A Secret

I knew the secret would catch you all. 🙂 Last year, Kevin J. Anderson invited me into his first holiday anthology (along with Dean and many of our good friends who happen to be writers). I strongly recommend one of my all-time favorite stories which Kevin reprinted in that anthology in the special holiday recommended […]

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The Business Rusch: Generational Divide

When I was taking classes in the craft of fiction, everyone—from established professional writers to English professors—recommended that a writer never ever say that a character looked like a famous actor. No “he resembled a young Orson Welles” or “she dressed like Claudette Colbert.” Not only was it lazy writing—the Gurus said—but, more importantly, there […]

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