This post is a chapter from my book, The Write Attitude, which is now in a second edition. I’m posting it here to entice you to head over to Storybundle to pick up a copy, along with ebooks by Darcy Pattison, Douglas Smith, Ron Collins, Tracy Cooper-Posey and others. Everything in this Storybundle is exclusive, including […]
Continue Reading
Yeah, the last list from 2024. Finally. I thought maybe I would just punt this one, but I like sharing what I’ve read that I’ve liked. So I didn’t want to lose all of these to extreme busy-ness. I barely remember September, so I can’t give you lots of comments. I do know that I […]
Continue Reading
In the course of this insane year, in which the news cycle was on overdrive in every single industry, and the Western world (which is what I mostly follow) spent all of its time splitting into factions and screaming at each other. In a year that had a moment of holy crap, are we really […]
Continue ReadingI threw out a book of essays in August. I mean literally tossed the book in the trash. The book was considered one of the best books of 2019 by a whole bunch of mainstream literary reviewers, all of whom are on my suspect list now. The book is exceedingly well written. The author writes […]
Continue ReadingSpent much of my month catching up on projects, reading for the Holiday Spectacular, and doing some other things that don’t count for the Recommended Reading List. I did start a critically acclaimed award-nominated book on the history of detective fiction and quit very quickly. It was racist AF. Three pages explaining what the Ku […]
Continue ReadingThe weather has become quite lovely here, and I have made it a point to read every night on my balcony. I can’t tell you what a balm that has been for my soul. Much of what I’ve read I can’t recommend, including an Edgar-nominated novel that was supposed to be “gothic” and “feminist” and […]
Continue Reading
In January, while I was preparing to teach a craft workshop here in Las Vegas, I was happily reading a lovely essay on the comma in the Oregon Quarterly. The essay, titled “For Love of the Comma,” written by Kate Dyer-Seeley, is beautifully done, and as I read, I was thinking of recommending the piece […]
Continue ReadingSo, it happened again. A big name fantasy writer made his fans angry because the next book in his series hasn’t appeared in years. And, in a passing remark, he compared the comments fans make on his overdue book to those comments people make to their unemployed adult child about getting a job or to […]
Continue ReadingBrand loyalty—name loyalty—is something that we writers desire, but it’s not something that we can simply will into being. And it certainly doesn’t come about by bribing your reader.
Continue ReadingThe publishing industry has been shifting since 2009. Indie publishing has become a force since 2011 or so. At first, we writers made our work available, but the things that worked six years ago don’t work now. The problem is that the marketing gurus for writers are just other writers with an okay idea. As […]
Continue Reading