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 going to slide into World War III? followed by the […]
Recommended Reading List: August, 2021
I 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 about all the awful things she’s seen in her life…and […]
Recommended Reading: March 2021
Spent 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 Klux Klan was (to tell us that a 1920s fictional […]
Recommended Reading List: May, 2020
The 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 was neither. The heroine never did anything except get rescued […]
Business Musings: Punctuation, Voice, and Control
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 on my monthly recommended reading list—until I hit this: …I […]
Business Musings: The People in Your Office
So, 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 their single grandkid about getting married. Patrick Rothfuss made the […]
Business Musings: Brand Loyalty 1 (Branding/Discoverability)
Brand 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.
Business Musings: Brand Image (Branding/Discoverability)
The 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 I’ve said all along, we writers must accept that we’re […]
Business Musings: Types of Brands (Branding/Discoverability)
I’ve been talking to myself lately. Actually, I’ve been talking back to podcasts, vlogs, and emails. Ever since I said I would be doing a series on branding, I’ve gotten links to great branding tips. (Please, keep them coming.) Every single link I received that dealt with branding from a writer’s perspective talked about cover branding. Lots of great information in each and every one […]
Business Musings: The People in Our Offices
I’m tired. Emotionally tired. My world is changing, and personally, I wasn’t prepared for it. That my world is changing while the greater world—the real world—is also changing is just serendipity, I guess. I’ve blogged about the larger changes, just a bit, talking about how to write in dark times, but some of that post is also about writing while bad things are happening to […]
Ten Little Fen: A Spade/Paladin Novel
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The Chase
The Chase, the latest Diving novel, answers a lot of your questions about the series. It also might cause you to ask a few more. Click here to find out more.
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