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The Years Go By
A Great Picture… Not sure where it was taken recently. At one convention or another, but it came across Facebook and I was stunned at what a great picture it was of four of the greatest writers in science fiction. And how we had all aged. (We all used to look young, honest.) David Brin (on the right) is almost exactly my age. Greg Bear (on the left) is a year younger. Vernor Vinge in the blue jacket is six years older than me and Gregory Benford is nine years older than I am. And they all started publishing in the middle to late 1960s except for David who started…
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Another Scam Firing Up
This Scam Starts in Traditional Publishing… It’s brand new, but I fear it will spread. Writers are that afraid. So what is this new scam? Sensitivity Readers. Not kidding you. Traditional publishers are hiring “sensitivity readers” to read books before they are bought or published. Wow, the amount of stupidity has just hit a new level in publishing, far higher than my cyclical belief thought it could. You can find the article and read it yourself if you want to be disgusted. http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-publishers-hiring-book-readers-to-flag-sensitivity-20170215-story.html Sadly, some people will hire themselves out to do this and new writers are going to buy into this scam just as they bought into the scam of needing…
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Just Reading…
Nothing to see here… Just piles and piles and piles of manuscripts. Kris and I are old-time editors and we read everything in paper manuscript format. Great fun and our cats are too old to care about the strange manuscript piles to cause issues. Clearly we need kittens. Now back to the pile… night.
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I’m Reading…
…A lot of great short stories. I’ll be able to talk more about why I am doing this in a couple of weeks. After the Anthology Workshop is finished. But note that I seldom talk about my reading in this blog. It’s just something I do. Kris calls me a stealth reader, so it feels odd to actually be sitting out in public where she can see me with a pile of manuscripts (like the old days when we were editing Pulphouse and F&SF). Reading in my family was a waste of time as far as my parents were concerned. So I learned early on to hide my reading and…
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You Can Learn Story from the HGTV Network
The Sequential Nature of a Story… Sounds like a well-duh, but so many writers are stuck in that problem. And that makes writing so much harder to do for themselves. What problem? Of course you write a story from the beginning to the end, don’t you? Nope. Basically, beginning writers believe they must start a novel on word one and write to the last word. That belief creates time-wasting things like outlines and rewriting, two of the more deadly practices to creativity ever invented by an English teacher. And if I believed I had to write from word one and not do anything but move forward until the last word,…
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Protecting Choice
When You Decide to Not Write and That’s Fine… I can name a number of major events in a person’s life that will make then flat decide to not think about going to a computer to write fiction. Valid reasons to not write. — Health — Family Health or Event — Some forms of Travel — Day Job Explosion Outside of Norm — And so on and so on… down into smaller and smaller reasons. There is a point that all of us look at why we are not writing at a given point of time and try to decide if the reason is fear or a valid reason. We…
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Encouraging… Really?
People Say I Am Encouraging… I have gotten that comment a few times this past week and a couple questions about why I spend the time and energy to help others. There is an answer, but not exactly what you might expect. Let me back into this for a second. I suppose if a person is really working to chase their dreams, I try to tell them the truth about fiction and writing if they ask. And if I think they want the truth. If a person is really working to become a better storyteller, I am willing to answer questions and give my opinion when asked. If they really want…
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Superstars Workshop
Going Back for the Third Time… I wanted to announce that in the first week of February 2018, I will be once again teaching at the Superstars Writing Conference. I will also be going in a day ahead to do one of their craft days as well. I’ll talk more about this over the year, of course. But so far confirmed for next year are Brandon Sanderson, Jonathan Maberry, Jim Butcher, Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, Eric Flint, James A. Owen, Mark Leslie Lefebvre (Kobo), Dave Farland, and Mark Coker (Smashwords). Should be great fun.
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Busy Day for a Saturday
Auction, reading, some writing, some working on the estate, some workshop stuff… And I wouldn’t be reporting all this stuff if I didn’t have a streak going of blogging every day about something. (grin) Here is what the day was like. First to both our stores. Antiques Week is starting here and I wanted to see how things were doing. Starting off great. Then estate work since the day was nice and the light was good in the house. Almost got it. Monday should finish it for me. Then out to the auction for a while to talk with friends there. Then to the WMG offices to work for a few…
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There Can Be Only One Topic Tonight: Ed Bryant
Edward W. Bryant Jr. passed away this morning. Writer, teacher, and great person, Ed was only five years older than me. I’ve known him since 1982. He was like a solid core of the science fiction and horror publishing field. Everyone knew and seemed to love Ed. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he was a major supporter of Kris and my company Pulphouse Publishing. In fact, he seemed to spend more time in Eugene than Denver during that time and we loved it. Kris lead off the very first issue of Pulphouse Hardback Magazine with an Ed story, a classic called “While She Was Out.” And then he lead off…