Archive | February, 2010
I’m Glad It’s Not Rocket Science

I’m Glad It’s Not Rocket Science

As often happens when I have a lousy and stressful week, I usually decide that I need to do *something.* Never sure what it is, of course, but it certainly needs doing. And since on March 27 I will be doing a book signing at the Arizona Renaissance Festival along with Robert Vardeman, I thought […]

Read more
Stress and Frustration

Stress and Frustration

It has been one of those weeks. For reasons I cannot share publicly, I’ve been decidedly stressed. Nope, nothing to do with health or writing, save that part of the frustration is that I’ve not been able to get as much writing done as I wanted this week. Certain events and forces beyond my control […]

Read more
How to Stand Out in a Crowd

How to Stand Out in a Crowd

One of the major laments that comes up whenever the discussion about the transition from the traditional publishing model to the new digital publishing model commences, goes like this: “It’s all well and good for you to advocate going direct, but you’re an established author. Of course this will work for you! What about me? […]

Read more
The Word-Cartel

The Word-Cartel

I want to take one more stab at explaining how the publishing business works, primarily because an insight came to me this morning. In the past I’ve pointed out that because publishers had the means of creating product at a reasonable price (economy of scale in printing) and they had the distribution network (that allowed […]

Read more
The Secrets Issue 136: Serendipity

The Secrets Issue 136: Serendipity

I just released the most recent issue of my newsletter, The Secrets. This issue is titled Serendipity. In it I go through the thought processes that shaped my recent story Chance Corrigan and The Tick-tock King of the Nile. (It will be coming out some time this year from DAW—I’ll post on its availability when […]

Read more
Murmuring All The Way To The Bank

Murmuring All The Way To The Bank

So, I got an email from a big bank with which I have a credit card telling me that I’d missed a payment. I figured it was a phishing scam because I knew I hadn’t missed a payment. I had my bank statement that showed me a scan of the cashed check. Then, early this […]

Read more
One more story down

One more story down

This ended up being a good week. Today I finished up the first draft of Chance Corrigan and the Tick-tock King of the Nile. The story is destined, I hope, to be included in the forthcoming anthology from DAW called Steampunk. Jean Rabe is editing it with Martin H. Greenberg. The story was a lot […]

Read more