Looking Back at the Future
Sometime in 1989, Kurt Busiek, who had up until recently been my agent, called me from his new position at Marvel Comics. They were planning on taking another crack at a Science Fiction comic book, and they were going to put two twists on the genre. First, it was going to be written by real, [...]
To Thine Own Writing Be True
It’s been an interesting experience getting The Mushroom Shift ready for publication. I mean, here is a novel I wrote almost 25 years ago, and as I’m reading it, and as I’m having my Kindle read it to me as part of the proofreading process, I’m discovering something about it that I hadn’t expected. It’s [...]
Wanted (No Questions Asked)
Walter Jon WIlliams is looking for pirated scans of his novels. In this article on Torrent Freak, he explains his rationale, and it’s a good one. Having recently scanned and coded the forthcoming ebook issue of A Death of Honor, I can see the genius of this move. Why bother scanning when there’s someone out [...]
Something is Happening
Okay, it’s finally time to say something because it’s all getting close. I’m in for a writing career reboot here, and it’ll likely all start happening by the end of the month. The retooling of this web site some months ago was the first step, but now there are others. I’ve slowly been putting things [...]
The Writer and the Day Job
So… as I said recently, the Stephen Kings and J.K. Rowlings of the world get advances in the tens of millions of dollars, and their publishers don’t make their money back on the deal. But they have a star to hang in their firmament. And the mid-listers – the ones you see on the bestseller [...]
OHHHH NOOOOO!
So here’s an alternate cover for Boddekker’s Demons. As with Ferman, AST decided to publish two paperback versions – one with the orange cover, the Alternative Fiction line aimed at young Russian hipsters; and the other a less garish cover, designed to fit in with the other books in the Literature section of the book [...]
The Process, Part II
Before going on to chronicle the editing process, I want to mention that, to someone who reads this blog, it would appear that like Mark Twain, I write in spurts. This is not quite the case. Twain would abandon manuscripts for months before coming back to them. I might leave something for days or weeks, [...]
Creative Procrastination
Let’s talk about creative procrastination. The fine art of putting something off while it simmers in your brain. This is an essay I’ve been putting off writing for some time. Seriously. I wasn’t sure I’d studied it enough, but maybe it’s time to start working on it, before it reaches full ripeness. Besides, I received [...]
The Clash, Redux
I suppose this is as good a time as any to blog this. I usually don’t reveal inside jokes that I put in my novels, but this one was already discovered by a reader a while back ago, so theoretically the cat is out of the bag. This is one more bit on how widespread [...]
The Filler Effect
Today’s discussion is on what I call The Filler Effect. Sometimes while writing I come to a point where I need a transition between one set of events and the next. It’s like a buffer is needed between dramatic events. In this case, I wanted to go from a scene with comic overtones to one [...]
