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Aug 31

63 Comments

Come One, Come All

Hear ye, hear ye, readers of the Mad Ones. It is the 5th Friday of the month. That means Promotion Day is here. We’re all in the middle of various projects, work, family, etc. So here’s your chance to tell us what you’re reading or to promote one–ONE–of your own books. The only rules are you have to link to Amazon (and no Amazon Associate links, please) and if you are linking to your own work or to an author you act as agent/editor/etc for, you may only link one title.

This is not a curated list. That means the MGC bloggers make no guarantees about the books listed in the comments.

The floor is now yours.

Aug 30

New Release

Ebsa’s in semi-quarantine along with the rest of Project Dystopia, until TPTB decide they haven’t brought along any giant spiders or rats the size of elephants.

And while they’re stuck on the Embassy World, a cookoff and fair seems like a good idea. What could go wrong?

If you’re looking for a quick light read, this novella is just right!

Aug 30

10 Comments

Nothing’s Changed

I’m still lurching from crisis to crisis, the feline digestive issues continue to require cleanup on a daily basis (you know your life sucks when it’s of vital importance to know the consistency of your cat’s business, as it were), and I have absolutely nothing I can think about sensibly enough to write about it.

So.

Read more

Aug 29

104 Comments

So You Want to Be a Writer

Lately I’ve run across a bunch of people who want to be writers (usually because they want to be indie) but genuinely have no idea how to go about it and ask for help.

And it occurred to me it’s been a long time since we did a post for bare beginners here, so here goes (and sorry it’s so late, wordpress has been driving me insane this morning.)

So… you want to be a writer.  Okay, here are some steps I’ve found essential for me and other writers (pretty much every other writer I know.) Read more

Aug 28

29 Comments

Step Back

Okay, coffee. Hello, Darkness, etc. Littles are still out, but I expect that to reverse itself in the not terribly distant future. The days crawl, yet tempus still fuggits in a manner with which I am not entirely comfortable. *sips*

And I see that this morning’s post has engendered some spirited discussion about the role of gatekeepers, and how they roll. Groovy. Game on.

Amazon is not coming for your intellectual property. Amazon doesn’t hate conservatives, though some employees at the ‘Zon no doubt do. They also don’t hate progressives, though I know for a fact they’ll hire people who aren’t impressed with neo-Marxist failed ideologies or their adherents. Dread Bezos is a businessman, and one who has created an empire. Pragmatism is practically his schtick. That and kickin’ customer service.
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Aug 28

92 Comments

The Mental State of M. Todd Henderson by Elaine Ash

The Mental State of M. Todd Henderson

by Elaine Ash

 

As the purge of conservative and libertarian pundits roils You Tube, Twitter, Facebook and anywhere speech is supposedly free, M. Todd Henderson and his political thriller Mental State fight an uphill battle to release in October.

In late 2015, I was hired as a freelance editor by Mr. Henderson, a law professor at the University of Chicago. His book, Mental State,  is based on the real-life partially unsolved murder of Florida law professor Dan Markel. In the book, the murder is pinned on the wrong perp. Read more

Aug 27

87 Comments

Foundations

If ignorance is bliss, why aren’t more people happy?

One of the things I’ve learned in the process of building our own farm from nothing more than a patch of bush with a fantastic sea view, is that starting from absolutely nothing is one hell of a lot harder than starting from something.  Literally, anything, but ideally something that requires little more than a redecorate and moving your furniture in is definitely this game on ‘lowest difficulty’ setting. From the regulatory/bureaucratic quagmire point of view, any sort of existing house, especially if it has electrical and sewage systems in place is going to save you a mint of money and may substantially reduce your chances of informing the FBI that your local council has a video of President Trump kissing Vladimir hidden somewhere on their premises.

Starting from nothing… well, you MAY get what you want, to your own desires and design. On the other hand, speaking from personal experience here, you may well end up building, taking down and rebuilding… at least three times to achieve something sort of Okay, in a good light, or at least when viewed through ‘I do not want to do it a fourth time, and it isn’t falling down immediately. Besides, it has character!’ Read more

Aug 26

3 Comments

Running to stand still

Today, a couple links for you on how to stop running flat-out (or how to prevent running flat-out to begin with.)

https://kriswrites.com/2018/08/15/business-musings-writers-and-the-hamster-wheel-of-doom/

and

https://mwl.io/archives/3232

Enjoy!

Aug 25

91 Comments

Flinch Training

In our polarized world, we are facing a constant onslaught of messages. From the practical of ‘look both ways before you cross the street‘ to the insane gaslighting of ‘glyphosate causes cancer‘ we’re bombarded at every turn. It’s on the news, on the internet, and in our fiction. We can’t escape it, it seems.

My Dad adopted a dog a few years ago while I was still living with him on the Farm. The young dog he’d adopted was about a year old, and a farm collie (appropriately enough), and he was a rescue dog. That last part was the problematic bit. You see, Wade had been born and raised on a farm down South somewhere, with his big dog family, and one little old man. When the man died, the dogs were left alone, roaming the farm, lost and confused. Read more

Aug 24

27 Comments

Learning from a pulp master

There are all sorts of writing courses, seminars, presentations and lessons out there.  Most appear to be offered by those who haven’t sold many (if any) books, and don’t rank among popular authors, yet present themselves as authorities in the field.  Others are post-graduate university programs that speak in grandiloquent terms about the art of writing, but seldom appear to lead to career success.  I’ve never understood why some of them appear to have so much credibility among students, but there it is.

However, I was recently reminded of one of the modern giants of pulp fiction, the late Warren Murphy, co-author of the “Destroyer” series of books and others.  They were ubiquitous on military bases when I wore uniform, along with others of their kind, as I noted recently on my own blog.  The “Destroyer” series gave rise to a pulp movie, if I could call it that, in the 1980’s.  It was a hoot.

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