Posts by accordingtohoyt

Bland

I recently had minor surgery (at least assuming that the stuff sent to the pathologist comes back clear, it will stay minor) and am experiencing one of the very rare side effects of the anesthesia used.

This is fairly normal.  I mean that I experience the rare side effects, not the effect itself, which apparently strikes one in several million: I’m suffering from hypogeusia. Read more

So I Have A New Collection Out

Before you ask, as someone did “Sarah, why are you writing all these short stories when you could be writing novels?”  I am not writing all these short stories. I have written all these short stories, some of them a decade or more ago. Read more

Diary of a Mad Reader

I won’t say I always read.  I was a sickly kid, and I remember the long days of childhood before I could read. In those days, where antibiotics were available but the traditions for treating sickness hadn’t changed yet, I was kept confined and usually in bed at the slightest fever.  I was the only small kid in the family and the cats weren’t allowed around me when I was ill.  My much older brother was busy with school and friends, and only occasionally had any substantial time to read to me.  Our parents both worked.

I must have spent a cumulative few years building improbable lego things and telling myself stories.  And then I learned to read. Read more

Being a Sadist

I don’t remember the exact quote, because I first heard it in Portuguese, so what I remember Heinlein saying is this: Only a fool or a sadist tells the unvarnished truth in a social situation.

I don’t know to what extent a blog is a social situation, but hold on to your hats, because I’m about to be a sadist.  I’m going to tell the unvarnished truth about traditional publishing.

Read more

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

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

Where Do You Want To Go?

Where do you want to go as a writer? And are you willing to pay the price? Could you do something other than writing and be whole?

More and more I find my advice to newby writers starts with it.  The reason is that you can’t get anywhere unless you know where you’re going.  It’s hard to make a map that takes you nowhere in particular, and if that’s where you want to go… you’ll get nowhere in in particular. And right now there are different routes and prices to “author destinations.” Very different.  And it’s worth considering. Read more