We Write!
Alma T. C. Boykin The short answer is "probably nothing, unless you've paid for the story and I need to e-mail/ship it." However, a lot of people, even those who will answer "nothing," believe in an understood contract with readers, especially those of us who are indie writers. Traditionally published writers are a little more... Continue Reading →
I've been in two anthologies in the last 90 days. I don't have any numbers on how they've sold yet, since I am not the publisher, merely a contributor. So it's a little early to look at a full After-Action Review, but as I am both sick, and recovering from parental visit on top of... Continue Reading →
Alma T. C. Boykin I almost said "bad review" but that leaves a lot of wiggle room: unfavorable, badly written, for the wrong book/recording, totally ignored the entire plot of the book ("I didn't read it but the author is a terrible person so this is a horrible book.") What I mean is a negative... Continue Reading →
Alma T. C. Boykin I confess, I no longer read thrillers. I used to read Frederick Foresyth, (Day of the Jackal, The Odessa File), Alistair Maclean* (Goodby California, The Satan Bug, The Guns of Navarone) and novels like The Wild Geese, Hunt for Red October, and so on. At some point, I either lost my... Continue Reading →
A comment from an Indy writer on Twitter caught my attention. She had just got a quote for editing her book. $6500. Was this reasonable? I asked the question: did she have any real idea how much she was likely to earn from her book? (I was not being nasty and all of this was... Continue Reading →
Alma T. C. Boykin In the beginning, there was fiction and nonfiction. Mostly. Ish. Sort of. If you didn't look too hard. And all was good, and all authors lived in harmony with their publishers, and it was Very Good. But then a marketing agent sidled up to Eve and said, "Psssssst, wanna get more... Continue Reading →
Alma T. C. Boykin No, not the year 2022, although I've got mixed emotions about seeing it leave. It wasn't the best of years for me personally, but it was much, much better than several that come to mind. I was thinking about the ten years since I released my first fiction book, A Cat... Continue Reading →
I recently came across a series of tweets by Sergej Sumlenny, discussing how Russia had used books, as well as other entertainment media, to prepare its citizens for war in general, prior to its invasion of Ukraine. Here's an excerpt from Threadreader's aggregation of the tweets. Let's start a long thread about how Russian book... Continue Reading →
About that "most books only sell 12 copies" bunkum, which from all accounts runs perilously close to perjury... it's statistics that have been mangled worse than most of the folks I see in physical therapy, here's a look at what's behind the smokescreen. Courtesy of J.L. Curtis, We can find a lot more information at... Continue Reading →
I'm not asking for me, here. I'm pretty sure that ten years, ten novels, and countless short stories into this, I'm an author. No, it's a question I'm not being asked directly. It's been a privilege, in doing the anthologies this last year, to include stories from a number of new authors in the mix.... Continue Reading →
Mad Genius Club 