Apr 21
My husband challenged me to compile the complete kitchen sink marketing checklist for launches – including everything I’m not managing right now. What else would you put in here? What do you do? What is your timeline for a release? Read more
The question came up in comments under the steps for opening a small business post: why do all this work? Why not just run it on the side like a hobby, commingling all your funds, skip the business licenses and all the other hurdles?
Why, in fact, are we encouraging you to do all that? What about all the folks who never got started along the way because of the hurdles of running a business, or who spent all their energy on opening the business, and never got any further – why are we discouraging them?
The key is: mindset. This is a collection of writers who do this for a living, not a collection of people who published a book once, and maybe will get around to that again.
After getting a few reviews of Scaling the Rim that graded it as a romance, not a science fiction book, I got curious. So, the past few months I’ve been reading several Romances, subcategory SF to try to figure out the difference between Science Fiction, subcategory romance and Romance, subcategory science fiction. At first glance, you’d think they’d be the same thing, but they’re very, very different – the reader cookies (what makes readers happy) aren’t even on the same page.
In the Romance genre, not only is the emphasis completely and totally on the couple’s relationship (duh, it’s romance), but the worlds have an extremely limited amount of worldbuilding, and a huge amount of handwavium, with far higher tolerance for psychic this or psionic that. (In that way, it reminds me a lot of the old scientifiction, speculative fiction, and pocket books of barely 40-50K words that were one step removed from collected issues of pulps – or were pulp stories fleshed out into books. Jack Vance had no problem with magic in his far-future dying earth!) Read more
What is a second-order consequence? Well, a first-order consequence is the immediate consequence of a decision, usually the desired outcome. The second-order consequences are the ones that are separated by time and space from the first order, and if you’re not thinking things through, are usually “Unintended consequences.” And, to be fair, even if you think things through, it’s impossible to account for how everything interacts – so there are always unintended consequences, though they may be years or decades down the road, and classified as third and fourth-order consequences…
As readers, and as writers, we’re all in this for a good story. And sometimes your fans want the story behind the creation of the story, or “the making of.” Sometimes this is fun and cute, like the romance novelist who blocked when writing at home, and found her inspiration while waiting for an oil change at Tires, Tires, Tires. (After the sixth oil change from a friend’s car, the guys knew something was up… and they made her their author-in-residence!)
Sometimes, the story is tragic, defiant, and heart-tugging, like the story behind Sakura: Intellectual Property by Zach Hill ( and Patrick M Tracy & Paul Genesse )
Feb 10
My lungs are trying to pitch an insurrection about having to work all the time, so I’m a wee bit distracted these last few months. Right now we’re having fun with medication… by the way, were you aware when you can’t breathe well, it’s really hard to be creative? Stay healthier than me!
So I give you some links I haven’t posted since 2016, because some of you will see these for the first time – and some of you will have seen these before, but with a few years more of writing under your belt, you’re likely to find a whole different set of meaning and advice than the first time. Good advice is multilayered like that! Read more
I should know; I flunked out of rocket science as a major, but I manage to do okay at writing blurbs!
Consider the following a basic primer in blurb writing; I am no master or guru, but while all my author friends are putting out their 5th or 15th story, I am putting out my 35th blurb attached to it. And with enough practice, you can get skilled at something. Read more
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