We Write!
—Alma T. C. Boykin— Is the book urban fantasy, plain fantasy, historical fiction? Yes? The correct answer is Yes. So, the annual "fun commercials with a football game in the middle" has come and gone in the United States. The general sense among my friends and coworkers was that with one exception, the commercials were... 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 So, having failed to learn my lesson, today's topic is romance as a genre. That is, keeping in mind that genre is about marketing. Romance as a term goes back to before romance as a genre, and romances used to be adventure stories that might or might not include a romantic-love... 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'd finally got progress on The Chapter of Stuckage (it went a lot faster once I sat down, and said "who is with whom this chapter? Ah, and what issues are there that they'd need to resolve between them, while they're out of the way of Main Plot Movement?") Before I could finish it, though,... Continue Reading →
Or 'It's the absolute truth, we swear... we just left out a few details, context etc.' Anyone who ever dealt with publishing is probably well aware that sometimes the author can mislead, but he's a piker compared to the average industry insider. The big five/four/three etc... have been in court telling everyone how little they... Continue Reading →
Cost / benefit analysis... from an author? Well, that should make you laugh, anyway. Seriously, it's profession for mugs, if you look at it from the straight 'work / earnings' (cost / benefit) point of view. That of course rests on 'all work is equally hard or pleasant or possible' which is plainly false. The... Continue Reading →
Mad Genius Club 