I’m reading only women for a year
Earlier this year, K.T. Bradford published an article with the simple title, “I Challenge You to Stop Reading White, Straight, Cis Male Authors for One Year.” It set a lot of people aflame. “Reverse sexism” and “reverse racism” and such. (Which, I should be clear is a dumb argument.) Neil Gaiman, who is the literal “posterbook” for the article, tweeted his support. And John Scalzi added, “Someone once told me they wanted to read my books but were reading only women for a year. I said, cool, my books will be there in a year.” I didn’t act on the post. I Read more…
National Novel Writing Month 2014
In 2007, I decided that it was time to get back into writing. I’d written novels throughout high school and college, roughly one every 18 months. But when I graduated from college, I found it was hard to keep writing. I didn’t have a desk in my first apartment, I was still adjusting to the realities of working, and I was still struggling as a writer, too. I was such an English major. I wrote books modeled off the literature I read. Those books, as a result, have some real problems. Now, I don’t want to bash them. They took Read more…
Frank Herbert and his Lost Archives
I thought this was an intriguing project and I wanted to share it here before the Indiegogo campaign wrapped up. Erik Jorgensen is working on bringing the “lost archives” of Frank Herbert to light. Herbert’s writing as a journalist is not nearly as well known as his masterwork Dune, of course. But what a journalist like Herbert chooses to pay attention to is revealed in his writing. Jorgensen has digitized his writing from 1949 – 1953 in Santa Rosa, California. Maybe someone should do the same with Herbert’s writing in the Puget Sound area, no? Good luck, Erik, on getting the Read more…
New Flash Fiction: Eleventh Hour Brother
Two months ago, I discovered that some fellow indie writers were creating a “flash fiction” anthology that would span genres. I was very interested. The main stipulation: all stories had to be under 1,000 words. One thousand words really isn’t a lot. (The Lead Cloak is more than 100 times as long) It’s hard to do much in that short space, but that’s what appealed to me. I made the decision to do something I’ve never done before–I wrote the story on my phone. My thinking was that writing on my phone would help me conserve words (there’s a reason emails coming Read more…
Should you self-publish?
I know a lot of authors who have self-published and a lot of authors who have traditionally published (and several who have found an in-between route). Brent Hartinger, my co-host on Media Carnivores, has done both, so together we were able to have a really interesting podcast discussion about this topic. We are definitely coming at it from two different sides–Brent thinks you should start by attempting to traditionally publish and I think you should start by self-publishing first. But we also both see real benefits to all options. The conversation went so well that we extended it into a Read more…
Did you get my author update?
A few weeks ago I sent out an author newsletter. My pledge is to email whenever I have a new title out or a new format. That’s it. You should totally subscribe. Yes, I talked about Media Carnivores and the translations of my books here on my blog as well as in the newsletter. But the newsletter contained this helpful writing update as well that hasn’t appeared on the blog until now: I’ve made some real progress in my work on The Iron Harvest, the next book in The Lattice Trilogy. I’ve also been working on a new book in my series Read more…
No more getting lost in translation
In 2012, Kindle opened up KDP publishing to non-English speaking Europe—Germany, Spain, France, Italy—and ever since then I’ve viewed getting my books translated into other languages as a sort of Holy Grail to self-publishing. There’s so much of the world that doesn’t speak English–I’d like to make my books available to them! Right now, I can sell in foreign markets, but they are still English-language copies. And, yes, it feels good that someone in France or Italy can buy my books right now. But in practice, no one really does. Out of the 20,000 books I’ve sold—a lot, certainly, but not an insanely high amount, and Read more…
Announcing the Media Carnivores Podcast
So here’s a really fun new project! Seattle author Brent Hartinger and I are starting a podcast called “Media Carnivores.” The first episode is online or you can subscribe directly from iTunes. There’s a Twitter feed for the episodes too. So what are “media carnivores?” Brent and I coined this term, so we get to decide! Media carnivores devour media–books, movies, television, plays. Everything. This podcast is our chance to talk about it. Not just about the shows we’re watching. But about what it all means. About where media is heading, as best as we can guess it. Sometimes that means talking about our Read more…
The Martian by Andy Weir
(I haven’t written a “formal” book review in awhile. But why not? It’s kind of fun. Here’s a review of The Martian by Andy Weir.) Mark Watney just got stranded on Mars. Believing he was dead, his fellow astronauts left Mars in the ship that is Watney’s only means of escape off of the planet. Alone in a hostile environment, he has enough food and water to live for a few weeks, but with the next Mars mission four years away, what chance does he have of surviving until then? Watching Watney try to eek out years of life on a Read more…
How to Enjoy Shakespeare
Today is William Shakespeare’s 450th birthday. Unfortunately, far too many people have a poor introduction to Shakespeare, and give up on him too quickly. I wrote a guide on Medium to enjoying Shakespeare (hint, don’t pick up a play and start trying to read it). It starts with a story about a college professor on Jeopardy. Enjoy.
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