I’ve been pirated! And I think I’m pretty ok with that.
In November, I participated on two panels with the Tacoma Arts Symposium. One of them was about social media/technology for artists. We had a lot of good questions from the audience, but a significant amount of them were about the audience member’s fear of piracy. People were afraid that if they started blogging their pictures or putting there ideas online, that they would be stolen. I came down pretty hard on the other side. I said something to the effect of piracy being a validation that you had actually produced something of value. That your art was actually good. That Read more…
Now available at Kings Books!
In the mystery section.
About that Beautyman short story …
About two months ago I posted about a short story I’d finished in my mystery series. I still like it, but I think I’m going to hold off publishing it. Why? Because I think it’s better as a novel. A member of my writing group made a suggestion, and it really got me thinking. I think I like it a lot better as a full-length novel than as a 30 page short story. Unfortunately, that means it’s going to take longer to come out. I’m working hard on my sci-fi novel–it’s already 56,000 words, about as long as The Saints Read more…
Kindle highlights
There's a feature on the Kindle that I rarely use: highlighting lines of text so you can find them later. I can count only a few times I've found this to be helpful. But! As an author, it turns out that it can be enormously encouraging. The Little Book of Gold, my fundraising guide for small nonprofits, has spent almost four months on the Kindle best-selling list for nonprofits. Crazy! One of the features of Amazon is that they will show you commonly highlighted passages in a book. That means that I (and anyone else) can see what people find Read more…
“Look, Ma, Look! A Brand New Bike”
"For me, for me, for me you say? I'm going to ride it, right a way!" I probably have "The Bike Lesson" memorized for as often as I read it as a kid, and my parents read it to me. I post it here in remembrance of Jan Berenstain, who passed away over the weekend.
5,000 pages of knights, dragons, and one really big wall
Sometime in early December I started the book Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin. It's the first book in a seven part fantasy series (parts 6 and 7 haven't been released yet). I started getting interested after the hoopla surrounding the HBO adaptation of the books. And then hearing from a lot of people that the books were quite good. So I decided to check them out. They have occupied the better part of two months. Really, I don't think I've read much else of anything since then, but they total 5,000 pages, so it's not like I've been slacking. They Read more…
Walk like the Dickens
Last week, Charles Dickens celebrated his 200th birthday. I've actually read a fair bit of Dickens. Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Bleak House, A Tale of Two Cities, and Great Expectations. Of those, Bleak House is probably the "best" of his books, and I have a certain fondness for it because I read it while in London. It also contains one of the first detectives in English fiction: the bizarrely named Inspector Bucket. I wouldn't necessarily recommend Bleak House, though. It is 1000 pages and quite dense. Out of those I've read, David Copperfield and Great Expectations are probably the most accessible. Read more…
“The Saints Go Dying” is free through Monday night!
I'm once again trying out marketing by giving away a book. Here's The Saints Go Dying on Kindle. It's free for the next 18 hours or so (it goes back to being $2.99 at midnight Monday night). So far, January has been a better month than December, and December a better month than November, and November better than October … But a lot of those sales were driven by The Little Book of Gold, which basically spent all of January in the Top 100 Kindle Books for Nonprofits list. Sales of the mysteries dropped a bit, though, so I wanted Read more…
The only copy in existence
I will soon have more physical books of The Marinara Murders, and hopefully of The Saints Go Dying shortly after that. This was a proof that I autographed and labeled #001. It was a prize at last night’s Social Media Club. Who knows, if I write enough of these books, maybe it will be worth something some day? But for now, it’s the only physical copy in existence. That’s kind of awesome to think about. It cost me $15 to create, and more than half of that was expedited shipping, to get it in time for the Social Media Club. Read more…
Rick Steves and public spaces
This morning as part of a park conference, Rick Steves was the keynote speaker. It was a really interesting looking at public spaces and parks. Mary was excited to join me for it, and she took away this nice souvenir. We both enjoyed the book, so it was great to get it signed!
^