Still here.
I realize, to my chagrin, that it’s been two and a half months since I’ve posted here. As I said in my last post (way back in 2014) I am taking my writing more seriously. The Little Book of Boards is complete in all its forms (Kindle, paperback, and audiobook). I’m also working hard on The Iron Harvest. One of the big signs that I’m within shooting distance of the end when I create a scene-list of everything I know I have left to write. And I created that list just a few days ago! So that’s a very good thing. 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…
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…
Artist2Artist conversation with Marissa Meyer
Last month I sat down with the New York Times best-selling author Marissa Meyer to talk about writing, Tacoma, and more, for TVTacoma. It was a fun and likely conversation, and particularly because I have so enjoyed her books. (The Lunar Chronicles are a sort of sci-fi, steam-punk, fairy tale mashup that works really well, with very strong central characters in all of them. I definitely recommend them.) Here’s the feature: Talking shop with another writer was a lot of fun–so much so, that I’m working on a project that I hope will allow me to do it more often. More Read more…
The Third Degree
Here’s something fun I’m trying out. I was invited to work with two other authors to package our mysteries together into a single bundled download. We called it “The Third Degree Bundle.” The idea was that you get three books for the price of one. And maybe find some new authors to check out! It’s a low-risk way to fill your Kindle with 885 pages of mystery and thrillers! Here are the three books: The Saints Go Dying, by Erik Hanberg A computer hacker turned detective is hunting a serial killer in Los Angeles targeting modern day saints. Project Moses, Read more…
Six habits for writing (and finishing) a novel
I wrote my first “novel” when I was in the seventh grade. It was 80 pages long and I thought it was a masterpiece. I was going to be the first middle-school bestseller. I later wrote a sequel in eighth grade. Then another sequel in ninth grade. Finally I realized I had an actual novel, and put it together as a single book. Since then, I’ve written another ten novels, and self-published four of them. Having been through it that many times, I think I’ve discovered that the biggest challenges with writing are not about the writing itself, but the Read more…
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