Month: August 2011

  • Sympathy for the Devil Cover Art

    It took a bunch of tries to get this right. But I like the results. I think it captures the spirit of the book. This one is almost ready to go. Hoping to have it live in a week or so. ADDENDUM: Just finished uploading the print version to CreateSpace. Here’s the wrap-around cover for…

  • Oh, God! It’s the END of PUBLISHING!!!

    Here’s a link to yet another idiot in love with the straight-line-projection, declaring that professional writers are doomed. He makes the following assumptions: That 100% of people, given a choice between stealing something and paying for it, will steal it. That the shitbags who steal from torrent sites would have actually paid for the books…

  • The special SELF-PUB modules for How To Think Sideways Self-Pub

    I took a break from putting together a cool HTTS Hotseat today with a writer who needed to know how to create a villain for her story. Got out a notebook, wrote out the existing modules in How To Think Sideways, and figured out how to streamline the HTTS Self-Pub course. URGENT! All current Think…

  • A low-priced Self-Pub version of How To Think Sideways?

    Self-pub has become the way to go if you want to write and make a living at it. The last few years, my self-pub has paid the bills, and my commercial pub hasn’t. Among commercially published writers, I’m not alone. The majority of commercially published novelists are working a “real” job just to survive. Successful…

  • The Arhel Trilogy Covers

    Today, I did the covers for the Arhel Trilogy. Fire in the Mist Bones of the Past Mind of the Magic I wanted something striking but simple for these books—and I wanted the central images to be meaningful. So I went with Ariss, the keyu, and a dragon. The toughest part of these was coming…

  • The New Paranormal Suspense Covers

    I finished the following covers for my upcoming novels today: Midnight Rain I See You Last Girl Dancing Night Echoes Because of a bit of a financial bump, I’m pushing hard to get all the backlist up in the next couple of months. To my amazement (because I thought exactly the opposite), I think the…

  • How Writers Create Money From Nothing [Discussion]

    People struggle with the realization that creating fiction creates jobs. Always. In this miserable economy, I think we as readers and writers need to take a look at the powerful economic force one person with an idea and the guts to get it out there can be. So I’ve written the article Money From Nothing:…

  • Things you trip over

    I was searching backlinks and broken links tonight because I’m trying to get the site all the way back to fully functional. And while I’m not entirely sure how I got here, I found a thoughtful, in-depth article about my site and me by William Bell. He never contacted me about having written it, didn’t…

  • Knock, Knock wraps at 2044 words

    Wow. Chapter 2, “Knock, Knock,” hit the points I wanted to hit, but it did it in a way that completely floored me. I’d had this image of Cady cleaning up after the corpse in her room, but what she did instead was so much better. And I discovered Hastrozene, “The Universe’s Best Instant Party,”…

  • 2275 words of new Cadence Drake

    I got up this morning and for the first time in a long time started writing a new novel that dragged me out of bed. Chapter one of that novel, “Can’t Kill A Dead Guy,” is now finished in first draft. It was like coming home. Cady’s voice was there. Not the bitter, dark voice…