Title: The Martian Chronicles Author: Ray Bradbury Genre: Fiction Publisher: Simon and Schuster Release Date: April 17, 2012 Pages: 256 The tranquility of Mars is disrupted by humans who want to conquer space, colonize the planet, and escape a doomed Earth. I encountered There Will Come Soft Rains when I was a little kid. I […] 
I recently had someone ask me about Scrivener and other writing tools. They were interested in my opinion of their usefulness as an established author and whether they should purchase some of the tools folks are discussing on sites like Facebook. Scrivener is a great tool but it has a bit of a learning curve. […] Daily Science Fiction If you’re not signed up for their weekday free stories that appear in your inbox, you’re missing out. This is a small SFWA-approved venue that pays better than pro rates, currently eight cents per word. When they picked up my short story, “A Case of Curiosities”, I qualified to join SFWA. This […] In literature, a red herring is an informal fallacy that typically uses extraneous or irrelevant information to mislead the audience. It’s used to give an astute reader several challenges during the telling of the tale. In other words, they’re purposeful deceits the author employs to mislead the folks who read their stories. Red herrings are […] Garden Gnome Publications Another oddball small press that publishes an interesting series of anthologies called Biblical Legends, amongst others. I co-wrote a couple of stories with Tonya L. De Marco about two robots who go about doing horrible things to humans — enough so that they help to create some of the legends and mythologies we […] Wolfsinger Publications This is another Colorado publisher, albeit a micro press. WolfSinger puts out several unique anthologies every year, and sometimes I write a story for them just because the anthology concept excites my muse. They respond to questions quickly and actually do thorough edits. My story, “Grubstake”, appears in Supernatural Colorado, and a story […] WordFire Press This is a small-to-middling sized pro-level Colorado press owned by Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta. I’ve done some minor work for them in the past, and they’re publishing a novel I co-wrote with a couple of friends. Everyone there is wonderful to work with, and I know many of them personally. Getting […] I was thinking about what makes a particular author’s work recognizable to their audience. Then I thought I would take the reverse of this notion — What if you write under several different pseudonyms and don’t want them connected? This is the issue I have to deal with. I don’t want readers of my horror books to […] Sometimes it’s a good thing to ask your friends and/or readers what they like about your work. Then again, sometimes the answers they give will surprise you. While many authors think they have a good idea of what they’re good at, sometimes they’re wrong. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing — in fact, having a […] Attention authors, particularly indie authors who are doing their own marketing: If you are not treating your advertising with at least the same respect as your book, you’re throwing away your money. In fact, you may be damaging your career. On my Kindle Touch is an advertisement for a book that almost screams “do not […]