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On Writing

Free Upcoming Classes from iVersity

 Interested in some free online classes? Well, you’re in luck. There are two upcoming classes that may interest you. First off is the Serious Game Design class. Did you know that games can be serious? Serious Games take advantage of the engaging characteristics of games to develop the players’ knowledge, personal and social skills. Join […]

Print is Dead?

 I’ve read several articles about how digital sales will eliminate dead-tree (print) format. Most of my author pals sell more digital downloads than print. I’m the exception, apparently. My print sales to digital sales are 4:1, where I will sell four print books for every digital download. Some months it goes much higher, such as my […]

New Guest Post at The Fictorians

 I have another guest post over on The Fictorians, a literary blog that has monthly themes. This month, the theme is what book inspired me to write. My answer is my first science fiction book called “The Space Ship Under the Apple Tree” by Louis Slobodkin. You can read the blog/article here: http://www.fictorians.com/2014/05/06/apples-and-aliens/

Fiction Writing Assessment

 From the brilliant Tim Waggoner, here’s an assessment form for use in teaching, workshops, or even critique groups. At the very least, it can be used as a checklist for beta readers as to what kind of feedback would be useful.   It’s a freebie. The email and name is to send a receipt. Feel […]

Facebook Pages: Are they worth your time?

 Almost every book marketing eBook I read says I should get out on Facebook and spew information on my current books. “Set up a Facebook Page for each book or series.” Now that Facebook has changed their algorithm, is it worth the time for an author to post about their books? Lets take a look […]

Freebie Friday: Con Name Placard

 I’ve been to too many conventions where name placards were not available for the panelists. Usually MileHiCon is on the ball, but I decided to make sure I have one ready to go. I picked up a plastic name tag holder from Office Depot and printed up a placard with my name and the MileHiCon logo […]

Facebook Pages — Are They Worth Your Time?

 I have a page for my author activities over on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/SpeculativeFictionAuthor). Most of my author friends also have their own dedicated pages, and some even have pages for each book they published. This blog is linked to my Facebook page, since I like to maximize the efficiency of the things i write. Some stuff goes […]

NaNoPrepMo

 Only a couple of weeks until NaNoWriMo begins. Coffee shops across the nation will notice a huge uptick in caffeine-infused drink sales. People will work on developing carpal tunnel. They’ll gather together in a huge social meeting just to ignore each other and poke on Facebook and get in a little bit of writing. All […]

Submitted: The Strangelet to Apokrupha

 Sent in a 418-word short story to Apokrupha’s Vignettes from the End of the World anthology. They’re looking for stories about the end of the world happening, all in 500 words or less. I was doing a bit of research on the Large Hadron Collider, and I ended up on Wikipedia. The page was about […]

Asana

 Since Tonya and I collaborate on work, and she is also my full-time business manager, we needed to get organized. I poked around, looking at project management tools. I needed something that we could both get up to speed on quickly, which ruled out Microsoft Project. I wanted something we could share on different laptops, […]