Jul
6

Catching Up

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The problem with going away on vacation…is coming back from vacation. And it’s not even that I have all the business type things to do – the emails, the website updates, the grocery shopping, etc. It’s having to come back to reality.  There was something really nice about the basic routine this time around, which essentially was nothing more than getting up early, eating whatever, maybe going for a walk on the beach or wherever, doing nothing until about 2 PM and then heading to the beach until 5 or 6, showering, dinner, drinking (at least as far as the rest of the family went) and maybe another beach walk. Which sounds fairly simplistic, but I was in desperate need of simple. And that’s not to say my “do nothing time” was actually spent doing nothing. It’s more that it was spent NOT working. In fact, I could break down… Read more
Jun
28

Word Whore & Fox and Willow Thursday

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This is most likely my last post for the next week or so – heading out for vacation tomorrow and my internet will be fairly spotty. Sort of a shame since I really want to write up a post on the new Brave movie and some of the really asinine reactions about it, but that’s probably going to have to wait until I get back to be posted. In the meantime, I may post some beach pictures if I can, but to be honest, I’m hoping to just remove myself from all things electronic for a bit. (Save email. I’ll have my iPad, so it’s not like I won’t have *any* connections to the outside world, but the last thing I want to do is blog. Though there will probably be some writing going on – deadlines remain, after all.) In the meantime, I’m over at Word Whores today –… Read more
Jun
27

Putting Out

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The thing about social networking is that there has to be a measure of honesty about it – at least if you’re trying to make actual connections with people.  I tend to go fairly light on the promo stuff most of the time unless I’ve got an interview or something to mention. I probably *should* do it more, but it’s just not me. Call it modesty, if you want, or laziness, or whatever, but I’m not fond of the selling myself aspect of authorship. Probably makes me a Bad Promotion Author, but that’s okay. No one really seems to know what sells books anyway – promo, ads, swag – whatever. In the end it should be about the words, though sometimes it’s really just luck and timing. At any rate, many authors are introverts – so the idea of blogging or facebooking can be fairly intimidating. It doesn’t mean they’re… Read more
Jun
26

Posering

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I used to have hobbies before the writing gig became professional. I won’t say writing was a hobby because I literally didn’t write anything from about college until I was 32 or so.  And certainly nothing “serious” until about 2008.  Which became BoD and then that was that. But yeah, before then I used to read a lot more than I do today. I used to cross-stitch. I used to do lousy Poser 3D art.  I liked the art stuff – even though it wasn’t massively taxing and somewhat equivalent to 3D Barbie, I still found it soothing. It was one way to get out some of that creative juice. When I started writing, sometimes I had trouble imagining what my characters looked like. I don’t usually associate them with existing people like actors or live-action characters (which is why that question is so hard for me to answer when… Read more
Jun
25

We’re All In This Together…Alone

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I stumbled across this Tumblr site a few weeks ago called Hey Author. Whoever runs it is clearly an author, a reader, or someone who is fairly deep into the author culture on Twitter/Facebook. (And obviously has a bug up their ass about self-publishing).  But as biting and obnoxious as some of the observations are, there’s a ring of truth to them too.  (Some of them are completely over the top, but still – I’ve been “guilty” of several of them.) I’m guessing the author of the tumblr is trying to point out that these “writer problems” are pretty low on the list of real world issues.  (But I suspect most artistic problems are. Writers aren’t the only groups who self-wank themselves into thinking they’ve got an emergency out of nothing – lots of artists do it too. Hell, most self-insulated groups do it, from the HOA to the PTA… Read more