This author’s note originally appeared in the February 20th edition of my newsletter. To sign up for my author newsletter, click here. One of the projects I hope to get to someday is to make a podcast on the history of science fiction. I’m a huge fan of podcasts, and subscribe to almost 100 of… Continue reading 2020-02-20 Newsletter Author’s Note: Thoughts on the History and Future of Science Fiction (Part 1)
Tag: indie publishing
A Much Deserved Fisking
In the November issue of Locus magazine, Cory Doctorow wrote an op-ed piece defending Jeannette Ng and the decision to strip Campbell’s name from the Campbell Award. At least, that’s how it started out, but it quickly devolved into a hatchet piece against everyone in science fiction whose politics lie somewhere to the right of… Continue reading A Much Deserved Fisking
Algorithms, social media addictions, and the endless churn of content
In the last 5-6 years, I’ve noticed a shift in most of the media content that I consume. Content has proliferated at an unprecedented rate, and the churn—or the rate at which new content pushes out old content—has become one of the driving factors for those of us trying to make our careers in this… Continue reading Algorithms, social media addictions, and the endless churn of content
Thoughts on Minimum Viable Product
So I read an article on Draft2Digital’s blog about Minimum Viable Product and what it means for writers, and it got me to thinking about what that means for books in general, and my own books in particular. From what I’ve managed to gather (and I could be totally wrong), the controversy in the indie… Continue reading Thoughts on Minimum Viable Product
Gotta go fast!
So they’re making a Sonic the Hedgehog movie, and the character design for Sonic is so bad that it’s spawned a bajillion memes. Within days of the trailer’s release, it got so bad that the director said they’d redesign the animation, and suddenly thousands of nine-year-olds became drunk with power. I have a few thoughts… Continue reading Gotta go fast!
Extra Sci-Fi S3E5: Dune – Origins
It’s always fascinating to learn how the big name authors got their start. As a fan, it pulls back the mystique a bit and makes those authors more relatable, and as a writer, it’s enormously encouraging to learn that even the big names had to pay their dues too. I wonder what Dune would have… Continue reading Extra Sci-Fi S3E5: Dune – Origins
New short story goals
In the last few months, as I’ve reworked my business plan, I’ve put a lot of thought into what I want to do with short stories. I’ve written about two dozen of them so far, and while I don’t expect to be known as a short story writer, I do expect that short stories will… Continue reading New short story goals
A Change in Direction
This is going to be a rather long post. I’ll preface it with some demographic trends among my generation, then tie that in with my situation and how I got here. From there, we’ll see where it goes. I was born in the early 80s, which technically makes me a Millennial, though it doesn’t always… Continue reading A Change in Direction
Why money should not flow to the writer
Yog’s law states that money should flow to the writer. It’s an old aphorism in the publishing industry, from a time when self-publishing was synonymous with vanity publishing. According to this 2003 post by Theresa Nielsen-Hayden: For years now, we’ve been dinning Yog’s Law into young writers’ heads: Money always flows toward the writer. Alternate… Continue reading Why money should not flow to the writer
Mid-May update
Holy cow, it’s been forever since I’ve written a proper update. For a while there, it seemed to be nothing but more of the same. Then I got caught up with all the other things that come along with writing and publishing, and the blog sort of fell by the wayside. Don’t worry, I’m still… Continue reading Mid-May update