featuring the Night to Dawn books and Barbara's fiction, and other goodies

Archive for the ‘authors’ Category

Publishing – a Reporter’s Capital Mistake

A couple of weeks ago, I gave my take of the AMP nightmare in The Seamier Side of Publishing. So have other authors with their respective blogs. Since then, rights reversal letters started to trickle through. I was one of the lucky recipients. A lot of people are still waiting, and the trickle seems to [...]

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authors, people, Publishing, Writing

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Aspen Mountain Press – The Seamier Side of Publishing

The acceptance letter you get for your book is a dream come true for most authors, especially if the watchdog websites like P&E green-light the company. If you’re fortunate, you never have to find out any different. In the case of AMP, the other authors and I were not so fortunate.  I signed a three-year [...]

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Artists, authors, Healthcare, people, Publishing, Uncategorized, Writing

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Autocrit Revisited: When Your Book Needs More…

Some time ago I raved about the merits of Autocrit. I ran Steel Rose and other work through it and became ecstatic when the software ferreted out repetitions, clichés, and problems with sentence structure. I showed up at the PWC with Autocrit-edited work, and learned that Autocrit made a great proofing tool indeed. The extraneous [...]

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A Word with Word, authors, people, Publishing, science fiction / fantasy, Writing

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Revisions…and then More Revisions

Over the months, I’ve alluded to a sequel to Dark Side of the Moon: Steel Rose. Steel Rose wound up with its own cast of characters, so I can’t call it a sequel any more. Maybe this is good. At workshops, speakers have advised everyone to put their manuscripts aside for a few weeks, and [...]

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A Word with Word, authors, people, Publishing, science fiction / fantasy, Writing

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Editing Software, Anyone?

I’ve read good and bad about writing software over the years, and once considered such gadgets a handy way to flush your money down the sewer pipe. About a year ago writer Gregory Frost talked up Scrivener software, which enables you to edit writing and research at the same time. Scrivener works well, once you [...]

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authors, Healthcare, Publishing, science fiction / fantasy, Writing

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Createspace versus Lulu Revisited

Some time ago, I laid out the advantages of using Lulu versus Createspace. And my biggest beef with Createspace was not being able to use my credit card. Well, at last I found my way through the labyrinth of ordering functions, enough to order a “proof.” Createspace has made peace with my credit card, and [...]

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authors, Publishing, Writing

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CreateSpace versus Lulu

My mother once told me that when you leave your old street for a new street, you know what you’re leaving, but you don’t know what you’re going to find. I kind of felt that way when some of my fellow small press publishers encouraged me to do my NTD printing through CreateSpace. The royalties [...]

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A Word with Word, authors, people, Publishing, serious, religion, science, surgery, deformity,, Writing

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The Call of the Wild

I never thought I would blog about my balloon collection, but as the cliché goes, never say never. Today was an unusual day for grocery trips. I went to a different supermarket, one that didn’t tempt me to buy balloons. More bad weather is coming our way, so I concentrated on buying supplies. I decided [...]

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authors, balloons, people, science fiction / fantasy

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To Lie or not to Lie – that is the question.

I’m referring to one of the verbs that give me and other writers a lot of grief – the difference between lie, lay, and laid. That and certain words that mean one thing when used as a compound, and something else when used separately, can mess up an otherwise well-written tale. And so therein “lies” [...]

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A Word with Word, Artists, authors, balloons, people, poetry, Writing

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Branding and Facebook

When a workshop leader coaxed everyone to promote their books through branding, I left the workshop confused. To my literal mind, “branding” refers to a cowboy who brands his cattle, marking it as his own, or the trademark a company uses to identify its products.  Then Facebook gave me an appreciation for branding. I’ve enjoyed [...]

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A Word with Word, Artists, authors, balloons, people, science fiction / fantasy, Writing

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