Category: authors
Writer Bewares and Watchdogs
Over the last year, I’m seeing a lot of small press book companies set up shop, accept work for publication, and then close without communicating with the authors / artists, let alone paying royalties. In June, 2007, Triskelion Publishing Company filed Chapter 7 bankruptcy. And sometime in 2011, Aspen Mountain Press folded after five years […]
Scorched Earth Warfare
My home was a forest. Balloon trees grew in every room. Butterflies, Disney characters, flowers, and glittering stars. Before Parkinson’s disease consigned Mike to a nursing home, we danced to classical music under the Mylar fruit that blossomed on those trees. When we weren’t dancing, he worked outside in his tomato garden or with our […]
The Story behind City of Brotherly Death
Although I’ve told everyone I weaned on horror with the Dark Shadows and Dracula, my introduction to horror happened long before Dark Shadows, when my mother and I went to Atlantic City before my eleventh birthday. My mother gave me money for amusement rides while she rested on a bench, watching me. A sign caught […]
Revisiting the I Gotta Bug: Information Dumping
In my post about the writer’s “I gotta” bug, I detailed the struggles I had working the ending to “One Last Favor.” I sent my story with a revised ending to Toni Rakestraw. A few weeks later, she sent me the edited tale with the line edits and thought balloons, and at the end, noted […]
Killing Your Darlings and other Writerly Issues
I got the edits back on Steel Rose, and was glad I had an editor look over the book. Maura Anderson has done a thorough job on Steel Rose, and Toni Rakestraw has done well by me on the stories for City of Brotherly Death. For me to edit my own work would be like […]