The following is a full list of “Dog Ear” articles, a collective blog about the wonders and frustrations of writing. A description of the entry is included in square brackets. New articles will post every Thursday, and will be added to this list.

Both sides of the aisle (DOG EAR) Should politics and straw men be in writing? Well, maybe…

LilySmash (Dog Ear)  [We meet a struggling artist and I realize how out-of-touch I am]

Sharing is Caring, you bastards (DOG EAR)   [The best way in the world to avoid nagging recommendations]

Overdone CGI  [When you can do story-writing, but can throw action and noise and stupidity at an audiance]

The Best of 2025 (DOG EAR)  [Another year down, and the best five that got me through it]

Shadow media (DOG EAR)  [Lazy, stupid, shallow storytelling of our modern era]

The Reason (DOG EAR)  [Finding an explanation as to why I service this crazy club for three decades]

The Villain (DOG EAR)   [My thoughts on Villains]

True Closure (DOG EAR)  [When friendships end and you aren’t sure why]

Hot Button (DOG EAR)  [Culture and Media in regard to the shit hitting the fan]

Unicorns and Rainbows (DOG EAR)  [Good friends and nice conversations]

Life (DOG EAR)  [The styles and hacks of living]

The mutter about clutter (DOG EAR)  [A nice clean house seems only nice in the absence of favorite books]

Dump (DOG EAR)  [Finding a good home for dear friends of mine]

Bugs (DOG EAR)  [When your library is just too damn big!]

Charms and tokens (DOG EAR)  [Finding value in the smallest of things]

Education (DOG EAR) [Trade School vs. College]

Chatterbox(DOG EAR)  [yack yack yack]

Fantastic Voyage (DOG EAR)  [film-buffing under the knife]

Procrastination (DOG EAR)  [Gotta get shit done]

Leading the horse to water (DOG EAR)  [Incivility on the web is nothing new]

Carbon-dating (DOG EAR)  [Growing old, fast]

Butterfly (DOG EAR)  [A lack of courtesy in a world of communication]

Too damn busy (DOG EAR)  [Heard the one about there being nothing to do in retirement? I haven’t…)

Getting Old (Dog Ear) [I had a great posting for today, but I can’t remember why it was great (or even what it was!)]

Backlogged [For once, I have way too many books to review]

Uncork (DOG EAR)  [When real-world dialog fails]

War of the Writers (DOG EAR)  [Yes, fuck up my favorite novel]

Generational Eagles (Dog Ear) [When up is no longer up]

Where the hell have I been? (DOG EAR) [A long absence….]

A real find (DOG EAR)  [The joy of a newly discovered series]

Introdus (DOG EAR)  [A lot of new members came in under the border relaxation in Facebookland]

CYON (DOG EAR)  [A brilliant idea of the future of novels. And it’s free for your use!]

Two Things (DOG EAR)  [I am going to go to my grave bungling these two things for my entire life!]

The Contracting Expanse (DOG EAR)  [When an actor can’t keep it in his pants. Sheesh!]

Gas Pump (DOG EAR)  [No! I don’t want to buy your product!]

Berlin (DOG EAR)  [One of the greatest acts of love for a book I think I’ve ever heard of]

Facebook Jail (DOG EAR)  [What’s something I share with a former president? We both got banished from Facebook]

End of a Friend (DOG EAR) [An unwanted change by a corporation impacts a growing friendship]

My plastic friend who’s fun to be with (DOG EAR)  [Striking up a friendship with a chatbot]

Making Room (DOG EAR)  [The editor’s pain of cutting subsets into the writer’s pain of being cut]

An Open Mind (DOG EAR) [Rediscovering my past in a moment of still-mind]

Railroad Paperwork (DOG EAR)  [I’ve been writing on the railroad, all the live-long day!]

Rock and a Hard Place (DOG EAR)  [When a 4mm ball of calcium gets between you and art)

Regressing into Space Opera (DOG EAR)  [When technology gets in the way of storytelling]

Power (DOG EAR) [Learning your craft and gaining power in this world]

Wording (DOG EAR) [Don’t babble out words for free. Miser them!]

Seeing Life and Art (DOG EAR) [Art, media, and how they intertwine with my life]

Targeted Saves (DOG EAR) [Sometimes windows is a pain in the ass…]

Values (DOG EAR) [Figuring out who we are and what our purpose is]

The fall of the house of Mozilla (DOG EAR) [A once-great tool-set falls on hard times]

Lost and Found (mostly lost) (DOG EAR)  [Loaning out media and not getting it back]

The Real World (DOG EAR) [The difference between idealized fictional worlds and our cold, crummy real one]

The Nature of Stories (DOG EAR)  [Stories are more than just words]

So I’m a Dick (DOG EAR)  [Interrupting art-in-training]

Character Progression (DOG EAR)   [Combining game design and writing]

Losing it (DOG EAR)  [Not emotionally. Incrementally!]

Best of 2020 (DOG EAR) [My favorite reads for this year]

Three on Three (DOG EAR) [A depressing look at what the youth are reading now]

Are we having fun yet? (DOG EAR) [How you spend your time and money really indicates your character]

Stories {DOG EAR) [The roll of stories and storytelling in our life and our way of thinking and relating]

Volleyball (DOG EAR) [Storytelling, anime style. So how can high school volleyball be epic?]

Imagination on tap (DOG EAR) [I got lazy and then my computer was at risk. So then I got imaginative]

Pissed off (DOG EAR)  [I was really mad. Popeye mad. And what did I do to get over it?]

Cancelled (DOG EAR) [The frustration of an entire series ending at the whim of a network]

Blind Eye (DOG EAR)  [The dangers of the lie, and of history repeating itself]

Writing Length (DOG EAR)  [How long should all the things you write be? What is your correct word-count?]

Are you Robert Raymond? (DOG EAR) [A true test of character… or being a character]

Fake News (DOG EAR)  [When a false message kills people]

Pud (DOG EAR) [Yeah, I do hate phones and the numbing affect they have on society]

False Narratives (DOG EAR)  [The truth and the media/mythology that supports it]

A nice review-review (DOG EAR) [It’s very nice when an author you review thanks you]

Reckless (DOG EAR) [The ways to read poorly]

Juniors Diner (DOG EAR) [Our little local book-readers breakfast spot is back!]

Summer Reading List (DOG EAR) [A late summer list of books your own YA might like. Or perhaps for you, instead!]

Business Communication (DOG EAR) [If there is something you want in email, do us both a favor, okay?]

Start the Presses (DOG EAR) [It’s time for the quarterly newsletter again, my labor of love]

The Robby Awards (DOG EAR) [Showing a little gratitude to those who help me get through my days]

Lead Time (DOG EAR)  [Deadlines loom for the submissions to my newsletter. Think the submitters will be ready on time?

My Busy Schedule (DOG EAR)  [There is a perfectly good reason I didn’t instantly call you back]

Evil without a backstory (DOG EAR) [You are a unique individual with special problems, just like everyone else]

The nicest morning (DOG EAR) [Bike riding and reading – these two great tastes together!]

Juniors (DOG EAR) [During the plague, the loss of a favorite restaurant]

Early Bird (DOG EAR)  [After the cats beat on me for feeding, my brain whirls up. What to do?]

Blessed Creativity (DOG EAR)  [If you are creative, waiting in a doctor’s office isn’t that bad]

RPG (DOG EAR) [Years ago, I used to storytell a role playing game. And here we go again…]

Insomnia (DOG EAR) [When you’re up, you’re up. It sucks to be an early bird]

Old Fiction (DOG EAR) [Those old classics are classics for a reason!]

Dead Slow (DOG EAR) [Why, during all this stay-at-home stuff, is my reading slowing down?]

DNF (DOG EAR) [Your uncle might be important to you, but he’s not squat to me]

Print Ready (DOG EAR) [Didn’t I just hassle-out the last newsletter a week or two back?]

Fire and Bronze Revisited (DOG EAR) [An author remembers his first published novel fifteen years later]

Knowing oneself (DOG EAR) [So how are you dealing with the CORVID-19 lockdown?]

Bumper Stickers (DOG EAR) [Just absolutely tired of Facebook]

Plague Doldrums (DOG EAR) [Finding creativity in uncertain times]

Fyre Thoughts (DOG EAR) [The high-octane, stratified world of social media domination]

The Creativity Dump (DOG EAR) [Learning to produce when the world is a tiny sad place]

Writing Dirty, Staying Clean (DOG EAR) [Never underestimate the power of pornography]

Days of plague and the new media (DOG EAR) [With all the things in your house, you can’t stay there?]

Pushy Media (DOG EAR) [The weaponization of personal media devices]

Podcast (DOG EAR) [The artificial nature of podcasts (and media…)]

Best of 2019 [My favorite written works of the year]

Toil (DOG EAR) [My job that doesn’t pay anything]

Game (DOG EAR) [The ten books that changed my life]

Thanks! (DOG EAR)  [I really appreciate the people that read my blogs and mention it afterwards]

Noticed (DOG EAR)  [Some of the reasons I write these blogs]

Breaking Eggs (DOG EAR) [A bad day becomes a good day]

No time (DOG EAR) [Everything costs seconds these days. No time for novel writing!]

Reading is Believing (DOG EAR) [One man’s crap is another man’s fiction]

Squeamish (DOG EAR) [Mutilated characters, book vs. movie]

Journal Box (DOG EAR) [The writer becomes a magazine editor!]

Page Break (DOG EAR) [Pulling off the storyline is as dangerous as pulling off the side of the freeway. Beware!]

Writer Inspiration (DOG EAR) [Something every writer should remember, no matter how many rejections he or she gets]

Dusty tomes (DOG EAR) [A lot of work getting rid of the stuff my dad called “crap”]

Collectables (DOG EAR) [Finding out that classics really aren’t classics]

Stacking up (DOG EAR) [All this time, and it’s all used up!]

Ailments (DOG EAR) [Perfect characters are boring. Flawed ones are great! Add blemishes!]

Hello, Darkness, my old friend (Dog Ear) [Getting an old friend ready for a trip]

To Sum Up (DOG EAR) [Writers write. Or do they?]

Filosophy of Phantasy (DOG EAR) [Dealing with bastards]

The Speed of Read (DOG EAR)  [I’m going to get through this book if it kills me…!]

The Big Book of Effort (DOG EAR)   [When big is maybe too big]

Book Burning (DOG EAR)   [Getting rid of my overstock. Such a sad thing to do…]

Retyrement – finally! (DOG EAR) [Finally doing what I want to do]

The Saddest Little Bookstore [Getting rid of all my old favorites]

Time for Crime (DOG EAR) [Now that I have time, where did it all go?]

Two Heroes (DOG EAR) [I have strange and varied tastes, it seems…]

Pixar’s Screenwriting rules  [Some rules you might consider for your novel]

Millennium (DOG EAR) [Learning to write for youth of this era]

The Brick Joke (DOG EAR) [A funny prank to play on your readers]

Change of scene (DOG EAR) [Getting ready to write in an all-new environment]

Among our subscribers (DOG EAR) [I’m apparently not just writing this for myself]

Forced (DOG EAR) [Nothing like executives putting their mission message in a small library of books]

Tired (DOG EAR) [You think you’re going to be rested and want to write? Really?]

Wake up call (DOG EAR) [Life (and mornings) with cats and my brain]

Sulking in his tent (DOG EAR) [When life imitates art, or is it the other way ’round?]

The Long, Hard Road (DOG EAR) [Getting behind on reviews for a really thick book]

Your Audience (DOG EAR) [Taking a look at a lot of people, and wondering…]

Early ReTesterment  [Do I have what it takes when the chips are… of no concern?]

Inventory (DOG EAR) [Essentially, who’s got what]

For Myself (DOG EAR) [Why do I write if I don’t get $$$ for it?]

Two Reasons (CAT EAR) [My best laid plans, and our two new cuties…]

On and On (DOG EAR)  [Why real-world dialog sucks compared to what we write]

A new beginning (DOG EAR) [The site comes back from the dead, again]

The Most Dangerous Mind (DOG EAR) [A great shared literary moment!]

A little help from my friends (DOG EAR)  [New reviews coming from others – yay!]

Thin Skinned (DOG EAR) [I try to be fair and ballanced, but some things bother me and others don’t]

A reflection on time (DOG EAR) [Time, and maybe having more of it]

Libertarian Grind (DOG EAR) [Beating me over the head with your politics won’t sell me]

Must see (DOG EAR) [When you are desperate to share – a writer’s curse]

Cold Feet (DOG EAR) [When my reivew dosn’t match someone else’s]

After Hours (DOG EAR) [What happens when there is a story “implied” behind the visible story]

Doldrums (DOG EAR) [Another piece on writing when you don’t want to write]

A reflection on time (DOG EAR) [How little I have now, how much I’ll soon have]

Best of 2018 (DOG EAR)  [The five best books I read in 2018]

Alas, Blogtorium II (DOG EAR) [More fun with the site]

Alas, Blogtorium (DOG EAR)  [How this site was won… and nearly lost!]

Storytelling (DOG EAR) [Sometimes the punchline is best on the head end of a tale]

Blogging (DOG EAR) [Reflections on my trip blogging about Japan]

A matter of taste (DOG EAR) [Tastes differ. And sometimes they can get you burned]

Magic (DOG EAR)  [You are a writer. Act like one!]

The churn of creativity (DOG EAR)  [The tricks of how to make things up]

Smile (DOG EAR)  [Why should I give a shit if your characters are plastic cutouts and your enemies stupid mooks?]

The Gift (DOG EAR)  [Good things come in bookjackets]

Dated (DOG EAR)  [When your futuristic prose slides into the dustbin of history]

High baud (DOG EAR) [Thinking about younger generations, and how I don’t seem to be able to reach them]

Jealousy (DOG EAR)  [I can get quite envious of other writers who produced following their debute]

Intruders (DOG EAR) [The annoyance of running your own site]

Failed Authors (DOG EAR) [Finding your voice even when the cash dosn’t find your wallet]

Books as lives (DOG EAR) [Finding a friend… in fiction]

Slate (DOG EAR) [When spelling matters… where you are]

Cold Dead Hands (DOG EAR) [When a book gives better companionship than family]

The Good, the Bad and the Chekhov (DOG EAR)  [Thinking about a bridge, and what it means in my writing]

The Good, The Bad and The Movie (DOG EAR) [Watching a movie with someone long dead]

You might remember (DOG EAR)  [When characters have to backstory – awful!]

Clichés (DOG EAR) [Check this list. If your story has any of these, STOP!]

Villains (DOG EAR) [Whick Villains are your favorite?]

Good words, bad sentence (DOG EAR) [The right words in the wrong usage]

Attention to Detail (DOG EAR)  [When you really add that little thing that brings the characters out of the background]

Grasshopper (DOG EAR)  [Writing when you don’t really want to write]

Stories (DOG EAR) [Just a story I heard on a railroad platform]

Mr Congeniality (DOG EAR)  [Writing against the natural grain]

Books as Pals (DOG EAR)  [When books are the best of friends]

Fast and Slow (DOG EAR)  [An example of pacing and how to get a point across]

Clerks (DOG EAR)  [Reading history and thinking about how it can apply to a modern deadlocked corporation]

Flatline (DOG EAR)  [What do to in a souless corporate enviroment….]

Own The Road (DOG EAR)  [The importance of writing a tight and sharp rebuttle]

Mind Blowing (DOG EAR)  [I give a strange gift to a stranger young fellow]

Million Yen Women (DOG EAR) [A TV show about writing and our reasons (sometimes) for doing it]

Perv (DOG EAR) [The dangers of writer research and an open work google]

Fatalism (DOG EAR)  [Losing everything and pressing on]

No feedback (DOG EAR) [Your input is important to us, but]

Book Burning (DOG EAR) [What to do with those old books]

Advocate (DOG EAR) [When you are a writer, carry yourself as a writer!]

Time Management (DOG EAR)  [How I gained an hour each day!]

Reviewing awful books (DOG EAR)  [How to do it? Short answer – don’t!]

Best of 2017 (DOG EAR)  [The list of the five best books (or stories) I encountered in 2017. Put them on your list!]

Hiatus (DOG EAR)  [Where I’ve been and what happened to me]

Clearing the slate Again! (DOG EAR)  [Bikes vs. cars. Books vs. Facebook]

Clearing the slate (DOG EAR) [And now I got something. What a difference a bike ride makes to creativity]

Dog tired (DOG EAR)  [I got nothing. It’s a problem all writers face]

Ingratitude (DOG EAR) [What you might do when you write something that goes out-of-date.]

Angst (DOG EAR)  [Getting mad at the barriers of life, and how you should use them in your writing]

Bootstrapping (DOG EAR)  [How to write. And how to stop]

Writing at the edge (DOG EAR) [Writing with such passion that you find yourself unfriended]

Legging it (DOG EAR) [The last run I’ll ever run. I’ve become “the lazy dog”]

Open Office (DOG EAR) [When you have 45 minutes of free time and Microsoft Word takes 45 minutes to boot-fail…]

Evil (DOG EAR)  [When the world gets to be too much, I turn into a classic villain]

Political (DOG EAR)  [Pissing people off, and the danger therein]

Scared Shitless (DOG EAR)  [Writing about being really, really scared]

Emotional (DOG EAR)  [I’ve laughed at things I’ve read. I’ve jumped. I’ve yawned. But I’ve never cried until now]

Rest (DOG EAR)  [I was more stressed than ever before. Finally, a writer’s break]

Book Acquaintances (DOG EAR)  [Strange tales of the universe grabbing my ear and shaking!]

Lower than Whale Shit (DOG EAR)  [When your heart dies, so does your writing]

Lettered Friends (DOG EAR) [When facing terrible situations, it’s good to have friends you can write to!]

The best possible cargo (DOG EAR)  [Ships exist to transport goods. Shippers with cargos should remember that. As should writers with stories…]

Carrying your pet book (DOG EAR)  [How to hold a book without trashing it]

Reading through tears (DOG EAR)  [Not every reading experiance is a good one, not this and not now]

Footnotes (DOG EAR) [An idea whose time has come… 170 years ago!]

The Good, the Bad, and the Late-Night (DOG EAR)  [Stories, what they mean to us. Stories within stories within stories]

Little help (DOG EAR)  Friends helping friends – the importance of informal networking.

Mr. Blue Sky (DOG EAR)  [How can an author (or songwriter) ever imagine the places his art might appear]

Phased out (DOG EAR)  [I think about the books I read then, and what is available now]

Overtime (DOG EAR) [Writing when the world won’t give you a break, not one!]

Bikes and… Speaking (DOG EAR)  [Writing is one thing. Speaking is another.]

The Great Train Bloggery (DOG EAR)  [Writing at midnight, deadtired and smiling from club fun. This is what real writing is all about]

Faceless Finale (DOG EAR)  [Easter has come. Christ has risen. Lent is over. I’m back on Facebook. And what did I learn?]

The perfect evening for reading (DOG EAR) [A good book, a glass of wine, and gravity]

Imagry (DOG EAR)  [Is storytelling more important, or the imagry used. And why ride bikes in the rain?]

Dangerous (DOG EAR)  [What the WWW prefix means to a writer]

Faceless 2 (DOG EAR)  [More on the art of incommunicado]

Contents (DOG EAR)  [The fate of the creative – up all night!]

Faceless 1 (DOG EAR)  [Life without Facebook, week one]

Lent Rethought (DOG EAR)  [Making a change to my lifestyle, before my lifestyle changes me]

Faster (DOG EAR)  [Changing my bike becuase of a story drawn halfway ’round the world!]

Gone in Sixty Seconds (DOG EAR)  [The end of an era of blogging. Oops. No, perhaps not quite yet]

Moon Scout (DOG EAR)   [A real research trip]   

A charm (DOG EAR) [When once, not even twice is good enoguh. Writing something over three bloody times!]

Quiet (DOG EAR) [The shared problem for readers and writers – talkers!]

Fate (DOG EAR)  [A lot of artists suffer from “fate” (i.e. failure). Internalizing this event…]

Grateful (DOG EAR)  [An old friend and a book-signing – what could be better for a writer?]

Personalized (DOG EAR)  [The missing human touch in an age of fulfilment]

Lent (DOG EAR)  [The well of stories dries up…]

Deadline (DOG EAR)  [Setting up your own deadlines, keeping them, and the guilt that ensues!]

New Media 2 (DOG EAR)  [More thoughts on our changing, churning world!]

Extinction (DOG EAR) [The sad story of the Fall of the House of Jurassic]

Shared (DOG EAR)  [The comfort of the written word in a world of screaming]

Life and Art (DOG EAR)  [Post election thoughts, part 1]

DNF (DOG EAR)  [When you simply cannot bear to continue through an awful book]

Effing (DOG EAR)  [A “new” curse word is sighted long ago]

To a Certain Degree (DOG EAR)  [When someone commits to learning, and the wonders you can have by watching]

Falling Short (DOG EAR)  [Literary peril vs the real heart-pounding fill-your-drawers fear]

Weave (DOG EAR)  [Life as stories as life as stories as life and so on…]

Frustrations (DOG EAR)  [When writing is not about writing, but rather it’s about tech support]

Perfect makes Practice (DOG EAR)  [When a skill like lighthouse-keeping, stamp-collecting or writing comes into the fore]

Offstage Epic (DOG EAR)  [That climactic resolution? Does it have to be a scene you tell? Or can you tell it from another place entirely  removed?]

Government Lab (DOG EAR)  [What using this phrase can convey, and is it at the point of being overdone?]

Scooby Snacks (DOG EAR)  [When someone reads your novel, how bright the world seems!]

Go! (DOG EAR)  [Considering stories so strongly played, the audience changes their lives over them]

Punked (DOG EAR)  [What happens when you speak with authority about a book over dinner with freinds, only to find out that the author has played you]

Andre (DOG EAR)  [Last week, who I thought I was. This week, who I want to be]

Athos (DOG EAR)  [An old writer reflects on his life]

Backed with Fists (DOG EAR)  [Does reading make us better people than those in other hobbies? And even religions?]

The Dream (DOG EAR)  [A little doggie story that soothed my battered soul.]

The Loaner (DOG EAR)  [You loan a book, you really need to take one. It’s how it should work]

Double Negative (DOG EAR)  [How to take a character introduction and bog it down with decoding]

Free to Play (DOG EAR)  [Here, we use a gamebook to make a point about storytelling]

Graying over Grey (DOG EAR)  [Tricks to remember special spellings and such]

Upshift (DOG EAR)  [How you feel when you go from a meh book to one that is magical!]

Opener (DOG EAR)  [How to set your character descriptions up in seconds!]

Gamebooks (DOG EAR)  [I love reading, and I love games. Why haven’t I gotten into this before?]

Interruptions (DOG EAR)  [when you are a creative-type, living with a non-creative-type)

New Media (DOG EAR)  [Holding out against change, failing, and not realizing until much later]

An unholy experiment (DOG EAR)  [Not writer’s block, no, but writer’s caulk. I’ve had a bad day and just don’t want to write]

Understated (DOG EAR) [Someone I knew meets someone I would love to meet, and describes it in a very minimal fashion.]

Blogs (DOG EAR)  [The art of putting out a good blog, with an example from a seaman]

Floatation Device (DOG EAR) [It’s under your seat, but where the heck did the phrase come from?]

Spring Cleaning (DOG EAR)  [Finally I get around to sorting out my massive list of books]

A verbal plea (DOG EAR)  [Pieced-together video media – honest kludge or deliberate manufacture?]

The Adventure Begins (DOG EAR)  [Sometimes heroes willingly embrace change. And sometimes, they are realistic]

Johnny Pulpseed (DOG EAR) [Another way to recycle a magazine or book. And it dosn’t involve a trip to the landfill]

Wet Shoes (DOG EAR)  [When it really, really sucks to be a writer – a wet and miserable deadline)

Near miss at 40,000 feet! (DOG EAR)  [You never know how much you love a new book until you lose it!]

Writing Fast (DOG EAR) – [Sometimes you have an unreasonable deadline. What to do? Do it!]

Word Choice (DOG EAR) – [Choose your words very, very carefully. Don’t be at wit’s end]

Cotten Candy (DOG EAR) – [About films and storytelling, and placing a grand vista of a movie against its present day counterpart. Feh!]

Take two. Take three (DOG EAR)  [Thinking vibrant description through, with some deconstructing in rewriting]

Polishing (DOG EAR)  [How reading, and appriciating, a single word might make our own writing better]

Making it darker (DOG EAR)  [You can write a paragraph, just saying what’s happening. Or you can add all sorts of grim forshadowing and mood. And why not?]

Heft (DOG EAR)  [Books even feel good when you carry them, all fulla weight and thought and enjoyment!]

Star Wars Objector (DOG EAR)  [My thoughts on studio-committee-franchised crap]

Stories not written (DOG EAR) [Listening to the true stories people tell you, and really listening to them]

Tell, don’t show (DOG EAR) [Trying to make dialog work – remember ot spell it out!]

Thank full 4 (DOG EAR)  [Three computer programs (or sub-programs) I have very thankful for, this day of blessings]

Steins;Gate (DOG EAR)  [Stories don’t have to run down the same ruts. Examples of where it’s different and wonderfully so!]

Dog Ear (DOG EAR)  [Following a reader’s footprints (or pagefoldings) through a novel I’m currently traveling through]

Ink Life (DOG EAR)  [Pondering the mysteries of being a writer]

Where does it go? (DOG EAR)  [A writer looks at time and how it trickles away]

Past and Future (DOG EAR)  [If you are a real reader, you should have all sorts of titles and catagories under your belt, not just one genre]

Write and Wrong (DOG EAR)  [When the written and spoken word do not equate – careful of usage (contains original radio broadcast!)]

Organized (DOG EAR)  [Thinking about getting things organized in the book listing side. Still, that was before the kindey stone struck]

Keys (DOG EAR)  [Everyone likes to think of writers using typewriters. But really? How did anything ever get written?]

Doornail (DOG EAR)  [A cautionary tale about why it’s so very important to back up everything. Yes, it can happen to you!]

Not for Fun (DOG EAR)  [I love reading, but only when its my choice. School, work, self-improvement – ack!]

GearBox (DOG EAR) [I drive with passion. I should write that way, too!]

Duality (DOG EAR)  [Everything comes in twos, including points of view and possible outcomes]

Gentle Nudge (DOG EAR)  [Sometimes, you need a friend to give you that push to produce. Enemies won’t…]

Brown alert (DOG EAR) [It’s amazing what a little food poisoning can do to your craft.]

Whats in a Name (DOG EAR) [Naming a ramrod pain in the ass villian. What to call him…?]

Who’s MINDING the store [This is your brain asleep. And here is your plot problem…]

The Reader’s Friend (DOG EAR) [Is Amazon your best buddy in the world?]

Link Finking (DOG EAR)  [Things I love about writing don’t involve web administration]

The Bond of Reading (DOG EAR) [Why my hair now is so very short…]

Kedgewater Deep (DOG EAR)  [The perfect name for the piritical town]

Block (DOG EAR)   [Suddenly I can’t make the dialog work. What solved that problem]

Echo (DOG EAR)  [When reading brings you down, and an unknown reader brings you up]

Grinding (DOG EAR)  [When I look up from a game and its 2am, and I’m thinking, “Isn’t this when great writers finished up?]

Way Behind (DOG EAR)   [Suddenly my period of inactivtiy is shattered by the bugle-call of deadlines!]

Disingenuous (DOG EAR)  [The English language at its best and worse]

Vacation (DOG EAR)  [When getting a clear look at something, in a different place, is a good thing]

Resources (DOG EAR)  [The internet can be very useful, especially at 11pm while writing]

Green Light (DOG EAR)  [Getting approval from Reader One]

Technologiy Shift (DOG EAR) [What happens when you change tech when you rewrite an old grinder scifi story?]

It shows? (DOG EAR)  [Finding out that when I write, I become a differnt person to those around me]

To YA or not YA (DOG EAR)  [Alas, to write down? Or up? And what about sex?]

Time Flies (DOG EAR) [Change the joke’s background, change the punchline. The climax that coudln’t be]

Eureka (DOG EAR) [Rediscovering the classics. Well, MY classics]

Death’s Doorway (DOG EAR)  [Death, seperating the living from otherwise, a good tool, but use it carefully]

Wednesday Night Lights (DOG EAR)  [What do the Astronomy Club, the Train Club, and the Book Group all have in common?]

You haven’t read…? (DOG EAR)   [Loaners. Why would you recommend it if you haven’t read the bloody thing?]

The Game’s Afoot (DOG EAR)  [Actually seeing those remarkable worlds we create]

Tough Choices (DOG EAR)  [When the going gets rough, how do people REALLY go?]

Architects (DOG EAR)   [How Hemingway viewed writing, and my own thoughts]

Reader (DOG EAR)  [In a moment of dark dispair, I trip over a reader. Bliss!]

Your ad here (DOG EAR)  [When product placement takes over an entire book]

Payoff (DOG EAR)   [That rush when someone, somewhere, reads your little-known book!]

Right Hand Man-uscript (DOG EAR)   [When tension in a book becomes so very real!]

Graphical Anuses (DOG EAR)  [All writing is not writing. My efforts to keep an unfortunate subliminal from pasting across Facebook]

Writing Humor (DOG EAR) [Doubling back to create a little joke between the writer and reader]

After the story (DOG EAR)  [The glossary – where to put it and how to tell your readers its there]

Absolutely True (DOG EAR)  [adding truth to your stories, no matter how strange it is]

I Hate (DOG EAR) [Turning anger inward – into a blog, into readership, and maybe into cash]

Torpedoes Los!   [Why is getting submissions together getting to be such a big deal now? I’m mad, Carstairs! Mad!]

Getting older   [A reflection of the cooling of age, and the rekindling of effort]

The Last Argument (DOG EAR)  [A FREE SHORT STORY. HAPPY THANKSGIVING!]  

Fury (DOG EAR)   [When fell-good Hollywoodism conflicts with inner-ear reality]

Showdown (DOG EAR)   [Pushing myself to push a bookshop to stock my product]

Backwards (DOG EAR)  [Pushing a bookshop to stock my product]

Passion (DOG EAR)  [When writing is more important that workplace teamwork]

Ad copy (DOG EAR)  [Winter is coming, and so are boot sales in this unique ad]  

Pure Gold (DOG EAR)   [The joys of reading – rediscovered!]

Pure crap (DOG EAR)   [The danger of self-publishing – horrible books!]

Erotica 101: Legality (DOG EAR)  [Phone sex with lawyers]

Erotica 101: Fire and Bronze (DOG EAR)  [Writing about underage sex in ways to get around prosecution]

Erotica 101: Secrecy (DOG EAR)  [cautions about revealing yourself to an enthusiastic world]

Erotica 101: Timing (DOG EAR)  [You’ve got a reader curious about your erotica. How many pages do you think you can hold them for? I don’t know – got a gun on them?]

Erotica 101: Characters (DOG EAR)  [Nobody cares what brands your characters are wearing. They’ll be out of their clothing soon enough…]   

Writing blue (DOG EAR)   [Making money at erotica – hey, I’ve written worse stuff!]    

Used (DOG EAR)  [Outside of ordering my book, where is the best place to get something to read. Amazon? Shame on you…] 

Vacation (Dog Ear)  [Writers on vacation! What ever will I do?]

Giving worse that I got (DOG EAR)  [another cautionary tale about reviews, and the people (and authors) that read them]  

Power to the People (DOG EAR)  [hey, paper books don’t need to be recharged] 

Lola! (DOG EAR)  [Keeping track of talent]   

Beach Books (DOG EAR)  [You don’t need that beach for low-impact fun reading!]

Decorum (DOG EAR)   [When to blog about someone’s pain, and when to let it go]

Buckets of Irony (DOG EAR)   [Capturing moments in your life, for later use in your stories]   

Facebook and Writers (DOG EAR)   [Are you here to push politics and social agendas, or are you here to sell books?]

Handful of Eclectic (DOG EAR)  [Sometimes, it’s good to have a broad base of storytelling to draw from!]

Sitting Pretty (DOG EAR)  [Suddenly I’m all set for book reviews. I don’t often have this luxury…!]

House of Cards (DOG EAR)  [Big Data giving us what we want, how we want it, and with who. So much for creativity]

Protecting one’s sources (DOG EAR)   [big data is watching you]  

Miss Understood (DOG EAR) [Sometimes the entire point you are trying to make ends up blunted]

Boot in the butt (DOG EAR)  [When advice to a friend about finding creativity becomes advice to myself]

Time and Creativity (DOG EAR)  [Advice to a friend, when I realize what is wrong with my own writing…]

Leaches (DOG EAR)  [Being a writer never made me think I’d have to deal with this sort of thing]

Interruption (DOG EAR)  [Interruptions while writing? How about practical jokes?]

Stinks to Heaven (DOG EAR)  [One of the slimiest book promotions ever]

Save early, save often (DOG EAR)  [The the stability of modern computers, we often forget…]

Everything new is old again (DOG EAR)   [an angry rant about books, reading, and the fact that this isn’t really new…]

Better than sex (DOG EAR)  [Oh, when you find that book that’s really, realllllly good…]

Do androids read the book? (DOG EAR)  [Book vs the movie. The old argument in a specific case…]

Do androids dream of fame (DOG EAR)  [What happens when a movie honors an author – just not the one who wrote the orignal story?]

Do Androids Watch Anime (DOG EAR)    [Like chocolate and peanut butter, anime and reading really mixed well here]

Pondering (DOG EAR)  [Writing about nothing at all]

Shared (DOG EAR)   [Sharing a book, and all the wonder and glory that was within it]

Holy Moley! (DOG EAR) [Apparently the Bible is not a book one should review – or so I’m told…]

Keeping one’s head (DOG EAR)  [What a writer needs to do when their web presence drops]

Time in a bottle (DOG EAR)  [Time. Where does it go. Oh, there it is!]

Who are our readers? (DOG EAR)  [Are there ‘readers’ in today’s world? A writer ponders…]

Life imitating art (DOG EAR)  [Watching the real world follow a storyline you’ve written]

Rejection (DOG EAR) [an angry in-the-moment piece about the worst thing in a writer’s life]

The Perfect Gift (DOG EAR)  [What’s the big deal with sweating over presents? You’ve got a shelf full of ideas!]

Being an Evil Overlord Part 5 (DOG EAR) [the last of the set. There are only so many stupid plot devices!]

Being an Evil Overlord Part 4 (DOG EAR) [even more of the silliest ways for a hero to overcome an overlord!]

Being an Evil Overlord Part 3 (DOG EAR) [another set of some of the stupidest, overused plot points ever!]

Being an Evil Overlord Part 2 (DOG EAR) [Fifty more stupid overlord tricks – don’t do these!]

Being an Evil Overlord Part 1 (DOG EAR) [Fifty writers’ tricks to avoid]

If it ain’t Baroque… (DOG EAR)  [Should you write blunt or baroque?]

Swap out (DOG EAR)  [character traits – swap them out!]  

A word, an idea, a thought… (DOG EAR) [a self-serving thesarus]

Facing the Obvious (DOG EAR) [Overusing the idea of ugly=bad, handsome=good]

Good Relations (DOG EAR) [Making friends in the field – a payback you can use!]

Dark stories (DOG EAR)  [Storytelling the shutdown]

Night Scribe (DOG EAR) Blogging your vacation.

Ramping up (DOG EAR)  [Becoming busizer and busier, and loving it!]

Purpose (DOG EAR) [Finding one’s writing passing in a short story contest]

Ask Amy II (DOG EAR) [Dealing with bad reviews]

Ask Amy I (DOG EAR) [Don’t, don’t, don’t base characters directly off real people. DON’T!!!!]  

Writing hazards (DOG EAR) [physical dangers writers face]

Markdown (DOG EAR) [the pain and disgrace of bargain-binning your book]

New Job Observation (DOG EAR) [using life (and dreams) as story ideas]

Grinding the worm (DOG EAR) [the index you are looking at is created!]

Quest (DOG EAR) [the reader’s joy of finding an elusive story from long ago]

Ya ya (DOG EAR) [true dialog, and how difficult it can be to replicate]

Grace (DOG EAR) [the writers ability to see beauty]

Dark (DOG EAR) [the writer and depression]

Really? (DOG EAR) [dealing with stumblebums who don’t read your book]

Styles (DOG EAR) [writing styles, author styles, and how to feel like a square peg in a round hole…]

Sleeping with the enemy (DOG EAR) [getting an Ipad]

Obituary (DOG EAR) [getting tasked with writing a loved one’s obituary]

Storyteller (DOG EAR)  [Watching how Garrison Keillor tells a story…]

Anti-Semitic (DOG EAR)  [Watching Jules Verne dirty his writing with cheap characterizations]

Carnegie (DOG EAR)  [a writer gives a speech to a graduating class]

Inspector Raymond of the Yard (DOG EAR)  [when a story trips over a detail]

In a corner (DOG EAR)  [when being a writer sucks – the whole posting out submission deal]

This I vow! (DOG EAR)  [forcing myself to post out submissions]

Passion (DOG EAR)  [seeing the passion for perfection in others]

Perspective (DOG EAR)   [in consideration of your villains]

Courtesy (DOG EAR)  [dealing with agencies who don’t reject you – they don’t say anything!!!]

Writer’s life (DOG EAR)  [using your writer powers for good]

Backing away (Dog Ear)  [writing for the sake of being a writer, not its fame]

Jimmy Allen (DOG EAR)  [storytelling from the 1930’s]

The perfect place (DOG EAR)  [finding that perfect place to write]

Ten Questions (DOG EAR)  [answering ten questions put to me by another writer]

Blog Hopper (DOG EAR)  [fulfilling a promise to another blogger]

Writing Time (DOG EAR)  [finding that perfect time to write]

By its cover (DOG EAR) 

Death of a book salesman (DOG EAR)  [eReaders and the death of the bookstore]

Dipsticks (DOG EAR)  [my favorite short story in a writing class, and why is was bad]

Then and Now (DOG EAR)  [when writing groups are more about marketing]

Showdown (Dog Ear)  [giving the villain a fighting chance]

Resolutions (DOG EAR)  [a method for posting out to agents]

Leading the horse (DOG EAR)  [kids and reading]

Killing them softly (DOG EAR)  [killing your characters and making your book stronger]

One year later (DOG EAR)  [a look back at my experiance with self-publishing]

Three Cups (DOG EAR)  [fame and success – worth killing yourself over?]

Dung sellers (DOG EAR)  [a modest writer looks at the egotism of self-promotion]

Thanksgiving (DOG EAR)  [a frustrated writer gives thanks]

Unlikely Heroes (DOG EAR)  [flawing your heroes]

Straw men (DOG EAR)  [not-flawing your villains]

Digging a Ditch (DOG EAR)  [what writers do to avoid that everyday job and gain the nirvana of being a professional writer]

Are writers better drivers (DOG EAR)  [observing the world around you]

It don’t come easy (DOG EAR)  [finding peace in reading]

The Words (Dog Ear)  [when writers steal]

Don’t use contractions (DOG EAR)  [dialog tricks you can use or can’t]

What price glory? (DOG EAR)  [your choice on how dirty you’ll get for publicity]

Meds (DOG EAR)  [medication and writing]

Fans from Hell (DOG EAR)  [fans, the good and the bad]

Watership What? (DOG EAR)  [did you ever notice how illiterate people are these days…?]

A copyright of passage (DOG EAR)  [why you should never, never, never use lyrics from a song in your story]

You say Yamato (DOG EAR)  [storytelling, your audience, and super-spacegoing-battleships!]

A kindle up your nook (DOG EAR)  [eReasons I don’t like eReaders]

Augean stables (DOG EAR)  [organizing my cover letters]

Ash cloud (DOG EAR)  [when life turns against you, you still have your writing]

The Irony of Irony (DOG EAR)  [irony – be careful in using it!]

The Air that I breathe (Dog Ear)  [imagining the moment of your book]

Rejection (DOG EAR)  [getting rejected – how could they NOT PICK ME???]

The man with the can (DOG EAR)  [how a single strange detail can work in your story]

Creativity (DOG EAR)  [creativity, and the heady rush that you feel when you have it]

Gotcha! (DOG EAR)  [making your readers JUMP in their chairs]

Literary Setbacks (DOG EAR)  [giving a literary speech my brother and nieces, my friends and coworkers, nobody – could bother with]

AdSpace (DOG EAR)  [everything, everything, EVERYTHING is promotion… ugh]

Book of Agentical Lore (DOG EAR)  [my method to the madness of finding an agent]

Effort (DOG EAR)  [the effort that goes into writing (and all the other crap)]

Naga-more (DOG EAR)  [getting nagged by my own characters!]

Writers write (DOG EAR)  [writing, and why we do it]

What’s wrong with this picture (DOG EAR)  [critiquing myself at a bookshow – lessons learned]

Postfix Muse (DOG EAR)  [when a muse nudges my ego]

A writer’s blog (DOG EAR)  [the opening salvo]

 

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