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.

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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