Dog Ear
April 19, 2012
It’s no secret that publishing, and especially self-publishing, will burn a lot of your time. There are submissions, proposals, side-efforts. If you attend a show and rent a booth, there are all sorts of things you have to arrange (as detailed HERE). All this takes time. I used to write – a lot – at lunch. The café downstairs has a nice outdoor patio and if I go early, nobody is out there. But now I haven’t been – I’ve been busy with getting Early ReTyrement ready, cleaning it, changing it, fiddling with it. I’m so focused on it (and […]
April 12, 2012
So here’s me at the UCF Book Festival. What am I doing wrong? Oh, there are some positives. The big eye-catching cover art. The price marked on the elevated book. The handsome author. But what’s wrong? 1) The stack of books for sale are too far back on the table, right back with me. Anyone who wants to flip through them (why do you flip though books? What do you hope to find?) has to reach across the table. That mistake I noticed in the first 15 minutes when I saw how neighboring mystery author Rod Sanford had his, all […]
April 5, 2012
Anyone who writes has a muse. If you are focused, it might be just a single heavenly ideal. For me, it could be the sun casting across a woman’s beautiful face, the blowing heat coming off an urban pavement or clouds chasing across the Florida sky. Inspiring muses are a dime a dozen. It’s the postfix muses that are harder to find. Once you publish, you are going to find yourself facing hardships you never imagined. Turns out that writing a consistent, entertaining, and marketable story over 500 pages is easy compared to selling it, accepting criticism, and getting screwed out […]
March 29, 2012
Let this be your first lesson, Grasshopper. I’ve got to blog on a fixed schedule. Nobody is going to check back every day for irregular postings, nobody except crazed stalker-fans. And my mom. With this in mind, I’m going to start posting up twice a week. As already established, I’ll post book reviews on Sunday. Since I can’t knock down a book a week, you’ll have to deal with some hazy recollections. But still, I’ve read a lot of books and will do my best to point out the more entertaining (for better or worse) of them. I’m also beginning […]