Why I’m Glad I Was Poor When I Was A Stupid Writer

I’ve been thinking back to the good old days when I was young and unaware of my imminent demise from alcohol poisoning or a brain aneurysm. It occurred to me, in that musing, that I should be very grateful about growing up on welfare and various other degrees of poor-ness. Why? When I started really […]

Weak Prose and Boredom

I’m finding myself becoming more and more bored by the style of prose exemplified by the contemporary mainstream publishing model. Not all of it bores me, and I don’t think most of it is bad, per se, but there are times when I will read a book and find myself wondering why I’m reading it […]

Payfail: The SF/F Pay Rate Fiasco

(I’d like to add that @maplemuse from Twitter has a blog post that actually takes a very level-headed approach to the Black Matrix problem. I agree with most of the assessments made there, to be honest. The distinction between 4theluv and profit is important to make in this case.) A lot has been said recently […]

5 More Things No Writer Should Ever Do

The publishing world is an interesting place. It’s full of eccentrics and alcoholics and all manner of slightly-mental weirdos and nutbags who make life interesting. When I wrote the original “10 Things No Writer Should Ever Do,” I kept it fairly focused on the issue of submissions, with a few allusions to certain nutty writers. […]

Ignorance is Bliss: More Self-Publishing Nonsense

It amazes me the things people say about the publishing industry. I often wonder if there’s a magical world that some of these folks live in that I somehow missed the train to get to. It’s almost like an anti-publishing psychosis that leads certain individuals to spout nonsense as if it’s fact. I liken this […]

What Are Editors Good For?

I’ll tell you. Editors are gatekeepers. The whole purpose of an editor in the publishing business is to weed out the bad and leave only the good. This is especially true in magazine publishing (online or in print). If you think that every story written is good, then you are sadly mistaken. Just because you […]