 DavidBCoe
read all posts by DavidBCoeMy regular week off from MW coincides with Thanksgiving week, which is convenient, because I will be traveling with my daughter to look at colleges in NY and New England, so I wouldn’t really have time to post anyway. But that means that my Thanksgiving post comes a week early this year.
As always I am thankful for so much — I’m a very lucky man. I love my family, and they seem to love me back, which is always good thing. I enjoy my job, and have had a successful year, revolving around the release of THIEFTAKER, which has done well both commercially and critically. And I have friends and colleagues here at MW and elsewhere whom I respect and care about a great deal. Are there things I would like to improve in my life — in particular in my career? Of course. I’m not claiming that [...]
Continue reading Books For Which I Am Thankful (An Early Thanksgiving Post)
 Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie MurphyFirst off, I want to thank everybody who participated in my Voice Exercise post two weeks ago. If you haven’t already, I highly encourage you to go read it, and to read the stories everyone submitted.
I was actually quite nervous about trying this in a blog format, because it would’ve been so easy for people to cheat. Normally I do it in classes, where it’s pretty much impossible to cheat. But it’s clear to me that people followed the rules that I established, so now I’m going to drive the point home:
No one can ever write the story you will write. Do not ever tell yourself that there’s no point in trying to tell a story because it’s been done before. It may have been, but you have not done it, and that means there’s still something unique you can bring to it.
I gave you guys six [...]
Continue reading An Exercise in Voice: Results
Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie MurphyGoodness, we’re a little more than halfway through A Year In The Life. Where does the time go?
Well, in the past two weeks, it’s gone to 1. jetlag, 2. a Bruce Springsteen concert (yes, this is relevant to the post), and 3. agonizing revisions. We’ll start with that last…
Writing: I’m working on a novel for my nephew. It’s the second one, after the first was a GREAT hit. This kind of puts the pressure on, and I’ve been working on this all month. Well, you know. In between vacationing and jet lag and The Boss, but anyway.
The thing is that, as discussed in my *last* YitL post, something felt Wrong about it. Two weeks ago I’d struck out about a thousand words and thought I was happier with it, but when I came back to it I was still unhappy with the pacing. The first book’s pacing [...]
Continue reading A Year in the Life: Week 15
Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie MurphyThis is a series of posts about the day to day detail work that makes up the life of a writer. It’s not glamorous, but it’s real. This week, as last time, I’m also discussing the crowdfunding efforts I’ve been part of, and posting short essays about them. So: onward!
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Writing: Nothing. Zero. Zip, zilch, nada. The past two weeks I have done no writing, no revising, no nothing. Normally this would be called a vacation, except it was caused by a convention sandwiched by two colds, rather than an intention of taking time off.
Work That Isn’t Writing: Hundreds of items have gone onto this list. I have:
- discussed with publishers the grey area where self epublishing meets the hope of a future physical collection of the same material (answer: it behooves you *greatly* to be prepared to have previously unseen content as part of any [...]
Continue reading A Year in the Life: Week Five
Catie Murphy
read all posts by Catie MurphyWriting: 25,000 words, all on “No Dominion”, the Kickstarter novella which has tipped over to a novel by breaking the 40K wordcount mark. I was hoping to have it done by today’s posting, but some Life Stuff has happened and I haven’t written since last Saturday.
Along those lines, I mentioned I was doing a “Febnowrimo”, a February 50K. I’m 15.2K into that, which, yes, I did all in the first 4 days of the month. The good news is that Life Happening hasn’t gotten me behind in wordcount because I had that initial surge, but I need to get back to putting words on pixels. How are your Febnowrimos going?
Work That Isn’t Writing: Spent the entire allocated work time of one Sunday packing up books to send out to contest winners. Or, more accuratly, I packed up about two books and some Christmas presents, and no, sadly, I’m [...]
Continue reading A Year in the Life: Week 3
 Faith Hunter
read all posts by Faith HunterFor years I said that self-publishing was something I’d not consider doing, but that was before the advent of: the total change in the publishing world, the importance of the Internet to culture and society, the ease of e-publishing, and the failure of Borders. The world has changed. So have I. Change is a necessity, is part of the survival of the fittest, and to not change is to fail. I’m not fond of failure.
As most of you know, Catie (C.E.) Murphy and I worked on a crossover story with our main characters Jane Yellowrock and Joanne Walker. This collaboration was total fun, a sharing of skillsets, abilities, and people we’ve worked with in the past who would help us on the way to our destination. And yes – it was self-published.
I’d like to share how that collaboration came about, from my perspective, and I hope Catie will [...]
Continue reading Easy Pickings – an Exercise in Sharing and Self-Publishing
 Kalayna
read all posts by KalaynaToday I’m going to piggyback on Faith’s PR post from yesterday. She gave some awesome advice that those of you who recently sold your first book and think 12-18 months until release is a long time should pay extra close attention to. Trust me, when it comes to promoting your first book, the months directly around the release are going to be madness so already having templates for interviews and your website up, professional, and easy for search engines to find will make things easier during a time that has the potential to be very stressful. If you’re not yet at that stage in the game, bookmark her post and come back to it when you’ve sold.
Faith also mentioned reviewers, review sites, and bloggers. Whether you are published or not this is something you can research now without any extra work on your part–simply note what review sites and [...]
Continue reading Targeted PR, Cross-Promotion, and Knowing Your Audience
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How To Write Magical Words
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