I’m one of the 300 entries in #spfbo9, which is quite exciting. I’m happy to be a part of it this year, but in the interest of full disclosure: being an entry is more about meeting the deadline than any particular merit. Nevertheless, I’m in and happy about it! #spfbo is one of the few, […]
Come On, Baby, Don’t Fear The AI
AI writing is a huge concern for writers. The current WGA strike has a ban on AI writing as one of their main demands. Indie authors are in a panic that in the near future AI generated novels will crowd them out of the marketplace and they’ll no longer be able to sell books. Why […]
Writers Who Stop Writing
There’s a vast horde of people who desperately want to become writers. They’ll dream about it, read advice books, and badger published authors for tips. If such people ever achieved success as an author, you’d expect that they’d spend their days writing in a bliss-filled reverie. Instead, you find that at every step, people drop […]
The ‘Game of Thrones’ method of Complex Character Creation
About a year ago an interesting post on Reddit promised a way to “make your character complex, realistic, and three dimensional, simply by writing down two things that they want.” This was posted in /r/rpg and was intended for people making characters in games like Dungeons and Dragons. The idea was interesting and struck me […]
Friendship Magician
I’ve released my next book, Friendship Magician. This is the sequel to my cozy urban fantasy book Merchant Magician. Self-exiled from her family of traders in mystical goods and services on her 23rd birthday, the Friendship Magician must make her way in the world: meeting a Scandinavian werewolf, a business-minded minotaur, an air elemental with a […]
The Importance Of “Slack Time” In A Job
There’s a “polite fiction” with employment that every employee is working as hard as they’re capable of. Perhaps the other side of this is that employers are paying employees as much as possible. A steady stream of Quora questions ask some variation of an employer considering firing their most productive employee who gets work done […]
Endless Seas: Never Meet Your Idols
I’ve released my next book, Endless Seas: Never Meet Your Idols which is set for release on February 28th. This is my second fiction book and my first full length novel. It’s a nautical, high-fantasy, action-adventure. For the narrative structure, it’s set up as a series of short stories (11 in total), which follow the […]
The Problem With Amazon Vella
Like many writers, I was excited when Amazon’s Kindle Vella debuted. I had been writing serial fiction, had tried the major platforms, and was disappointed with each of them. Amazon has smart people and tons of money, so I (along with others) hoped they’d get it right. Vella For Readers Sadly, what they released is […]
Make ‘No’ Your Magic Word
When two-year-olds first learn to say no, it’s a trying time for their parents. The epiphany that these all-powerful gods, known as mom and dad, who have controlled every aspect of their existence up to that point can be refused is intoxicating. Some studies have measured that toddlers argue with their parents 20-25 times an […]
Marketing Your Indie Book Via Online Forums
Online forums exist for every imaginable interest. From entertainment options, like fantasy, sci-fi, or romance, to self-help to personal finance, like stock or real estate investing. In the earliest days of the internet, these took the form of Usenet newsgroups and in modern times they take the form of subreddits, forums attached to a blog, […]