March 22, 2012 in General Topics
Well, folks, I really appreciate the suggestions in this last week’s contest to name my upcoming short fiction collection. As it turns out, of all the suggestions, the one that I liked the best was: Read the rest of this entry →
March 16, 2012 in General Topics
Alright folks, here’s the deal. In addition to The Tyrant Strategy series getting launched in late summer \ early fall, I’m also going to be publishing a short fiction collection.
And I need your help naming it. For your ten seconds of time, I offer you a $20 gift card from Target if I use your suggestion.
Read the rest of this entry →
January 30, 2008 in General Topics
This was a great surprise in my inbox this morning:
I heard “Spired” on Variant Frequencies today. What an amazing short
story! – one of the best I have read/heard in several years. Please
keep on writing. I’ll be looking forward to your first full length
novel.
It matters a lot to me when people read my stuff, regardless what they think of it. But I have to admit, praise is nice.
January 6, 2008 in General Topics
What a way to start out the new year. Last year the crew over at the Variant Frequencies podcast took one of my stories for publication. I’m pleased to see that Rick Stringer, and reader John Cmar, have done an outstanding job turning my modest tale into something marvelous.
I want to thank Rick Stringer, Anne Stringer, and Matt Wallace, the creative folks behind the podcast, without whom none of this would have been possible. I want to especially thank Rick, who’s poured so much work into bringing this tale to life. Listen, my friend — thank you.
If you enjoyed this story and are itching for more work of mine in a similar vein, I invite you to check out my bibliography, specifically the links to “Paston, Kentucky” (Murky Depths, Issue 1), “Eee” (Afterburn SF, September 2007), and “Tex’s Last Run” (Apex Online, and OG’s Speculative Fiction). Or, if you’d like some pdf docs to carry around right now, check out the free fiction I’ve hosted here, specifically “Manifest Hegemony”.
My sincerest thanks to any of you who took the time to listen to this. Feedback is also greatly appreciated, but I’d appreciate it even more if you support Variant Frequencies and tell your friends about this consistently-excellent, Parsec-winning podcast.
June 3, 2007 in General Topics
I’ve been watching way too much “Deadliest Catch” lately, and the comparisons between fishing and marketing fiction have become far too obvious. At this point, in true Northwestern fashion, all my pots are in the water, or rather will be by the end of the day, once I put “Spired” back in the wild.
Yes, it got rejected again, this time by Not One of Us. It’s all good. I thought I had the market pegged, but it wasn’t quite what they needed. They had nothing bad to say about the quality of the tale itself, which is much better than the last response the story got: “It just didn’t grab me”.
Every time I get a response like that, my toes threaten to eviscerate the soles of my feet. It’s much easier to fight grammatical nitpicks than subjectivity, for which there is little to do but simply try to write more engaging tales.
Other than that, it’s been a quiet week. The sixth revision of “The Lifeboat” (and the second revision to that market), got mixed comments over on Baen’s. I need to rewrite it once more, but people will only read this thing so many times.
I finished up the first draft of my latest piece, a fantasy-humor yarn of about 4,000 words. I’m midway through the second draft.
Stay tuned.
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