Every once in a while I get asked for writing advice, either in RL or in Second Life where I run around as a tiny clockwork dragon and hang out in steampunk sims. And I have the same answer for both lives - don’t ask me for writing advice!

Why?

Because I’m not one to ask. I’m a tough old broad who lucked out after a decade of writing fanfiction into ( Read more... )

It's been a while since I posted here and for that I should apologize - but, frankly, I'm one of those people that don't really feel that posting nothing every day is a Good Thing. While there's been things going on here and there I didn't think it was worth wasting the bandwidth for bits and pieces that could be better combined into a decent fat ( Read more... )

Submitted for your recommendation - the latest info on Blu Phi'er Publishing.

Seems that the owner sent out a mass mailing to all the authors detailing their royalties, if any, and how much they OWE the company. Courtesy of The Rusty Nail.

I don't even KNOW where to begin to discuss about how totally wrong this is. First, and this is just from a gut ( Read more... )

... you know the rest.

Seems that there's a "publisher" in the UK that's racing towards becoming known as the Next Great Publishing Scam. YouWriteOn, a writing website, has decided to lunge forth with the offer to publish the first 5,000 manuscripts sent in to them. Wait, you say - what's the scam there? Why wouldn't any decent author rush to get a ( Read more... )

You don't have to be a genius to see that having your book reviewed is probably a Good Thing - sure, we'd all like to have it in the New York Times or some such esteemed paper but that's often hard to get. So many authors fall back on smaller magazines or specialised ones that cater to their genres. Which is all fine and dandy until you find out/ ( Read more... )

Well, it's been a great year for movies AND books in my opinion - sure we got a FABOO Iron Man (insert RDJ fangirl swoon here) and looking forward to more excellent comic-based movies but there's some great books out there for those of you looking for something a bit different.

Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs is set in the Mercy Thompson world - and if ( Read more... )

Well, there's another dark cloud on the horizon for a small press - Blu Phi'er, to be exact. You can find details of the goings-on of this small press here and here. In a nutshell, not only did they cancel two anthologies and NOT inform any of the contributors, meaning that they have/had stories tied up there for months that could have been sold ( Read more... )

Interesting commentary here about the free ebooks that Tor has been giving away.

Me, I'm still in the neutral spot. I've become a fan of the Julia Spencer-Fleming series because of the free ebooks from St. Martin's Press, but I'm not sure if I'm the norm or not when it comes to boosting sales of the sequels or paper versions of the freebies. I guess ( Read more... )

found this while surfing around the web:

Ten things to look for when submitting to small presses

it goes without saying that if you're considering submitting to a small press/micropress that this article should be your first and best set of guidelines to start asking questions.

sure, some small pubs/micropresses may fall short of some of the ( Read more... )