Take Back Tomorrow is available as a free Kindle download today at Amazon.com. Eddie Royce thinks he’s got things all figured out. He’s managed to cheat the system and gotten himself published in the sci fi pulps by “borrowing” plots from Shakespeare. He doesn’t mind being a cheat and a plagiarist as long as no…
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When Jon Stewart interviewed Christopher Walken on The Daily Show recently, he asked Walken if he’d ever had to give one of those fake 555 phone numbers while acting in a film. Stewart’s point was that every time a character uses one of those numbers, it pulls viewers out of the movie. These aren’t real…
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Here’s something that seems to be an accepted truth about and among indie writers: The e-book and indie publishing movements are good for writers, providing countless authors the opportunity to get their material “out there” when it would have been rejected out of hand by traditional publishers and agents. Two underlying arguments: 1. The publishing…
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Last post, I talked a bit about character motivation. Think of this as Part 2, but with a twist. To recap, briefly, if we’re looking at a major character, readers need to know what motivates that character, what gets him or her going, what causes the character to risk life and limb or to dig…
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I’ve been a bit quiet for the last couple of weeks: Christmas stuff, a shift in my schedule, and trying to finish the first draft of my follow-up to Dead Man’s Hand are all taking time away from blogging (and other things I should be doing). I ran into a little problem about halfway through…
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As another round of student papers (the final set for this year) gets ready to come at me, I’m gearing up for looking at more careless mistakes: seemingly random uses of their, there, and they’re; sloppy pronoun references; uses of “now and days” or “now in days” instead of nowadays. Then there are the students…
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I’m offering my science fiction novel, Strictly Analog, as a FREE download today at Amazon. Ted Lomax does his best to get by as a private detective in a society where almost nothing is private any more. He lives in a near-future California that has gained independence from the economically collapsed United States and where…
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You know who I’m talking about, right? The mustachioed miner from the Rankin & Bass claymation Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer from the mid-60s. He’s a bit rough around the edges but helps Rudolph, ends up on the Island of Misfit Toys, and finally helps save the day in the end. The thing I keep…
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Over the summer, I released my urban fantasy novella, Dead Man’s Hand, as an e-book on Amazon. Maybe it was a timing thing, but it really seemed to fly under the radar, so I thought I’d post a sample. What follows is a short excerpt from the third chapter. If you’d like to see more,…
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