Caught a post on my Tumblr dashboard today. While I appreciate Mr. Green’s passion, I have to call bullshit.
Give a read HERE
Publishing Shills Still Trying To Convince Us They Are Important
Reply
A Christmas Tale – Free short story (horror)
My short horror story “A Christmas Tale” is now available for free. Choose your version from the links below:
Kindle (.MOBI file) – Put this in your Kindle’s Documents folder
Nook or other e-reader (.EPUB file) – I don’t have one of these so I’m not sure where the file goes
MS Word Document (.DOC file)
Rich Text Format (.RTF file)
Description:
He knows if you’ve been bad or good…
The three Devlin boys are in trouble, and this year they might make it onto Santa’s ‘naughty’ list.
6,535 word short story
Thanks for reading! Please share this story with anyone that might be interested.
It’s Better This Way – Free Science Fiction Novella
Hello everyone. If you’d like to read my science fiction novella “It’s Better This Way” just click one of the links below:
Kindle (.MOBI file) – place this file in the Documents folder of your Kindle
Nook and other e-readers (.EPUB file) – I don’t own an Epub-capable reader unfortunately
MS Word Document (.DOC file)
Rich Text Format (.RTF file)
It's Better This Way - small cover
Description:
Twenty-three years ago, the ‘bulls’ appeared in orbit and destroyed Earth’s infrastructure in less than ten seconds.
These days, the alien invaders aren’t as much of a problem as the surviving humans are.
Evan Greggs has learned that things aren’t always as bad as they seem, but sometimes the choices to be made are as murky as they are difficult.
24,000 word novella.
The book is free, so feel free to pass it around to anyone you think might be interested!
Let’s Talk About… (#1)
Hi. My name is Angry (Travis if you don’t like using internet nicknames), and I’m going to start a new discussion called “Let’s Talk About…” and each one will talk about something different that has to do with you, writing, editing, publishing, and possibly even reading.
Today, Let’s Talk About…Story Ideas
Right. So. You want to write a story/book, but you think your ideas are weak, or you cannot come up with good plot. Maybe you just need a little push to get going in one direction, and then as you get writing, it’s like a snowball roll down a mountain. Continue reading
My Novella = Gay Agenda/Propaganda?
I guess I’m proud to announce that my first book published is hereby declared ‘gay propaganda’.
I’m going to say, “Good.”
The book of course is NOT gay propaganda, but it does have an LGBT-friendly…story? I don’t know how to explain it. Some of the characters are gay. Like…so what? Because there are gays in this real world, there shouldn’t be gays in fiction / science fiction?
Here’s how I see the world, and in turn, how I write stories: Continue reading
It’s Better This Way – new novella published
Just in case you are one of the three people who follow me and didn’t yet know this, I got around to publishing the short novella “It’s Better This Way” over at Smashwords and Amazon. Amazon of course takes 12+ hours to approve, but the link for Smashwords will work just fine.
It’s Better This Way – FREE! @ Smashwords
It’s Better This Way – FREE! (soon hopefully, otherwise $.99) @ Amazon
Twenty-three years ago, the ‘bulls’ appeared in orbit and destroyed Earth’s infrastructure in less than ten seconds.
These days, the alien invaders aren’t as much of a problem as the surviving humans are.
Evan Greggs has learned that things aren’t always as bad as they seem, but sometimes the choices to be made are as murky as they are difficult.
24,000 word novella.
Yay! A novella!
James Patterson Is A Prolific Author, But Kind Of Dumb
Read the entire post at JA Konrath’s blog. Trust me on this one.
Perhaps you’ve seen the ad James Patterson recently ran in the NYT.
The Ad Should Be Called "Hyperbole" or "Special Interest Marketing"
If you don’t want to squint at the jpg, here’s what Patterson wrote:
“If there are no bookstores, no libraries, no serious publishers with passionate, dedicated, idealistic editors, what will happen to our literature? Who will discover and mentor new writers? Who will publish our important books? What will happen if there are no more books like these?”
Then there’s a list of 38 books, including All the President’s Men, Catcher in the Rye, The Color Purple, Fahrenheit 451, Catch 22, etc. I agree that many of them are great.
Then he ends with:
“The Federal Government has stepped in to save banks, and the automobile industry, but where are they on the important subject of books? Or if the answer is state and local government, where are they? Is any state doing anything? Why are there no impassioned editorials in influential newspapers or magazines? Who will save our books? Our libraries? Our bookstores?”
I respect Patterson for his marketing genius. I also like many of his books. He makes 94 million dollars a year, so he’s obviously doing quite a bit right.
But I’m not finding much to agree with here.
Another voice chimes in here, and is definitely worth the read!
Jenna Marbles Is More Popular Than You…
*cough*Good Morning America*cough* and some lady named Cecilia Vega.
There’s a reason why almost no one in the overall scope of possible viewers watches GMA anymore. The biggest reason is that when most of us wake up, we want our coffee, our shower, and our email, and not necessarily in that order. I’m forty years old and haven’t watched Good Morning America for at least twenty years. It should also be noted that I’m a modern American so I choose to get my news and feel-good stories from the internet instead of lame-ass mainstream network news/morning shows.
My news comes from aggregate lists at Google and SeattlePI.com where I can click on the interesting headlines and get multiple views of the same story. My feel-good stories tend to mostly come from places like Tumblr (go ahead, click the link and type in something relevant like ‘bullying’ or ‘LGBT’ or ‘suicide’ and tread through the vast amounts of heartfelt blogs, rants, and advice…I’ll wait). Continue reading
Still Not A Fan Of Twitter
As I’ve been slowly working on building a ‘cadre’ of ‘followers’ at Twitter, I’m starting to come to the conclusion that Twitter for people like me, which is basically anyone that is trying to sell either themselves or their product, is nothing better than a giant flea market with tens of thousands of stalls all packed into one Expo Center and every stall has a person shouting at the top of their lungs the wares they are offering.
I won’t say that Twitter isn’t going to end up being useful, and for the moment it is kind of interesting that I can tweet morons like Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan (@RepMikeRogers) who claim that the CISPA bill making its way through Congress is only being opposed by ‘14 year olds living in the basement‘. Continue reading
Apologies: What, When, and How by John Scalzi
A very, very good blog post by author John Scalzi on apologies and apologizing. Please give this a read and make the world a better place.
First thing: What is an apology? Leaving aside classical definitions that are not directly on point to how the word is used in everyday life:
An apology is an admission that you’ve wronged others and that you are actually sorry for it. This is of course why it’s difficult for people to apologize. No one likes to admit they are wrong or that they screwed up. No one likes the complicated, defeated feelings that come with being wrong and screwing up. No one likes having to go to other people, publicly or privately, and admit to them they’ve been wrong and have screwed up. It is, literally, humiliating, since apologizing almost always requires humility and a willingness to put the needs of those you have wronged over your own. For ego-bound creatures, and we are all ego-bound, this is a hard thing to do.
I think it becomes less hard, however, if you consider the following:
One, everyone’s wrong at some point. Because, hello, you’re a human, and humans are imperfect beings. It’s okay to recognize you are not infallible.
Two, it’s better to center your ego on doing what’s right rather than never being wrong. Because, per point one, you’re going to be wrong at some point.