This post is about publishing, art, and the smallest bit of whining that I can include without feeling like a total self-pitying jerk. It’s about our best intentions – and how that’s not enough to carry the day. We exist within walls of preconception and self-doubt. Sometimes there are outside stresses in our lives that…
Read More A matter of timingOne, I’m not that great at it, which bugs my sense of vanity something fierce. Two, to my immense chagrin, I’m not doing art for anything that will make me money or satisfy a contract obligation. Which sucks, but sometimes you just have to let the creativity monster off its leash for a while. This…
Read More I should not be doing art (that Loki pic people keep asking for)On the Blog Hop front, Erika Lindsen is hosting Mina Kelly today here, in a discussion of Mina’s book Inescapable. On the art front, last week I took on an urgent free commission from Kadorienne, a long-time friend and beta reader. I owe her: for dragging me back into fan fiction 13 years ago, for…
Read More AW Blog Hop updates & assorted insanityI’m a sucker for glowing things. Lights in the dark have always made me happy: from nightlights, tiny lanterns in pools or gardens, star-fields seen in planetariums and unspoiled wilderness, and my first glimpse of a big city at night – all the way to phosphorescent oceans, modern LED lights, photoluminescent plastics and glass, and…
Read More Glowing ThingsAnother writing-and-reading PSA. Go here to check out author Brenda Novak’s annual online charity auction. She’s been doing this for a number of years, and the prize board this year looks amazing. Forget the antique jewelry, art, and unique vacation packages you might win – check out some of the professional services available. Query-writing assistance.…
Read More Brenda Novak’s Annual Online Auction for Diabetes ResearchI recently attended an Al Stewart and Dave Nachmanoff concert at the Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) in north Scottsdale. (Aside: Al and Dave are brilliant guitar players and polished singer/songwriters who not only craft songs with several-hundred-word vocabularies, they’re also wickedly funny in between songs. Come for the music, stay for the comedy.) It was one…
Read More A Tale of Two MuseumsI don’t have a site counter on the Blue Night blog, so I don’t know how many people read it. That’s part of the fun. Really? You have never put a message in a bottle and thrown it into the sea, or tied it to a balloon? The law of averages says you’ll never get an…
Read More Fun With Spam, Part 2The witty and fabulous Kate Lowell just tagged me for the Very Inspiring Blog Award. Thanks Kate. I’ll try to live up to the high standards placed upon me (cough cough.) I’m supposed to share seven facts about myself. Er, that is, things I can share in a public forum. Then list the blogs and sites…
Read More Very Inspiring Blogs (and sites)Etsy.com and Amanda McKittrick Ros are brilliant examples of the Dunning-Kruger Effect, “a cognitive bias in which unskilled individuals suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly rating their ability much higher than average. This bias is attributed to a metacognitive inability of the unskilled to recognize their mistakes.” Or, in street-speak, “You are not only not as talented/smart/beautiful as you think you are,…
Read More Etsy.com and Amanda McKittrick RosJanuary 21 is designated as ‘Blue Monday’: the day most likely to result (at least in the Northern Hemisphere) in depression and winter ennui. The holidays are over, the weather often sucks, summer vacations are a long way away, the job market scares us, we’ve already broken many of our New Year’s resolutions…you get the…
Read More Blue MondayAfter playing with Bloodshadow for too damned long, I finally got a reasonable sketch of the main character Tel Girshanha. I might be using a version of this image as a cover, if I ever have to self-publish this crazy book. For anyone following the backstories in both Moro’s Price and ‘Saints and Heroes’ –…
Read More Sometimes I get it rightMissy Welsh invited me to tag along on The Next Big Thing blog hop, and talk about my current works-in-progress (WIPs). What better way to celebrate the start of a new year? 1. What is the working title of your book? I have two WIPs jostling for attention at the moment. Book #1 is Moro’s Shield,…
Read More The Next Big ThingThis is a post about art, because I’ve been an artist a lot longer than I’ve been a writer. Playing with useless objects and patterns seems not only to be a primate penchant, but one found in upper avian species as well. Smart creatures may not be able to eat shiny, pretty things – but…
Read More Celebrating Mindful BeautySome readers may get that instantly. Many won’t. That’s fine. On a cold moonlit morning, with Yoko Kanno’s ‘Tank!’ as the daily earworm, it’s just my way of saying that Cowboy BeBop still rules after 14 years. As anime classic, space opera tragicomedy, existential exploration – and now a remastered version with clearer colors and…
Read More See You Space Cowboy…It’s art. It’s marketing, full-on Mad Men style. It’s both, but cover art is actually a lot closer to marketing. The one thing cover art should probably never be is art therapy or uncritical self-validation. Starry-eyed would-be authors need to understand this sooner rather than later. In just the last year alone, I’ve seen several…
Read More Cover Art ConundrumsIn the late 70’s I was a Tolkien geek. I’ve mentioned this before. I wasn’t a Tolkien geek in San Francisco or New York or any other big city, where I might have seen ‘Frodo Lives’ painted on a wall, hung out with other Tolkien club members, and visited science fiction & fantasy conventions. Nope.…
Read More Middle Earth Merch‘Tis the season when I wax emotional about the folks who’ve made my writing life possible: My friends and family, who have put up with so much to get me to this place. My adversaries, who’ve added spice and determination to my life, tested my limits, and taught me the value of both humility and…
Read More Holiday gratitude…and can its marketing staff. Like many people, I don’t go to movie theaters anymore. I’m selfish. With access to a friend’s good satellite service and decent home theater, the only things I’m missing out on are screaming kids in movies too adult for them, people talking over the movie, overpriced tickets, even more overpriced…
Read More The flop that wasn’t, or why Disney needs to trust itself…Andrew Piper says that e-readers will doom the act of reading. He even has a new book out about it, from the University of Chicago Press, which I am fairly certain will also be available in digital form. Edited to add: yep, it’s on Kindle. He wrote a Slate article about it, too. I call…
Read More The death of reading?Last May, author Neil Gaiman gave a commencement speech portraying the artist’s life. “Walk toward the mountain,” he said, meaning do those things that will add to your chosen career. Give weight to choices that will help you become a better artist, not merely those which pay bills and siphon time and love. Really, I…
Read More Neil Gaiman explains why we are here