Miscellaneous

It appears that I’ve decided to release an e-book of all of my mostly really short stories that I’ve written over the years, plus some new ones. The mighty, once-bearded Matt DeBenedictis will be slashing it to ribbons editing it so you know it will be good decent better than it is now. I think … I’m Releasing an E-book and It Will be Acceptable

The “blogosphere” (aka: the blogs in my subscription queue) has been “buzzing” about the state of e-publishing, about self-publishers who have struck it rich with their e-book, and these stories are complementary goods to the insistent posts forewarning everyone that the old guard publishing industry is really, really e-worried about this and should really, really … Dear Children: I’m Dead, Here’s A Bunch of Computer Files

In my current work in progress the protagonist is an early-twenties female, and more than a few times I had to stop myself and ask, “Would someone of her cultural makeup actually do/say that?”, and the fact that it’s in first person makes this issue much more crucial. And it brings up the entire issue … Dude, You Write Like a Girl

If you haven’t been here in a few days, you’ll now notice that jd.com looks different, and a little more significant than the, “Hey, did you get a haircut?” sort of looking different. There are a few reasons for this, the biggest of which was that the other blank theme I used had no ongoing … New Look, Same Mediocre Content

My friend Seth emailed this to me about my last post, about writers not having the outlets for promoting themselves that musicians have: The equivalent for writers playing shows I think is capturing an audience and building a fanbase online even before an author has a book written. That way when you have a book … Music and Writing, Part Two

If you’ve already entered, direct thine oculars to the note at the bottom of the interview to make sure you are truly, truly, entered — then go whack a badly-rendered effigy of me, pinata-style (I am filled with Hot Tamales…they’re my favorite.).

It’s already a few days into the new year and I haven’t broken my non-resolution to read the whole Bible to do a legitimate review of it. In fact, I’m ahead of the 90 days schedule. No furtive glances or fidgety fingers for me — I’m pounding this into submission. Since it’s the era of … Resolutions Were Made To Be Broken

So I’m on vacation until the first work day of the new year. Among other things on the docket, mostly holiday-related, that I need to do, I thought I would plan to finish the third and final rewrite of the book — final, as in, the manuscript that is agent-ready and something that I would … Staycation 2010-2011

The Art of Manliness posted about nine writers that are carrying the torch for men’s fiction. It’s not really a secret that most modern fiction is marketed towards women, but I wonder exactly how a story can have a gender. It’s an absurd notion on its head because only people have genders, not words on … Genitalia Fiction

A photographer friend of mine, Jonathan, was telling me about a discussion he had with someone at a video shoot we had just covered for Noisecreep. This person asked Jonathan how to become a photographer. He said his response was this, roughly paraphrased: “I didn’t really know what to tell the guy. The way you … Waste Your Life Away With Words

I recently subscribed to the wonderfully-designed blog of someone high-profile in the publishing industry — a writer and editor. There was a good amount of useful information for people like me: unpublished twerps waiting in line to get their hopes eradicated. But there was also plenty of drek: two levels of main navigation, advertisement graphics … Read It, Won’t Buy the T-Shirt

The other day I ran into one of my pastors downtown. He had on his headphones so I laid my hand on his shoulder in the most non-threatening way one could do. We talked for a few minutes on the sidewalk in front of a coat store, and it was the sort of interaction seemed … Vitruvian Rendezvous

Through some recent discussions with a friend I’ve decided to take comments off the blog. Not that the comments were really a huge “problem” to begin with, but it’s more representative of something internal. I want this site to be a documentation of a cadre of various things, a few of which are broad topics … Comments Closed, For Eternity

My long-time friend and blog boss Seth W wrote a little e-book for which I did a mostly-adequate layout job, and you can download it for free. It’s called How to Buy Your First Bike, where he finally sticks it to Gettier’s paradox. Just kidding. He just advises us on the best way to hand … How to Download a PDF About Buying Your First Bike

Older than many things. It’s not very big (that’s a mini-pencil beside it), but I didn’t want anything bulky. The edges of some pages are yellowing, and there’s arcane charts and tables of measurements relating to growing and caring for commercial crops, some minimalist advertising for fertilizer, and two calendars of the entire year of … Notebook Bought

Not my notebooks. I’ve toyed with the idea of a pocket notebook for a while, after reading somewhere about how Chesterton would stop while crossing the street to write down a thought. This is partly because I like to cause car accidents, but mostly because I can’t remember any thought that strikes me from the … Write It Down

I totally made a big change in my life by increasing the font size of the body text and changing the font itself, to trebuchet MS. I like how readable the articles on mises.org are, so I took a cue from their designer. On a less successful note, I tried using (a very large version … Totally Useless Update About Fonts and Background Images

I may get some business cards printed up. Why? Because there have been a few instances where I wanted to give people my contact info for something writey-related and I had to resort to ye olde fashionede quill and parchment. It feels far less professional than handing over a decently designed business card. So here … Making the Call

Being the father of an almost-five year old and a book dweeb, I naturally enjoy reading her books with her — at least, as much as an adult can enjoy that sort of thing. The ones that are didactic are fairly innocuous in their delivery; they promote good manners, cooperation, learning, imagination, inventiveness (some of … Collectivist Kids’ Books

I’ve informally made sure to keep this writey blog Christian-theology-free — and sometimes I skirt too close to the edge — but I’m not afraid to post in that area of interest if it has something to do with the engrossing use of language (I have a Venn diagram benignly hovering in my head). Enter … The Confession of Chalcedon

A longtime friend of mine, Seth W, wrote an e-book on killing your blog, a minimalist diatribe to encourage us to spend more time doing things rather than writing about them. This is coming from someone who has been blogging for nearly a decade and runs the Internet’s biggest metal sites (and who is singlehandedly … Kill Your Friends

I came across You Write Like, where you can input text that you’ve written, a form of necromancy passes through your hard drive, and you are assigned a literary doppelganger. I input about a half-dozen bodies of text that I’ve done, from stories on here to a some paragraphs from my book. About four times … Your Writing Is Terrible: You Write Like A Dead Person

I’ve been searching for ways to get the second draft of my book knocked out. Usually it’s “when I find time”, and this still holds true, but I will be finding more time in the next few months to actually pound this thing into submission. With that, I think I will be posting excerpts of … How the Gods Book

Earlier this month Rachelle Gardner gathered a lot of responses from authors about the one-sentence book pitch contest. I mean, she’s a literary agent that encourages comments her blog, so of course authors are going to flock in droves to get themselves noticed. She could post about the off-color of her pee in the morning … Gods In One Sentence

You can buy a print of Eve’s Geometry, signed by me, on the store page. If I’m feeling adventurous while I pack it you might even get something extra with it — though I promise it won’t be a pig’s heart with a nail through it. Those are expensive to procure and that kind of … Throw Your Dirty Money At the Internet’s Face