Writing-life

Raising a Racket over IBD!

The ladies of the racket have spoken! That's right, Rhonda Carpenter and Heather Roulo have been nice enough to have me on their PodioRacket Podcast once again to talk about all things going on over here, including In Broad Daylight, THIS IS LIFE coming out in print and eBook, Czechmate, Kickstarter, and much more. Visit the blog post about our interview here.

OR... Click here to listen or download our interview.

Hope you enjoy it! I'll be back soon with more of IN BROAD DAYLIGHT... stay tuned.

Interview for Your Ear-Piece!

D*Con Sigler PartyD*Con Sigler PartyHey guys, I'm here today with a fresh interview for you, conducted by my fellow podcaster John Mierau. You can find all of John's work here at johnmierau.wordpress.com He's the author of the Serving Worlds Anthology, Last Man Home, Harlan's Wake and Marked Men, among others. Check out his podcast Enemy Lines if you're looking for a hot place to start!

In this interview, we discuss the Kickstarter campaign, the changing face of publishing, podcasting as a means of raising fan interest, eBooks, and much more, including answering fan questions from Twitter! Click here to listen now or download this episode! Rock it, pump it, dig it, and I hope you enjoy!

True fans, you'll love how we crush publishing in this one!

More on Writing

I've been starting back to the desk at regular intervals and am pushing my word counts again, which means more new content on the way. Hope you're pumped! I'm looking to have some goods for you by Fall (sept).

As I got going with the process of putting pen to paper (fingers to keys), I wrote a few pieces on the act of writing. In addition to my last post, here are a few short pieces I posted on Scribd

First is Why I Write, which was covered in my last blog post. To follow up on that, I posted "More on Writing" or Why Write (Part II) and then this very short pieces on starting up the mind muscle exercise of regularly writing, "Like Running."

More to come in this vein soon, perhaps, but mostly I'm working on a new novel that you'll have to hear to believe. It's gonna be a rocking fall for you to listen. Stay tuned around here!

Why I Write

Yes, it's high time I started posting here again. Never fear, I'm back. I have a new short crime story that I plan to share soon as audio and for today, I have this piece on writing that I recently posted here on Scribd.com.

I plan to give you more audio soon. For now, enjoy the read.

          Why We Write

Of course you could go outside. Take the dog and do what any normal person would do on a nice afternoon: go sit in the sun. But there’s something different about a writer. Something else that makes a person sit inside on a beautiful day, wake up and do work on one project or another without any sign of payment.

There are always other things you could do, even ways to earn money. Instead, you sacrifice relationships, push away loved ones and demand time to yourself. You leave friends at the bar, make your life boring in the name of ritual, trying to stay clean.

Others will earn more money doing anything you can think of—hawking cars, making sales, sitting in offices, betting on stocks—and spend free time in excitement, travel, getting drunk, doing wild stunts.

Maybe it’s foolishness. No one says writers are saints, not by a long shot. But you try to survive and carry on, do your level best to make it through another day and come back to the desk again tomorrow.

Who knows if this road is wise? Once taken, there are places to get off. Perhaps you think of them, sitting at the desk on a cold, damp morning. Maybe you even regret. But you won’t think about this when you’re writing.

JPII in Da House!!

click to enlarge, son!click to enlarge, son!Eat your heart out, youngsters! Here it is and coming to YOU soon...

As they say in France, "Ooh la la la la..."

You've seen this picture before, TWICE now, and both times it's meant awesome literary goodness coming to you for your reading pleasure. And THIS IS LIFE will NOT disappoint! This edition features the original stories from both JP2 and JP3 (podcasts) and is edited, boiled down, bettered, all the good stuff!

So never fear and be ready to pony up them bennies later on in the summer as the release rolls out in early fall. More to come and much more exciting info on the way to you soon. The kid is back. --Yer boy.

Using Scribd.com to Publicize Your Book

Today I want to talk about a great new way to publicize your work online, one that's working very well for authors Kemble Scott, Hyla Molander, and today's guest Ransom Stephens: uploading your ebook to Scribd.com. Here, lots of readers can discover your work, "read-share" it via Facebook and generally help you get the word out.

Ransom Stephens uploaded his book The God Patent to Scribd in May 2009 and since then he's seen the book rack up over 19,000 reads and 80+ great reviews. This was enough for the book to get picked up and published by Numina Press (Vox Novus) last December. Billed as "The Scribd eBook Sensation," you can read The God Patent for FREE here.  

Looking ahead to publicizing YOUNG JUNIUS next month around its release from Tyrus Books, I caught up with Ransom to ask a few questions about how I can use Scribd to help: [more after the break]

I am BACK!

Strictly Business AttireStrictly Business AttireYes, I'm back from a wonderful trip abroad to Tanzania! It was awesome!

What am I up to now? Working on Young Junius and Jack Palms II, of course!

And more...

Stay tuned for further info and trip re-cap coming soon.

Creating an Online Preorder Event: Tips & Strategies!! - Part II

Good News for Writers! (and 5 Tips on how to Capitalize on It!)

Right now there are more ways than ever to publish, distribute and evangelize your work—without spending a lot of money. Though the direction big publishing will take remains unclear, because we writers are small and nimble, we can act on as many strategies as we have time for.

Want to create a blog but don’t know what to post on it? Your best bet is to post your fiction or non-fiction—that manuscript you’ve been working hard on. You’re better off showing your work to an online audience of potential readers than struggling to get it in front of a few harried agents.

1) Post your book in installments so readers can digest it in small bites. That way you’ll also have content to spread out over a long period. It will take time for interest to build about what you’re doing, but build it will. Trust me.

Personally, I’ve used podcasting—turning my work into free audio files (MP3s)—that I distribute via my blog, iTunes and Podiobooks.com to get my novels out and build an audience. And it’s worked! My interaction with fans has buoyed my spirits, helped me write more, and landed me deals with major and independent publishers. (For more on podcasting, see my June WD Webinar “How to Podcast Your Fiction.”)

2) You might actually be better off with an independent publisher than a big guy.

Writing Workshop - The Gripping Read - "Dave's House"

Greetings! This post is intended for my classmates in the Stanford Writing Workshop - "The Gripping Read" from fall 2009, but anybody is welcome to read and chime in. I posted a portion of my story "Dave's House" as one of our class exercises and I have now revised the story and posted it as a #fridayflash on my blog. I've attached a PDF of the story and I welcome all comments and constructive criticism. Also, please check out my blog at http://www.inspiredbyreallife.com where you'll find a new story each week. Thanks to Seth for inviting me to post my story here.

Essentail Art Class Forum for Students

Please post any and all continued conversation that you'd like to engage one another with in this forum. It should work effectively like the forums in our Blackboard class: you can create new threads for various topics and post an attachment to your new thread post--so you can attach new writing pieces and get feedback. Have at it! It's your world. Seth
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