Making a Living in the Arts Is Fiendishly Hard–By Design

Making a Living in the Arts Is Fiendishly Hard–By Design

Those who follow me here and on social media might be familiar with this graphic: The takeaway is that of the roughly one million American authors, only 2500 earn a full-time income from their writing. A lot of aspiring authors were discouraged by that figure, but it's actually an improvement…
December 30, 20166 Comments

Should You Go to College?

Commenter anonme offers some sage advice to college-age readers in response to yesterday's post: As someone who holds a useless humanities degree, I am firmly in the "college is a scam" category. With caveats.  If there is some in the audience who are college age, I am going to attempt…
December 29, 20165 Comments

Free the Debt Slaves

TaxProf Blog shares a proposal by Sheila C. Bair to help relieve the unrepayable, and often unserviceable, student loan debt incurred by American college graduates. Student debt now stands at $1.3 trillion. More than half of student borrowers are unable to repay their loans according to the original terms. In…
December 28, 201615 Comments

Self-publishing Costs: One-time Payment or Percentage of Royalties?

As an indie author I wear two hats: writer and publisher. These two job roles involve complementary but markedly different responsibilities and mindsets. A writer's job is to produce the best writing possible so that readers will be pleased. A publisher's job is to get the author's writing into readers'…
December 27, 20162 Comments
Amazon Reviewer Praise for The Secret Kings

Amazon Reviewer Praise for The Secret Kings

For SFF fans who want fun and who don't want message fic in their space opera, consider the beta reader and early buyer reviews of The Secret Kings, Book III in my award-winning Soul Cycle. A continuation of this beauty and horror of a story. Brian Niemeier has a great…
December 26, 2016
Big Men with Screwdrivers

Big Men with Screwdrivers

Today's topic comes courtesy of a comment left on a previous post by anonme: I mean this with all sincerity, but one of these days you are going to have to make a detailed blog post detailing what you think "big men with big screwdrivers" is, because to this day,…
December 23, 20166 Comments
Esquire: Star Wars Should Be Fun. Rogue One Isn’t.

Esquire: Star Wars Should Be Fun. Rogue One Isn’t.

Scathing criticism of Disney's $150 million disappointment comes from an unlikely source: Esquire magazine. Let's start by stating plain facts: Rogue One is not good. It may even be bad, though it's hard to argue a film with a final 40 minutes that entertaining could be outright bad. It's the first…
December 22, 20168 Comments
Vox Day Book Aims for Martin; Hits Closer to Tolkien

Vox Day Book Aims for Martin; Hits Closer to Tolkien

Multiple Higo-nominated editor Vox Day intimates that he wrote his latest book with the aim of improving on George R. R. Martin. If early reviews are to be believed, A Sea of Skulls not only surpassed Martin's recent work, it landed somewhere closer to Tolkien territory. Quoth Vox: When I began writing…
December 21, 20166 Comments
#DumpStarWars Makes a Dent: Razörfist’s Twitter Autopsy of Rogue One

#DumpStarWars Makes a Dent: Razörfist’s Twitter Autopsy of Rogue One

The novel concept that not paying people to insult you might disincentivize them from slinging insults may finally have penetrated conservatives' and libertarians' thick skulls. As evidence, I present choice excerpts from the autopsy of Rogue One's opening weekend performed before a live Twitter audience by the ever-perspicacious Razörfist.  If…
December 21, 20169 Comments
Console Wars

Console Wars

I reviewed Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation previously on this blog. Having grown up in the 80s and 90s, I found the book to be a fascinating look behind the scenes of a corporate rivalry that shaped my childhood. It was therefore a pleasure to…
December 20, 2016