Where Do Ideas Come From?

Where Do Ideas Come From?

"Where do you get your ideas?" Writers get this question often. It doesn't lend itself to a simple yes/no answer, so I'm gonna go in-depth with this one. Where ideas come from: Some are lifted from books, movies, TV, etc. and I file the serial numbers off and recombine them.…
February 22, 20185 Comments
Reason #1,000,001

Reason #1,000,001

The following FaceBook post found its way into my feed yesterday. Names and faces are concealed to protect the innocent. Anon is right on the money. Body positivity/#HealthyAtAnySize is pure rhetorical snake oil for all the reasons listed. Furthermore, it's downright evil for ulterior reasons not-so-subtly hidden in this comment…
February 13, 201814 Comments
Amazon Ghettos

Amazon Ghettos

Following my recent posts about how the fundamental realities of publishing have changed in the new Amazon/indie-dominated landscape, a reader passed along a number of eye-opening revelations about how authors and publishers are unintentionally consigning their books to "Amazon Ghettos". The Amazon sleuth explains: Amazon’s algorithm is set up to…
December 13, 201714 Comments
Sanderson’s Law

Sanderson’s Law

Authors are just as prone to cognitive dissonance when received wisdom about the publishing industry is challenged, as this series of tweets demonstrates. That tweet is not a statement of personal preference or opinion. It is based on objective market data. As of this writing, the top three books in…
December 12, 201719 Comments
A Deal They Can’t Refuse

A Deal They Can’t Refuse

Bradford Walker offers some sound advice to media conglomerates who are overzealous about guarding their IPs. Yesterday I posted Razorfist's recreation of a lost episode of The Shadow radio show. In the video, he mentions that he's gotten nastygrams from the IP owner, Conde Nast. The now-infamous Axanar incident shows…
November 2, 20174 Comments
Work for Hire Pros and Cons

Work for Hire Pros and Cons

Over at Walker's Study, Bradford Walker informs authors about the pros and cons of work for hire projects. Here's Bradford: I'm talking about this because, if you are at all serious about paying bills by writing fiction, then you're going to consider taking Work For Hire contracts. That's you as…
October 14, 201711 Comments
How to Polish Your Prose

How to Polish Your Prose

In the latest installment of Geek Gab: On the Books, I draw from my editing experience to offer writing advice to aspiring authors. How do you avoid the most common writing mistakes made by new authors? How can authors identify and break bad writing habits? Why does second person POV…
October 5, 2017
Authors: Control Your IPs

Authors: Control Your IPs

Author Kristine Kathryn Rusch hammers home the importance of intellectual property rights and observes how decades of tradpub conditioning has left most authors woefully inept at controlling their IPs. I wrote the following sentence to someone who wanted to take my entire IP in a series for a pittance: I’ve…
September 21, 201716 Comments
The Thinking Man

The Thinking Man

Bradford Walker contrasts the thinking man's pulp hero with the more familiar Man of Action over at PulpRev.com. The Fighting-Man is the default protagonist, but there are other archetypes. They arose out of defining themselves against the Fighting-Man, often in the form of a tradeoff: he's really good at (X)…
September 12, 20175 Comments
DBZ Syndrome

DBZ Syndrome

Author JD Cowan warns writers against making the same mistake with superpowered heroes that Toriyama did with Dragon Ball Z. There's always been a problem getting superpowers across in fiction. For instance, Superman has almost no defined limits to his abilities, which is fine for a Superman tale but it…
September 7, 201711 Comments