Sightings in the Wild

I've been busy, here and there, hither and yon. Which is to say, there are four guest posts of mine out there on the great wide web from the past few weeks.

Why is a raven like a writing desk? Guest post for fellow word-smith, Julianne Douglas, writer of historical fiction, on how my poetry informs my fiction.  (From my intro to the post:)

Having been a poet for a far longer time than I have been a writer of fiction, I maintain that poetry - or at least the tools of poetry - underlies all effective writing. Not only that, but in writing speculative fiction, those tools can enhance world building and reader immersion in fundamental and crucial ways.

The poetic tools I'm going to focus on are specificity, musicality, and comparisons. All three can heighten the reading experience of your novel, especially novels of speculative fiction.

Interview on Addicted to Words, by crit partner and YA writer, Candie Campbell.

In which I answer questions about my favorite characters, books (mine and others), and show off some of my pottery.

My post on The Scriptors blog, Ithaka Rising: By the numbers, where I detail the sales/earnings in the first few weeks of my newest release. 

And, last, but not least, a long and detailed post for Susan Spann's blog, Spann of Time on the tasks involved in being a writer-publisher. Susan is both a writer (her Shinobi Mystery series is EXCELLENT) and an intellectual property lawyer, who runs the excellent twitter chat #publaw. (From my intro to the post:)

. . . I have just published my 5^th novel. One of my books has sold nearly 10,000 copies and spent much of last summer on the Amazon best seller lists. So am I a breakout success? That entirely depends on what you consider a success.

By the ‘can you support your family on your art’ metric, no. But very few writers can reach that high bar. I measure my success on a very different metric: Have I learned to put out a product that is indistinguishable from what you would find from any small or large publisher? Yes. Do those books sell in the open marketplace? Yes. Do those books get favorably compared to traditionally published books in similar genres? Yes.

Plenty of news and views of yours truly, along with some (I hope) useful information about the world of indie-publishing and the writing life. 

#SFWApro

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