Paris bucket list

If you can’t give bad advice, what’s the point of giving any advice at all? Daughter Becky has a friend who is on her way to Paris for a semester abroad.  On Facebook, she was tasked with drafting a “bucket list” of things her friend had to do while she was there.  Perhaps foolishly, she…

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Ringing in the New Year

It has been quite a year I have a bad habit of focusing on things that haven’t happened yet rather than stepping back and looking behind me at what has been accomplished.  This tunnel vision quality is sometimes very useful, such as when I’m writing a novel, but maybe less useful in other settings, such…

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Promoting in a social media world

Leading horses to water Promoting a novel can be extremely challenging, and in ways that are different from promoting a website or a toy or a machine that goes *ping* at regular intervals.  Novels are subjectively enjoyable, frequently disappointing, and an unavoidable commitment. Nobody wants to get stuck reading a bad one, or worse, having…

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International and electronic Immortal

Death of the “local” customer As I have discussed before, the e-book revolution sort of took me by surprise.  I still like paper books, but I’m coming to realize that every day I cling to them is another day for me to look like a guy on horseback on a freeway. And I’m still trying…

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Mary Sues and assholes

On the notion of the Mary Sue and the ubiquity of fan fiction I’m a fairly non-social writer, by which I mean when I’m working on something I’m alone with it until I’m reasonably certain it’s truly and actually done.  I have not historically taken advantage of writing groups or posted partials for comment, or…

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Miscellany

Losing my mind I’m going to go ahead and conclude that I am not wired properly to handle a gradual book roll-out. A week ago I was completely convinced Immortal wasn’t going to debut as scheduled, which is a terrifying thought for someone who’s already gone through that once.  Now I’m completely preoccupied with the…

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I need my own flash mob

I need command of my own flash mob Speaking today to a local bookseller, the question was posed: if an event were planned in the store to promote Immortal, could I get thirty or forty people to show up? And the answer is: I don’t know.  Because so far all of my promoting has been…

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Immortal Quotes

Some choice quotes With little else to do right now but wait for the advance review copies to surface–soon, honestly–I thought I’d share some of my favorite quotes from Immortal.  These are taken from various sections of the book and mostly stand on their own without need for additional context. I’d also like to add…

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Accidental Network

When I was still trying to understand Twitter I had this conversation once with a friend who signed onto Twitter before I did. “I’m in a chat.” “On Twitter?  How the hell do you chat in Twitter?  Is there a room everyone goes to?” “No, we just all follow each other.” This struck me as…

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Welcome

Ancient times Let me take you back to when I first started writing for the Internet. The year was 1995, and “the Internet” consisted of America On-Line and a sign posted at the edge of AOL that read “Here There Be Monsters”.  That was where the rest of the World Wide Web lived, and one…

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