Happy Holidays from us to you!
Short Story Contest
As we head into September, I'm struck by how quickly this year has flown by. I have a radio interview in two days and a book fair next month, and I'm sure there will be much more happening as I go full bore with marketing campaigns for Miles of Files, Jana, and...

“Does Humor Belong in Music?”
So queried Frank Zappa in his 1995 CD release of the same name. Of course, like Groucho Marx, Zappa already knew that the answer was an unequivocal Yes. Last month we lost Tom Lehrer, a Harvard math professor better known for the 37-odd satirical songs he wrote and...

Announcing The Whizzers Launch Team!
This weekend, I got my edited copy of Whizzers back from editing and sent out my monthly newsletter announcing the formation of the Whizzers Launch Team. Stuff is a-happening! As Mike Ehrmantraut once said to Jessie Pinkman, "Big doings today." Of course, that...

How Do You Write About Sex—Seriously, Irreverently, or Not At All?
“Writing about sex is like engaging in sex: it’s hard. Or, it should be.” —Sean Murphy Today I want to talk about fictional scenes where characters either discuss sex or engage in sexual activity. I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, because I’m working...

Books: Great Holiday Gifts, or The Greatest Holiday Gifts?
I saw a cartoon the other day that features a character who's starting to sing, "It's beginning to look a lot like..." A second character quickly and quietly puts the first character down, saying, "Shh. Sleep now." Dark stuff, right? But hey, these are dark times—in...

Authors’ Pandemic Sales and The Dubious Metric of “Necessities” Vs. “Luxuries”
Considering everything going in the world, the past week was a pretty good one for me. Almost a year after its initial publication, my novel Whizzers—which had flatlined in the Kindle store—suddenly spiked to #179,500. When one of your babies jumps that much, it gets...

Marketing to Nostalgia: Football, Basketball, and… The Partridge Family?
Recently, I wrote a Monday blog post here discussing the mundane aspects of life in "preparing to move" mode. Entitled Cats & Comics, it briefly touched on the task of selling my vintage comic book collection on eBay—a process of diminishing returns, to put it...

What’s The Problem With Shameless Self-Promotion?
While I still find it somewhat hard to believe, I've been on Twitter for almost eight years. I know this not only because Twitter shows Joined March 2015 on my profile but also because, even if they eliminate that feature, I use a tracker called Who Unfollowed Me? If...

Sometimes All You Can Do Is Rock With The Storm
A while back, I was having a very bad Monday, and wrote a blog post called Roll With The Punches, Baby! The idea was that sometimes you win, sometimes you lose; sometimes life hands you a bouquet of flowers, other times, a punch in the mouth. On that particular...










