Archive for the 'Career' Category
December 6th, 2010 by jdsawyer
The following is intended for other writers working to find their stride. I hope something in the following meanderings is useful to you as you hash out your process.
Fall is crazy, right? Halloween, Thanksgiving, School restarting, Christmas, RenFaire, Dickens Faire, conventions, festivities, and all those bleeding birds nesting in my trees and eating my pears, it’s enough to make one want to accept exile to an obscure Italian island.
After my writing binge this summer, I’ve been caught perpetually in the feeling that I’m wading through treacle, and it’s been driving me bonkers. Too much time on the road, too much Real Life ™ getting in the way, not enough time podcasting, or writing, or doing any of the half dozen other things that are in the top five of life priorities.
Continue reading ‘That Plateau Feeling is an Illusion’
November 15th, 2010 by jdsawyer
Buried Alive In The Blues, the apocalyptic fantasy I wrote for Philippa Ballantine’s Erotica A La Carte, is now available as a standalone ebook from all your favorite venues.
The end isn’t near, it’s here.
Irene, recently widowed, knows the Earth is drowning, and all she wants is one last night to dance. The best band in the world is playing just up the road in a blues club at the edge of what little land remains, and there she encounters a stranger, and a clue that might unlock the mystery of her husband’s death.
This is the way the world ends: not with a whimper, but with the blues.
The story is now available from Amazon, from Barnes & Noble, and from Smashwords.
This title is intended for adult audiences.
—Story Sample Below the Cut—
Continue reading ‘Buried Alive in an Ebook’
October 22nd, 2010 by jdsawyer
And, from the kitchen this weekend we have for you a lovely Link Salad, with leaves of history and science, garnished with a healthy dose of whimsy.
But first, I begin with a special treat for my free-wheeling brewer friends. Beer has always been a problem in space — not because of drunk piloting, but because weightlessness does weird things to the sense of taste. There’s also the question of what the bubbles will do to the body, and how drinkable beer will be in zero G anyway. Fortunately, someone is officially working on these problems so that we can take into space with us the drink that made civilization possible in the first place: Click here for Space Beer!
Now, on to the main courses:
Continue reading ‘Link Salad, Oct 22 2010′
October 10th, 2010 by jdsawyer
On Halloween Weekend, October 29th to be exact, a new series debuts at Amazon.com and in the other major ebook markets.
A man of infinite social grace he isn’t, but what former disgraced Oakland Police Detective Clarke Lantham lacks in high culture he makes up for with his ability to slip into any role he needs to to get the job done (which is probably why he got fired in the first place).
Fortunately, the world needs private detectives. Unfortunately for Lantham, on this particular Friday morning, “the world” consists of a fretful mother with a missing daughter, and the case she hires him for is about send reality staggering into the gutter like an eighty-year-old drunk.
From the posh shadow of Mount Diablo to the kink clubs of San Francisco to the genetic engineering labs of Stanford, Clarke Lantham chases down pieces of the weirdest puzzle he’s ever seen, all for the sake of a nineteen-year-old girl whose face he can’t stop seeing every time he closes his eyes.
And Then She Was Gone is the first of the Clarke Lantham Mysteries, hard-boiled detective fiction with a hard comic edge, the series consists of a planned three self-contained novels and a number of short stories, though I enjoy writing this character so much I would not be surprised if it grew. This is a market experiment–how well can a relative unknown do in the suddenly wide-open ebook marketplace? We shall see. If nothing else, this experiment has yielded one result already: a book which will give you your month’s RDA of adrenaline while making you chuckle maniacally.
I hope you join me on October 29, 2010 for the all-markets rush. More details coming soon!
September 29th, 2010 by jdsawyer
An editor friend of mine recently asked me what I would consider an ideal rejection letter, if I were a hopeless writer with delusions of adequacy and no command of grammar. (I’m pretty sure the “If I were” bit was a ruse to make her think she wasn’t talking about me, so I actually expect to receive the below letter in the mail in the next couple weeks).
Since I enjoy being entertained (even while having my manuscripts torn up), I suggested something which I would be proud to hang on my wall for the sheer conversation-starting value.
So, here is my ideal rejection letter for completely hopeless writers:
Dear [writer],
Thank you for your submission. While we do not think it advisable for you to commit suicide this early in your career, your writing displays the kind of promise and angst that have made unknowns like Sylvia Plath, Anne Frank, and John Kennedy Toole into posthumous best-sellers. These writers made the crucial mistake of dying with only one or two books to take the world by storm–don’t let yourself fall into that trap!
Unfortunately, our policy only permits us to publish fiction in your genre after your scandalous death, so we encourage you to build up your backlist and contact us again when you feel you have said your piece.
Sincerely,
[editor]
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go to the mailbox to check for today’s round of rejection slips.
What are some of the best rejections you’ve given, gotten, or heard of? Chime in in the comments!
September 5th, 2010 by jdsawyer
Zombie industries are all around us–these are businesses whose models have ceased to be relevant and they’re just waiting for something better to knock them over. This doesn’t mean they’re not still earning money–some of them are earning quite well, thank you. And it doesn’t mean that they’ve been artificially resurrected with government stimulus money, although those certainly seem to be zombie-like.
No, I’m talking about industries and businesses that don’t yet know they’re dead. The ones whose future demise is as certain as the next big earthquake: we don’t know quite when, and we don’t know quite where, but the prospect that somebody will huff and puff and blow the house down has a probability of 1.
Continue reading ‘How To Spot a Zombie’
August 27th, 2010 by jdsawyer
If you want the background for this post, check The Binge post for a description of my recent unintentional astronomical word count adventure. Short version: I wrote one hundred twenty three thousand words in fifty days. Yow.
So, you may ask, what did I learn from writing 123k words in 50 days?
Plenty.
What do you need to know if you’re gonna try for this kind of marathon?
Try these on for size:
First, as you can read in my post about the health problems I developed as a result of crappy Microsoft workmanship, ergonomics are everything. You can actually seriously damage your arms, hands, and wrists if you don’t move around regularly, have a comfortable keyboard, and pay attention to your body. Being in a groove is no excuse.
Second, food. I tried a variety of different styles of eating throughout the ordeal, mostly motivated by whatever I could think to put in the kitchen that week. What I wound up discovering surprised me. I expected to want junk food—pre-prepared high calorie, high density, high-protein, ultra-tasty nibbles supplemented with fruits and finger-friendly vegetables. However, it turned out that I gravitated toward made-from-scratch fare. I actually learned to make wood-oven pizza, sourdough from scratch, knishes, and a few other things during this time, and not just because they were tasty. It’s because it gave me something else to do.
Continue reading ‘Writing Odyssey: Lessons Learned’
August 27th, 2010 by jdsawyer
By the time I finish writing this article, I’ll have written 123,000 words in fifty days. The output constitutes two short-book-length works (one novel, one reference work), nine blog posts, two commissioned articles, and some odds and ends of work on another novel.
For the first half of the duration, I did it by accident. So, I thought it might be worth something to those of you who write or want to if I documented the experience.
Continue reading ‘Writing Odyssey: The Binge’
August 9th, 2010 by jdsawyer
A few months back, after grinding my eight-year-old generic ergo keyboard into the ground I found myself in need of a new ergonomic keyboard. The keyboard failed on a deadline, so I had little choice but to do that thing you’re not supposed to do: shop for computer equipment at Best Buy.
I’ve been writing and hacking since the age of four, though I don’t hack much anymore, so I need an ergo keyboard to keep my wrists functioning properly. The only ergo on offer was the Microsoft Natural Pro 4000, so I paid through the nose for it ($60) and took it home.
It looked gorgeous. The spacebar was sticky as if the tolerances were a little too close, but I figured it would work out. Unfortunately, I never got to see if it would–the keyboard failed in about sixty days.
A return trip to Best Buy, and some carefully measured profanity coupled with very complimentary sweet talk, got me a new one of the same model for free.
Continue reading ‘Microsoft: Consistent Quality Through The Ages’
June 29th, 2010 by jdsawyer
[amazon-product align="right" bgcolor="#99CCCC" height="240" width="120" frameborder="1"]B003QP4F0W[/amazon-product] Circlet Press’s new anthology, Apocalypse Sex, is now available on Amazon and Smashwords. It contains a new and improved version my novelette Buried Alive In The Blues, which some of you may remember from its appearance on Erotica A La Carte last year. Now you can take it anywhere with you on your handy-dandy e-reader!
Don’t delay — read for yourself the story of the woman who loved the Blues so much that, when the world ended, it was the only thing she still wanted.
Me? I think I’m going to go celebrate. Where is that Leadbelly album?
June 22nd, 2010 by jdsawyer
Those of you following the Balticon and Contracts series on the blog have probably been wondering where the hell I’ve been – and those of you following the podcasts are really wondering.
Well, I’ve been writing and producing an album. Wish there was a sexier answer, but there it is. And it is fun 
I’m going on pod later today to record some special episodes – one will contain Down From Ten bloopers!
The other one is the occasion for the post. I’m going to be recording a special episode about guns. Particularly, about how to deal with guns in fiction, geared for people who don’t have extensive first-hand experience with them. I’m going to be covering vocabulary, safety, different types of firearms, popular myths that come from movies, and other stuff that can shoot your credibility in the foot. To this end, if you have questions, please post them to the comments here, so I can be sure to answer them.
See you on pod soon! And fear not. The Balticon Adventure and Principles of Contracts both return next week.
June 4th, 2010 by jdsawyer
As a writer, like most writers, I have one giant terror point. For some people it’s the writing. For some people it’s showing your work to friends, or to strangers. For some people it’s marketing in general. For me, it’s marketing fiction to editors. I don’t have a problem with nonfiction (as my bibliography demonstrates), but when it comes to the giant black box world of terror there’s very little that can beat marketing fiction to New York.
It’s scared me since I was 12, when I read Writer’s Digest religiously at the library every day (which, in retrospect, was my first mistake). To my twelve year old mind, it described a world full of arcane rituals, secret handshakes, nepotism, and strange protocols – and a game at which nobody made a dime to boot.
Of course, I’ve learned better in the meantime, but the terror never quite went away. For years I’ve coped by doing other things I needed to do anyway in order to go pro – focusing on craft, learning to network at cons, podcasting and learning about how to interact with an audience, building my platform, and romancing the occasional agent, but I’ve hit the point in my career where I’ve got a hell of a backlist piling up (at least, for someone at my point in their career), and a handful of fiction sales that prove that my terror (which is largely born of the sense that I don’t understand a goddamn thing about the fiction publishing culture) is well past the point of being about 75% bullshit.
Continue reading ‘The Great Ass-Moving Experiment’
May 20th, 2010 by jdsawyer
[amazon-product align="right" bgcolor="#99CCCC" height="240" width="120" frameborder="1"]189749209X[/amazon-product] These are the milestones which I know, from experience, will seem piddly small in retrospect, but for me at the moment they represent surmounting a ridgeline and seeing the valley beyond. The valley might be filled with swamps, marshes, and tangles under the trees, but from here it’s gorgeous.
I can’t sit here. There’s thousands of miles and hopefully countless vistas to hit before I run out of steam. Even today, I’ve got a few thousand words and a recording session to plow through. But waiting at my door this morning was my first ever author’s copy of a fiction publication – which somehow feels far different from authors copies for a non-fiction publication. Tonight, if I make my word count, I’m going to make up a shelf devoted just to my publications – seems like a good way to celebrate.
Thanks to all of you who read this blog, send feedback to the podcasts, buy LinuxJournal and the new anthology, and have stopped by to help me with a friendly kick upside the head in the last few years. It’s been glorious – and I daresay that after another fair amount of sweat and blood, it will be even more glorious.
May 6th, 2010 by jdsawyer
[amazon-product align="right" bgcolor="#99CCCC" height="240" width="120" frameborder="1"]189749209X[/amazon-product]It may be a minor thing in retrospect, but today it’s tickling my socks off. My first fiction print sales are now available from Amazon. The Pod Complex is an anthology of the best stories from the podosphere in genres ranging from mystery to horror with all stops in between. My own stories Cold Duty, The Man In The Rain, and Angels Unawares feature, and they’re joined by other authors like Podfather Tee Morris, Dark Overlord Scott Sigler, Dead Robot Justin Macumber, Night Terror-inducer Phil Rossi, and a host of other creative folks like Jared Axelrod, Jack Mangan, Emerian Rich, J.D. Williams, and at least four others whose stories I haven’t read yet (but, judging by the general quality of the anthology, should be page-turners).
It’s a handsome trade paperback with pretty cover-art, and will sit handsomely on your bookshelf or coffee table. Hours of entertainment – and, in my case, new and improved versions of stories you love, now available to enjoy at your own pace instead of at mine.
Share and Enjoy!
March 16th, 2010 by jdsawyer
As part of my self-education as a writer learning to market his work, I’ve been watching trends in e-books and audiobooks as well as publishing industry trends, and thinking about them in the context of podcasting as an endeavor that takes a lot of passion and commitment from very creative people.
With all the talk of the podcasting revolution a few years ago, I wonder how many people truly grasp the potential enormity of what we’re doing. Just like good old Mr. Ballantine who invented the paperback, we podcasters are creating new kinds of intellectual property. However, unlike Mr. Ballantine, we don’t fully appreciate what we’re up to.
Continue reading ‘It’s Time To Bust It Open’
