I’ve spent fifteen years in publishing—working as a retailer, editor, copyeditor/proofreader, managing editor, production supervisor, and writer. As a result of these experiences, I have formed some opinions, many of them centered around how subjective the rules of grammar and language style are.
One of those opinions is that semicolons are the devil. I fucking hate [...]
Semicolons are the Devil
Priorities
All parents have their priorities. Some are obsessive about teaching the basics of reading and math, and make their child’s life an endless grammar/math quiz. Others don’t give a damn about reading and just want their child to be able to sing. Or dance. Or sit and watch sports/play video games with them. No matter [...]
Treasure in the Mail
The postal service has been good to me this week.
One of the things about being an author that I’m still coming to terms with is all the awesome books I get for free, often in advance of their on-sale dates. Some of these are my own work, and that’s to be expected, but my publishers [...]
A Note on Book Reviews
I don’t review many books on the Peephole these days. Part of that is a kind of professional awkwardness. When I was blogging in obscurity, I could say whatever I wanted about a book. Say it fucking sucked, speak ill of the author’s mother, whatever. Alternately, I could gush about how awesome it was like [...]
The Author’s Catch-22
Aidan at A Dribble of Ink essentially retweeted a post from George RR Martin’s “Not a Blog”, wherein Mr. Martin discusses the current state of the long-awaited A Dance With Dragons, and gives some small insight into his creative process.
Every time GRRM makes a post like this, there is a ripple through the blogosphere as [...]
The Circle of Death
I started this post months ago, and then forgot all about it until a NY Times article my agent sent me reminded me about it.
One of the first acts of the Obama administration was to push forward an economic stimulus bill in an attempt to kickstart a recessing economy. Many detractors said that this is [...]
Worlds Collide
So this is odd.
Some of you may know that before I started writing fantasy professionally, I worked in medical publishing for 10 years. I wore a lot of hats in that career: editor, project manager, copyeditor, proofreader, art director, print production supervisor, vendor manager, and probably a bunch I’m forgetting. One of my regular duties [...]
eBook Wars
So. Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last week, you’ve probably caught wind of the kerfluffle between Amazon.com and Macmillan books. I first discovered that Amazon had delisted all the Macmillan authors when I went online to buy Old Man’s War by John Scalzi and was baffled as to why this [...]
DSAC Round 2
I haven’t been blogging as much as I used to. Part of this is being super-busy, but another part of it is circumspection, out of a desire not to offer any spoilers about The Great Bazaar or The Desert Spear before people get a chance to read those stories for themselves. In the same vein, [...]
This Is My Job
If you missed out on the mayhem, I just participated in a Live Chat RPG on Suvudu with authors Ari Marmell, Diana Rowland, Jason Thompson, along with some fans. It was, as you might expect, utterly bizarre. You can click the link and scroll through the chat in its entirety, though it ran in real [...]