August 13th, 2010 
fanaticalpupil I don’t know much about Tinashé, and I haven’t really been able to find much, but he does have a website and an album coming out 9/13. (We’ll pretend like the whole album concept is still relevant even though artists can have their music heard all over the world through the magic of the internet.)
From one of my new favorite sites: Pigeons and Planes.
August 10th, 2010 fanaticalpupil Evidently a very old and very large publisher of mass market paperback books is moving entirely to eBooks. I’ve never heard of Dorchester Publishing, but they have an extensive list of authors.
ReadWriteWeb asks:
The e-book format has inherent multimedia possibilities: trailers, background and reference materials, interviews, actors reciting the poems the book contains. But will these ultimately be considered enrichment of the text or just distractions from it? Perhaps these sorts of experiments will go the way of Flash splash pages and manically hyperlinked documents. In the end, the portability may be the fulcrum, the only fulcrum. Are e-books simply the paperbacks of the future, the cheapest way to publish the cheapest books for the largest number of readers?
I tend to think the last question is the most important as well as most easily answered. Sure, there will be books with ancillary bonus features, but I think people will view that kind of content as they do the bonus material that accompanies some DVDs. There will be some opportunity for authors like Mark Danielewski to take advantage of these feature in avant guard ways. But mostly, eBooks will be cheap, light, and easy to buy, just like mass market paperbacks are now.
July 28th, 2010 fanaticalpupil According to the first 500 words of the Valkyrie Project…
Having only read The Da Vinci Code, all I can say is: ouch. I certainly wouldn’t mind selling millions of copies of my books, but I’ve seen other authors names on those IWL badges and I’d much rather be like any of those.
Another 700 works from later in the Valkyrie Project bring me to the same result. I guess I shall have to resort to some sort of gimmickery now to get people to read my work. Oh well. I suppose it’s better than if I’d turned out to write like Stephanie Meyer.
Posted in Around The Web, Random Stuff, Writing 
Tags: Dan Brown, I Write Like, Valkyrie Project, Writing 
View Comments July 4th, 2010 fanaticalpupil Today, take a moment to celebrate the independence and freedom that makes the United States of America so unique and powerful: Buy a book or music that was published or distributed through a huge company. Or even just buy some beer or wine to bring to a barbecue that was made locally and distributed not because it’s from a huge company that packs supermarket shelves, but because people have discovered it and like it. Help others to discover these hidden gems and help America remain independent and free.
Posted in Milestones, Random Stuff Tags: 4th of July, Holidays, Independence Day, Independent View Comments March 18th, 2010 fanaticalpupil 
The Chuck producers must totally read my blog. In Part 2 of the Frightened Rabbit on Chuck series, I criticized their use of Backwards Walk and suggested that they should have saved Frightened Rabbit for when their new album came out (which happened just a little while ago, as of this writing).
Well, they went ahead and followed my advice anyway, using the song Swim Until You Can’t See Land in the latest episode of Chuck. I was literally laughing out loud (though there was no one around to hear).
If you’d like to hear the song in it’s entirety for free, I’d recommend heading over to Lala.com. If you like it, you can get it for only 89 cents, or the whole album on MP3 is only $7.49. I’ve listened to it once through so far, and it seems like it will end up being every bit as good as Midnight Organ Fight.
Are you a man or a bag of sand?
Posted in Music, TV Tags: Chuck, Frightened Rabbit, Music, Swim Until You Cant See Land, TV View Comments March 11th, 2010 fanaticalpupil 
4 Reasons I Quit Writing Exercises – I totally agree. When I’m not writing for a project, I write for my blog. I’ve done writing with prompts and journaling and other things like that, but to me, that ended up feeling like like training for a marathon by doing wind sprints.
Why Word Count Goals Can Be Destructive – Again, totally agree. I used to have word count goals, and I spent way too much time tracking my word count while writing and after my writing sessions. I now have what I think of as “soft” word count goals. They’re goals, yes, but my main goal is just to write something. I can track that easily with either a 1 for Yes, or a 0 for No. I track my words, but on a more meta-level now (at the scene/chapter level rather than on a daily output level).
Why You Should Stick With A Story – I have much less experience with actually finishing a story, but I certainly do agree with the idea that you should finish what you start. (Do as I say, not as I do!) That way, instead of practicing starting a new and exciting idea over and over, you practice toughing it out, and you practice writing a complete story. As they say, “No one wants to read just the beginning of a really cool story.”
March 9th, 2010 fanaticalpupil 
From Charlie Stross’ blog: Why books are the length they are. An interesting read on why the coming ebook revolution will set authors free – provided that it happens soon enough that people actually still read things besides blogs and status updates.
February 27th, 2010 fanaticalpupil 
[This post is 916 words - about 4 minutes for an average reader]
Writers are well known for their procrastination. Many call it “block”, and while the traditional definition is probably accurate in some cases, I’d venture it’s usually just that there’s other stuff to do.
It’s taken me a while, and a few readings of Getting Things Done, to get my life’s priorities sorted. But now that I have, I feel I can give a good definition/explanation of Productive Procrastination. It’s simple, really, but it does take some time and self-awareness.
Productive Procrastination is when you put off doing a task by doing another productive task. See, like I said, easy enough. There are 2 keys to being able to pull it off though, which are harder than just coming up with and understanding the definition.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Random Stuff Tags: Getting Things Done, Procrastination, Productivity, Writers Block View Comments February 26th, 2010 fanaticalpupil 
Do I get to count blog posts?
An interesting question from a reader over at Barry Lyga’s blog (via Jo Treggiari):
I used to think keeping a journal was pretty good writing practice, and it is in a way, but I don’t think it’s all that helpful for my fiction. To get better at fiction, I have to write, well, fiction.
Okay, so not really a question. My apologies. And even more sorrowful, Barry says:
Your blog doesn’t help you all that much towards your million bad words!
I will give you that writing a blog is not writing fiction. (Unless you’re blogging about a fake life, perhaps, and making up stories – something which I’ve considered, but discarded because it seems like you’d either have to write a whole bunch of blog posts ahead of time, or be really good at making stuff up on a daily basis; anyway…) I would argue that my blog (at least, the one that I post to on a consistent basis; not so much this one) has helped me tremendously in getting through my million bad words. Or, perhaps, if you don’t buy that, then I’d contend that by practicing on my blog and developing a strong voice over there, I’ve cut down on the number of bad words I’ll have to pump into crappy drafts of fiction pieces before I write The Great American Novel. (And by TGAN, I mean Awesome Space Opera Pulp Adventure)
The funny thing is, though, that I agree with the reader in saying that a journal isn’t that helpful for fiction. My argument in that case is that a journal is personal and not intended for public consumption. A blog, on the other hand, is specifically intended to be read by other people – just like a novel or short story. A blog post has to be (or should be if it’s not) written and edited carefully before it’s posted on the World Wide Web where the entire web of the wide world can see it.
Also, since blog posts are shorter in length than novels or short stories, and authors usually try to write them in a correspondingly shorter time span (or perhaps with shorter deadlines), they force the writer to create a higher quality first draft so that further revisions are limited. Otherwise, the blog post may never get published (trust me on that one), and when it does, it might be woefully out of date. (Clearly this is more true of certain kinds of blogs, but I am certain it applies to all blogs as a meta rule) While the subject matter may not be directly transferable to the world of fiction writing, this ability to quickly turn out words and create higher quality rough drafts is as useful in both cases as, say, being able to run fast is to both bobsledding and football.
February 25th, 2010 fanaticalpupil Hope for the Hopeless. Or Clueless.
Jim Macdonald posted a letter from Publish America over on the Making Light blog. According to this letter, authors “published” by Publish America can now have up to 5 copies of their book sent to Random House (for the mere cost of 10 copies of the author’s book).
For those who might actually think this sounds like a good idea, here’s another idea you can do at much lower cost: Finish your novel, order a copy from a POD (Print On Demand) company, and mail it to Random House yourself. A brief check tells me that it would cost $7 to print a 200 page book on Lulu. Add another $3 to mail it yourself, and another $3 to mail it to Random House for a total of $13.
The cheapest sci-fi book I see on Publish America is $12.95. If you order 10 books (the minimum order to get the extra copies sent to Random House) at 50% off (they provide a coupon code) + $1.99 shipping per book, that’s $64.75 + $19.90 = $84.65.
Do-it-yourselfers save about $70 and probably have the same chance to get their book published by Random House as the PA authors.
Posted in Books Tags: Patrick Nielsen Hayden, Publish America, Self-Publishing, Traditional Publishing View Comments
