Ebooks are not books. They’re not ‘electronic’ books. In the same way that MP3s are not vinyl and Second Life isn’t real life (who’da thunk?). The book industry is not moving to ebooks. The publishing industry is expanding from paper to electronic screens. The losers will be those who think they are moving to electronic [...]
Writers should be thirsty for all the assistance offered to them. Hell, everyone who works daily to improve a skill should. And there are plenty of formulae, methods and structures out there for the writer (and I don’t mean that in any negative sense). Larry Brooks’ Six Core Competencies is one of my favourites. You [...]
Jan O’Hara posts on Writer Unboxed about worrying about your stats. In this web-a-day world there’s no shortage of stats to tell us how we’re doing, how popular we are (as popular as our last post? Please, God, no!). As a blogger, and a writer who can only get his Bad Self published online, there’s [...]
David Hume (1711-1776) was, amongst other things, a philosopher. In his essay Of Tragedy (included in the Four Dissertations volume) he explores the reasons why humans are so keen on tragedy. Tragic plays include scenes of joy only to better plunge the audience into the next dramatic act. But push the audience – or reader [...]
A note about a great anthology project which should interest writers and readers of Science Fiction, as well as Creative Commons fans (I fit into all these categories, which must be why I liked it so much!). Thoughtcrime Experiments is a paying online anthology of Science Fiction stories (or, more precisely, speculative fiction) edited by [...]
I was listening to an old Sitepoint podcast which is about the future of publishing in a digital world. More specifically, it’s about how and why print publishing can stand alongside digital publishing, especially when the latter offers free, easy to store content at your convenience. The podcast offers a host of technical and, as [...]
OK, so I’m not holding a seance or anything, but this seems like a good follow-on from my previous post. I find it much easier to write when I’m on holiday, and so in sunnier climes last week I began writing at pace. Like most people, I also read a lot on my hols, and [...]
As someone who is interested in Free culture as well as writing, I was struck when I came across this from a long list of tips for authors: “5 When information becomes free and universally accessible, voluminous research for a novel is devalued along with it”. When I think of my favourite novels (2001: A [...]
Found out today that an old uni friend of mine also writes, and has read stuff out loud at an open mic night. Out loud . Cripes, I can barely read my own work to myself silently. Cojones, that man. Respect. Really wish I had more time to write. It’s great to know of someone [...]
