The best insight comes when you least expect it. I was in Toronto a couple weekends ago, at Ad Astra. I sat in a room on Sunday afternoon with twenty other writers, staring at a piece of flash fiction I wrote for their annual writing contest. I hadn’t won, and while I waited to talk […]
Archive > April 2012
GUEST POST, by Mae Empson: Speculative Poetry 101
Today, the Inkpunks invited me to talk about speculative poetry.  April is National Poetry Writing Month  in which poets often try to write a poem a day.  Like all writing, poetry benefits from continued on-going practice, so I encourage you, if you are interested in writing poetry, to set yourself goals.  A poem a week might be more realistic, though. […]
Guest Post: What NOT to do with your Website, By Lisa Grabenstetter
I’ve been doing some soul searching lately on the topic of websites, very aware that I need to streamline my online presence. So when illustrator Lisa Grabenstetter decided to write her guest post on the subject, I could not have been more pleased. Thank you Lisa! ******** A Brief History Of The Internet, or How […]
Guest Post by Damien Walters Grintalis: Falling Into Dark
Let’s talk about fear for a moment. You hear a strange noise in the middle of the night. You sit up in bed with one hand pressed to your chest and the other clutching the sheets. Your breath catches in your throat. Is it a harmless push of air through the vents? Your cat knocking […]
Delicious Prose
Stories are like meals. Some I tear through the way I attack a greasy mountain of chili cheese fries. I slurp them down, satisfying guilty cravings that sometimes leave me regretting the experience. Â Others are like expensive sushi, and I let each morsel linger on my tongue, willing it to melt slowly into memory. I […]
The Job Continuum
For the last week and a half, the Inkpunks have been in a pretty serious discussion of our work-life-art relationships. As artists, it’s almost impossible not to struggle to find some kind of balance between the need for money and the need to create. Sometimes it feels like the two needs are completely inimical and […]
Guest Post: Research, or, Why You Should Start at the Library, by John Klima
John Klima is the Assistant Director of the Waukesha Public Library. He also edits the Hugo Award–winning magazine Electric Velocipede. As of 2010, the magazine has also been nominated for the World Fantasy Award four years in a row. In 2007 Klima edited an anthology of science fiction and fantasy stories based on spelling-bee winning […]
Bifocals for Authorial Vision
I recently finished watching the movie Louisa May Alcott: The Woman Behind Little Women. (It’s a great movie about a fascinating woman in a fascinating family–I recommend it highly!) If you don’t know, Louisa May Alcott was the J.K. Rowling of her time, growing so successful from her children’s books that she became, in adjusted […]
the taxman and the artist
So. A few weeks ago, I took my receipts, pay stubs, and pages and pages of handwritten notes to an accountant to see about filing taxes as a freelance illustrator. It was my first time doing this and I was nervous the accountant would take one look at my stack of tattered papers and tell […]
Guest Post: 9 Ways to Piss Off an Editor, by James L. Sutter
By far the most useful thing I’ve ever done for my writing career is getting into editing. Being the Fiction Editor for Paizo Publishing has helped me make connections with amazing editors and authors, taught me the business side of publishing from contracts to distribution, and helped me recognize common writing mistakes and cliches before […]
