As mentioned in yesterday’s post, I’m attempting to publish 52 chapbooks throughout 2022. You can read a little more about it here. Today, let’s talk a little about the first cab off the rank: Available in ebook from all great bookstores right now and in print next week, but you can get it as a […]
Back at the tail end of 2020, Dean Wesley Smith laid out a challenge to aspiring indie writers who had a short story back list: publish 52 short stories over 2021. One of the key details in his write-up is that the focus is publishing rather than writing. As he put it: A lot of […]
Back when I taught short story writing, people would often ask the trick for getting past the inevitable flow or rejections. My answer was always simple: it comes down to volume. When you have a single short story that you’re sending out, every rejection feels like you’ve been thwarted. When you’re sending out a dozen […]
Yesterday Brain Jar Press released the sixth Writer Chap, Headstrong Girl, from the powerhouse of Australian genre, Kim Wilkins (aka Kimberly Freeman). It brings a close to season one, which was a test case for what seemed like an improbable and weird idea back in the middle of 20202. But this isn’t a pitch for […]
Most days, I’m faking it here on the blog. My mission statement is simple—show up every day and put the most interesting insight I have into the world—but at least half the time I show up searching for something to be interested in or something useful to say. Some days, I’m less interested and more […]
While the traditional side of the publishing industry is bracing itself for disruptions in the supply chain, the conversation over on the indie publishing side is all about how to prepare for the coming email marketing apocalypse. For those who don’t pay attention to such things, the low-down goes something like this: Apple has been […]
LOCATION: Windsor, Brisbane, Australia. THE QUICK-AND-DIRTY NEWS Printers have shipped out first print run of Joanne Anderton’s Inanimates, which should arrive around mid-week. First COVID vaccination jab yesterday, which means I’m aching like hell today. I’m searching for a new day job, which has thrown life into chaos. Our cat had an emergency vet visit, which […]
Back when I pulled together the Brain Jar Press writer guidelines, I specifically called out that we use a backlist driven model of publishing. It’s one of those phrases that generates a lot of questions from new authors, and there’s been a project where the author in question wasn’t interested in pursuing publication with us […]
I recently opened the “unfinished drafts” section of my blog and discovered that I had 52 unfinished posts in various states of completion. Some of these resulted from dumping a quick idea using the WordPress app on my phone, little more than three of four words to be fleshed out later. Some are just a […]
I opened up for Freelance Cover Design Work last week because our cat had an unexpected vet visit and it wiped out my emergencies fund. However, with my small business grant running out towards the end of October, I’m also preparing to open up a few more side-hustles to keep things afloat while I’m looking […]
My favourite headline doing the rounds right now: Is Salman Rushdie’s decision to publish on Substack the death of the novel? It seems to originate from Julian Novitz’s article over on The Conversation, taking a quick dive into Rushdie’s decision to publish his new novella through Substack on a Pro deal (where Substack pays creators […]
I’m a big fan of running playbooks to take decision making off the table, especially on low energy days when I don’t have the spoons for self-management. There’s a larger piece in the works on this—part of a series that’s been going through my newsletter of late—but it remains a work-in-progress because there’s a bunch […]
