Last year I did a new cover for Alan Baxter’s Shadow Bites: A Horror Sampler, a free bundle of stories and novel excerpts for folks who’d like to get a taste of Alan’s work. It’s a project from a longer conversation Al and I were having about title development, the stuff we’ve both been doing […]
Funny thing about the Chapbook challenge: it feels as though I’m always behind, given that I’m only posting about the second chapbook now, but that’s largely because the folks who see them first are signed up to my Patreon (where Chapbook number 4 just dropped and I’m preparing for number 5). It’s also because print […]
The negative effects of stress are magnified by a lack of self-efficacy and control. The more you feel like you’re unable to shift the needle in a stressful situation, the faster you inch towards stress induced burn-out. We often advise new writers to focus on the things you can control. You can’t control whether publishers […]
One of the recurring refrains in Todd Henry’s The Accidental Creative is the importance of unnecessary creating or back-burner creating. The creative work that you do that’s not on spec or on demand, but something that’s done because you’re curious, refining new skills, or simply interested in the subject. My accidental creating often revolves pro-wrestling, […]
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 […]
