Last week, I finished a proposal for a new book, and I sent it off to its prospective editor.
Last week, I picked up my work-in-progress, BITE AFTER BITE, and I wrote a few thousand words in a new chapter.
Those  two sentences were very easy to type, but they don’t begin to capture the true nature […]

Agent - Reviews the contracts to eliminate unfavorable clauses and protect the author’s interests, allowing the author to relax and enjoy the experience of being published.  In the relationship model of publishing, the agent is the condom.*
Censorship - The suppression of speech, generally by the government or others with authority.  China’s ongoing efforts to arrest and silence those who […]

Sometimes posts are easier to write than others. There are times when a subject for a post presents itself with such force that it really does — pardon the cliché — write itself.
And then there are days like today.
It’s rainy and cold outside, I have some very nice jazz on the stereo (Brian Bromberg’s […]

It used to be that women in stories were incompetent.  Their only jobs were to a) look pretty and b) make the hero look good. (Even the villainesses.) They got in trouble so the hero could rescue them; they asked dumb questions so the hero could demonstrate his knowledge; they stood around spectating […]