social media

Social media is a bar

We knew they knew about that table in the back. We knew what the bartenders would say if we complained: “It’s just talk. Maybe they’re LARPing. They pay their tab, OK?”

Hello CapClave – Trading cards now REAL!

I’m paneling and reading starting today at CapClave in Rockville MD. It’s a very different kind of personal appearance than my work at convention booths, with panel discussions of literary topics, and a half-hour Saturday morning to read my work. In celebration, my social media …

Fun with marketing – book teaser trading cards

The image-driven firehose that is social media challenges the modern writer. I see some managing to do clever things with it, releasing aphorisms and motivational notes, and others just stupefied. Count me more often among the latter. Not long ago, writer, blogger and ace self-marketer …

Writer vs author (social media)

This is a post about web marketing and how I am working through mine. TL;DR – avoid mistaking writer for author, mistaking content for news.

Robots vs. androids in fiction (go robots!)

Among the characters in my new novel is a collective of former package-delivery drones that, after a war, evolved themselves into a taxi service for their damaged city. From the earliest drafts, I saw them as small flying saucers, with only a central trunk/harness to carry …

Catching up to success and building on it

For the last month now, what writing time I’ve had all belonged to my new serial novel. I regret losing energy both on social media and on my first novel, but I can return to them. The experience of the serial is unusual and worthy …

Performance anxiety (Facebook edition)

If the fool would persist in his folly, he would become wise. — William Blake, “Proverbs of Hell” I noted recently that writing has become a performing art, one where we writers all have to be promotional and public. I’ve been mulling that over in regards …

Writing is now a performing art

In high school my friends had a punk band called Prep H. They mostly played for fun, but I was easily persuaded to host a punk party where they could perform publicly one Saturday night. For the show they placed a round poster board sign in …

Making a busy life into a busy blog

The blog has been stale although I have been busy. In posts across the web, that “although” is a “because” — you know you’ve read it, here and a thousand other blogs. Which is a problem. It’s one thing to know silent business is a …