Category Archives: Publishing

publishing stuff

“A wicked fun read.” — Kirkus Reviews (and who am I to argue?)

YA With Real Science BY LEILA ROY – Kirkus Reviews At the risk of bringing unwelcome attention to just how very little I paid attention in my high school science classes*, one of my favorite things about Christian Schoon’s Zenn Scarlett is that … Continue reading

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Legendary Powell’s Books Sez “So Long, Jeff Bezos. Sorry! (Not sorry…)”

Just in time to celebrate Independent Bookstore Day, the globally beloved Powell’s Books brick-and-mortar-words-on-real-paper-palace in Portland announced it will no longer port its books over to gazillion-pound-clickgorilla Amazon. Many authors, of course, need that clickgorilla to keep afloat, but ya … Continue reading

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Best-selling thriller guy is mad as Hell, will not be taking it anymore… and burns his French publisher re: lame cover art. Authors should learn from his example.

  OK, got some basically inside-baseball book marketing stuff going on here. Topic: the cover imagery on an author’s hard won, sweated-blood-from-his/her-eyeballs new book. We all want our books to put their best book-foot forward, eh? Doesn’t always work out. … Continue reading

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A short vid compiling (and discussing) the origins, impact and (oh yeah!) the epic weirdness of the under-appreciated art of Sci Fi Book Covers.

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Gadzooks! Run away! It’s the dreaded… hat-fright! Or, um… the fearsome Hound-plant. Or the… oh, wait… nevermind. It’s harmless.

What happens when you ask a recurrent neural net to cook up some wicked cool new D&D monster names? Hilarity, that’s what. Intrepid research scientist Janelle Shane from Boulder, Colorado had previously commanded her obedient little RNN to spew out … Continue reading

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I live in (the rural Oort Cloud-ish outer reaches of) one of the planet’s coolest cities for authors. Just sayin’…

The Iowa City UNESCO City of Literature humans are awesome humans when it comes to being the kinda humans that authors appreciate. Also: I need to get into town and pick up one of those t-shirts. That is all.

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Thanks for sharing, facebook-Dana.

Well, isn’t this special? (Yes. Yes it is. Never gets old.) FB pal Dana snapped these retro-tree-fiber-pulp specimens hanging out in ye local shoppe somewhere. Note that they’re trying to be cool-by-association with cool-kid Scalzi in the upstairs apartment….

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How do ya find a literary agent? Sometimes, they find you…

At cons or workshops where I’ve been on panels, I’m usually asked “Dude, how did you land an agent?”   (or maybe it was “Dude, how did YOU land an agent?!” but let’s not quibble). Well, there’s a site-page for that. Back when my first novel, Zenn Scarlett, was about … Continue reading

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Yo, writerly types: Here’s your chance to polish your editing & revision chops till they gleam – w/ Harvard’s Mary Rakow – in Iowa City, April 22 & 23

The ever-awesome IOWA WRITERS’ HOUSE gang presents a world-class workshop in editing & revision with a true Jedi Master of the art. Clickety HERE for all the details. Mastering Editing & Revision: A Writing Workshop WHEN: Friday, April 22, 6-8 pm … Continue reading

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1 Book 2 Book Literary Festival hits Iowa City on 2/27. The words are waiting for ya. C’mon in!

All manner of books-and-comics-and-artists-and-authors stuff is slated to rear up and word-out in Iowa City on Feb. 27th as the One Book Two Book Lit Fest & Jr. High Writing Jam storm into town and touch down at the Hotel Vetro, the … Continue reading

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