Happy new year, everyone! I am so glad that 2013 is finally done. It’s been an exceptionally busy year for me at home, at work, and writing, and I’m looking forward to a quiet 2014 in which to sort it all out. Writing-wise, it’s been a pretty good year for me. I wrote: 1 novella, […]
For those of you attending Arisia next month in Boston, the schedule is up and I’m on it. I’m going to be pretty busy and probably not available to go out to dinner (have I mentioned how excited I am about the food trucks? SUCH a good idea), but I expect to enjoy the heck […]
Went up today at Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show (requires subscription). The accompanying illustration by Wayne Miller really is lovely, and I had a surprise: my story is also read aloud by Mr. Card himself (the link is on the sidebar of the above-linked page, halfway down).
Today’s lessons: Science fiction and bacon are strangely linked (Just ask John Scalzi) and Twitter is strange. This all started the other day when Cat Rambo brought up bacon pie on Twitter. It was a joke, I think, but I suggested that bacon jam might work well in a pecan pie, one thing led to another, […]
One of the most popular search terms for people coming to this blog is, “if you can measure it, you can control it,” in just those words. They go to a page on this site with a different (correct) formulation: “If you can’t measure it, you can’t control it.” There is a critical difference between […]
I’ve noticed that the “My Fiction” page has gotten some attention lately, and I felt I ought to clarify how I handle sales announcements. Basically, I’ve decided that it’s most prudent not to announce a sale until I’ve signed a contract. Most short fiction contracts are straight-forward, but there are occasionally things I would balk […]
A short piece, to new market Lakeside Circus. LC is a quarterly ebook magazine publishing a short novels’ worth of short fiction four times a year. My story Still Life, With Orange will be in the inaugural issue; subscriptions are on sale at a pre-launch discount at the moment ($20/year currently). Mine is an experimental […]
I thought I’d announced this here already, but I don’t seem to have! My novella “Claudius Rex”, an SF homage to the Nero Wolfe mysteries, has been sold to Paper Golem Press‘s Alembical 3 anthology. This was a hard story to sell, due to its length (~36,000 words after several go-rounds with Paper Golem’s talented […]
The Urban Dictionary has listings for two sayings related to the removal of hair from animals. Writers are fond of the phrase “cat waxing“: an industry term for procrastination by writers, with heavy connotation of trying to justify the activity as something that “had” to be done. Usually activities that can arguably be considered […]
I’m a devoted listener to the podcast Writing Excuses — despite their claims to the contrary, they really are that smart — and found their most recent episode, on Middle Grade fiction, to be fascinating. (Defining Middle Grade is contentious, but loosely, it’s fiction for kids 9-12: think Charlotte’s Web, the first Harry Potter book, […]
John P. Murphy 