process
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Cry Baby Bridge Author Interview: Ray Daley
follow writers in your genre and support them. Lift them when they are down, cheer their wins, commiserate their losses. Read more
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Cry Cry Baby, a special book for our fifth collection of utter speculation
We’ve expanded out from the collections of utter speculation since then, but we always return home to speculate utterly, and this year marks our fifth year doing so, so we’ve gone back over our collections and discussed some of our favorite things about each one, and decided on a topic that really gives our authors… Read more
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Work in Progress, Spec Pub’s Story Crafting Workbook is here
When you start out as a workshop called “Writers Block” you come up with a lot of methods for getting a story on the page. River Eno, Susan Tulio and I have struggled our way through four collections of utter speculation, starting with Roanoke where we had no idea what we were doing. Read more
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Spread thin but still around
I have always loved this blog, but am aware that I have updated less and less. The reason is good, I have a lot of work. Between Speculation Pub, the series I’m putting out on Vella (which I did have to take a summer break from), a recent dream trip to the Greek Isles and Read more
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And now for something completely different
This year I’ve had several big pushes for several big projects. When the push is done there’s always a feeling similar to teetering at the summit of a mountain, unsure if you should walk (or are going to fall) down the hill you just worked so hard to climb, or stick around at the top Read more
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When you decide you can’t fail
Writers are notoriously pessimistic, and for good reason. It is effing hard to publish a book, no matter which route you take. First you spend months, years, decades even writing a novel, than you edit the hell out of it for more months, years, decades. Then you pick a publishing path and go down it Read more
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Can friends be your beta readers?
You know you can’t rely on your mom and bff to be objective beta readers. You know that your neighbor and your co-worker will not give you reliable feedback (or any most of the time). So should you even bother with giving your manuscript to the friends who request it? What purpose does it serve Read more
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Writing through a crisis
I’ve read the stories of many authors, not their books, their personal stories. How they came to be a writer, how they finished their first books, how they got published. A theme has come out through all these stories. My relationship fell apart and for a while I didn’t write My dad got sick and Read more
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Researching your Book: Is the internet enough?
Oh we have it so easy today, don’t we? Instead of spending hours in the reference section of the library, we have wikipedia and google. We can literally type any question we want into a search engine and get the most direct answer out there. If we need a book we can get it without Read more
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84,500 words. 1 Month. Done. Bam
Ten tips that helped me accomplish a full length first draft in a month. Read more
LC W. Allingham 