Starting this evening is my absolutely favorite conference for SciFi and Fantasy – ReaderCON.

To see last year’s blog from the conference check out this link:

READERCON 22

I’ll be joined by friends and fellow writers Leah Petersen and Glenn Skinner.

It’s three days of panels, chats, drinks and laughs. It is one of the most exhausting conferences I’ve ever attended.

And the most fun.

One of my favorite Dark Fantasy writers and fellow New Englander, Caitlín R. Kiernan, is one of the guests of honor (which reminds me, I need to grab my copy of Silk and my first editions of issues 17-19 of The Dreaming to get them signed).

There some GREAT panels and readings scheduled as always, numerous kaffeeklatsches—intimate gatherings with authors—that I want to attend, plus the “Meet the Pros(e)” party and of course “The 26th Kirk Poland Memorial Bad Prose Competition.”

Not to mention the Shirley Jackson Awards.

I’ll do what I’ve done for the last few years—post periodic updates and photos from the ‘con.

Tonight (Thursday 12 July) is the “free-sampler” evening. If you are in the Boston area, this evening does not require registration. So head up to the Burlington Marriott. It’s a great way to get an idea of what ReaderCON is all about. I normally skip Thursday and start fresh on Friday morning, however two wonderful authors who I’ve met and stayed in contact with over the years will be read bits from their latest books. 

Peter Dubé will be reading from The City’s Gates and Yves Meynard will read a bit from his latest Chrysanthe.

Here is the full Thursday evening schedule:

Thursday July 12

1. 8:00 PM F   Unfinished Symphonies. Erik Amundsen, C.S.E. Cooney (leader), Maria Dahvana Headley, Natalie Luhrs, Sarah Smith. One of George R. R. Martin’s fans threatened to camp out at the author’s house with a shotgun and an espresso machine until Martin buckled down and finished A Song of Ice and Fire. Recent years have seen Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time continued by Brandon Sanderson, a fourth book in Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast completed (from only a fragment) by Maeve Gilmore, and younger writers completing some of Philip Jose Farmer’s works, for only a few examples. Are such projects merely opportunistic attempts by publishers to extend a franchise, an exalted form of fanfic, or legitimate works of creative literary scholarship? Should unfinished series remain unfinished, or should the reader’s (and bookseller’s) desire for more trump notions of literary “purity”? And why do readers care so much about seeing series through to the end?

2. 8:00 PM G   Genrecare. Elizabeth Bear (leader), Kathleen Ann Goonan, Kelly Link, Shira Lipkin. In a 2011 review of Harmony by Project Itoh, Adam Roberts suggests that “the concept of ‘healthcare’ in its broadest sense is one of the keys to the modern psyche.” Yet Roberts notes “how poorly genre has tuned in to that particular aspect of contemporary life.” Similarly, in the essay “No Cure for the Future,” Kirk Hampton and Carol MacKay write that “SF is a world almost never concerned with the issues of physical frailty and malfunction.” As writers such as Nalo Hopkinson, Tricia Sullivan, and Kim Stanley Robinson explore the future of the body, how is SF dealing with the concepts of health, medicine, and what it means to be well?

3. 8:00 PM ME   Managing Motivation to Write. Alexander Jablokov, Steve Kelner (leader), Toni L.P. Kelner, Matthew Kressel, Ben Loory. Kipling (an SF writer himself) wrote: “There are nine-and-sixty ways/of composing tribal lays/and every single one of them is right!” Science fiction writers should know this better than most, yet most people don’t realize just how different the creative process is for different writers. Join a panel of writers discussing how they keep themselves going, the underlying reasons for why a given tactic works for them, and how it might (or might not) work for others. ?Proposed by Stephen Kelner.

4. 8:00 PM RI   No Longer Lonely in the Cloud: Digital Collaboration for Readers. Jim Freund, Erin Kissane (leader), John Edward Lawson, Graham Sleight. MORE Magazine has created a multi-city book club via group video call. Writers who used to hang out in cafes are now using Google+ hangouts as virtual coworking space. In2Books matches up kids with distant adult pen pals specifically for the purpose of discussing books. Kindles and Readmill let you share your marginalia with your friends. How are new concepts of socializing and togetherness affecting the ways we read, write, and talk about literature?

5. 8:00 PM NH   Reading. Kit Reed. Kit Reed reads one of the new stories from The Story Until Now, her “best-of” collection forthcoming in 2013.

6. 8:00 PM VT   Reading. Peter Dubé. Peter Dubé reads from the novel The City’s Gates.

7. 8:30 PM NH   Reading. Yves Meynard. Yves Meynard reads from his new fantasy novel, Chrysanthe.

8. 8:30 PM VT   Reading. Darrell Schweitzer. Darrell Schweitzer reads “The Corpse Detective.”

9. 9:00 PM F   The Visual Generation. Gemma Files, Elizabeth Hand, Caitlín R. Kiernan, John Langan (leader), Lee Moyer. Last year’s horror-related Readercon panels all brought in discussions of other media. Many of today’s horror and dark fantasy writers were exposed to horror movies and television before ever picking up a horror novel. In a 2010 book review, horror critic Will Errickson wrote, “I can’t imagine what it must have been like for authors such as Arthur Machen, H.P. Lovecraft, Algernon Blackwood, M.R. James, Sheridan LeFanu, et al., to write horror fiction without having horror film as an influence.” Yet despite these undeniable changes in the field, readers often disparage horror writing when they feel it tries too hard to be “cinematic,” or when an author openly admits to being inspired by visual media. Is it time for us to get over this stigma and accept that horror literature and visual media are in an ongoing two-way conversation? Or are we in danger of diluting the craft and consigning the genre’s past masters to obscurity unless they’ve been adapted to film?

10. 9:00 PM G   Why Is Realistic Fiction Useful? Daniel Abraham, Nathan Ballingrud, Grant C. Carrington, Liz Gorinsky (leader), Alexander Jablokov. In a 2011 blog post, Harry Connolly wrote, “If I want to understand the horrors of war, the pain of divorce, the disappointment of seeing a business fail, I don’t need to read fiction. There’s non-fiction on that very subject…. So forget about justifying the utility of fantasy. How do people justify the utility of realism?” Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried distinguishes between “story truth” and “happening truth”; O’Brien feels that fictionalizing some aspects of his own experience makes them more universal. On the other hand, reality TV, Photoshop, and CGI have proven how blurry the line between fiction and non-fiction can be. How do we tease out these distinctions, and what is realistic fiction’s place in the literary landscape?

11. 9:00 PM ME   Randomness, Relativity, Reality, and Free Will. Eric M. Van. As the physics world struggles to develop a Theory of Everything, it is increasingly faced with four big questions. Is quantum mechanics, with its inherent randomness, ultimately true, or does it derive from deterministic processes in some deeper layer of reality? Is relativity ultimately true, or is there a deeper layer of reality where there is an absolute standard of simultaneity and frame of reference? Is there an objective reality independent of conscious minds, or do conscious minds somehow determine reality at least in part? And do beings with conscious minds have true free will that somehow supersedes causal laws? It turns out that the four questions are intimately related to one another in all sorts of fascinating ways, so that answers to some questions pose difficulties for, or even rule out, certain answers to others. Eric M. Van will attempt to narrow the set of answers down as far as possible, deriving a set of possible ultimate realities to believe in.

12. 9:00 PM RI   How Fantastic Is Fantasy? Erik Amundsen, Ron Drummond, Andy Duncan, Katherine MacLean (leader), Faye Ringel. Audience members discuss events of supernatural import that we ordinarily keep locked in the closet: luck, coincidences, things that go bump in the night, telepathy and precognition, visions and dreams. Many people have had Experiences, but no one wants to look like a nut. In this discussion, we’ll let loose and explore our personal experiences of the places where reality gets weird.?Proposed by Katherine MacLean.

13. 9:00 PM NH   Reading. Kathleen Ann Goonan. Kathleen Ann Goonan reads her short story “A Love Supreme,” which will appear in Discover this October.

14. 9:00 PM VT   Reading. F. Brett Cox. F. Brett Cox reads “The Amnesia Helmet,” a new short story.

15. 9:30 PM NH   Reading. Jennifer Pelland. Jennifer Pelland reads from her novel Machine.

15. 9:30 PM VT   Reading. Toni L.P. Kelner. Toni L.P. Kelner reads from her story “Pirate Dave’s Haunted Amusement Park,” published in Death’s Excellent Vacation

In this decade, we will see the return of the Short Story. Sure, they have been around a long time, but they fell out of fashion and people thought them to be a format for academics and other people who talk a lot. There always have been people who put out short stories, such as Dahl, Heinlein, Proulx, and a bunch of others, but what we see now is different.

With the emergence of new devices for people to read with, short stories are back with a vengeance. Independent authors have channels for their single stories, so there’s no longer a need to compile the 20 stories and then hunt for an agent and a publisher. Applications such as Five Stop Stories feature single stories that you can read your iPhone and get new stories delivered to your device on the run. iPads and other tablets, not to mention Kindle, support short story reading. And there are more websites with free short stories than you can wave your laptop at.

So, isn’t it time you had a look? Of course, the emergence of indie short story authors has produced many good anthologies too, and compilations of single author stories. The point is that short stories are there for you to enjoy when you have only a few minutes to spare, and no chance of immersing yourself in a full length novel.

Heikki Hietala has written a novel of historical fiction called “Tulagi Hotel”, and released a 18 story compilation of his short stories as “Filtered Light and Other Stories” by PfoxChase Publishing in February 2012. His work is often speculative in nature. You can see more of him and his work at http://www.tulagihotel.com.

How does a writer get an idea for a story? The old saying “Write what you know” comes to mind.

Recently, a new follower on Twitter sent me the tweet “You’re really beautiful, so I take it you write all your novels from an autobiographical standpoint … Research & all.”

She was sweet, and I took it as a compliment, but it got me thinking. Was she suggesting I’d lived my characters’ lives?

I write erotica. It’s fiction, though a lot of who I am shapes my female characters. They’re strong women who love deeply, travel the world, and have sex with men—sometimes multiple men at the same time.

So … is my writing a thinly veiled autobiography? And if you write fiction, what does “Write what you know” really mean?

It’s not about events, as I can assure you I have not experienced everything I’ve written. For me, it’s about the emotions associated with events. The extent to which I can connect these emotions to an experience, whether real or imagined, is what breathes life into characters and their stories.

How I can write about the beauty of Thailand without actually having been there? Research it. But how can I convey the magic of falling in love there if I’ve never set foot in the country? The answer is I’ve fallen in love before—that is the part I know. Along with fear, longing, lust and a range of other emotions, I weave stories from my imagination.

The measure of good writing is how successfully you connect your fiction to your readers—on an emotional and an imaginary plane.

Eden Baylee writes erotica incorporating all her favorite things: travel; culture; and sex. She enjoys weaving together stories with edgy themes, and sex is but one way to do it. Her first book, Fall into Winter, a collection of four erotic novellas, is currently available on Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other sites located on her website.

Her second book, Spring into Summer is set for release July 2012.

Connect with her via her Website, on Twitter, and on Facebook.

For writers, the rule is ironclad. All the experts tell us we absolutely, positively must have a website. So you do it. You register “yourauthorname.com,” fire up WordPress and you’re in business. But it’s the next step that can give you pause. It has to do with basic website strategy. And that boils down to a simple question.

“What do I write about?”

There’s the rub. What do you write about on your site? I think this question is key for two important reasons.

The first reason deals with the purpose of your site. Chances are, you’re not writing your site/blog purely because you love it to death. As a writer, you’re blogging to support your real writing. You know, the writing you pour your heart and soul (and maybe even a little more) into and which you sell with varying degrees of success. Of course, some writers love to blog and work very hard at it. But for many of us, the blog is there to support our other writing – the stories, novellas, novels, trilogies and mega-volumed epics and doorstops for sale at Amazon, B&N and Smashwords. As such, we need a blog that entices potential readers and returning readers to take a chance on buying our writing. We also need to provide information about where to find our stories and books, about appearances we might be making, on special deals we’re running, etc., etc.

The second reason has to do with perseverance. You’ve better write about something that interests, beguiles, and inspires you, or the blog posts will always be a chore. If there’s no spark there, you won’t feel it and your readers will know it. In word: deadly.

So, you’re sitting there and politely reading all of this but you’re, like, wondering, “When’s he gonna give up the super secret answer to the question of what I should write about? And will I get a decoder ring in the mail?”

Well, here’s the honest part: I don’t know what you should write! I’m no expert on this stuff! In fact, I’m in the process of pulling the old switcheroo with my own web strategy.

I started with the idea that I wanted to draw readers interested in humor. This made sense because the first book I put up for sale was a humorous historical romp called George in London. Young George Washington in London, sowing his wild oats, drinking, screwing, wrestling the Prince of Wales, that sort of thing. The site I built to support this is called Height of Eye and it traffics in news satire. You know, taking a nugget of real news and spinning into absurdity. You may have seen a site named after a weep-inducing vegetable that does the same thing. Well, some people have heard of it..

Anyway, soon after George in London, I released another genre of book entirely. Called The SHIVA Compression, this is a technothriller with no jokes at all, not even a bad pun. So the incomparably hilarious Height of Eye site was not the best support for SHIVA.

The solution? I have finally gotten around to doing what many writers have already done: Set up a site that caters to all my various books and provides info about them and where to get them. An author-centric rather than a theme-centric site. (Internet sages would probably say something here about a nexus of interests or creating stickiness or drilling down into my endemic. And I would probably nod like I knew what the hell they were talking about. ‘Cept I would definitely keep them from getting anywhere near my endemic — no way I let a drill down there.)

This, of course, raises a question: What do I write about on my blog? (Keeps popping up like Mormons at the front door, right?) Since I’m just getting started with the switch, I don’t know exactly. But I suspect the material will lean heavily towards thriller subjects, as I have another thriller, The Atlas Fracture, in the works. But some hilarity may sneak in on cat feet, who knows? It’s a new adventure. Just like self-publishing.

Oh, and your decoder ring? It’s in the mail.

A magazine editor and writer, Tim Queeney lives in Maine with his wife and three sons and the family pooch, a black lab who is always on the wrong side of the door! His house is a stone’s throw from the ocean. When the mist rolls in or on snowy winter nights, he can hear the fog horns from three lighthouses bleating their warnings. His website is, appropriately, http://www.timqueeney.com. His books are available at Amazon via his author site http://www.amazon.com/Tim-Queeney/e/B005ITX48S/ref=ntt_athr_dp_pel_1.

Okay, I’m probably not alone in this, but it’s maddening how many ideas come to me when I’m not really at leisure to write any of them down. 1 AM in bed in a freezing cold room? Yup. In the shower, driving the car, and cleaning with corrosive substances are other golden places to get a stellar writing idea with little no time to take notes. The worst are song lyrics (which are as elusive as a wild badgers and come about as quietly) but story ideas — especially solutions to really sticky problems— can be just as annoying.

If you’re lucky you can repeat them to yourself like a mantra until you can wipe the soapy bleach off your fingers and get to a pad and pen, (or smart phone, or whatever you techno-haves possess these days. Laser-pens, probably). But if you’re like me, you suffer from the dual indignity of having horrific handwriting. I’m only kidding a little when I say my handwriting looks like someone taped a pencil to a rat and then taught the rat to do summersaults.

For example, I’m looking at my note-pad right now, and in between the million drawings of Spongebob Squarepants I’ve done to entertain my kids, is something that I almost positive is an important writing idea.

As far as I can tell it says, “Grit for nuttha futha dimpoe nimble rint. Kelo didot.”

Is it some secret language? Was I possessed and writing in tongues? Which of my book series was this even supposed to be for? What does it mean? And of course, there’s the possibility that this was something related to the dry-cleaning or grocery shopping.

So until someone invents a brainwave-to-text machine that I can use during my 5am toilet break, I’ll just make sure I’m NEVER be more than 3 feet away from my laptop.

Monica Marier is a caffeinated writer, artist, mother and eccentric. On weekdays, she’s busy working on her books, recording audio files, and composing short stories for her blog. On weekends she’s a co-founder of Tangent Artists.

Links:

Comics: www.tangentartists.com

Follow her on Twitter! @lil_monmon

Books: Available through Hunt Press http://www.huntpress.com/

A writing career isn’t for the faint-hearted. It’s for the tough. It’s for the ferocious.

You’ll find yourself writing things that you never meant to write, and defending things that you never knew needed to be defended. Your words, however gentle, will cause harm to somebody’s soul. They’ll rake nails across exposed nerves, summoning up past traumas. The reader will put your work down and cry. You may never know this. Or maybe they’ll tell you, and you’ll feel like you’ve gutted a kitten.

Your ideas, no matter how brutal, will cause others to laugh. You can rant and snarl and claw about the injustices that you see, the brutalities that you’ve suffered, but you won’t be taken seriously. “Isn’t it sweet that the writer feels so much emotion,” somebody will say, and tie a bow around your neck. You’ll know what it’s like to feel unadulterated hate.

Nobody puts a gun to your head and forces you to finish a project. You’ll go it alone. You’ll be tempted by vacations, TV shows, loved ones who want you to come to bed early. You’ll need to think and be clear-headed while you’re worried about unpaid bills, your daughter’s wheelchair, and the evacuation notice in your home town.

You’ll be criticized. You’ll be pitied. Teased, lauded, and hated by turns. You’ll be put on an unrealistic pedestal. Mainly you’ll be ignored, and there isn’t anything worse than being ignored.

But you’ll go on. Vomiting words, bleeding ideas. You don’t write because of the money. There isn’t any. You don’t write for the fame because there are more writers in the ether than sharks in the ocean. You write because it’s a need, because there’s a sharp piece missing in your soul if you aren’t working on something. Then you’re a waste, a nonentity, and you won’t stand for that. You’re not the kind to shuffle through life. You’re a writer. You’re a warrior.

Mercedes M. Yardley writes whimsical horror.  She has been published in several venues and is the nonfiction editor for Shock Totem Magazine. You can reach her at www.mercedesyardley.com. Her first collection of short stories comes out this fall.

I started writing when I could pick up a pen. Or pencil. Or crayon. I wrote this work – from a series I called “Little Books for Children” – at the tender age of 10. On brown paper, tied with red yarn. If I didn’t know what something meant, I’d have to consult a behemoth hardback dictionary. I knew writers existed, but I certainly didn’t know any. They were as mythological as Pegasus or the wild-west American Indians I liked to read about.

We didn’t have computers. I’m not sure I’d even heard of one. In fact, my first computer experience – with a Macintosh Classic – was in college, when I worked for the school’s newspaper. That black and white screen? Da bomb.

Today, I write on a brand-new MacBook Pro with a gorgeous and (comparatively) ginormous screen. With the touch of a button, I can visit with people I’ve never met in person. A friend of a friend gave me helpful hints regarding spring in Maine for a book I just finished. If I don’t know the meaning of a word, I can look it up on any number of websites. If I need help writing something, I can send an email to any number of other writers.

Some pundits decry that technology and its ilk are fragmenting the world. I say instead, it’s bringing us closer together with our stories and shared experiences. It’s only now, in the 21^st century, that I’m learning what it truly means to be a writer.

Bio:

D. Savannah George is a multi-disciplinary artist – she writes, paints, crochets, takes photographs, and makes beaded jewelry, bookmarks, and notecards. She is a member of the Ozark Arts Council, the Harrison Art League, and the Arkansas Artist Registry. She has published several short stories and a number of poems, as well as numerous articles in various newspapers and magazines. She has won several awards for her writing. Her first book, A Spicy Secret, #22 in the Annie’s Attic Mystery Series, will be released in January 2013.

She received her Master of Arts degree in communications (cum laude) from Georgia State University and her Bachelor of Arts degree in communications (cum laude) from Berry College in Mt. Berry, Ga. She moved to Harrison, Arkansas, in 2006 from the coast of Georgia, and lives on four acres outside the town with her husband, dog, turtle, and two cats.

You can find her:

Web: www.dsavannah.com

Twitter: @dsavannahcreate

Self-publishing is nothing new: Proust, Joyce, Mark Twain, Zane Grey, Upton Sinclair, Carl Sandburg, Anais Nin did it… and the list goes on and on, and no one is going to dispute the worthiness of these giants in the world of writing.

What is different is the sheer magnitude and ease of producing a book in a digital universe that democratizes the process down to the lowest common denominator. Quantity over quality rules the day where equally weighted offerings crowd cyberspace in a Powerball cesspool pandering to the ‘you’ve gotta play ta win’ mentality. And unfortunately there have been some ‘big scores’ with truly unworthy ‘pop culture’ efforts. That makes the author’s job that much harder. Do you sink to the lowest common denominator in order to compete or do you hold out for a set of standards by which a jury of your peers can at least deem you worthy of a modicum of respect?

I’m going with respect … but then, I edit for a living.

If you are in any doubt about how poorly edited content can impact sales, read through the reviews on Amazon and see how many castigate the author for poor editing, to the tune of “I might have loved this story but I gave up” or “I’ll probably never read anything else…” In lieu of a $5M movie deal, I’d say that’s not really the legacy you wish to leave your heirs.

A book is a covenant between the author and the reader. It is a product for which someone pays out of discretionary funds. Don’t you owe that person the courtesy of creating the best product that you can provide? That means in addition to a ‘good story’, you construct a reading experience that does not yank the reader out of the story by assaulting the eye and the mind with trivial, inexcusable mistakes—mistakes that transcend simple typos: grammar, punctuation (that can seriously alter the meanings of sentences), misspellings and continuity (which can be the deal breaker in the author-reader relationship).

No matter how good you are at writing, I can almost guarantee you are not nearly good enough at editing. Why? Because your mind ‘fills in’ what you think is there. In effect it lies. And it happens to all of us. That’s why an investment in an editor is an investment in your future, an affirmation in your commitment to the craft and your obligation to provide your customers with a reading experience that is worthy of the story you wish to tell.

There are good editors out there who won’t break the piggybank. Try word-of-mouth and find someone you can work with.

Trust me … typing THE END is only the beginning.

Website: PubRight Manuscript Services: http://www.pubrightms.com/

Personal website: http://www.idancewithwords.com

Bio:

Diane Nelson has thirty years’ experience in technical and fiction editing and four years’ with publishing across a variety of formats (print and digital). She is also an author with more than a dozen published fiction works.

As an editor she produced the well-reviewed The Prodigal’s Foole by R.B. Wood.

http://nyareviews.blogspot.com/

Well July is turning into a very busy month—just the way I like it!

Not only will the annual summer blog hop kick-off tomorrow (The first two week schedule is posted below), but of course July is time for my favorite of all conferences – ReaderCON.

The amazingly talented Leah Petersen will again be staying with my partner and I (which reminds me…Tina and I had better start cleaning up) and we are currently running through the schedule of events to see what we’ll be attending.

I’m also looking forward to reconnecting with so many friends I’ve made over the last few years at the conference. Authors Jim Morrow, Yves Meynard, Peter Dubé editor Marty Halpern along with many others.

I’ll be doing my “semi-streaming” conference updates so make sure you are following on Twitter and my author page on Facebook to keep track of the madness that is ReaderCON.

Along with ReaderCON, I have a months worth of special content coming up, provided to you be writers from around the world.  I’m still finalizing the second half of July, but coming up beginning tomorrow is a wonderful set of posts written to the topic:

“From the Front Lines: Authors of the 21st Century.”

It’s gonna be fun…I hope you’ll join me for a really hot July!

From the Front Lines: Authors of the 21st Century Schedule.

Date                          Author                         Topic

1-Jul                      Diane Nelson                   Writing THE END is only the Beginning

3-Jul                      D. Savannah George        Who started writing in the 20th

5-Jul                      Mecedes Yardley             Writing with Ferocity

7-Jul                      Monica Marier                  Thunderbolts and Laser Pens

9-Jul                      Tim Queeney                   Author Website Strategy

11-Jul                    Eden Baylee                    Write What You Know

13-15 July              ReaderCON                     RB Wood Conference Musings

This July, I’m hosting what is becoming a bit of a tradition.  A 250 word blog tour, and I’m looking for fellow Indie Writers to participate!

What’s the topic?

“From the Front Lines: Author’s of the 21st Century.”

Your experiences about being a writer, author or blogger (aren’t they sorta the same?) in this day and age.

Want to write about your querying experiences? Perfect!  A post on social media? Go for it! A commentary on the ebook revolution? Write it up!

Spaces are filling up for this July, but I really want to fill the entire month (except for my ReaderCON jaunt the 13-15 of the month where I will be ‘semi-live’ streaming the event) with the remunerations of my colleagues.

So what are the details?  Glad you asked:

RBWood’s annual blog-o-rama

Topic: “From the Front Lines: Author’s of the 21st Century.”

Length: 250 words or there-abouts

Sub-topic: YOU choose!

I’ll need your articles, a photo and your bio as quick as you can get it to me.  I’d like to publish the full schedule next week.

If you want to play, sent me an e-mail right away to ME@RBWOOD.COM with a few dates you’d prefer (if any preference), the subject of your article based on the topic and when you can get me the article, your bio and pic.

Looking forward to some fun!

Peace

My podcast, The Word Count has been running for a year and a half at this point.

The show was originally conceived as a show for writers were I’d chat with industry professionals and chat about all aspect of the business.

Episode three of the show became something different, which I’ve run with ever since. It was the first holiday special and I asked for ‘scary stories’ from writers to place in the show.

The reaction was overwhelming. Writers, creating original short stories and recording said stories for the show. All free, all for the listeners.

There have been over 5,000 download for the show ever since this new direction.

But lately I’m noticing a drop-off of downloads as well as submissions. Other than a few diehards (Eden Baylee, Matthew Munson and Bill Kirton to name a few), the interest in this free ‘cast seems to have moved on.

So the question of the day is this. Is it time to retire the show, change the format, add a cohost or what?

I’ve ALWAYS maintained that the cast would be free with no adds. Ever. I’ve had two companies reach out to me to incorporate The Word Count into their cadre of programming. But the terms were never acceptable.

It’s not a money-thing. It’s a sell-out issue. And I won’t do it.

So what do you thing the next phase should be? Stay the same, Change or Close the Show down?

Comment below.

Peace

No question the passing of Ray Bradbury is a loss for the literary world.

There will be many-a-tome written in the next few days, weeks, even years about the marvelous works of the man described as “the writer most responsible for bringing modern science fiction into the literary mainstream”

To me, he was one of a handful of world-builders who breathed life in my desire to be an author.

The funny thing is, my introduction to Bradbury was via the somewhat cheesy television mini series The Martian Chronicles I saw back when it debuted in 1980.

Of course when I was a kid, I thought it was amazingly awesome. And I wanted one of those Martian gyro-copters!

But my older brother told me that the books were even better. So I read The Martian Chronicles.

Then I read Something Wicked This Way Comes. Followed by Fahrenheit 451, The Halloween Tree, Dandelion Wine and every short story I could get my hands on.

This lead me to Jules Verne, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and a boatload of other writers I still read to this day.

My imagination was ignited all those years ago. It still burns bright today.

With any luck, it will burn until the day I turn to ashes.

We’ll miss you, Mr. Bradbury.

Peace