Where did the weeks go? Of course, I’m fully prepared, planned, and raring to get started. *cough* This year will be one, or maybe two, or maybe more, depending on how long they turn out to be and how much time I find to write, cozy mysteries! Oh yes, trying something different. Why not? Continue reading NaNoWriMo starts tomorrow. What?
The good thing about not visiting your blog for a while is all the comment spam that suddenly appears, usually within half an hour of each other. And so it happened today. All have been marked as spam, of course, but some of them are too hilarious to not share: Thank you so much for this artecli, it saved me time! That’s a subtle way of thnnkiig about it. You write so holsteny about this. Thanks for sharing! That’s a clever answer to a tricky quteoisn You get a lot of respect from me for writing these helpful arteslic. The … Continue reading Comment spam
How long is it since I posted to this blog? Oops. I’ll never be considered an authorpreneur. Aaaaaggghhhh! Perhaps I should explain. I don’t like the term “authorpreneur”. Yuck. Especially when it’s pronounced author prenewer. Double yuck. To me, it starts to push our noble profession towards, and maybe even over the border of, internet marketing. How to sell more books. How to build your tribe. Use social media to drive your sales. Why you need an email list. And other marketing nonsense. Yes, all this stuff is of some importance, but to me, writing is the number one thing here. … Continue reading Angry Gerald
I seem to be doing better on my interaction with people lately. Which is not very secret code for hanging around on social media a lot. Anyway, last night I brought my wordcount spreadsheet up to date. I keep my own Excel spreadsheet, recording my daily wordcounts on various projects. It’s a good idea, so I can try to keep myself on track, and give myself motivation. It also allows me to track my endeavours on various writing challenges (I love a good challenge, me). So, after adding up the blog posts I’ve written (few of which have seen the … Continue reading Look at me, blogging an’ that
And with this, I really do promise to move on. Ros Barber was written a blog post. You can (and should) read it here: http://rosbarber.com/you-one-me/ In it, she tells the story of how she came to write *that* article, and of some of the ‘feedback’ she’s received from it. I have written a reply, but I don’t know if it will get approved. I hope so. I shall put it here as well, just in case (for some reason, I can’t copy and paste it from there, so here’s a screencap) (and it’s not particularly well-written, and unedited) I didn’t agree … Continue reading Final, final update
Not that I’m obsessed about this nonsense in any way whatsoever. But … I was wandering around Facebook spending 90% of my time telling people to BUY MY BOOK because, well, that’s what all us self-publishers do, isn’t it? Anyway, someone appeared who I thought was Ros Barber, but wasn’t, so I decided to have a shufty at her page. Of course, a few people (who almost certainly haven’t a clue what they’re talking about) agree on what an absolutely awful idea self-publishing is, and up pops the following comment: So there we have it. Controversial article = lots of “engagement”. … Continue reading Update on the Guardian self-publishing article
For me, writing is a delight, and allows me to create characters and worlds out of thin air. And then I read the following article: http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2016/mar/21/for-me-traditional-publishing-means-poverty-but-self-publish-no-way And it made me angry. Because, yet again, here is a traditionally-published author pouring scorn and derision on the world of self-publishing, and making the same old clichéd statements that trad authors, publishers, and the whole traditional publishing industry spew forth. Go read it, and come back here. Because, in the great tradition of Joe Konrath http://jakonrath.blogspot.co.uk/, we’re going to do some fisking http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Fisking * I exploded the myth of the wealthy writer. Only … Continue reading It’s not often I get annoyed …
I suppose one of my ‘start of year’ targets (see http://gerald-hornsby.com/blog/2015/12/31/welcome-2016/) should have been to make myself more accountable. Well, here goes. How am I doing? ✔︎ 1. to write one short story a week for the whole year (a.k.a. the Bradbury Challenge) Yes! I’ve written 4 shorts in my linked series, and 7 (yes, seven!) pieces of flash fiction, one of which will be uploaded one day soon. ✔︎ 2. to write 100,000 words @ 1,000 words a day (a.k.a. #100kwords100days Yes! I’m doing well, and certainly up to date, and in fact, slightly ahead. I also doing a 365k … Continue reading 19 days in – how are those targets?
Once again, I’m inclined to write about the ability (or otherwise) of writers to achieve commercial success and / or recognition for their writing. This follows complaints from some would-be authors: a) An indie author complains that their books aren’t selling enough to enable them to give up work and write full time. b) An unpublished author complains about continuing rejections from agents and publishers. Both complainants stated that they’d been working hard for some time to produce the best books they could, and they’d paid out for editing services – one of them, a considerable amount, well into four … Continue reading Moan, moan, complain, complain …
So, here we are again. Another New Year – countries to the East of us here in the UK have dropped into 2016 already. So in this increasingly globalised society, we are all in the New Year. Sort of. None of us knows what lies in store for us, as individuals, as a country, as a society. And yet, each year, we make resolutions – promises to ourselves, made public, to lose weight, exercise more, join a gym, drink or smoke less. All things designed to make us healthier, and maybe to live longer. Inevitably, a lot of these so-called … Continue reading Welcome, 2016