Celebrating Independent Authors
Congratulations to Steven M. Stucko whose entry won this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge.
The voter-selected story is recognized with a special feature here today and wins a place in our 2015 Flash Fiction Anthology, which will be published as an eBook when this year’s challenges are completed.
Without further ado, here’s the winning story:
Continue reading “Steven M. Stucko Wins Flash Fiction Challenge”
What do the creative processes of Truman Capote, Joyce Carol Oates, Vladimir Nabokov, JK Rowling, Jackie Collins, and Quentin Tarantino have in common? Each of these brilliant writers prefers, or preferred, the slower process of writing by hand. Truman Capote wrote lying down, très louche. Joyce Carol Oates is never without a pencil and a small pad of paper. Vladimir Nabokov wrote on index cards, and then moved them around to test the flow of scenes — a sort of cut and paste. JK Rowling prefers to write her first drafts by hand, as does Jackie Collins: her last manuscript topping out at a whopping 2000 pages of cursive. And Quentin Tarantino, the uber-talented creative genius, writes his screenplays by hand. Continue reading “Cursive’s Connection to Creativity”
This week I’m supposed to reveal the results of the survey we ran last month on the book production processes used by our readers. It was a lot of work, so I’m going to milk the survey for as many posts as I can. But we also have a theme for this month, focusing on “publishing fouls.” Guests and minions alike have been providing stories and hints on how to recognize and avoid being victimized by those in the publishing world who prey on eager neophyte authors.
I could tell the story of the book my mother self-published more than twenty years ago. At the time I was vaguely aware of vanity publishers, although I have no idea how. I was concerned someone would take advantage of her, but she’d done her research, knew the pitfalls, what her goals were, and made all the right decisions. Of course, the fact that my dad is so cheap (he’d claim the word is thrifty) and she was dependent on him to bankroll this, would mean any vanity publisher was going to be wasting their time with her. Continue reading “And the Publishing Process Survey Says: Part 1”