All Through The Night (The myth of the overnight success)

Guest post
by Jo at Inknbeans Press

There has been much alarm, many blogs, news items, blustering and tears recently about bigger fish in the publishing pool, and how the pond has been tainted by sock puppet reviewers, gaming sales, defining ranks, Amazon’s latest shenanigans, and flash mob vote ups (or downs.) Here’s the truth: Amazon has nothing to do with it. An author’s auntie getting her entire bingo club on a bully run to vote down negative reviews has nothing to do with it. Big six publishers arranging thousands of pre-order and release day sales to make a new title’s ranking soar has nothing to do with it. What matters, in the long run, is the quality of the story. Continue reading “All Through The Night (The myth of the overnight success)”

Nuking the Newbies

Authors tend to be sensitive types. Perhaps thin-skinned is more accurate. After all, it’s not that writers are sensitive to you, but as a group, we tend to bruise easily, react strongly and bear longstanding grudges with a modicum of effort.

Whatever the reason, when you get a bunch of these daisies together in a forum of any kind, conflict is likely to occur.

Writers are people whose daily craft lies in the orderly application of carefully chosen words and phrases. To see them engage each other in a manner befitting a playground quarrel is both baffling and horrifying.  It’s bad enough to see veterans going after each other hammer and tong, but when I see a newbie getting a beat-down, it really bothers me. Continue reading “Nuking the Newbies”

Tips From the Masters: Paul Levine

Paul Levine is one of my recently acquired tastes. He’s another one of those lawyers who started writing best-sellers just to piss us all off. Hey, do us writers start trying cases? But he won me over with a single title: Habeas Porpoise. You gotta love that.

And many love his two main series, Lassiter and Solomon & Lord. Lassiter is the slap-happy attorney who wouldn’t know what to do with an ambulance if he caught it, but can stipulate the wisecracks and rough stuff, Solomon and Lord are sort of odd-couple “Moonlighting” match-up of two counselors most unlikely to form a partnership. But a lot of fun. I really like the sloppy, always-in-danger-of-being-disbarred-and-unfriended heroes in both series, and envy the way he can juggle three or four storylines, each one always hanging its butt over a cliff as we segue to one of the other scenarios. Continue reading “Tips From the Masters: Paul Levine”