Dubus is a larger-than-life kinda guy. Boston brawler born, who looks like the literary love child of John Mellencamp and Kurt Russell (that’s Zachary Petit’s description and I agree), he’s comfortable sharing a laugh and a pint as well as writing these intensely dark and poignant stories that leave us wrung out, alone, and wondering where the good is in being human. He taps the deep and lives his truth, which may be why his writing resonates with so many.

How does he do it? I like to find out about other writers’ processes. That is, the actual mechanical things they do to prepare for a writing session. Here’s Dubus’ process, from the article in Writer’s Digest:

“Andre Dubus III is both artist and businessman. It’s methodical: Every morning, Dubus wakes up and takes his kids to school (he lives in Massachusetts with his wife, who is a professional dancer, and two of his three children). He returns home. It’s empty of everyone except the dog. He takes a cup of black dark roast coffee down to the basement, where he’s built a 5-by-11 sound-proofed room. He sits at a desk in front of a blank wall, types the previous day’s longhand writing into the computer, then turns the machine off. He sharpens a pencil with a knife, reads three or four poems — for ‘the high bar of language that poets always give us prose writers’ — and then stares at the page.

‘There’s a profound difference between making something up and imagining it,’ he says. ‘Imagining it instead is falling into your psyche, your imagination, and finding some aspiring writer asks him a career question, he says he gets uncomfortable — he’s happy to help, but wants to know if the person has done the real work first: painstakingly crafted the words.”
From “Meet the Real Andre Dubus III,” by Zachary Petit (Writer’s Digest, July/August 2012), p. 43.

The interview itself is not available on the Writer’s Digest site unless you’re a subscriber (it’s in the print version, though), but you can get some of Dubus’ other words of wisdom from the site HERE.

So, writers. What’s your process? Does it seem to work? Would you change it if you thought it would open new windows for you? Just curious.

Happy Sunday.

So this whole writing thing can bring you down. It can stress you out, maybe make you say stupid things and do even stupider things.

Yes, a lot of this should be obvious. But to some, maybe not.

I blogged about that HERE, with regard to responding to a bad review (hint: DON’T).

And here’s another example of unprofessional and rude behavior. In this case, an author took offense at a forum administrator’s moving of his thread to a more appropriate section of the forum. That forum was the “small press/self-published” thread. The author had a very public meltdown on the forum, then took the nasties to Twitter, where he continued his insults. Read the comments on that blog that documented his behavior/meltdown, because many of those commenters note more of this author’s claims.

Author Chuck Wendig also blogged about this other author’s behavior, here. (NOTE to those with delicate sensibilities: Chuck can be a little profane/irreverent) Read the comments there, too.

It seems that one of the things that the meltdown author was having an issue about was being defined as “self-published.” That’s why his posts were moved to the more appropriate “self-published/small press” thread at the forum. It was an odd thing for him to take exception to, because the name of his publishing company, as posted in his diatribes, was HIS. Since he clearly is a self-published author, his behavior spread a malodorous cloud over other (and probably the vast majority of) indie authors who work hard, put out good products, and interact with their readers and other writers professionally and helpfully.

Granted, the author’s behavior probably did garner him publicity and probably some sales. After all, a man claiming he sells as much as he does and compares himself to big names in his genre is sure to attract some curiosity. People will want to see if he can put his money where his mouth is. But would you really want to sell books like that? Wouldn’t you rather cultivate readers by producing good works and being helpful and approachable? That’s what gets readers on board with you for the long term. And they’ll tell their friends about your work.

Someone amazed at your douchery might be a one-time reader, but is probably going to think of you more as a circus show because of your online antics than a writer whose work they genuinely enjoy and want to follow. You may get him or her to buy one copy of your book, but chances are, that’s the only copy he or she will buy. And they most likely will not tell their friends to support your work.

Remember, as an author, you are a public personage. You will be judged not only on your work, but also based on what you post online, and how you come across.

So, with that in mind:
1) Don’t like a policy on a forum? Politely email the administrator in a private message and ask about the policy. If it’s not to your liking, thank the admin and take your interactions elsewhere, to a forum whose policies you prefer.
2) Don’t air your dirty laundry. That is, don’t publicly post your indignation/pissiness/weird issues online.
AND
3) Stressed out about writing? Cranky about it? Stay away from the interwebs. That’s what I do. Read a book or a magazine or watch something interesting on TV. Go to a movie. Go work out. Something. But don’t put yourself into a situation in which you might have a meltdown or come across as snappish or prickly.

Publishing — whether indie or traditional — is a business. A professional business. You’re working in that business. Why would somebody want to shop at (let alone be a return customer of) the giant store of unprofessional asshattery in writing when they could shop at the approachable, professional, and courteous shop of a writer who subscribes to the “treat others as you would like to be treated” adage?

I tend to prefer the latter.

Happy reading, happy writing.

Hope everyone will have a happy and safe Memorial Day weekend. Amidst whatever you’re doing today, please remember that this is also a day to remember those who have died in military service to the nation. Here’s a link for more information on that.

Anyway, got a nice comment from “Lisa,” on the “Book List” page here on my site. For those not in the know, my Book List is a list of books in both my series (mystery AND sci fi) and the order in which they should be read. You can either print it out from my site or download a .pdf (there’s a link on that page) to frame it or put it up by your bookshelf or Kindle/e-reader. Or use it to line the bird cage. Whatever floats your boat.

So join me while I answer (or attempt to answer) Lisa’s questions!

Lisa’s comment was:

I just read both of your Far Seek books and absolutely loved them. I couldn’t put either one down,metaphorically speaking (.pdf). When should all the alt sci-fi enthusiasts of the world expect a 3rd book? I’m interested to know where all the imaginative colorful characters
are headed.
And, just out of curiosity, what drug trip was the inspiration for “being brainjacked”?

First, many thanks for reading, Lisa. I really appreciate that and I’m extremely glad you enjoyed Friends in High Places and A Matter of Blood. Readers, you can see what those are about and read excerpts HERE.

I am currently writing book 3 (I don’t release the title of the work until I release an excerpt, which is usually a month before publication). I am actually just about done with number 3. The artist who did the cover for Friends in High Places, Beck McCoy, is working on the image for number three. You can find out more about her HERE.

The way my process works is I’ll write a book, then let it sit for a couple of weeks or so before I go back in and start preparing it for the publisher. I’m hoping to have book 3 done by the end of June, so it’ll go to the publisher sometime mid-July and then it has to be edited and the cover needs to be finalized and all that good stuff. Which means HOPEFULLY, Cyllea willing, book 3 will be available around the end of August. I’ll make an excerpt available probably the beginning of August.

Now to the second part of your question. Just so we’re clear, it was not one of MY drug trips, for the simple reason that I’ve never had one. Yes, I am that geeky and pure. The experience with addiction I have is by watching friends who have family members who have been caught in the throes of various addictions, including meth, alcohol, and cocaine. I also came into contact with a meth addict in Albuquerque who haunted a particular stretch of Central Avenue. I spoke with him a few times, and figured out he was using meth because he had several of the most notable symptoms of long-term use. He disappeared after a few months and I always hoped he got help, but I have a feeling he may not have survived his addiction. So with that in mind — how addiction can manifest physically — I thought about what kinds of drugs or stimulation people would be able to access via sci fi.

The idea for brainjacking isn’t necessarily something I made up all by myself. There’s a strain in sci fi that involves cybernetic intelligence, and the merging of human and machine. Think about virtual reality. You interact with something that isn’t really there via technological tools, but it tricks your brain into thinking it is. Star Trek employed the Holodeck, where entire worlds could be constructed but the actual room on the Enterprise was empty except for the person using the technology.

The movie Strange Days (1995), directed by Kathryn Bigelow, included people interacting with virtual reality in ways that made it really scary for the thrillseeking humans involved. The link I provided above will take you to the Rotten Tomatoes site for Strange Days, which has a good overview of the premise of the black market virtual reality technology that people are engaging with in the movie. Basically, they’re getting thrills off other people’s memories, that have been recorded and are made available on a device that allows people to participate in the memory. Many of those memories involve sex and violence and many people become fascinated and addicted, in a way, to experiencing life this way.

That was sort of what I was thinking about when I developed the idea for “brainjacking.” Something that stimulates certain parts of your brain like a drug would, but it’s from neuro-technology. Electrical impulses that work pleasure centers/thrill-seeking centers in your mind but, like present-day street drugs, there’s the potential that you’ll need more and more of that stimulation to achieve the high. In this case, long-term users of brainjacking develop certain physical symptoms/traits. If they don’t get a fix, they might have what the character Cyr exhibited — symptoms of withdrawal.

With regard to working the brain, Medical science is already working with magnets and the brain to alleviate some of the symptoms of depression of Parkinson’s, and neurostimulation is being explored to help with Essential Tremors. We as a species have a long history of neurostimulation and experimentation, whether for good or nefarious purposes.

So that, plus my fascination with virtual reality technology and how the brain can be tricked into seeing things that aren’t there, led me to brainjacking, because honestly, we don’t know what the long-term effects of something like that may be. There may be none. But what could happen if you trick the brain enough times into thinking something’s there that’s not? Or if you keep it linked too long into technological conduits? What kind of strain is that on the brain? And what does it do to neuromapping? I don’t know. But science fiction allows us to explore things like that, and posit “what if” questions.

And there you have it. Thanks for reading, thanks for stopping by, and hope everyone has a fabulous weekend.

Donna Summer’s music does that for me, and it always will. Upon hearing of her death May 17th, I immediately got out her “Bad Girls” album and listened to it, and went right back to the late 1970s, when I was a young teenager trying to find ways to cope with being different in the rural area where I grew up. Music became a conduit for me to an outside world. The internet wasn’t around yet. Neither were cell phones. I got my music info from pop magazines, TV, the radio, and snail mail penpals. Through music, I could access whole cultures and scenes without leaving my own community.

Source: Bossip (re-sized here)

Please continue…

Others in the LGBT community who came of age during the 70s and 80s expressed those sentiments when news of Summer’s death started circulating around the blogosphere. Music critic Barry Walters notes that some of the appeal of Summer’s music and lyrics was not only its mainstream, poppish veneer but also its open but coded messages. Walters says

It was messages like these that made Summer both a mainstream star and a gay icon, the kind of messages that could speak to overlapping pop, black, female, and queer audiences of the ’70s and early ’80s with a simultaneous out-in-the-open yet under-the-radar sense of subversion. I don’t remember Summer acknowledging her gay fans at the height of her popularity; instead, she spoke to us in code, and we picked up these transmissions from Planet Disco with religious devotion.
source: “Donna Summer, Me, and the First Days of Disco,” by Barry Walters in Popdust.

Known as the “Queen of Disco,” the Boston-born singer grew up in gospel but worked in many different genres and sounds, and also performed on Broadway. She spent her early record years experimenting with different types of music, making them what Rolling Stone says were “concept-heavy and experimental.” She was and will be remembered as a ground-breaking artist who changed the face of club music in 1978 when she released the breathy, seductive, and scintillatingly erotic “Love to Love You, Baby“. David Bowie and Brian Eno recognized the impact that song would have:

David Bowie famously recalled hearing it with Brian Eno, while they were working together in the late 1970s. “One day in Berlin, Eno came running in and said, ‘I have heard the sound of the future.’ And I said, ‘Come on, we’re supposed to be doing it right now.’ He said, ‘No, listen to this,’ and he puts on ‘I Feel Love,’ by Donna Summer. Eno had gone bonkers over it, absolutely bonkers. He said, ‘This is it, look no further. This single is going to change the sound of club music for the next fifteen years.’ Which was more or less right.”
Source: “Dim All the Lights for Donna Summer,” by Rob Sheffield in Rolling Stone

The album I remember best is 1979′s “Bad Girls,” released at a pivotal and contentious point in music history, as RS writer Rob Sheffield notes (link above). What “Bad Girls” did was make disco not suck, and it provided a template for Michael Jackson’s “Off the Wall,” which dropped a few months later. “Bad Girls” was a slick, poppish, danceable mixture of sex, grit, rock n’ roll, and disco. And she was just getting warmed up. “On the Radio” followed “Bad Girls,” and through the 80s she continued pushing envelopes, experimenting with New Wave, a bit of reggae (remember “Unconditional Love” with Musical Youth? One of my faves.), and then a re-make as a hi-NRG artist in 1989 with “This Time I Know It’s for Real.”

Summer, a five-time Grammy winner, kept making music, into the months before she died. Fitting, since she spent her life exploring music and its production, and performing and writing it. I envision her as restless and endlessly creative, always looking to expand what she could do with the medium of music. She’s left a marvelous catalogue, and it will continue to fuel a generation of memories and hopefully create new fans.

In 2009, doing “Bad Girls” and “Hot Stuff” at the Nobel Peace Prize concert:

link

“On the Radio,” original version (1979)

link

“Macarthur Park,” live @2006?

link

“Unconditional Love,” with Musical Youth (1983)

link

“Dim All the Lights,” live (1999). She tells a cute story here. She originally wrote the song for Rod Stewart, but decided to cut it herself. As a tribute to Rod, she sings the first part as he might have sung it, then launches into pure Donna.

link

This might be viral-ing around writer world, but I wanted you to see it if you haven’t already. This is author Neil Gaiman‘s recent (as in, May 17th or thereabouts) commencement address at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.

It’s about 20 minutes long, but he’s a wonderful speaker as well as writer and his message, I think, will hit home for all artists, writers, creator-types, tinkerers, wanderers, eccentrics, irreverents, and anybody else who ever thought “what if” and then followed that little hint in the back of the mind to see what was over the next hill.

Source for the vid

Happy Friday, happy writing, happy dreaming!

OMG before I get into some really common spelling/grammar boo-boos, I simply must share with you my latest snack craze. Holy cow, these things are good:

source: Blue Diamond (re-sized here)

Serious yum-yum.

Anyway. Where were we? OH! I’m going to list a few of the most common boo-boos I see in writing. Care to see? Well, carry on!

First, let’s start with apostrophes. You use these to indicate that you’re combining two things or to show possession. Let’s deal with the combining thing. The apostrophe takes the place of a letter or two:

it + is = it’s
It’s a fine day for a stroll through the cemetery, isn’t it, Vlad?
it + has = it’s
It’s got the potential to turn ugly real fast if you don’t turn that truck around and head back to Idaho.

he + is = he’s
He’s going to be pissed when he finds out we’re borrowing his zombie-proof van, dude.

she + is = she’s
She’s kind of nice, but that whole undead thing leaves a weird smell in the air.

you + are = you’re
You’re seriously going to the party dressed as a vampire again? Really? Hey, what are you doing? Wha—AAAAAHHHHH!

they + are = they’re
They’re running out of ammo, bro. Soon we’ll be able to launch an attack.

we + are = we’re
We’re going to party like it’s 1999.

let + us = let’s
Let’s go! The horde is gaining on us!

that + is = that’s
That’s a fine thing to tell me on a full moon.

you + all = y’all (NOT ya’ll)
Hey, have y’all seen my chainsaw?

You see how the apostrophe is a little placeholder for a letter or two so that you can join them together?

Now let’s (see? let’s!) check out the “s” ending and make things possessive.

it + s = its
The beast snarled and launched itself at its prey.
Do you see the difference? If you had used “it’s” there, the beast would have been launching itself at “it is” prey. That’s how you can check that kind of thing.

your + s = yours
No, I’m pretty sure this M-16 is yours. Mine is over there.
Hint: Yours NEVER takes an apostrophe.

her + s = hers
I totally wouldn’t mess with that sword. It’s hers.
Did you catch the use of “it’s” in there, too? Bust it up, and you get: It is hers. That’s how you can tell if you need an apostrophe or not.

All right. These get misused quite a bit, too:
their, there, they’re

“Their” is a possessive form of “they.”
Their death-ray doesn’t work as well as advertised.

“There” can function as an adverb in which it denotes place or location or it functions as a pronoun to introduce a sentence or clause. In that situation, the verb doesn’t have a subject or complement. Anyway.
Adverb: Put the body over there, Igor.
Pronoun: There isn’t any hope since the apocalypse started.

“They’re,” as we’ve seen above, is they + are. (did you catch the other one? “We’ve”? No, that’s not a hair we’ve. That’s “we’ve”: we + have = we’ve)

And something I see way often these days is confusing “lose” with “loose.”
“Lose” is a verb. “Loose” is an adjective, though it can function as a verb, in the sense that you are “loosening” something.
If you lose your gun, we’re seriously screwed.
vs.
These pants are way too loose on me. I could practically put a grenade launcher down the leg.
vs.
You dare to challenge me, Mordigan the Magnificent? I’ll loose the hounds of hell upon you!

Do you see the difference? You LOSE a game. You LOSE your keys. You don’t LOOSE them unless you’re trying to sound archaic and you take them off the keyring so they can run away and be free.

Want more on apostrophes? Grammar Girl can save you.
Here.

And I’ll leave you with this awesomely handy guide to common spelling mistakes by The Oatmeal, which should be a poster on every wall in your house. (hint: it is available for purchase)

“You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em. Know when to fold ‘em. Know when to walk away. Know when to run.”

And I realized that’s a writing life.

How? Go see.

I wrote my first official novel when I was about 15. Long hand, on looseleaf notebook paper. Must’ve been about 100 sheets, back and front. It was a fantasy, in the spec fic vein, because I was (and still am, to a certain extent) a sci fi/fantasy geek. That was my first completed novel-length work.

An equally atrocious sequel followed, same method, as soon as I finished the first. I think I may still have them somewhere. I didn’t finish the sequel, as I recall, but I got about halfway through.

I wrote longhand for years. I came of age before a computer was in every house, and our typewriter was for “official” use). Back then, I wore out Bic ballpoint pens (I prefer black) and used up whole packages of looseleaf notebook paper. I cultivated an all-caps style in high school for formal writing, though I slipped easily into an upright cursive scrawl if I needed to write something fast or I was working on a research project and taking notes in the library. I still use both styles when I write longhand, something I still do because I send actual cards and postcards to people and I do take notes longhand when I’m working on projects.

source: Free Spirit Knits (re-sized here)

When I went to college, personal computers were still a luxury for a lot of us, so I used a big, clunky typewriter with correcto-tape. I bought far more spools of correcto-tape than ribbons, especially when I worked on my class papers. I started another novel, but about halfway through, school interfered. Then I started another novel. But classwork, again, got in the way.

But I held onto those manuscripts.

I then wrote a few short stories, still in the spec fic genre, and I started writing poetry, which I included in my journals. When I journal, it’s always by hand. So, too, is my poetry. I always write poems longhand first, scratching things out on the page, adding things here and there, trying different structures. A few of my poems have been published over the years, but mostly they’re exercises in word and rhythm, in how something sounds and feels, in images and evocation.

I didn’t start writing another novel until I was a grad student working on a master’s degree in anthropology. That was the first novel I typed — still no computer, though my typewriter then had some word processing capability. I didn’t finish that one, either, but I did write a few more spec fic short stories and submit them for consideration in anthologies. They were all rejected.

At that point, I folded.

So I wrote more poems instead, and kept them as exercises in my journals.

Three years later, I again started writing a novel, but I went back to the basics. Bic pen (black ink) and looseleaf paper. This one was a mystery and I didn’t finish it, either.

I walked away.

About ten years later, that handwritten pile of whatever it was I started before I walked away would become a very loose basis for my first published novel. I had written and completed two novels prior to getting that one published. Both were based on those novels I had started in college and grad school, respectively, and it felt cool, to complete them though they’re just hard drive bookends now.

Writing is fitful. Writing is shitful. But it has to be, because in order to find those new levels and break through whatever stale blockages we’ve got stored up in our deep-downs, we sometimes have to just stop. Children’s author Robin LaFevers said today in a blog at Writer Unboxed that

Rejections, bad reviews, lackluster sales, painful critique feedback, are all necessary lumps on the road to our objective. Then we need to be humble enough to hear what that feedback is telling us. Sometimes the feedback won’t be the obvious kind—a rejection or editorial letter—but rather simply not making progress on our journey. Keep your eyes peeled for that kind of subtle hint the Universe likes to taunt us with.

and

Almost every successful writer I know gave up writing altogether at one point and walked away. It’s an important part of the process because giving up often provides the window for a breakthrough. Also? If you’re not pushing yourself hard enough that you sometimes feel like giving up, then maybe you’re not pushing yourself hard enough.

Been there. Done that.

Ran away.

And no doubt will again. The stretches of time that mark my walks (or sprints) away from writing are my fallow seasons, when I let the soil rejuvenate and plant poems elsewhere, tending them as they grow and letting words sift through my fingers like the dirt I left in the other field. I pull a journal out, reach for a pen, and plow new lines across the pages. There’s something earthy about writing by hand, something intimate and deep, and it triggers parts of my brain that were also lying fallow and suddenly feel the stirring of new growth.

“Every [writer] knows that the secret to survivin’. . .is knowing what to throw away. . .and knowing what to keep.”

Happy writing, happy reading, happy weekend.

And apologies to Don Schlitz, “The Gambler” songwriter, and Kenny Rogers, who sings it far better than I. (Go ahead. Sing along.)

Got some groovy linkage here you might find useful for your writing and publishing selves.

Keith Cronin tells us: DARE TO SUCK! Great advice, because all writers (at least all the ones I know) go through a phase where everything they write or try to write feels like it’s no better than drunken monkey poo thrown liberally across greasy burger wrappers. That’s okay! Write it anyway! Or skip the scene that’s giving you nervous hives and write another one. The important thing is to keep writing, because you need that momentum (and if you want to find out more about Keith, click here).

Lydia Sharp says: It’s okay to watch movies and TV shows! Cuz you can learn cool things that translate into fiction writing! I agree. Catch her post about 5 ways novelists can benefit from doing that. And find more Lydia here.

Meg Wolitzer at the New York Times gives us some food for thought about the state of women’s fiction and women writing fiction. Go see. And find out more about Meg Wolitzer here.

The problem of knock-off ebooks at Amazon (that is, copy-cat books based on legitimate titles that Amazon posts). Check the comment thread, too, on that one. I guess my question on that one would be: If you know the title and author of the book you want, why would you buy a knock-off with a slightly different title/author? Hmmm.

And Stevie Carroll has a discussion about female friendships in fiction going over at Women and Words. Readers, you might want to check that out and offer suggestions to Stevie and others about books that have female friendships. Find Stevie at her LiveJournal here.

All right, friends. Happy reading, happy writing, and happy Tuesday! And please do feel free to provide links you think will benefit us here in The Situation Room in the comments. Cheers!

Dreher was a playwright and author, and also a practicing psychologist. She died April 2 of this year, a week after celebrating her 75th birthday. You can find an obituary for her here. She was a Lambda Literary Award winner, as well as an Alice B. Readers’ medalist.

I remember her best for her Stoner McTavish mystery series. I read the first one soon after I finished Radclyffe Hall’s Well of Loneliness, and it was a breath of fresh air after the sadness and tragedy embedded in Hall’s work. In Dreher’s work, I found a lesbian character who didn’t die in the end and who managed to get into a realistic relationship. Dreher’s McTavish series was probably the first genre lesbian fiction I read, and in a way, it was revolutionary and showed me what was possible in terms of writing LGBT characters and, more importantly, writing human characters.

Dreher never let a reader off easy, but her gentle humor and empathy for her characters — all of them, whether damaged, suffering, or searching — created nuanced and layered mysteries that were as much an exploration of the human condition as they were about lesbian and women’s identity against a variety of backdrops. Life is complicated. People are complicated. And Dreher knew that and gracefully wove it into her stories.

In 1997, she published Solitaire and Brahms, a novel about being a lesbian in the 1950s, and the ever-present tensions between public and private lives, a theme that seems to echo in some of her other work.

She contributed essays and writings to a number of projects, including Off the Rag: Lesbians Writing about Menopause, ed. by Lee Lynch and Akia Woods. “Waiting for Stonewall” appears in Sexual Practice/Textual Theory: Lesbian Cultural Criticism, ed. by Susan J. Wolfe and Julia Penelope. You’ll also find a contributed chapter to They Wrote the Book: Thirteen Women Mystery Writers Tell All, ed. by Helen Windrath.

You can find a collection of her plays here (published 1988), for a sense of how she brought her characters from page to stage and into the hearts and minds of audiences.

Dreher was busy in her non-writing life, as well. She was the co-founder (and, for the past seven years, president and clinical director) of Sunrise Amanacer, Inc., a non-profit organization concerned with the mental and physical health of underserved and non-English-speaking people. I like to think that the different facets of her life fed her creative mind, and allowed us a glimpse of who she may have been and the many possibilities there are for seeing each other and for those we don’t know. The prism of shared humanity offers many different views. I think Dreher’s was wide, encompassing, and always compassionate.

You can find her mysteries, plays, and novel at New Victoria Publishers here.

If you’d like to leave a comment in her memorial register, go here.
NOTE: you may have to cut and paste the link. Here it is:

http://douglassfuneral.com/wp-content/plugins/funeralworks_obituary_plugin/ajax-obituary2.php?Counter=1049

If that doesn’t work, go to www.douglassfuneral.com and type Dreher into their search function, upper right. My apologies; the site may require that you clear your cache or refresh your browser to get to her page.

Hope your week is treating you well. Mine’s outta hand, but no worries.

So I finally got around to reading the May/June 2012 issue of Writer’s Digest. Writers, if you buy one issue of this magazine this year, make it this one.

There’s a big ol’ piece called “The New Era of Publishing: Making It Work for You” by literary agent April Eberhardt. It’s a good primer for coming to grips with how publishing is changing, and what that means for you in terms of finding the right model for how you want to proceed as an author, regardless of where you are in your writing career.

There’s also an article by e-publishing guru Jane Friedman, called “The Basics of DIY E-Book Publishing,” which is another crash course in that subject, with Jane’s easy-to-understand info and tips. You can find her HERE, too, for more awesome-ness from her guru-ness. (No, SRSLY. Jane Friedman is considered an authority in e-publishing. She’s currently a professor in e-media at the U of Cincinnati and a former editor of Writer’s Digest.)

The next piece is called “Today’s Best Strategies for Savvy Self-Publishers,” by Joel Friedlander, author of a book on self-publishing and an award-winning book designer. Go see.

And one of my personal faves, WD’s best websites for writers. This is their 14th annual “101 Best,” broken down by category like “Creativity,” “Everything Agents,” “Online Writing Communities,” “Jobs & Markets,” and “Publishing Resources.” A couple that readers here might find intriguing include WOW! Women on Writing, an ezine that supports women through every step of the process. Go here. The current issue is about the art of storytelling. Novel Rocket offers tons of interviews and advice from published authors and literary agents. Grammar Girl (she is freaking supercalifragilisticexpealidocious) takes on grammatical quandaries that authors of all levels deal with. Check it out. And one more, to whet your whistle — Coalition of Independent Authors, a group of self-published writers who created the Coalition to gain exposure for their work.

That is just a taste of the 101 entirely useful sites in this list. The catch? You have to actually purchase the print copy of this mag, as these groovy tips are not available at the website. However, there are lots of cool things on the site for writers in terms of tips, writing prompts, exercises, and workshops to consider. So even if you opt not to subscribe or buy this issue, the Writer’s Digest site offers some good info for all kinds of writers.

Happy writing, happy reading!