Gary D. Robson's Blog: Reading & Writing with Gary Robson, page 10

Gary and the Wild Horses

I just searched through my blog to find something I wrote about my rodeo experience ten years ago and realized it wasn’t a blog post, it was a newspaper article. I did mention this in a blog post (Rodeos, beer, and cancer), and even included the picture below, but I’d like to share it here […]

7 book signing tips for children’s authors

There are a lot of things that are different for an author who writes books for children — especially picture books. I’ve talked about some of these things before, but I’ve never specifically addressed how to actually sign the books. Most of the generic book signing tips and guidelines apply (see my 14 book signing […]

Collecting your freelance money

When we start out working as writers, most of us think that means we’re going to spend our time writing. It can come as a shock when we find ourselves spending so much time marketing ourselves and our work, sending in proposals, queries & outlines, researching editors & agents, rewriting, and doing accounting. The real […]

Schedules and meta-blogging

Ever since I split my blog in two, creating this blog and Tea With Gary, I have tried to keep the writing-related items here and the tea-related items there. Yesterday, however, I wrote a post on Tea With Gary about blogging on a schedule. Blogging is, of course, writing, which means that it belongs here […]

Dear Meddling Passerby

I addressed this post to “passerby” rather than “neighbor,” because I really, truly hope that one of my neighbors wouldn’t do such a thing. So, dear passerby, I’d like you to know that I’m really quite a friendly person. I’m quite happy to chat with people and answer questions. Questions about, let’s say, my horses. […]

The Start of Online Captioning (realtime text transmission)

Closed captioning has been a part of television broadcasting for several decades. For pre-recorded shows, the captions can be added in a studio, carefully typed, proofed, and formatted. In the U.S., this is known as “offline” captioning. For a live show, someone has to type that text as it is spoken, known as “online” or […]

Charities Supporting Main Street

A friend of mine named Judith Gregory popped in to my store to chat a while ago. As we talked, she looked out the front window at the construction equipment that was ripping out half of the street to replace the water main through downtown Red Lodge. “This construction must really be tough on business,” […]

Online Medical Information for Patients: Where Quality Beats Quantity

I have been pretty lucky as a freelance writer. There have been very few times that I haven’t been paid for my work. In one of those cases, I was approached by a medical magazine in Canada — it’s always nice when they call you — about doing a guest column for medical professionals about [...]

Small Business and the Marketplace Fairness Act

If you listen to the scary emails being sent by massive online businesses like eBay, I should be panicking right now. They say that the “Marketplace Fairness Act of 2013” will hurt small businesses like mine. In actuality, I agree with the Washington Post editorial that says this bill is an excellent move, and I’m [...]

The History of the Kilt

Time to pull another fun one from the archives! This article first appeared in issue #81 (November 2011) of Renaissance magazine. None of the photos here appeared in the magazine — they own their pictures. There is no more recognizable symbol of Scotland than a man in a kilt. If you wish to celebrate your [...]