Joseph Devon's Blog, page 11

Sewing Climax Flash Fiction Challenge Winner

Haha…sometimes I get a kick out of writing headlines that are as confusing as possible at first glance. Probably not the best blogging strategy. Whatever. It’s fun.

So a few weeks ago I issued a flash fiction challenge to write a story with a climactic sewing scene. I’m happy to announce that the winner of this contest is Albert Berg.

A few words about Albert. He is a huge fan of the Matthew and Epp stories and has penned one of my favorite reviews for Probability Angels going.

He’s great fun to...

Things That Were Cooked Memorial Day 2012

Outside of writing, cooking is probably my favorite creative outlet. Annoyingly I only get to do it rarely because cooking for one is utterly joyless for me. If I can’t share what I’m making, I don’t see much point in it. This has more to do with my personality than my menu. It’s like how I don’t consider a story done until I get a solid bit of feedback from a handful of my fans.

Anyway, a few times a year I do get the chance to cook for a crowd and I always post my trials and errors here, usu...

My Contract With My Book

Dear Book,

I love you, I truly do even though I, as of yet, do not know you fully. I love your curves as you move through time, I love your heart as you show me the humanity of the most despicable characters, I love your brain as you teach me about Ancient Rome and the origins of wool.

But we need to talk.

I’ve been through this with some of your siblings before, five of them to be exact, and each of the books that came before you broke my fucking head apart once the honeymoon part of the relati...

Flash Fiction Contest: Sewing Climax

Short Version: Write a short story in 750 words or less in which the final climactic scene involves…SEWING!!!! Mail it tothiswhiterabbit@gmail.com. Next Friday-ish a winner will be announced and they will win signed copies of Probability Angels and Persistent Illusions. And if you have a blog or site where you want to post your story, feel free to link to it in the comments.

Longer Version: After discussing my research on Wednesdaya conversation started on Twitter with @xperegrineabout how, si...

I Think It’s Time to Start Book Three

Oh god I can’t believe I just wrote that blog title. I have so much more research I need to do. Currently I’m halfway through a book on the history of textiles and sewing methods. I have no idea when the book was published, I grabbed it for my Kindle without checking, but it discusses at length how you shouldn’t store your thread next to a fire or heating stove because that can make your thread brittle. So I don’t think it’s the most modern book ever. Nor is it the most exciting. But it’s hel...

Prague Film School and My Creative Commons License

Earlier this week Ireceivedan email from my new friend in Prague, Roma Raju. I mentioned her a few months ago. She attends a film school in Prague and wanted to know if she could adapt my short story, Private Showing, into a film for her final project.

My response was something along the lines of, “F*&! YES YOU CAN THAT’S SO F&*$G COOL OHMYGOD!”

She wrote me to let me know that progress was being made, she was looking into casting and that, “There is a whole lotta talk going on in school abou...

The Pins are Out of the Grenades: More Thoughts on Self-Publishing

I haven’t been sleeping real well lately and my eyes are all kinds of blurry this morning. That’s partly because of allergies and partly because I’ve been pretty stressed out this past week.

As I mentioned last Wednesday, I’ve started seeing signs of my self-promotion paying off. It’s clumsy but, for the first time ever, I have a marketing machine that makes some sort of sense to me.

Everything I’ve tried over the past few years, outside of releasing a new book, has had a murky effect on my sal...

A Few Words About Advertising Your Books

Last week I chatted a bit about marketing my books, what has worked, and how revisiting my core strategy required some shifts in my current methods (that sounded like jargon-speak).

At one point I mentioned that advertising was a pretty lousy way to sell books. That may have been a bit of an overstatement. The phrase “advertising” is broad and I don’t think one blanket judgment sums up my thoughts on the subject very well.

When I said that advertising is a lousy way to sell books, I wasreferrin...

Marketing as an Indie Publisher, the Amazon Algorithm, and Why My Books Are No Longer Free

I was talking to a friend of mine once about what I’m trying to accomplish in the world ofindependentpublishingand he commented with a quickly astute, “Huh. Sounds like a lot of chicken and egg stuff.”

Every time I try to gather my thoughts and plan my next move for my books, I come back to that comment and it has continued to ring true.

I put out a new story? Great, so I want to get readers for it. So I tweet and post on Facebook and write about it on here…but that only reaches the readers I a...

Recent Photographs

So I've been taking a lot more photographs than usual lately. I made a New Year's Resolution to take my camera out with me more and I've actually been doing a pretty good job of keeping up with that. I also go to a lot of bars. So the end result is a lot of pictures from bars…well and some other places.

At any rate, I always find it amazing how easy it is to share my work on the internet, and yet how difficult it is to share my work. Most people know to come here for my words but I have my...