Terry Shames's Blog: 7 Criminal Minds, page 48

The Writing Business

How do you measure “business success”? How “successful” have you been in terms of “business” this year?

Brenda here.

I suppose I measure business success by sales and a growing audience. As most authors in this business know, it takes a lot of time and energy to build a readership because word of mouth is one of the best ways to have someone pick up your book. I can't count how many times I've heard or read in a review, "I have no idea how I never heard of you before."

It's easy enough to be overlo...

Typing as the Nights Grow Longer By Josh Stallings

Q: The days are growing shorter: do the seasons affect your writing schedule, or ability/preferences, in other ways?

A: This question stumped me. I was born and raised in California where we have less seasons and more differing levels of good weather. Maybe that answer is trite and not entirely true. We have seasons they are just subtle, the quality of light shifts from gold to blue, temperatures shift from hot to warm to fresh. Maybe the reason the question stopped me goes deeper. 

Proof we do ...

As The World (Still) Turns, by Catriona

As the days grow shorter, do you find yourself writing more, orless, because of the difference in the season? Do the seasons affect yourwriting schedule, or ability, in other ways?

If only. Man, if I could be guided by the tilt of the earth toward and away from the sun, and write like a true Celt, Solstice to Equinox to Solstice again, that would be fantastic.

Because I am a Celt and I love the turn of the earth and the shape of the year, not just the Solstices and Equinoxes, but the Beltane and...

Escaping the season... by Cathy Ace

As the days grow shorter, do you find yourself writing more, orless, because of the difference in the season? Do the seasons affect yourwriting schedule, or ability, in other ways?

The shortanswer to this question is “Yes”, but maybe not in the way most would think.

In case youhaven’t noticed, I travel. A lot. Which means that certain times of the yearare better for me to be writing, because I’m at home, at my desk, and able todo the whole plotting, researching, writing, and editing thi...

A Time to Every Purpose by Gabriel Valjan

 

The days are growingshorter: do the seasons affect your writing schedule, or ability/preferences,in other ways?

 

To associate the seasons with the stages of life is as oldas Ecclesiastes. They mark time. Winter is devastation, spring is potential,summer is fruition, and fall is harvest. Light is life, and the gradual retreatof sunlight is correlated to decay, disease, and inevitable death.

 

“There is a time for everything, and a season for everyactivity under the ...

Doom of Darkness Time

 Q: The days are growing shorter: do the seasons affect your writing schedule, or ability/preferences, in other ways?

-from Susan

The question is complicated by the fact that several major holidays fall within the Doom of Darkness Time, which for sure affect my writing schedule. It’s hard to keep an eye on the turkey while batting out the daily word count. Buying and decorating the tree is a two-day total loss, and since I host Christmas Day for my extended family, most of the week before is shot....

We Can Be Heroes

 

 

by Abir

 

Whom do you consider the greatest hero you’ve read, and why?

 

This is an interesting question. Are we talking fiction or non-fiction? And how do we define hero? The great thing about a blog like this is that I’m free to interpret the question in any way I want. So let’s go with fiction.

 

Heroes. Meh. I can take ‘em or leave ‘em, at least in the sense of the guy who swoops in and saves the day or the damsel or the whatever else it might be. Anti-heroes, now they’re much more my cup of tea...

Heroes and Writing Goals from James W. Ziskin

Whom do you consider the greatest hero you’ve read, and why?

 

I’m going to interpret the word “hero” literally as a person of strong character who performs marvels and is possessed of noble qualities. And you know what? That kind of character in a book is usually boring. I had a professor long ago who asked her students who was a more interesting character, Melanie Wilkes or Scarlett O’Hara. Melanie was a kind, wonderful, upstanding, decent person. And she was strong. Who wouldn’t want to know he...

Go ahead, make my day

Whom do you consider the greatest hero you’ve read, and why?

by Dietrich

The answer to that has changed over the years. Early in my reading life I would have named Robin Hood, Zoro, Tarzan, Shane, and Hawkeye. As I got a little older, it became True Grit’s Rooster Cogburn. I think I liked that he had an extra dimension that my previous heroes — he wasn’t all good, in fact he had some pretty rough edges — like real people.

Harper Lee’s Atticus Finch was wise and a straight shooter. He didn’t lo...

The Heroic

 

Terry here answering our weekly question: This week the question seems particularly fitting when war is once again consuming much of the world:
Whom do you consider the greatest hero you’ve read, and why? 
 I was probably intended to write about heroes in mystery novels, but nothing in my reading experience compares to reading about real-life heroes. Siegfried Sassoon and Pat Barker have equal place in my consideration of “the greatest hero I’ve read.”
 I was introduced to Siegfried Sassoon in ...