Steven E. Wedel's Blog, page 42

Summer, where are you going?

Well, it was time to report back to work last week. Not just the as-needed excursions I'd been making off and on all summer, but back to school for real. Students return this coming Thursday. I have a pretty sweet schedule this year, with two sections of AP Language, two sections of AP Literature, and two sections of English IV. One of the English IV classes has 30 kids in it, but in the other classes there are no more than 15 per class. I'm a little nervous about the AP Language class since ...

Thick Skin

A writer has to have thick skin. Not the kind nightly applications of Lubriderm will help. I mean the kind that is like armor against the pointy arrows of rejection. Sometimes it seems those arrows are fired randomly, while other times it seems the editor is taking careful aim at your self esteem. That usually isn't the case, though it often takes years before you can look back and see that the editor was trying to help.

Case in point, my short story "SKN-3", which was recently...

That first word

Writing that first word of the day is always the hardest one. There are so many ways to procrastinate. Gotta download the e-mail, of course. Oh, and Facebook must be checked. Hmm, anything interesting on Craigslist today? Better pop over to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and see if Brett Favre has said anything new to set off another frenzy about his return to the Vikings. I can spare a few minutes to my appetite for destruction with Crush the Castle 2. Oh! Somebody commented on my Facebook sta...

Some publishing news

I've been meaning to post some of this stuff for a while and keep forgetting it. As you may have noticed, I haven't had a new book out since Bad Moon Books released Little Graveyard on the Prairie last year, and with it being an expensive limited edition, probably not a lot of people shelled out the cash for it. I have, however, had a few short stories published since then, so I wanted to tell you about those.

Nadia's Curse -- This one is for Amazon's Kindle. It is self published. I wanted to ...

Discipline

Ah, there's nothing like the feeling of a stout wooden paddle in your hand. The whistle it makes as it swings through the air and the solid, meaty sound it makes when it contacts some blue-jean-clad buttocks ... Well, I assume it offered my teachers some satisfaction back in the day. But right now I think I'll talk about discipline in writing.

I've been plodding along in Nadia's Children for months now. For a while it was slow simply because it lacked direction. Then I found where the story wa...

Insanity?

They say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Since become a teacher, I've looked forward to summer break every year, thinking I would get a lot of writing done. It seems I always overlook the fact I have a bunch of needy kids at home who want to eat, go swimming, eat, go to the movies, eat, play games, eat, get sno-cones, eat, eat some more, have friends over, all of whom eat. Oh yeah, and they like to EAT!

Not that there hasn't bee...

Racism and Ignorance and Me

Earlier this week I started a little firestorm on Facebook after reading this article about Prince being honored at the Black Entertainment Television Awards. For those who don't want to click through, I'll summarize quickly: I asked for a discussion as to whether or not America still needs awards ceremonies, pageants, etc. that excludes all but a specific race of people. Of course, the danger of initiating that discussion is the seemingly common belief that anybody who would ask must be a ra...

Scrybe Press update

Just to update the situation with Scrybe Press ... the publisher has contacted me and is working to rectify issues. There is a chance the books of The Werewolf Saga, as well as Seven Days in Benevolence, will remain in print with Scrybe Press.

My Books

It was with great regret that I sent the owner of Scrybe Press an e-mail today demanding that he stop printing all my titles he’s published, including the four books of The Werewolf Saga. The publisher is in breach of contract, and I’m calling him on it.

That means the four published volumes of The Werewolf Saga will be going out of print very soon. I’m about halfway through the third full-length novel, Nadia’s Children, and I hope I will be able to resell at least the two full...

Careers

When I started writing (and wanting to publish) about 25 years ago I was stuck in a job I didn't like and saw writing as a way to get away from having an asshole for a boss, not have to punch a time clock, and yeah, get rich. I wrote because I didn't want a day job. The jobs changed, from machinist to newspaper reporter, to corporate writer, to public relations director, and I kept writing because I need that creative outlet, but there was always that thought that part of why I did it was to ...