Mur Lafferty's Blog, page 95

Links for 2009-07-04 [del.icio.us]

My Own Sweet Thyme: Rhubarb Cream Pie
Book Marketing Maven: Why Freemium is an Excellent Opportunity for Authors
9 Ways People Respond to Your Content Online | Lateral Action
50 Free Resources That Will Improve Your Writing Skills | Developer's Toolbox | Smashing Magazine
Video: How To Rapidly Grow Your Blog Traffic - Entrepreneurs-Journey.com by Yaro Starak

ISBW #120 – Don't Be an Ass! / Matthew Wayne Selznick Interview

Once again we are proud to have GoTo Meeting as a sponsor this week! Get a Free 30-Day Trial!

[image error] We are also proud to be sponsored by JC Hutchins' Personal Effects series, the podcast Sword of Blood is available free now, and the novel Personal Effects: Dark Art, launched this past week (order now!)

00:07: ISBW #12000:37: GoTo Meeting Message01:303: I just don't manage to podcast during vacation.02:40: Collaboration effort with JR Blackwell, Her Side03:57: I have a new agent! Brandi Bowles from the

Revolutions and Pitfalls

Seems that this has been coming up a lot lately- authors bypassing the traditional publishing avenues and doing stuff themselves. Now, don't laugh; of course it's been coming up, as I and my podcasting peers have been doing it for years. But now some new developments are coming up, and they bear watching.

Tim Pratt (former guest of this show and an excellent writer) is releasing a "reader-supported novella" called Bone Shop . It's a prequel to his popular urban fantasy Marla Mason books (first fou

Rule 5- Don't be an ass.

I'm adding to my Rules for Writing – as I said, it's a work in progress, created as I discover something else people should know.

And dude, this is something that everyone should know. It's a golden rule you learn in preschool.

Rule 5- Don't be an ass.

While this is one of my main rules in life, I hadn't thought to include it as a specific writing rule. But it seems people need to know. Especially in regards to the Internet. Back in The Day, a popular phrase was "on the Internet, no one knows you'r

Good news on vacation!

I am happy to announce that as of yesterday, I am being represented by Brandi Bowles, an agent with Howard Morhaim Literary Agency!

#

Sudden thought today: it seems the scifi authors who wrote about things that actually ended up happening (like the Internet or nanotech) seem to happily embrace the swiftly changing landscape of the world, while others (cough*Ray*cough*Bradbury*cough) seem to hate the science-fiction-come-true of today. Do we think there’s a connection?

Vacation has been full of fami

Pregnancy (it’s a metaphor)

Traveling always wreaks havoc on my writing – blogging included. Yesterday my family and I drove 12 hours (plus more to accommodate a 6 year old’s bladder) from Durham, NC to Buffalo, NY. Needless to say, neither writing nor blogging got done. I know people who can blog/write while they travel, but I don’t seem to be some of them.

But now that I’m here, I can blog, write, read and plan, in between family visitation. Which is good, cause I’ve got stuff on my mind, which is the topic of today’s blo

Links for 2009-06-17 [del.icio.us]

Kiva - Loans that change lives

This looks like an excellent idea, will be participating when I return from trips this month.

Links- advice for n00bs, new media, software and support

Meant to include this on the last post and forgot. So TWO blog posts today! W00t!

Excellent advice from Joanna Penn about What I Wish I’d Known Before Writing My First Book — (This inspired today’s Measurable Goals post, for the record.)Is anyone using the Atlantis Word Processor? It has a “publish to ebook” feature with the new update, and I’m curious how well it works. If you are using it, please let me know! (I’d test it, but it looks to be PC only, dangit.)More authors taking control of their

Measurable Goals

There’s one thing I never realized about this whole writing thing until- embarrassingly enough- this year. Whether you’re doing the “get started writing” thing or the “begin to get published” thing or the “alternate/indy/new media publishing” thing or even the “established writer veteran,” there is one thing you absolutely must have:

Measurable goals.

Having a clear goal in mind when you start any project is vital to its success. And it’s something I have lacked.

Sure, when I start a project, I v

Outlining

So here’s the deal. As you may have heard in I Should Be Writing #119, I’ve gotten a number of questions about outlining. I have decided to investigate other outlining methods than the snowball method- ALL FOR YOU. So shoot me your outline ideas/methods, or links to methods, and I’ll try them out. I have three personal projects this year, so I’ll try three different outlining methods and see if I can get some good outcome from them, reporting back to you.

So we have snowflake, what other outlini