Author Archive: Eric San Juan

Sound advice for aspiring writers

A fellow Eric brought these links to my attention and I thought they were well worth sharing. There is a wealth of advice here, and while not all of it will be applicable to you, if your aim is to write you’ll want to read these and take 90 percent of ’em to heart. The Guardian first gives us Ten Rules For Writing Fiction, as offered by noteworthies like Neil Gaiman and Elmore Leonard. They followed it up with Ten More Rules, bringing folks like Michael Moorcock and ian Rankin into the fray. The vast majority of this advice is good, sound, reasonable, and damned difficult to learn. Take this stuff to heart NOW rather than learn it after years and years of slogging through…
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Campaign season is the worst thing ever

Brutha, there is no more awful time of the year than campaign season. As many of you know, in my day job I’m a newspaper guy. I do the kind of things newspaper guys do. Right now, that means managing the coverage of two fierce mayoral elections. And let me tell you, my hatred for campaign season is the kind of hatred usually reserved for famine, pestilence, genocide, and Barbra Streisand. Not in that order. I’d go into details, but not in a public forum. Suffice to say that after 11 years of covering local politics, I’m more than a little jaded at the process and the people and all the little insanities that go into it. I aim to do a good job because…
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The Hitchcock podcast returns!

Hey, remember a little something called the Year of Hitchcock Podcast? Well, it’s back. Technical difficulties and life issues forced a break, but it’s back and ready to roll. We’ll be airing roughly every other week for the time being — if there are blips in the schedule, there are blips in the schedule — and will at the very least clear out the shows we already have recorded (14 in all). From there? We’ll see. So for now go subscribe, fire it up on iTunes, tell some friends, spread the word, yada yada yada. Or don’t. I don’t care either way. No skin off mine.

Whoooaaa, we’re halfway there

Stuff Every Husband Should Know

A little more than halfway, actually. Stuff Every Husband Should Know is chugging along nicely. We are past the halfway mark. The last few evenings have seen chapters such as How to Grocery Shop in Less Than 30 Minutes and How to Make Family Time (Even If You Work A Lot) submitted to my editor. He has yet to curse my name and call me a fool, so I guess it’s going okay. To give you a sense of what this book will be like, check out Stuff Every Man Should Know, also by Quirk Books. Husband will be part of the same pocket books series, in roughly the same format. As you can see, it’s fun and awesome — two things I hope to…
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I am a terrible singer…

… but will soon be doing it anyway. I mentioned previously that when my PC died my music ground to a halt with it. I kind of need to do music, though. It’s a creative outlet I can’t do without, especially since writing is as much work as it is fun. New PC is now up and running … and that means a new X-Sweet album is coming at some point in the near future. This time, though, I’m taking my time. I have a habit of rushing through this stuff, settling for good enough, and tossing it out the door before it’s ready. Too impatient; lack any drive to be a perfectionist with this stuff. This time I hope to sit on these tunes,…
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