Tag Archive: random musings
Eric San Juan
December 13, 2011
I’m not much for the whole posting quotes thing, but this quote from Ursula le Guin’s award-winning ‘Those Who Walked Away From Omelas,’ which can be read in full here, strikes me as worth sharing: “The trouble is that we have a bad habit, encouraged by pedants and sophisticates, of considering happiness as something rather stupid. Only pain is intellectual, only evil interesting. This is the treason of the artist: a refusal to admit the banality of evil and the terrible boredom of pain … But to praise despair is to condemn delight, to embrace violence is to lose hold of everything else. We have almost lost hold; we can no longer describe happy man, nor make any celebration of joy.” In the world of…
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Eric San Juan
March 23, 2011
I don’t normally use my blog for this sort of thing but felt like this was something I wanted to share: A little real life story about doing good things for other people. The story has been kicking around for a while now — in fact, this blog post was written back in December, I just never got around to pushing it live — but if you haven’t yet read it, I urge you to. It’s one of those beautiful real life stories that give you some faith in the inherent good in people.
Eric San Juan
February 9, 2011
Yesterday I posted about self-publishing a local history book. Niche works like that are ideal candidates for self-publishing. An author with the will and skill can more effectively reach his or her target audience than a publisher, even a specialty publisher, and be more financially successful with it in the process. Yet that’s not what prompted me to start yesterday’s post, so let me pick up where I left off: I’m thinking of self-publishing some fiction. A short story collection or three. Digitally. My thought is, why not? These days print outlets for short fiction are few and far between. Most are already digital, and many are fly-by-night. Short story collections are generally only viable for established authors. While I’ll have a second book out…
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Eric San Juan
January 21, 2011
So it’s been a little while. Hell, it’s been a long while, really. No, not THAT. I mean since I last wrote. The folks who know me know that in recent years I’ve tackled project after project after project. From the time I took on editor duties at the now defunct DVDinmypants.com to this holiday season it’s been a relentless stream of projects. Four years of Books both published and pending. Anthologies. Articles. Freelance stuff. Music. And lots more. All while holding down a full-time job, trying to be a good family man, and attempting to have something resembling a social life. Shortly into the holidays, I finally hit the wall. Hard. I realized I had to take some time off. Since the completion of…
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Eric San Juan
September 20, 2010
Driving home from work the other evening and ideas are rolling through my head. Sitting at a traffic light and it occurs to me, “Say, I should self-publish a science fiction anthology next year, maybe something with a Mars theme. Invite writers to submit stories, do it via CreateSpace and list it at Amazon. Yeah, that would be fun.” What the bloody hell is WRONG with me?
