Do not pester the editor!

Posted inRants
As some of you may know, I am an editor in my day job. That means I get plenty of letters, emails, faxes and calls from people who want to see their stuff in print. Press releases from marketing firms, mostly (I work in local newspapers), but other items, too. Let me share with you my least favorite call in the world: "I'm calling to confirm that you got my email?" Do not do this. I could go on a bitter tirade about why it's irritating and why it's unnecessary and why it defeats half the purpose of email, but…
Suffering from project overload

Suffering from project overload

Posted inRants, Writing
Sometimes I get in over my head. My need to fill every square inch of spare time with creative projects too often leads to more stuff than I can do at once. It's maddening and frustrating and at times a bit overwhelming, yet if I drop one I resent the project I keep for holding me back on the other one. Madness. What am I juggling right now? Take a look: Dystopian Science Fiction novel My current fiction work in progress (WIP), this involves an America healing from a second Civil War, an oppressive caste system that has driven most…

The Laptopless Life

Posted inRandom Musings, Rants, Writing
Sometimes I am a forgetful fool. Yesterday I was at my buddy Jim's, where we began recording what will be a weekly podcast series covering ground similar to our book, A Year of Hitchcock (Scarecrow Press, 2009). It was a fun project to dive into. While I've done radio before (doing the "color commentary" for a local station's Election Day coverage, that sort of thing), I had never done podcasting. They're similar, but not quite the same. Anyway, I the laptop and some recording equipment up to his place, we yammered for a while about Alfred Hitchcock's movies, had lunch…