I was chatting with a friend of mine the other day about a writing conference and he mentioned how disappointed he was with some of the authors who attended. Now, before I go too far, let me say that the friend I was talking to is also an author. As to why he was disappointed in (some) of his fellow authors it comes down to a single word: attitude. He told me that a number of the attending authors had the attitude that they were better than everyone else and deserved to be treated like celebrities. I have a real problem with that because, as Dave Duncan once said to me, “Every professional author was an amateur just like you […]
Read moreAuthor: Michell
GalaxyBillies – Episode 8
Hello, my friends. Well, the group consensus seems to be that the name for fans of GalaxyBillies should be “Kinfolk”. So a big “HEY” to all the Kinfolk out there. In honour of this momentous occasion I’m going to setup a page for GalaxyBillies with a show description and link to all the episodes. I’m also going to set up a page for all the kinfolk out there. So here’s what I’d like you to do: send me your name or Internet handle to kinfolk at irreverentmuse dot com and I’ll generate a kinfolk name for you. Those I will post on the kinfolk page. I won’t be doing anything more with them (yet), but I’m noodling on what would […]
Read moreBook Review: Evolve, Vampire Stories of the New Undead
Evolve is a different kind of book for me; I usually don’t read either anthologies or vampire fiction. I’m more of a novel reader and while I enjoy vampire fiction the recent trends in that genre haven’t really struck a chord with me. Still, I think I was fated to read this book. When I first opened it to a random page, the story was taking place in Calgary where I live. That doesn’t happen every day so I picked up the book. I read it cover to cover over the course of a week during my daily commute. Evolve has a nice assortment of 24 short stories from a wide-range of authors including Kelly Armstrong and Tanya Huff as […]
Read moreDon’t Be Afraid of Small Steps
For those of you who are hoping/expecting to write something and become overnight sensations, let me be the first to tell you… well, keep dreaming comes immediately to mind. Honestly, I’m not trying to crush your aspirations. It’s just that overnight success usually takes a LOT of work in advance. You might argue that people like JK Rowling, Christopher Paolini and the like were instant successes. To that I would suggest you dig into their publishing journey a little deeper. In both cases (and in dozens more) a lot of rejection and self-sacrifice happened before they hit the big time. The fact that they actually did have such astonishing success is a factor of luck as much as talent (some […]
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