Best Books For Writers 2013
Just to be clear this is not my list of the best books for writers released in 2013. This is my list of the best books I read this year. Looking at the list I realise that I prefer technical books about methods and process, nuts and bolts, rather than motivational books and those that talk in terms of art. Please keep that in mind as you go through my choices. Sitting down to write this made me think about the way publishing has changed in the past few years. Even in the first decade of the 21st Century, a Read more…
How to Format Your Novel For Kindle, Nook, the iBookstore, Smashwords and CreateSpace in One Afternoon
Way back in the summer on Kindleboards and in other places I kept reading about people laying out their print books for CreateSpace using Scrivener. Long term readers of this blog will know that I can’t praise Scrivener enough. It is the single best program for long form writing I know. Now it seemed Scrivener’s utility had expanded into an entirely new arena. I knew it could create ebooks easily and well, but print books? I have always used Word, or if the need arose, InDesign for that. Being the sort of man that I am, I thought I should investigate the possibilities. Read more…
The Joys of Kickstarter
Yesterday the nice man from DHL brought me a package. It contained a copy of Monte Cook’s new book Numenera, a role-playing game that I have been looking forward to for quite some time. I’ve had the PDF for awhile but there’s nothing quite like holding a physical book to make something real, as I know from my own experiments with producing a print version of Stealer of Flesh. I don’t want to do a review of Numenera right here, right now. Free time has been in short supply this year and I’ve just skimmed through it. It’s a good Read more…
Radio Archives
I got into pulp in my teens by way of Sword and Sorcery and the great Weird Tales authors; Robert E. Howard, Clark Ashton Smith and H. P. Lovecraft. This was back in the early 70’s when there was very definitely a pulp renaissance under way. I am not entirely sure why that was. I suspect that there was probably a generation of people working in publishing who were as nostalgic for the comfort reading of their youths as I now am for the comfort reading of mine. It probably didn’t do any harm that there were vast stocks of Read more…
The Return of Thraxas
“One whole venison pie feeds a family of four,” comments Makri, passing with a tray. “Not if I get there first,” I say, moving on to the pork and apple pastries.Thraxas There are many re-releases I have been waiting for with baited breath this year. Karl Edward Wagner’s Kane books are due from Centipede Press. Michael Moorcock’s entire back catalogue of fantasy and SF is slowly (come on Gollancz, get the finger out!) making its way into ebook format. The re-release of Martin Scott’s Thraxas books though came as a completely unexpected and very pleasant surprise. I stumbled across them Read more…
Author’s Notes: City of Strife
City of Strife was the fifth Kormak book I wrote, even though it is being released as the fourth in the series. Yes, that’s right, I wrote a complete novel, Taker of Skulls, and I sat on it while I wrote this one. I even had what I thought was a good reason for doing so. Taker of Skulls is a book about dwarves. It might best be described as Red Nails set in Moria. Weaver of Shadows, book three in the series, is about Elves. It just did not feel right to me moving directly from Dwarves to Elves Read more…
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