Consider Booklife for the Holidays!

Dear Reader:

It’s now been a year since my writing strategy book Booklife came out, and it’s received lots of praise, leading to an interview on National NPR, among other opportunities like speaking at MIT and the Library of Congress. I’ve even had artists and musicians tell me they picked it up and found that the advice in it worked for them as well.

I know there are more of you out there, so if you’ve enjoyed Booklife and/or reading new content on this website, it would be wonderful if you’d be willing to blog about it this week, recommending the book as a holiday gift. (Or tweet or facebook if that’s more your style. Or even re-post something you wrote when the book came out.) Monies from sales will be directly reflected in my next couple of royalty statements and help off-set the cost of a couple of important projects my wife Ann and I are taking on gratis.

If you do decide to blog, here are a few possible links to include:

Booklife at Amazon

Booklife Kindle edition

Booklife at Indiebound

Booklife at Indiebound (ebook)

Booklife at Powells

Direct from the publisher, Tachyon

As importantly, I’m interested to know how Booklife was of use to you (or, even, where you wished it would’ve been of more help), and will write a follow-up post here and on Booklifenow that links your post. If you tweet or facebook post, consider echoing into the comments thread here.

Finally, thanks for considering Booklife as a holiday gift for the creatives in your life!

Always Rolling the Dice: Monica Valentinelli on Taking Risks in Writing

Monica Valentinelli is the project manager for the horror webzine FlamesRising.com. She’s been working as a freelance writer and game designer since 2005. Her e-book, The Queen of Crows, features an enhanced short story about a Navajo elder and the queen of crows, Mahochepi. Valentinelli writes a column for both the Apex Book Company and for the How to Write Shop. She is also one of the contributors to Will Hindmarch’s The Bones: Us and Our Dice.
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Let Your Characters Be Big: Five Authors on The Law of the Gun & Writing the West

A good Western anthology serves a number of purposes.  First and foremost, it’s a thrilling read with a variety of great stories by familiar and maybe even a few unfamiliar authors. Regardless of genre, it also serves as a series of case studies organized around a theme.  With Law of the Gun, edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Russell Davis, that theme is characterization.
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If You Play It Safe: Matt Forbeck on Taking Risks in Writing

Matt Forbeck is one of my heroes.  When I was teaching full-time and dreaming of one day going freelance, I modeled my imagined future on Forbeck’s career.  Forbeck does just about everything. He takes risks.  He juggles projects.  He gets things done.  Rumor has it that he’s never missed a deadline. Forbeck’s list of creative credits goes back to the 1980s and gets more and more diversified with each passing year.  These days, he has multiple non-fiction books, novels (media tie-in and original), roleplaying games, collectable card games, and movies in the works.

It’s hard to single out any one of his projects.  But the Weird West role-playing game, Deadlands, and his Western-influenced fantasy trilogy, The Lost Mark, hold a favored spot in my heart for blending my favorite genres.  All in all, though, my favorite Forbeck book is usually the most recent one.  Right now he has Amortals out with Angry Robot and a sequel Vegas Knights on the way.

The one thing all of Matt Forbeck’s projects seem to have in common?  He enjoys the heck out of what he does.
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