There is a lot of discussion about self-publishing on the Intewebs these days, and it is almost always in the context of the the seemingly imminent collapse of the traditional publishing models. There have been a number of recent self-publishing success stories, the most prominent of which is probably that of Amanda Hocking. She is…
I can still remember that January day when I was a junior in college and decided that I was going to try to be a science fiction writer. I sat down and wrote a story in about 2 hours and it was uniformly awful, but I studied the guidelines for the various magazines and sent…
I had intended to write about the first letter in the Brass Tacks column for the April 1940 issue of Astounding as part of Episode 10 of my Vacation in the Golden Age, and by the time I had finished my write-up, I’d forgotten about it. (I hadn’t made reference to it in my notes…
A couple of people have asked me if I had any symptoms of withdrawal, being away from the Internet for more than 24 hours. I don’t think so, although I was eager to check my email and blog stats as soon as I woke up this morning. Actually, I was rather humbled by all of…
This week’s episode appeared at 3:15pm Eastern Daylight time. I wrote the episode last night and scheduled it for early release today. I am completely offline today, taking my one opportunity each year to free myself from the bonds of the Internet and give myself 24 hours to not think about it. I’ve done this…
Today is my Jack Benny birthday, and if anyone is wondering what that means, Benny played the role of the comic penny-pinching miser, insisting on remaining 39 years old on stage despite his actual age. [Emphasis is mine.] So that means I am 39 today and will (thankfully) still be in my 30s when the…
Just a reminder that I will be completely and totally OFFLINE tomorrow. It’s how I like to roll on my birthday. That said, there are a couple of posts that I wrote today that will appear at various intervals throughout the day tomorrow so that the blog, at least, is not silent. In particular, for…
I raced home from work today hoping that I’d have the June issue of Analog in my mailbox. The issue contains my story, “Take One for the Road” and I’ve already heard from Steven H. Silver  and Michael Burstein that they had received their copies. It seemed as if every other magazine to which I…
Today, I participated in my first ever podcast for the folks over at SF Signal. The actual discussion was earlier in the week and I couldn’t be there for that, but I was able to record my thoughts on the topic separately and in fact, I just finished doing that about two minutes ago, which is why…