Category Archives: Blog

Building an Author Website

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This is the second part of a workshop I hosted for the Palouse Writers Guild on Saturday, July 28, 2018.  To see the first part of the workshop, click here: Building An Author Platform.

ESTABLISHING YOUR AUTHOR PERSONA

Even introverts publishing under a pen name need an author website and that’s why it’s absolutely vital to contemplate your author personal at the onset.  Some people are wholly themselves online, while others may use a pseudonym and have an online persona different from who they are in real life.  It is essential that authors figure out their persona BEFORE beginning to build their website; the website becomes the author’s identity.

 When editors, agents, and publishers receive queries from prospective authors one of the things they do is Google the author because they want to see the size and scope of platform, prior works, etc.  Readers also look for author websites.  The whole point of a website is making yourself and your work easy to find. Without a website the author simply does not exist. Continue reading →

Building an Author Platform

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I presented the following information at a workshop hosted by the Palouse Writers Guild on Saturday, July 28, 2018.  The second part of the presentation will appear in a separate blog post.

WHAT IS AN AUTHOR PLATFORM?

Author Platform Definition: The ability to sell written content (books, short stories, magazine articles, etc) because of who you are or who you can reach.  Simply put, a platform is your visibility as an author in the communities in which you participate. Continue reading →

Summer Lovin’

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June . . . love is in the air.  It’s the traditional month for weddings.  The solstice is upon us and the days are filled with light.  The wedding month traces its roots back to Celtic origins and the story of a marriage which resulted in an unnaturally long day.

Celtic mythology states that Dagda and Danu loved each other so much that they married in secret and hid themselves on the Earth in order to make love away from the prying eyes of the other gods. Their marathon love-making session lasted nine days and nine nights.  When Danu finally climaxed a great rush of water issued from her, creating the Danube River.  From their union the goddess conceived.  To prevent discovery of her pregnancy Dagda harnessed the sun and held it in place until Danu gave birth, thus their son was conceived and born on the same day.

The marriage of Dagda and Danu represents the union of a tribal god and a mother goddess, uniting land and people, a concept that remained popular in the sacral marriages of kings to their goddesses in later generations.  If the king upheld the duties of a husband well, the land and his people prospered.  Fail to show adequate love, respect, and devotion to the Goddess and the kingdom would fall into disarray, just like the household of any unhappy marriage.  And that is the whole point of writing today: sometimes relationships stumble. Continue reading →

DYSTOPIA Launch Party

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All the hard work has paid off and now it’s time to celebrate! The SFCC Pullman Creative Writing Club is proud to announce the publication of their anthology, DYSTOPIA.  Authors will be at Thomas Hammer Coffee on Wednesday, June 6th to read sections of their work and be available to autograph copies for the public. Coffee and munchies will be provided.

Copies of the book are available for purchase from Bruised Books in Pullman and BookPeople of Moscow.  On June 4th copies will be available from And Books, Too, in Clarkston.  In addition, Aunties Bookstore and Giant Nerd Books in Spokane have agreed to sell the book just as soon as I can get a few copies to them.  Bookworms can read for free by using their library card.  Print copies of the book have been distributed to libraries in Whitman, Asotin, Latah, Nez Perce, and Spokane counties.

Books are available for sale on Amazon for $9.99 or $2.99 for a Kindle version.  Continue reading →

Idaho Magazine, May 2018

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My story about treating Bruce to dinner in Harrison for his birthday is featured in the May 2018 issue of IDAHO Magazine. You can read the whole story for free by following the link.  (I suspect the free read will only be offered for a short time, so if you’re curious, read it now!)

IDAHO Magazine rules state that authors cannot mention businesses unless they are advertisers, so the restaurant where we dinned is not specifically mentioned in the story.  However, I am please to say that we dinned at The Landing.  The proprietors, John and Shawna Nelson, out did themselves to provide a perfect evening and I look forward to dining there again, when Bruce returns the favor and treats me for my birthday in June.

More pictures from around the area are below, I hope you enjoy them.

Continue reading →

Zucchini Bandits Receives Honors

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My story, Zucchini Bandits, won a Judges’ Choice Award in the 2018 IDAHO Magazine fiction contest.

Zucchini Bandits is a short story about an unlikely pair. Delfred Long was forced into an early retirement after surviving a heart-attack. Ronnie is a precocious seven-year-old. Neither are looking forward to spending the summer together. Over the course of the story the grandfather and granddaughter duo bond while engaging in zucchini related mischief and mayhem.

I have considered writing a series of short stories involving the adventures of Del and Ronnie, then compiling them into a chapter book.  Who knows what mischief the pair will be up to next?

You can see other award winning stories on the IDAHO Magazine website.

Guns and Cats

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I am a gun owner and a cat owner.  Judging from the reactions of the overly ferocious crazy-cat-lady NRA types out there, you’d think I owned neither.

Like the makers of this supper-cute video, I don’t want big mean strays in the neighborhood.  Especially not the big feral tom cat that terrorizes small children and dogs.  Nor do I want bump-stocks and AR 15’s in the neighborhood.  Especially not in the hands of the delusional man on the corner who also terrorizes small children and dogs.  Unfortunately, the gun-waving-crazy-cat-lady-NRA members of the world want you to believe people like me, who want regulations for guns and cats, want to eradicate all guns and all cats.  And that simply isn’t true.

I may never understand why some many people believe guns and cats are an all-or-nothing issue when there are clearly options in the middle.

Feral Cat Fiasco

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My story, Feral Cat Fiasco: Lovable Until They’re Not, is featured in the January 2018 edition of Idaho Magazine.  There were several edits to the story so as not to offend the sensibilities of the magazine’s readers.  However, I have no such apprehensions, so you can read a bit that was cut from the story below.

Also, to see more information about my troubles with feral cats, check out this post on Feral Cat Solutions.

The Cut Bit:

Well, if they want to maintain a feral cat colony, let them do it at their house, I thought.  And that’s when an idea took root. Continue reading →

Laughter and Libations, 2017

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It’s that time of year again.  Beaten down by rampant consumerism, we’re all left wondering how to balance work and pleasure.  Laughter and Libations is a survival guide of sorts, helping people to drink and be merry during a season over-powered with puritanical messages.  This year’s edition includes recipes for favorite winter drinks along with three categories of songs: Traditional Treasures, Simple Substitutions, and Ridiculous Rewrites.  Traditional Treasures can be traced back to a less than pious origin whereas Ridiculous Rewrites takes an originally pious hymn and alters it to appeal to our most base and carnal instincts.

Continue reading →

ISBNs, Copyrights, and Barcodes, Oh my!

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At the Palouse Writers Guild Build-a-Book Workshop I presented the following information on ISBNs, copyright, and barcodes. The workshop was a success and we plan to host another one in the future.

Presentation PowerPoint: ISBN Presentation

What is an ISBN?

An ISBN is the International Standard Book Number.  It uniquely identities the book, publisher, and edition. The purpose of the ISBN is to establish and identify one title (or edition) from one specific publisher, allowing for more efficient marketing by booksellers, libraries, universities, wholesalers and distributors.

Parts of the ISBN

Each 13 digit ISBN consists of 5 elements separated by spaces or hyphens.
The five parts of an ISBN (13) are as follows:

Continue reading →