Point of View

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Point of View: Scraping Together a Living in Publishing

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Bigfoot Hunters in Love cover

If you’re not Steven King or JK Rowling, you probably don’t make a huge income on writing alone. Most of the authors I know write as a second job, or have a spouse who works and can help support them. My husband Mark has been fully supportive of my writing career. But that doesn’t mean I can abandon our own business, and so there’s always a tension between the two in terms of deadlines and my time. This is my third year earning money as a writer, and the trend line is definitely going in the right direction. But I’ve … Read more

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Point of View: 8 Tips to Prepare for a Successful Con

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Scott GRL prep

OK, so GRL is officially just two weeks and a couple days away, and I am TOTALLY FREAKING OUT. There’s too much to do! I’ve done cons before, but there’s always a bit of last minute preparation, and this one is no different. So I thought I’d share with you a bit of what I do, have done and will do to prepare for a con like this. 1. Book Your Hotel Early: Most of these cons offer a discounted hotel rate, but these often have limited availability. Book early to have the best shot at these low rates – otherwise … Read more

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Point of View: Going From Writer to Author

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seal scott author

I’ve been a writer for as long as I can remember. I wrote a sci fi story in fourth grade – ok, so it wasn’t much of a story, more of a Jetsons rip-off. But the creative urges were there in elementary school. In my late teens and early twenties, I wrote my first novel, which was then soundly rejected by a number of publishers and which I allowed to kill my nascent writing career at the time. Now I am actually published – with twelve stories that have appeared in journals, anthologies, and even as stand-alone novellas from respectable … Read more

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Point of View: Selling at a Con

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Scott Angel Freddy yaoicon

Hey all, Just got back from YaoiCon in San Francisco – I went for one day on Saturday to hang with MCB Books’ Angel Martinez and Freddy MacKay. I thought I’d share some of what I learned from this and the other cons I have attended about how to get the most out of your book sales. and to be as organized as possible beforehand. Find Out if You Need a License: Some states require you to collect taxes and send them in for sales made at cons and trade shows. I don’t know if it was required for YaoiCon, … Read more

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Point of View: Listening to My Writer’s Heart

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Scott's Writer's Heart

I’m supposed to be hard at work on a short story extension. I have a publisher interested in a novella-length version of it, but my heart’s just not in it. I thought it was just ’cause I hadn’t written anything new in a while – maybe I was bored with it? So when a deadline for an anthology I’d been interested in but hadn’t had time for was unexpectedly extended, I jumped on the opportunity to write something new, and left my other story behind. I’ve been writing the new one for about two weeks. It’s flowing nicely, and I … Read more

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Point of View: Squirrel!

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Scott - Squirrel

I just spent a couple months slogging through a fourth (or was it seventeenth?) draft of one of my novels, and then jumped right into an extension of another work. After that, I have another novel to finish up. In short, I’m working or reworking a lot of things I have worked on time and time again before. My writer brain wants something NEW! So this week, I am sidetracking a little bit and working on a BRAND FREAKING NEW short story – something for a holiday anthology I’ve had my eye on for awhile. And you know what? It feels GOOD. … Read more

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Point of View: Shaking Up My Marketing Plan

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Scott

Hey all… On paper, I’ve been doing all the things authors are supposed to do to market themselves and their works online. I have my Facebook pages (personal and Author). I am very active on Facebook and have a great network of author and reader friends. I talk about myself more often than I post about my works, showing suitable writer modesty. I have a Twitter account that I also post to regularly. I have an Amazon Author page, a Goodreads Author page, and an ARe Author page. I have my own writerly blog, with regular, unique content – a … Read more

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Point of View: Creative Destruction

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Creative Destruction Scott

A week ago yesterday, I sent off my novel–well, one of them, at any rate. Woo hoo! Now I am wrestling with a short story that I want to extend to novella length. Two problems. One, part of my central premise for the story turns out to be unworkable. Apparently you can’t have a kid at a school with a gun without getting legions of police officers involved. Who knew? Probably anyone who watches any of the thousand and one police procedural shows on TV. *sigh* But there’s another problem too. The story is based on the idea that there … Read more

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Point of View: It’s Done.

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Oberon

I just completed the next step in a journey that began something like twenty years ago, when I sat down to write my first queer sci fi story. The story “Oberon” opened with a graphic (for me) sex scene, and involved a strange world called Oberon – commonly known as Split because it is literally half a world. I didn’t finish it at the time – in fact, I sketched out just a few scenes, and then put it on the shelf with a bunch of my other unfinished works. But it was a milestone for me. I had recently … Read more

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Point of View: How I Edit

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Scott Editing

Hey all, I am breathing down the neck of my first completed novel in twenty years. “Sciatháin” (which many of you may know as “Oberon”) has been through some serious twists and turns to get to this point. I started the story that eventually led to this novel in the mid-nineties. It was the first “gay” story I ever wrote (or at least began), with a sexual opening sequence that was, in a way, my coming out as a writer. I shelved it after a few scenes – well, I shelved pretty much my whole writing career – for a … Read more