Families are often hard to deal with, even if you love them. This is true in real life, but it’s even more true in fiction, especially in science fiction and fantasy. A large part of the problem is that including the hero/heroine’s family in the story means
Read more →A while back, I had an inquiry from a reader regarding research, specifically asking how I went about researching historical slang and stage magic. I decided I’d answer it here instead of in email, because while the specific subjects are fairly easy to address, there are some
Read more →There is really nothing like a good villain. From Blackie Duquesne to Darth Vader, they’re often the most striking and memorable characters in a story. A lot of the professional writers I know find villains a lot more fun and interesting to write about than heroes; several
Read more →So after all these business posts, people wanted me to write about retiring. I’m not surprised; it was kind of exhausting to think about doing all that stuff. In any case, this is the retirement-for-writers post. The very first question is: what does retirement mean to you,
Read more →So there you have it: all seven areas of business – operations, sales and marketing, quality control, finance, administration, public relations, and executive – laid out for writers. Looking at them all at once like this is rather daunting, but not looking at them at all is
Read more →7. Executive – This has to do with strategic planning and overseeing everything else. For writers, the Executive area means keeping an eye on all the other categories to make sure nothing is left out and everything stays in balance (which can be quite a trick for
Read more →Before we get to today’s post, I wanted to mention two things: first, some time in the next month I’m going to be changing servers. In an ideal world, this will be completely unnoticeable to all the readers of my blog and web page, but how often
Read more →5. Administration – This is the overall organization of people and processes, including everything from office management to the human resources department. For writers, Administration covers most of the day-to-day tasks of making and tracking submissions, answering mail, returning email and phone calls, filing, organizing manuscripts, maintaining
Read more →4. Finance – This has to do with all the monetary aspects of a business. The financial end of the writing business needs and deserves a lot more attention than many writers give it absent emergencies. Especially the taxes part. I’ve said before that editors don’t do
Read more →3. Quality Control. This is where products and processes are tested for defects. For all writers, Quality Control obviously includes all of the editing and revision parts of the job; for the self-published, it includes packaging details as well – everything from design (page layout, font/typeface, cover design) to
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