Juvenilia

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I have, literally, a stack of novels that I plan to read this summer. Right now, I’m reading Foundation and Earth, the last book of Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Series — a series that I actually started reading back in March. To tell the truth, I don’t read a lot of science fiction, so plowing through [...]

I’m nearing the end of the second week of Christmas break. For the school where I teach, the two-week Christmas break separates the first and second semesters. I’ve mostly used this time to rest (sleep) and to read. I had planned to write, too — maybe complete a chapter or two of Juvenilia, but unfortunately, [...]

Lately, I’ve been reading the online version of Chris Anderson’s new book, Free. His ideas about using the concept of “free” as a marketing tool have influenced the way I approach the marketing of my own books. Whenever possible, I try to make the ebook versions of my novels available to download for free (although, [...]

I mentioned in Part 3 that I started writing poetry in high school, producing no less than 200 poems before I graduated. Another reason why I started to write less and less prose after high school was because I became more and more interested in poetry. In fact, by the end of the 1990s, poetry [...]

My first attempt at creative writing came when I was in the third grade. For some reason, my mom bought me a diary book (a 20th century blog), and so for a few weeks I wrote some entries. Eventually, I got tired of recording what was really happening in my life and decided to fictionalize [...]

Yesterday, I started work on a new chapter, but right from the start, I had the feeling that it wasn’t going to be a chapter that will make its way into the final draft of Juvenilia. Nevertheless, I’m going to write it anyway because it’s a story idea I might pursue after my current project. [...]

Juvenilia will be the third and final book of a series that I’ve been writing, off and on, for almost two decades. When it’s finished, I’m really not sure what I’m going to do. Perhaps I’ll stop writing fiction altogether and let my three published novels stand as my oeuvre. If I decide to continue [...]

Yesterday, I put an end to my involvement in a pair of blogs. The first was a blog I created about a year or two ago to help try to market The Spring. It was my first WordPress blog, as a matter of fact, but there wasn’t much there — just a few sample chapters [...]

I gotta give Paul Lamb all the credit for this post. On his website today he wrote about Duotrope’s Digest, which I had never heard of before. It’s a free website that lists online literary magazines where one might submit short stories or poems. It looks like a very useful website for creative writers. I’m [...]

Lately, I’ve been working on “Chapter Fourth of July.” I’m hoping I can make some good progress this weekend and maybe finish the first draft by Monday or Tuesday (that’s probably wishful thinking, though). I find that I tend to classify the chapters into three distinct categories: Mark-centric chapters, Rosemary-centric chapters, and chapters that feature [...]