Tag: career decisions

Refining my short story strategy

I’ve blogged several times about my short story strategy. To restate it briefly, I’ve found that it works best to self-publish all of my short story singles for free, and to take them down when I have enough of them (+40k words, usually about 10 stories) to bundle into a collection. I earn more this… Continue reading Refining my short story strategy

Why I won’t be publishing “The New Covenant” as a free short story single

For short stories, I typically self-publish them first as free ebooks, until I have enough of them to bundle together in a collection. I’ve found that this is a great way to give new readers a taste of my writing and engage my already existing fans. It also helps to market the collections, which is… Continue reading Why I won’t be publishing “The New Covenant” as a free short story single

Navigating Woke SF, Part 4: Götterdämmerung

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced his resignation today, after his sexual harrassment scandal that has seen an overwhelming number of women come forward. As tempted as I am to dive into the politics of this story, I bring it up only to provide context for this: Yeah, I’m cringing too. For the last several years—arguably, since… Continue reading Navigating Woke SF, Part 4: Götterdämmerung

Navigating Woke SF, Part 3: Toward a New Short Story Strategy

So I really love how China Mike Glyer cherry-picked the excerpts that he quoted from my last blog post, leaving out how I said that it’s important to give people the benefit of the doubt, or how you can’t take diversity statements at face value because of all the elitist signalling language. But the thing… Continue reading Navigating Woke SF, Part 3: Toward a New Short Story Strategy

Navigating Woke SF, Part 2: When Is It Not Worth Submitting?

So a couple of hours after I published my last blog post, China Mike Glyer of File 770 infamy picked it up for his daily pixel scroll. Hi, China Mike! I thought you might be looking for some red meat to feed your readers—aside from the Chinese clickfarms, of course—but I was especially pleased that… Continue reading Navigating Woke SF, Part 2: When Is It Not Worth Submitting?

Navigating Woke SF, Part 1: Short Story Markets and Author Blacklists

Last year, I had a short story published in the anthology Again, Hazardous Imaginings: More Politically Incorrect Science Fiction. Not only was it one of my highest paying short story sales to date, but it also made it onto the Tangent Online 2020 Recommended Reading List with a *** rating, their highest tier. Only 13… Continue reading Navigating Woke SF, Part 1: Short Story Markets and Author Blacklists

Are short stories worth publishing?

Every couple of years, I get the short story bug and write maybe half a dozen short stories in the span of just a few months. Then, I get really excited about putting them up on submission, and for the next couple of years I systematically send them out to all the professional markets… and… Continue reading Are short stories worth publishing?

White Science Fiction and Fantasy Doesn’t Matter

If you are white, and you write science fiction or fantasy, it is only a matter of time before you are cancelled. This is the logical end of intersectional identity politics, which is really just the resurrected, zombified corpse of Marxism. White people are the oppressors. People of color are the oppressed. All white people… Continue reading White Science Fiction and Fantasy Doesn’t Matter

A New Short Story Plan

So I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how best to leverage my short stories, not just from the traditional publishing angle, but from the indie publishing side as well. The problem is that self-published short stories really don’t sell much, so after you’ve sold them to a traditional market, what are you supposed to… Continue reading A New Short Story Plan