Cheers to S.W. Lauden, who put the screws to me over at his website, Bad Citizen Corporation. He had some great questions—I hope I gave some good answers back.
Podcast
I was on Books and Booze!
My first official interview as an author guy.
And so much damn fun that everything from here is pretty much downhill.
May updates!
- I’ve got a piece up at Salon on the cult of self-publishing. I measure my relative success or failure on how long it takes for someone to call me a douchebag. Since it happened in the first comment, I’d call this a success.
- We’ve got a solid slate of classes coming up at LitReactor, covering query letters, eBook coding, thriller and horror writing, character archetypes, and grammar. Find ’em here.
- New podcast! We talk about transgressive fiction. Good times all around.
Podcast; hiring; essay
Check out the latest episode of Unprintable, the LitReactor podcast. It features a special guest, literary agent Bree Ogden, and we cover a lot of good ground, re: finding an agent, publishing, etc.
We also talk about the two least controversial figures in modern literature—Orson Scott Card and Bret Easton Ellis. And also I geek out of The Hard Bounce by Todd Robinson, a book that you should be reading right now, at this moment, and if you’re not, then you are making mistakes I can’t help you with.
Also, interested in being a class facilitator for LitReactor? It’s a paid gig, plus you get access to the lectures from our instructors. Details here.
Finally, Craig Clevenger wrote a fantastic essay for LitReactor: The Safety of Transgression versus the Risk of Honesty. Also would be good of you to drop what you’re doing and read it right now.
Catchin’ up
I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this blog will only ever feature collections of links to stuff I’m doing and haven’t had time to talk about otherwise. It’s cool. I have plans for original content soon. Maybe someday! Anyway…
The lastest episode of the LitReactor podcast is up. Shit gets real.
I stumbled across this blog where I am beaten to shit in the comments section over at article I wrote at LitReactor. It is great.
We’ve got a collection of very cool classes coming at LitReactor. Maybe check ’em out and sign up for one?
Also, we’ve kicked off our latest writing challenge at LitReactor: Teleport Us. Get in on the fun!
Here is an article from Mashable, about print vs. eBooks, in which I am quoted. Woo!
Over at Amazon, the sales page is up for an anthology I’ve got a story in. Somehow I was billed on the main sales page, and am next to Ken Bruen, one of my idols. I don’t even know what to say or do about this. When I first saw it I wanted to cry and vomit at the same time, in a joyful way. It hits in August. You will hear more about it between now and then.
My publishing house just re-released 12 novels from James M. Cain as eBooks. We don’t have the big three (Double Indemnity, Postman, Mildred Pierce), but we have pretty much everything else. Which, still, awesome.
Finally, the KDP window on my novella is up on Feb. 4, at which point I’ll make it available at Barnes & Noble and Kobo again. I’ll let y’all know when that happens.
More TK.
New podcast episode is live.
Episode 4 of Unprintable is live. And it features our first guest: Craig Clevenger, author of The Contortionist’s Handbook and Dermaphoria.
We talked erotica, the books we’re reading, and whether writers should get paid for their work. It was a lively conversation, despite the fact that I had taken Ibuprofen PM the night before and it hit me pretty hard, so I was a little spacey during the recording.
But, hey, still fun!
Check it out here. And if you could subscribe and review and rate that baby, it’d be greatly appreciated.
Various things have happened
The fourth installment of my column, Adventures in Self-Publishing, is live. In it, I talk about the Amazon KDP program.
Also live: The third episode of Unprintable, the LitReactor podcast. This is our best one yet. Probably because I was a little drunk. Check it out. If you could pop over to iTunes to review/rate it, that would be greatly appreciated.
The LitReactor shop is open for business. We are selling a very handsome t-shirt and a snazzy mug. Just in time for the holidays! Nothing says love like a mug.
Hey, also, I’ve been promoted to Class Director at LitReactor, which means that I’m now in charge of developing all those online writing classes the site hosts. I’m thrilled to be doing it.
We’ve got two classes coming up that are pretty great: One with Suzy Vitello on dialogue, and one with Taylor Houston on grammar and style. Check them out here. And there’s going to be more to share in the coming weeks.
And, on a final note, this week I got my very first check for a piece of fiction—a short story that’ll appear in Kwik Krimes, an anthology of flash fiction edited by Otto Penzler, to be published by Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint.
It is gratifying beyond words to get paid for making something up in my head. Also, there’s a ton of really amazing authors in it. I don’t know why they let me in.
Kwik Krimes will hit in the spring, I believe. Don’t worry, I will tell you when.
Podcast, episode 2
The second episode of the Unprintable podcast is live. We discuss the aftermath of Sandy, BDSM, books, and various other things. Dig it.
Podcastin’
I’m a little late posting about this, but LitReactor has a shiny new podcast, called Unprintable. And it stars Cath Murphy, Joshua Chaplinsky, and me! It’s a fun time. We talk about books and writing and goof on each other and stuff.
It’s available through LitReactor (here) and iTunes (here). The first episode includes discussion on Cloud Atlas, the iPad mini, digital publishing, and pirating. Check it out, and if you could leave it a rating or a comment over at iTunes, we’d be much obliged.
If you have any questions you want us to answer or topics you want us to discuss, you can e-mail us at podcast@litreactor.com. We recorded the second episode last night, and we’re planning to do this twice a month. So keep an eye out.
Rob Hart 