Miss a couple of days of putting up links and they tend to overrun you in a hundred different directions, so if these links seem a little scattered to you? They are.
First up, a couple of writing essays.
"Persistence Doesn't Matter If You Make This Common Mistake" by Jane Friedman. Short and not sweet essay for those anxious to get their novels out the door and into the hands of a publisher. Excellent advice! http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/2009/06/02/PersistenceDoesntMatterIfYouMakeThisCommonMistake.aspx
"Writers Block? What's Needed? A Good Swift Challenging Kick in the Ass" by Robert W. Walker. This is a dead-on take about making excuses for not writing. http://heydeadguy.typepad.com/heydeadguy/2009/06/writers-block-whats-needed-a-good-swift-challenging-kick-in-the-ass.html
In the Short Mystery Group last week there was a discussion about writing series characters, so this essay about series characters by Carolyn Haines is a must read for those tossing the coin between series and stand-alones. http://www.murderati.com/blog/2009/6/8/series-characters.html
Brian Lindermuth has another interview up in his Conversations With the Bookless Series. The featured author this time is John Rector. And not to complain too much, Brian, but you didn't link to any of his stories this time (hint-hint). http://www.bscreview.com/2009/06/conversations-with-the-bookless-john-rector/
James Lincoln Warren is looking for some writers who'd like to contribute guest blog posts over at Criminal Brief. I have to admit that I missed this post back in May, but he linked to it in today's post and I thought I'd just pass it along. Hmmm, I wonder if he'd like "Crime Fiction's Bastard Child"? http://criminalbrief.com/?p=6714 You can find the guidelines for submitting here http://criminalbrief.com/guidelines.htm
I stumbled across the most fabulous short fiction site yesterday called Classic Short Stories. They feature a bibliography, a message board, links to other short fiction sites, and you can search their site by author or title. How cool is that? http://www.classicshorts.com/
For those of you who write western shorts, here's a new anthology market called Six Guns Westerns and they're a paying market. http://old-west.blogspot.com/2009/06/western-small-press-six-guns-westerns.html
And for the guys, you'll love this one! http://www.esquire.com/women/women-we-love/bar-refaeli-naked-0709?click=pp Only Stephen King could rate a cover like this for a short story!
8 comments:
I'm very interested in Six Guns Westerns and will see about dropping a story off there. And why is Stephen K always so lucky? Was David Cranmer to long a name to fit?
No, David, just not on the New York Times best seller list. Yet!
I've been thinking about Six Guns also. I like writing westerns and have about a dozen of them in various stages but I really don't know much about the West, so am afraid they won't sound authentic enough or will come out sounding like a western movie.
I've been reading Luke Short's Best of the West and noticed that he doesn't do a lot of description of the land and plantlife like L'Amour and others do. His stories focus on the characters, but the language is strait out of the west so you know you're reading someone familiar with the area.
So much to learn, so little time.
We were actually moving all this past week and with the book deal getting announced I didn't want to sit on the interview too long.
(still moving stuff actually :(
So yeah, I dogged it a bit.
Moving is such a pain! Rule of thumb, if you've got boxes you've never unpacked, you don't need what's in them. :-)
I did find a couple of his flash stories from 2002 by doing a search, but couldn't find anything recent. Very good stuff! And with the book deal, I completely understand the rush.
You will find Max Brand doesn't go into a lot of detail either and some of his stories could fit into other genres rather easily.
And you can't go wrong studying from Luke Short. He's among my top five.
As usual, you have me bookmarking everything on here. Thanks for your work and for sharing it.
I picked up a few Westerns at last year's book sale, but couldn't get into them, David. One was Max Brand's Posse. I picked that one up because it's composed of a group of shorts he wrote for Mavericks Magazine in 1934. I'll have to give it another go.
I also have Jonas Ward's The Name's Buchanan, but I'd just seen the Randolph Scott movie and kept comparing the two. Now, that will really throw you out of a story!
The other one I have is Elmer Kelton's The Day The Cowboys Quit. I got about 50 pages in and wanted to throw it at the wall because there was nothing happening, just a long drawn out hint of what was coming.
But I'm really enjoying the Luke Short anthology. The stories are just wonderful and the writing keeps you glued to the page.
Thanks, Patti! There's so much good stuff out there, it'd be a shame to miss some of it. I only wish there were more hours in the day to find it all.
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