Categories
Books

Spirit Cane

My brother asked me what I wanted to keep of my father’s and I answered without hesitation, his cane. Upon further reflection, I also asked for his books, and I’ll borrow the photos long enough to make digital copies. I bought Dad the cane years ago when he starting slowing up a bit, at the […]

Categories
Books Writing

Free of the toothless sharks

Now that the book deal I had spent four month wrangling over has fallen through, I pulled the about page until I can figure out what it will say. (Oh, did you miss that particular rant? You’ve got to move quick in the Burningbird world, or you’ll miss the good stuff. You can, however, still […]

Categories
Books Writing

Book publishers suck

I’ve been in negotiations for over four months with a publisher on a book. After the last book deal fell through with negative reprecussions for me, I’ve been more wary when it comes to contracts. One issue with the new publisher has been about a clause in the contract that the publisher could bill me […]

Categories
Books Writing

If it’s so bad why do we love it

Michael Blowhard at 2Blowhards provides a detailed discussion about why you wouldn’t want to write a book. Among the reasons given, such as only a few hundred people make a living at it, he says that writing a book just isn’t fun: Many people imagine that they’d “fullfill themselves” (whatever that means) if they wrote a book; […]

Categories
Books Technology Writing

If only

It’s been slow going getting another book deal. The publisher I’m currently talking with about a book on MySQL/PHP wants to include a provision in the contract to bill me if I’m paid royalties on books that eventually get returned from the book stores. Normally, the returns are more than compensated for by new book […]