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POINT OF VIEW: The Roller Coaster and the Inner Critic

critic - pixabay

Hey all, As anyone who knows me or follows this column knows, it’s been a wild month. It was just about a month ago that we discovered how much GDPR (the new EU privacy law) would require of us as a company, and how little time (3 weeks!!!) we had to accomplish it. It also landed squarely in the lead-up to the release of “The River City Chronicles,” my first self-published work. It also happened to be the month when I was due to finish writing Ithani, and one of my beta readers threw me a (much needed) curve ball … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Punch Drunk and Slap Happy

Sleepy Scott

I have to admit, I approached the prospect of writing today’s column with a bit of trepidation. It’s almost never a good idea to write sleepy. I spent a lot of yesterday afternoon and evening prepping my first book for self publication – “The River City Chronicles” should come out in about a month or so, date to be announced soon. Then I spent the rest of the night in bed obsessing over what I still had to do. You see, I have this condition called writer’s’s brain. In the clear morning light, it’s obvious that most of the stuff I … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: The Holy Sh!t Moment

Scott - Holy Sh!t Moment

Every novelist works a little differently. Some write books by the seat of their pants, riding the crazy writing train to wherever it takes them. Others make meticulous outlines before ever putting a word on the page, and know exactly where they’re going and how they will get there. I suspect that most of us are somewhere in the middle. Icertainly am. I start with a loose outline. I know how the plot will lay out, generally, and the steps along the way. But I also allow for that rarest of beasts – the “Holy Sh!t Moment (HSM).” It’s the … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: After the Fall

hope - pixabay

Anyone who read my column last week knows how devastated I was to find out someone I used to be close to had been killed eight years ago, and I’d only just found out last week. I’ve spent the last week and a half processing this. I’m a writer – that’s what we do. Now I am starting to emerge on the far side. I want to thank my friends and family for rallying around me, and I want to acknowledge the pain of those who were much closer to Damon than I, and who lost so much more with … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: When Will It Click?

trend - pixabay

Hey all I’ve now been back to writing seriously for about four years. In that time, I’ve gone from zero things published to sixteen published works – including two novels launching two separate sci fi series, and I just sold the sequel to the first one. I’m about to wrap up my online serial, “The River City Chronicles,” which I plan to release in book form in both English and Italian. And I have a bunch of other irons in the fire, including my second sequel and a group serial project. So when is it going to happen for me? … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: I Destroyed the Earth

Four Things

Hey all, I’ve recently noticed a clear change in the tone of my writing about the future. A few years ago, I had a pretty optimistic view of how things would go. The US and a bunch of other countries signed the Paris Accord on climate change, finally getting serious about what was happening to our planet, even if it was just a first step. Marriage equality became the law of the land here in the USA and in a number of other countries. And changing demographics meant the Republican Party and all its retrograde ways would soon become marginalized, … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Chocolate or Bust

Chocolate

Hey all… This week is all about writing motivation. 🙂 I have, give or take, about two and a half months to finish my next novel, at least to the first draft stage. It’s do-able, though it’s a month less than I thought I had originally – long story there. But what it means is that I have to sit my butt down in the chair every single day to write, and for a good, solid chunk of time. I am a master procrastinator. As a writer, that probably goes without saying LOL. I can put something off for days … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: A New Horizon

New Horizons - pixabay

Hey all… In about two and a half months, my new book “The Stark Divide” will be released from DSP Publications. It’s NOT A ROMANCE. (Angel is snickering somewhere over this). Publishing a non-romancey sci fi tale is a departure for me in one way, and in another it’s not at all. We’ll get back to that in a moment. The challenge now? Everything I’ve built to market myself and all the contacts I’ve made have been geared to market my romance work. Sure, most of my romance tales are also sci fi or fantasy or magical realism. But I’ve … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: Summer Cold

summer cold - scott

Okay, so I just got back from the long-planned family reunion in Flagstaff. It was fantastic, and we took a couple extra days to explore Flagstaff and Sedona. I planned to hit the ground writing-wise and work-wise as soon as we got home. Then things went wrong. Comcast, our internet provider, was down all morning Thursday and all morning Friday. That sucked, but hey, I figured I could live with it. We de-camped and went to Starbucks for wifi. Then Friday night, it hit me like a ton of bricks. The dreaded Summer Cold. It’s a thing that shouldn’t exist. I mean, … Read more

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POINT OF VIEW: The Icky Part

J. Scott Coatsworth

Hey all, I’m at that part of the story on “Lander” that I always hit, about this far in. I’m probably three quarters finished, and all I can see is suck and ick. The writing sucks. The story is pedestrian. The threads of it are all over the place, and there’s NO WAY I am ever going to find a way to bring them altogether. It sucks. I suck. I am a horrible writer. Everyone’s going to find out. I will fail. Instead, I just sit back and laugh. You see, every one of us writers has this little internal critic. … Read more