So I Wrote A Sequel To KAREN MEMORY.
Not to bury the lede or anything. Nine years ago, give or take a couple of months, _Karen Memory came into the world and was a surprise hit with just about...
What is this nuance thing, what good is it, and do I even want some?
That’s an excellent question, and I’m here to tell you that the answer is “It depends.” Nuance is not exactly on-trend currently. Social media and the social...
I've been thinking a lot about caracaras.
Caracaras, if you don’t know, are a subfamily of Falconidae (Here’s a Wikipedia link) that fills an ecological niche much more like corvids than like...
Fallow time can bite my shiny metal @$$
I have an entire novella in my head, just ready to be written, but every time I sit down to write it a get a few paragraphs and it peters out because the...
Where I'll be and what I'll be doing! (MidSouthCon Edition!)
Hey, folks! This is just to let you know that I will be appearing as one of the Guests of Honor at MidSouthCon just outside of Memphis TN this coming...
More Cheap Books! (Machine for $1.99 in North America.)
The second book in the White Space series, Machine, is now $1.99 in ebook the US and Canada (and if I am checking correctly, £3.99 in the UK). So if you were...
Author points: what are they, how do they work, and how can I get some?
Hello, all! Author points is a term I coined decades ago to describe the goodwill a reader has toward a writer’s work if they are already invested in that...
Chronic pain and other delights. Also, Ancestral Night is still on sale.
First things first! Ancestral Night is still on sale for $1.99 in North America! Get it while the getting is good! In unrelated news, I’ve been trying a...
The tiny personal hell of author's notes, cheap ebooks, and but also, a FOLDED SKY publication date!
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The Bite Sized Chunk
How do you deal with a project that’s just enormously, overwhelmingly big? You just do the next thing, is all. This applies whether the overwhelmingly big...
A happy ending depends on where you stop telling the story.
Sometimes I think that fiction is soothing because it posits there are solutions in this world, rather than just practices. You can do a thing and get to the...
They tell you to be here now but they don't unpack what that means, now do they?
Throwanotherbearinthecanoe Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid...
Social media does have its uses.
In my last email, I was talking about how social media and the unblinking Sauron-eye of the Internet can make creating good art very hard, because that sense...
It's hard to make art when you're guarded and the internet is a terrible place to be vulnerable.
The older and crankier (or maybe the older and wiser) I get, the more I think social media and being Extremely Online can be really bad for innovation and...
A few of the things that cancer taught me
Eat right, exercise, and die anyway.
We judge because we're scared
A little bit of housekeeping: I will most likely be moving this newsletter to a different platform in the New Year, but ideally that move will be seamless...
Publishing and marketing is sure a thing right now
Hey, folks, So I was mentioning in my last missive how anxieties and tensions are running high in the writer world, and how a seismic shift seems to be...
Substackers against Nazis
I am not one of the drafters of this open letter, but I endorse its message wholeheartedly. Dear Chris, Hamish & Jairaj: We’re asking a very simple question...
"Does any of this matter? Is this thing even on?"
When I was a kid, there used to be catalogues of text-only T-shirts with often off-color but sometimes profoundly philosophical sayings on them. This is a...
Unthrilled
I’ve realized in the past week or so that I’m really tired of thrillers. This is a weird place for me to be, as somebody who has at various points in her...