I tend not to show my anger. It’s a blessing and a curse. When I do blow my top, it’s usually at something in the publishing industry, ensuring that the only people who ever witness it are my poor wife or fellow writers. This has earned me the nickname Angry Joe in some circles. Angry Joe reared his ugly head earlier this week when something in the local community set me off, and I felt compelled to write an email that I’ll never send. As I explain in my SleuthSayers article this week, this is in a grand tradition that includes such writers as Abraham Lincoln and Ben Franklin…

Dean Wesley Smith is an incredibly prolific writer. He writes with his cats. I write with my pooch. Dean is adept at writing into the dark at speed. In other words, he does not outline his work before writing and sets for himself some remarkable word—count challenges. In a book of his I recently read, Writing With the Waltese Falcon, he shows us how he wrote three books—one in ten days, one in seven, and one in five while traveling on vacation. That’s incredible. In a column I share on SleuthSayers, the mystery blog, this week, I do a quick overview of the book and then share the story of my one and only experiment writing at speed. I’ve shared that story on this blog a few years ago.

Here are my thoughts on the last batch of 10 stories of the 2023 “advent calendar” of stories published by WMG Publishing, as edited by writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

Just to remind you…

I’m back with capsule reviews of the ongoing “advent calendar” of stories published this season by WMG Publishing, as edited by writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, this writing project delivers a short holiday story to your email inbox each day from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, 40 stories in all…

I’m back with capsule reviews of the ongoing “advent calendar” of stories published this season by WMG Publishing, as edited by writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch.

As I mentioned in my earlier post, this writing project delivers a short holiday story to your email inbox each day from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, 40 stories in all…

I’ve long been a fan of the prolific writer Kristine Kathryn Rusch, who writes romance, mystery, SFF, and incisive nonfiction on the craft and business of writing. She and her equally prolific writer spouse Dean Wesley Smith offer the best craft courses for writers I’ve seen online. (I’ve taken 9 of them—I think.) For the last five years, Rusch has offered her Annual Holiday Spectacular, a kind of advent calendar that ticks off the days from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day, delivering a short holiday story to your email inbox of varying lengths and genres…