The Spear Cuts Through Water is a breathtaking book. I just finished it and, honestly, I feel bad for whatever book I read next. It’s going to be tough to stand up to this kind of work. That said… I can’t easily recommend this book to you. It’s not going to be for everyone. The […]
My writing career has been a bit of a rollercoaster. Ups and downs, plenty of screaming, plenty of excitement, and more than one dark tunnel that didn’t seem to have an end, but they always do. Between the early joy of signing with the genre’s best agent (in my opinion, of course) to the equally […]
Last weekend, I was adjacent to a conversation between a couple of indie and trad publishers, and it got me to thinking about the future of publishing. I’d like to unpack some of this for you, with the intention of sparking a discussion about what comes next for publishers, writers, and readers. The core of […]
I recently drove around to some of my local Barnes & Noble locations to sign stock and to advocate for Wraithbound. At time of writing, the book comes out in less than three weeks. Once upon a time, I could count on every B&N in the country to order a copy or two, but with […]
Many things have wrapped up, and many more are still up in the air. It’s difficult to know what’s going on for writers from the outside, so I thought I’d take a moment to peel back the curtain and talk about where my various projects stand and what I’m doing on a daily basis to […]
One of the questions I get from interested fans and aspiring writers is whether I will be releasing hardcover versions of various books, or why this other book is only available in trade paper, etc. My first answer to these questions is always “Well, I don’t decide, the publisher does” but then I usually talk […]
One of the things I said I wasn’t going to do in this series is recommend really popular books. You’re not going to see Sanderson or Rothfuss or Martin on my list, because they’re doing fine without my attention, and the publishing houses behind them aren’t scratching their heads trying to decide if they should […]
Let’s all be clear about something. The coronavirus lockdown has been terrible for the publishing industry. The whole industry, from top to bottom, from writers, to publishing houses, to agents, to bookstores, to readers. It’s been a shitshow. Debut novels have fizzled, bookstores have struggled, writers have seen books delayed or even cancelled, and the […]
Ask any writer and they’ll tell you that there was a book that made them want to be a writer. That’s pretty obvious. It might even be a series of books, or simply a particular period in their reading life when they graduated from consumer to creator, from reader to writer, from being a fan […]
How many of you remember Christian bookstores? There are still some around, of course, and the big chains only collapsed in the last few years, but it’s been a while since they were ubiquitous. I want to talk a little about the decline of Christian bookstores and the subsequent change in Christian publishing, and what […]