Episode 58- Neil Gaiman's Rules for Writing

Dave and Alan discuss Neil Gaiman's "8 Rules for Writing."

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 Dave's latest, Buccaneer, is out, and Alan is wrapping up his work in-progress.

The writer's high of the last few chapters of a manuscript.

The emotional ups-and-downs of writing.

 Alan was invited to contribute an article to the Hugo-winning site, SFSignal.

Why Alan has an issue with NaNoWriMo

Promo- SecondWorld by Jeremy Robinson


Neil Gaiman's "Rules for Writing"

Why the best rules for writing aren't hard-and-fast rules for writing.

Alan's post on the subject


New release- Ragnarok by Jeremy Robinson and Kane Gilmour.

Episode 57 - Navigating the Perilous Amazon

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We talk about what’s happening in our writing life, which leads us to talk at some length about that old planner vs pantser debate. David has discovered he really doesn’t like planning.

Alan is a pantser too, but both of us have various ways to organise and plan what is happening in the book we’re working on. Alan talks about his spreadsheet timeline method.

Alan talks about how his plans can change in the process of writing them and how he likes to allow that and not be restricted by a strong outline.

David talks about characters leading the story and staying in control of what’s happening.

David talks about some new releases he’s excited about, including his latest Dane Maddock book, Buccaneer.

There’s also a new Gryphonwood horror anthology out now for 99c - https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/248571

Alan and Dave talk about Dave’s story in the new anthology, and how the process of Alan beta-reading the story changed it for the better.

This leads us to talk about the structure and writing process of a short story.

Alan talks about his story in the Dark Places 2 anthology, “The Seven Garages Of Kevin Simpson”.

We go on talk at length about Amazon and some of the things happening at the moment.

We start with the case of Amazon wiping a customer’s Kindle while she slept.

We talk about the nature of the rental agreement which is a Kindle purchase.

We go on to talk about the latest Amazon reviewing debacle where Amazon have been removing “competitive” reviews.

Here’s the blog post Alan read from: http://killzoneauthors.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/et-tu-amazon.html#.UKGO_YZSljc

These things highlight Amazon’s model and how it’s flawed.

We move on, strangely, to talk briefly about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s announcement to make a new Conan film.

Alan talks about the horror of The Expendables 2. What a terrible movie.