Just because you aren’t paranoid doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get you.
Dear Diary – May 12, 1999
September 11, 2023
Getting Yourself to Write
December 14, 2021
Writing can be a struggle for writers of all levels, from beginning to professional. The struggle has a dreaded name: writer’s block. Writer’s block …
Getting Yourself to Write
I’ve never really experienced the so-called “writer’s block.” Not that I’m bragging…but I often just don’t find I have enough time to write.
By which I mean, writing seriously. It’s easy, however, to find time here and there just to jot down some random thoughts.
(Aside note: if you type really quickly on the WordPress smartphone app, it autocorrect “random” to “radon,” which would put you in an entirely different frame of mind.)
Continue ReadingProcrastinate, work, repeat
November 12, 2021
Where’s the Artemis?? What’s up with Mars? And Ceres seriously…?
Sorry I haven’t kept up the story posts, everyone.
I know it’s been almost a month since the last Bringer of Light episode. Work just got dumped on me, and I can barely find time to give my writing students feedback. We switched back to face to face classes…with live streaming on Zoom for students who couldn’t or wouldn’t go back to campus…which is definitely NOT a teaching style I would recommend to anybody, anywhere, ever.
It’s been like laying down tracks in front of an oncoming train. Every day.
There is lots more good stuff for Riss and her crew, I swear. I’ve got drafts up to Chapter 42, and plots to the end after that. Let me see if I can get the next one up for you all in a day or two…
Amazon shoppers misled by ‘bundled’ star-ratings and reviews
April 5, 2019
The combinations of formats and editions make it impossible for readers to pick between multiple versions of the same products, and allow those selling badly put together editions to piggyback on good reviews.
At this point, Amazon should just admit that its review policies are a complete shambolic mess. If they refuse to allow fellow indie authors from reviewing each other and even prevents their own friends and relatives from reviewing their work, how can Amazon justify trying to sell dreck this way?
Hypocrisy.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/apr/05/amazon-shoppers-misled-by-bundled-product-reviews
My Amazingly Insightful Interview at Smashwords
January 26, 2019
Yes, I have finally gotten around to “being interviewed” (by, er, myself) at Smashwords. In which I lay bare my literary influences. Ah, and also revel in my geekdom. Yeah.
Which means that, yes, I am preparing to (re)publish some of my work in ePub format. Hopefully, Adam’s Stepsons will be soon available for iBooks, Kobo, and some other apps/devices. Aiming at April 1st (since Adam’s Stepsons is currently enrolled in Amazon’s “KDP Select,” which prohibits me from distributing it as an ebook through other services until March 31st).
The Kindle (.mobi) price will be lowered to ONLY US $0.99 from Sunday! (I hope. Maybe Monday. Definitely by January 31st).
In the meantime, work proceeds apace on Bringer of Light! More coming soon. Very soon.
Adam’s Stepsons awarded Pinnacle Best SF
December 29, 2017
A late Christmas surprise!
Adam’s Stepsons won Best Science Fiction in the Fall 2017 NABE (National Association of Book Entrepreneurs) Pinnacle Book Achievement Award contest.
It’s gratifying to see my novella appreciated, but it would be even better to hear from individual readers.
If you have read Adam’s Stepsons, please don’t hesitate to write what you think about it – even if it’s just a single sentence – on Amazon, Goodreads, your own blog, Twitter feed, or Facebook page, anywhere!
Adam’s Stepsons – BookWorks Featured Author
October 5, 2017
BookWorks has selected me as their weekly “Featured Author.”
Please check out the BookWorks pages for me and for Adam’s Stepsons, where you will find a free Chapter 1 (PDF).
Marquez, the general, and his labyrinth
April 19, 2017
When I first started writing the kernel of what ultimately became Adam’s Stepsons, the multiple/mixed genre story The General in His Labyrinth had just been published, by Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.
I’d been searching for character names, desperate not to have them all sounding like the people I knew at the time (i.e., white guys in my rural hometown).
So “Marquez” sounded like a great name. I had a general in the story. General Marquez fit. Why not. Continue Reading
1000 Isles
April 1, 2016
Some people have asked me on FB for some previews of Notes from the Nineties. It’s difficult to prepare excerpts from short stories (which are already short). So while I’m thinking of what’s appropriate as a teaser, here’s another poem from the volume. It appears right after the story “Boys Will be Boys” together with the poem “Grandmother.”
1000 Isles
Summers of my Upstate youth were spent
in the family station wagon, the six of us, or was it seven,
traveling to the great St. Lawrence
Seaway of a thousand islands.
The first time we stayed one night at Mosquito Heaven,
sleepless in a brown canvas tent,
and four nights on the biggest island—
half in the US,
half out.
I learned how to gut a fish, how to swim,
how to roll up a sleeping bag,
and where to buy fireworks—
I mean sparklers.
On my 12th birthday, I got a wallet,
put in a year’s allowance,
then when I forgot it in the campsite bathroom,
got advice in return the next morning—
“I told you so.”
Looking back, it makes sense
to me now
that I hate dressing.
On “En”
March 29, 2016
I’ve been meaning to add a personal essay page to my web site for stories that didn’t seem to fit into any neat categories. The immediate impetus is an essay that was recently “rejected” by my former graduate program’s in-house literary journal…probably because it’s an essay and not a short story (I posted elsewhere an article about the quirkiness of the English-speaking world’s insistence on an artificial separation of “fiction” and “nonfiction”).
Rather than wait up to half a year to see whether I could get it published online in a magazine (most of which seem to only publish US-centric, “woe is me” or “OMG look at THIS” sensationalist drivel) I thought that at least I could share it here…
The essay is “En” (縁), a topic that Asians (particularly those in Confucian-influenced societies) know a lot about. I first encountered the concept as a teaching assistant in Gojo High School, Nara, about 15 years ago. Almost like a previous life. Maybe it was…
Check it out here.
M Thomas Apple Author Page 