Author | Joseph L. Selby

Category: writethink

  • Too Busy Writing! And a Quirky Idea

    Clearly there was an uptick in blog posting earlier this year. Three times in as many months! In an age where blog posting is effectively dead if you don’t have a platform (or if it isn’t your primary focus), we’ll call that a surprising increase in activity. And then…NOTHING! Until today. The cool thing is,…

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  • In Between Times

    I always take a little break between manuscripts. I consider it a “voice reset.” I used to be so jazzed I would immediately roll into a new project, but I found the voice of the next project sounded exactly the same as the one I had just finished. It inevitably led to a lot of…

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  • 2013: A Singular Endeavor

    I don’t normally do a year in review because my pursuit of publication has been an ongoing effort for over four years now and that story has only changed somewhat. Write a novel -> query, write a novel -> query, start new year, repeat. That was 2009 through 2011. Then came 2012, the year of…

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  • Sex Scenes and Sexuality

    I have, in my time, both acted as and utilized beta readers. With that, I’ve found that different authors have different policies in how they treat their beta readers. I have rules on how I deal with them. They are unpaid volunteers that are doing me a great service without any promise of return. I…

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  • Novice Juggler

    I know it’s been a while since I posted. I’ve been meaning to for a while, but some “things” happened. I hate things. Rarely does one converse about things and speak of good news. Good news is “events” or even “news”. “Things” mean shit’s gone down. For me that’s my labrum. What’s a labrum you…

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  • Hell, Flip it on its Ear

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    I’m reading Tad Williams’ DIRTY STREETS OF HEAVEN. Not only is this the latest novel from one of my favorite authors, it is officially the first novel I’ve ever paid more than $9.99 for, without some kind of asterisk attached1. Williams does a wonderful job building out a recognizable Judeo-Christian angelic hierarchy without necessarily committing…

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  • A Review: CAPTAIN VORPATRIL’S ALLIANCE

    If you know anything about me, you know that my favorite author is Lois McMaster Bujold. And guess what? She has a new book out! There are four categories of Bujold books: Vorkosigan saga, Challion tetralogy, the Sharing Knife, and the Spirit Ring. The Spirit Ring is the first fantasy book she ever wrote. It…

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  • A Review: THE CITY’S SON

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    Once upon a time I was a podcaster. In addition to the weekly audio recordings, it also afforded me a place to act like a more professional blogger. I could review books (and in fact, reviewed a Tad Williams book that I had been keen to receive). I no longer podcast (or I should say,…

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  • Shoo! Get away, you!

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    Generally, I feel in a rush to be published and begin my professional career in earnest. Part of that is because I’ve been writing for so long and am a touch ashamed that I only recently started taking it so seriously. I lost a whole decade in there where I might have made something of…

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  • The Cinema!

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    It’s hard not to say Lord of the Rings is my favorite movie1. The most epic of fantasies done better than any genre movie ever before. But for all its awesomeness, I always come back to Out of Sight. Steven Soderberg’s 1998 movie with George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, and Ving Raimes. The writing, the acting,…

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