What I Should Be Doing....

Question: How can you tell if a writer has a looming deadline? Answer: His/her house is spotless. Writers are masters of procrastination. Every year at the Saints and Sinners Literary Conference, casual talk among writers eventually turns to "what I did instead of writing like I should have." Maybe we all work better under pressure. I have no idea, but it's an epidemic. (Note that I'm making a blog entry instead of working on a story. See how insidious it is?) I have two stories due to editors, so of course I'm going to spend the weekend scouring the hovel. I've start both. That's a good thing. Both are hanging at a tipping point. That's good, because it gives me something exciting to jump into when I start again. I know exactly where these stories are going and how they're going to get there. All I have to do is write them. *heh* Sure. Any moment now. Right after I clean my office and clear the lint from the dryer line. BTW - suppose I should mention the big to-do over Amazon. Amazon owns a POD (print on demand) subsidiary. Don't think of print on demand the old way. Think of it as just-in-time inventory control. Even the big publishing houses are turning to it. So anyway, Ingram, the biggest distributor of books in the US owns a competing POD company. Amazon is playing dirty and forcing publishers to sign with their POD company OR ELSE their book won't be available for sale on Amazon, which is the biggest source of revenues for many publishers. The problem with that is that if you take your book off Ingram's system, other bookstores besides Amazon WON'T STOCK IT. Rock and a hard place. So the literary world is up in arms right now against Amazon. Looks like restraint of trade to me, but what are the odds that the government will get involved? Pretty low. So anyway - if you want to support small press, please buy from your local independent bookstore instead of from Amazon. If you want to go online, buy from Skylight Books or Alternaqueer. (Alternaqueer is Greg Wharton and Ian Philips of Suspect Thoughts fame. I adore them. Skylight isn't specifically queer, but it's an important part of the LA literary scene. Besides, their late store cat, Lucy, is a character in my ghost story in Haunted Hearths.)