Rhino Puzzlings

Continuing on the themes of "patience and deadlines" from last time, I want to share one of the most useful and terrifying skills I've picked up over the last year: sharing. I'm (over?) confident in my ability to do a short-burst draft of something. My instructor recently reminded me that I've just marked my two year anniversary of taking her evening classes, which are shaped as half-instructional, and half developmental. We're writing to an in-class prompt, producing a response or an outline, or possibly a brief scene, and then sharing. It's rough-and-raw writing, and the room is very accommodating: we've turned it out in fifteen minutes, it's not going to be great. It might not even be  good . But it's a start. Out of class, we have different forums for sharing, and that's been the most help to me, for skills growth. Preparing a passage for a five- to seven-minute reading and light, supportive critique is very different than attempting to...

Turmoil, upset, and no shortage of sturm und drang this week among the indie publishing community (i.e., self-pubbers like yr humble rhino.) Draft2Digital announced they they were no longer going to be allowing purely free signup and support: new accounts will be charged $20 setup, and sales must meet or exceed $100 annually or else the account is charged $12. Barnes & Noble has a similar, albeit less spelled out policy that accounts not meeting standards could be knifed. Amazon, as of this writing, has been mum, but Amazon also has incredibly deep pockets. They can--and I suspect do--lose money on their self-publishing platform, and it's barely a mote in their financial eye. But boy, it was like D2D announced they'd be puppy-stomping, and indie authors would be funding it. What happened? I'm speculating that it's the general issue of scale . When books took a while to produce, D2D naturally did not get as many uploaded to their service to distribute, and they bot...

I maintain a presence on Reddit (yeah I know), and sometimes try to pass along bits of writing advice culled from a few years of personal fumbling around/practice. These often involve a fictional title Rise of the Were-Chicken which is a genre-crossing piece of imagination, adjusting to the question at hand. It's the most adaptable book I'll never write. Social media is still awful, but for the moment it's still largely humans, and creators need to stick together. For those who avoid that particular hive of villainy, I'll occasionally repost (and expand) on my opinions.

Continuing a theme from last time , where fraud is attempted upon yr humble rhino correspondent. Principle cast: 🧛 —the scammer du jour 🧩🦏 — the would-be victim 🚩 — private internal snark Episode IV: In the Spotlight 🚩: On the very day I push out @TheRealJoyG, I receive a DM from someone representing themselves as an author. The profile is new-ish and what I consider all "cover vomit." No real material, just the same cover assets over and over. Someone has put in some work on making it look professional and/or amateurish. The "author" web site links to Instagram and other social media there's Amazon reviews, etc.. It could be another hobbyist writer, and I take the stance of "innocent until proven guilty" albeit with a high dose of skepticism. This connection comes out of the blue from someone in a totally different genre. Do you have a lot of free time to DM random people? No? Why would a best-selling author (his words) ...