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So James Moran, who wrote one of my very favorite Doctor Who episodes, gets asked a lot of questions about how to Make It as a writer, and has condensed down all his best advice into one big FAQ.  Some very good advice in here, all told in a no-bullshit-here-it-is manner:

“And remember – any writing info I give, that’s purely specific to me. Feel free to follow it, or completely ignore it, it’s just what works for me. If you want my advice, then here it is, do with it as you wish. There will be some swearing. I’m not going to beat around the bush here, because I’d just be wasting everyone’s time, especially yours. If you want to be told that you’re brilliant and talented, go and ask your mum. She loves you.”

— the pen is mightier than the spork: The Big Writing FAQ

Okay.  Everything looks legit.  Time to turn on the neon “OPEN” sign and unlock the doors.

I’ve been working on a redesign of Bloodletters for, ohhh, call it six months, off and on.  I think I’m finally happy with it.  Many thanks to those of you who have given me feedback, encouragement, and alcohol during this process.

I’ve got two weeks of posts already written and scheduled.  Be sure to join me over at the blog for my new webseries Causality, too.

This should be fun. Watch this space.

After years of having just a few of my stories available on this site, and years of performing my stories for enthusiastic audiences at Halloween and at science-fiction conventions, and years of having my more geographically-distant fans ask when or if I was ever going to record any of my readings so they could hear them — I’m going to bow to the inevitable, and start podcasting. Hope you enjoy it.

Jack shoved his chair back, stood, backed away, turned at the last minute and carefully did not run down the hallway to the bathroom. He walked, and raided his medicine cabinet for gauze, alcohol, tape, anything that looked useful.

He came back, led Tommy over to the kitchen sink, and carefully pulled the bandages off.

Tommy’s right hand had only the ring finger and thumb left.

Counting From Ten [ 36:58 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Why “Episode Zero?”  Because this isn’t actually an episode of this podcast — this is episode number nine of Pseudopod, the horror podcast zine, and it features the title story from my anthology, Counting From Ten. As host Mur Lafferty says, this one’s a “grisly little story,” so be warned ….

The reader here is podcaster J.C. Hutchins, and I have to say he really nailed it — the character voices sound just the way they did in my head, and he had a great sense for the pacing and mood.  Since this story came out, I’ve read a lot of what Hutchins has to say about podcasting, and those words lit a fire under me to get started podcasting here on my own.  So that’s two drinks I owe him now.

If you have comments on this story, please visit its page on Pseudopod and leave me some feedback there.

Some of you out there may remember Ravenlike, the weblog that I used to run here.  I’ve been meaning to return to blogging for quite some time, in an effort to reach out a little more and let people know what I’m working on and what I’m thinking about.

As author John Scalzi said at the 2009 O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference:

“When you build those 40,000 people or 4,000 people or however many you have because what you write is interesting to them and they come back again and again and again you develop an interest in yourself as an author. There’s somebody in this room who once said the next generation of authors will be performers as well and there is something to that. My performance is not necessarily what I’m doing now, for example my performance is on my website on a daily basis. It makes a difference.”

— via The Future Of Science Fiction Publishing Is In Cyberspace

(2009?  Yes, I’ve been collecting links for this blog for quite a while, so most of them for a while aren’t going to be new — although hopefully they’ll be new to you.  Bear with me, we will eventually catch up to 2011, already in progress.)

So this is me being a performer.  Expect posts about writing, about horror movies, about readings and podcasts, and especially about the Future of Publishing — which seems to be happening about now, as near as I can tell, so it’s much on my mind lately.  Welcome aboard.