As with most everything I have to say about art and writing, this is a long and meandering piece. I think it means something though. I think it gets somewhere. We shall see. I am going to use pretentious words like “art” and “artist” and other such muck-a-muck. If you are one of those TLDR […]

As synchronicity would have it, I ran into two different bits today that have to do with cultural snobbery and the genres. The first is a blog entry by Mike Dunn, who is an aspiring writer who was literally chased from his love of Analog by the culture of friends he hung around. The second […]

“I’ve never thought of writing as being artistic.” I’m paraphrasing a little, but that was a friend of mine said during a conversation we were having a couple weeks ago. He’s a moderately new writer, meaning he’s been working on it for a while, but still has tons o’ questions and tons o’ worries and […]

A little while back Roberta Laurie interviewed me for On Spec magazine, which is the really rocking Canadian small press that published my short story “Operation Hercules.” It’s a great publiciation. I suggest you read it. She asked me who some of my favorite authors are, and I started with Robert J. Sawyer. I think […]

As I’ve noted in the past every now and again, I listen to a lot of podcasts during the afternoons when I walk, or work out, or go to the grocery, or do whatever non-writing thing I do to break from the creative/productive side of the day. I used to listen to a lot of […]

I spent yesterday giving three sessions as part of a workshop of local writers here in south-central Indiana. Since it essentially ripped the heck out of my normal Saturday, I’ve found that I’ve been reminding myself all day that this is Sunday. It was a fun workshop, though. I did a session on line editing, […]

Well, this is pretty cool, eh? Today I get the remarkable pleasure of reporting that a kickstarter for The 2015 Young Explorer’s Adventure Guide has gone live! This is a really remarkable project that I’m happy to be a part of. It’s a deeply inclusive work targeted to the middle grade levels. Your pledges can […]

A few weeks back, Myke Cole linked to a Reddit article that disclosed the results of a survey taken regarding piracy of authors’ works. Probably because I am an author, and probably because I geek out on behavioral science kinds of things, I thought the results were interesting as all get-out. Since I figure my […]

It’s been awhile since I mentioned that I’m the brother of Gabble Rachet’s lead guitar player. Now I get to show you. This is a clip from their reunion gig of a week ago or so. Pretty danged cool. I present Jeff Collins on lead guitar…

Ron’s Top 10 Influences #10 – Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott #9 – The Island of Doctor Moreau, H. G. Wells #8 – Spider-Man, Stan Lee & Steve Ditko #7 – Brave New World, Aldous Huxley #6 – The Old Man and the Sea, Ernest Hemingway #5 – The Writer’s Art, James Kilpatrick #4 – […]