Shouldn’t you be writing another book or something, you lazy fuck? (HT: @horrorshowflick)

Yet another article on the perils of procrastination? Or merely an opportunity to throw in some alliteration? And then a rhyme?

Got a nice little story you’re working on there, hmmm?

It seems these days there are a billion distractions that look like writing. The core mantra of writing is ‘just write’, which means, oddly enough, that at every opportunity you should write. Yet we’re not always in the mood; you see, we might have convinced ourselves we ought to wait for the muse to take us. And sometimes the muse is addicted to Twitter or other social media, because we can tell ourselves we’re doing other things.

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Danse Macabre is on its way!

So I have the pleasure to have a short story in a new anthology coming out by Edge Publishing, in October 2012.

Danse Macabre is a collection of stories about ‘Close Encounters with the Reaper’. Specifically, Nancy Kilpatrick, the editor, was looking for stories featuring different people in different professions and walks of life, encountering Death, where Death has to be a prominent character, in some form.

I’m proud that my story, ‘Population Management’, closes out the anthology with an encounter between a bureaucratic robot Death and a department of Population Management bureaucrat marked for death. I’m looking forward to reading the other stories. Seriously, I’m in there with authors who shaped my youth, like Tanith Lee and Brian Lumley.

Brian ‘Necroscope’ ‘Contributor to the Cthulhu Mythos’ Fucking Lumley, people!

Needless to say, I am excite.

eBooks: When the container has no value, what are you actually paying for?

I recently stumbled into a conversation with the lovely @Virginia from Booki.sh, on twitter. I’d waded into some discussion about the excessive price of ebooks in Australia vs Amazon’s pricing (for non-Agency pricing, obviously).

@PnPBookseller @fangbooks I’m yet to understand (as a reader) how an ebook is worth $15+. I get costings etc, but as a _reader_ it’s crazy.

@PnPBookseller @fangbooks personally $10 is the utter maximum I’d pay for a non-DRM book. $5 would be reasonable. #themarketdoesntlikeittho

Twitter is a great medium for forcing you to refine your point, but subtlety is often lost. What I meant is that, purely from a reader/consumer perspective and disregarding any production costs of an ebook, $15 is a ridiculous price to pay for a digital file. Virginia challenged me with:

@Cacotopos But as a reader, you’re used to paying $30 for books! And most of the enjoyment is derived from the words, is it not?