Category: Media

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I published one short story in 2009:

My story submission database isn’t really set up to answer the question of how many new stories I wrote this year, but I see three whose first submission to an editor was in 2009.  Hopefully some of those will appear in 2010.

Two articles of mine appeared as guest posts at personal financial blogs:

I wrote 71 posts for Wise Bread.  I’ve bolded a few where I thought I managed to say just what I was trying to say, and commend them to your attention:

One of my Wise Bread posts (Understand Capital Costs) was featured in in US Airways Magazine (October 2009, page 22).

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A while back Trent Hamm at The Simple Dollar invited me to do a guest post and I finally came up with an idea that I liked:  Living off Capital.

People who come from wealthy families learn how to live off capital. The rules are taught along with all the other things they learn from their parents–how to dress, how to eat, how deal with bankers and trust officers. But even though most people don’t learn the rules, living off capital is just a skill, and it’s one that everybody should learn, because everybody lives off capital sometimes.

It talks about investing for income, reinvesting to preserve capital, diversifying, and keeping your expenses flexible.

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US Airways Magazine is running my Wise Bread article Understand Capital Costs in their section “The Gist.”  It appears on page 22 of the October 2009 issue.  I got my contributors copies in the mail today.

I’m not sure what day they actually change out the magazine onboard the planes, but I assume for the next month or so airline passengers will be reading my article!

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Mishell Baker has an article up at the new Fantasy Magazine website on looking ahead to attending Clarion this year while pregnant, Cautiously Expecting: On Creating Life and Fiction at Clarion–which includes a couple of quotes from me, talking about my experiences at Clarion.

She had emailed, asking for my thoughts.  I responded and also pointed her to a little essay I’d written about How I Learned at Clarion.  Looking at that piece again prompted me to revise my page about Clarion to include a link to it and to the various other things I’d written about my Clarion experience and what it had taught me about writing.

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I did two interviews recently with Laura of Green Panda Treehouse:

She’s looking for other people to interview, so I thought I’d mention that it was fun to do.  If you’re a personal finance blogger, consider getting in touch.

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As part of the publicity related to the publication of the Wise Bread book, I’ve got a guest post up at Get Rich Slowly in which I advocate that you be a bon vivant.

A bon vivant is a person who lives well — someone who enjoys the best things in life, especially with regard to food and drink. The stereotypical bon vivant is someone who can afford the best (or has generous friends), but that’s not the only way. You can be a bon vivant on a budget.

What is “the best” anyway? Your own tastes play the biggest role, but the tastes of family and friends have a strong influence. To a lesser extent, so do the tastes of opinion leaders, celebrities, experts, and others — even fictional characters. Because of this, appreciating the finer things in life makes you vulnerable to serious “keeping up with the Joneses” issues.

There are a lot of ways to fight this.

My working title was “Be a bon vivant,” but JD thought it would tie in with his site better as How to Live a Rich Life — On a Budget.

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Christine Des Garennes of the New-Gazette did a profile on me and my writing for Wise Bread.  It made the front page! Checks and Balances: Living large on a smaller budget.

Although some of his blog posts are practical, such as “how to make sourdough bread and save a buck on every loaf,” Brewer’s “central shtick,” as he put it, is all about doing what you love.

Ask yourself, are you working a job just to earn enough money to support your lifestyle?

“If you live frugally enough, you can change your work based on what you want to do,” Brewer said. After your family, he said, there is nothing “that has such an importance on whether or not you’re happy than your work.”

[Updated 29 May 2009:  It used to be that the News-Gazette closed articles behind a pay wall after a week, but as of today the link seems to still be working.]