Just learned that Redstone Science Fiction has accepted my story “Like a Hawk in its Gyre” for publication, probably in early 2011.
I’ve signed the contract and mailed that in already. I still need to write a bio to send along with a headshot. Until I start selling more frequently, I have the luxury of writing a new bio for each sale. (I know some writers find the bio-writing step to be daunting, but I kind of enjoy it.)
Late last summer, I got email from the publisher Gale. They wanted to license my Wise Bread article Bankruptcy is a Good Thing to use in their book Bankruptcy (Introducing Issues With Opposing Viewpoints).
They have a whole series of “introducing issues with opposing viewpoints” books, each of which contains a variety of articles and essays on some topic. I gather that the idea is to help teach students the skill of reading a number of articles, any one of which may be unbalanced or narrowly focused, and then synthesizing an understanding of the topic. It’s a useful skill, and one that’s hard to teach with a textbook, since textbooks generally try to present a comprehensive and balanced viewpoint.
I executed the license agreement back in August. The book came out in April, and the check (payment on publication, of course) arrived today!
It would probably be worth my time to market reprint rights more aggressively, but I enjoy writing more than I enjoy marketing. So, it’s especially nice when the chance to earn a license fee falls into my lap like this.
Because of the nature of (and price of) the book, I didn’t try to negotiate a contributor’s copy. If you happen upon a copy, I’d be pleased to hear a little about it.
I was invited to write a guest post for Self Reliance Exchange and was pleased to give them Find Your Self-Sufficient Sweet Spot.
There’s a reason we don’t see more self-sufficiency: It’s not frugal. It almost always takes more time to make something than it takes to earn enough money to buy one—and that’s without even considering the time it takes to learn the skills (let alone the cost of tools and materials). On the other hand, frugality is a powerful enabler for self-sufficiency. So, how do you find the sweet spot?
My wife spins and weaves. I have a beautiful sweater that she hand knit from hand spun yarn. It’s wonderful—and it’s comforting to know that my household is not only self-sufficient in woolens, we produce a surplus that we can sell or trade. But the fact is you can buy a perfectly good sweater at Wal-Mart for less than the cost of the yarn to knit it.
There’s a lot of useful tips and trick for living a more self-sufficient life at the Self Reliance Exchange. Totally aside from my article there, it’s worth checking them out.
[Updated 2011-03-11: Self Reliance Exchange no longer seems to exist and its successor site no longer seems to be using my post. Rather than just let it disappear, I’ve republished it here.]
My story “An Education of Scars” made the Best New Stories of 2009 at Free SF Reader, which gave it a rating of 4 out of 5. Since they didn’t give any “5 out of 5” ratings last year, that puts my story pretty close to the top of the list.
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).
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.
The reprint of my Wise Bread post Understanding Capital Costs is up at the US Airways Magazine site, in the section the Gist: Understanding Capital Costs.
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!
This isn’t new news, but I don’t think I’ve mentioned before that my Wise Bread post How to Spot Counterfeit Money was reprinted in the handsome educational magazine The Forensic Teacher. It appeared in the Winter 2008 issue.
Cool! Lifehacker picked up my post Stuff will never make you organized, as Save Money by Organizing Before Purchasing Organizational Tools.
Lifehacker links to posts by other Wise Bread writers pretty often, but I can’t remember the last time they linked to one of mine.
