Improbable Press Blog

This is inspired by a Neil Gaiman blog post and something I wrote for the Spark writing/fandom newsletter, and it's about cheating. But first, the three trick questions: Did Shakespeare cheat when he wrote real person fic about Richard III and Henry V? How about Bram Stoker, Anne Rice, Stephenie Meyer, or the hundreds of others who've made bank writing books about vampires? Did the Disney animators cheat when they paid people to model for their animations? Did all the winners of the Great British Bake-Off cheat when they adapted recipes they learned from cookbooks? These are all trick questions...

Dragons and laughter and the boiling blood of a mountain…that's what people saw in the last prompt. What do you see in this one? And hey, how are you? What do you need? Diversion? Focus? Company? Alone time? Would a writing challenge help, hm? I don't always write for the prompts I put up, but I think I'll challenge myself to write for this one, 100+ words before the weekend is out. There's something about that swoop and the impressionist painterly feel of this, there's something about the evocative phrase a box for wishes that calls me. How about you?...

By Atlin Merrick Spoiler alert in the first paragraph! The difference between vanity presses and small presses is you pay the first one to work with you, and the second one pays you to work with them. That's mostly it. Or let's put it another way: with a vanity press or self-publishing, you assume most of the risk of publishing your book. When you work with a small press, they assume most of the risk of publishing your book. If you self-publish or use a vanity press you call the shots because you're paying. You decide if your book is...

Here's a little idea for NaNoWriMo, if you're going to do it: Let it mean anything. I know it stands for National Novel Writing Month but it can also stand for taking those same hours to copy all your digital files onto an external hard drive. Or weeding out old magazines. Or sending out job applications (every cover letter can be part of your word count if you still want to track things that way). What I'm suggesting is don't break yourself this month because you make the rules. So you can change them. And right now things are so...

After a moment, though, the grasses crackled and shifted, and Holmes’ warm shoulder pressed into mine. ‘There,’ he said softly, pointing with one long, thin finger at a smattering of stars. ‘Cassiopeia.’I grinned. ‘Why, Holmes. You’ve been swotting up.’‘Astronomy - nil,’ he quoted, with a laugh. ‘It’s hardly good business to advertise one’s weaknesses. Proving another’s misconceptions wrong, however, is. I have taken advantage.’‘Show me, then. What else have you learned to prove me wrong?’'The constellations,’ Holmes murmured. His voice was close against my ear. ‘The stars.’ His long hands gestured toward the sky, as though directing the heavens, and...