Dispatches from the Frontlines of Fatherhood: Love for All
My three-year-old son has a unique kind of logic.  You can’t always follow it, but it’s sure fun to go along for the ride.  Here’s a conversation the other morning between he and my wife: Son:  I love everyone!  I love everyone in the whole world.  Mom:  Oh, that’s very nice, honey. Son:  Even you, Mommy. Mom:  Oh. Don’t you mean especially me? Son:  I love my teeth.  I brush them. Mom:  That’s very good. Son:  It’s good to brush your teeth.

How Online Are You? A Writer’s Scale of Internet Engagement
On Saturday, I went to the coast for a “Writing Technology Day” with a bunch of  professional writers, where I spent the majority of it helping friends with things like using Wordpress and putting stories up on Kindle.  It was also an opportunity for me to brainstorm and bounce ideas off some sharp minds about what it means to be a writer in the digital age.  It was fun, and it was one of those rare times when my day job (I’m an Instructional Technologist for a university, where I’m chiefly

Check out the 10′ers
The 10′ers is a livejournal community of young adult and middle grade authors whose books are debuting in 2010.  Lots of great stuff on the site.  I recently joined, and you can find my introductory bio here:  http://community.livejournal.com/10_ers/322902.html.  I might cross post there from time to time, if the subject matter also seems appropriate for that site. There’s over 80 other authors listed on the site.    Check them out!

Conversations with Poe: Are Writers Just Self-Promoting to Each Other?
Me: You know, looking at a lot of the online self-promotion that writers do, I sometimes wonder if most of it is just being seen by other writers — book trailers, guest blogging, that sort of thing. Poe: Is that such a bad thing? Me: Well, the hope is that your promotional efforts reach plain old readers too. Poe: Aren’t writers also readers? Me:

Back on the Write Every Day Bandwagon
A few weeks ago, I looked back at my word counts the past seven years and noticed something quite surprising:  The first year I got very serious about writing — in other words, treating it like a profession and not a hobby — is still my best word count year.  I wrote just over 250,000 words of fiction that year.  Now, according to my spreadsheet, I’ve written about a million and a half words in the past seven years, so it’s not like I’ve been slacking.  Still, it’s not the level of productivity I’m happy with, not the level of productivity that I think will get me where I want to go, so I started asking myself why I didn’t exceed