There’s more press about me and my book out there, but this isn’t my full purpose for writing today. That said, here are a few links:

• THE IRON RING is featured on Confessions of a Reader and New Reads!
• An Interview with myself by The Examiner.

More upcoming, of course.

This is just where you start. That’s all.

However, let’s pause for the topic of the day: the writer and his community. Writing, it has been said, is a solitary profession. This is, of course, literally true – when you write, you do so alone. That’s just the writing part of writing, though. Being an author, as I am fast discovering, involves a lot more than just writing. You need to talk and associate with people.

The reason for this is that, once you actually get a novel out there, you also need people to want to read that novel. To do this, you need other people to do things for you – things like review your book on Amazon, feature your book on their blog, interview you for their paper, help you edit the damned thing, help you sell the next one, and on and on and on. That means, ultimately, you need to make friends in the industry and keep healthy connections with others within your corner of the reading and writing world.

Now, I happen to suck at this – I fully admit it. Honestly, one of the primary reasons I focused on getting a traditional publishing deal (as opposed to self-publishing) is that I wanted some kind of framework and guidance and legwork taken on by somebody who knows what they’re doing. So far it seems to be going okay, but I know I can’t just stop there.

This is why I am so very fortunate to have won the Writers of the Future contest for this year. In April, I will be heading out to LA to rub elbows with not only established professionals in my genre, but also to make friends with and learn from other writers just starting out. This is a monumental opportunity to expand my tiny little writing world and to invite others into my little Fortress of Writing Solitude. These are talented individuals, too, and here I will pause to plug some of them, rather than just plug myself.

C Stuart Hardwick, a former WoTF winner and himself a talented writer, had taken it upon himself to interview this year’s winners and put them up on his blog. I, myself, will be featuring there soon, but I wanted to entreat you all to visit there and read up on my friends, Martin Shoemaker and Scott Parkin. They are two major up-and-comers in the scifi world. Scott’s ideas are just devastatingly clever and his insight into writing as a craft is extremely sophisticated. Martin, meanwhile, has a list of publishing credits as long as his arm in places like Analog (he would have been ineligible for the contest had he not won the quarter he did!) and his work has already been featured in  The Year’s Best Science Fiction 31st Annual Edition (!).

Clearly, I travel to LA in mighty company. Also, I am very glad to no longer be walking this road alone.