Thanks to Chris Roberson at the Interminable Ramble, I recently discovered “What Does the Protagonist Want,” a blog belonging to Todd Alcott. Alcott’s a screenwriter, with “Antz” and few other films to his credit, and he’s really smart about story construction. Last weekend, I spent way more time than I should have browsing through [...]

On the last Sunday of the month, the San Francisco Chronicle Book Review spotlights new children’s books. Today, the paper features my review of “Runemarks” by Joanne Harris, author of “Chocolat.”
Although I think it too often loses track of its feisty main character, “Runemarks” has an interesting take on the old Norse myths. Ragnarok has [...]

Aaaarrghh! What a frustrating week it’s been. Something wacky has been going on with “Two-Fisted Freelancing Tales” for reasons I don’t understand. Every pingback to one of my posts has crashed the site, resulting in the following message in the browser window where the loaded page should be:
The e-mail could not be sent.
Possible reason: your [...]

As the song says in “Gypsy,” you gotta have a gimmick. Even as a book reviewer.
Well, “gimmick” isn’t the right word. But you probably do need to specialize. You can’t approach an editor at the right time and say, “Gimme any old book to review.” You’ll need to pick something appropriate to your tastes and [...]

This post originally ran last week, until some sort of software glitch brought everything tumbling down for a couple of days. Apologies for the repetition.
Howard Phillips Lovecraft is now regarded as one of the pre-eminent figures of twentieth century horror literature. Born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island, he wrote some [...]

Tip of the Day: Don’t Be a Moron Like Me. Back Up Your Blog!!!
I’m still not sure what happened, but Two-Fisted Freelancing Tales disappeared sometime early on Thursday morning, replaced by the cryptic message:
The e-mail could not be sent.
Possible reason: your host may have disabled the mail() function…
Today, my host, the redoubtable Hostito.com, was [...]

Of all the social networks I’ve tried, I like LinkedIn best. I find it to be a great way to keep in touch with people I already know, however superficially.
I first started using it seriously after I read this article by Sree Sreenivasan at Poynter Online. Since then, I’ve accumulated around 70 LinkedIn connections, a [...]

Everybody has a list of particularly annoying grammar and spelling errors. Here are some from mine:
it’s versus its
It’s only means “it is.” It’s a contraction, not a possessive. I don’t understand why this is so confusing to some people, but seeing it in otherwise competent prose is liked being flicked in the eye with a [...]

Kevin Kelly, Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine, is the editor and publisher of the Cool Tools website, one of the Web’s best resources for truly useful information and recommendations. In case you’ve never visited it before, its statement of purpose reads:
Cool tools really work. A cool tool can be any book, gadget, software, video, map, [...]

This is an anecdote I’ve told my kids. I think it will serve them well. It might do the same for you when you’re setting rates or negotiating payments:
 
When I was a college senior, I took a semester-long playwriting workshop. The instructor was a visiting professor, someone with a fair number of produced plays under [...]