For 43 years, Ornament Magazine has been documenting personal adornment through the world’s highest levels of wearable fine craft and art media. The magazine itself has a physical beauty that has never been compromised: thick paper, glossy finish, stunning photography, and deeply-researched articles. I first encountered Ornament in January 1979 in the skimpy magazine section…
Read More Ornament MagazineThis will eventually have its own spot on Filigree’s Rule, but I thought the problem merited its own longer post. Literary agents are human: they have likes, dislikes, foibles, and triggers like anyone else. Sometimes an author is lucky and their quirks will mesh with the agent’s. This is one of the major reasons to…
Read More Abusive agents and how to spot themAs per this Facebook post, the erotic romance publisher Loose Id is closing. https://www.facebook.com/LoosenYourId/posts/10156261079630101 The four owners (The Quad, in LI nicknames) have decided not to squander the market’s good will, and are winding down the business by May of 2018. This was my first romance publisher: they took on the first edition of my…
Read More End of an Era: Loose IdHint: if your publisher pops up and declares they will no longer consider submissions from agents, and requires their authors to sever existing ties with agents…your publisher is either predatory, clueless, or both. This post prompted by the hilarious meltdown from Tyrant Books, an independent literary press based in Rome & NYC. Tyrant *has* published…
Read More On agents and publishersI’m partway through the next set of award ribbons for the Tempe Festival of the Arts. These are based on the work of Erin Curry, so for the applique backgrounds I used a mix of bright and subdued cotton prints glued on white felt pre-edged with dark green/blue rose print fabric. The prints have some…
Read More Gel transfers on fabricOkay, we’ll try another version of this. In other words: writing is work. Often very hard work, that might pay little or nothing for an insane amount of time and labor. There is no set ‘destination’, since your career can skyrocket to best-seller and movie status, or crash into obscurity with equal speed. If you…
Read More Crane’s Guide to Writing and BakingA few years ago I posted this excerpt of a rewritten fantasy short story, ‘Red Amber’, a M/M erotic romance about creativity, grief, pride, and lost love. Here’s the current mood board for it. While I’m waiting on edit letters for THE PURIST, I’m settling back into this story. I have 12K of it written, so…
Read More ‘Red Amber’ updateI’m contracting THE PURIST to NineStar Press for a release date sometime in 2018. It almost certainly *won’t* have this cover, and possibly not this title, but I look forward to seeing what NineStar does with it. Way back in 1996 or 1997 I wrote a 6K short story set in my Lonhra Sequence fantasy…
Read More ‘The Purist’ has a home with NineStar PressThis book (two books, actually) holds a wistful joy for me. The two stories woven within are pure McKillip at her best: lyrical, mystical, with down-to-earth protagonists and a way of bringing the eldritch in for tea. I encountered the first book in 1992 at a World Fantasy Convention, and the second in the summer…
Read More Cygnet, by Patricia McKillipMany of my book art sculptures are represented in the US and internationally by the wonderful folks at Vamp & Tramp Booksellers. http://www.vampandtramp.com/finepress/c/cranedesigns.html A large catalog of works can be seen by scrolling down the pages on the right side of this blog. Look for Book Arts & Text Based Art, for pieces from…
Read More Crane Designs Book ArtSince I’ve a nice uptick in sales lately on this M/M space opera romance, here’s a mood board of my original art inspired by the story, cover background from Natasha Snow, and images from Alphonse Mucha, The Nature Conservancy, and Pinterest. I don’t know any other way to respond to the anniversary of 9-11, or…
Read More Moro’s Price mood boardOh god, this is so funny it’s painful. To go along with Lani Sarem and GeekNation’s previous misadventures involving Handbook For Mortals, YA author and blogger Claribel Ortega takes on the soul-stunting task of reading and live-tweeting this book. To be super efficient, Claribel has Storified two separate reads in these handy threads. So if…
Read More Claribel Ortega tweets HandbookSo much news to absorb in the last week or so: Charlottesville’s aftermath, Trump’s Phoenix speech, the solar eclipse, religious riots in India, North Korea, Hurricane Harvey… I might touch on all those later, but let’s look at two hilarious gaffes in recent social media. Both of them embody privilege, legal-but-morally-suspect corruption, and astounding condescension…
Read More Big Fails: Lani Sarem and Louise LintonOr: the state of LGBTQIA SFF and Romance publishing in 2017. Tl:dr…diverse authors may be courted by large publishers not so much for the value of their stories, but for the cachet of representing them as proof of diversity in publishing. Unagented authors and agents need to be wary of this possible trend, and plan…
Read More Diversity BingoI’ve talked before about a wonderful fanfic-writer-turned-agented-commercial-author, Alis Franklin. Time for a bittersweet update. LIESMITH has a great sequel, STORMBRINGER, which you can read. And what looks to be a couple of brilliant follow-ups, which you can’t (not yet anyway). You can find out more about her writing here. Out of respect for Alis and…
Read More Alis Franklin: Books of the WyrdFinally, finally, after way too many years of having only a vague idea what Sfassa, one of the main characters of THE PURIST, actually looks like when she’s human-ish, Hayley Amber Hasselhoff (yes, David’s daughter) showed me the way. I also owe a shout-out to model and wrestler Lindsay Hayward, and the other stunning plus-size models…
Read More Sfassa in Sirrithani guiseOne of the best side-effects of online novel-pitch contests: the community around them. Whether or not a writer makes the cut (agent request, mentorship, etc), most writers can find new friendships and even collaborations within the larger pool of the hopeful and hopeless. Mark J. Engels and I met during a pitch contest in 2016…
Read More Mark Engels: ALWAYS GRAY IN WINTERThis has been a *long* time in the works, but I’m so happy to see ‘The Gear’d Heart’, a new steampunk serial by AG Carpenter. I’ve read it in an earlier beta form, and seen the kickass sequel. Now’s the chance to get in on a charming, devious, and dark story, via Patreon!
Read More The Gear’d Heart, by AG CarpenterAll glories I have wrought by hand and gift of seeing, All dreams I have brought from dreamscape into being, All mysteries I’ve taught, however fast or fleeting, Mingle toward the truth I’ve sought: streams at the Sea completing. Spirit of Probability, Spirit of the Single Path, I have sought you. You are not here.…
Read More Artist’s InvocationNow that I have your attention, here’s a little rant about authors asking for reviews. In short, we shouldn’t get grief for this. We shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for asking, or told we’re ‘pandering’ or ‘imposing’ on our readers. Likewise, we shouldn’t hold ourselves loftily above promoting our work in careful, tactful, honest,…
Read More Begging for Eyeballs: authors and reviews