Feb 27, 2019 | Publishing
No one knows anything. William Goldman’s aphorism concerns Hollywood, but it’s also true of book publishing. Who would have guessed that 50 Shades would become a publishing phenomenon? Or Dan Brown’s The Da Vince Code? As an article on Wired...
Feb 25, 2019 | Maps and Infographics
When I first started working on the Internet, back in the mid-90s, we had to code everything by hand. And I mean, everything. You couldn’t even write a simple “Hello World” without a dozen lines of code. Fast-forward to today’s...
Feb 23, 2019 | Free Stuff, My Publications
*** Read Infinite Waters for free on Kindle Unlimited *** In April 2018, I posted my thousandth post on this blog. To celebrate, I started sharing here all my short stories. Every couple of weeks, I’ll be posting one story from my celebrated Exciting Destinies series...
Feb 19, 2019 | My Publications
It was my birthday a couple of days ago and I had a lovely surprise: a surprise gift from a Greek reader friend, who teaches children English as a second language. She wrote to me to let me know how she uses my children’s book, Musiville, in the classroom. With...
Feb 17, 2019 | Maps and Infographics
I will conclude this special feature I started with my post, The Fight Against Fake News, with an infographic on online data, courtesy of TechJury. The infographic will show you how big companies that provide free service (read: social networks) get to know you better...
Feb 15, 2019 | Maps and Infographics, Random Musings
I will continue this special feature on online privacy and cybersecurity I started with my post, The Fight Against Fake News, with a post on Chinese efforts to tame the Internet. This will, hopefully, demonstrate the extent governments will go to in order to control...
Feb 13, 2019 | Events and Giveaways
Love is in the air. Or the flu. As we’ve all been sick this month, it could be either. Still, tradition dictates that I wish you a Happy Valentine’s Day, whether you are in a new relationship and are planning to spend a small fortune on a night out; in an...
Feb 11, 2019 | Random Musings
In my last post, I described the moves companies take in their fight against fake news. That post raised some privacy issues; issues I will further explore in today’s post. Namely, I list here 15 default settings you could change to safeguard your privacy,...
Feb 9, 2019 | Random Musings
If you haven’t heard the term “fake news” yet, please come out from under that rock and join the rest of us. As for the rest, you will no doubt be aware that fake news has been linked to extremist politics, social division, mob violence, and crime....
Feb 4, 2019 | Random Musings
Apologies for missing yesterday’s post. It’s because of the various bugs that the wee one’s been bringing home since her school reopened after the Christmas holidays. Last week we had to keep her home every day but Monday, so that threw a spanner in the works: I...
Feb 1, 2019 | Maps and Infographics, Writing
While researching keywords for Eaux Infinies, my recently published French edition of Infinite Waters, I came across an infographic on Human After HAL exploring the various dystopian subgenres, created by YA author Erin Bowman. Enjoy! Note: if the image appears too...
Jan 31, 2019 | Marketing, Publishing
The Written Word Media (WWM) regularly posts great material examining the latest trends in publishing; trends of interest to every author – particularly Indie ones. Here is my summary of Ricci Wolman’s predictions for 2019, along wth my comments: 1) Amazon...
Jan 29, 2019 | Random Musings
This is an unusual topic, but it touches upon so many of us that I had to ask: have you received one of those threatening emails that claim to have hacked your computer and/or camera and recorded you pleasing yourself? They then ask for a large amount of money paid in...
Jan 27, 2019 | My friends' Guest Posts, Writing
This is a guest post by author Mary Bradford. She is sharing here with us her writing journey. My Journey to Writing a Novel When I began writing short stories and flash fiction, I wondered if I’d ever write a full novel, but I often dismissed the thought....
Jan 25, 2019 | My Publications
Infinite Waters: 9+1 Speculative Fiction Short Stories has probably the strangest history of all of my books. Its launch was marked by the closing of Greek banks and the imposition of capital controls. As a result, instead of a big promo, all I could do was depend on...
Jan 23, 2019 | Publishing
Last October, I started using Kindle Create to prepare my manuscript for publication and wrote about my experience using Kindle Create to create your manuscript. Amazon has now released an Early Access feature that shows the direction the company wants to take their...
Jan 19, 2019 | Events and Giveaways
Okay, the holidays are over but the weather in Greece certainly qualifies as bleak mid-winter. If you don’t believe me, just check out this photo I took a couple of days ago, showing the wee one in our garden. Yes, that’s Athens, Greece (albeit in the...
