Summer's Still Hot!

"Writers are just wingnuts with keyboards." James W. Hall

For those in the writing game, the announcement of Barnes & Noble seeking a buyer is yet another crack in the fissure called the publishing game. And game it is. The B&N "for sale" sign joins Borders who has been looking for a new sugar daddy for a bit.

And there are other growing fissures: Dorchester's announcement of the end of mass market paperbacks as we have come to know and love them; the addition to every writers' vocabulary of the new diety: Smashwords (on the road to Kindle and other ereaders); the Horror Writers Association's discussion of changes to admission requirements; author Brian Keene's dive into self-publishing.

See the highway? See the hitchhikers? Thumbs of editors and agents and publishers? Where do they go from here?

Are people reading? Ask THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO. Ask Stephen King. Maybe they know.

As I sit here in my local library, the computers are standing room only, but scattered in the cool are people comfortable in chairs reading. People searching the stacks for books. Not everyone is here for the web-time or the DVDs or the CDs or the magazines. Though nobody seems to be here for the newspapers.

What's a writer with a finished and yet unpublished novel to do? I guess what other writers are doing: write. And read. And then write some more. Mingle with people. Live life.

I've nestled down with the James W. Hall Thorn novels in the past few weeks. Being a John D. MacDonald junkie, it's been nice reading the finely crafted words of a fellow JDM junkie. I like Thorn. He's... Well, I'll save that until I've read more.

And in between Hall's words, I'll listen to my own and practice my own wingnuttiness at the keyboard. Got to please those voices in my head. Because like Mr. Hall, I feel life is amazing. So is writing.