Fiction Writers Lie

...and I'm a fiction writer and a liar. I suppose the real question is: which came first, the liar or the fiction? You would be foolish to believe my first answer, but it would probably be true. Probably. Let's just assume I'm a liar who has stumbled into the most honest line of work for liars. That should save time.

Pictured: The Kids Today

I just make up stories, all the time, based on nothing but boredom and audience reaction. Sure, if they're about me, the stories usually have a smidgen of truth dust in to polish the lie stones. I've got plenty of truth dust, it's just not all nearly as interesting without a bit of polish. Mostly it just goes until it stops. You'll note that 'truth dust' is my new fancy word for 'experience'. I assume The Kids Today use it as a word for some hallucinogen. 

It doesn't help that I'm almost certainly smarter than you, having saved all the time that non-liars usually spend racing cars or hotdogging to boogie tracks (or whatever) and spent it on reading, speaking, wandering around, meeting people, and yes: Lies. LIES! The elixir of youth, the crowning achievement I'll lie to my grandkids about in my old age. Good stuff.

Apropos of nothing: The World's Longest Articulated Bus!

I've been messing around with Guido Henkel's Take Pride in Your eBook Formatting because I figured I should take my formatting up a notch. It's not really that hard, you should try it. Obviously, Smashwords still only accepts .doc (a major failing), but your Kindle books will look all snazzy. Or at least the Table of Contents will work right, which is just as good. In other dramatic news...

I stole this image from the article.

Kristine Kathryn Rusch's Writing Like It's 1999
Michael A Stackpole's House Slaves vs. Spartacus

These two articles have pretty much convinced me that I will never sign a publishing contract. It seems like altogether too much work and hassle and waiting for altogether too little reward. (We need not mention agents.) You know who was 'self-published'? Mark Twain. I'll be like him, except I won't lose all my money investing in bean harvesters or whatever he did.

But that was pretty much what I was going to do anyways.

Carry on.