I’ve just enrolled in the KDP Select program with Amazon. If you are a member of Amazon Prime, you can download free Kindle versions of my two latest books.
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When a work gets published, the world gets to define it in terms that live outside the author’s mind, popping the bubble the author lived inside while writing the story. This can be a blessing or a curse, depending on what other books are name-dropped in the reviews. When the Financial Times reviewed . . . → Read More: The typecast curse: When a book review marries you to another author The name C-Path almost sounds like an ancestor of C-3PO. A Stanford research program has taken the first step toward replacing physicians in the imaging field with a software program called Computational Pathologist (C-Path). Recent news reports that “…engineers and pathologists have trained computers to analyze breast-cancer pathology slides — and the machine is more accurate than the assessments of man (and woman).” This is of interest to me because in my concoction of a sequel to Accelerating Returns, I plan to have a support group with people whose occupations have been replaced en masse by rapid advancements in technology. My imagined unemployed group includes truckers, pilots, teachers, nannies – but most important, among the members of the support group is a radiologist, whose skills, once so highly sought and paid for, has been reduced to the fate of the low-skilled. Stanford may beat me to the punch…in . . . → Read More: Is the Deep Blue of medicine on its way? Software pathologist beats human assessments of breast cancer No, I’m not part of the super rich class. I am in the 1% of people who have “mixed-handedness,” which is not the same as ambidexterity. That is, I am righthanded for some things and lefthanded for other things. I write lefthanded, throw darts lefthanded, throw baseball righthanded, bat righthanded, shoot basketballs lefthanded (but dribble righthanded), bowl righthanded, kick soccer balls leftfooted, and eat lefthanded. An article released today called The Health Risks of Being Left-Handed mentioned that only one percent of people have this mixed condition. The article pointed out that “mixed-handedness is strongly associated with ADHD” and that “most people’s brains have a dominant side. More symmetrical brains of mixed-handed people may explain the link to some neural disorders.” Lucky me. :|
The final frontier is the brain. Humans have been to the four corners of the earth, to the moon, to the bottom of the sea. Since the beginning of the industrial age up until the information age, the dominoes of knowledge have tumbled steadily. But the brain remains a mystery, and remains the subject of much debate just as it was when Descartes first redefined the division of body and soul. When I think of the future, I usually consider the human ability to create art the only bastion that technology cannot bust through with a big idea. However, I have growing doubts about this. Not long ago, I wrote a short story about a software application that wrote literature, which I initially thought to be impossible. After I wrote the story, the idea became more interesting to me and I began working on a novel about this same . . . → Read More: Bestsellers written by a machine someday? Narrative Networks, Story Grammars, and Artificial Intelligence TLDR: Can you go home again? After his divorce, Dr. Patrick Dupree leaves New York.
Late in the afternoon on July 3rd, Dr. Patrick Dupree had a final meeting with three people he hoped to never again see. One of them was his lawyer, who Patrick would be firing at the conclusion of the meeting. The conference room was completely silent for five minutes, as Patrick loomed over pen and paper. The other lawyer in the room said to Patrick, “Of course, we want you to take all the time you need.” No one moved. The only indication that the room had life in it was the movement of Patrick’s thumbs against his temples while his fingers shielded his eyes. His tongue also moved, or rather rolled inside his mouth, just as his intestines spun and his stomach twirled. Trying to control his emotions took all of his concentration. . . . → Read More: Short Story: The Last Act of Patrick’s Ideal TLDR: A love triangle, bent out of shape
In Dawville, every summer is someone’s summer of love. The river rises and falls as regularly as the spikes and doldrums of hearts on the rise and hearts on the mend. The cycles of the Mississippi river normalize the town, with the molasses of winter turning to rolling mercury for two days each summer during Longshore Days. And this season the madness belonged to a pair called Jon Dupree and Eddie Hufford, two young men who came from two houses of very unequal dignity. Only a few hours prior to dawn, Jon and Eddie had butted heads in the parking lot of Wayne’s Dock, a tavern and dance hall owned and operated by Wayne Trempeleau, the owl of Dawville. Fights do not happen for just any reason in Dawville. On the contrary –there is always a stupid reason. For fifteen years, . . . → Read More: Short Story: Unequal Dignity When the topic of literary agents comes up in online writing groups, the conversation is much different today than it was ten years ago. A trend is emerging where authors are rejecting the pursuit of literary agents. The writers have their pitchforks and pikes raised and are bypassing the agents altogether on their way toward the new publishing models. Amazon has created a world-changing endeavor, and after travelling the road of tradition, I’m in the horde now, too. I’m quick to criticize agents, since I know well the joy of rejection. I spent years querying agents, only to ultimately feel like I’d been to a casino, throwing postal money down a slot machine. I’ve killed a few trees in submitting sample chapters. But I will say this: for all the time my submissions spent in slush piles before getting tossed, that period of being marginalized did help me become . . . → Read More: Indie barbarians at the gate of literary agencies
The Gamblers: Readers will definitely take a chance on reading indie authors when they can taste a free sample. This is a no-brainer, but I’ve read that authors should not offer free copies, since it makes the quality suspect. I disagree, since as an indie writer, finding readers amid the social network noise is difficult. The free offer exposes authors to readers that otherwise wouldn’t take the chance. Mysterious spikes in downloads: On certain days, I’d see spikes in the number of downloads, with my top giveaway day leaping to 250 downloads. The rapid rise and fall . . . → Read More: Reflecting on my free book giveaway experiment
Review from the Financial Times (Review by James Urquhart) With its terse emotions, rural dysfunction and sharply comic moments, this suspenseful debut shares midwestern ambiance and territory with the Coen brothers’ Fargo. An array of strong characters gives a bright, nervy edge to Anthony’s fresh prose. Review from the South Wales Argus (Read full review) Josh Werther is the first to offer help to find the missing boy Jacob Marak, but it soon becomes evident that Josh’s interest goes further then just ‘being neighbourly’. I found this novel a very . . . → Read More: Warm up Christmas with a blizzard: A Town Called Immaculate now on Kindle |
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