New writers these days are instantly awash in all kinds of advice (some even useful) but none is better, I humbly suggest, than that you don’t have to master everything all at once. This is true of writing craft, but it’s especially true of the business side of the game, from website development to marketing.

When I started writing professionally, I didn’t know much about the business, but I knew I needed to build a newsletter so that I’d have a list of people I could get news out to later when I had novels and such to sell.

At the Writers of the Future workshop, Mike Resnick gave me hell about not belonging to my local writer’s guild, and it was good advice. The Houston Writers Guild was at something of a zenith of activity at the time and I got invited to participate in a number of appearances from which I collected a tiny buy growing list of reader email addresses.

Some of you may not have been able to get out and enjoy the Christmas lights as you normally would, or may not have felt up to it this year, or may not have had neighbors in the mood….so we did it for you.

Hi everybody! I know I’ve been way too quiet of late, and I thought I’d pop in to give a little update–and a lesson in perseverance.

First, I sold two more stories (you are the first to know). One, my 2020 Jim Baen contest winner, sold to Analog. The other sold to Galaxy’s Edge after being my second Jim Baen finalist way back in…I’d have to look up the year.

Below is my reply to a person who reached out through my website to explain why he didn’t need to see my video about anti-viral masks because he “already had covid for a few minutes and is immune for life,” and anyway the disease is a hoax, etc., etc. I didn’t write this to address that person (who is no doubt so deep in the cult of political theater as to be beyond all hope) but to address for the greater good his oft-repeated misapprehensions. And now that I’ve done that, it’s off to work I go…’

That depends on your definition of “touch.”

Obviously we can touch things. You are touching something right now that’s preventing you from falling to the center of Earth’s gravitational field. The thing is, “touching” may not mean what you think it does.

If you play pool, “touching” may conjure the firm crack of cue against ball, but if you’ve ever flown a kite, you know you can touch the air in a much squishier way.

I am reposting this here after it went viral on a website I contribute to. I cannot claim credit for this method; it stems from a parenting book by T. Berry Brazelton, but I can tell you it works–and what my parents did didn’t, though it veered at times into authoritarian abuse.

Here is what I did, from the time my children started on solid food: