Tag: writing

“Flock of Crows” Coming Soon For Kindle!

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

I just finished reformatting A Flock of Crows is Called a Murder for the Kindle, so within a day or two it should be available for that device for the low, low price of $0.99! As usual it will be DRM-free and text-to-speech enabled. If you have a Kindle, or use the Kindle reader for your computer or mobile device, check it out! I will be putting up the link to the Kindle edition once it has been approved by the gatekeepers at Amazon.

To tide everyone over until the Kindle edition is available, here’s a randomly-selected excerpt from the book:

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Random Rejection: The Eclipse Comics Saga Part IV

~ James Viscosi ~ 5 Comments

So it seemed as if things were progressing nicely with Eclipse Comics … I was writing “Night Watchman” stories, my artist was drawing panels, and my editor was getting married and moving away.  Good times for all concerned!  Sadly, good times never seem to last …

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Random Rejection: The Eclipse Comics Saga Part III

~ James Viscosi ~ 8 Comments

When we last left off with the Eclipse Saga Part II, I was getting good feedback from the editor at Eclipse Comics about “Night Watchman”. So, while I continued to work on that, I started sending him proposals for all the other series ideas I had. I don’t have the scripts for all of them, but they included several that eventually became novels, as well as others that remain on the shelf in my mind gathering dust.

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Scene-Of-The-Month: “The Wolf”

~ James Viscosi ~ 2 Comments

The votes are in and the readers’ choice for the next scene of the month is — wait for it — The Wolf. There really is a werewolf in this book, honest — just not yet.

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Random Rejection: The Eclipse Comics Saga Part II

~ James Viscosi ~ 5 Comments

So after getting those encouraging letters from the editor at Eclipse, I had to actually produce the scripts. Fortunately that wasn’t a problem; I was pretty prolific back in the day. However, formatting was an issue. From reading reference books (in 1993, you couldn’t just hop on the Internet to find examples of comic book script layouts), I was aware that when submitting comic book scripts as a writer, you have to format them similarly to a movie script, with the action divided into panels. You have to supply POVs, camera angles, etc., and each line of dialogue is numbered; this is all so the artist will know how to arrange everything on the page.

As you can see from the Eclipse editor’s copious notes, in this early Night Watchman draft, I wasn’t very good at any of that yet.

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Random Rejection: The Eclipse Comics Saga Part I

~ James Viscosi ~ 14 Comments

So this week I pulled something really juicy out of my pile of rejections. I may have mentioned before that a number of my books, including Night Watchman and Dragon Stones, started out as comic book series proposals. I was working with an editor at the now-defunct Eclipse Comics on developing several of these. Unfortunately I’m not a particularly good artist, so I was submitting them as scripts that would be illustrated by others. How did it all work out in the end? Well, let’s just say I’ve lived in the San Diego area for eight years now and have yet to attend a Comic-Con.

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Scene-Of-The-Month: Dragon Stones

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

The votes are in and the readers’ choice for the next scene of the month is Dragon Stones. Flipping randomly through the pages, I stopped at this scene, in which the kidnapped oracle Tolaria makes good her escape.

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“Long Before Dawn” Now Available For Kindle

~ James Viscosi ~ 5 Comments

Not long ago, I announced that Dragon Stones had been ported to the Kindle e-book format. It has now been joined by Long Before Dawn, my vampire novel. Also, both Long Before Dawn and Dragon Stones are now available for Kindle for only 99 cents. Save a tree and a lot of money* and read electronically!

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Random Rejection: Doyen Literary Services

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

Here’s what I consider an example of a form rejection letter done right: It doesn’t offer uselessly general advice, generic statements about what the agent is or is not looking for, lengthy attempts to justify the rejection, or nonspecific critiques. It’s just a simple “no thank you, try again”, which in my opinion is all a form rejection needs.

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Blast from the Past: Response Times

~ James Viscosi ~ 4 Comments

The other day, I was poking around my old web site in The Internet Archive looking for some information, and I happened to notice my “Response Times” link. This was a report that could be spit out by my old Manuscript Tracking database and which I used to upload from time to time just as a point of interest to show how long it was taking to get responses to submissions. Obviously this information is now completely out of date and utterly useless, but I thought it would be interesting to post its state as of the last time I updated it, over ten years ago. And so, here it is, in all its retro Web 1.0 glory:
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