Writer Beware's Annual Round-Up of Scams

I highly recommend subscribing to Writer Beware's free email newsletter and to make a habit of following their discussion of trending scams if one is at all interested in publishing. I frequently see people in writers' groups announcing they have just signed with this or that publisher or that this movie studio just reached out to themm and so on, and wonder how many thousands of dollars these particular scammers will get out of their victims before they clue in they've been had. It's painful to watch but people don't listen. So, as a bare minimum, read this annual round-up of 2024 scams that cost authors hundreds of millions of dollars.

https://writerbeware.blog/2025/01/10/best-of-writer-beware-2024-in-review/

"Ransom and the Giant" Published

My short story, "Ransom and the Giant" has been published in Big Smoke Pulp from Pesto Comics. The anthology is an all genre all action adventure collection. As the title implies, another in my Ransom and Friends urban fantasy series.

"Ransom in the Woods" Published

My short story, "Ransom in the Woods," is out today in Neo-Opsis #36. As the title suggests, this is another in the Ransom and Friends series. And this is the first time I've shared a table of contents with Canadian national treasure, Matt Hughes, so that made my day. http://www.neo-opsis.ca/Thirty-Six.htm

Review of Valdron's Starlost Unauthorized

My review of Starlost Unauthorized and the Quest for Canadian Identity is up at the Ottawa Review of Books.

Review of Cole's Zebra Meridian

My review of Geoffrey W. Cole's Zebra Meridian is up at the Ottawa Review of Books

"Alan" Story Reprinted

My mainstream short story, "The Missing Elephant" is up today in CommuterLit. (Free to read)

It was originally published in They Have to Take You In anthology, Ursula Pflug, ed., Hidden Brook Press, 2014 and reprinted in Costal Shelf Issue #1, Nov 20, 2020.

This is an "Alan" story from my series about life in the 1960s, this one about things one did not talk about and the overwhelming power of denial.

Guest Spot on Re-Creative

I'm featured in Episode #58 of the Re-Creative Podcast.

Hosts Joe Mahoney and Mark A. Rayner invited me to come on Re-Creative, the podcast about art and writing that inspire writers. I took a long time to think about which writer or artist had had a big impact on me, but they had already talked about Den Valdron's The Mermaid's Tale and Douglas Adams, and I was debating amongst so many other possibilities (Terry Pratchett, Samual Marchbanks, Dave Duncan, Guy Gavriel Kay, Shane Koyzan, Lois McMaster Bujold, etc etc) that I just couldn't focus: until I read R. F. Kuang's Yellowface (See my text review). I could not shut up about how brilliant and relevant Yellowface is, a must-read for every aspiring writer, so that became the natural topic to propose to Mohoney and Rayner.

We also talk about a bit about my writing, editing, and breakfast.