MFA Thesis Novel Book Club Guide & Author Interview

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Cool news from the MFA Thesis Novel front: this month Vine Leaves Press and I released the MFA Thesis Novel Book Club Guide, which includes an author interview with yours truly and discussion questions for the novel.  It’s free for download from the link above, and starting this month, it’s included with the eBook version of the novel as a bonus.

Here’s a quick snippet:

Q: What inspired you to write MFA Thesis Novel?

A: As the novel itself hints, MFA Thesis Novel sprang from my experience in graduate school at the University of Nebraska, though my program was technically an MA. I was workshopping a novel based on my time working in Japan, but the subject matter and the style I was writing in were so foreign that people around me couldn’t relate to the book. At the same time, the program seemed to be pushing us to build up longer and more impressive CVs rather than improve our writing, which I found disconcerting. Like Flip, it took me a long time to realize which parts of the program were helpful and which parts weren’t conducive to the career path I was looking for.

Read the rest of the interview here. Continue reading »

A Signed a Contract for My Second Novel!!!!!!!

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Big news! Last month I signed a contract with Vine Leaves Press to publish my second novel, Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers, in 2025.  This is the Secret New Novel I’ve been talking about on this blog for literally years.  Vine Leaves published my first novel, MFA Thesis Novel, in spring 2022 and were super-great to work with, so it was only natural that I wanted to publish Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers with them as well.

What’s Carcrash Parker and the Haven of Larpers actually about, you ask?  Well, LARPing (a.k.a. Live-Action Role-Playing) for one.  More specifically, it’s about fantasy role-playing in the real world, with a group of twentysomethings on a quest to rescue a lost Commodore 64 from some bullies in the New Hampshire woods.

Also, it’s narrated in ye olde fantasy English speak, with wizards and maidens and stuff, even though it’s the real world. And the characters talk a lot about ’80s movies.

That’s the bare-bones gist. If you’re wondering why I waited so long to mention the deal in the age of same-day instant internet news, the answer is that I’ve been held up with a little Non-Creative Work Issue that I’ll be talking about in another post.  For now, if you want to know more, read on to find out how the deal happened and what comes next. Continue reading »

Networking Is NOT a Dirty Word

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Last Saturday I went to the New Hampshire Writer’s Project yearly writer’s conference, the largest writing conference in my area.  It was a chance to hear a keynote speaker, participate in writing workshops, and learn more about marketing and promotion.

All that stuff was pretty useful, I guess (read: it was a lot of stuff I already knew), but one thing about the conference made me really, REALLY glad I went: the chance to meet people.

I wrote last week about how you present yourself as a creative person when you’re meeting people in social situations like weddings.  This applies even more in professional situations, where people actually WANT to know about your creative work and expect you to present yourself as a creative professional.  These situations can be even easier, I think, because in these situations, people are actively interested in learning about the work you do, since it’s potentially in the same realm as what they do.

In this post I want to talk a bit about how I’ve tackled networking and conference-type situations over the years, what I’ve learned, and where I screwed up.
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Funding Your Projects with Kickstarter: A Micro-Interview with Miranda Reeder of Harlevin Visual Novels

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Today I want to talk about Kickstarter, which I don’t have a ton of (read: any) experience with, so I turned to fellow writer, artist, and friend of But I Also Have a Day Job Miranda Reeder.  Under her online handle Min, Miranda runs Harlevin Games, a visual novel studio whose releases can be found on Steam and Itch.io.

What’s a visual novel, you ask?  Think of it like an interactive novel that you play through like a video game, where you can choose your own path through the story.  Visual novels can include images, music, and voice acting, and many allow you to customize your own characters.

Overall, they’re a cool way of taking stories to the next level in ways that traditional books and graphic novels can’t quite do, without the investment needed in a full video game experience.

Miranda and I spoke waaaaaaaaaay back in 2020 about her path to making visual novels like Arena Circus and The Pretenders Guild, but her new project is far more ambitious, involving collaborations with other artists, musicians, and voice actors.  She and her collaborators at Fablesoft Studios did a Kickstarter for their dark fairy tale game Twisted several years back, but her new project, Celestial Crowns, is an even bigger step forward.  (You can check out the trailer below!)
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What to Do When You Double Book

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Last week, things got pretty fucked.

Okay, to be fair, nothing actually got fucked—I was just REALLY busy juggling different deadlines, appointments, and other commitments that all seemed to fall to the end of April.  To make matters worse, I still haven’t entirely unpacked at my new place, so my office and much of the rest of the apartment is still a mass of boxes and piles.  This meant that when I needed to find something from those boxes or piles, instead of just reaching over and grabbing it, I needed to search for it, which meant I spent a lot of time searching that could have been been spent on other things (like actually unpacking…) Continue reading »

Doing More With Video as a Creative Person

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I think a lot about some advice I got from the Youtuber and speedrunner Karl Jobst during our Day Job interview: Everyone in a creative field should be using Youtube, because whatever you’re doing, it can only help you build your platform.

There’s a lot of truth to this.  On one level, people watch a lot of YouTube—like, billions of people watching billions of videos racking up zillions of views.  The YouTube algorithm also drives viewers to keep watching, to check out new YouTubers, and to watch videos related to what they’ve already seen.  So, not only is YouTube a HUGE outlet for sharing your work, but it can also help you reach people in new ways that can potentially be fun and natural.

Plus, YouTube advertising is like, an enormous industry that helps creators earn real, folding money, if that’s the direction you’re headed in.

On my end, though, I want to be a writer, not a YouTuber, so a big part of me doesn’t want to get wrapped up in the process of prepping, filming, editing, and hyping videos all the time, since I’m already busy enough as it is.

This begs a really important question: Is there a way for creative people to do more with internet video without it becoming their main focus? Continue reading »

The Quest for 50

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I’ve embarked on a Quest.  Some might even call it a Second Quest.

It’s a quest fraught with danger, menace, and hazards at every turn, a quest that involves a perilous journey whose conclusion is uncertain, a quest beyond the reaches of anything mere mortals can imagine, and a quest that will undoubtedly expose me to attacks by dastardly villains who’ll stop at nothing to thwart my goals.

Fantasy-speak aside: I’m looking for more online reviews of MFA Thesis Novel.

(Also, my apologies for the somewhat click-baity title, since I was looking for an entertaining way to lead into this topic and thought the whole pseudo-fantasy bit would be fun.  Keep reading, though, and I’ll explain more!) Continue reading »

Here’s What I Got Done in 2022

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So I’ll admit, I’m a little behind on the blogging game: after taking some time off from writing and creative work for Christmas and New Years, I returned to But I Also Have a Day Job last week to write about my New Years Resolutions.

Thinking about the coming year also got me reflecting on the previous year and what I’ve been getting done (I made a similar post for what I got done in 2021 too).  In a lot of ways, 2022 was my biggest year ever as a writer, both in terms of accomplishments, and making positive life changes.  However, it’s easy for me to forget that when I’m busy or having a stressful time, which is why in this post I decided to list out my accomplishments for 2022.

In total, that list came out to 8 different accomplishments—and as much as I love Top Ten Lists in the David Letterman sense, it didn’t seem right to force two more in just for the sake of aesthetics.  It also didn’t feel right to put these accomplishments in order of importance, so instead I’ve listed them out chronologically to form a mini-story of what my creative work year looked like.

So without further ado, here’s what I got done in 2022… Continue reading »

November 2022 Novel Update: Thanksgiving Writing and a New Year’s Deadline

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Heads up for New Hampshire folks: This Saturday, December 3rd I’ll be at Main Street BookEnds in Warner from 12:30 to 2:00pm signing books, talking to customers, and in general just hanging out. The awesome local children’s authors David Elliot and Matt Forrest Esenwine will also be there throughout the day as part of Warner’s Hometown Holidays event.  Click here for more details, and if you’re around, stop by and say hi!

Novel revisions have been going well, which has me in a really good mood.

In late August I finally finished the rough draft of my Secret New Novel, took a week off, then began second draft revisions.  Writing the second draft is eons easier than writing the first draft because I’ve already got a scaffolding of what the novel will look like, and I know the characters and story a lot better than I did at this time last year.  So, sitting down to write every day has been much, much easier.

Still, it’s not all a walk in the park: several chapters, particularly near the beginning, needed to be 90-95% rewritten, and for most of the others I’m still changing 50-70% of what’s on the page from Draft 1.  Fortunately, though, the revision process has gotten easier Continue reading »

Reflections on Six Years of Blogging

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Hard to believe that I started working on the But I Also Have a Day Job blog six (!) years ago this week.  At this time in 2016 I was testing designs and playing with WordPress formatting while I drafted the very first posts on Day Job Basics, and from there, it was off to the races.

This blog represented a really big step for me: back in 2016, I’d finished grad school, was trying to sell one novel and finish another, and made a major life change by moving out of Nebraska, where I’d gone to grad school and stayed an extra year working in the Agriculture department.

I knew I had to start taking my writing more seriously and figuring out my next steps, and the But I Also Have a Day Job blog was a HUGE step in clarifying the direction I wanted to take my creative work and my life in general.  Before this blog, I didn’t have much of an online presence at all, had very little published work, and it felt like I was just barely starting out.

Fast forward to six years later, and I’m…pretty satisfied with how how far I’ve come.  I haven’t done as much as I’ve liked, but I’m overall Continue reading »

When Should You Stop Promoting Your Creative Project?

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The question in this week’s title is especially relevant for me because as of this week, MFA Thesis Novel has been out for three whole months.  For the big publishers, that’s the typical amount of time in a book cycle, where new releases tend to come in 3-month seasonal waves.

In the past three months I’ve been doing a lot to spread word about the novel: in addition to the pre-order and the novel release party, I also contacted local bookstores about carrying the novel, built a new website page to feature it, talked about it on my email mailing list, answered a few author interviews, listed it in my alma mater news, recorded guest appearances on podcasts, and got some of my writer friends to review it, in addition to pitching the novel around to other reviews sites, bookstores, and media outlets.

I’ve also been doing a mini drive to get more Amazon and Goodreads reviews, which are incredibly helpful for helping people find the book.  (By the way, if you liked MFA Thesis Novel and want to help in a super-easy way, consider leaving me an Amazon and/or Goodreads review!)

In the past few weeks, though, I’ve found myself running out of steam, with fewer bookstores to contact, avenues to explore, and hype to generate.  This has gotten me thinking about a really important question: Continue reading »

Do You Treat Your Creative Work Like a Business?

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I talk a lot about “creative work” on this blog, but what does that really mean?  I guess I can loosely describe it as “anything that has to do with making things or getting those things out into the world.”

In that sense, for me as a writer, creative work would be…

That’s just the actual creative part, though.  There’s also:

The things on the first list are purely about creation: the act of making art Continue reading »