When not writing the Brimstone Files, preparing for the debut of Mavericks of War, or teaching six classes at various schools, institutions, and search engines, I’m an improv actor. Which means in exchange for stage time, I perform completely improvised theater that is mostly comedic but often dramatic and weird to an audience of primarily […]
I read an awful and highly successful business book. Many things made it awful. Bad logic. Simplistic assertions. Dubious correlations between neuroscience and business practices. But my major gripe was that it used historical case studies without scholarship or depth. Historic “successes” were used to sell a simple message with supposed deep and profound meaning, […]
Spencer Ellsworth is, first and foremost, a fan of FXXK WRITING but is also the author of the Starfire Trilogy from Tor.com, beginning with A Red Peace and Shadow Sun Seven, released in 2017, and concluding on February 27th with Memory’s Blade. You can read up on him and subscribe to his newsletter on his site, […]
Careers in the arts are tough. So much so they are actually a series of part-time freelance gigs wrapped in the word “vocation.” Ones with no employee benefits, and retirement is whatever you can save when not eating Ramen. I’m at a weird place in my career as a writer, teacher, and historian. For four […]
TEN TIPS TO TURN EIGHTEEN YEARS INTO OVERNIGHT SUCCESS! For over the twelve-plus months that THE GUTTERS ran, I unpacked the spaces in between writing and success in publishing my first major novel, HEX-RATED. Because the kids these days love listicles, I thought I’d round up the year by distilling 10,000 or so words into […]
Last month I talked about writing during the Ebook Revolution Hysteria of 2010-2013 and how this crashed against the realities of not only the market and my own stupidity but also the compounded tragedies of being unemployed, beginning a divorce, and having my mother killed by four different kinds of cancer all within months of […]
Last month I talked about the first three of fourteen novels I wrote before I got a traditional book deal. None of them are published or will be. They’re me learning by doing before I set down to actually write novels as the main goal of my profession. Surely, once I did make novels my […]
I’m thrilled that people are digging HEX-RATED, the first novel in the Brimstone Files series I’m writing for Night Shade Books. But the whole reason for the Gutters to exist is to crash your idea about overnight success and smack the myth that we can all be living off our writing (and that such […]
This month, we shook things up a little. Jason’s newest novel, HEX-Rated: A Brimstone Files Novel released this month and I had a couple questions for him about the process. And a few questions about his writing life in general. What’s your writing process? Are you a pantser or a plotter? Or do you throw […]
When this column started, I had given up on writing novels. Now? The debut novel of my first series is HERE! Behold, HEX-RATED: A BRIMSTONE FILES NOVEL is now released from Night Shade Press! Publisher’s Weekly: “Steeped in the style of 1970s pulp detective fiction . . . Brimstone is cut from the cloth of […]
