Bob Mustin's Blog
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Oct.17.2012
Writers, you think landing an agent or a pub contract is hard? We're learning a bit of why that's so in the article linked below. The actual nature of books is changing, and we book buyers and readers are changing our habits, too.
How will this end? Everyone has an opinion these days, but no one...
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Oct.14.2012
This is a taste from a book of mine soon to be out - a collection of connected short stories, with one story woven, chapter by chapter, among the others. This is the first chapter of that woven story.
CHAPTER I
Sunday morning had crept in on a throaty wind, softened only by a pure but...
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Oct.11.2012
Note: Normally I post only on politically neutral things, principally writing and reading. But this month's magazine reads seem to compel me to purgative rants. After tomorrow's post, I'll be better.
Harper’s Magazine, October 2012
When both Presidential candidates agree that there’s...
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Oct.09.2012
After posting on Neil Young's book, Waging Heavy Peace, I couldn't help but post this link.
I'll let it go now.
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Oct.07.2012
Waging Heavy Peace, by Neil Young
image via neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org
Neil and I go back a long way. Not that we're pals, you understand, or musician-comrades. Part of the phenomenon of ‘sixties/‘seventies rock and folk music was that these musicians wrote songs that we could...
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5 comments
Oct.07.2012
The Canterbury Tales, by Geoffrey Chaucer - - The Miller’s Tale (3rd in a series)
This episode of Chaucer’s trip to Canterbury seemed more difficult to read: more details of this cuckold’s tale, and a lot more idioms to wade through. As a result, and despite the story’s ribald nature, it...
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Oct.06.2012
Baseball has always seemed something of a metaphor for the broad spectrum of life, but then that's me. I'm always seeing the game, its foibles and phantasms, as instructive of real life.
image via washingtonpost.com
That's why as I watched my former hometown team, the Atlanta Braves, take on the...
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5 comments
Oct.06.2012
For all who downloaded my novella, The Blue Bicycle, yesterday, a most heartfelt thanks for your interest. I hope you’re enjoying the read, and please pass along this offer to your reading friends. It’s open for free until 11:59 pm, Pacific Standard Time, October 6th. It’s available at this...
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Oct.04.2012
I keep thinking about how I can show my gratitude to all those who read my posts here, and I came up with this:
My novella, The Blue Bicycle, will be offered for FREE in e-book form, October 5th and 6th. Download it from Amazon onto your Kindle or other e-reader, and have a great...
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2 comments
Oct.03.2012
image via karenswhimsy.com
Today, I'll finish the third edit of a historical novel I've written set in the Middle Ages, and this has me looking back. I started research on this rather obscure subject and personality some 20 years ago, and then came compiling and synthesizing the data. The...
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7 comments
Sep.29.2012
Ever read Russian short stories? The way they involve all sorts of histrionics, people yammering? But in the end, you can't really say much happened?
Well, the missus and I both thought of The Master that way. It kept treading the same emotional ground, and at the end of the day...
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2 comments
Sep.27.2012
Winter Journal, by Paul Auster
image via npr.org
You pick up memoir such as this one expecting...what? A life laid out chronologically? The failures of parenting - yours and that of your parents? Confessions and dirty linen? The titillation of romantic escapades? Saucy comments about...
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2 comments
Sep.27.2012
Last night the missus and I went to see a play, "R. Buckminster Fuller - The History (and Mystery) of the Universe." I'm not sixteeen years old, so I hesitate to use the word "awesome," but the play was, well, awesome. For several reasons:
Playwright D.S. Jacobs synthesized thousands of pages of...
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Sep.25.2012
I wasn't aware this sort of publishing opportunity was avalable, but it certainly bears looking into.
With Kindle Serials, Amazon hopes to reinvent a format that already exists. Jeff Bezosdragged out the obligatory Dickens reference at the LA press conference, but serial fiction had a...
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We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.
”
—ERNEST HEMINGWAY, New York Journal-American, Jul. 11, 1961
About Bob
I've been a North Carolina Writers Network writer-in-residence at Peace College under Doris Betts' guiding hand. In the early '90s, I was the editor of a small literary journal,The Rural Sophisticate, based in Georgia. My work has appeared in The...
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Causes Bob Mustin Supports
Native American culture. Education. Creative writing.
Bob’s Favorite Books
The Garden of Eden Waiting For The Barbarians War and Peace Saturday Our Lady Of The Forest Atticus