Bob Mustin's Blog
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Nov.13.2012
Poets and Writers, November/December, 2012
What with the drama that continues to unfold within the publishing world, a drama that seems to be benefitting no one these days, it seems, except the corporate masters and their stockholders, the world has gotten a whole lot harder for us writers...
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Nov.12.2012
It's magazine week again, so let's dispense with the political smoke today and move on.
Harper’s Monthly - November 2012
We here in the U.S. have been ensnared of late with presidential election kerfuffles, both candidates and their surrogates disputing the claims of the other, and a cottage...
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Nov.10.2012
My short story collection is nearing publication, the date set, only a few short months away. So how do I handle publicity? Signings? Speaking engagements?
image via ducttapemarketingconsultant.com
My publisher, a rather savvy author in his own "write," downplays the value of readings at such meet...
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Nov.09.2012
image via blogs.discovermagazine.com
I write every day. Yep. Every. Day. It's not a compulsion as much as it's a passion - something I want to do, something that fills me up even as it empties something within onto the outer world. If you write, you know it takes stamina, something akin to running...
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Nov.08.2012
James Richardson
The Jackson Poetry Prize - Celebrating the First Five Winners
For someone who began his creative writing as a poet, I feel I’ve left that aspect of writing far behind - as it has me. I received this thin book some months ago - the result of a contest in 2011 held by Poets...
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Nov.07.2012
Jack Kerouac and his merry band of maniacs were about more than writing, although they were that, too. They were searchers for life's underlying strata in a very Zen sense, and in the process they laid bare subcultures in the U.S. that were both rich and tragic. The below link gives an early...
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Nov.05.2012
Some people celebrate New Year's Day. My big celebration will come some time later, on March 25th of 2013. That's the day my collection of connected short stories will be officially launched.
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Nov.04.2012
Writing is a process that delves deep - we all know that - but it also integrates. Let me give you an example.
I've recently finalized a "good-stopping-point" draft of my many-times-mentioned medieval historical novel. Then I took a couple of days off to twiddle thumbs and bwadda-wadda my lips...
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Nov.03.2012
image via mandmglobal.com
“With this planned combination, Bertelsmann and Pearson create the best course for new growth for our world-renowned trade-book publishers, to enable them to publish even more effectively across traditional and emerging formats and distribution channels. It will build...
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Nov.03.2012
The Dog Stars, by Peter Heller
image via beatrice.com
It’s sometimes hard to separate the life of an author from his/her works; this was certainly true of James Joyce, Norman Mailer, and Ernest Hemingway, and Heller’s tale here is more or less of that tradition. It’s a dystopian tale of survival...
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Nov.02.2012
From the link below, it's beginning to look a lot like the first year or so of Steve Jobs' return to Apple in 1996. Wonder what Tim Cook is up to. Did Jobs leave something of an empty shell behind? Highly-paid sycophants? (The Apple TV makes me think the brain trust was drying up).
image via...
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Oct.31.2012
I tend not to include political broadsides here (and this really isn't one), but it's hard these days to ignore the increasing-although-somewhat-subtle racial-moves-of-resistance in the U.S. as the nation slowly morphs from a WASP-populated and controlled nation to a truly diverse one. The book...
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Oct.29.2012
image via nytimes.com
For someone who as a kid loved the Yankees, and who after growing up a bit, moved to Atlanta and began a difficult love-hate relationship with Los Bravos there, it's always been a ho-hum thing for me to acknowledge the San Francisco's Giants' presence. But in...
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Oct.28.2012
The Blue Bicycle is having a special promo at Amazon, today only. (Until midnight PST). Help make it a success by downloading your FREE e-book copy today.
The Blue Bicycle
Visit Bob's Web Site here, and his FB Fan Page here.
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Oct.26.2012
I came across Jacques Barzun (see link below) in the late nineties as his book, From Dawn to Decadence - 1500 to the Present - 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, began to gain traction. I was still bogged down in an engineering career then, had divorced my first wife and 2.4 kids, and was in...
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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