Business of Writing: Estimated Taxes
The IRS recommends you use their multipage worksheet (https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/f1040es.pdf), which involves estimating your income and deductions, both personal and business – and, since writing is a pretty variable business, you should do that worksheet for each quarterly estimated tax payment …
Which is sort of like having to do you taxes five times a year, in my opinion.
Business of Writing: Taxes and Why Authors Are Surprised By Them
It’s Tax Season in the US, and throughout the land there echoes amongst the hills and valleys of writers’ forums the wailing cries of horror, disbelief, and pain, as writers who met some measure of success last year find out what it will cost them.
Book Recommendation: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
Why can’t our political leaders work together as threats loom and problems mount? Why do people so readily assume the worst about the motives of their fellow citizens? In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and...
No, ReviewMeta’s not ready for Prime Time – at least for books
ReviewMeta's an interesting idea. Analyze product reviews and try to weed out the bought and paid for. Lord knows that's an issue -- and one that makes the review system on sites like Amazon less useful for everyone. The problem is data analysis is hard -- facts are...
So … I guess I’m on Patreon now …
I've been working on a Patreon page for several months now -- as well as hemming and hawing about whether to actually make it public. Patreon's a rather different model -- one I'm not entirely sure I'm comfortable with -- because it's "support" rather than "purchase"....
Book Recommendation: Critical Failures (Caverns and Creatures Book 1)
Tim and his friends find out the hard way that you shouldn't question the game master, and you shouldn't make fun of his cape. One minute, they're drinking away the dreariness of their lives, escaping into a fantasy game and laughing their asses off. The next minute,...
HMS Nightingale (Alexis Carew #4) is now available for preorder!
For Lieutenant Alexis Carew, it should be the perfect assignment — a command of her own and a chance to return to her home star system. What she finds is a surly crew, the dregs of every frigate and ship of the line to pass through on the way to the war’s front, a...
Mad Cow – a new short story from a drug-induced dream
Frank and James think they have the perfect scheme — use the magic Frank learned from his grandfather to scam drug dealers out of their money. Who are they going to complain to if they can’t even remember the deal? Just one problem … near the full-moon, there are some...
What I’m Reading: Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error
In the tradition of The Wisdom of Crowds and Predictably Irrational comes Being Wrong, an illuminating exploration of what it means to be in error, and why homo sapiens tend to tacitly assume (or loudly insist) that they are right about most everything. Kathryn...
What I’m Reading: The Alchemy of Chaos: A Novel of Maradaine (Maradaine Novels)
Veranix Calbert is The Thorn—the street vigilante-turned-legend—and a danger to Willem Fenmere, the drug kingpin of Dentonhill. Veranix is determined to stop Fenmere and the effitte drug trade, especially when he discovers that Fenmere is planning on using the Red...