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	<title>Literary Abominations</title>
	<link>http://jdsawyer.net</link>
	<description>The Worlds of J. Daniel Sawyer</description>
	<lastBuildDate>Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:16:59 +0000</lastBuildDate>
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		<title>Released: Sunday Morning Giraffe</title>
		<description><![CDATA[For those of you who liked my recent story on Escape Pod (which will hit ebook format this month), I&#8217;ve got another tale from the pawnshop for you. Call it a fable about the value of a healthy sense of self. And for me, personally, this is a favourite. So, step into the pawnshop and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2012/02/06/released-sunday-morning-giraffe/</link>
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		<title>Released: Silent Victor (Lantham #4)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Ladies and gentlemen and those who prefer neither title, I am very proud to announce the continuation of The Clarke Lantham Mysteries. This is the biggest one yet, ringing in at nearly the same length as Predestination, and the adventure scales with the book. Teaming up with his assistant Rachael and his new squatter Nya [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2012/02/03/released-silent-victor-lantham-4/</link>
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		<title>The Most Important Question?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I spend my life cultivating and exploring questions at all levels from the inane to the putatively profound. Part of my job is asking questions&#8211;in fact, if you squint hard enough and look through enough lenses, you will be able to find a question or cluster of them behind every story I write. As I [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2012/02/02/the-most-important-question/</link>
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		<title>SOPA Aftermath: Boycott</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This is the last politics post for a good long while. Click on the &#8220;more&#8221; link to read it&#8211;I&#8217;ve positioned it very high up so that those of you who are uninterested in the topic don&#8217;t need to read about it. After the blackout yesterday, enough Reps and Senators backed off that SOPA/PIPA might just [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2012/01/19/sopa-aftermath-boycott/</link>
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		<title>The Blackout: Letter to a Senator (or Two)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Warning: Politics For those of you following the SOPA/PIPA to-do, be warned: if you live in California, both of your Senators are flogging hard for this thing. Because of that, for these two characters I actually wrote a note rather than just calling, tweeting, or petitioning. In case you want something to riff on, I&#8217;m [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2012/01/18/the-blackout-letter-to-a-senator-or-two/</link>
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		<title>Gyros From Scratch</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today, I bring you a break from your regularly scheduled business and cultural snark to present you with one of my other favorite hobbies: Cooking As you might be able to tell from my stories, I love to cook. Cooking is responsible for many of the relationships I have had throughout my life (guys, take [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2012/01/13/gyros-from-scratch/</link>
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		<title>Why the Flight to Amazon?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Before I start, I should make something plain: I like Amazon&#8211;they&#8217;ve been incredibly, uncharacteristically work-with-able on a level that&#8217;s unprecedented in the publishing industry. I am delighted to have my books available in their store, I&#8217;ve had an excellent time working with CreateSpace for POD books, and very much enjoyed access to what is currently [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2012/01/10/why-the-flight-to-amazon/</link>
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		<title>Tentative Q1 Publishing Schedule</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Being that it&#8217;s the beginning of the year, I&#8217;ve been a busy boy laying my evil plans. Since some of you have asked on twitter what&#8217;s looming on the horizon for the next few month, here&#8217;s a tentative schedule (subject to change if I work faster or get bogged down): Audio January: Launch a Kickstarter [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2012/01/07/tentative-q1-publishing-schedule/</link>
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		<title>New Year, New Productions</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There will be a new newsletter out shortly after the new year, but as we&#8217;re winding down this year I wanted to take a moment out and give you all a wave and huge thanks. 2011 has been a remarkably productive year, and the last four days are going to be some of its busiest [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/12/28/new-year-new-productions/</link>
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		<title>Un-Hitched</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I had the fortune to meet Christopher Hitchens briefly during his stop in Palo Alto in 2007&#8211;I found him to be drunk, surly, and completely irascible. It was not a disappointment. Going through life we collect intellectual heroes. As someone who was raised with academic ideals (critical thinking, intellectual integrity, fearless inquiry), I quickly fell [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/12/16/un-hitched/</link>
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		<title>New Story in Escape Pod</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Last April, Mur Lafferty was the subject of a fan-driven firestorm around at Escape Pod. The prevalence of lesbians in her magazine was raising a few eyebrows among both people who don&#8217;t like lesbians and people who wanted to see more gay men. As is the case with Internet controversies, the point at issue was [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/12/10/new-story-in-escape-pod/</link>
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		<title>Released: Down From Ten</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve been waiting for this day a long time. When I first wrote Down From Ten as a screenplay, a production company in Canada was going to be handling rights clearances for the Alan Jay Lerner music incorporated into one of the scenes. When I did the podcast, ASCAP was very helpful. But as a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/12/01/released-down-from-ten/</link>
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		<title>The Judean People&#8217;s Front? Or Not?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve been holding this post for a while, because the situation is moving so quickly and the feelings are so high, but I&#8217;ve had enough people ask me about it that I thought it would be good to have a centralized place to direct them. This post is political, but it&#8217;s not partisan. If political [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/11/15/the-judean-peoples-front-or-not/</link>
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		<title>Released: Science Fiction Weaponry</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Those of you who follow me on twitter will have seen a lot of tweets regarding the long-awaited &#8220;Gun Book,&#8221; which finally has a title. This is the book I started work on last year with the blog post Back in the Podcasting Saddle with Guns&#8211;in response to your questions and comments, I quickly wound [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/11/06/released-science-fiction-weaponry/</link>
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		<title>Released: Free Will</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The time has finally come. The revolution is about to begin. It is my distinct pleasure to announce, at long last, that Free Will, the sequel to Predestination, is now available for all electronic platforms. The Lunar Revolution is faltering, events are spinning out of control, and Bill Shelley is inches away from achieving victory. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/10/28/released-free-will/</link>
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		<title>Released: Sculpting God</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Sculpting God, the story collection that started it all, is now available for all e-readers. With the original seven stories, plus new behind-the-scenes essays for each story and an introduction about the genesis of the series, this is first of three volumes coming over the course of the next year. Grab it while it&#8217;s hot! [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/10/23/released-sculpting-god/</link>
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		<title>What is a Full-Cast Audiobook?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Parsec committee is currently soliciting opinions on the definition of Full Cast Audiobooks in order to see whether it would be practical to add another category&#8211;and, if it is, what would the definition be? The following was my response to the committee. If this is something that interests you, please take the time to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/10/21/what-is-a-full-cast-audiobook/</link>
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		<title>Cosmic Geek Irony</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I remember, back in the &#8217;90s, when I used to laugh at people who would smack electronics to get them to work, or hit their desk or their keyboards to make the computers work. You remember the drill, right? Bad picture? Smack the monitor. Computer hung up? Smack the thing. CB or tape deck started [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/10/17/cosmic-geek-irony/</link>
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		<title>Literary Abominations Newsletter</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The time has come. There&#8217;s too much going on not to have a mailing list and a newsletter, so I&#8217;ve taken the plunge. Newsletter readers will get quarterly (and sometimes more-than) updates and general goofiness from me delivered directly to their email boxes. Two weeks later, an edited version of those newsletters will be posted [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/10/17/literary-abominations-newsletter/</link>
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		<title>Released: Smoke Rings</title>
		<description><![CDATA[You met him in And Then She Was Gone, you got to know his family in A Ghostly Christmas Present. Now, the hard-boiled snarkfest continues as Clarke Lantham tackles the two most perplexing mysteries of the universe: FBI fugitives, and romance. Clarke Lantham has a checkered relationship with holidays, and this New Year&#8217;s Eve is [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/10/14/released-smoke-rings/</link>
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		<title>But I Already Have a Publisher&#8230;</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We all know that adventurous types like Joe Konrath, and established types like Kris Rusch, and insanely successful types like J.K. Rowling have been having a ball publishing ebooks on their own&#8211;and we know that weirdos like me are going to do it because we&#8217;re maverick by nature and like tickling the envelope in ways [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/10/05/but-i-already-have-a-publisher/</link>
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		<title>Interstellar Synthesis</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In the great search for other earth-like planets, things have oscillated between encouraging and downright weird. So few of them seem rocky at all&#8211;mostly just gas-giants&#8211;but we&#8217;ve assumed that it&#8217;s just because the detection methods we&#8217;ve been using (gravitational wobble) are biased toward finding gas giants in close orbit. That seems to be true. But [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/09/30/interstellar-synthesis/</link>
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		<title>The Dam Breaks</title>
		<description><![CDATA[We&#8217;ve been waiting for it. We&#8217;ve been talking about &#8220;What will happen if/when?&#8221; We&#8217;ve speculated ho how it will change things when the mythical species arrives: The $99 e-reader. Well, now we get to find out. Today, Amazon unveiled the $79 Kindle, as well as a $99 model. Don&#8217;t take my word for it, you [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/09/28/the-dam-breaks/</link>
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		<title>The OTHER Right Wing</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Warning: This blog post is about politics. Proceed at your own risk. Yesterday, I had occasion to visit an old friend&#8211;a conservative Rancher who&#8217;s occasionally been very active in Republican politics, who I hadn&#8217;t seen in close to five years. After the normal catching up, talk turned to writing and ranching, new projects and old, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/09/26/the-other-right-wing/</link>
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		<title>Review: Dodge Charger</title>
		<description><![CDATA[One of the side effects of having a little sports car is that there are some times when you need something different. Maybe you&#8217;ve got to take your collection of old computers to the surplus store, or help a friend move their piano. Me? I had to go to Reno, for the second time in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/09/14/review-dodge-charger/</link>
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		<title>Netflix for Books? Riiiiiight.</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So, the latest-and-greatest panic rumor is that Amazon is going to create a &#8220;Netflix for books,&#8221; where any Amazon Prime member can download (presumably) any ebook they want for nothing more than the cost of their Prime membership. People on the net&#8211;particularly paranoid authors and lugubrious tech writers&#8211;have been speculating about something like this for [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/09/13/netflix-for-books-riiiiiight/</link>
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		<title>Quick Thought For the Day</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8220;We are at our best when we move together, and we are at our worst when we move together. When our leader was killed by your people, we went mad together. We stayed mad for a very long time, a madness that almost consumed your world, until finally, before it was too late, we woke [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/09/11/quick-thought-for-the-day/</link>
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		<title>Tinker, Tailor, Topple, Die</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So, you want to make your work&#8211;book, movie, sculpture, whatever&#8211;perfect, don&#8217;t you? You want it to shine. And you&#8217;re going to polish it, rewrite it, re-imagine it, and retcon it every chance you get? Or maybe you just can&#8217;t resist adding those few last-minute flourishes? Well, you&#8217;re in good company. The impulse to tinker is [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/09/01/tinker-tailor-topple-die/</link>
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		<title>The Ebook Revolution Isn&#8217;t about Ebooks</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m going way out on a limb here. I&#8217;m only a lay enthusiast in the field of economics, not an expert in the field, but I&#8217;ve got a middling amount of business experience in a variety of different fields, and a strange notion has been growing on my mind lately: What if the ebook revolution [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/08/30/the-ebook-revolution-isnt-about-ebooks/</link>
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		<title>The Barbaric Ritual</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Compared to ancestors in eras past, modern Americans are pikers when it comes to ritual. We tend not to like them when they&#8217;re formal, and we&#8217;ve gotten rid of most of them. But there are a few left, and of those there is one that is easily the most barbaric of all: Funerals. Specifically, Protestant [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/08/26/the-barbaric-ritual/</link>
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		<title>WorldCon report, part 2</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Continuing from the previous post&#8230; By mid-day Friday I had my bearings a lot better. We managed to locate some decent casino food&#8211;if your only experience with casinos is looking at the advertisements on billboards and the decadent meals there pictured, trust me, this is not as easy as it sounds&#8211;and set about hitting panels [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/08/25/worldcon-report-part-2/</link>
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		<title>WorldCon Report, part 1</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, I&#8217;ve just returned from my first Worldcon&#8211;this one was in Reno, called &#8220;Renovation&#8221; by its pun-hungry organizers (and who can blame them, really?). What a different experience from other cons, on many levels. I set off with she-who-must-not-be-named in the new convertible for the four-hour drive. I had my doubts about making that long [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/08/22/worldcon-report-part-1/</link>
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		<title>Parsec Committee: Recognize Full-Cast</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The following is the text of an email I sent this evening to the Parsec Awards Committee. If you agree, please chime in in the comments. Dear Committee&#8211; A couple years ago, the categories surround podcast novels were modified so that single reader podcast novels were given their own category, while full-cast productions were transferred [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/08/17/parsec-committee-recognize-full-cast/</link>
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		<title>Predestination in Paperback</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Grab a pack of cards. Strap your pressure suit on. It&#8217;s time to head to the poker game that started it all, and the book that View From Valhalla called &#8220;lovingly detailed, well-written thinking man&#8217;s science fiction at its best.*&#8221; Joss Kyle is a one-time National Security Advisor who barely escaped Washington D.C. with his [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/24/predestination-in-paperback/</link>
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		<title>Showcasing the Best in Human Culture</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ITV in Britain is currently airing a show which, for my money, is one of the finest pieces of television going anywhere in the world right now. In fact, I&#8217;ll go one step further and say that it&#8217;s a show built entirely around the very best aspects of human nature, and is more entertaining than [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/20/showcasing-the-best-in-human-culture/</link>
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		<title>Principles of Contracts: You CAN Fight City Hall</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Because this one deals a lot with the law again, the usual disclaimers apply: I am not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. This is one man&#8217;s opinion on how business is done. Always consult a qualified legal professional when seeking legal advice. &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; Previous chapter: Embrace Your Inner 2 Year-old [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/18/principles-of-contracts-you-can-fight-city-hall/</link>
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		<title>Playing Jazz With Words</title>
		<description><![CDATA[You hear a lot of talk of &#8220;discovery writers&#8221; and &#8220;outliners&#8221; in the writing world. The &#8220;pantsers&#8221; and the &#8220;plotters,&#8221; respectively. It&#8217;s true that there are a lot of people that fall into both categories&#8211;including many of my friends&#8211;and human nature loves dichotomies, but I&#8217;ve never fit comfortably either, and I suspect I&#8217;m not alone. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/15/playing-jazz-with-words/</link>
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		<title>Dropbox: Credit is Due</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, everyone, it looks like Dropbox has listened. They&#8217;ve rewritten their TOS in a way that is very sensible, does not use loaded legal terminology that would allow an unscrupulous employee or future company administration to do a little snatch-and-grab with your intellectual property, and is layperson readable. I call this a good result. The [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/13/dropbox-credit-is-due/</link>
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		<title>Blogging Free Will&#8211;Ebook Giveaway</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So, Free Will is in prep for release right now, with the typos and other nit-picky details being worked over, layout being done, etc. It&#8217;s a big step forward in the Antithesis Progression, and there are a lot of you out there who have been waiting patiently for the series to continue. Some of you [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/12/blogging-free-will-ebook-giveaway/</link>
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		<title>Google Pulls a Dropbox</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Apologies to those who are already tired of this&#8211;it&#8217;s threatening to become a hobby horse. Looks like with Google+, Google is going where every stupid lawyer has gone before: claiming &#8220;a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/11/google-pulls-a-dropbox/</link>
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		<title>Big Updates</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As of last night, the fact-checking of what&#8217;s currently going by the uninspired name of &#8220;The Gun Book&#8221; came to a close. We&#8217;re now on to layout and diagram phase, as it&#8217;s a graphics-rich book. Once I get a proper title for it, it&#8217;s going to be a guide to firearms for writers. A spin-off [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/11/big-updates/</link>
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		<title>More Dropbox Updates</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Dropbox keeps trying. They&#8217;ve changed their TOS again&#8211;if you&#8217;re watching and waiting for them to get their act in order, check the link and see where they&#8217;re at now. Meanwhile, Gigacom has posted an interesting analysis about what the public reaction to Dropbox might mean for the future of online privacy. Finally, a reader wrote [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/08/more-dropbox-updates/</link>
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		<title>Skin Deep</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I saw Star Wars for the first time when I was four year&#8217;s old. I&#8217;d been a fan long before, thanks to the read-along books and the action figures, but actually seeing the film mad equite an impression on me. One of the things that bugged me, though, were the references to the off-screen &#8220;Clone [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/07/skin-deep/</link>
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		<title>Dropbox TOS vs. Others TOS</title>
		<description><![CDATA[ECtimes posts an excellent analysis of why Dropbox&#8217;s TOS situation continues to be a problem for its users&#8211;and compares the current (revised several times since Friday) wording to the wording of some other, similar services. Worth a gander. &#8212;addendum&#8212; There are more updates on the Dropbox situation at my new blog post here.]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/06/dropbox-tos-vs-others-tos/</link>
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		<title>You Are Not the Customer&#8211;You Are the Product</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My gripe session about Dropbox&#8217;s new TOS and my presentation (wherein I all but came out and shouted that it&#8217;s stupid to use a free cloud-based backup service) understandably rankled a healthy percentage of the commenters. My fellows in the hacking community, who eat, sleep, and breathe security issues, described my post as a &#8220;breathless [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/05/you-are-not-the-customer-you-are-the-product/</link>
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		<title>Update on the Dropbox Situation</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Dropbox has posted a public explanation for their rapid TOS changes today. As suspected, the email they&#8217;ve gotten from concerned users hasn&#8217;t gone unnoticed&#8211;that&#8217;s a good thing. Am I now recommending them? Hell no. Assuming the best of intentions, I think they are in error about the kind of license they need to run a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/03/update-on-the-dropbox-situation/</link>
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		<title>Put it in the Cloud? Are You Nuts?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Note: The situation in the following post has been resolved for now. Dropbox has taken everyone&#8217;s outrage seriously, and has fixed the problem. More information here. I am leaving this post and the follow-ups up because it contains a good deal of information on how to protect yourself and your intellectual property when working in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/02/put-it-in-the-cloud-are-you-nuts/</link>
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		<title>To America, On The Occasion of Your Birthday</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Neurological pharmacology&#8211;a fancy way of saying &#8220;what drugs do to brains&#8221;&#8211;is a subject with which I have a special fascination. Some of them accentuate specific aspects of personality, some create hallucinations and religious experience, some relieve depression, some kick the sex drive or the bonding drive into high gear. In a lot of ways, though, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/02/on-the-occasion-of-your-birthday/</link>
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		<title>Incoming Transmission: Free Will</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Download Subscribe The definitive update, in audio for all you grabbing this with podcatchers. Lots of news]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/07/01/incoming-transmission-free-will/</link>
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		<title>Self-Sustaining and WCW *FINALLY* on Nook</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Much apologies for the delays, but B&#038;N&#8217;s backlog seems to have caught up with itself finally. As a result, both of the new short stories are now available on the Nook. You can find Self-Sustaining here, and We Create Worlds here. Now, back to getting Free Will squared away&#8230;]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/06/24/self-sustaining-and-wcw-finally-on-nook/</link>
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		<title>New Fiction: Self-Sustaining</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Theo is a monk&#8211;or as near to it as makes no difference&#8211;but don&#8217;t worry about it if he invites you to dinner. You won&#8217;t be left with bread and water. Although he may deny himself the pleasures of the flesh, he is generous with his hospitality&#8211;and his money. Tonight, he hosts dinner with his chief [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/06/21/new-fiction-self-sustaining/</link>
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		<title>Failing the Wikipedia Test</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Writing fiction in the age of the Internet can be fraught for the author who values authenticity&#8211;particularly if you write historical or technical fiction. Since the glorious thing about writing fiction is that you essentially make shit up to entertain other people, there are a range of opinions about the technical rigor to which writers [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/06/21/failing-the-wikipedia-test/</link>
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		<title>Released: We Create Worlds</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Rick is a scurrilous, irascible scoundrel, with a heart of gold—not because he&#8217;s warm and fuzzy underneath, but because his heart is totally devoted to money. His favorite goldmine is his shop, where he vends virtual reality and manufactured novels. He keeps his customers happy, and he always knows the right party to hit to [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/06/20/released-we-create-worlds/</link>
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		<title>Released: Train Time</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Have you ever seen that well-dressed man at the airport, or the station, who stands patiently by as if he has all the time in the world? Have you wondered who he was waiting for, and how long he&#8217;d stay? Have you ever been that man, stuck in the hours between delay and disappointment, with [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/06/16/released-train-time/</link>
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		<title>The Fonthead (An Epic, of sorts)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Even if I&#8217;m lucky enough to be in that generation that gets to live past a hundred and twenty, I doubt I will ever reconcile myself to fonts. I love fonts&#8211;I&#8217;ve been doing graphic design now for the better part of a decade. Titles, book covers, book layouts, pamphlets, movie posters&#8211;you can&#8217;t get away from [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/06/16/the-fonthead-an-epic-of-sorts/</link>
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		<title>Fans Making A Difference</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Most people why buy a book or pick it up from the library just want to read it&#8211;that&#8217;s an excellent thing! Sometimes, though, us authors get email from fans who, for whatever reason, what to know what extra they can do. If you&#8217;re in that camp, this is for you. If that doesn&#8217;t describe you, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/06/13/fans-making-a-difference/</link>
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		<title>Literary Studies, Anyone?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Disclaimer: What follows is a rant about something that can screw up the creative process. This post is more esoteric than is normal for this blog. It contains a lot of jargon, and talks a lot about academic politics and social history, and it won&#8217;t interest everybody. Don&#8217;t worry, though. It doesn&#8217;t signal a change [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/06/11/literary-studies-anyone/</link>
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		<title>Who&#8217;s an Outlier, Again?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A funny thing happens during times of great industrial upheaval: Everyone wants a piece of the new deal, but nobody wants to take what they perceive to be a risk. Most established players retrench, hold on to what&#8217;s familiar, and try to shout down anyone with a contravening opinion. It&#8217;s human nature to get defensive [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/06/10/whos-an-outlier-again/</link>
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		<title>Unsuitable for Children?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So, Megan Cox Gurdon of the Wall Street Journal is concerned about the darkness in YA literature. It seems that such stories (written, as they are, for teenagers) might introduce unnecessary dreariness and misery into the otherwise sunny time of adolescence. It raises the obvious question: At what age does an adult undergo a mandatory [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/06/07/unsuitable-for-children/</link>
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		<title>Podcasting 101: The Basics (Recording)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[From time to time, people ask me about how to produce the audio for a basic podcast. If you&#8217;re considering doing this, here&#8217;s a basic tutorial: 1) You&#8217;ll need a good recording device. The most cost-effective and technically simplest way to do it is to pick up a Zoom H2 recorder. It has gorgeous microphones [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/06/06/podcasting-101-the-basics-recording/</link>
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		<title>Gearing Down, Trading Up pt5</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Last time I talked about some of the things you want to look for when you&#8217;re shopping for a used car. There&#8217;s a lot more I have to share about this adventure that might help you the next time you&#8217;re buying a car, and I&#8217;ll get to that next time. But this is not just [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/06/04/gearing-down-trading-up-pt5/</link>
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		<title>Principles of Contracts: Embrace Your Inner 2 Year-Old</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8212; &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; Previous chapter: Everybody Knows Peggy Lee (Or Should) &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; Implicit in the early installments in this series was the assumption that when you do a business deal, both parties have something to gain and something to lose. It follows then, that all other things being equal, when you [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/05/31/principles-of-contracts-embrace-your-inner-2-year-old/</link>
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		<title>Being Buzzed Has Its Drawbacks</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today was a day for work away from the internet&#8211;working on Free Will pacing notes (a book this big? The pacing can get delicate), and finishing the buzz hunt in the studio. About a year and a half ago, right toward the end of DF10, a nasty new buzz crept into my recording studio. Straight, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/05/30/being-buzzed-has-its-drawbacks/</link>
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		<title>Principles of Contracts: Everybody Knows Peggy Lee (or should)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Preface: I mentioned this in the first post in this series, but because I&#8217;m going to be talking about some specific points of law in this post, I need to reiterate: I am not a lawyer, am not qualified to dispense legal advice, and none of what follows should be considered as legal advice. All [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/05/26/principles-of-contracts-everybody-knows-peggy-lee-or-should/</link>
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		<title>Down From Ten&#8211;next week</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today is the day I was hoping to post the announcement for the ebook of Down From Ten. Unfortunately, I got right to the edge and realized I still had some rights clearances to do for song lyrics that are quoted in the book, so it&#8217;ll be another few days. However, it IS coming in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/05/26/down-from-ten-next-week/</link>
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		<title>Revelation 16:17 (Free Will update)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[And the seventh angel poured out his bowl into the air; and there came a great voice out of the temple of heaven, saying &#8220;It is done.&#8221; All the original writing for Free Will is now done. I have a few days of continuity tweaking ahead of me, and then some cutting, but it really [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/05/22/revelation-1617-free-will-update/</link>
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		<title>Destiny on Tap</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As I get to the very end of writing Free Will, it&#8217;s time to wrench open the Antithesis taps again. My friend Danny Schade has now soundtracked two and a half books for me over the last couple years. For Predestination, he composed upwards of nine hours of music, and it made such an impression [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/05/17/destiny-on-tap/</link>
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		<title>Sculpting God: The Man In The Rain (recast)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Download Subscribe Mondu, once an AI designer at the top of the Nigerian IT industry, needed to escape from a life that was eating him alive. He found refuge as a shopkeeper in the depths of the Amazon, at a unique resort. It&#8217;s a preserve for all forms of Amazon life&#8211;reptiles, mammals, and human and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/05/03/sculpting-god-the-man-in-the-rain-recast/</link>
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		<title>Gearing Down, Trading Up pt4</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Continuing on from last time, we&#8217;re going over the things to look at when buying a car&#8230; Now we&#8217;ve done the undercarriage&#8211;though I can&#8217;t help feeling like I overlooked something important. Fear not, I&#8217;ll mention it if it occurs to me&#8211;and we&#8217;re on to the rest of the checklist. The Engine Pop the hood and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/30/gearing-down-trading-up-pt4/</link>
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		<title>Gearing Down, Trading Up pt 3</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Car shopping isn&#8217;t just about practicality. It&#8217;s a chance to drive cars that are completely impractical&#8211;cars you would never buy because they&#8217;re too expensive, or they&#8217;d never work well with your lifestyle, or for a thousand other reasons. I took that opportunity, and took it in grand style, during my recent hunting season. I told [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/26/gearing-down-trading-up-pt-3/</link>
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		<title>Sculpting God: Lilith (recast)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/25/sculpting-god-lilith-recast/</link>
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		<title>Gearing Down, Trading Up pt 2</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In order to properly shop for a car, it&#8217;s essential that you do your research. The sales process is an adversarial one&#8211;sure, there are crooked car dealers out there, but even leaving those aside, it&#8217;s a predatory process. &#8220;Predatory?&#8221; I hear you say, &#8220;Isn&#8217;t that being a bit dramatic?&#8221; Not at all. In fact, in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/22/gearing-down-trading-up-pt-2/</link>
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		<title>Sculpting God: We Create Worlds pt 2 (recast)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Download Subscribe When last we left Rick, he was having a pleasant&#8211;if confusing&#8211;day. But will it last? Find out, in the conclusion to We Create Worlds.]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/21/sculpting-god-we-create-worlds-pt-2-recast/</link>
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		<title>Gearing Down, Trading Up pt 1</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Driving. In all the world, it&#8217;s one of the finest things. I don&#8217;t mean driving in traffic, I mean driving. Heading out onto the open road, or attacking a mountain and forcing its roads to unwind for you. Feeling the physics, pushing to improve the precision. I treat driving like some people treat horseback riding: [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/20/gearing-down-trading-up-pt-1/</link>
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		<title>And Then There Was Paper</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s tax weekend, and if you&#8217;re like most Americans you&#8217;re madly rushing to get your forms (or extensions) filed. Of course, if you&#8217;re not American, you&#8217;ll have to deal with taxes sooner or later anyway. In either case, chances are you&#8217;ll hit the end of your weekend and be forced from the gorgeous spring weather [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/16/and-then-there-was-paper/</link>
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		<title>Sculpting God: We Create Worlds pt 1 (recast)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Download Subscribe This is the story of Rick. He’s a scurrilous, irascible scoundrel, with a heart of gold. Not in the sense of being warm and fuzzy and good underneath, but in the sense of having a heart totally devoted to gold. His favorite goldmine is his shop, an entertainment venue where he vends virtual [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/15/sculpting-god-we-create-worlds-pt-1-recast/</link>
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		<title>Released: The Man In The Rain</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If you&#8217;re missing Joss Kyle, your wait is nearly over. And to whet your appetite for more, I&#8217;m pleased to present you with the ebook of the first Antithesis adventure, The Man In The Rain. Mondu, once an AI designer at the top of the Nigerian IT industry, needed to escape from a life that [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/11/released-the-man-in-the-rain/</link>
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		<title>Released: Angels Unawares</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Time for a new short story&#8211;this one is called Angels Unawares. It first appeared as part of the Sculpting God series, which is currently re-podcasting from this blog. It later appeared as part of The Podthology, last year&#8217;s anthology of the best of podcast short fiction (along with Cold Duty, available at right, and The [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/07/released-angels-unawares/</link>
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		<title>Released: Cold Duty</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I am pleased to announce the ebook availability of my acclaimed Steampunk story Cold Duty: Selected Readings from the Diary of a Gelusian Repairman, which Steampunk Scholar Mike Perschon reviewed a couple years ago, and has since described as &#8220;Probably the best steampunk short story I&#8217;ve read.&#8221; In 1860s Manchester, young Jamie Broadman wasn&#8217;t much [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/06/released-cold-duty/</link>
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		<title>Sculpting God: Control Room (re-cast)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Download Subscribe What if somewhere in the universe there was a room, and in that room was a creature, surrounded by screens and dials and controls? In his room, he sees all, knows all, manages all. He directs the thoughts and actions of every being in the cosmos. Would such a creature be God? And [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/05/sculpting-god-control-room-re-cast/</link>
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		<title>Down From Ten cover art</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So, I&#8217;ve never been quite happy with the cover art for DF10. What I saw in my head never quite came through on the screen, and I wound up with a collection of images that, while possibly intriguing, felt&#8230;confusing. It was too dark in the wrong places, you couldn&#8217;t tell what the elements were, and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/04/down-from-ten-cover-art/</link>
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		<title>The Great Cull (Free Will Update)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[When I started writing The Antithesis Progression, I had a nice, tidy three-book series in mind. Then I wrote it, and discovered that what I thought was book 1 was actually 2 books cleverly hiding inside my head under a single title. Well, no problem there. Turns out there was an excellent break point where [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/04/the-great-cull-free-will-update/</link>
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		<title>What&#8217;s in a Name? (Creating Kickass Titles)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s a black art to titles. Some of them have it, some of them don&#8217;t. &#8220;What&#8217;s &#8216;It&#8217;&#8211;aside from a Stephen King novel?&#8221; you ask. &#8220;It&#8221; is that thing that makes you notice. The thing that makes you pick up a book and look at the back cover. The thing that makes a title to a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/01/whats-in-a-name-creating-kickass-titles/</link>
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		<title>AWP Books Spring and Summer Schedule</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Preface: Despite the date, this is not an April Fool&#8217;s joke. With that out of the way, here goes&#8230; Ladies, Gentlemen, and those of you who are anything but, I am pleased to announce this spring&#8217;s publishing schedule (well, for my books anyway) from AWP Books. In no particular order, here&#8217;s what&#8217;s coming: The Clarke [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/04/01/awp-books-spring-schedule/</link>
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		<title>Publishing Priorities: You Decide</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The good folks at AWP Books and I have a decision to make: What order do we publish things in? In the process of discussions, it occurred to us that you all might have an opinion, so here&#8217;s your chance to vote: [poll id="2"] You may vote for two of the three options (this is [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/03/31/publishing-priorities-you-decide/</link>
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		<title>The Quest for Transport</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Ah, car shopping. That magical time of life where you get to hop around the area, sitting in other people&#8217;s vehicles, fondling their shifters and clutching at their pedals until you finally get hauled away for turning Top Gear into a porn show. In between times, you get harassed by salespeople both fabulous and incompetent, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/03/31/the-quest-for-transport/</link>
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		<title>Smashwords and OpenOffice</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Smashwords, for all its good points (and they are many), suffers from a singular lack of support for open formats where their Meatgrinder software is concerned. This has caused a hue and cry from those of us who prefer to author our own epub and mobi files, and from those of us using OpenOffice and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/03/30/smashwords-and-openoffice/</link>
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		<title>Sculpting God: Train Time (re-cast)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Download Subscribe Have you ever seen that well-dressed man at the airport, or the station, who stands patiently by as if he has all the time in the world? Have you wondered who he was waiting for, and how long he&#8217;d stay? Have you ever been that man, stuck in the hours between delay and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/03/10/sculpting-god-train-time-re-cast/</link>
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		<title>Released: At The Edge of Nowhere</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I am proud to present the first in a series I&#8217;ve been prepping for a while now. The Lombard Alchemist Tales center around a pawn shop in a gambler&#8217;s town&#8211;but not just any pawn shop, a special pawn shop full of strange artifacts, each with a unique story and an unusual effect on the world. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/02/28/released-at-the-edge-of-nowhere/</link>
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		<title>Sculpting God: The Coffee Service (re-cast)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Download Subscribe Join me for a conversation with a quaint, friendly man about his unusual abilities. He&#8217;s a hospitable fellow who invites strangers into his house for coffee. He is alone in the world, and only wants someone to talk to&#8211;but he may just get more than he bargained for one morning, when he has [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/02/22/sculpting-god-the-coffee-service-re-cast/</link>
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		<title>Free Will update</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, my friends, I have some news for you on Free Will. It&#8217;s not done yet, but something has happened that&#8217;s making it even better. The story scope turned out to be far larger than I had anticipated, and I&#8217;m now 20,000 words beyond my target, with a ways left to go. The story is [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/02/22/free-will-update/</link>
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		<title>Sculpting God: Angels Unawares (re-cast)</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Download Subscribe Sculpting God opens with a story of an unusual cliff diving episode. In 1898, a woman’s body was discovered broken and battered at the bottom of a tall sea bluff in Southern Scotland. and the small town she lived in began locking the doors at night. Only one man saw what happened, but [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/02/06/sculpting-god-angels-unawares-re-cast/</link>
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		<title>Sculpting God re-cast</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Sculpting God feed broke in a recent wordpress/php update, and the old blog is un-fixable. Therefore, I&#8217;m going to be re-casting them on the uberfeed (posting the old episodes without any new edits or news) while I port the old blog over and restore the feed. Look for the first episode tonight or tomorrow. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/02/05/sculpting-god-re-cast/</link>
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		<title>The Doctrine of Goofy Ideas</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As a human being, I am entitled to my goofy ideas&#8211;and boy, do I have a lot of them. I can&#8217;t help it. I have a brain, and it has to do something while it&#8217;s waiting for the teapot to boil. Some people think about knitting, some people think about sex, I tend to think [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/01/31/the-doctrine-of-goofy-ideas/</link>
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		<title>Link Salad, Jan 10, 2011</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s mid January, and time for your vegetables. This year&#8217;s first link salad is here&#8211;I hope you enjoy this sampling of my weidrness and wanderings from around the web! Vanity For your starter today, I&#8217;ve recently finished Sam Harris&#8217;s book The Moral Landscape. We recently had a three episode set discussing the premise and arguments [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/01/10/link-salad-jan-10-2011/</link>
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		<title>Tracking Progress</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A new year. Time for resolutions, right? Right. Except that a few years back I resolved to no longer make resolutions. Ironically, it&#8217;s one of the few I ever wound up keeping. Instead, I use this wonderfully arbitrary and booze-infused time of year to make plans. Because, really, is there a better time to make [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2011/01/07/tracking-progress/</link>
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		<title>TV SF Tropes That Need To Die, pt 1</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As you might be able to tell by the title, I&#8217;m fed up with a number of the stock, boring, and stupid plots that get dressed up as &#8220;Science Fiction,&#8221; though they also show up in other forms in series drama. These tropes represent the functional equivalent of training wheels for writers, exhibit an appalling [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/12/28/tv-sf-tropes-that-need-to-die-pt-1/</link>
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		<title>Link Salad 12/27/10</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Time for your vegetables again &#8212; these are some of the highlights of my research journeys hither and yon in the great wasteland of cyberspace. Hope you enjoy! Vanity On the ever-so-self-indulgent subject of, well, me, there are a few items potentially of interest. First, I released a second Clarke Lantham novel. When Clarke Lantham [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/12/27/link-salad-122710/</link>
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		<title>Clarke Lantham: A Ghostly Christmas Present</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The new Clarke Lantham Mystery is here. Explore the true meaning of Christmas with murder, mayhem, ghosts, and unfortunate accidents of physics! It&#8217;s hard to beat being thrown in an out-of-state jail on a trumped up charge as a Christmas present, but detective Clarke Lantham loves a challenge. So when he calls up his brother [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/12/19/clarke-lantham-a-ghostly-christmas-present/</link>
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		<title>That Plateau Feeling is an Illusion</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The following is intended for other writers working to find their stride. I hope something in the following meanderings is useful to you as you hash out your process. Fall is crazy, right? Halloween, Thanksgiving, School restarting, Christmas, RenFaire, Dickens Faire, conventions, festivities, and all those bleeding birds nesting in my trees and eating my [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/12/06/that-plateau-feeling-is-an-illusion/</link>
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		<title>Link Salad, Dec. 3, 2010</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Time for your vegetables again. Here&#8217;s some of the fun stuff that&#8217;s flitted across my desk in the last few weeks. Crazy Silly Creative Things To start off with our garnish, you could do no better than watching this 3 minute video about what Welshmen really do with sheep. Don&#8217;t worry, it&#8217;s work safe&#8211;but you [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/12/03/link-salad-dec-3-2010/</link>
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		<title>Cons: Are They Worth It?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The question came up on Twitter today: Are cons worth the time and money? Opinionated though I am, it&#8217;s not an easy question to answer. So here&#8217;s a quickie list of the pros and cons garnered from a scarce four years of con-going experience: Con Pros 1) Networking. I&#8217;ve met lifelong friends through Cons. I&#8217;ve [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/12/02/cons-are-they-worth-it/</link>
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		<title>Sawyer&#8217;s First Law</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If 2007 was the year I got serious about writing, then 2010 was the year when attitude and education caught up with intent. Think of it as the difference between declaring a major (2007) and doing your first internship in a Ph.D. program (2010). Up till this year, I did one book a year and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/11/29/sawyers-first-law/</link>
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		<title>The Deadly Hunter</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The friends I stayed with in Portland had a cat who knew her business. She was a bona-fide, go-get-um, get-in-my-way-and-you&#8217;re-dead mouse hunter. Fortunately,* I caught her in the act: *I just made a lolcat to avoid writing. This is officially a new low.]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/11/29/the-deadly-hunter/</link>
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		<title>Why I Don&#8217;t Drive an Automatic</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;ve taught about a dozen people to drive so far, and it&#8217;s not because I&#8217;m an adrenaline junkie or a glutton for punishment. It&#8217;s because, all things being equal, I prefer the company of people who are competent, empowered, and self-possessed, and there are few things in this world that can undercut those thing as [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/11/29/why-i-never-drive-an-automatic/</link>
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		<title>New Blurbs for ATSWG</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The blurbs from fellow authors and reviewers for &#8220;And Then She Was Gone&#8221; have started coming in, and I gotta share a couple: &#8220;&#8230;a strangely beautiful noir for the future. And Then She Was Gone has all the history of the genre&#8230;packed with the trademark Sawyer intelligence.&#8221; Philipppa Ballantine, author of Geist &#8220;&#8230;the parody of [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/11/28/new-blurbs-for-atswg/</link>
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		<title>Now Available: Lilith</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This story is now available at Amazon, Barnes &#038; Noble, and Smashwords. One of my favorite stories in all of mythology is the Talmudic story of Lilith. The insight it gives into the development of Judaism, of Hebrew mythology and culture, and its naked and impossible-to-talk-around display of preclassical sexual politics have all tickled the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/11/27/now-available-lilith/</link>
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		<title>Link Salad 11/18/10</title>
		<description><![CDATA[I&#8217;m on the road, writing short stories and a little on the novels, and exploring the murky rainy depths of the Pacific Northwest. But it&#8217;s hard to get the hang of Thursdays, which is why they&#8217;re salad days. Neither fabulous restaurants, nor rain nor bad traffic nor dark of overcast day shall keep me from [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/11/18/link-salad-111810/</link>
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		<title>Principles of Contracts: Market Awareness</title>
		<description><![CDATA[You walk into the grocery store to buy apples, but when you reach the produce section the apples are twice what they are across town, and the quality isn&#8217;t quite as good as you remember them from the other store. Do you buy them? Maybe, if you&#8217;re in a rush and apples are a must [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/11/16/principles-of-contracts-market-awareness/</link>
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		<title>Buried Alive in an Ebook</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Buried Alive In The Blues, the apocalyptic fantasy I wrote for Philippa Ballantine&#8217;s Erotica A La Carte, is now available as a standalone ebook from all your favorite venues. The end isn&#8217;t near, it&#8217;s here. Irene, recently widowed, knows the Earth is drowning, and all she wants is one last night to dance. The best [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/11/15/buried-alive-in-an-ebook/</link>
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		<title>Live, from Portland</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Portland in the fog has all the charm and beauty of Los Angeles of 2029 in Blade Runner, but without quaint charm of suffocating corporatism. Instead, it defaults to a decidedly more Stalinist aesthetic: gray and oppressive during the day, moody and hazy at night. It&#8217;s skyline is punctuated by the occasional train yard and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/11/15/live-from-portland/</link>
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		<title>Free Will, ep 06</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Download Subscribe And now, Episode 6 of Free Will and Other Compulsions. Story So Far by Kitty NicIaian, your co-producer and occasional voice actor. Cast this week (in order of appearance): Steven H. Wilson as William Ellison Renee Wilson as Marjorie Derek Moore as Jim Miss Kalendar as Ali Kitty Nic&#8217;Iaian as Futigive&#8217;s AI]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/11/12/free-will-ep-06/</link>
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		<title>Six Magic Words to Write a Novel</title>
		<description><![CDATA[It&#8217;s NaNoWriMo, the National Novel Writing Month, when many of you who don&#8217;t normally write will be trying to write a short novel in 30 days (and some of you who normally do will try to get a jump start on projects that need doing). Generally people find it easy to start a novel, not [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/11/01/six-magic-words-to-write-a-novel/</link>
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		<title>The Detective is In</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The City that Never Sleeps&#8230; &#8230;Needs a Detective With Insomnia The first volume in the new Clarke Lantham Mysteries is now available at all your favorite online book retailers, in all ebook formats. This is the beginning of a year-long experiment with ebooks and other maverick content delivery techniques, and Lantham (in all his snarky, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/10/29/the-detective-is-in/</link>
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		<title>Link Salad, Oct 22 2010</title>
		<description><![CDATA[And, from the kitchen this weekend we have for you a lovely Link Salad, with leaves of history and science, garnished with a healthy dose of whimsy. But first, I begin with a special treat for my free-wheeling brewer friends. Beer has always been a problem in space &#8212; not because of drunk piloting, but [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/10/22/link-salad-oct-22-2010/</link>
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		<title>Free Will, ep 05</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Download Subscribe And now, Episode 5 of Free Will and Other Compulsions. Story So Far by Jack Hosley, host of Wander Radio. Cast this week (in order of appearance): Steven H. Wilson as Percy Scott Nobilis Reed as The Nurse Nathan Lowell as Senator William Shelley Kitty Nic&#8217;Iaian as White House Intern Benjamin Roberts as [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/10/20/free-will-ep-05/</link>
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		<title>Seth Harwood&#8217;s Young Junius</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Seth Harwood&#8217;s new release, Young Junius, hits stores today. For those of you who like hard crime, this is the place to get it&#8211;it&#8217;s been garnering great reviews from Publisher&#8217;s Weekly. I haven&#8217;t read it yet myself, but at his best, Harwood is phenomenal. Here&#8217;s the PDF so you can judge for yourself. Take a [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/10/18/seth-harwoods-young-junius/</link>
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		<title>Dealing In, ep10 pt2</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Download Subscribe Welcome to the second of several Down From Ten Feedback shows. This one is episode ten, part two of the Dealing In series of feedback shows, where I and several friends answer your emails and talk about whatever comes up. This time, I&#8217;m joined by Metamor City and Down From Ten cast member [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/10/15/dealing-in-ep10-pt2/</link>
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		<title>Link Salad, Oct 13 2010</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In the &#8220;should have done this a long time ago&#8221; department, I&#8217;m going to start offering up a semi-regular link salad digest. These are links to articles, books, lectures, and other cool stuff that I&#8217;ve run across in the course of my ill-fated attempt to grok the universe. They also tend to feed my creative [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/10/13/link-salad-oct-13-2010/</link>
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		<title>Columbus the Scumbag?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Today (well, technically tomorrow) is Columbus day, the day when residents of the New World used to celebrate the onset of colonization, and the formation of the dozens of nations that have peopled North and South America for the past half-millennium with their bronzed, clean-limbed, healthy living, civilized ways; the opening of the new frontier, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/10/11/columbus-the-scumbag/</link>
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		<title>Announcement: And Then She Was Gone</title>
		<description><![CDATA[On Halloween Weekend, October 29th to be exact, a new series debuts at Amazon.com and in the other major ebook markets. A man of infinite social grace he isn&#8217;t, but what former disgraced Oakland Police Detective Clarke Lantham lacks in high culture he makes up for with his ability to slip into any role he [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/10/10/announcement-and-then-she-was-gone/</link>
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		<title>Beer Money: Responding to Konrath and Siregar</title>
		<description><![CDATA[My recent post on zombie industries (in which I argued that the pissing and moaning coming from authors and some publishers recently is a sign of an industry that is currently in serious trouble) leads inevitably to the obvious question: If, appearances to the contrary, the customer actually sets the price in a marketplace, and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/10/09/beer-money-responding-to-konrath-and-sigrear/</link>
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		<title>Pro-Rate Markets List</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Several people have asked for my current pro-rates markets list for short fiction. The following are periodicals only (i.e. no anthologies) broken out by genre, and listed in order of highest paying to lowest. Here you go, listed in or: All Genre New Yorker Atlantic Monthly Playboy Saturday Evening Post Science Fiction/Fantasy Tor.com Cobblestone Heliotrope [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/10/04/pro-rate-markets-list/</link>
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		<title>What Every Author Should Know</title>
		<description><![CDATA[There&#8217;s a conversation going on at the always controversial blog of Dean Wesley Smith. The post itself is interesting for its unconventional wisdom, but it is the comments that are important. In it, several authors with pub credits in the dozens and loads of literary experience talk explicitly about contract terms, money management, professionalism, and [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/10/04/what-every-author-should-know/</link>
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		<title>The Ideal Rejection Letter</title>
		<description><![CDATA[An editor friend of mine recently asked me what I would consider an ideal rejection letter, if I were a hopeless writer with delusions of adequacy and no command of grammar. (I&#8217;m pretty sure the &#8220;If I were&#8221; bit was a ruse to make her think she wasn&#8217;t talking about me, so I actually expect [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/09/29/the-ideal-rejection-letter/</link>
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		<title>Fixed: Dealing in 10 pt1</title>
		<description><![CDATA[For those of you who were having trouble, this should fix it. Download Subscribe]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/09/26/fixed-dealing-in-10-pt1/</link>
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		<title>They Were Here First</title>
		<description><![CDATA[In Peter David&#8217;s Star Trek Novel Q-Squared (which is a damn good book that stands well on its own merits), Picard gets pretty damn huffy at Q for being arrogant, as Picard is wont to do. Q replies: &#8220;Picard, I could blast this ship out of existence if I felt like it. I could grow [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/09/24/they-were-here-first/</link>
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		<title>Dealing In, ep10 pt1</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Download Subscribe Welcome to the first of several Down From Ten Feedback shows. This one is episode eleven of the Dealing In series of feedback shows, where I and several friends answer your emails and talk about whatever comes up. This time, I&#8217;m joined by Metamor City and Down From Ten cast member Chris Lester, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/09/23/dealing-in-ep10-pt1/</link>
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		<title>UPS Loves Me</title>
		<description><![CDATA[This one&#8217;s artwork heavy, so I&#8217;m putting the &#8220;get more&#8221; link right at the top so it doesn&#8217;t take over the main blog page. Click on it, check out the coolness Lookie what I&#8217;m taking to UPS right now: The Predestination cover art drew rave reviews when it appeared two years ago &#8212; I got [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/09/10/ups-loves-me/</link>
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		<title>The Balticon Adventure pt 5: Pontification, Panels, and Parties</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Well, I suppose I&#8217;ve put it off long enough. The summer since Balticon has been packed to the gills with activity. Lots of writing, lots of strategizing. I don&#8217;t think I&#8217;ve read as much in one summer in at least a decade, and I&#8217;ve written 150k words and still going—might even hit 350-400k for the [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/09/10/the-balticon-adventure-pt5/</link>
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		<title>How To Spot a Zombie</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Zombie industries are all around us&#8211;these are businesses whose models have ceased to be relevant and they&#8217;re just waiting for something better to knock them over. This doesn&#8217;t mean they&#8217;re not still earning money&#8211;some of them are earning quite well, thank you. And it doesn&#8217;t mean that they&#8217;ve been artificially resurrected with government stimulus money, [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/09/05/how-to-spot-a-zombie/</link>
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		<title>Life on Mars?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Much as I liked the show, this is about the actual planet. As someone who writes about Mars, I&#8217;ve got kind of a vested interest&#8211;then again, as a resident of Earth I&#8217;ve got kind of a vested interest anyway. Assuming we don&#8217;t manage to wipe ourselves out (a prospect which, though it will always remain [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/09/01/life-on-mars/</link>
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		<title>Paradigms vs. Conspiracies: What&#8217;s the Difference?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Last night&#8217;s post about the exciting new developments in fringe cosmology provoked some interesting twitter comments. Seems some of the language in the article I linked to (particularly at the end, where it talks about vested interest) reminded some of you of denialist language from one or another favorite science/history denial camps. Specifically, the word [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/08/31/paradigms-vs-conspiracies-whats-the-difference/</link>
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		<title>Big Bang Go Boom?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Big Bang contrarians are a dime a dozen, from the crackpots to the respected physicists, like Halton Arp, who like to pick nits at the existing paradigm but don&#8217;t have a coherent alternate theory to advance. They&#8217;re usually good for an afternoon&#8217;s entertainment, but little more than that. Sometimes, though, the exciting stuff happens in [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/08/30/big-bang-go-boom/</link>
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		<title>Writing Odyssey: Lessons Learned</title>
		<description><![CDATA[If you want the background for this post, check The Binge post for a description of my recent unintentional astronomical word count adventure. Short version: I wrote one hundred twenty three thousand words in fifty days. Yow. So, you may ask, what did I learn from writing 123k words in 50 days? Plenty. What do [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/08/27/writing-odyssey-lessons-learned/</link>
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		<title>Writing Odyssey: The Binge</title>
		<description><![CDATA[By the time I finish writing this article, I&#8217;ll have written 123,000 words in fifty days. The output constitutes two short-book-length works (one novel, one reference work), nine blog posts, two commissioned articles, and some odds and ends of work on another novel. For the first half of the duration, I did it by accident. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/08/27/writing-odyssey-pt-1-the-binge/</link>
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		<title>How to Move a Geek</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Give me a thousand words or so (or less) on the most unlikely movie, story, or song that made you cry, and what it taught you about your own preferred artform, if anything.  Include a short bio with links to your work.  I'll put the stories up as guest blog posts, and hopefully we can generate more traffic for your projects while giving our audiences a unique glimpse into our bizarre creative processes.]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/08/24/how-to-move-a-geek/</link>
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		<title>Social media?  Yeah, okay, sure</title>
		<description><![CDATA[So, with any luck, this announcement will post to Twitter and Facebook, have at the bottom a &#8220;share this on social media sites,&#8221; and come up handsomely on mobile phones. Step one of prepping the site for this September&#8217;s big announcements is now accomplished!]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/08/23/social-media-yeah-okay-sure/</link>
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		<title>Casting Call &#8211; Free Will</title>
		<description><![CDATA[After far too long away, we have new episodes coming your wayâ€¦ shortly. First, though, we need to cast a few new voices. Visit the casting call page for a list of the new characters and brief descriptions, and contact casting@jdsawyer.net if you would be interested.]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/08/11/casting-call-free-will/</link>
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		<title>Microsoft: Consistent Quality Through The Ages</title>
		<description><![CDATA[A few months back, after grinding my eight-year-old generic ergo keyboard into the ground I found myself in need of a new ergonomic keyboard. The keyboard failed on a deadline, so I had little choice but to do that thing you&#8217;re not supposed to do: shop for computer equipment at Best Buy. I&#8217;ve been writing [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/08/09/microsoft-consistent-quality-through-the-ages/</link>
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		<title>Principles of Contracts: Nothing But Net</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8212; &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; Previous Chapter: Interlude: Think Contracts Don&#8217;t Matter? &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; Most of this series concentrates on general contract principles. This week&#8217;s entry is a little different. It&#8217;s devoted solely to the creative industries (businesses like films, music, books, theater, etc. which depend on artists for their grist), and I&#8217;m posting [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/07/28/principles-of-contracts-nothing-but-net/</link>
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		<title>Slight Topic Derailment</title>
		<description><![CDATA[For those of you waiting on the next Principles of Contracts or Balticon Adventure post, your patience will soon be rewarded. Things here have been hopping&#8211;between article deadlines, a couple new contracts to hash out, and having written a new book in the last three weeks, July has been completely packed. Some of the contract [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/07/25/slight-topic-derailment/</link>
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		<title>Think Contracts Don&#8217;t Matter?</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Since I&#8217;ve been doing a blog series on the Principles of Contracts, I have to include this bit of news about the biggest, ugliest case of a handshake deal I&#8217;ve seen in quite some time. Seems that the publishers and authors of The Shack never really figured out who owned what, and now they&#8217;re out [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/07/16/think-contracts-dont-matter/</link>
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		<title>Principles of Contracts: Self-Interest</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8212; &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; Previous Chapter: The Narrowness Principle &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; All business deals are based on trust, and it&#8217;s a trust backed up by a trustworthy legal system. Without trustworthy courts, high trust between people in a culture, and an environment characterized by trust and reciprocity, business is impossible. &#8220;Trustworthy! Dan, what [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/07/08/principles-of-contracts-self-interest/</link>
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		<title>&#8220;Apocalypse Sex&#8221; Now Available</title>
		<description><![CDATA[[amazon-product align="right" bgcolor="#99CCCC" height="240" width="120" frameborder="1"]B003QP4F0W[/amazon-product] Circlet Press&#8217;s new anthology, Apocalypse Sex, is now available on Amazon and Smashwords. It contains a new and improved version my novelette Buried Alive In The Blues, which some of you may remember from its appearance on Erotica A La Carte last year. Now you can take it anywhere [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/06/29/apocalypse-sex-now-available/</link>
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		<title>Principles of Contracts: The Narrowness Principle</title>
		<description><![CDATA[&#8212; &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; Previous Chapter: The Third Cousins Rule &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; &#8212; &#8220;Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it.&#8221; Matthew 7:13, NIV Seldom, if ever, have the words above been truer than when negotiating a contract. [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/06/28/principles-of-contracts-the-narrowness-principle/</link>
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		<title>Back in the Podcasting Saddle with Guns</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Those of you following the Balticon and Contracts series on the blog have probably been wondering where the hell I&#8217;ve been &#8211; and those of you following the podcasts are really wondering. Well, I&#8217;ve been writing and producing an album. Wish there was a sexier answer, but there it is. And it is fun I&#8217;m [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/06/22/back-in-the-podcasting-saddle-with-guns/</link>
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		<title>The Balticon Adventure pt 4</title>
		<description><![CDATA[The Saga Of The Hat At this point in the narrative, I&#8217;m forced to chose between one of two roads. I could go along the chronology, skipping the boring and blackmail-worthy parts along the way, or I could chose a theme and tell its story&#8230;or I could jump back and forth between each as my [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/06/07/the-balticon-adventure-pt-4/</link>
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		<title>The Great Ass-Moving Experiment</title>
		<description><![CDATA[As a writer, like most writers, I have one giant terror point. For some people it&#8217;s the writing. For some people it&#8217;s showing your work to friends, or to strangers. For some people it&#8217;s marketing in general. For me, it&#8217;s marketing fiction to editors. I don&#8217;t have a problem with nonfiction (as my bibliography demonstrates), [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/06/04/the-great-ass-moving-experiment/</link>
			</item>
	<item>
		<title>The Balticon Adventure pt 3</title>
		<description><![CDATA[Scuba Gear I normally travel with carry-on baggage only, but it&#8217;s not because by the end of a plane ride there&#8217;s nothing that gives me greater relief from coach seat-cramp syndrome and DVT than sitting down in another small seat in a moving vehicle. Nor is it that the prospect of walking around an unfamiliar [...]]]></description>
		<link>http://jdsawyer.net/2010/06/03/the-balticon-adventure-pt-3/</link>
			</item>
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