Oh, how the world loves to throw the word “lazy” around. It’s the perfect insult, isn’t it? A single word that sums up every ounce of disdain for someone who appears to be doing… well, nothing. But let’s pull back the curtains on this term and uncover the grand deception. You see, being termed...
This week is our last week of a month and a half tour of Mexico. Although I’ve traveled extensively since I was young, and have made money online for several years, I’m only beginning to make enough money to really travel around, work from anywhere, and fully engage in nomadic living. During our time in
As a Capricorn, I’ve always been a goal setter. I don’t spend enough of my time visualizing and meditating on my goals, but I’m still pretty good at making them happen. However, I’m a little guilty of shooting too low sometimes. I set the bar only a little higher than where I currently am. This
Any artist or author can tell you where creativity comes from. It usually arrives when unexpected, as flashes of insight when focusing on something else. It cannot be controlled or called. True genius is spontaneous, wild, and unpredictable. But is it crazy? Nietzsche made famous the distinction between Apollo, the rational mind, and Dionysus...
For the last week I’ve been avoiding my work: the pressures and responsibilities and deadlines have been building up, and like a turtle I react by disappearing, into junk food and catching up on popular TV series. But today I’m catching up – starting with a fancy breakfast of icecream strawberry waffles at a nearby
Today I’m honored to host an interview with an author who’s doing amazing things in art and literature. I met David Clarke while working on his book cover for Rare Traits, a fascinating novel that makes use of David’s interest in art history. Then I found out he’s in Tuscany studying art restoration. Wow –
I just got my first “Cease and Desist” order, in an email claiming to be from a lawyer defending the rights of Angry Birds. It happened just after I sent the following sketch to some painting companies in Dafen China, in a project aiming to explore whether fine art can be outsourced. Obviously, somebody turned
I thought I’d take a break from graphic design and watch a scary movie. Danielle Radcliffe’s “The Woman in Black” (very good, very scary, by the way, had me jumping like a little girl). The first 10 minutes or so was a little rough and obvious – working the background story in deliberately and without
Update: this is an older post that still gets a lot of traffic, so I made a video on some critically important pen name tips that will help you sell more books. Watch the video to learn more. For a long time I thought using an author pen name was disingenuous. Plus it gets confusing
Millions of people are dusting off manuscripts and cranking out self-published novels for the kindle and ipad market; and some indie authors are making hundreds of thousands of dollars. We are experiencing something of a “gold rush” of indie publishing, and everybody is desperate to sell more books. If you’re familiar with...
Creativindie is a good idea that I plan to explode into an enormous helpful blog for indie authors and writers; hence I’m looking for a wordpress theme that will make it user-friendly and have that “professional blogger” look that earns nearly instant credibility. If you know what I’m talking about – the clean...
My name is Derek, which means “leader of the people.” My sister’s name is “Terra” which means earth. Both names reflect our parents’ backgrounds, ethnicity, and popular names of the time period. When you’re choosing character names for your novel, you can pretend you’re planning out the...
