The SLUSHPILE Blog

We had an odd weekend. They happen on occasion, when your normal routines are blown away by something unexpected and pressing and you find that both days go by in a a vacuum of unforeseen activity.
Such was our weekend.
For some time we have discussed having the woods cleared out which are below our home. Not [...]

Throughout the hard slog of an edit it is easy to focus only on the problems in a story and much of what I’ve written about in the Editing 101 section of this blog deals exclusively with those. Sometimes it’s easy to skim past the things I like.
Every writer we have was chosen for the [...]

I really hate the fact that I got out of the Monday Editing 101 routine. Editing takes time, and explaining editing takes even more time. Time for now and the foreseeable future for me is my most precious commodity, and on an extremely limited supply.
However–just because I haven’t blogged about editing for about a month [...]

I’ve sorely missed my blog. Sometimes there is a time to talk about what you are doing/planning to do, and sometimes there is a time where there’s no more time for talk and you need to just do it. The past couple of days, I’ve been just doing it, and in the doing it, it [...]

I got such a kick out of my second oldest son’s school project that I had to share it here in pdf.
The assignment was to create a story with images using the superhero PI and geared towards an elementary school level reader.
My son was having an immense problem coming up with a story, and what [...]

The good news, like Gail MacMillan’s snow, just keeps piling up:
First for the good news: Yesterday we were contacted by Kim Laird, Head of Acquisitions & Periodicals and Michigan Notable Books Coordinator, Library of Michigan, DHAL. She asked that we supply her with some promotional copies of James Spurr’s upcoming One Sloop and Slow Match [...]

Yesterday was a busy day. On the business front, I received word from Gail MacMillan that her author appearance for yesterday went very well, that a film-maker contacted her to let her know that he had ordered Ceilidh’s Quest to read, and that she had six feet of snow on her lawn (Gail lives in [...]

The Press Release for Jim Spurr’s Governor Appointment is scheduled for this morning. This is going out state wide in his home state of Michigan, which is the state bestowing his appointment. For more information, see the official PR here.
This Press Release was a little different for us. We’ve gone to a new PR Service, [...]

Double Edge Press Author Receives Governor Appointment
 
James Spurr, author of the Great Lakes, Great Guns Historical Series has been appointed by Michigan Governor Jennifer M. Granholm to the Michigan Commission on the Commemoration of the Bicentennial of the War of 1812.
 
Spurr is a native of Portage, Michigan and serves as Director of the Michigan Maritime [...]

Yesterday, I received an e-mail from our author James Spurr. He currently has one book released by Double Edge Press (Sworn for Mackinaw) and a second book being worked on now for release within the next 30 to 60 days (One Sloop and Slow Match, a sequel to Sworn for Mackinaw).
His area of expertise, and [...]