Rick Shaw Posts

Just a brief post. Looking for an update on The Lost Fedora? The Santa Barbara Literary Journal’s anthology The Fifth Fedora dropped on September 14th. You can find it at the SB Literary Journal’s online Bookstore, or on Amazon. I’m truly humbled to be included among this community of authors to honor our friend, Stephen T. Vessels. Life provides us two families, the one you’re born into, and the one you gather along the way.…

It is one of those things… you know the things that fall into that what authors do list of expectations. In this case that thing was a public speaking event, coupled with a question & answer, and reading of an excerpt from a recent work. You know… pimping your work! As a professional geek, and chief information officer, I’m frequently in front of a room full of folks doing a Q&A, or exploring some issue.…

It’s that time of year again – NaNoWriMo. And I find myself, tush in seat, fingers to the keyboard, wracking my brain for a story. My adoring wife wants me to build one to a worst-first sentence I once crafted. That’s not fair, it actually won that particular competition. But it was a throw away line. One intended to illicit a giggle and little more. But now, almost fifteen years later, I find myself trying…

I had the coolest thing happen to me a couple of days ago, and I’m still buzzing from it. Back in June, I had a short story accepted for an anthology; my first short story sale. At the time I thought cool. I found a home for Fiddler (the story’s title). I did a little happy dance, and then moved on. Earlier this week, the publisher of the anthology, Bayonet Books, published the collection of…

One of the hardest aspects of crafting a novel, for me, is the motivation to plow through the middle. I write what I see in my head. In that, I’ll see scenes that drive a story to the conclusion I know is coming. There is, however, and equally essential need for the connective tissue that weaves or bonds all the parts, the foreshadowing, the red herrings, and the ‘oh shit I didn’t see that coming’…

Imagine, if you will, two stories.  With a common premise. Interdependent upon one another. Authored a year apart. The second, done as a challenge by my well-intentioned band of lunatics. The Tunguska Deception has been my personal insanity since December, with the successful completion of 2016’s NaNoWriMo. My current challenge is stitching together these two stories, each approximately 50,000 words. The first never intending to have the second timeline as a companion/partner. Add to this,…

The Fervid Imagination and Writing Process of Rick Shaw – by M. Talley Rick Shaw has been part of the Southern California writing community for over a decade. Though I have known him for roughly five years, we both attended the Santa Barbara Writers Conference for the first time in 2005, when it was held at Westmont College in Montecito. When I read Rick’s work, I think, this is a guy who could actually make…