Mar 20, 2025
Mark has a virtual beer with Kevin J. Anderson while they talk through various aspects about writing and publishing. This episode is from a live chat that was hosted on the evening of Sunday March 16, 2025.
This episode is sponsored by Superstars Writing Seminars: Teaching you the business of being a writer which takes place in early Feb 2026 in Colorado Springs, CO and where Mark will be a guest speaker.
Use code: STARK100 to get $100 off your registration.
In their chat Mark and Kevin talk about:
- The loss of author and poet Danny Peart, Neil Peart's brother and how the first story Kevin and Neil wrote together named the main character after Neil's brother
- Mark and Kevin's Rush and beer connection
- Kevin's "music starter kit" to his grand-kids
- The significance of the Rush album Grace Under Pressure to both Kevin and Mark
- How the Columbia Music Record Club is what led to Kevin discovering Rush (because he was looking for sci-fi style album covers and Rush's 2112 jumped out at him)
- The back-story to Kevin's Terra Incognita novels
- Writing a novel that was a tie-in to a Rush album
- How Kevin has been able to leverage Kickstarter to produce products that no New York publisher would likely ever get behind
- The way a tribute song "No Words" about Neil Peart led to a new friendship and collaboration with Kevin
- The music behind the Terra Incognita trilogy
- Kevin's Kickstarter for Terra Incognita funding in 14 minutes, but the ultimate goal of earning back the high investment he has already put into it
- The number of novels that Kevin has written
- Benefits of being able to order books directly from the author versus going through the multiple layers of traditional publishing
- Superstars Writing Seminars, the conference that Kevin, his wife Rebecca, Dave Farland, Eric Flint, and Brandon Sanderson started more than 15 years ago
- The Masters of Creative Writing with a focus on Publishing that Kevin teaches at Western Colorado University
- The annual anthology that this program publishes thanks to sponsorship from Draft2Digital
- The latest musical collaboration Kevin recently announced
- Kevin coming to Toronto's Massey Hall for RushFest on August 1, 2025
- What books Kevin and Mark are currently working on
- Favorite advice for running a Kickstarter and the real costs of shipping and handling
- Kevin's love of hiking and dictating when he writes
- And more . . .
Links of Interest:
- Kevin J Anderson's Website
- Superstars Writing Seminars
- Buy Mark a Coffee
- Patreon for Stark Reflections
- Mark's YouTube channel
- Mark's Stark Reflections on Writing & Publishing Newsletter (Signup)
- An Author's Guide to Working With Bookstores and Libraries
- The Relaxed Author
- Publishing Pitfalls for Authors
- An Author's Guide to Working with Libraries & Bookstores
- Wide for the Win
- Mark's Canadian Werewolf Books
- The Canadian Mounted: A Trivia Guide to Planes, Trains and Automobiles
- Yippee Ki-Yay Motherf*cker: A Trivia Guide to Die Hard
- Merry Christmas! Shitter Was Full!: A Trivia Guide to National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation
The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0