-
Restart Challenge
I Love Restarting… Everything feels fresh and I can pretend that the problems earlier didn’t happen or don’t exist. I have missed about two weeks of stories total in my Write A Story A Day challenge. Not bad, but now I am starting fresh, making sure I get a story per day done, and when I have some extra time, finish a second one to catch up. But the challenge for me this next three months is to write a story per day, and maybe catch up four or five of the days I missed. Totally possible. But it would not be possible without the attitude of restarting. Three years…
-
Value on Lifetime Everything Subscription…
Got An Observation That I Have To Respond To… Someone commented that if they bought a Lifetime Everything Subscription to our workshops on WMG Teachable, it would take years to make up for the costs in new workshops. I went, “Huh, that’s not right.” But I wasn’t sure, so I had to go figure it out to make sure. (grin) Here are the new classes and workshops we have added onto Teachable since January 1st of this year (2025). In essence under three months. ONLY THE NEW STUFF!! (Remember, the Lifetime Everything Subscription is for the 600 or so classes and workshops already there, plus everything going into the future.)…
-
Calculate Kickstarter Profits…
Stunning How Some Writers Set Up to Fail… And I am not talking about the total gross earned on a campaign or the number of backers or the amount of promotion a campaign will bring to a book or series. All that is really good in various ways. Nope, talking money only. There is no right number for a percentage of profit from a Kickstarter campaign. I have seen it vary from 85% of the gross down to losing money. Depends on the prices you set, the products you offer to backers, and the cost of those products. So a simple round-number example: You have a campaign that does well…
-
Calling It A Night…
Plans on a Blog On Cash Streams… But honestly too tired to get it written tonight. Stunning how many cash streams a writer can have these days. So stay tuned for that. Might give you a few ideas. Also I will have a blog talking about successful Kickstarters. Do you measure a Kickstarter by how much profit it brings in after costs, or by the gross number (how Kickstarter does it), or by numbers of backers??? So many writers get lost in the cool stuff they can offer. And also how does Kickstarter growth really work and how to measure it. Fun topics, all beyond my poor brain tonight. Attempting…
-
Let Me Show You A Brand…
POKER BOY BRAND… I have been writing Poker Boy stories since 1987. And over the years I tried to settle on a brand look as it became clear that Poker Boy was a main part of my writing. Marble Grant, Ghost of a Chance books and stories, Sky Tate, Pahket Jones, and others like Detective Crunch are all in the Poker Boy Universe. Finally, with all the learning I have been doing on brands and trademarks, the brand for Poker Boy finally came together with the brilliant help of Stephanie at WMG. And the look of the covers is finally settled as well. So firing up a Poker Boy Kickstarter…
-
My Filing System
I Am Both Organized and Not Organized For 67 months, I did Smith’s Monthly Magazine. Had one short break in the middle somewhere and now it has been on hiatus for over two years because of the life rolls. But it is coming back. Soon. The last few days I discovered once again why I loved doing that magazine and what is really important to me about it almost more than anything. It is my filing system. Every month I would publish four or five or six short stories. I never repeated a short story, so there are 270 different stories in those 67 issues. There are also novels and…
-
Fun and Excitement…
Building a Brand… Right now Steph and I (mostly Steph) are building the Poker Boy brand. In all the years I have been writing Poker Boy stories (since 1987), I have never been able to come up with a look, a brand look, for Poker Boy. At times, his stories had covers that sort of illustrated an event in the story. At one point we went to these really nifty cartoon covers designed by comic writer Lee Allred. Then we gave up on those and I started putting really wonderful fantasy women on the covers. So with a bunch of brainstorming and just standing back and asking basic questions, we…
-
Explaining the Class
LICENSING: HOW TO CREATE A BRAND The class is starting tomorrow. (Tuesday) It is a nine week class leading up to the Licensing Expo. It is on Teachable. So let me set a scene for you… You are at (name any place as a setting that you might run into someone with a connection to a license). For now just think major convention or the Licensing Expo, but it can happen anywhere and has to both me and Kris. A person who can license IP who is interested in finding new IP to license comes to learn you own IP. Here is how the conversation goes… Person: “So, what’s your…
-
Update On My Challenge…
Going Along As Expected… I had a really bad start to March for various reasons, and missed some days on my daily story challenge. I expected times like that to happen. But missing some stories does not mean I have failed. Snort. Not by a long shot. This is a very long year and I would have been delusional if I had thought I could actually write a story every day without missing for an entire year. (Have any of you have a memory of bad days during your year?) But I still plan on having 365 stories by the end. I am on target for that. And here is…
-
Kris and I Both Noticed…
Writer’s Having Trouble with Five Senses… Especially Taste and Smell. So Kris came up with an entire series of short classes, with a webinar at the end for questions, to deal with this problem, and other problems writers are having. She decided she liked the idea of doing a series of QUICK AND DIRTY WORKSHOPS. Short Solutions to Long-Term Problems. The first one is on Taste and Smell and is available now and will start shortly. Three weeks of videos from Kris, two assignments, then after the third week Kris will do a webinar to answer questions. It is on the WMG Writer Store because of the webinar involved. (She…