• Challenge,  On Writing

    Some Hints on the Super Great Challenges

    THESE HINTS CAN APPLY CHALLENGE OR NOT… Those of you who are thinking of going for the $10,000 Lifetime Everything Subscription by having a fantastic year writing and publishing, or those of you who are just wanting to streamline a fantastic year writing, let me give you some hints to help out. Hint #1… Plan your writing hours to be as consistent as possible each week. Set a time each day and hit it. Hint #2… If you need 5,000 words a week, plan to do 7,500 words. You can always use the extra words the following week. But if you only plan exactly what you need and things miss…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Write Stuff Story Bundle Just Went Live!!

    THE WRITE STUFF STORY BUNDLE 2025 Kris put together a great bundle this year. Check it out at www.storybundle.com/writing. Kris’s blog is below explaining all this great stuff. The 2025 Write Stuff Bundle – Curated by Kristine Kathryn Rusch When I got into the writing business, it had been stable for decades. Traditional publishing had a monopoly on production and distribution. That part of the industry, based in New York (and London and other capitals for those of you outside of the U.S.), determined what we read, how long the books were available, and where we could buy them. Traditional publishing still exists. Fortunately, it’s not in charge of what we…

  • Challenge,  motivation,  On Writing,  publishing

    Rules for Each SUPER GREAT CHALLENGE

    The Early Bird Special Is Open For One Week… On any of the Super Great challenges, the cost is $600, but if you use the code: EarlyBird You get 20% off. ($480) (And yes, if you miss, you still get $600 credit.) Early Bird sale will last for one week. But if you make any of these new SUPER GREAT challenges, you get the LIFETIME EVERYTHING SUBSCRIPTION worth $10,000. Great challenges. So here are the rules to the new four SUPER GREAT challenges now up on WMG Teachable. —- The Super Great Challenge rules… — Write one short story per week for 52 weeks. — Stories must be minimum of…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    SUPER Great Challenges

    Blog Early Tonight Because of Licensing Expo… Starts tomorrow morning, so I might be late a touch on a few things, but will try not to. And will give a report here and on a couple of the classes later in the week. But quickly, I want to announce what is not up yet, but will be shortly on Teachable (shortly meaning a day or so.) THE SUPER GREAT CHALLENGES… Right now we have the following challenges you can sign up for at any time… Any genre… — The Great Challenge (write a story per week and send it to me for 52 weeks.) — The Great Novella Challenge (write…

  • Challenge,  Licensing,  publishing

    ADVANCED MAGIC BAKERY… Chapter Two

    Chapter Two… Market or No Market… You write this short story. All done. In your magic bakery you have created a magic pie. That pie has a lot of value that I will talk about in later chapters. But instead of taking the pie out of the kitchen and putting it in your store to sell to customers around the world, you just put it on a shelf in the kitchen, for some reason deciding not to market your story. Pie will not spoil. It can just sit there for years and years. But it is not making you any money, not paying you back for the time and energy…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    More Reading…

    So Chapter Two Another Day Off… As I talked about last night, my problems with most stories is not the writing. And I say so if I do have an issue with that. Been thinking about this as I read more and more stories with the same issue. Information flow problem. What do I mean by that? Simply put, most writers don’t know when to ease up on the details and back story and bring in the story itself, so I often don’t make it to the story even though the writing is great. That is an information flow problem. Can a hook help that at the opening? Not so…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    More Notes From An Editor…

    Again a Lot of Reading Tonight… Story after story after story so far tonight, the writing was good if not great. But I would be reading along and suddenly go “where is the story?” Oops… Another thing I noticed is flashbacks in openings. I guess the writer thinks that is a good way to help explain a character, but the reader (in this case me) is not grounded in the present of the story so when I  am taken back to some event in the past, I quit reading. And back to point one, that flashback is a long ways from any story. Oops… You know, writers, you don’t have…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  Pulphouse Fiction Magazine

    Back Tomorrow With Chapter Two…

    Got Too Busy Reading Tonight… Because of all the things that happened this last fall and through the winter, I got really behind on reading the stories for Pulphouse Fiction Magazine that were sent over the fall and winter from the Pulphouse Kickstarter last summer. But been giving every story a good chance, a good read, and finding some. I have been mixing up the topic stories through the fall, so the ones I have left are not that many in any month. One more week I should have a response to everyone who sent in a story through December. This has been a great time reading and I am…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  workshops

    LAST DAY OF FOUR MYSTERIES KICKSTARTER

    Get Four Of Kris’s Short Mystery Novels… The four books are new, and except for a publication in our Holiday Spectacular Calendar last fall of one of them, none of these have seen print. (Out of that Calendar, the one story won the Derringer Award.) Fantastic reading and all four books come automatically with any reward in the Kickstarter. In total we have hit six stretch goals counting the special backer one, which means all backers get six more Kristine Kathryn Rusch stories, plus for writers, four writing classes worth $1,650. That’s right, $1,650 value in writing classes for free for backing this campaign at any level. And if we…

  • Challenge,  publishing

    ADVANCED MAGIC BAKERY… CHAPTER ONE

    ADVANCED MAGIC BAKERY Copyright, Trademark, and Branding in the Modern World Dean Wesley Smith Chapter One: A Magic Pie   To start off with, I need to make sure this metaphor is totally clear. When you finish a story (a short story or a novella or a novel), you have created a magic pie. The pies are all the same size. The length of the work does not dictate the size of the pie in any way and I will explain that later. When a real baker makes a pie, there might be 20 different ingredients put into the mix in a certain way and baked in a certain way…