A Non-Event
No Eclipse Crowds at All…
In fact, this weekend has less traffic and people than a normal August weekend. The hype and all the warnings clearly scared people away. Hotels have empty rooms, the roads are like a winter week-day.
Every business, hotel, restaurant, and store was staffed up with people scheduled to work overtime. Lots of hours and work had gone into this for every business and government agency here on the coast. I have a hunch the grocery stores are going to take it the hardest with all the extra stuff they ordered, now rotting in the vegetable aisles and meat counters.
All for naught.
Nada. Nothing. Zero. Zip.
The town is in shock.
And the irony is that the weather will be great here on Monday morning.
What a bunch of hype. Just stunning, and I believed it as well.
So us locals and a few tourists will see the totality when it hits landfall on Monday. And thus, sadly, we have lost an important weekend for business in this town. Thank god we don’t have another full eclipse in my lifetime hitting this town.
Not sure if the businesses here could stand another one.
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SEPTEMBER ONLINE WORKSHOPS…
All have openings at the moment. Information at
www.wmgpublishingworkshops.com
Any questions at all, feel free to write me. And if you are confused as to which workshop to take first, we have a full curriculum posted on its own page. I will be updating the curriculum in September adding in the new workshops.
Class #25… Sept 5th … Depth #3: Research
Class #26… Sept 5th … Writing into the Dark
Class #27… Sept 5th … Business
Class #28… Sept 5th … Endings
Class #29… Sept 5th … Writing Fiction Sales Copy
Class #30… Sept 5th … Writing and Selling Short Stories
Class #31… Sept 6th … Depth in Writing
Class #32… Sept 6th … Advanced Character and Dialog
Class #33… Sept 6th … Cliffhangers
Class #34… Sept 6th … Pacing Your Novel
Class #35… Sept 6th … How to Edit Your Own Work
Class #36… Sept 6th … Writing Fantasy
Writing into the Dark is a new workshop starting in September.
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THE UNIVERSE BETWEEN BUNDLE
I curated this bundle and I had great fun with it.
I loved living in that middle ground. All my writing falls in the middle ground between two places. Every story. Some more obviously than others, but without a doubt, every story or novel that I write, or every book or magazine I edit, falls in the “between” place.
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And it has an entire volume of Fiction River. A lot of short stories in there as well.
Give this one a look, folks. I think you will be very happy you did.
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10 Comments
Michael W Lucas
dang it! We should have come out there.
David Anthony Brown
I think a lot of folks are heading to the Midwest for the totality. I briefly toyed with the idea of going with some friends to Missouri or Nebraska, but the closest hotel room was in Des Moines. That and frankly, the massive crowds of people scared me away. I’ll enjoy the partial eclipse from my back porch, thank you very much.
Jason M
Hey Dean, a non-related question for a non-event post:
What book, if any, would you recommend to learn more about how the Golden Era pulp writers worked? I’m curious about their habits, their outlets, their pay scale, etc. A good general history. Anything like that out there?
Thanks!
Chong Go
Ooh. That sounds interesting! (Wasn’t there a book years ago about the guy who wrote the Tarzan series? I have a vague memory of it being something along those lines.)
Sean McLachlan
Frank Gruber’s The Pulp Jungle is a good place to start.
dwsmith
Exactly what I was going to say. Thanks, Sean.
Jason, sadly there is no summary book of the time. But a number of the pulp writers did books. Some suck. But I have read fifty or more of them and the Gruber is the one that sticks for me as well.
Also, books on Lawrence Block and Robert Silverberg will give you some insights in how the transition moved into the fifties and sixties. Those two, along with Mike Resnick and others wrote hundreds of books over a very short time.
Mark Kuhn
If I’m not mistaken, didn’t someone write a book about Erle Stanley Gardner’s process and production?
allynh
This is a good summary from the NYTimes.
‘The Fiction Factory’
By ALBIN KREBSMARCH 12, 1970
http://www.nytimes.com/1970/03/12/archives/the-fiction-factory-erle-stanley-gardner-author-of-the-perry-mason.html
Thomas Bennett
The eclipse in 2024 won’t be seen well out there?
Martin L. Shoemaker
It will run Texas to Maine. I suspect Oregon is about as far from totality as you can get in the lower 48.