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Finished a Short Novel
Might Only Be a Novella Tonight I finished another Pakhet Jones story. Now basically I have written an entire larger story in six or seven short stories over the last month and a half. The one last night that I didn’t think stood up that well as a short story, only Kris said it did. Go figure, I’m only the author. I don’t know anything. And I mean that honestly when it comes to my own work. So tomorrow I am going to take all those stories and do the connecting tissue and a bunch more depth and see if it climbs solidly into novella length and maybe short novel…
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Special Mystery Workshops
Both Are Sent Out… If during the Crimes Collide Kickstarter, you took either or both of the mystery workshops, WRITING MYSTERY ENDINGS or WRITING CROSS GENRE MYSTERY, you should have in your email the information about them now. If you can’t find it, make sure you are looking on the email you used for Kickstarter, and also check your spam filter. If you still can’t find the email, contact me at once since both first sessions of the workshops start today. If you have not done the survey, do that and Josh will get me your information and I will send you the letter. For some reason we really pushed…
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In Person and Study Along Classes
March In-Person Workshop Cancelled… Not for Covid reasons, but because only three people were signed up. No surprise. So the March workshop THRILLER/HUMOR is going to be online in the Study Along format. The reading list has been out for that for a time now, so if you are in the Study Along for THRILLER/HUMOR, better get reading. It will take place March 21st to 24th. The May in-person craft workshop here in Vegas is going to happen just fine and the reading list for that is already out as well. It is the MYSTERY/CAPER and is held on May 16-19, which is right ahead of the Licensing Expo. We…
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A Day of Running
Finished Two 5K Runs… Started off way too early this morning in a park in Henderson. Really nifty park and lots of people for a good charity cause. Kris and I decided to stay together and just walk it since the run/walk was not timed. We walked until we got over our 5K and headed for a restaurant we had not been in for going on two years. The Squeeze Inn. We used to be regulars there, but you know… Pandemic. The manager and two of the wait staff remembered us and were shockingly excited to see us back. That was wonderful and let me tell you, it felt great…
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All the Art
Took Me Two More Hours Today… I found all the art for eighteen more book covers this afternoon and evening. Finding art I feel is the hardest thing about doing covers, and since I had gotten behind doing covers for all the January stories, I just decided to look for it all at once. So I would created a folder for the story that said say “Story 10 The Galactic Missing” Then I would move the word.doc of the story into the folder and open it, glance at it to remember the story, then go to find the art. In the case of “The Galactic Missing” which is a Seeder’s…
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Quick Update Tonight…
Got a Lot Done Today… Worked all day on workshops, and doing a lot of recording. Also worked on covers and downloaded 14 pieces of art for short story covers. I can tell you that took some time. Another 15 or so to go and I will be almost caught up. The art is the hardest part, so figured I would just do all the ones I was behind on all at once. Then the covers will take me ten minutes each to finish and I can get more raw stories to Patreon. www.patreon.com/DeanWesleySmith I hit my challenge tonight even with a very late 12:30 am start. A really twisted…
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Two More Stories on Patreon
And February Workshops are all started… Still lots of time to jump into them. And I will have the March ones posted in a few days as well. Story tonight was a group of characters from other series. It was a Sky Tate story, but had Poker Boy and Marble Grant in it. Great fun and came in just over 3,200 words. I started it this afternoon for a change and it took just about 2.5 hours. I also did covers for the 6th and 7th stories from January and got those two stories on Patreon for those following the raw stories. https://www.patreon.com/deanwesleysmith Covers for those are below. One is…
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I’m Up Late
So Not Much of Anything Tonight… I got a late start at the entire evening, so didn’t even get back to writing until 12:30 am. So finished the story about a new superhero character by the name of Skip Keepers. Basically a treasure hunt story for a marble. Yeah, we shall see. 2,400 words in two hours plus a break. About normal for me. So February is up and running. Onward I go. With luck I will have time tomorrow to do more stuff. Just got buried today, but still got the story done, something that would not have happened without the challenge. Here is an image of the treasure…
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January Challenge Stories
List of All 31 Stories for January… Well, after an amazingly difficult month in the real world, and basically just starting cold after a tough fall and December, I wrote 31 short stories, one per day, in January. Many, many nights I thought about just skipping the story and catching it up later, but I didn’t. All the stories were short stories except one I didn’t wrap up very well and it is a clear novel start. About eight of the stories are novel starts that I wrapped into short stories until somewhere in the middle of the month I managed to actually just write short stories. They ranged from…
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Patreon Updates
Smith’s Monthly #57 and 3 Raw Stories… Got those on Patreon. If you want to really see what Smith’s Monthly looks like, read the pdf version. You get to see it completely. And the last five pages with all the covers of all 57 issues is pretty stunning. But for those of you at the $5 level on Patreon and above, I put up both the Bookfunnel link and the pdf of Smith’s #57, the January issue. Also put up three more raw short stories from the challenge. What is slowing me down is the covers, of course. I did those three in an hour, but I got to find…