• Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    MidWinter Workshop Sale Starts Now!!!

    Blogging Early Tonight… Wanted to let everyone know about the sale starting now. Go to https://wmg-publishing-workshops-and-lectures.teachable.com/ Then hit “See All Courses” and find the course you want. It will be half price by hitting Purchase and then on the top of the next page put in the coupon code: MidWinter That will get you the class, the workshops, the lecture, or Pop-Up at half price. And you can buy as many as you want, but you have to do it one at a time since Teachable does not have a shopping cart. The MidWinter sale will last until Thursday, February 24th at 7 pm. In essence ten days. And yes,…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    Didn’t Run… Slept!

    Kris and I Both Slept In… We figured we needed the sleep more than we needed the three miles. And boy were we right.  And I took another hour plus nap later before finally feeling rested. Don’t buy any workshops tonight or in the morning until I give the go-ahead. We have decided to do a Mid-Winter sale. (Actually the code will be MidWinter to get half price.) That said, when the sale starts, I do have all the March workshops up, including the new one SECRETS IN CRAFT. It is a craft workshop talking about the secrets of writing better fiction. Might be one of the best craft workshops…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  running

    Going to Try For Sleep

    Got a 5K Run Early… So got my story done early, going to rest for a bit and go to bed a couple hours early. Still won’t get a full night’s sleep, but will help. The course tomorrow has a pretty good hill on it, but I am still going to try to break 40 minutes. Now my fastest is 31:19, but won’t get close to that since that was two years ago and I was five pounds lighter and it was a flat course. So 40 minutes is my goal. I know, for you runners, that’s slow, but I’m old, and if I do that I should win my…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Story Tonight Was Novella

    Seven Stories plus Transitions and Fillers… I spent all evening doing this, making sure information was not repeated too badly from story to story, lining it all up as 19 chapters, adding transition to keep the main story line moving through it all. Seven stories are the core. I wrote almost 3,000 new words tonight, more than equal to a short story. So counting this novella called BIG EYES as my story for the night. It will be the lead story in Smith’s Monthly #58 which will be on Patreon and out to subscribers in a week or so. Plus next week it will be part of a cat bundle.…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Tried Something New For Me…

    Flipped Viewpoints in a Story… Now, this would have been so much easier to just write a new story completely, but since I am doing this challenge, and I was in a spot that it made sense to do this stunt, I thought I would try it. My suggestion… Don’t. I had a Poker Boy story called “Mystery Cat” that also had in it Pakhet Jones. But it was a Poker Boy story, and Poker Boy is first person. I wrote it about two years ago or so and published it in Smith’s Monthly back about a year ago. Pakhat Jones stories are also first person. But in the Poker…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    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…

  • Challenge,  workshops

    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…

  • Challenge,  workshops

    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…

  • Challenge,  running

    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…

  • Challenge,  Cover Fun,  running

    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…