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New Poker Boy Story…
Published Today… Monday… In the WMG 2020 Holiday Spectacular. That’s right my story “Hidden Box Inn and Casino” is the Monday, December 14th story in the Spectacular. It’s a Poker Boy story and the newest. And it’s a holiday story, but not what you would think of as a normal holiday story. After all, it is Poker Boy. Here is what Kris said in the introduction to my story. (She writes an introduction to every story.) Hidden Box Inn and Casino by Dean Wesley Smith Genre/Mood: Light and fun fantasy After one of our bleakest stories, here’s one of our most fun stories. Dean Wesley Smith is a co-mastermind of…
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An Idea For Balance for the New Year…
Combining Challenges… This is sort of a simple idea, but it has some catches to it. A lot of writers I know are setting writing goals for the new year. And publishing goals as well. I have my publishing goal half set, my writing not so much. And I have been focusing on exercise and on losing a few more pounds. (How cliche is that for a New Year’s goal?) So need goals there as well. So here is how I have been looking at each segment. Time. Exercise… I want to get back to 10,000 steps a day streak. For me that’s five miles. One to two miles are…
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Went Running…
Well, Sort of… Kris and I and Lisa did a live, in-person race this morning. One of the few the state has allowed to happen. We went out in 25 person waves every thirty minutes, and even inside each wave we were spread apart. Very safe. Beautiful day, sunny, in the 60s. Typical Vegas December day. I managed to run just over a mile of the three miles, walked the rest. Not exercising much for three weeks since the marathon and still slightly sore feet made this an easy one. Kris beat me by a long ways and she’s nursing a sore knee. And I think Lisa tied her best…
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Working On A Story…
Watching a Couple of Movies… So I am behind on email and will get caught up tomorrow after we do a 5k charity run. My feet are back healthy as they will ever be, so it will feel good to be back out. Plus we had two charity runs scheduled for tomorrow, but one was forced virtual. The one we are doing has groups of 25 going off (spaced out) every thirty minutes. Masks required and gladly worn. I am sure there will be pictures. I’m going to use tomorrow to ramp back up my amount of steps per day. I am doing a bit of muscle work as well,…
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Year of Changes…
Now Looking at A Year of Doing… This last year has been hard, to say the least, on most people. And we are not done yet. Not by a ways, even with the good news today of a vaccine being approved in Great Britain, Canada, and today in the States. We have a long three or four months ahead of us before this even begins to turn around, especially with the non-mask wearers and their stupidity here in the States. For most of this last year it was impossible to try to plan anything. The Licensing Class we have going we just added a year. And supposedly now the Licensing…
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Holiday Stories
All Kinds of Ways to Get Holiday Stories… I have said this before, and more than likely I will say it again. I really like the basic Lifetime Holiday Movies and the Hallmark Holiday Movies. I tend to look at and scan through, or actually watch completely, one movie a night. Kris doesn’t really watch that kind of movie, so its me, just enjoying the journey, often with a bag of popcorn, or on some nights a mug of hot chocolate. Best movie so far that is new this year on Lifetime is a time travel one, standard letters through time plot with a portal, but it worked fine. My…
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Last Days of a Great Storybundle!!
I Have a New Collection In This Bundle Just over one day left to get this bundle. This collection premiered in this nifty Space Opera Storybundle curated by Robert Jeschonek. A Billion Earths: A Seeders Universe Collection of five major stories in my Seeders Universe. And the Storybundle it is in is flat out amazing. You don’t want to miss those books if you are a fan of space opera. You also get the book that started Kris’s incredible Retrieval Artist series. So don’t miss this. Just a day to go and the bundle will be gone. My collection is not published out wide yet, and won’t be for another…
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Five Story Collections
A Brand New Series of Classes… Okay, this is not official yet, but here is what Kris and I are thinking for the Collection Class Series. This is the really fun idea that has popped up a bunch of times since the summer. This would not be part of the regular workshop classes or subscription, but something very different and you will see why. But the upshot is that by the end of the class, you will have published a five-story collection you didn’t have going into the class. Here is. the structure of each class in general. A nine week class. (Yes, I said nine weeks.) And each week…
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Time to Look Ahead…
And We Can!!! Finally, the end of this year is in site, a vaccine is in sight, and here in the States a new government is in site. So it is the 7th of December and time to slowly start making plans for the new year. Writing plans, business plans, exercise plans that were almost impossible to make four months (or even two months) ago. On exercise, since I finished the marathon, I overate and gave my feet time to heal, so gained five pounds. Winter/holiday weight I am sure, but going to drop it back off plus more after the holiday. So I am in the process of setting…
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Want Someone to Do It For Me…
I’ve Run Into This Lately A Few Times… Some writers are dead set on going to traditional publishing because they want someone to do the work for them. They believe their job starts and stops with writing. And back in 1990, that was the case. You wrote and the publisher published. Writers had no control at all and honestly in 1990 should not have asked for it or tried to get it. But that was thirty years ago. Writers now control everything, but beginning writers still come into writing wanting someone to do all the work for them. I’ve been trying to figure out why, since indie publishing is so…