• Challenge

    One Challenge Aside, Maybe Another One Coming…

    Officially Tossed in the Towel on the Story-Per-Day Challenge… I will total up the number of stories at the end of the year, but got a hunch it will not be as many as the first time I tried that challenge. Just flat the wrong year for me to give this a push. Maybe on a future year I can get it off the ground. But thinking I might do a seemingly impossible challenge starting up in mid-November when I turn 75. The challenge? To publish 75 major books in my 75th year. Stand alone novels, novellas, collections, and any major product I edit with my name as editor on…

  • Challenge

    Books Don’t Spoil….

    But Covers and Sales Copy Need Refreshing At Times… At WMG, this is an ongoing thing. Kris and I are always doing new projects that take priority on the publishing side. For example, the new Fey novel I showed you last night. New issues of Pulphouse. New Collides series volumes, and so on. But we also have over a thousand titles up, or getting put back up, right now. And we have learned a lot in the last ten years and are a thousand times better cover designers than our old staff could ever dream of being. So we have a lot of books that need refreshing. A lot, to…

  • Challenge

    Fun Updates…

    We Are Slowly Gaining On Catching Up… I recorded one stretch goal class tonight and got it up. Poop-Up #92 Glass in Space for the Four Science Fiction books. I also got it to the folks with the Pop-Up subscriptions and Lifetime Everything Subscription. I will be doing the other three this next week or so. Pulphouse #40 is out and paper copies will be following in a week or so they tell me. Three Epic Fantasy Kickstarter is all done and the books have all be shipped except for a slipcased set. That one is taking longer. Those books are way cool. Poker Boy Kickstarter is all done as…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign

    Kickstarter Friday

    Some Fiction Campaigns That Are Worth Studying and Backing… I do this every Friday when I have a few campaigns I think are worth putting here. I will not say much negative about a campaign. If there is too much or it is going to fail, I won’t post it here. And for those wondering where I get off judging Kickstarter Campaigns by fiction writers, I have now done 55 of them, every one funded and made money. My first campaign was in the very early days of Kickstarter. But if yoyu are going to study campaigns that I have done, study the last year or so. I am continuing…

  • Challenge

    Aces Won… But Sloppy…

    Aces Advance to the Semi-Finals in the WNBA Seven straight seasons. But the game on Sunday Seattle just outplayed the Aces to barely win. Tonight’s do-or-die game the Aces were sloppy everywhere except for Wilson and barely escaped with the win. Barely. I really love to watch great basketball, so I hated the first half of the season when the Aces were just sort of making the motions and very, very sloppy all the time. Just hard to watch.  Until at home the Lynx toasted them by 50 plus points. That woke them up and they played fantastic basketball as they can do with the level of talent they have. …

  • Challenge,  Smiths Monthly

    Something For Myself Tonight…

    I Signed Up for a New Edition of InDesign… This new computer screen I have is so small compared to my older ones, I had some trouble with small print and my eyes, but I made it work.  More than likely at some point I will need a Mac mini and two HUGE screens to really make this easier. So I opened up a Smith’s Monthly cover template, which opened just fine with the new program. Then in just under one hour (with only three Google searches to find how to do something and two of them were wrong), I built the cover and spine and back cover for Issue…

  • Challenge

    Aces Got Beat… Raiders Were Just Bad…

    Two of Our Sports Teams Here In Vegas… Monday, the Raiders forgot to show up with all their promise for that game. Nothing to talk about. Ughh… Aces tonight went into Seattle with a 17 game winning streak and just got outplayed. A really good game, down to the last few seconds, and Seattle played just good enough to beat the best team in the league. So now we have a playoff game on Thursday night. Then (with luck and the Aces play well) another on Sunday against either Atlanta or the Fever, who just handed Atlanta their heads tonight. Wow. I love having season tickets to the Aces games.…

  • Challenge

    I Am An Easy Touch…

    Cats Stick With Me At Night… Kris goes to bed early because she likes to get up early and run when it is not so hot outside. I stay up and write and work on other things like workshops and such until around 5 am. So after Kris heads off to bed, our two cats stick with me in my office. Usually the white kitten (Angel) is asleep on a box under my business computer. And Gavin (old orange guy) sleeps in a cat bed we have for him under the window in my office, between my writing chair and the window. So tonight I am tired, but figured I…

  • Challenge

    Quick Post On AI Writing and Copyright…

    Got Three Letters… All three explained to me (I did not take then as condescending, but they were…) that I did not understand how the copyright office is having issues on how much human touch needs to be done to make a piece of AI art or writing able to be protected by copyright and thus owned as a property. Basic rule of copyright… It must be human created. Is a 10% change enough of an AI output? No. How about an 80% change? Is that enough to have it deemed human created? (We won’t talk about the minimum requirement of originality because that is just mostly moot.) So yes,…

  • Challenge

    AI in Writing and Art…

    I Messed Up Last Night… On my Friday night listing of some Kickstarters I thought were good, I didn’t notice that one of them had used AI art. (It has been removed.) Let me be very clear here now. AI art and AI writing was trained by wholesale copyright theft. For one company alone, I had over 200 titles stolen to help them train their stupidity. That company just settled for 1.6 billion on a class action suit and will more than likely be going out of business. AI art was trained by wholesale theft as well and there are a ton of lawsuits pending. Some good artists friends had…