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Got Pushback On App Idea
Not At All Sure Why… Of the three ideas I mentioned the other day that I thought might be ripe to start gaining speed, the most attention went to the mass market size and a lot of people liked the gift card for electronic books. But wow did I get a lot of “That can’t work!” about writers having an app. Not in comments, but in private email and other ways. Stunning. And no one has a really good reason why not. It might be that apps look “important” and hard to do or something. Or that writers can’t see any reason to use one for themselves. And I must…
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February Workshops About to Disappear
Still Time to Jump In… The February regular workshops are starting into their second week and will soon be replaced by the March workshops. Nine of them in February and they are a good group. Depth in Writing is the workshop to take first, but this month if you have had Depth, I would suggest either Teams or Endings. Both will really help your writing. I think understanding teams in fiction just makes novel writing so much easier. It gives books almost an automatic structure or bones. And knowing all about endings makes readers want to buy your next books. So anyhow, you sign up on Teachable if interested, or…
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Business Workshops Around the Country
Three… Maybe Four… Worth Thinking About But only on one does the entire focus stay on the upper levels of Indie writing only. That is the Master Business Class WMG Publishing puts on every October in Las Vegas. Details below. What are the others? First off, SuperStars Writing Seminar in Colorado Springs just finished and it is great. Hosted by WordFire Press and Kevin J. Anderson and Rebecca Moesta, it is a great place to go and network with other writers and learn about all basic sides of the business. Did I say networking. They are great at that. But Superstars spends about half its time on traditional publishing. But if…
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Reading as an Editor
I Have A Lot of Reading to Do… As does everyone else who is attending the 2019 Anthology workshop here in Las Vegas the first week of March. And even better, the stories are all written by writers who sure know what they are doing. This is not slush. This is what Kris and I used to call back in the days (early 1990s) of Pulphouse or F&SF reading, the “pro pile.” Everyone attending the workshop is reading like editors, not readers, or they should be, even though only five of us professional editors will be up front actually buying stories. But I have a real advantage in this reading.…
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Some Ideas I Think Might Be Ripe
This Is Just A Fun Thought Experiment… But I think that some ideas in publishing that have been around for a time and not gotten much traction might be nearing time-is-right place. Just my opinions, and I am sure I am missing a ton of other close, but not ready yet, things. But here are three to think about that I personally think are close. Idea One… Gift Cards for Books Now back in 2011, we did a couple books on credit-card-like cards with a code on the back to download the book. In essence the idea was to give a physical form to electronic books. We mounted the books…
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Mentor Program
Still One Spot… For the Kickstarter campaign, I had opened up two mentor spots, bringing my total of writers I would be working with to 5. I felt good about that number since the ones that started in January seemed to be doing fine, moving along, checking in. And one of the writers who wanted to join the program through Kickstarter doesn’t even want to start until the middle of the year. So why do I have an extra? Some person I had never talked to and who wouldn’t answer my email (so I had a hunch something was wrong) just dropped out in the last hour or so, as…
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Last 24 Hours
Only One Thing I Can Write About Tonight… Last 24 hours of the Smith’s Stories: Make 100 Paperbacks Kickstarter campaign. You can get regular workshop credits through the campaign to use any time in the future. Get lectures and other stuff as well. And eight of either my mystery novels (Cold Poker Gang) or eight of my sf novels (Thunder Mountain). Not counting the 100 short stories either solo or in three collections. (Every award level gets the three collections in electronic form when I am done.) And, since the campaign made its first stretch goal, everyone gets another large collection of my stories (Stories from July) and a Classic…
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February Workshops Starting
And Some Other Stuff… First off, the February regular workshops are starting up. Nine of them and they are a good group. Depth in Writing is the workshop to take first, but this month if you have had Depth, I would suggest either Teams or Endings. Both will really help your writing. I think understanding teams in fiction just makes novel writing so much easier. It gives books almost an automatic structure or bones. And knowing all about endings makes readers want to buy your next books. So anyhow, you sign up on Teachable if interested, or if you have a workshop credit you want to use, write me and…
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As Promised…
Pictures… Crawled out of bed at 6:30 a.m. and Kris and I were headed out the door before 7:30 am on a rainy and slightly cold morning for Las Vegas. All to attend a “5k fun run.” Actually it was for a great cause and made money to support rare childhood diseases and turned out to be a lot of fun, although very, very wet. (A squishing sound coming from a 68 year-old-man is never promising.) For the first time since I fell in November, I finished ahead of Kris and with a time around 38 minutes, but still run/walk. Got to work that down to around 30 minutes which…
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There Will Be New Pictures
A Run At 8 am… Off for another 5k fun run in about seven hours, so this will be shorter than I had planned and I will get to the writing blog later. Need some sleep. But that means tomorrow Kris will have new pictures of our run on Facebook. Those are always fun. But before staggering off to get some sleep, I did want to say that the regular February Workshops are starting on Tuesday and Wednesday. Good list. Nine workshops. And soon I will have the workshops for April-July up. That will include some new workshops. And the next Futures Workshop called Structures will start in March. First…