• Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  workshops

    Stories #4 and #5 for February…

    Somehow Managed to Do Them… So the challenge is still going. I have totally failed at trying to write during the day, but will get that changed as well shortly. Tomorrow, since we have cleaners swarming all over our place in the afternoon, I will be heading out to our storage unit for two reasons. I will be looking for more of our author’s copies (missing dozens and dozens of boxes of them… yes, the storage unit is that big…) and at some point I will dig into a bunch of boxes of digests and do more sheets of half titles. I have a good thousand or so half titles…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  workshops

    Marble Grant Kickstarter Live!!

    SO HAPPY ABOUT THIS ONE!! Marble Grant is one of my favorite characters, so it feels great to have her stories take a step out into the world. Four books… three brand new collections. Plus we decided to do Marble Grant on mugs, t-shirts, sweatshirts, and totes just for fun. And two really special workshops, one on writing ghosts and one on writing other paranormal creatures. Plus on this campaign you can jump into the full year of Publishing Mondays at half price. And more fun stuff. Here is the link to it. Marble Grant Kickstarter Take a look at the fun little video Kris did for Marble. (Might have…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign

    MARBLE GRANT KICKSTARTER…

    LAUNCHES AT NOON… I am so excited about this one. I love the covers and it takes the brand I have had on Marble Grant now for almost ten years and really makes it come alive. So much fun to have a character I have been writing and having fun with now finally get a chance to shine and for others to see why I love these stories so much. Marble Grant adventures started in a short story called “Blind Date” where she and her date were killed by a mugger. He went on to the next life while she hung around to become a ghost agent. Her partner and…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  On Writing,  workshops

    Story #2 February…

    Yes, Restarting Numbering Each Month… I know I got 31 stories done in January. Restarting keeps the number lower so I don’t think of eating the elephant too much. And gives me a monthly target for stories completed. Tonight’s story was a late starting story because I had a ton of other stuff to do, so I went for a character with a lot of voice that I am having fun with and that is my new character, Private Detective “No-Neck” Crunch. All the story titles start “A Woman Who…” And the last part of the title is a hint to where he will find the body of the woman…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  workshops

    Ate the Elephant For a Time…

    Had To Sit Down and Take Deep Breaths… You see, I have four big whiteboards on one wall of my office. They have the titles of the short stories that are in the first 50 issues of Smith’s Monthly. I stopped at Issue 50 because I ran out of room on the boards. There are 220 titles of stories written up there. 220 stories, covers an entire wall. I hope to do 365 stories this year. I happened to glance up at the wall of story titles and my mind went, “That is just 2/3rds of the number of stories you hope to write this year.” Wham!!!  I went from…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    January Challenge Stories

    Managed A Story Per Day For 31 Days… I have some adjustments to make, such as starting earlier in the day. But very happy with going from zero to full speed on fiction. 101,280 consumable words. That’s on pace for about 1.2 million words this year. Not up to my average yet, but close and a lot of things in January cut into that word count, so we shall see how it works in February and March. Working to get back above 1.3 million words. Here are the story titles for January… List of JANUARY Challenge Stories The Notes She Left Behind… Thunder Mountain A Lost Darkness… Marble Grant Death…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  workshops

    Golf, Kickstarter, and Story #30

    Fun Day! It was a stunningly beautiful day and professional fiction writer Ron Collins and I walked down to the Strat to hit golf balls. Ron is a good player and I used to be. But now I am 20 pounds overweight and have a new Titanium shoulder, getting any kind of control of the ball is a challenge. And a lot of fun. A lot of laughs, actually. But toward the end of the hour I had worked out a few things and was managing to hit shots against the back fence. Without hitting either side fence. Then this afternoon I started writing before taking a nap and cooking…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Story #29…

    Two More Stories to Complete January… Considering I jumped from zero to full speed overnight, I will take it. I will do an inventory of the stories and word counts from January in a few days. On the publishing side, Kris has read 12 of them and I will be putting the first collection of ten together as soon as I work out an issue with doing the covers. The idea is for me to do a collection every two weeks once I start them. I will also be putting some of the stories in issues of Smith’s Monthly. Thinking the restart of that now March. I will also be…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Story #28… Poker Boy

    I Will Do a Full List After the 1st… But still going… Story #28… Two title halves were “Who You Calling…” and “Sweet Cheeks…” No idea what “Who You Calling Sweet Cheeks?” was going to be about until I started typing and up popped Poker Boy. Started it in the afternoon this time, got about 700 words done and the rest about 1 this morning, finishing fast and easy. Love stories that do that. I just kept typing until I found the end. I will do a word count as well, and I got to do an introduction and covers to the first collection. Kris has now read eleven of…

  • Challenge,  publishing

    Story #27…

    Just Kind of Stumbling Along… Got some adjustments to make, but about to drop this challenge into the publishing part. That’s going to make it even more interesting. Story tonight was a Bryant Street story and I started it with a play off of Serling’s old Twilight Zone episode starts. Kind of fun. Also I think I got it finally why writers have trouble with valuation of their own property. Here is the analogy. If you built say a theater complex with all kinds of extras involved. And you opened it for business and the first night it made $500, if you were a writer you would think that theater…