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Fun Challenge
October Until The End of the Year Challenge… Actually, only part of it. A really fun publishing challenge. Shortly I will be putting up on Teachable all the Collection Classes for 2023. 18 different ones. Six from the first year we did them in 2021 (and if you bought the full year, yes, you can take them in 2023.) Six from the second year. And six new ones for 2023. I will have all of these posted in about a week or so. Each collection class is 9 weeks long and you write five stories during that time, as well as learn how to put a collection together, do the…
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Cold Poker Gang Book Free Right Now
Kill Game… First Book In the Series It is free right now just about everywhere, because it will be on a Bookbub on Saturday. So you can grab it any time. Cold Poker Gang is a series of puzzle mysteries where retired Las Vegas detectives join the Cold Poker Gang task force to solve cold cases. Strangely enough, there is a cold case task force here in Vegas, two guys, that I didn’t know about when I started this series a decade ago. Not sure they existed back then. I love these books and hope to write more in the series this coming year. Below is a nifty book video…
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False Start On Buffet Book!
Really, Really False Start Headed out to go to the Palace Station Hotel and Casino. It is an off-strip casino fairly close to downtown. We often go there because they have a great movie theater upstairs and for years I had been looking forward to trying their buffet. It seems that less than two weeks ago, the buffet closed down for good. They have some other great-looking restaurants, but no longer a buffet. Well, that was a bummer. Never went by the place when there wasn’t a good line to get in. My sense is they couldn’t find enough employees to keep it going. That is a big problem here…
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Freezing and Typing
Yes, I Know… It’s 101 Degrees Outside at Midnight Right Now… But at the moment I am thinking of trying to dig out my ski parka and if I could type in gloves I would. You see, someone in this building needs to have their air-conditioner fixed, and it seems for some strange reason they have to turn off the entire building from 1 am to 8 am. So Kris came up with the idea (or maybe I did, too cold to remember) to turn down ours very low until it gets shut off at 1 am. I must say our air-conditioner works very, very well. The low tonight will…
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Lessons from the Writing of the Fey Videos
Now Up On Teachable… Kris has been writing on Fey novels solidly since she got everything cleaned up and going after the first Fey Kickstarter campaign ended. But it took her a while to record the ten videos of the Lessons from the Writing of the Fey, because, to be honest, she wanted a few books under her fingers before she looked back again. The book got out a number of months back and now tonight, on Teachable, I have posted the videos. I have written personally to everyone who backed the Kris videos on that first Fey Kickstarter and gave them the way to get to them on Teachable,…
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Hadestown
Amazingly Good and Worth Seeing!! Of course, most people know that. I didn’t, couldn’t even get the name to stick in my head until Kris convinced me to go with her tonight. My review… Wow! Hadestown tells the stories of two Greek mythological couples — Hades, god of the underworld and his queen Persephone, as well as the singer Orpheus and his love Eurydice. The basic plot is that Eurydice dies, goes to the underworld (aka Hadestown). And then shit happens. The jazz and blues music was amazing, the chorus did wonders, and the Three Fates at times stole the show, although the guy who played Hades had an amazing…
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Past Crimes Bundle Last Day!!
If You Want Great Mystery Reading, Don’t Miss This One!!! I’m going to reprint here my introduction to the Past Crime’s Bundle on this last day. I was amazingly honored to be able to put this together and work with these other fantastic mystery writers. But all good things come to an end, and this bundle and the deal to get the ten books will end on Thursday evening. So don’t miss it. Just one day left!! Go to www.Storybundle.com/crime So below is my blog/introduction to the StoryBundle that I think describes it pretty well. It Came Together This Way The past often brings out the best in crime. In…
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Fun New Book I’m Going To Do
It All Started with a New iPad… A really big one, like my old one that had pretty much given up working a year ago. A new iPad and a desire to get out of the condo more often. Those two things are a deadly combination. And then add in an article in the daily paper about the buffets back open around Las Vegas. Oh, oh…. The thought hit my mind fairly quickly…. “I could take my new iPad with its fancy new keyboard and go write a short story while sitting in a buffet.” Yes, I could do that. Oh, fun. It would take some discipline to maintain my…
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NOTICE!!! My Old E-Mail is Toast
Can’t Get It Working… So if you have been sending me things to dean@deanwesleysmith e-mail address, I have not seen them and have no idea where they are going. Not one clue. It seemed to be killed when we took this site to a new host. So please send them again to my workshop address, which is under the contact me tag above if you don’t know it. Sorry about that. I have spent far, far to much time trying to get that old address working. So I am tossing in the towel.
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Still A Mentor Spot Open…
Been Three Years Since I Opened This Up… Since a number of the writers I was helping in this program are not writing me as often, I decided last week to open this back up again for three spots. I really enjoy working closely with writers over the years, but I don’t push myself on them. I am just there to help, answer questions, and point in a certain direction. I want each writer to be the writer they want to be. And I am a pretty good cheerleader along the way. And this is to help fiction writers. I suck at helping nonfiction writers. So back last week I…