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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…
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Blog 3,650 In A Row…
Without a Miss!!! That’s right, I have had a blog up here of one type or another every day for ten straight years, as of today, August 1st. No computer crash (three or four), no power outage (dozens and dozens), no sickness (one night in a hospital), and no moves (3 major moves) caused me to miss a day in ten straight years. That is flat pure luck. And a lot of help from Kris who nightly asks me if I have my blog done. Thank you! During the ten years blogging, I wrote eight or nine non-fiction writing books here as a chapter per blog post, plus started three…
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Mentor Openings (Not Part of Sale)
I Am Missing The Interchange… Back in 2019, I opened up what we called a mentorship where I answered questions on anything that person wanted in writing and business of publishing. I took seven mentees total in 2019 and early 2020. How it sets up is that I asked the person to report in to me every Sunday (or Monday) about what they were doing, progress or no progress. Writing or publishing done or not done. And plans for the coming week. I was sort of a check-point each week. If there were questions, I tried to answer them, or look at a cover, or a publishing idea or sales…
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THE PAST CRIMES BUNDLE (My Introduction)
It Came Together This Way The past often brings out the best in crime. In fact, for a vast majority of crime fiction (mystery), the crime has already happened in the past and solving what happened, or who did it, or why the crime happened is the fun of it all. I personally love past crimes of another category: cold cases. When the question of who done it or why in the normal crime stories doesn’t get answered in any satisfying way, the crime becomes a cold case. And the passing of time makes it harder and harder to solve that dormant case. Cold cases are my personal favorite past…
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The Great Pandemic Escape
Amazing to Watch… For two years, almost all of us were stuck in place. We didn’t dare travel like the old days to see family or friends or just get away. But now, even though the pandemic isn’t really over, most feel safe enough to travel, especially those smart enough to be vaccinated and boosted. And these last three months for writers have been the time of great forgetting anyway, so for writers, April, May, June, and July have been brutal on writing goals and schedules. Far worse than normal. And I couldn’t figure out why it was so much worse, exactly, until Kris and I started noticing that our…
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Close Brush With Death…
Honestly, This Might Be One of My Closest… Over the years, in my life, I have had a lot of close brushes with death, from being swept under a rock in fast rapids to getting tangled in high-tension power lines while skydiving. And sadly enough, there are others. All of which start with me saying, “I thought it was a good idea at the time.” But yesterday, I had a very close call and I wasn’t even doing anything stupid. (go figure) Kris and I were headed down to the Arts District to have lunch at a favorite restaurant. We pulled into a diagonal parking spot, nose of the passenger…
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Just a General Day…
We All Have Them… Seems like nothing really got done, yet when I look back at the day, a lot actually did get done. I got a lot of email done before Kris and I headed out for a great lunch at a new place we wanted to try. It’s a keeper. Did my first two miles of exercise around the casino the new restaurant was in. Got to stay inside since it is summer heat here. Then I headed to the grocery store and did the shopping, then home and cooked dinner. Then I recorded a week of one of the new workshops. After that I headed to the…
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Science Fiction In Real Life
Just Got to Be Aware of It… Late this afternoon, because it is 110 degrees outside, Kris and I went down to the Resorts World hotel complex. Just finished a year ago, three major Hilton brand hotels in the same massive building. The reason was to walk and get exercise without going to a gym. And there was a small restaurant there that we wanted to try for dinner when done walking. If you walked into the lobbies of all three hotels, then back along the casino and then up and back in the huge interior mall that’s bigger than Fremont Street and then back, it was a one mile…
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A Fun Teaser
I Did a Podcast About Writing… With John Goodwin for the Writers of the Future Podcast. I always have a lot of fun talking with John and I think that comes across here. This is a very short teaser they put together on YouTube for the podcast I did with them, with a bunch of pictures of me and others at the event. One picture you can see me and my long-time good friends Keven J. Anderson and Rob Sawyer. Fun picture. So take a look. The topic of this teaser is a Hubbard essay on writing that even going on a hundred years after he wrote it is worth…