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More Way Back Stuff
Picture Then and Now… We are in the middle of the Fantasy Study Along workshop, so sort of busy, like a great deal. Some great reading and such. So instead of doing a blog that would take my brain, I decided to put up a picture from the way-back machine. The first picture is in my publisher’s office on the second floor of the Pulphouse Publishing Inc. building in Eugene, Oregon, in January of 1991. It was taken by James Fiscus. I was 40 years old in that picture and the publisher of the 5th largest publisher of science fiction, fantasy, and horror in the nation for the third straight…
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The Need For Cat Pictures
Especially Today… I normally hate Fridays for a ton of historical reasons, but today I hate this Friday even more. 2020 sucks and today it just got worse. So instead of dwelling on death and politics and pandemic, I figure it was just better to do cats. So this first picture is of Kris and her heart cat Moose. Moose was a polydactyl and Kris rescued her when she was a tiny kitten, on the edge of death, and had to be bottle fed. Moose, when she was small, got in the habit of sleeping in Kris’s hair and did that every night for 14 years. Not kidding. After Moose…
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23 Years Ago
In a Land Far, Far Away… Dean and Kris had some great times with some friends… Or so the story goes… That’s right, back in the late 1980s and through most of the 1990s, Kris and I used to travel a lot to conferences. In 1992 it got excessive and we went to 26 different ones. By 1997, we had cut way, way back and basically only hit a few big conventions and a couple fun ones. One of the big conventions in August 1997 was the San Antonio World Science Fiction Convention. That’s right, San Antonio in August heat. Late August heat, actually. So it wasn’t the biggest world…
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Blast From The Early Days
Early Freelance Days… The picture below was taken by the great fantasy writer Nina Kiriki Hoffman on Christmas Eve, 1988. Professional writers used to gather in Eugene, OR on Christmas Eve every year and it was a wonderful tradition for a good decade. The tradition started in 1986 and we would start off at my place (and later Kris and my place just outside of town) where I would cook a turkey dinner for everyone. Then we would all drive over to Jerry and Cathy Oltion’s apartment (or later house) to open dollar gifts, then we would drive to Nina’s place to read aloud stories we had written for the…
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Scary Scam
Invite to Judge a Contest… Today, in separate emails, both Kris and I got an invite to judge a contest. The point of the contest is to get writer’s work in front of agents and traditional publishers. Yes, Kris and I got that invite to judge a contest to help new writers get their work in front of agents. I will let you stop laughing now. This woman thought it would be a great honor for me to do that, since she had no idea at all who I was. So while laughing and trying to decide what to say in return, I made the mistake of looking up the…
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Catalyst Game Labs Press Release…
Thought It Would Be Fun To See… We do press releases at times for different things at WMG Publishing. They are not easy and you need a real reason to do one and also know who you are sending it to and why and how they will use it. It is an old art that is still being used fairly regularly, just not by indie writers much. This is the press release that was also in the Catalyst newsletter that just went out, talking about the collaboration between Catalyst Game Labs and Kris. Those of you who have been following the licensing stuff, this has been in the works for…
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DIVING INTO THE WRECK Game
Just Added to the Kickstarter… Because we reached the third stretch goal, we just added in a nifty new DIVING INTO THE WRECK game to the kickstarter that you can now add on. Cool doesn’t begin to describe this game. Here is the pitch… DIVING INTO THE WRECK An Encounters Game from Catalyst Game Lab Boss Needs Your Help! Gear up, check your lines, and prepare to descend into the latest wreck discovered by Boss and her crew of salvage experts. Build resources, explore lost ships and abandoned space stations, and hopefully escape with something more than your lives. A cooperative push-your-luck encounters game. Players use a set of six…
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1st Post… 9th Year
Going to Keep Going… Daily… See no reason to stop the blog streak now. But since my focus is changing some this year because of my upcoming 70th birthday this fall, I think I will add in the exercise part of things here at times. And maybe a little more on the writing updates. For example, I have a story to do tomorrow, two introductions to different book projects, and then two more stories to write. Then I will fire back on the Cave Creek novel and finish it. So writing is fun and jammed at the moment. The exercise, on my schedule, was to really ramp up today, August…
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Day 2,911
Blog Streak is Approaching Eight Years… On August 1st, unless I miss between now and then, I will have done a daily blog or more every day for 2,920 days. That is through major moves, power outages, internet down, computer crashes, and nasty storms. Some blogs are like this one… filler because I am too tired to write anything of value. Some have been just me talking about my day. Some have been workshop news and such. A few have been book announcements, but very few considering that over those eight years I published well over two hundred books with my name on the front covers, including a ton of…
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Craziness is Over…
Except for Recovery… And catching up on emails and workshop assignments and such. The guys arrived this morning, right on schedule, with the huge UHaul truck. Kris and I had parked all three of our cars out on the street last night to hold the parking spots in front of the new office. So as the truck pulled up, we shuttled our cars into the parking garage and let the truck take the spots so it was only twenty feet from the door to the office. I had bought a lot of Staples banker boxes, so every box in the truck was the exact same size making packing a ton…