• Challenge,  Fun Stuff,  publishing

    Cold Poker Gang Kickstarter Hit Two Stretch Goals!!

    Gets Great From Here On Up!! Any supporter will now get three books and a choice of lectures just for supporting the kickstarter. And with each stretch goal hit now, more reading and more workshops, pop-ups, and so on. (The “so on” will be really amazing for anyone if we get there. (grin)) And I am excited because now we are finally going to get the Cold Poker Gang entire series into hardback. I want that set of books on my shelf. Just having it there will make me write more and more books in the series, I can tell you that. I am that superficial at times. (grin) So…

  • Fun Stuff

    Kris’s Birthday Party Part Two

    THANK YOU, EVERYONE!! For all the wonderful birthday cards you sent to Kris. She has a list on her Facebook page of everyone. Please pardon the typos, they are mine, since I was typing in names, and trying to read handwriting and two cards had some water damage so we just couldn’t get names. But wow, it was wonderful!!! You made Kris’s day, folks! And made it special. So thank you!!!!!!! After we got back from the Bellagio, We put the birthday cake in the middle of the dining room table with the huge pile of cards. We had had a piece of cake the night before and Kris had…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Kris’s 60th Birthday Part One

    A Really Fun Day in Two Posts and Lots of Pictures! And Kris said she had a blast. She started off her day with her normal morning run, and Fremont Street was open. It just so happened that the casinos were opening here in Vegas just today. The town felt alive and coming back to Vegas. Wonderful. So she ran on Fremont Street, like she used to do. She describes it on her Facebook page wonderfully. Then after I got up and got around, we headed out to the Bellagio to see the Japanese Garden display there. They opened at 10 am and we got there around 1 pm. The…

  • Fun Stuff,  publishing,  Recommended Reading

    Cold Poker Gang Kickstarter Launched

    Fun New Campaign… JUST LAUNCHED!!! We’re trying to get The Cold Poker Gang books into hardback. And I have a new novel in the series called BOTTOM PAIR coming out later this year. So if you want to get an early read of BOTTOM PAIR, you can do so through this Kickstarter Campaign. Plus limited edition signed hardback set of all eleven of The Cold Poker Gang novels. Plus a limited edition signed hardback of BOTTOM PAIR. And a very, very limited set of Cold Poker Gang chips, with the special decks of cards in a metal case. On top of all that, there is a special workshop that you…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Cool Deck of Cards

    Been Wanting to Do This For A Long Time… Finally, just tonight, after designing and ordering a nifty set of Cold Poker Gang chips in a nifty case last night, tonight I put together a Cold Poker Gang deck of cards. All eleven book covers randomly placed on 54 cards. Next week we are firing up a Cold Poker Gang Kickstarter campaign to help us get all eleven books into hardback and also to give fans of the series an early look at BOTTOM PAIR, the eleventh novel in the mystery series.  Plus we will have limited signed editions and a few limited poker chip sets and these decks of…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    A Busy Friday

    Nothing on the Surface to Show For It. Didn’t even get caught up on regular email. I will Saturday, so no worries if I have not responded yet on something. Kris and I spent some time in a furniture store today. Masks in place, and they were enforcing social distancing. So very safe.  We were there because of the standard Memorial Day Furniture sales here in the States. We shopped, found some things we wanted, then went to get take-out for lunch and called Allyson to confirm everything, then I went back to buy what we had found. We ended up with a fantastic table and chairs for the new…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff,  On Writing

    Two Bundles With StoryBundle.com

    I Have Stuff in Two Different Storybundles Right Now… In the Adventure SF bundle I actually have a Thunder Mountain novel, a collection I edited, and  the cover story in Writers of the Future #35. How fun is that? And the bundle is ending in just over a day!!! So don’t miss this one, for no other reason than to get Snot-Nosed Aliens Anthology from Pulphouse. Stories in there are as fun as they sound. And a Thunder Mountain novel from me and a Retrieval Artist novel from Kris. And, oh yeah, a bunch of other great sf writers like Kevin J. Anderson and Rick Wilber to name just two.…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Some Misc. Stuff

    A Few Questions I Got Today… What made me think of a lot of people sending Kris birthday cards? Actually, it was thinking about how bummed I was about Kris not being able to have a lot of her friends around her on her 60th birthday. That’s a special day. But nothing at all I could do to change that fact this year. Then it struck me that if friends sent cards, I could stand the cards up on the table, and even though the friends were not there, they would be represented at the party. And that would be fun. And Kris was touched by the idea and likes…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Kris’s Birthday Party

    On June 4th Kris Turns 60… And wow were we going to have a party for her. But, as you may have guessed, past tense on that party. We will do it next year now, as many of you are doing as well for birthdays. But I had an idea. You see, Kris loves cards. Not those electronic type, but real paper birthday cards. So with her permission (since she had decided she didn’t want to do anything instead… but I promise you, that is not happening on a 60th birthday), I figured it would be really, really cool to have a party anyway, a sort of virtual party, not…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff,  On Writing,  publishing

    Something Fun…

    Listen to Me Babble for 45 Minutes… Live… At 10 AM West Coast time, I will be on the Draft2Digital Spotlight talking publishing and writing with super writer and editor Mark Leslie Lefebvre, who also works for D2D. It will be live and could get silly, because Mark and I tend to get silly at times. For those of you who don’t know, for a number of years now, Mark has been our anchor at both the Master Business Class and the Anthology Workshop. His depth of knowledge of fiction and publishing and his willingness to help writers goes beyond any words I might say. And he likes beer. And…