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Two Mentorships Open
First Open Since 2022 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 or at least once every two weeks) 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,…
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Reading for Anthology Workshop…
Wish I Could Talk In General About Craft Stuff… But not going to because that will be for those attending in person the anthology workshop. But reading this many stories at once sure is something. All the writers are good, but just what and how makes one story work and another not work. Plus we are reading across six topic genres. SF Mystery, Cozy, Military SF, Fantasy Regency, Ghosts, and Halloween Romance. All the stories were written for those FICTION RIVER anthologies, all edited by different people, and I am reading the stories overall for Pulphouse. A great story for the anthology would not be a great one for Pulphouse.…
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A Reminder of Traditional Publishing Stupidity….
The Past is Present… A few days ago I got a huge packet of royalty statements from Pocket Books… Huge. And a check for $9.12 for six months. On those statements were the “sales” and returns of thirty-seven books I did for them (I did more, but they are out of print). Most of the statements were negative by more thousands than I could imagine. That packet reminded me of a post I wrote a long time ago here about Star Trek books I wrote for Pocket Books. Turned out I wrote that post on July 7th, 2012. After I got a big packet of royalty statements. Twelve years ago…
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Signing… How Strange…
I Am Signing Books in a Bookstore… That’s right, for the first time THIS CENTURY (that I can remember), I have agreed to do a book signing. Signings are a waste of time for me. But because Writers of the Future folks think they are worthwhile for their award winners, and I am a judge, and my friend Lisa Silverthorne was a winner this year, I agreed to go along for support. And then the Writers of the Future folks roped in Ron Collins (a winner from years back) and another judge, Todd McCaffrey. So it will be great fun sitting there for three hours talking with my friends. I…
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Fiction Branding… Part 13
Branding Is Fun!! No clue if any of these branding posts go into any kind of order. I will figure that out down the road if I decide to do something with them. At the moment I am just learning and thinking. I realized a while back that branding a series was fun in a bunch of ways. Ways that hit me where I write and live, actually. I realized this when I found myself doing a “chart” of a brand on a series. (More like a rough spreadsheet.) Not anything for public consumption or a sales tool to a licensee. Just sort of me, for fun, keeping track of…
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We Missed a Great Game Today…
Aces vs Liberty… Here in Vegas and we have season tickets, but the game started at noon, which meant me getting up around 9 am and leaving at 10 am. Middle of my night, so I had decided to not go and Kris decided to stay home as well and get the video for the new GHOST OF A CHANCE Kickstarter done. (she did and it is really nifty…) So by the time I made it downstairs, Kris had been watching the Aces’ game for a while and from what she said we had been down, then way up, then way down. I watched the last quarter as we could…
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What Is A Weekend?
A Great Question That Applies to Professional Writers… Kris and I honestly at times don’t know what day of the week it is. For example, tonight, on the way home from the Aces’s game, we ran into a bunch of traffic right near the Art’s District near where we live. Neither one of us could figure out what was going on until finally Kris said, “Oh, it’s first Friday.” First Friday of every month there is a massive arts’ fair in the downtown area. Even though earlier we had done a normal Friday lunch with writers and I had done a webinar that is always late Friday, neither of our…
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She’s Doing It Again…
Kris Wants to Do Another Challenge for the Summer!! Not kidding. She told me that and for the next three days I asked her if she sure until she got mad at me and said she was SURE!! It seemed the January challenge and the May challenge really kept her focused on writing first every day, even with all the business stuff she has been dealing with. And it was a lot, let me tell you. Her challenges work like this… She writes a letter to me every day telling me what went on in and around her writing and how many words she got done. I take that letter…
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Aces Game…
The Day Was Dominated By the Game… Left the condo around 3:30 to get to Slice of Vegas pizza in the Mandalay Bay complex… Yes, after three days there for the Expo, I go right back for an Aces game. Great pizza and we made it to our season ticket seats with a lot of time to spare. Place was packed as normal, but even more so with Caitlen Clark being in the building with her team the Fever. The two-time defending world champions Aces made short work of the rookie sensation and her team, but still a fun game to watch. I’m sure Kris will have a post about…
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Fifty Years of Mistakes
And I Am Still Making Them… That, I have come to learn, is part of living. If you are active and working, you keep making mistakes. (Wish that was not the case at times.) Tonight I recorded about thirty minutes (5 videos) of the first week of Learning from 50 Years of Mistakes. Great fun taking a ride back to that first year of college when I was 24 years of age, and what I was doing and how I made a mistake that would cost me 8 years of writing and sales. A single mistake. Eight years. But in those eight years I was married, divorced, married again, got…