• Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    My Star Trek Writing

    A Blast From the Past I wrote this is July of 2012, eleven years ago. I had been indie publishing my own stuff for three years at that point and WMG had become a corporation in May of that year. I was solidly in my blog streak. So thought this would be interesting to bring forward just for historical perspective… July 2012… Last week in the mail I got this huge packet of royalty statements from Pocket Books. Now understand, when I say huge, I mean huge. Maybe 200 pages. I’ve written shorter novels to be honest. These statements are only for the books I did with Pocket Books that are…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Aces Game Two of the Finals…

    A Superteam in Action… The Liberty are a great team, zero doubt, but the Aces are one of those once-in-a-generation teams and wow are they fun to watch in THE HOUSE. That’s what they call their stadium and it was packed, full sell-out, and more screaming and shouting and cheering than I have ever heard. Game started at 6 pm and at one point in the first quarter the Aces were up by 30 points. First quarter… That was fantastic fun with the crowd. Maybe the best quarter of basketball I have ever watched in my lifetime. Liberty made a show of a run in the second quarter and then…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Las Vegas Aces

    Championship WMBA Team… The Aces are trying to repeat as champions and played today against the New York Liberty in the first game of the championship series. They are the leagues two super teams. Game started at noon and for the first half it might have been the best basketball I have ever watched between two great teams. Just stunning. Aces down at one point by eight points. Then in the second half the Aces hit full afterburners and came from five points down to at one time being over twenty points ahead. It went from stunning basketball to “Are you kidding me?” fantastic levels on the Aces side. Blocked…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    I Have Built 33 Kickstarter Campaigns…

    Working on #34 Now… It is for the upcoming 2023 Holiday Spectacular. (Details to come soon.) Way back when I first started, Kickstarter was a fairly new platform and we used it first for our Fiction River volumes and then to test if there was any interest in restarting Pulphouse Fiction Magazine. There was intrest and we are still going, coming back from a hiatus caused by my eyes going bad for a time. Of the 33 campaigns, five have been for Pulphouse subscription drives and five for Fiction River projects. Back in the first twenty-five or so campaigns, I built and wrote every detail. Last year or so I…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff,  running

    First Run of the Year…

    Yes, Kris Beat Me… I got up over five hours ahead of when I normally get up, so that was fun (not). But this year the temperature was perfect. And we were joined by Ron and Lisa Collins and Bridget Collins. And I did more running than I expected to do after my failed summer of getting in shape. I managed about a quarter of a mile straight running, then ran a block and walked a block. I got a distance ahead of Kris, but she caught me just after the two mile mark. I ran another block and got back ahead of her, then she caught me for good…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff,  running

    First Run In 7 Hours…

    The First 5K Run of the Season… So I will be getting up five hours ahead of my normal time. Talk about jet lag. Yikes. This run, the Vegas Strong 5K, starts down on Fremont Street,  goes up and down Las Vegas Blvd in the downtown area. A couple thousand people run it in honor of the horrid shooting here on October 1st 6 years ago. This is the run I was aiming at starting back in June. I watched my calories and tried to increase milage, all without success. I lost no weight at all and I am not in good shape because of foot injuries and just flat…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff,  publishing,  workshops

    Wow!! What a Store!!

    WMG Publishing Started a New Diving Universe Store And right now it is having a grand opening sale.  Go to www.divingintothewreck.com and browse around. Imagine the store without all the Grand Opening sales stuff. And imagine something like it as your own author web site. Yes, Shopify can do all kinds of looks and blogs and anything a regular web site can do and so much more.  I loved the Pulphouse Shopify Store and our main WMG Books store we call “the mothership.” But when I saw how Stephanie Writt had built this store, the first thing I thought of was an author web site. It would be one of…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff,  Kickstarter Campaign

    Hit Special Stretch Goal!

    Now All Backers Get Two Writing Classes… And we are gaining on the next stretch goal with another Kris story and another writing class. So check it out at IVORY TREES: A Diving Universe Novel Kickstarter. And check out the two special workshops. They are only offered for the next three days on this Kickstarter. They will be fun and great learning. Also, the Aces’ game this afternoon was great and not close, which made it even more fun. They have now advanced to the semifinals. Kris on her facebook page put pictures. I can’t even begin to imagine the cost of those towels. For two different games. Wow. Watching…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Aces Game Tonight…

    First Game of the Playoffs… Kris and I and Lisa Collins went to the Ace’s game tonight after some great pizza. The Aces are defending world champions and also seeded #1 in the playoffs after a record-breaking season. They are fantastically fun to watch. They were playing tonight, for one night only, at the T-Mobile Area, the home of the Stanley Cup winning Golden Knights. (Yeah, fun sports in this town.) The Aces were playing the Chicago Sky and Chicago never stood a chance. At one point the Aces were ahead by over 30 points. And not because the Sky were not playing well, the Aces are just a machine.…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff,  publishing

    Paperback Writer…

    I Loved the Beatles Song “Paperback Writer”… When I came into publishing almost fifty years ago, what dominated as far as fiction distribution was the mass market paperback. In 1977 I opened a bookstore called “The Paperback Exchange” and did really well, changing the name to “Twice Sold Tales” after I bought a comic store and the towns only album store and moved them all in together. It was a fun place. As a writer, all I ever wanted to be was a paperback writer. And then as the world changed in the early part of this century, trade paperbacks started taking the place of mass market paperbacks and now…