• Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    Fall Indie Writing Festival Starting…

    Five Videos Plus Extras About Reviews on First Day… Just getting started and this time around, instead of offering the 20 or so people signed up (yes, still room to jump in), we are making all of WMG Teachable Courses half price. All six hundred plus of them. For everyone… And we will give you an even better discount on the Lifetime Everything Subscription to WMG Teachable. Ask me if interested. This first week is all on Readers and Fans and getting more of both, which also means you will make more money. Here is the basic information on the Fall Indie Writing Festival followed by the basic information on…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  On Writing,  publishing

    Mentorships and Fall Writing Festival Starting

    All Kinds of Great Learning… KICKSTARTER MENTORSHIP… That’s right, one-on-one, I will help you build and launch a book kickstarter in the next three or four months that will fund, and get you readers for your books, then I will continue to help you with how to fulfill the campaign. You can start any time you want with this. Even into next year, but need to sign up now. I will cut this off after a few. And then in the following six months after the first one is done, I will help you with a second campaign. You will have two successful campaigns from this and have the confidence…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Personal Sales Help Mentorship

    Two Spots Still Open… I still have room for two more writers. And you can start now or next year, either is fine. Here is why I am going to do this. To put it bluntly, many writers are simply creating stories that won’t sell for one reason or another, often having nothing to do with craft. Sometimes learning this stuff early helps before you get to twenty or more major titles published, but often a writer gets to that discoverability threshold of 20 books and still does not see an increase in sales. That means something is off in the product. (At that point, the story is a product.)…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    Last Day for Early Bird Discount!!!

    FALL INDIE WRITING FESTIVAL… Online October 20th through November 14th Going to put this basic information here again since we still have more than enough spots open. We will have a minimum of five videos a day, often over ten when we do special focus things. There will be between 150 and 200 learning videos in the four weeks you can do on your own time. No assignments at all. But staying up with the videos as they go along also allows you to ask questions, which is an important part of this. Kris and I will answer the questions either in an email if personal, or in a video…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    FALL INDIE WRITING FESTIVAL…

    FALL INDIE WRITING FESTIVAL… Online October 20th through November 14th Since we did the last master class back six or seven years ago, we have been trying to come up with a way to bring everything in indie publishing and writing together. And have it all presented in a way that makes sense. With our regular workshops and classes and such, there are so many gaps of large areas we are missing that we want to cover. Really important gaps to indie writers and publishers. So this last summer in our INDIE WRITING CAMP, we did our best in an orderly fashion that we hoped helped writers of all levels…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    My Challenge

    Four Months Left… My challenge had two parts. First, the idea was to write a short story per day for the entire year. Second, to get my writing back up to over Pulp Speed One, which is one million words a year. The year started off rough right from the start, with a ton of business things that just overwhelmed everything. Called a life roll, and I sort of expected it but hoped I could drive through it. Nope. It was just too much. But my word count has been hanging around the pace to make one million words, so that part I think I can smash through in the…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    A Saying That Has Stuck With Me…

    Printed and Framed On a Card… This saying has been in my writing offices for 43 years now.  Don’t really care who originally said it. But it came about because Nina Kiriki Hoffman and I were challenging each other to write one story per week, not rewrite it, and put it in the mail. Nina called it “Dare to Be Bad” and that stuck. And is the reason both of us started selling regularly. Takes far, far more courage to write and put out your work than to be so afraid as to not write and not publish anything. And that’s a fact. So the saying I have had in…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    New Promotion Class and Extension of Early Bird Discount…

    Yes… We Are Doing A Promotion Class It is called… INDIE PUBLISHING PROMOTION 2025 A step-by-step guide to understanding how promotion is done for books in 2025. You don’t need to waste money on Facebook or Amazon ads. There are more great promotions than you have time for that you can do for your books that work and build a real fan base. 9 week class given by New York Times bestselling author Dean Wesley Smith and planned by both Dean and New York Times bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch together. This will have some information talked about in the Writing Summer Camp, but a lot more added plus assignments…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    List of Workshops Starting September 2nd…

    Some Really Great Classes and All On Sale! All of these are on WMG Teachable. All start either September 2nd or 3rd. I have put the links with most of them, but if the link doesn’t work, you can scroll through on Teachable and find it. (Search function on Teachable is not great.) Sale information at the bottom of the post. REGULAR WORKSHOPS… 5 available starting on September 2nd… 6 weeks long with 5 assignments… I respond personally to all assignments… $300 Four of these are available every month. This month Heinlein’s Rules is added in for one month only. To find them just go to WMG Teachable and hit…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    A Look At 13 Years Ago… For Fun…

    In 2012 Indie Publishing Was Just Starting… Since I started this blog 13 years ago today, I thought it might be fun to look back. Kris and I had been getting books up indie for over a year, and I had just finished time taking care of a friend’s estate. I had also done all the covers and loading and everything. Over 300 books at this point, mostly short stories by me and Kris and some of Kris’s novellas and some of her novels. I had put up about sixty of my short stories indie, but if you looked at the Amazon sales page under my name, the only thing…