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Kickstarter Live!
MY STORIES HEADED INTO THE WORLD! FIVE SCIENCE FICTION COLLECTIONS by Dean Wesley Smith Can’t begin to tell you how happy this makes my creative voice to finally have my short stories started out into the world. Amazing, just amazing, and I want to thank you ahead of time anyone who decides to back this. Thank you. This is my 60th Kickstarter campaign and we already have a “Project We Love” from Kickstarter. Really cool. This is the start of me getting out a bunch of my short stories finally. (Story in the introduction as to what happened.) The base of this campaign is five science fiction 10-story collection. But…
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Short Story Organization…
I Am Slowly Winning the Battle… I think I have most of my short stories that I want to move into the future on my spreadsheet now. Maybe I will find another thirty or so, but for now I am happy. A whole bunch of stories are just dropping into deep storage. And at the moment I am not reprinting any of my early short sales that I sold to different markets because I wrote them on a typewriter and I see no reason to bother with them. (Yes, I know how to scan, but again, no point at this time.) Only exception is my story that was in Writer’s…
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Time of Great Forgetting!!!
It’s That Time Again… The time when a bunch of other things take writer’s attentions, all seemingly more important, and the writing and publishing just sort of get forgotten. This is not a problem for professional writers, but for those coming in and striving to build a publishing business, this time can just make months vanish. And sometimes even professional writers need a focus to get through. Kris and I have been talking about this for a few weeks now, and she has come up with a really fun idea I will talk a about here in a few days when all the details are worked out. I think it…
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A Writer Thing…
Watching People… Since I sometimes don’t get out of the condo for entire days, I took the opportunity to go with Kris tonight to the Strip. That’s right, the Strip on a Saturday night. Not a place I would normally ever think of going, but Kris had a concert in Caesar’s Palace and I offered to drive her and explore Caesar’s Palace, one of the only major casinos I had never been in, even back in my team card days. So since it was a really nice evening, we parked at the Wyn and walked. Lots and lots of people around 7pm. Very crowded. (In fact the rumor of how…
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WRITING STORY BUNDLE!!
It Is Now Live!! 14 Exclusive Books and a Class! This is through Storybundle.com/writing and is amazing. Kris put it all together and it is amazing. Here is her introduction and details about Storybundle.com The 2026 Write Stuff Bundle – Introduction by Kristine Kathryn Rusch Long about January, I got the idea to do an all-exclusives StoryBundle. I knew we had our annual StoryBundle on writing coming up in April, and I figured if I asked nicely, I could get a dozen writers to come up with something new just for the bundle. Most of these writers blog already. They’re experts in their field, not just in fiction, but also…
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Exercise is Tough…
At Any Age… And especially when you are way out of shape. In 1980, as I was about to turn 30, I had gained a ton of weight in law school, so started to slowly run, just blocks at first and then more as each month went by until later that year I ran in my first full marathon. Did great for 20 miles, last six I try not to remember, but I finished. Over the years after coming to Vegas, I did a bunch of 5K and 10K runs and every year I finished the half marathon in the Rock and Roll Vegas Running Series. Some years I did…
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Working Over Another Writing Book…
Actually Three Books Into One… This weekend I went over and updated to 2026 “How to Write a Novel in Five Days While Traveling.” And today I went over and updated, “Writing a Novel in Seven Days.” Both books are a series of long blog posts detailing how to get ready for the challenge, day-by-day the process, the thinking, the attitude. And here in 2026 they stand up very well after I added a bunch and cleared up a few things. Next few days I will go over and update “How to Write a Novel in Ten Days.” I am hoping it holds together as well and then I will…
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TSTL
Fun Discussions on TSTL… TSTL is when a character is Too Stupid to Live. Mostly caused by a writer trying to hide information or a plot problem that goes on far too long and could be solved with a simple conversation. Now I have always thought TSTL to be pretty straight forward in fiction, but in great conversations with Kris over watching this season of Bridgerton, I am learning that the world building or structure of the world can make what would be TSTL situations in other stories and genres completely normal in Regency. What I am seeing as TSTL is basically because I don’t UNDERSTAND the world structure. I…
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Better Covers and Four Books
Advanced Magic Bakery and Three Others… Four basically new indie writing and publishing books. Don’t go looking for any of these yet, but they are coming. But since I put up two covers that really didn’t work very well, I thought I would put up all four tonight. To say I am having fun with these is an understatement. Doing four new updated and advanced editions for Indie Publishing 2026. And yes, a ton of new stuff and older stuff updated to apply today in Indie Publishing in 2026. There will be a Kickstarter for these four books very soon. — ADVANCED MAGIC BAKERY — ADVANCED WRITING INTO THE DARK…
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Easy to Be Negative…
Really Hard to be Positive… But I am going to try… Two days ago I did the two five list of the dumbest things indie writers and publishers do. Stunningly easy to come up with five, could have been ten, and then writers sent me even more. Not so easy to try to define what indie writers do well. And I finally figured out why. Asimov’s Rule. “9 Good things, one bad, you focus on the bad.” Human nature and especially the nature of writers. Indie writers, at least the successful ones, do so many things correctly, it is impossible to single out just a few. Sot let me give…