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False Start on Challenge
Strangest Almost-Start I Have Ever Experienced… I was all set to fire up on the short story challenge for November. No issues at all. And then nope. Just nope. I was even planning on starting early because it had been a while, so got to my writing computer at 10 p.m. Nope. Not blocked. Just nope, it didn’t feel right. Something was off. So I went to do my normal solution to figuring out stuff I can’t put my finger on… a nap. And when I woke up I realized my focus was on the 67 published books in my 67th year. And my 67th birthday isn’t for another week…
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Workshops Might Be Moving to Teachable
I Think I Figured It Out… I needed a second person to look at the Teachable stuff, so Josh (my managing editor of Pulphouse) and I dug into the instructions and with some side-tracks, I think we figured out how the regular monthly workshops, the ones listed below, will work there. And I think I can make the switch with the November workshops. Once the switch is done, we can get away from all the password silliness and you can keep going back to the workshops for as long as you want. That is the plan anyway. So here we go. If the switch isn’t going to work quickly, then…
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Catching Up And Pulphouse Fun
Totally Normal After a Long Workshop… The day was full of a ton of different things, from unloading the van full of stuff from the workshop to checking in with all three stores to working on workshops. All regular stuff after a long week of a major coast workshop. But also tonight, after being caught up, I got to play with putting Pulphouse Fiction Magazine Issue Zero together. Wonderful fun. All of the stories in Issue Zero will be only reprints, so I am have had the pleasure of reading great stories I either haven’t read before, or ones I remember fondly from twenty-some years before. And the writers with…
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Some Clutter Gone
A Writer Website… Since I have a massive writing and publishing challenge starting first at the start of November and then the major part in the middle of November, I thought I would begin cleaning up this website some to get ready. — Workshop information links are now on the widget to the right. — List of November and December workshops are to the right and down as well. The sticky post about the month’s workshop is gone. — I removed the workshop links from the top menu. — I removed the building Smith’s Monthly widget from the side as well. — I will no longer combine daily stuff and…
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Workshop is Over
This Site Very Slow… So I am tired and the site is slow, so just going to say before this crashes that things here will be back to normal tomorrow (Sunday night) and you will start seeing some changes here as I try to clean up some of the clutter here. And the questions will be going out to the kickstarter backers for Pulphouse on Monday and Tuesday. But for now, I had a wonderful week of learning and talking to great writers. And now I need sleep and to not get up so darned early.
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Feel the Fear Pictures
Great Fun At The End of the Night… After the session tonight at the Master Business Class, we called for pictures of the authors in Fiction River: Feel the Fear and also the authors in the Fear bundle on Storybundle.com which has Feel the Fear volume in it. It was a calm picture, but then the fear took over… In the picture back row from left to right is Lauryn Christopher, J.F. Penn, me, Mark Leslie Lefebvre, Eric Edstrom, T. Thorn Coyle, Dayle A. Dermatis, David Stier, Michael Kowal, Kristine Kathryn Rusch, Allyson Longueira, Michael Lucas. One very tired bunch of professional writers. (grin)
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Orville and Star Trek
Relaxing… To take a break this week from being brain-fried with so much information and learning at the Master Business Class, for an hour each night I watched Star Trek, and Orville. I love the fact that there are two Star Trek shows on right now, even though Orville isn’t actually Trek. And Trek would never dare do such a show either. The Star Trek fans would crucify it. But as a drama-comedy not actually called Trek, but in the vein of Next Generation, Orville is great fun. And fascinating how Orville tackles some pretty major themes, just as Original Trek did. The full democracy episode I watched tonight was…
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Screwed Up Sleep For More Than Just Me
Getting Up In The Middle of My Night… Normally at 9 a.m. I am three hours into sleeping. Normally. (I work until six a.m. most nights.) But this week I have gotten up every morning at 9 a.m., stunned to see there was sun at that unbelievable time of the day. I have almost adjusted after four days now. Joanna Penn is here from Great Britain. And Mark from Kobo just got in from the eastern time zone of Canada. I noticed tonight that Joanna has also adjusted to the massive time switch and was at the late-night session talking for the first time. Mark seems to adjust flawlessly since…
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Brain Frazzled Tonight
Is Frazzled a Word?… I think it is, but my brain is too frazzled to care to look it up. So much information pouring in, so many conversations, so much fun. I will talk more about this stuff, all the learning, after this week. I had planned to update a post tonight on Making a Living with Short Fiction. Far too much work at the moment to get to the simple answer that yes, in this new world you could make a living only writing short stories. But I will finish the post next week when the brain unfrazzles, which I am fairly certain isn’t a word. Defrazzles? Becomes frazzle-less?…
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Learning a Bunch of Great Stuff
Great Conversations With Writers… Having some wonderful conversations with other professional writers about business and having a blast and learning. I’m going to let sink in for a week the stuff I am learning this week and then maybe talk about some of it here. But not this week. Besides, my new challenge has got me fired up and I want to start getting ready for that first part of the challenge, which is writing 30 short stories in November. And in my spare moments I am doing some reading on the reader challenge a few of you are doing and putting together Issue Zero of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine which…