• Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Writers of the Future Contest…

    You Might Be Eligible And Not Even Know It!! And if you are eligible, you should enter every quarter without fail. Okay, I have been around the Writers of the Future contest now for 39 years. I was the first person across the stage to get my award and my first story has been in print in Volume #1 for this entire time. At Pocket Books, we patterned the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds contest on Writers of the Future and I edited that for ten years. I became a judge for Writers of the Future after we stopped the Star Trek contest. Now, I am responsible for putting the…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    Regular Monthly Workshop Sale

    Last Full Week of Every Month… Can’t believe it is the last full week of the September already. Wow. The sale code to get everything 50% off on WMG Teachable is SeptemberRegularSale50 Just hit purchase on anything you want and on the next page put in the code and hit apply and your choice will be 50% off. NEW STUFF BEING ADDED… October regular workshops are being added and will all be up in a day or so. I will do a list here, but for the next few days you can still get the active September workshops and I’ll work with you to get caught up on the first…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Restart Motivation

    October 1st Just Two Weeks Away! So I got two weeks to figure out some new challenges, new motivation, maybe pick up the short story challenge I fell off of earlier in the year. October 1st is a great time to do that. A challenge I am thinking of is 100 short stories in 100 days. That will bring my total short stories up over 200 for the year. Not 365 as I had set out to do, but still not bad. (grin) Today I was working on getting the new 2023 Collection Classes posted and live for the coming sale. All six from the first year will be available…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  On Writing,  publishing

    Why Do We Do Kickstarters?

    I Got That Question Today… The question sort of caught me by surprise, to be honest. First off, surface reasons. 1… It gets new books to readers ahead of the publication date and at a discount. Fans of a series or a writer enjoy that. I know I do, which is one of the reasons why I back so many campaigns. 2… It gets our work out to readers we might never find and they might then buy more of our work. This is called discoverability. 3… It is amazing promotion and advertising and you don’t have to pay for it. In fact, if you do it right, you get…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Got Closer to Buffet Challenge

    Took My New iPad to a Buffet… Sort of a test run. Didn’t plan on doing any writing, just mostly setting up a bunch of programs on my iPad, including Microsoft Word and Outlook. Got interesting, to say the least, but 90% there. Only killed the only email I have left twice, but managed to save it both times. Yikes… Even set up a word doc that I can use sort of for a template. And wrote the start of a story. The first line of the story is… “The 1950s called and they want their food back.” Yup, the buffet I was in was that bad. And I like…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Thinking About Motivation

    And What Motivates Each of Us… As I put the final touches on the BRAND NEW FEY NOVEL Kickstarter campaign that will launch on Tuesday, I got thinking about motivation because in the story in this new campaign, Kris talks about how it was the first Fey Kickstarter and all the backing that got her motivated to tackle the monster project of getting back into the Fey books and cleaning them all up and writing new ones. Link to the Fey Kickstarter Promotion page is: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/403649867/brand-new-fey-novel And I tried to do a short story per day challenge as motivation going into this year and it had all sorts of issues…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    The Buffet Challenge

    Going To Be Fun and Take Time A while back I talked about trying to visit every buffet in Las Vegas and start or write a short story in each one. And also talk about the buffet in articles and blogs and put all the stories and articles together in different books. I said books (plural) for a reason. Wow, just wow are there a lot of buffets in Las Vegas. From high-end to just regular ones. I have started the research and just making a list of them seems overwhelming. Numbers of top-ten lists, but that mostly just focuses on the really high-end ones. I got a new iPad…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Creative Voice Having Fun

    Watching Two-Year-Old-Kids Kris and I always talk about the creative voice being a very, very smart two-year-old kid that knows a ton more about writing than your front critical voice will ever learn. Problem is the front voice doesn’t allow the creative voice to play, set it loose. Lots of reasons for that. So tonight, while I was over at Resorts World Casino, walking, I got to witness twice the creative voice at play in real-world dramatic fashion. (And yes, my 5-mile-per-day streak is still going and at 8 days now. Some running. But tonight, because of the heat, I just went to the mega resort of Resorts World and…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    Redoing the Post From Saturday

    Figured A Lot of You Don’t Check In Here Over the Weekend… So here is Saturday’s post again about all the new stuff available and the half-price sale going on right now. Everything on WMG Teachable 50% Off! That’s right, everything. And a bunch of new stuff since the last sale. I’ll go over some of it. Go to WMG Teachable. To get the 50% off price, just hit purchase on what you would like to take, then on the next page put in the code: AugustRegularSale And hit apply and it will be 50% off. This sale lasts exactly one week. It does not include the in-person workshops, only…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  workshops

    Explaining Depth

    And All the Workshops Attached to Depth… Since we are doing a sale with everything half off, and I got the question to explain exactly what Depth is and how all the workshops tie together, I figured this would be a good time to do it. To get any workshop at half price, just hit purchase on anything on Teachable, then use the code: AugustRegularSale And hit apply and you will get it for half price. 1… WRITING WITH DEPTH is the basis of all of the craft workshops we do. We offer it every month and I have not changed it much at all in the five or six…