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An Order To Workshops
Craft Courses First… I have a workshop curriculum that has been posted for a while, but since we are doing a half-price sale right now for everything on Teachable (see last post for details), I thought I would revamp the curriculum some and help writers decide what class to take next. Today I will do the foundation courses for craft. Tomorrow I’ll update the foundation courses for publishing, genre, and attitude. And the numbers are my suggestions on the order to take these workshops because many of them build on others. (Two types of workshops are included. Regular and Classic. It is a regular workshop offered monthly unless noted as…
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Workshop Sale… Again…
We Are Still Mostly At Home… (Or We Should Be)… Back when WMG Publishing did what we all thought here would be the last workshop sale two months ago, we had an expectation that as things opened up, we would all be able to slowly go back to a changed, but new normal life. And that sort of happened for some. Sort of. But now everything is headed in the other direction fast, and to be safe, we all need to stay home as much as possible to not only keep the hospitals from being overrun, but to save lives. Maybe our own. But to stay sane through this next…
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Recorded Yet Another New Pop-Up
I Should Have Both Posted by Wednesday… The one I recorded a few days ago is called #21… Fear of Success, maybe the largest trigger of the critical voice there is outside of making a book important, and also a major reason many writers stop writing. The Pop-Up I just finished recording is called #22… Dealing with Toxic People. Sort of a how to recognize them, how to fix the problem, or how to get away from the problem. Sadly, often the most toxic people are friends or family who have your best intentions in mind. So I figured people needed some help on that. Now Kris and I have…
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Playing With Licensing
Once Again… I mentioned a while back for the Cold Poker Gang kickstarter that I created a set of cards with all the book covers as the backs. Looks way cool. And a few people will be getting signed decks from me from the Kickstarter rewards. (By the way, the surveys have all been sent out. I will be contacting you with workshop stuff later in the week.) I also got one test deck of cards with the new book only on it. Way cool looking. I also made a poker chip set with Cold Poker Gang on every chip in gold lettering and my new book cover on the…
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Recorded a New Pop-Up
Not Live Yet… But will be next week. In fact, I am going to record a second one as well and put both up at the same time next week. The new Pop-Up I recorded is called Fear of Success. We are doing right now the first time through a Killing the Critical Voice workshop (that we will offer every month) and fear of success is often so much of the reason for not being able to fight critical voice. And it is amazing how many writers have vanished or held themselves at a certain level because of this fear. Critical voice always comes out in fear, by the way.…
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Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s Advice
Advice from Another Pro… Before he died in 2017, Dr. Jerry Pournelle recorded at the Writers of the Future conference advice to help newer writers. He wasn’t talking to fans, but to writers. It doesn’t matter what any of you thought of Jerry personally, his books were New York Times bestsellers and he was in the industry writing for over forty years or more. And besides helping writers at Writers of the Future, he often took in single student to mentor. Some major writers were his students at one time or another. And I know a lot of you don’t believe me at times about some of the advice I…
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A Real Test…
For What Remains of My Critical Voice… Which is clearly nothing. Tonight I had to read a lot of assignments in the critical voice workshop. This assignment details out how each person makes projects important and thus allows critical voice in. Now in all those assignments there was an amazing amount of reasons, excuses, and just scary problems. I read them all tonight to get a basically form-letter response to everyone. Nothing I could really say. It was one of those awareness assignments. But tonight I also had a short-notice short story due that I had to finish by tomorrow. That kind of deadline can make a story “important” quickly…
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Tags and Sales Copy
Captain Proton… Defender of the Earth! “Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when Real Men with ray guns and beautiful women in beguiling outfits battled hideous monsters from outer space! Return with us to the days when Captain Proton ruled the skyways!” That is part of the back cover copy of a full novel I wrote called Star Trek: Voyager Presents Captain Proton. I wrote the novel under the name D.W. “Prof” Smith and in the style of E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman series. Captain Proton, for you non-Voyager fans, was a character on the holo deck in the show. (I also wrote a book staring…
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Just Eight Hours Left!!
Cold Poker Gang Kickstarter Campaign… Almost to the fourth stretch goal. If we manage to hit that, everyone will get 5 extra books, plus $35o in lectures, Pop-Ups, and Classic Workshops. Plus, remember that the only place to get into the special Writing Mystery Series workshop is in this campaign. It is a three week workshop and the reward level is $150. You have your choice of taking it in July or August. And there are discounts on lectures and regular workshops as well. Ends at 6 PM tonight, West Coast Time, so not much time left. Here is the link to the campaign… Cold Poker Gang Kickstarter
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Losing An Art Form In Book Sales
Just Was Brought to My Attention… That publishing is losing an art form. Television still has it, so do movies, so do gaming and other licensing areas. But books are losing this art form completely. Tag Lines. That’s right, writing a tag line to catch a reader’s attention used to be an art form on book covers and helped sell millions of copies of books. But now, due to simple lack of knowledge, the art form is vanishing. So what is happening? Well, in traditional publishing, massive budget cuts have taken out most of the sales force, leaving a few for only the bestsellers. Where the sales force used to…