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First Day New Year
A Good One Here… Actually, we started the day off watching the fantastic fireworks over the Strip here in Vegas. Nice night, not too cold, great fun. This this morning we were out toward Summerlin in a park, running a 5K charity run. We ran in the same park on New Year’s Eve in the early evening. So two runs in about 18 hours. I did fine on the first one, but I have a hip injury that slowed me down on the second one this morning. But I made it just fine. Slow, but fine. Now to give the injury a few days to heal before running again. However,…
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Playing With Covers
Having Fun On This Saturday Night… I did three covers tonight in just about 45 minutes, and that included looking for art that sort of matched for the three collections. That’s right, 45 minutes for three wrap-around paperback covers. These will need the spines on them, of course, where the black bar is at, since they are larger than my normal short story paperbacks. But the front covers can be chopped and used for electronic book covers as they stand now. I did them in InDesign. And I am still learning that, so a few minutes was spent a couple times looking for how to do something. (grin) These covers…
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Working on The Decade Ahead
In More Ways Than One… Doing a lot of work on the first part of the year-long class The Decade Ahead. In early February it will also include a Pop-Up that anyone signed up for the class will get for free. And speaking of the year ahead and the years ahead, today I got to see a blog I will post here next week from WMG Publishing about all the projects we did in 2019. It will blow you away, because it stunned even me and Kris. I will post it a few days after it is on the WMG Publishing blog. Also today Allyson sent me the tentative “Production…
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A Tough Week…
For Writing Streaks and Challenges. Amazing how such a good time of the year can be so tough on writing. After all, it is the holiday season full of fun and family and travel. And that’s the problem… it’s the holiday season full of fun and family and travel. More streaks and challenges break in this last week before Christmas than any other time of the year. But thankfully, next week is the start of a new year and challenges and streaks can be fired back up then for the long winter. After forty years in this business, I have observed general times of the year where writing comes easy…
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Great Challenges
Lost Three This Week… Two writers from the Short Story Great Challenge and one from the Novel Great Challenge. And that is no surprise, considering the holiday stuff. In fact, to me, honestly, it is more of a surprise that more didn’t drop this week. And this next week will be brutal for many as well. However, the two in the short story workshop both had done over 26 stories in a row, so both of them got $900 in workshop credit. And over 26 new stories to market, use for promotion, get up indie. Total win! 26 short stories is more stories than most writers write in years. So…
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All Focus On The New Year
Everything Kris and I Are Doing is Focused on 2020 and Beyond… That focus on the new year seems to be taking up a ton of our time and effort over the last week. Tonight, on occasion, I heard swearing coming from Kris’s office because she was focusing on putting her calendar system for 2020 together. It is extensive. And complex. And she has been doing it for all of the thirty-plus years I have known her. And I really appreciate that she does the organization because, to be honest, I depend on her a lot to tell me when we are scheduled to do something here in Vegas. That…
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Friday Night… No Questions
The Decade Ahead Class for 2020… Got no questions today. Guess I got it moderately clear. I think it might be the best class we have ever tried to teach. Going to be fun, that’s for sure, with lots of videos every month, some assignments, and a special Pop-Up included as extra every quarter. So with new videos in the Shared Worlds class (more coming late next week) and assignments there all answered, and since I will be reading but not responding to Challenge stories until after Christmas, I will now go to bed early. Why? Because I have to be up in about six hours to go on a…
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The Decade Ahead Class Questions
Got a Number of Them… So thought I would respond here as well as individually. First off, all four quarters of The Decade Ahead class (plus the special Pop-Ups in each quarter that are included) will be focused in a balance on personal problems that affect the writing, craft work, and publishing business. Three parts working in unison and I hope balanced over the year. What I mean by personal work is productivity, getting to the computer, surviving life rolls, family issues, health issues, money, and so on. That is all a major part of building a writing career that will be where you want it to be in 2029.…
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The Decade Ahead
Four New Classes To Help You Get Through 2020… …And to Plan For 2029 You have been creating all the stories and novels. Getting them out to readers, promoting them, then moving on to the next story. Great! But how do you keep that going? How do you make sure you have a successful year, and at the same time plan for the new decade ahead? In fact, how do you even plan in a realistic way that will help you long term? In other words, how to keep going in 2020 and where would you like to be in 2029? These four quarterly classes will help you with that.…
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Mentor Program
I Have Two New Mentor Writers For 2020… The two new writers joined up through Kickstarter earlier in the year and are starting January 1st. Plus for 2020 I have two writers who started in August and are carrying over into the new year, and another with a health issue who will be carrying forward some if health allows. Plus I’m going to continue to help those I worked with for the entire year into the new year when I am needed. Interesting how this worked. Each person was different. And my focus and goal was to not be intrusive, to not try to force anyone into working my way,…