-
At the Run
Talked with Donny Osmond for a Short Moment… About 22 or more years ago, he and I started to write a novel together. It was set up by Tekno Books and was to be a thriller. I spent a couple days on it, writing about 15,000 words and an outline, I don’t think Donny spent more than thirty minutes on it, twice talking with me on the phone. I remember vaguely that he liked it and that it would be fun. New York killed it. 22 or 23 years ago. So I barely remembered details of it and he didn’t remember it at all, which I didn’t expect him to.…
-
We Made It!! Goal Hit!
WMG Holiday Spectacular Is A Go!! We hit our goal for the WMG Holiday Spectacular project. So now, all the backers of the project will get a story a day from November 28th to January 1st. 35 top stories from top professional short fiction writers. A gift that lasts an entire holiday season, every day. For 35 days. How much fun is that!! As Kris said, she spent years trying to figure out a way to make this work, and it has been a project that has been on the burner for over a year now at WMG Publishing. To see it make the goal in just six days, with…
-
Shared Worlds
SHARED WORLDS: What Are They, How to Do Them, and Why… This is a one-of-a-kind class. Not a workshop, not a lecture, not a study along. For years now, Kris and I have tried to figure out how to teach shared worlds as a topic to writers to get the most benefit for writers. Both of us have written in so many shared worlds, we couldn’t begin to count. From the major shared worlds of Star Trek and Star Wars, to the more subtle shared worlds of say the WMG Holiday Spectacular that we are running through Kickstarter right now. And everything in between. There are thousands of reasons indie writers…
-
Great Rewards In New Kickstarter
Been Sending Out Codes for Workshops All Day… And it dawned on me that many of the people I was sending codes for lectures and workshops from the Pulphouse Kickstarter didn’t know there was a new Kickstarter from WMG starting up. And it has great workshop and lecture rewards as well. The WMG Holiday Spectacular is going to be a calendar of stories for 35 straight days. That’s right, in your mailbox you get a new holiday story from Thanksgiving until January 1st. But we had to do the Kickstarter here in Oct0ber to make sure we got through everything and had time to get everyone on board before the…
-
One Mentor Spot Left for 2020
Doing 2019 Still… I had five people take me up on me helping them by being a mentor in 2019. I am basically a cheerleader, someone they have to check in with each week, talk about the ups and downs. I answer questions when asked, give opinions on covers, read stories, and so on. In essence, I am there. And I am not really going away from those that I have been helping just because a year of time ended. A couple of the people started late, and one has pretty much vanished due to health issues. I hope that person will return later. So I figured I could handle…
-
Sales Numbers
Some Interesting Comments… A number of posts back I talked about the difference between indie writers and traditional publishing writers. Not one person thought my sales numbers of over forty thousand for the traditional published author were too high. No one even questioned them. (They were far too high for 2019.) But wow did I get a lot of people objecting to around 50 copies a month average sales for indie. I understand that. I was doing a comparison on two books between the two types of publishing. And I used the word average, but so many writers don’t understand that term when it comes to sales. So let me…
-
October Workshops Starting
Plus the How to Write a Pulphouse Story October… If you signed up for that workshop through the Kickstarter and want to take it in October, write me at once. If you have workshop credit from the Kickstarter, you can use it against these October workshops if you want. We will have everything out later in the week as surveys get back in. The Regular October workshops are starting and for a few of these, this will be the last time they are regular workshops with homework. They are headed to classic status. However, if you are a lifetime subscriber, you can still send in the assignments on those. But…
-
Edmund Gosse Explains Things So Well
From His Poem “Impression.” “Too much afraid of faults to be…” And that simple line from that incredible poem describes a great number of the writers I talk with every day. (You can read the entire poem here, published about writing in 1894. Worth the read. And if you could dare to write as ill as some whose voices haunt us still…) But that simple saying of being afraid of faults to be describes why so many writers don’t finish stories. And why so many don’t get their work out to readers or short fiction to editors. That saying a long time ago stopped making sense to me as a…
-
Up Early for an Outing Tomorrow
With the Romance Workshop… Kris is taking the entire romance workshop on a field trip tomorrow. The mystery workshop in May went to the Mob Museum and this group gets to go to the Springs Preserve, and I’m going along because I am a member there and love the place. So got to be up early for me, so nothing tonight except to say there are seven more videos posted in the Licensing Transition and sign-ups for that are still open if interested. And sign-ups for the two Great Challenges are also still open. Lost two more writers this week, so far. And I am caught up, basically, on my…
-
Romance Workshop Going On Here Now
And I Am Recording Kris’s Lectures for the Study Along… I realized tonight how really good these Study Along workshops are. Kris does a ton of videos about books on her reading list, then assigns stories, and I record her lectures from my point of view on a topic. And if you are taking the Study Along, you can turn in a story by the deadline and I will read it. First assignment of the Romance Workshop Study Along I ended up with 12 stories I will be reading over the next day or so. And just tonight I gave out story assignment #2. And the best deal is the…