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2020 Las Vegas Workshops Announced!!
Some Fantastic Workshops!!! We are a few months late announcing these this year, but now we are ready to go. We wanted to wait and find out first how the large master class went here in Las Vegas in October and then the smaller craft workshops taught by Kris here in January. The verdict? About a million times better than the coast. Everything is easier, flights are cheaper, rooms nicer and without ghosts, and the food is available in hundreds of choices for every allergy and diet. It is more expensive for WMG Publishing to do, but we think the extra costs are worth it for the writers attending. You…
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Some Ideas I Think Might Be Ripe
This Is Just A Fun Thought Experiment… But I think that some ideas in publishing that have been around for a time and not gotten much traction might be nearing time-is-right place. Just my opinions, and I am sure I am missing a ton of other close, but not ready yet, things. But here are three to think about that I personally think are close. Idea One… Gift Cards for Books Now back in 2011, we did a couple books on credit-card-like cards with a code on the back to download the book. In essence the idea was to give a physical form to electronic books. We mounted the books…
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Mentor Program
Still One Spot… For the Kickstarter campaign, I had opened up two mentor spots, bringing my total of writers I would be working with to 5. I felt good about that number since the ones that started in January seemed to be doing fine, moving along, checking in. And one of the writers who wanted to join the program through Kickstarter doesn’t even want to start until the middle of the year. So why do I have an extra? Some person I had never talked to and who wouldn’t answer my email (so I had a hunch something was wrong) just dropped out in the last hour or so, as…
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February Workshops Starting
And Some Other Stuff… First off, the February regular workshops are starting up. Nine of them and they are a good group. Depth in Writing is the workshop to take first, but this month if you have had Depth, I would suggest either Teams or Endings. Both will really help your writing. I think understanding teams in fiction just makes novel writing so much easier. It gives books almost an automatic structure or bones. And knowing all about endings makes readers want to buy your next books. So anyhow, you sign up on Teachable if interested, or if you have a workshop credit you want to use, write me and…
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How I Will Do 100 Paperbacks?
Figured I Would Lay It Out Here… …since the Smith’s Stories: Make 100 Paperbacks Kickstarter campaign is just a few days away from ending and getting close to its second stretch goal. At that end point I get to start the process of making 100 paperbacks and I have had a couple people ask me how I am going to do all that. So I figured right here, right now, I would lay it all out. Maybe help a few of you on the process. Of course, to do 100 paperbacks of short stories, I need 100 short stories. Actually, that is not a problem. I have about 60 unpublished…
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Six Days Left
And Major Workshop Discounts… On the Smith’s Stories: Make 100 Paperbacks Kickstarter project. Right now you can get any lecture for $40.00. Any Regular Workshop for $250.00. Or get as many Regular Workshop Credits as you want. Or Lifetime Subscription to workshops or lectures. Or a bunch of the Pop-Up series. When WMG Publishing does a Kickstarter, we sometimes add in these discounts for workshops, and since this is a project I really wanted to do, I wanted to add these workshops in to kick it over the top. And it worked. Cleared the goal in a day, which is wonderful. Thank you, everyone, who has supported this so far.…
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Making a Challenge Sane (Sort of)
Restructuring My Writing Challenge… If you have been following along this fall, I decided back in September to try to do 10 novels in 100 days. That was to get me back writing again after a long year of life-rolls, so why not go from zero to light-speed instantly? Yeah, that always works. (grin) So I ran into a number of problems right off. The first was changing my schedule of 35 years, the second was learning to live in Las Vegas. The third was the life roll was far from finished. Those problems just didn’t allow the challenge to get off the ground, so I restarted in October, failed…
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Heads-Up Writers
Those of You Who Backed the Fiction River Kickstarter… …and took a reward where you also get a chance to write for a volume. I will be contacting each of you this week. Everyone will start writing on Sunday evening (February 3rd) for a Fiction River anthology idea. I will send you the rules and guidelines on Sunday, don’t worry. You will have one week exactly to finish the story, with the deadline being midnight, February 10th. If you took two rewards, your second story will start on February 10th (again, I will send you the rules and guidelines) and you have one week. If you are one of the…
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Kickstarter Pop-Up Starting
Two Different Kickstarter Topics Tonight… First off, the Kickstarter for Writers Pop-Up has now launched, just tonight. All the ups and downs as a writer of using Kickstarter crowd funding for your projects. And, of course, there is a short story prompt at the end of it as well that if you get it in under the deadline I will read. That’s on Teachable. Second, the Kickstarter campaign Dean’s Stories: Make 100 Paperbacks just went past its first stretch goal so today I set another stretch goal. Right now, anyone who supports the campaign gets the reward they support, plus three major electronic collection of all 100 stories, plus for…
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Just Over $600 Left…
Before Every Supporter Gets a Workshop and a Book… That’s right. Smith’s Stories: Make 100 Paperback Short Stories Kickstarter campaign is almost to its stretch goal. Just over $600 left. If this campaign hits $9,000, I will give everyone who pledged at any level an electronic copy of my large collection Stories from July. It contains 32 short stories plus all the blogs I wrote about writing them. And also, on top of that, each person pledging to this campaign will get a credit for a Classic Workshop of their choice worth $150. (If you are a lifetime workshop subscriber, you can take the equivalent in lectures or Pop-Ups we…