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A Pithy Comment
A Good One This Week… I find a pithy comment of the week every week to add into the videos in the Motivational Monday class. This Monday is the 5th week of the second quarter. If you sign up for the entire year, you get all the ones from the first three months in the first quarter, plus the five so far this quarter. Plus all the rest coming in this year. But this week I wanted to share the quote from Ingrid Bergman out wider, which I thought applied to writing and publishing spot on the money. And from a direction most writers don’t come from. Basically, what I…
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Catching Up… To Do or Not To Do?
A Great Question… I got that question from a writer just today and I had a pretty simple answer for him. But there is more to my answer than what I was able to give him at the spur of the moment. I said this: Try to catch up if doing so is possible and will be challenging. If impossible to catch up, then simply reset the challenge and start fresh. Sounds simple until you start figuring out if something is impossible or not. Sometimes you just know you have screwed the pooch. No catching up is possible. Reset and restart!!! But other times the added challenge makes it even…
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Time of Great Forgetting…
It Is Back, Stronger Than Before… In all my years of watching writers go through this period from April to the middle-end of July, break all streaks, get too busy to write, actually forget about writing and publishing completely, I have not seen a year this bad. I got a hunch there is one major reason. This is the first spring in two years that we feel (as a population) safe enough to get out and do things in most parts of the world. So wow, all that postponed stuff from the last two years is going to be done this year no matter what. I get that, I really…
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Finally Getting Some Things Caught Up…
Not Everything, Yet, But Gaining… Today I finished all the layout of Smith’s Monthly #60. Yes, realize or try to imagine 60 monthly issues. Five full years, although there was a 2 year gap in there when Kris was sick and we had to get down here to Vegas. But now still going strong. And I also did the introduction and got everything together for Smith’s Monthly #61. Will turn that in after a day or so. And also got a bunch done today on the next issue of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine. Got to get that turned in. So all kinds of fun projects. And a very strange Sky Tate…
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Another General Day
Some New Covers, Workshops Caught Up, Other Stuff… Didn’t get a story done tonight, didn’t even start one. Just did other stuff. Tomorrow back on a regular story per day again. Should be interesting to fire back up. I really miss not being regular at it. I think this is day #111 or so, and I think I have about 90 or so stories done. I’ll know more tomorrow as I finally start using my new tracking and filing system. But 90 sure isn’t bad and 21 is easy to make up. Should have that made up around August 1st. Maybe sooner if I get on a run. So not…
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THE 2022 WRITE STUFF BUNDLE
WOW, THIS IS A GREAT BUNDLE!!! And it has a $150 Pop-Up class in it as well, all part of the ten projects to help with your writing and publishing. Kris curated this and did a fantastic job. This one is worth grabbing, folks, and telling people about. You can get it at www.storybundle.com/writing. And while you are at Storybundle, Kris and I both have books and one of our major collections in Celestial Sagas bundle put together by Robert Jeschonick. It is a great one. So you can grab a bundle to help you with the writing and publishing and a bundle of great reading. So here is Kris’s…
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Front List and Back List
Talked About This Before… But yesterday I got this newsletter that comes out monthly focused about 95% on traditional publishing. And let me tell you, folks, from the sounds of things in traditional publishing, everything is just doing great. (Note I said from the sounds of things.) They are using all kinds of hinky percentage increases that are statistically bogus and mean nothing. And, of course, the real reasons the balance sheets are standing strong under observation of public traded corporations are the IP valuations and depreciation of those IP assets. Book sales are not holding these companies up, let alone the companies vast expenses in New York property, or…
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Why All The Stretch Rewards?
Why Give So Much Away? Got that question a lot this time, more than any other campaign we have done, although I must admit, that question is pretty normal for our campaigns. If a person does a $5 pledge to get an early copy of RESCUE TWO in electronic form, as I write this they get ten more books and nine workshops worth $1,350.00. But that is about to jump one more goal to eleven books and ten workshops. Why do this? Why give so much away? Two major reasons, actually. First, this is a campaign for my new Seeders novel RESCUE TWO. It stands alone, but gives a good…
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Another Friday Night
Over The Years… I think it is a total miracle that I have not missed on this blog on a Friday night. Some of you know I tended bar for 17 years, and just about always on a Friday night. So back in 1987, when I went freelance with writing and editing and publishing, I swore I would never spend another Friday night or another New Year’s Eve in a bar. But for some reason, after 35 years of not going anywhere on Friday night, the itch to go out and do something on Friday night is still there. I never want to do anything in reality, but it is…
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RESCUE TWO KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN NOW LIVE!!!
ALL KINDS OF GREAT STUFF!! Including a ton of different workshop stuff, and with every award you get a copy of my new Seeders novel RESCUE TWO. Rescue Two Kickstarter. The two special workshops are on science fiction. — WRITING IDEA FICTION Special Workshop. All the ins and outs of writing idea fiction and how to do it and how to come up with ideas. You can take it starting April 12 or May 3rd. And remember, this is the only place to get this workshop. — WRITING ABOUT TIME Special Workshop. All the ins and outs of writing about time while in space and how to do it and…