• Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    February Workshops Now Up

    They Are Live On Teachable… A good list of workshops for February. And a few of the January workshops are still live as well if anyone wants to jump in late. But they won’t be still available by Monday. Also, anyone can still get the Lifetime Workshop Subscription that gives you complete control over when you can go through a workshop. Also, the first Futures workshop is available and the second one is available and going right now. There will be four in that series by the time it is all done. http://wmg-publishing-workshops-and-lectures.teachable.com/ Class #11… Feb 5th … Endings Class #12… Feb 5th … Point of View Class #13… Feb 5th … Writing…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    No One Cares

    And No One Will Notice… I constantly get comments and questions from writers worrying about putting out a book that someone might hate, or that might have a mistake in it, or whatever other excuse they can think of to not take a chance and put a book out on the market. All based on fear. All excuses. This sort of continues the last post about always wanting to go back and fix something you put out earlier. You think someone might care if you did that to your book, that someone might notice. Or even more stupid, they might notice that you didn’t fix it. Gadzooks!!! This area, among…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Fun First Day at CES

    But Only 1,000 Words of Writing… The day chewed up my time completely, but a lot of fun. I did manage 1,000 words tonight on the book, but under my daily goal, but that’s all right. CES is only once a year. Kris did a really good blog on her Patreon page about our first day, so figured I would just add a few pictures and call it a night. Got to leave the condo tomorrow morning at 7:30 a.m. so another long day. I will talk more here about the cool stuff I am learning as I get it sorted out. Going not only as a SF and Mystery…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    The Book With Baggage

    An Idea for a Series of Posts… Or maybe a Pop-Up. Or a new writing book. Or all three. This came about when a number of professional writers were talking and writer J. Steven York mentioned a book he was going back to that he had struggled with. And then we got talking about that book (or two) that we all had that carried so much baggage with it, we either couldn’t finish it or don’t want to think about it ever again. I have never met a long-term professional writer that doesn’t have a book-from-hell story. Or a book so hard to work on that it is  just not…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    CES Show

    Kris and I Are Both Going… For at least as long as our brains hold out from all the crowds and things to see. For us it starts on Tuesday. We are only planning to be there during the days, but my gut sense is that by Thursday we might both be burnt out. I might be wrong. The entire Consumer Electronics Show is spread over the entire city and I am not kidding. There had to be thirty or more places to pick up badges. We walked a few blocks downtown and got ours in the lobby of a hotel there. Free shuttles leave the four major downtown hotels…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    A Crazy First Five Days

    Workshop and Mentor Stuff… It has been a wild and crazy five days for me, both in ramping up the writing and exercise, but mostly in the WMG Publishing side of work. You know, first of the year business stuff. Longest five days I have had in a long, long time. But now things are smoothing out. And tomorrow I even turn in two book projects to WMG Publishing. One on time, one ahead of time. (They might faint.) So to get some rest and make tomorrow my best fiction writing day in a long time, I am just going to give you the information I gave out earlier in…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Mentoring and Workshops

    First of the Year is Here… Four things tonight to make sure you all know about if interested. First… I have one spot open for anyone interested in having me be a mentor this year. I had one person drop out due to a nasty health issue that does not sound like a good way to start a year. So one spot open. I am just starting to get going with the other two in this program. All the details are in the post here. Second… I have decided to do the challenge again. You can write either three novels in three months or thirty short stories in two months.…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    Public Domain Day

    I Know… Copyright!… But hang on, it’s interesting, honest, because for the first time in a lot of years, major works are entering the public domain. Now granted, for some countries, this is a normal thing. For example, in Canada, any author who died in 1968 has works entering the public domain now because of life plus 50 year rule. But the United States has had some pretty messed up copyright laws since it was founded and copyright was put in the Constitution. Now finally, everything from 1923 has dropped into public domain and that will continue to move forward each year, one year at a time, until it catches…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Sixth Pop-Up Launching

    Writing Mysteries into the Dark… This is the sixth and last one for this year, of course. I will be announcing two or three more in a week or so. We will do at least two or more per month, and they are only up for two weeks at a time. Details of all of them are below. However, you can still get the earlier ones in the bundles. We have three bundles available. The first five, the second five, and the first ten. As of today there are six Pop-Ups available in the bundles. Information about them is below. But again, the first three are only available in the…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Looking at Gaining Energy

    I Actually Have Two Challenges That Will Help… As I have detailed out before here, my two challenges are to lose about 25 more pounds and write ten novels. All in 100 days. I was talking with Kris about the two elephants, working on how to carve three hours for writing and three hours for exercise out of every day for 100 days. I have done as we teach, looked and written down my schedule, and if I remain focused, the six hours are there, no issue. But just thinking about it made me tired. (You know, elephants.) Then I found myself saying that once I got the writing going…