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Questions About Smith’s Monthly…
Is It Coming Back? Answer… I sure hope so. Stopped with #67 last fall when I had the eye issues. Now delayed a bit more with the shoulder injury, but my hope is early next year. Writing comes back up first, then the magazine. Got to get up to at least 70,000 words of fiction a month to fill it. I appreciate the questions about it.
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Smith’s Monthly
Ten Years Ago… Yes, one fine day in 2013 right about this time of the year, Kris and I were headed into Salem, OR from the coast to have dinner and see a movie. I had been noodling on ideas to get myself back really writing after spending most of the year before dealing with my friend’s estate, and then not really writing that much in the last half of 2012 and the early part of 2013. I needed something to get me focused. Earlier that day, while in my office, I had been sorting out my digest fiction magazine collection and came across some Mike Shayne issues. It was…
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Smith’s Monthly
New Place for Smith’s Monthly… We have all of them on our new Shopify store. Right now only the electronic editions are there, but given time, with luck, the paperback copies will be available as well. Check it out. When you see all 67 issues one right after another, you realize how amazing it is. Remember, each issue is about 60,000 to 70,000 words of only my fiction. Four or five original short stories every issue, plus a novel or something else large, plus other stuff. Every month. The November 2022 was the 67th issue. That was the last one I did at the moment because of my eye issues.…
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I Never Look Back…
But At Times I Am Forced To By Circumstances… I write stories, one draft, cycling, and finished. For fiction, I have a person go over it to find typos. Kris reads it to help with the typos. I never look at a story again. Now I have published well over 400 short stories (a number of them from my early years and because they were horror, they no longer fit what I am doing, so I have never republished them.) But most I have put through Smith’s Monthly and then indie published. A bunch have been in anthologies I have never republished in Smith’s Monthly as well. Someday I will.…
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Last Bits of Smith’s Monthly #63
Just Finishing SMITH’S MONTHLY #63 Up Tonight… Fun thing to do on a Friday night. As many of you know, I do all the layout of the magazine, and every month I have a blast with it. There are four original stories in this issue, plus another collection of stories and the novel that is the header of this web site. MELODY RIDGE, which is a combination Jukebox Novel and Thunder Mountain Novel. It is the origin story of all my jukebox stories. So I wanted to put the collection of the short stories, with how the jukebox stories came about, and how thirty years after I started them I…
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Smith’s Monthly #62
Laying It Out Now… June issue. It will be out later in the month. Yes, issue #62 of a monthly magazine that has about 70,000 or so words in it every month. All written by me. No one else. Do the math. That’s is over 800,000 words per year in just Smith’s Monthly, not counting anything else I do. Except for a light copyedit and the actual loading to the accounts, I do everything else on this magazine. I do all the covers for the short stories and the rest of the contents and the magazine itself. I do the layout into trade paper in a two-column format in InDesign.…
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Getting Things Cleaned Up
Licensing Next Week… So got to get a lot of things done ahead of time this weekend. That includes getting Smith’s Monthly #61 laid out and back to WMG so they can fire it out. And recording what I need to record for the week. Tomorrow (Saturday) I will post some recordings in the Master Business Class on the how and the why of the Licensing Expo and details about the WMG Suite. So watch for that later tomorrow. And I did a bunch of business stuff today to get it all out of the way as well. Allyson will be here Sunday, which is the first time in 2.5…
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Some Updates
Just Catching Up… Update #1: If you backed our Crimes Collide kickstarter campaign, you should have gotten a survey on Friday. If you did not, check you spam filter in the email address you used on Kickstarter. If you still can’t find it, email Josh at subscriptions@wmgbooks.com Update #2: February regular workshops start on Tuesday and Wednesday, including the new Pulp Speed Writing class, which will be interesting in a lot of ways. March workshops will get posted next week. Update #3: Kris and I got a bunch of information on licensing this afternoon, some of which we knew, some of which was confirmed, some new. That will show up…
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Smith’s Monthly #53 Published
I Got a Little Carried Away… This monthly issue has 85,000 words in it. Yikes. Since I am working on another new Thunder Mountain novel, I thought I would put the very first one in this issue, along with nine short stories (four new, five in the serialization of Stories from July. The first Thunder Mountain novel (called simply THUNDER MOUNTAIN) was actually in Issue #2 of Smith’s Monthly in November 2013 with a very different cover on it. So anyway, thought I would note the publication today of Issue #53 of Smith’s Monthly. All 85,000 words of it. Yikes!! Here is the link to the page on WMG Publishing.…
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Cover Fun
As I Do Every Month… First, before covers, I would like to thank those of you who sent ideas for Pop-Up classes. The ones online I tried to explain why the might or won’t work. Might want to check my reasons, but still got some great ideas, so thanks!! These covers below are the covers I did tonight in a few hours for the next Smith’s Monthly Issue, (actually 1 hour and 35 minutes, including finding art.) I didn’t have to find the art for next month’s issue. Allyson already had that. The mountains in that image are exactly like the mountains where most of the Thunder Mountain novels take…