-
Getting Really Organized…
I Mean Really, Really Organized… So I am writing all these new stories. And they are in bunches of different series. At the moment they are just printed out and stacked by the day and month I wrote it. Yeah, that’s stupid. And I have two file cabinet drawers full of manuscripts I’m not sure where they go, or have gone, or even what they are. And I have a spreadsheet of all the stories that have been in the sixty-seven issues of Smith’s Monthly, along with in some cases the collections they have been in. Some cases. So I was having issues getting started on a story tonight because…
-
Filing System Drawback…
Smith’s Monthly As A Filing System… A number of people have mentioned to me how cool that idea is to keep stories organized. And it really is. When I publish an issue. I have not published an issue since #67, which was November of 2022. Which means I have not filed anything since then. (grin) Granted, for six months of that time I was mostly blind and for another six months of that time I was recovering from surgery and most of this last year I was dealing with business issues. So yes, it has been 2 years and 4 months since I filed anything, but a lot of that…
-
My Filing System
I Am Both Organized and Not Organized For 67 months, I did Smith’s Monthly Magazine. Had one short break in the middle somewhere and now it has been on hiatus for over two years because of the life rolls. But it is coming back. Soon. The last few days I discovered once again why I loved doing that magazine and what is really important to me about it almost more than anything. It is my filing system. Every month I would publish four or five or six short stories. I never repeated a short story, so there are 270 different stories in those 67 issues. There are also novels and…
-
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.
-
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…
-
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.…
-
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…
-
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.…
-
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…
-
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.…