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Knowing How Lucky You Are…
I Know For a Fact I Am Stunningly Lucky… Just to be alive and well. My old-time friends all say that all the time and I can’t argue with them. I have been lucky to have friends for thirty, forty, and fifty years that I treasure and they are there when something happens and I hope I am there for them in return. I have been stunningly lucky to have been with Kris the last 38 years. I was lucky to be a free-style professional skier, a PGA Professional, get a masters degree in architecture, and do three years of law school. I was lucky enough to write a lot…
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Cleaning Up!
My Traditional Publishing Brag Shelves… It is all getting boxed up and hauled to storage. Nine shelves filling about 12 filing boxes full of books and magazines that I published stuff in during my traditional publishing days. Sadly over the years, I didn’t keep it up very well, and would take a book out of it for one reason or another and not replace it or get the book back in the right spot. And unlike Kris’s brag shelves where she kept everything in perfect order and also has one copy of all editions. Her brag shelves fill an entire room and her office. We have another brag shelf downstairs…
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Life Rolls…
That Means “Life Events”… And so many different kinds of Life Rolls and different sizes and events. Health issues, family issues, money, job issues, publishing issues, and so on and so on. Major life events can stop you cold, like me falling last fall and smashing up my shoulder and being in a brace for a month after surgery and then nine months of PT. (Quarterback of the Las Vegas Raiders just had that happen to him on Sunday, same injury.) You just never know what kind of life event will hit and what size and shape. Today, (Monday), Kris and I both had pretty busy days planned with writing…
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Length of a Brand/Trademark
I Was Surprised… I was working on an issue of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine tonight and mentioned in the introduction that Kris and I started Pulphouse in 1987 and it has been going along one way or another, making money as a brand and a business name for 37 years this coming year. And we have plans to expand the brand even more very shortly. I find it interesting that the older I get, the bigger the numbers get with different things I have been doing. My best friend and I have been close for sixty years this year. I sold my first short stories 50 years ago. And the Pulphouse…
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Thinking of the Start of the New Year…
New Year Is Not Far Off.. Today I got up late (since I stay up until 5 am), watched far too much college football including that crazy ending to the Arizona/BYU game, then headed out to the store(s) to get all the stuff Kris needs to make her fantastic pumpkin pies and a turkey and all the extra stuff as well. Actually fun. And then watched more television and didn’t get into my office until after midnight. And most of the time since getting in here I have been working on and thinking about the start of the new year and what I am going to do to really ramp…
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A Few Great Questions Today…
First A Question on Priorities… The question boiled down to this… “What is more important? Writing, Learning, Reading, Publishing?” Great question, and I honestly had to stop and stare at it for a moment because in the publishing world of 2024, all of those are important. There needs to be a balance of feeding them all regularly. But writers tend to get into trouble over time when they drop one or two. “I don’t have time to study another author’s book or to take a class or worse yet, I don’t need it right now.” So learning gets left out and the writer goes stale and dull in time. “I…
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I Have Been Lucky…
Yes, Even With Everything Going On… I consider myself amazingly lucky that somehow I have been able to continue in this profession of fiction writing now for fifty years. I mark that fifty from selling my first short story. For going on thirty-nine of those years, I have been super lucky to have Kristine Kathryn Rusch as my partner. We met when we had both sold a few short stories and just kept on going through all the ups and downs. There have been some amazing ups I can tell you, but also some stunning downs. We just keep on going, enjoying the storytelling and the publishing and our friends…
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Judging, Gifts, and Golf…
Yes, I Am a Judge… Of the Writers of the Future writing contest. How it works for us professionals is that the editor of the book Jody Lyn Nye and a host of first readers wade through all the submissions every quarter and they send us professional-writer-judges 8 stories. I tend to judge two quarters a year is all. There are no names on the stories, but if I recognized a student’s style or story, I would disqualify myself. So total blind judging on our parts. Now here is what is interesting that most writers don’t know. Many, many writers were published out of the contest, which means they had…
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Why So Many??
Got That Question the Other Day… Why have I done so many Kickstarters? Done 44 of them, working right now on building #45. My honest answer. I like to get my books and Kris’s books and our projects to readers. That simple. And here in 2024, that is the first step in telling readers what is available. Just as with any kind of promotion, Kickstarters take time to build up followers, but first question I always ask someone who is complaining about book sales is have they done a Kickstarter? Answer is almost always no. Fear. Too busy. Too much work. All the reasons for the answer “no.” And when…
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Writing, Learning, Fun…
New Structure Format… Coming Out of Writer’s Block… I have for some time now not been writing at the pace I usually enjoy. This is from three life events. Going blind for a time, major shoulder injury and surgery, and then a discovery with our business. But as with all Writer’s Blocks caused by life events, I am emerging back into the light and my creative voice really wants me to pick up speed. So now I am deciding on what to do next. And I hope sort of a start on December 1st with a ramp into 2025. I know what I want to do on the publishing side.…