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New Bundle Out
New Bundle Out Many of you know I have written some thrillers over the years. The main one I can claim is Dead Money. A poker-based thriller. It sort of was the anchor to my mystery series called The Cold Poker Gang series. However, under a pen name a while back in time I wrote a thriller set on and around a golf tournament. Yup, not kidding. (Remember, I used to be a PGA golf professional.) And the original book had sex in it, sort of graphic sex, actually, because that was the basis and slant of the publisher I wrote it for. So it was a sex golf thriller.…
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A Celebration
A Celebration I want to have the 36th issue out of Smith’s Monthly this month. (Go ahead, try to wrap your brain around that. A novel, four or five short stories, serial novel, all mine, every month for 36 months. Yeah, go ahead, imagine doing that. (grin)) Why this month? Because this is the 36th month since the first Smith’s Monthly came out. So since the writing is slow at the moment due to massive amounts of other things which will clear shortly, I decided to put my entire first published novel, Laying the Music to Rest, in the 36th issue. Thought that would be cool. I had been serializing the…
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New Stuff
New Stuff As I said yesterday, I drove to Salt Lake and spent a few fun days at a great romance writers conference there. Well run, lots of great writers. It was an honor to be invited. I ended up teaching two classes, one about indie and one about business. Of course, both topics are so large an hour didn’t begin to start to cover either topic. But tried to cover some basics and then opened it up for questions. Got some great questions. What I noticed the most and that was the most fun for me was being around so many writers hungry to learn. That hunger is infectious.…
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Getting Refocused
Getting Refocused Sometimes, when the world hits with far too many things, we all lose focus. I am no exception to that. But I am pretty good at getting refocused. So I have two major things I am going to refocus on. I have a marathon I want to at least start in November, so over the next weeks I need to give that some top focus. So that’s first. Very short term. So for the next month I will be reporting at times and doing some more videos on the marathon progress. That starts on Wednesday (today as you read this, tomorrow for me). Second, going to be bringing…
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Comics and Workshops and Business Diversity
Comics and Workshops and Business Diversity Last few days was a pretty good example of the business diversity of WMG Publishing Inc. Kind of fun to look at, actually. It started off a few days ago when the electronic issues of the new Fiction River went out to subscribers. Paper copies will be headed out to authors and subscribers as soon as they arrive, which should be any day now. I will also have out a few more issues of Smith’s Monthly shortly and a new novel this month will go out. All on the publishing side of things. We are publishing about five projects a month now on a normal…
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Dinner With Friends
Dinner With Friends Writers meeting at 2 this afternoon, a planning meeting afterwards, some exercise, and then dinner with friends, which was the highlight of the day. I am stunningly lucky. I still have friends from my days in junior high. I have known one of the friends I had dinner with tonight for more than fifty years. And my friend would just tell you that my being a writer was not something ever on my radar back then. I was a golfer and skier. And I hated writing. But no matter what crazy thing over the years I have done, this old friend just shakes his head and supports me.…
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Point of View
Point of View As I said yesterday, Kris and I took a day off and drove into the valley, an hour to two hour drive, depending where you go from the coast. And along the way we were talking and brainstorming about the new online workshop Point of View. I was telling her what I saw from beginning writers since she doesn’t see beginning writers much with what she teaches and edits these days. I was telling her about the character having “thoughts” like … I wished I was there, he thought… A huge viewpoint problem if not done right in a story. And I was telling her that I…
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Workshop Finished Here On The Coast
Workshop Finished Here Today was the last day of the Historical, Time Travel, and Alternate History workshop here at the coast, taught by Kris. What a fantastic group of writers who attended from all over the world. Kris was the instructor on this one, so I played behind-the-scenes support, but last night I got to read a group of stories from them because Kris wanted me to be reader feedback. I was impressed and got to give them my feedback today. Some of the most innovative ideas came out of there and I got a hunch I’m going to be seeing a lot of those stories as parts of new…
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Running Breakthrough
Running Breakthrough As I have talked about since the first of this month, I am in training to try to finish a marathon in November. I started this over twenty pounds heavier on July 1st and have been slowly and carefully working my way toward that goal of starting that race. Very, very carefully since I was overweight and have bad knees. My goal is to run/walk the marathon. I want to say that right from the start. Actually my goal is starting. Finishing is sort of a distant dream. I respect that distance. But after today it feels a little closer. I had planned on upping my daily milage…
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A Workshop Day
Workshop Day I spent most of today, in one fashion or another, on workshops. For those of you who missed it, the workshops now have a curriculum, or at least a suggested order to take them. That is under the Workshop Curriculum tab at the top of the page. The entire things is broken down into core workshops, business workshops, craft workshops, and genre workshops to make them easier to find. I also in two areas suggest order and what you should take first. And for those of you who signed up for workshops through our Kickstarter drive, the first week of October I’ll send out a survey through Kickstarter…