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Business Master Class Finishing Up
Business Master Class Finishing Up Here on the coast we are just tomorrow finishing up the really fun business master class. Forty professional fiction writers, all in one meeting room, talking nothing but business morning, afternoon, and night, and into the night, actually. Great fun. Exhausted but I have a long list of things I want to do. So tomorrow night it will be done and things will be back to normal here on Sunday. And I will start making some of the changes to this site at that point. ——– Kickstarter Update: We have finally figured out a few tricks on the surveys we send out to supporters to give…
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Getting the New Look of This Site Together
New Look Coming Not much tonight other than I have been really getting some great help and some good discussion over the last few days about this site. And ways to clear the clutter and get it better focused and functioning. So not only will I be hitting the writing hard starting next week, but will be making changes here. And doing more writing blogs because I’m learning a lot this week. So nothing tonight. Too late and I have to be up too early to say anything sane. (grin) But fun stuff getting planned. ———————- November Online Workshops Click the workshop tab above for description and sign-up or go…
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Trust the Reader
Trust the Reader I have a hunch that the phrase “trust the reader” is going to come out of my mouth a lot this week. Just guessing. What exactly does that mean in general? Basically, it means to let the readers decide if something you wrote works or not. How do they decide? They spend money on it. If it doesn’t work, they won’t buy it. Trust the reader. Sounds so simple, but for most writers, almost impossible, if not flat impossible. Writers have this ego thing that makes them think they are the best judges of their own work. And, of course, no story is ever perfect, so writers…
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Workshop type of day
Workshop type of day Short post tonight. Been working on different things with workshops all day. Kind of surprised that so very few are signed up yet for the November online workshops. Too many things going on in the world I suppose. My focus has been taken for a short time for a personal reason, but it is interesting how I am noticing almost across the board that other writers’ focuses are off as well. In one week I will be back at full speed on the writing, but I have no explanation for why it seems across the board (workshops are only a minor sign) that this October is…
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Fun Day
Fun Day Worked on first the master class, then recorded another week of the POV workshop, then home to cook dinner, take a nap, and work more on the master class stuff. Great fun. This workshop is going to be a real challenge and the POV workshop is already a real challenge to try to present such a vast area of information and techniques and have it make sense. So I am challenged and when I am challenged, I have fun. The Point of View workshop is also offered in November, but trust me, you don’t want to even try it without the depth workshop first. — This is a…
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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…