• Challenge,  publishing,  Smiths Monthly

    Smith’s Monthly Is Back!!!

    After Three-Plus Years!! Finally, Smith’s Monthly is back!! Yes, I haven’t really been gone for over three years. Just the magazine has. The date on Issue #44 of Smith’s Monthly is May 2017. The date on this new issue #45 is January 2021. So over three years. For almost four years before that, I did an issue per month and didn’t miss. One new novel, four or five short stories, and part of a nonfiction book. Or earlier on, a serialized novel. Every month. And I enjoyed it. All those issues are listed in posts on Smith’s Monthly web site, one at a time, with contents and cover. (Many of…

  • Challenge,  publishing

    Cover Fun

    Got Playing Around… I’m going to be putting out some collections this spring and through the summer and fall, so tonight I got playing around with some covers. I managed to do both of these, both wrap for paperback (except for spine… got to have page count first) and epub covers. It took me just slightly over 45 minutes to do both, and that included finding the art work, which is always the hardest part in my opinion. So thought you might like to see two of my collections that will be out over the next month or so. I’ll do more covers later for more collections. The first collection…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    Colliding Worlds Five Volume Set…

    100 Science Fiction Stories… Fifty from Kris, fifty from me, in a five volume set. Colliding Worlds We are slightly over halfway through the campaign and it is doing great. We hit the third stretch goal, so everyone gets more books and two classic workshops. Basically, tThis is us having a great time. We have also talked about doing joint collections of some sort of another, and then Gwyneth came up with the idea of us putting 100 of our science fiction stories in the same set of five books called COLLIDING WORLDS and both Kris and I loved the idea. Really, if you have a few minutes, watch the…

  • Challenge,  publishing

    A Blog Post Worth Reading

    From a Bestseller Going Indie… Interesting stuff. Worth the read. They have been hybrid for a while, but looks like the math got them finally on the side of indie. (grin) Math can do that. And note they kept saying “Forever” when talking about rights. Anyhow, nothing else tonight except I have Smith’s Monthly #45 headed for publication and I almost have #46 together. So here is the link that you really should, for fun and education, go read. Flowers and Questions  

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Fridays…

    Not Sure Why Fridays Bother Me… I imagine it is because of back in 1987 I was finishing up a 14 year run of tending bar. Fridays, Saturdays, holidays, I always worked until late. So on Fridays I was alway out with those partying in one way or another. And then from 1987 until the late 1990s, I spent a massive number of weekends at science fiction, fantasy, and a few mystery conventions. In 1992 Kris and I went to 26 of them, one every other week. It was part of the business back then. We were both writers and Kris was the editor of the Magazine of Fanasy &…

  • Cave Creek,  Challenge

    Kris Read the Cave Creek Novel

    She Liked It… And said it will be a great bible for the shared world anthologies set in Cave Creek. So finally this weekend I will record some more videos in the shared world class while the novel is being copyedited and put in a form everyone in the class can read it. And also turns out that the town is so open for a ton of stories, I don’t have to outline much other than what is in the book, so great fun there. Turns out that writing a novel with the intent that it would work as a short novel, and also be a bible, was an interesting…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  publishing

    One More Distracted Day

    Totally Expected… All good stuff today, of course. And by the time the world let go of me enough, and I had a nap to catch up on missed sleep, there wasn’t a lot of time and focus. But since I had just finished a novel yesterday, I spent today’s free time on Smith’s Monthly #45. I am basically done with it, a few ads to fill out, want to double check some stuff, then off it goes tomorrow to get published. Yeah! Soon as available, I will announce it here and the subscriptions to the electronic will go out, and the paper will follow when the paper issues are…

  • Challenge,  publishing

    New Challenge Update

    Nothing Changed… Just Some Focus… With all the world events, it has been damn near impossible for most of us to focus over the last two months. Still, going into 2021 with the vaccine coming on and the chaos-in-chief leaving, I figured the future was solid enough to make some goals and to push myself for 2021. And I still believe that. Just didn’t know that 2020 was going to have a 13th month. So lost a bunch of days and a bunch of focus, as many of us did over the last 20 days. And the waiting and wondering what was going to happen next just puts an underlying…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  News

    Finished Cave Creek Novel

    Card Sharp Silver: A Cave Creek Novel This book got sidetracked badly because of Covid this last year. I just sort of put it away for the longest time, then finally brought it back out in November after the election and started dinging at it again, planning to have it done right about now. It’s a short novel at 31,000 words, and now Kris will read it and then it will go to WMG for copyediting, then it will be posted to the Shared World Class. By the way, if you have opted out of emails on Teachable, you are missing a lot of instructions and updates. Emails are how…

  • Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  publishing

    Colliding Worlds Kickstarter Doing Great!

    Hit Second Stretch Goal… And headed for the third. Kris and I are very pleased because we really love this idea of having a joint set of collections. Five books with fifty of her stories and fifty of mine to make 100 science fiction stories in total. That’s right, all science fiction. And all types of science fiction. All with the title Colliding Worlds. All of these have been published before, but I guarantee not one person out there besides the crew at WMG Publishing will have read them all. Or even a quarter of the 100 stories. Some of mine have only seen print in early volumes of Smith’s…