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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 &…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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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…
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Working On Smith’s Monthly
Taking Longer But Almost Done… Maybe two more days before it is finished and heads for print, the first issue since 2017. Then I am going to start at once on the February issue and get out ahead. March right behind that. Why talking longer is the learning curve on InDesign complex magazine layout. Two columns with ads and everything. And second instead of being able to use some of the ads from the first 44 issues, I am rebuilding every ad. That is taking time, but that will get quicker as each issue goes by. So my work schedule is holding on both the last few chapters of the…
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Pattern of Work
When the World Lets Me… Which is has for the last few days. Great fun. I start off doing email when I first get up and get going. Usually around noon or so. Then errands and lunch. Then around 3 or so I go down to our office and work down there for about an hour and a half, putting things together, sorting, putting up shelves, you name it. Basically physical work. Then more email, then a quick nap and then dinner. After dinner I am in here doing other stuff, including assignments and misc work at my computer. Often reading some. (Remember, bad eye so computer time is limited.)…
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Why The Vastness of Space Workshop…
Because It Is Fun To Learn and Use In Fiction… Really is that simple. Problem is, so many writers (and I have read three just lately) who do not know space terms and measurements, or do not know how to fake it, or go around it. And using a term wrong is deadly to a story. The problem is that for almost all humans, understanding real distances in space is just almost impossible. Unless you work on it and are interested in it, your mind will not even pretend to grasp the real distances of space. But this does not mean you can’t write space opera and science fiction. Quite…
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COLLIDING WORLDS Kickstarter Campaign
100 Science Fiction Stories… Fifty from Kris, fifty from me, in a five volume set. Colliding Worlds This is us having a great time. We have also talked about doing joint collections of some sort of another, and then Kris came up with the idea of us putting 100 of our science fiction stories in the same set of five books called COLLIDING WORLDS. Really, if you have a few minutes, watch the video. We talk about our writing process a little as well. Each book will have ten science fiction stories from Kris and ten from me. You can get all five volumes in electronic edition, trade paper, or…