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The Return of Boss
Three Full Days Doing the Survey And almost ready to go. Waiting on one more detail and it will finally head out. I’m learning a great deal, actually, since this is the first one we have gone with a fulfillment company on. It should be pretty good, even though this time they are only doing the survey and we are still doing the actual fulfillment. But it is a ton nicer and a ton more work. And also we will have a site up for a time to take late pledges. In other words, if there is something you missed during the Kickstarter, you can still pick it up, or…
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Course Curriculum
Updated Because of the Sale… You can find this workshop curriculum at any point on the front page of my web site on the right under the Curriculum tag. There are a bunch of workshops, pop-ups, lectures, and other classes that I tried to put in some sort of order. If I missed something or didn’t add it in for some reason, just write me with questions. Remember, until the 8th, everything is half price on Teachable. Everything, including classes, lifetime subscriptions, everything. Full instructions and reasons for the sale are in the previous blog, but all you have to do is hit purchase and then put in the code:…
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End of Summer Workshop Sale
Summer Has Gone… We are still in Covid. I honestly last spring never would have predicted this. Back when WMG Publishing did what we all thought here would be the last workshop sale in May, we had an expectation that as things opened up, we would all be able to slowly go back to a changed, but new normal life. And that sort of happened for some. Sort of. But by July it was clear that most of us were still locked up, wearing masks, and doing our best to move forward in some way or another. So WMG Publishing decided to do another sale the first week of July,…
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New Workshop Coming…
And Other Stuff… Last day of August. Been a long summer, that’s for sure. Actually, a long time since March/April and the start of all this. I went for months this summer (except for the scary trip going up North for moving) with my big adventure each week going grocery shopping. Or maybe running for some take-out pizza. I know for a fact I am not alone in that. Being safe and sane through all this is crazy. I sure thought last May we would be through this by now. Nope. Now I am at least getting out of the building each day for exercise. Who knew by now I…
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Going For Exercise
But Still Too Hot… In a few short hours from now I will be driving out toward Summerlin, with the sun not yet up, to join a running group. I will be mostly walking. And it is all set up Covid safe. I signed up for this group that meets every Sunday morning until December, so even though it will be 84 at sunrise, I’m going to show up. This is a training group for marathon running and they set up a 12 mile course every week. I am hoping to do four miles tomorrow morning. Again, more walking than running, and be home before the temperatures get into the…
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Fun Interview
Robert Jeschonek Interviewed Me… A fun and short discussion with Robert about different things science fiction and 1970s, because he’s doing that SPACE: 1975 Kickstarter Campaign. When we recorded it, it was about 60% funded, but now the campaign has made the funding and first stretch goal and is doing great. I am excited because I get to write a story for it. The interview happened when I was in the worst of the allergies from the smoke and I wore big headphones, so I looked a little more beat-up than normal. (grin) But it was fun. And since I sold my first couple of short stories in 1974, I…
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Really Fun Special Workshop
And Only FOUR Days to Get It!!! Robert Jeschonek is doing a really fun Kickstarter campaign where he has a bunch of us writing stories for this 1975 themed science fiction anthology. It is called SPACE: 1975. Check it out! Only four days left. Ends on Tuesday. So Kris and I got talking about how many different things and techniques we had to learn to actually write or something like this in science fiction, and it occurred to us that writing to topic, especially historical topics, in science fiction, had a lot of tricks, techniques, and methods that writers could learn from. Kris and I learned them over hundreds of…
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Blast From The Early Days
Early Freelance Days… The picture below was taken by the great fantasy writer Nina Kiriki Hoffman on Christmas Eve, 1988. Professional writers used to gather in Eugene, OR on Christmas Eve every year and it was a wonderful tradition for a good decade. The tradition started in 1986 and we would start off at my place (and later Kris and my place just outside of town) where I would cook a turkey dinner for everyone. Then we would all drive over to Jerry and Cathy Oltion’s apartment (or later house) to open dollar gifts, then we would drive to Nina’s place to read aloud stories we had written for the…
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Cover Basics
I Got a Surprise Today… With the Covers 101 workshop starting next week, I decided I needed to round out my education a little on what the writers were doing who hired people to do their covers. All of you know I think that is a waste of time and money and can hurt your writing overall, but numbers of writers I know have others do their covers, so I was curious. So I wrote one wrier and asked a favor, if that person wouldn’t mind sending me a blank copy of the contract they use with their cover designer. I got a nice letter back saying they didn’t have…
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I Gave Up…
After Over Two Years of Fighting It… I am now working to get up around dawn. I still have not figured out the writing parts, but I need to do this for the exercise, so the writing will follow. I am starting two things next week that I just could not figure out how to do with the heat. I will be joining a running group that starts once a week at 6 am to train for a marathon, so once a week I was going to basically lose a day anyway by getting up so early. And all races start very early in the morning anyway. And I have…