• Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    Having Fun In Week #2…

    Of the Making Money Workshop… I just spent the last few hours recording the second week of Making Money with Your Fiction Writing Workshop. Oh, my, I think I was punchy. (grin) But for me it’s a fun topic and I was having fun. I also realized while showing off an issue of Smith’s Monthly that by the time #45 comes out, it will be 2021, and Issue #44 came out in summer of 2017. Wow, 3.5 years between issues. Sort of been a crazy time, that’s for sure. But I am so excited about bringing it back. I have about eight or nine novels done and waiting to go…

  • Cave Creek,  Challenge,  Kickstarter Campaign,  On Writing

    Writing Update

    Some Stories and Progress on Card Sharp Silver novel… I’ve been kind of dinging along on the Cave Creek novel, doing a couple thousand words per night. Also doing some cat stories with my new series character Pahket Jones. She’s in the Poker Boy universe and so far he has appeared in one of her stories and she has appeared in a new Poker Boy story. I’m having fun. Hard not to in the Poker Boy Universe. The Cave Creek novel, Card Sharp Silver, will not only be in a future issue of Smith’s Monthly, but will be sent to everyone for the Shared World Class, along with some bible…

  • Challenge,  Cover Fun,  workshops

    Very Impressed…

    The Covers From the Covers 101 Workshop… The writers who managed to get through to the last assignment of the covers workshop produced some stunning book covers. The Covers 101 Workshop is a step-by-step process workshop in design and layout of covers. I just got done earlier tonight going through Assignment #5 in the Covers 101 workshop (first time it was offered) and basically all were professional covers that would sell books. I showed Kris a few and she just said, “Wow!” A couple writers, as expected, thought they could write sales copy for the back cover without training and failed, horribly, but this wasn’t a sales copy workshop, it…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    Money and Kickstarter Workshops Starting

    How To Make Money With Your Fiction Writing… Yup, that workshop starts on Wednesday this coming week. Should be a very interesting one, but don’t take it if you want to learn about advertising on places like Facebook and so on. That is not how to make money past a moment in time, maybe, if you are lucky. We’re not even hardly mentioning that. This workshop is how to make money over the long haul and build the income. If you first thought is that you know how to do that, you really need this workshop. If you first thought is you can’t imagine what we will talk about besides…

  • Challenge,  Misc

    Up At 5:30 AM…

    For a Run… I have a running group I join sometimes on Sunday mornings and for the first time in a month it will be cool enough for me to go tomorrow morning. Only about 76 degrees as the sun comes up. We are still record heat here. After this summer 76 will feel like I need a coat. (grin) Got to be out in Summerlin at 6:30 a.m. and that’s thirty minutes of driving, so up even earlier. So this is a filler post tonight. Daily streak at 2,984 blog posts without missing a day. My brain can’t really grasp that number to be honest. And oh yeah, worked…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  workshops

    If I Owe You A Letter

    In the Last Three Days, Hold On…  I will get caught up today. No problem, I’m just taking some breaks and doing other things. Also about to do some videos in the Decade Ahead class and more cat videos. So next week check those out if you are in them. Again, the Decades Ahead will go through all of 2021 now. No chance in hell any of us can plan while swirling in this mess. The key with all this is just get your head down and keep writing. And make sure you vote. Horror and Historical-focused Science Fiction special workshops are starting on Tuesday. And Making Money with Your…

  • Challenge,  running

    An Exercise Goal…

    Granted, A Stupid One… I just heard from a marathon run (26.2 miles) that I had sighed up for a few months back that it will actually happen on November 14th. Shocked, I say. Shocked. I signed up just not believing it would happen, but they figured out a way to do it to get the state to approve it. Now I am in decent shape, but not marathon shape, and still about ten pounds overweight to try that distance. But I have six weeks. When I am not injured, which I am not at the moment, I average about 40 miles per week of a little running and a…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Doc Smith and My Family

    Some Strange Similarities… I got to know Verna Smith Trestrail, E.E. “Doc” Smith’s only daughter way back in 1974. Her father had been dead for about a decade at that point and I had never had the pleasure to meet him, but Verna was wonderful. Since Doc graduated from the University of Idaho and the writing group I was in there, and the science fiction club, was thinking of putting on a convention, I suggested that they invite Verna and have Doc be the honorary guest of honor. They went for it and MosCon was born, a great little convention that lasted for years and is trying to make a…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Henry Kuttner

    One of My Major Influences… Not so much for his writing, but for Kuttner’s ability to write a lot of stories. And his partnership and marriage to C.L. Moore. Henry Kuttner died in 1958 at the very young age of 43, so I never had the pleasure of meeting him. Or C.L. Moore for that matter, mostly because she stopped writing and left the field in 1963. But she was maybe the most important of the early women writers in science fiction. Kuttner (and Kuttner and Moore together) did well over 300 short stories and a ton of novels, publishing under more than a dozen major pen names, plus their…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Dare To Be Bad

    A Great Catch Phrase… Following is a post I wrote almost exactly ten years ago. Very little has remained the same in publishing in ten years, and especially through this pandemic, but I figured it would be a good time to bring this forward, touch it up a little bit. Many of you have heard me talk about this concept, and it is an amazingly freeing thing when applied. And my gut sense is that this would be a good Pop-Up topic to really dig into it for those who might need this. Anyway, here is the original post from ten years ago. Dare To Be Bad Kevin J. Anderson…