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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…
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Two Cool Things!
Really Worth Checking Out… The first is a brand new series of blogs/articles from professional writer Chris York, who writes mystery and science fiction, but these days mostly really amazing cozy mystery novels under a couple of names. Chris is married to writer J. Steven York and they have been our closest writer friends for more decades than any of us care to think about. Anyone who has come to a major workshop for WMG, either on the coast or here in Vegas, knows Chris. Anyhow, since the beginning of this year, Chris retired from her long-time day job as an accountant for a major hotel and condominium complex and…
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A Quick Covers Post
Different Aspects of Cover Art… I tell writers to do their own covers. The levels of critical voice excuses I get back are amazing. And all the excuses are geared to make sure the writer fails. After all, that is what critical voice does, it stops you. In this modern world, unless you have a ton of money you want to just toss into a garbage can, no writer can afford to hire covers done. Wait, let me change that. No moderately prolific writer can afford the time, the money, the problems that come with having someone else do your covers. Moderately prolific? Four novels and a number of short…
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Friday Night and Exercise
Talking Exercise for a Minute… Since it is Friday night and even the streets of Vegas are mostly empty, I figured it might be time for me to talk about what I promised a while back, and that is regularly blogging here about exercise and weight loss. It has been brutally hard to do either this last month. Vegas has had the hottest August on record EVER! Think that through. Las Vegas, known for heat, just broke all records. Oh, joy, which made going outside impossible unless you are out and moving at dawn, and even then some of those temperatures this month would have taken a long time to…
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Working on the Survey…
For The Return of Boss Kickstarter… It ended tonight and thanks, everyone, for the great support. Really fun. But now I am working on the survey that will get sent out in a week or so. Basically I am rebuilding the entire campaign… twice. Not kidding. And adding some extra stuff people can grab if they want, or if they missed it in the campaign. At some point, Loren and I will do some videos in the Kickstarter Best Practices about surveys and the many ways they can be handled after you run a successful kickstarter. Kickstarter itself gives you a decent tool to use. And using that is pretty…
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Last 18 Hours…
As I Write This… The Return of Boss Kickstarter campaign ends at 8 pm West Coast Time tonight (Thursday) and looks like we are going to go past the 6th stretch goal. So writers, you get four Pop-Ups as stretch goals, worth $600 total. We already have two of them recorded and will be finishing up the last two and have them all up before the survey goes out in a week or so. Also a lot of great reading as well as stretch rewards, plus everyone who backs this gets the new Diving novel Thieves as well. So make sure you don’t miss it. This turned out really well…
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Best Workshop Deal Ever….
In the Return of Boss Kickstarter Campaign… Kris’s wonderful Diving Universe novels and novellas and short stories are all in the subcategory of Science Fiction called Space Opera. So back when Kris finished the new Boss novel and we were talking about what cool things we could do for the campaign for writers, we came up with the idea of teaching a special three-week workshop called How to Write Space Opera. It will only be offered through this special Kickstarter campaign and now only for two more days. Ends Thursday Evening! But since the Diving Books are space opera and learning how to write great space opera is a tough…
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The Return of Boss Kickstarter…
Is Down to Counting Hours… As I write this, 65 hours left. Only that much time left to sign up for the new special workshop, or get the two new Diving novels early. Or a bunch of other great stuff. We have made it through five stretch goals, which means there are some great extra books and for writers three Pop-Ups that everyone will get automatically. And there is still time to hit that last stretch goal and add in even more. So help us pass the word. Or if you haven’t looked at it yet, click over to The Return of Boss Kickstarter campaign and look at all the…