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Rejections From The Past
Makes Me Realize Why I Am Here… Today, towards the end of the 16 hour day of packing and moving, I was sorting through boxes of old filing and stuff that needs to come to Vegas and I came across a banker’s box completely full. It had five of those massive photo albums in it, all bursting with too much stuff. Each album contained an entire year of rejection slips. I used to put all my rejections in these big photo albums before I learned that the rejection slips need to be filed with a copy of the story and so on. So I opened up one of the big…
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Here and Working
Arrived at the Coast… Around 6:30 Pacific Time, checked into my hotel, and went to work up at the warehouse, ending around 10:30. Had some help tonight from Chris and Steve, which was great. Thanks!! Oregon was a lot better than central Nevada on the masks and my safety today. Even Eastern Oregon. No real issues and only one guy I had to step back to avoid. And Boise was great. No issue at all. So two legs of this trip down. Now comes three days of packing and work before I get to go back out on the road again and risk my life because idiots are too selfish…
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Leg One Down
Ten Hour Drive from Las Vegas to Boise… Made it fine. Too much fast food, as I knew I would do. And since it was deepest, stupidest, red Northern Nevada, very few face masks in sight. I stayed over 20 feet from anyone without a mask and moved quickly. Families traveling through all had masks on their kids and seemed just as bothered as I was about the idiots. Boise has a harsh mandatory face mask rule, so fine here. I am sure Eastern Oregon will be a problem area again tomorrow. Otherwise no issue at all. Kris and I have a fairly new Cadillac SUV and it is scary…
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On The Road Once Again
Headed for Lincoln City, Oregon. That is a 20 hour drive and I am staying to the back roads for the most part, up through the center of Nevada, stay in Boise, then across the center of Oregon to avoid Portland traffic. And yes, I will be careful, basically drive-through meals and more hand sanitizer than I can absorb. Plus I stay away from anyone too stupid or callous to NOT wear a mask. And I do mean way, way away. A side note: If you are following this blog and think you are too good, too perfect, too smart to wear a mask when out in public anywhere and…
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ANTHOLOGY WORKSHOP PUSHED BACK ONE YEAR
No Surprise to Anyone… We have officially pushed back the anthology workshop from Feb 2021 to February 28th through March 3rd, 2022. The writing for the anthology workshop always starts in November. We did not feel that it would be safe yet for anyone to really travel in seven months from now. So we’re giving it another year with the hope that things can be under control by early 2022. We did add in a bonus for those signed up and paid and who are holding over the year to 2022. Kris will need the Holiday Spectacular stories again, so anyone signed up and paid will be invited by Kris…
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Decade Ahead
A Crazy Thing… Right now, one of the main conversations I am having with writers is how is this year going to turn out? No one has a clue. And we are all afraid to try to forecast anything in 2020, since this year started here in the States with an impeachment that didn’t hold and then gave free run for the same president to really screw us with this pandemic. So at the moment the States are a dangerous place to be as almost a thousand people a day are dying from this virus. That’s right… Every day. So it was a great, great idea in January of 2020…
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Kickstarter Full Workshop
Finally Going to Do It! Kris and I have been talking about this for some time, but it just never seemed like a right time to launch it. And we have the Best Practices on Teachable already that is free, but without a workshop structure, that can only cover so many details. But today, as we were talking about different aspects of what Brandon is doing and why over the years more writers don’t use Kickstarter and other sites like it, the reason became clear. The details. Writers are overwhelmed by the details. What do you do first, what do you do next, how do you set stuff up, how…
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4 New Videos
On Kickstarter Best Practices That is a free service that Loren Coleman and I are doing on Teachable, trying to help fiction writers get started and understand fiction on Kickstarter. Right now, Brandon Sanderson is over 5 million in three days on his fiction Kickstarter. So this is worth studying and looking at, even as a new writer with no fans. I have seen new writers make nice money on Kickstarter. Just have to know what you are doing and follow some best practices, and that is what Loren and I have done on that location, detail out and talk about the best practices for fiction writers on Kickstater. Again,…
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Changes In Publishing
A Glimpse of a Future As many of you know, I have been around and working in publishing and fiction writing professionally since 1987. Sold my first two short stories in 1974. Over the years, I have watched publishing change numbers of times. I knew the distribution collapse of the 1990s, caused by Safeway and invoicing, would alter publishing forever. And it did. And I watched as the Kindle changed everything in publishing and created the indie movement which is now the major part of publishing (even though traditional writers and publishers don’t want to think so.) And I have watched and wondered how this pandemic was going to change…
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Exercise Again
Every So Often I Just Have To Talk About This… Exercising. Critical for writers. Not a fun topic and most writers just sort of shrug and move on. But since I didn’t get the time to really unpack everything Brandon is doing on his Kickstarter today and record some videos about it, I figured I would fill this blog tonight with a reminder to exercise. I am working to lose weight and my goal as I have told many, is to run at least one marathon in my 70th spin around this planet. I am building toward that with a written-out plan that I have in a notebook beside my…