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Recorded a New Pop-Up
Not Live Yet… But will be next week. In fact, I am going to record a second one as well and put both up at the same time next week. The new Pop-Up I recorded is called Fear of Success. We are doing right now the first time through a Killing the Critical Voice workshop (that we will offer every month) and fear of success is often so much of the reason for not being able to fight critical voice. And it is amazing how many writers have vanished or held themselves at a certain level because of this fear. Critical voice always comes out in fear, by the way.…
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Basic Science
Sadly, Not Always Learned… Some misinformed young woman tried to post to this blog tonight about how cloth masks do not stop the actual virus much at all and studies have proven that because the actual virus is too small. She is right. If the virus just floated all by itself in the air, a cloth mask would not stop most of them. Of course, one single virus particle does not carry the virus load needed to infect anyone in almost all cases, but that is beside the point. But thankfully, the transmission of the virus comes from someone who is infected talking or singing or shouting in a closed…
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Dr. Jerry Pournelle’s Advice
Advice from Another Pro… Before he died in 2017, Dr. Jerry Pournelle recorded at the Writers of the Future conference advice to help newer writers. He wasn’t talking to fans, but to writers. It doesn’t matter what any of you thought of Jerry personally, his books were New York Times bestsellers and he was in the industry writing for over forty years or more. And besides helping writers at Writers of the Future, he often took in single student to mentor. Some major writers were his students at one time or another. And I know a lot of you don’t believe me at times about some of the advice I…
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A Very Satisfying Feeling…
When the Versa on My Wrist Buzzes… That means I have hit my 10,000 steps, which is five miles for me. For those of you who don’t know, a Versa is a Fitbit in watch form, sort of like an iWatch. It gives me the time, my heart rate, my steps, my miles, and how many calories I have burned so far in the day. All on the face of the thing. I have the calories set assuming I am 180 pounds instead of 195. And there are a ton more features, including tracking my sleep every night. Up until I got this thing, I had never worn a watch,…
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A Real Test…
For What Remains of My Critical Voice… Which is clearly nothing. Tonight I had to read a lot of assignments in the critical voice workshop. This assignment details out how each person makes projects important and thus allows critical voice in. Now in all those assignments there was an amazing amount of reasons, excuses, and just scary problems. I read them all tonight to get a basically form-letter response to everyone. Nothing I could really say. It was one of those awareness assignments. But tonight I also had a short-notice short story due that I had to finish by tomorrow. That kind of deadline can make a story “important” quickly…
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Author’s Copies
They Become a Necessary Problem… After collecting author’s copies for 35 or more years now, they tend to build up in volume. And when you have two prolific authors, they really can build up in numbers. So one of the large collections I will be bringing to Vegas is all of Kris and my author’s copies. (Our brag shelves are already here. I am talking about extra copies.) The reason is that the new offices in Lincoln City just doesn’t have the room for all the back stock of WMG books and all of Kris and my author’s copies. So one collection is moving to the new Vegas office and…
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Tags and Sales Copy
Captain Proton… Defender of the Earth! “Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear when Real Men with ray guns and beautiful women in beguiling outfits battled hideous monsters from outer space! Return with us to the days when Captain Proton ruled the skyways!” That is part of the back cover copy of a full novel I wrote called Star Trek: Voyager Presents Captain Proton. I wrote the novel under the name D.W. “Prof” Smith and in the style of E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensman series. Captain Proton, for you non-Voyager fans, was a character on the holo deck in the show. (I also wrote a book staring…
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A Sort-Of Day Off… And Black Books…
Without Really Taking the Day Off… You know how that goes… You sort of think you are going to take the day to rest, but then end up puttering a bunch of stuff done. Yup, that was me today. Finished up email, worked on a workshop, did laundry, got some research done of the UHaul for the final July move to bring the marbles, digests, files, and extra author copies down to the Vegas office. And three naps. Guess I was tired. (grin) Black Books… I have mentioned to a few people that I bought a long time ago a mountain of gold, just could never get to mining it.…
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Some Licensed Products
Cold Poker Gang Licensed Stuff… In the mail today I got a nifty box with another metal box inside. It was a set of poker chips in a metal case with an image of the cover of Bottom Pair on the outside of the metal case. And inside each chip was embossed in gold with the words “The Cold Poker Gang.” I put two decks of The Cold Poker Gang cards inside it in exchange for the regular cards that came with it. I get to keep it for something down the road, because no one took a set in the Kickstarter Campaign. So I get to keep this first…
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Some Promised Pictures…
Hard to Get a Sense of 7,000 Square Feet of Stuff… But the following pictures will sort of give a hint at the monster I am tackling. (And yes, I owned all of this stuff.) What I did for four days was mostly pack and make decisions about entire collections and found homes from most of it. Like a large collection of anniversary clocks went to my old bookstore, along with a ton of nonfiction books that I sorted that were from Kris’s old library. I had also bought a massive collection of decorative wooden boxes. Those went to the bookstore as well. The massive Muffy Vanderbear collection (that was…