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Some Ideas I Think Might Be Ripe
This Is Just A Fun Thought Experiment… But I think that some ideas in publishing that have been around for a time and not gotten much traction might be nearing time-is-right place. Just my opinions, and I am sure I am missing a ton of other close, but not ready yet, things. But here are three to think about that I personally think are close. Idea One… Gift Cards for Books Now back in 2011, we did a couple books on credit-card-like cards with a code on the back to download the book. In essence the idea was to give a physical form to electronic books. We mounted the books…
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Mentor Program
Still One Spot… For the Kickstarter campaign, I had opened up two mentor spots, bringing my total of writers I would be working with to 5. I felt good about that number since the ones that started in January seemed to be doing fine, moving along, checking in. And one of the writers who wanted to join the program through Kickstarter doesn’t even want to start until the middle of the year. So why do I have an extra? Some person I had never talked to and who wouldn’t answer my email (so I had a hunch something was wrong) just dropped out in the last hour or so, as…
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Last 24 Hours
Only One Thing I Can Write About Tonight… Last 24 hours of the Smith’s Stories: Make 100 Paperbacks Kickstarter campaign. You can get regular workshop credits through the campaign to use any time in the future. Get lectures and other stuff as well. And eight of either my mystery novels (Cold Poker Gang) or eight of my sf novels (Thunder Mountain). Not counting the 100 short stories either solo or in three collections. (Every award level gets the three collections in electronic form when I am done.) And, since the campaign made its first stretch goal, everyone gets another large collection of my stories (Stories from July) and a Classic…
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February Workshops Starting
And Some Other Stuff… First off, the February regular workshops are starting up. Nine of them and they are a good group. Depth in Writing is the workshop to take first, but this month if you have had Depth, I would suggest either Teams or Endings. Both will really help your writing. I think understanding teams in fiction just makes novel writing so much easier. It gives books almost an automatic structure or bones. And knowing all about endings makes readers want to buy your next books. So anyhow, you sign up on Teachable if interested, or if you have a workshop credit you want to use, write me and…
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As Promised…
Pictures… Crawled out of bed at 6:30 a.m. and Kris and I were headed out the door before 7:30 am on a rainy and slightly cold morning for Las Vegas. All to attend a “5k fun run.” Actually it was for a great cause and made money to support rare childhood diseases and turned out to be a lot of fun, although very, very wet. (A squishing sound coming from a 68 year-old-man is never promising.) For the first time since I fell in November, I finished ahead of Kris and with a time around 38 minutes, but still run/walk. Got to work that down to around 30 minutes which…
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There Will Be New Pictures
A Run At 8 am… Off for another 5k fun run in about seven hours, so this will be shorter than I had planned and I will get to the writing blog later. Need some sleep. But that means tomorrow Kris will have new pictures of our run on Facebook. Those are always fun. But before staggering off to get some sleep, I did want to say that the regular February Workshops are starting on Tuesday and Wednesday. Good list. Nine workshops. And soon I will have the workshops for April-July up. That will include some new workshops. And the next Futures Workshop called Structures will start in March. First…
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Six Days Left
And Major Workshop Discounts… On the Smith’s Stories: Make 100 Paperbacks Kickstarter project. Right now you can get any lecture for $40.00. Any Regular Workshop for $250.00. Or get as many Regular Workshop Credits as you want. Or Lifetime Subscription to workshops or lectures. Or a bunch of the Pop-Up series. When WMG Publishing does a Kickstarter, we sometimes add in these discounts for workshops, and since this is a project I really wanted to do, I wanted to add these workshops in to kick it over the top. And it worked. Cleared the goal in a day, which is wonderful. Thank you, everyone, who has supported this so far.…
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Making a Challenge Sane (Sort of)
Restructuring My Writing Challenge… If you have been following along this fall, I decided back in September to try to do 10 novels in 100 days. That was to get me back writing again after a long year of life-rolls, so why not go from zero to light-speed instantly? Yeah, that always works. (grin) So I ran into a number of problems right off. The first was changing my schedule of 35 years, the second was learning to live in Las Vegas. The third was the life roll was far from finished. Those problems just didn’t allow the challenge to get off the ground, so I restarted in October, failed…
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Series Workshops Are Done…
It’s Late, and Bowling in a Nerd Bar… Much harder than it should be. But great fun with a bunch of writers. Webinar for the last of the Study Along stuff tomorrow morning early. So for the second day in three, I’m going to turn this over to a cat picture. Back with writing stuff tomorrow. Cheeps… Our indoor feral…
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Heads-Up Writers
Those of You Who Backed the Fiction River Kickstarter… …and took a reward where you also get a chance to write for a volume. I will be contacting each of you this week. Everyone will start writing on Sunday evening (February 3rd) for a Fiction River anthology idea. I will send you the rules and guidelines on Sunday, don’t worry. You will have one week exactly to finish the story, with the deadline being midnight, February 10th. If you took two rewards, your second story will start on February 10th (again, I will send you the rules and guidelines) and you have one week. If you are one of the…