• Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  running

    Some Stuff

    Ran in a Five K Fun Run This Morning… Actually I am still in run/walk mode, but managed to run about 2 of the 3 miles total. In another month I’ll be running the entire distance. (Pictures below) And still averaging over 10,000 steps a day. ——— Fantasy Detective Story Bundle I curated is on the last few days. Don’t miss this one if you like really different fantasy mystery stories. For $15 you can get a ton of great reading. ——— New Pop-Up is Live!!! On Teachable. This one is about how to help your career by understanding Second-Hand Sales. I know this makes no sense to many of…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    Kickstarter Funded!

    Thanks to a writer wanting to jump into the Mentor Program… And that is wonderfully cool! Now I get to not only help someone for a year with their writing and publishing, but I get to make the 100 paperback books I wanted to do. And still 19 days left in the Kickstarter campaign.  So now anyone who does back the project either for the books or for a lecture or workshop gets the three collections of my 100 stories. That will be a lot of reading since my stories all range from 3,000 to 7,000 words. They have to be at least that long to fill out the 24…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    Make 100 Short Story Paperbacks Launched

    A Kickstarter For Me To Make 100 Short Story Paperbacks… I just launched it. Going to be great fun. 100 short stories in paperback form, as well as electronic form, as well as in a set of collections. Most, if not all of these short stories will be original, never published anywhere. And I am doing all the work, including the covers, the layout, everything but the large collection books. Here is what one of the short stories will look like. And here is what a cover of a Smith’s Monthly looks like, which will be starting back up this spring. Notice the branding? (grin) YES, WORKSHOPS TOO… Yes, like…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Two New Pop-Up Workshops

    #7 Second-Hand Sales and #8 Kickstarter for Writers… The Second-Hand Sales Pop-Up covers what are second-hand sales, why they are great for writers in so many ways, and how to successfully use second-hand sales to help grow your sales and your fan base. There are tricks, lots of trick to it. It is on Teachable now with an introduction video and also in the bundles. It will actually launch on Sunday evening the 20th. A second Pop-Up is also available and will launch on Sunday January 27th. This one is called Kickstarter for Writers. Basically all the details about how to set up a Kickstarter campaign for one of your…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Second-Hand Sales

    Another Topic I Get Lots of Questions About… And again, this topic is so full of myths about sales and publishing, it will be impossible for me to do this justice here. But we are going to do a Pop-Up on this topic soon that will go into why this isn’t a problem and how to use second-hand sales to help your own sales. Yeah, I know, crazy, but true. So for this topic, I’m going to use second-hand sales to mean sales out of used bookstores or garage sales or other places where the writer or publisher makes no money from that exact sale. To do a second-hand sale,…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Trust the Character

    We Hear That All the Time… Trust the Character… What it basically means is just stay true to the character you have set up in the opening of a story and let them tell the story to you. It is your creative voice playing through the character, but it is great fun to just follow a character you are writing just as you follow a character you are reading in another author’s book. I am always surprised by my characters when writing. Well, this last week I’ve been puttering along on a novel, not doing more than a thousand or two thousand words a day, even though I really like…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Magic Bakery Workshop Moved to Classic

    I Pulled It From the February Line-up… I looked back over the records and no one had taken the Magic Bakery workshop since last spring I think. So no point in listing it as a monthly workshop anymore, even though I think it is one of the most important workshops we have done. So now only nine workshops offered in February. I will continue to work to clean up old workshops so there is room for new ones this spring. So the Magic Bakery workshop is now a classic workshop. And it has been added to the Lifetime Subscription as a Classic workshop, and I left the original one there…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    February Workshops Now Up

    They Are Live On Teachable… A good list of workshops for February. And a few of the January workshops are still live as well if anyone wants to jump in late. But they won’t be still available by Monday. Also, anyone can still get the Lifetime Workshop Subscription that gives you complete control over when you can go through a workshop. Also, the first Futures workshop is available and the second one is available and going right now. There will be four in that series by the time it is all done. http://wmg-publishing-workshops-and-lectures.teachable.com/ Class #11… Feb 5th … Endings Class #12… Feb 5th … Point of View Class #13… Feb 5th … Writing…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    No One Cares

    And No One Will Notice… I constantly get comments and questions from writers worrying about putting out a book that someone might hate, or that might have a mistake in it, or whatever other excuse they can think of to not take a chance and put a book out on the market. All based on fear. All excuses. This sort of continues the last post about always wanting to go back and fix something you put out earlier. You think someone might care if you did that to your book, that someone might notice. Or even more stupid, they might notice that you didn’t fix it. Gadzooks!!! This area, among…

  • Fun Stuff

    A Special Cat Picture

    Because I Am Exhausted from CES… I finished up the series blog post on wanting to make stories special that is right ahead of this one. So thought before I staggered off to bed I would show you a picture of Gavin on his and Cheeps new cat tree. I was trying to finish up a few letters, but my eyes are blurring. So if I owe you a letter or response, tomorrow. No CES for me tomorrow. Night…