• Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Time Travel Story Bundle

    I LOVE TIME TRAVEL BUNDLES… I have one of my Thunder Mountain time travel novels in this bundle. It is called Warm Springs and might be the most complex time travel novel or story I have ever written, and that is going some. And I am not curating this one, Kris is, which makes it even more fun since her take on Time Travel and my take on it are very different. So here is her blog introducing the time travel bundle called The Big Time Bundle… It is her words from here on out… Call it a guest blog, sort of… ——- The Big Time Bundle – Curated by…

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    Visions of the Future

    A Storybundle… I grew up reading science fiction way back in the 1950s. And from those early years, I loved it, how it showed me possible futures, places to escape to, wonderful visions, and dark possibilities. Science fiction took me out of a bad childhood and let me escape, not only from my home, but from this planet. And then, when I was in high school and college, Original Star Trek, in its first run, allowed me to escape into a wonderful future of hope and dreams, where the good guys won. To say I loved science fiction would be a gigantic understatement. And for the last six decades, I…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Invested In Not Writing

    Amazing How Common This Is… Basically put, writers, over time, develop a real and crippling investment in not writing. And, at the same time, often claim they want to write. These writers cross the spectrum of types. — Teachers who always wanted to write, teach writing, but now feel inside that they just flat don’t dare expose that they are still beginning writers at their core. — Burnt out writers who have made writing so important (because they have had a few successes in the past) that they don’t dare write anything more. Failure is a very high platform that these writers in their minds don’t dare jump from. —…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    How I Count Years…

    Resetting and Focusing Ahead… I actually have three times in a year I really reset and focus. First of the year, of course. July 1st (halfway), of course. And around my birthday. Now I am not sure why I use three, since my birthday is in early November (don’t ask) and I just sort of use it for starting challenges and other things over the years. Or if nothing else, spend the two months before the end of the year to get ready for the new year. In January 2018, Kris was so sick, I was only thinking of that. In July of 2018 I was still in the middle…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Racing the Clock Storybundle

    A Great New Bundle… I curated it and everything and I think I found some of the best fast-paced books in a lot of different genres. So below is my introduction to the entire bundle and all the books and nifty stuff. Worth grabbing folks. And if you haven’t read any of my Mary Jo Assassin novels, here is a chance. Get it at… Racing The Clock Storybundle Fast Paced in Every Genre I love reading stories that grab me and don’t let me go until I come up at the end of the story, sometimes breathless from the ride the author has taken me on. Those kinds of stories…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Sorcery and Steam Storybundle…

    Now Live!!!… And folks, I have a brand new, never seen before, Poker Boy collection in it. And Kris has a brand new, never seen novella in it. And on top of that, Annie Reed has a brand new collection in the bundle and Fiction River Presents: Sorcery and Steam is also new. Plus Laura Anne Gillman’s nifty novella “From Whence You Came had very little distribution before this bundle. So this bundle is chalk full of original-to-the-bundle books. And I put it all together. And had a blast doing so. This is only available for a very short time. So grab it quickly. Here is my blog from the…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  workshops

    Emotion Workshop…A Sample

    Lifetime Subscriptions… You should already know that the Emotions workshop is in their subscription. Anyone with a lifetime subscription to workshops can take a new workshop when it starts up or wait and take it any time down the road. And you don’t have to tell me you want to be in it. Lifetime subscribers are automatically in. One subscriber asked if it was better for me to have them take it first time out or wait until later. For me, it makes no difference. But for the subscriber, it might be better to wait and get out of the crowd. (grin… not that many people taking it the first…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Special Stories

    This Came From A Question I Get A Great Deal… In fact, I think some form of this question is the most common question I get overall. The question basically boils down to this… A writer has learned something new. Should that writer go back and fix some old stories or novels to make them better? The last two times I got this question (just yesterday and today) caused me to flash back to a memory. (Might have been being so tired from CES, but either way, here came the memory.) I remembered clearly how when I finished a story back in my “rewriting” days it was something special. And…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Harlan Has Left The Building

    Harlan Ellison Died In His Sleep… I am sure that over the next few days you will hear good and bad things about Harlan, and a ton of Harlan stories, as people like to call them. I have my share as well. Not going to give you many. At least not here. I considered Harlan a friend. Kris and I got to know him in 1987 when we started up Pulphouse and he was a friend and mentor to us for a lot of years. And I had read his writing for years before that, including The Glass Teat columns. We were not in touch much the last decade because…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    The Many Deaths of a Fiction Writer

    A Sort of Look At Tombstone Markers… I’ve been thinking about trying this post for a year or more now, but this last news about the agent ripping off 3.4 million from writers (at least) brought this back to the front. So I’m going to try it. The idea is simple. From my position of being around for 40 years, liking to watch other writer’s careers, and editing and teaching and interacting with writers now for over thirty years, I have seen what flat kills writer’s careers. They are always, and I repeat always, self-inflicted wounds. And one note before I dive into this. Those of us who have survived…