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More On In-Person Workshops…
All Set Up… And Getting Sign-Ups… So I figured I would mention a few things. First off, here in Vegas the Covid statistics are very low, in the moderate range and are dropping steadily. No masks required anywhere. In the entire state there are just over a hundred people in the hospital, all of them not vaccinated and most of them older and up north where the non-vax folks live. All of them have other conditions as well. But even so, we are still going to require for all of 2023 workshops that everyone attending an in-person workshop must have proof of vaccination and boosters. No exceptions. Do not make…
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Announcing New Advanced In-Person Craft Workshops
Workshops Are Here In Las Vegas… All these workshops are advanced craft focused. You will be doing a lot of writing while here. And each workshop, similar to this year, will be two-genre focused. And each will have a Study-Along class going on at the same time online on Teachable. And each will be followed by a novella challenge class to do a novella in two weeks on the workshop topic. (You must have taken either the in-person or the study-along to take the novella.) DETAILS… Workshops always start Monday morning and end Thursday by noon. So you fly in on Sunday and out on Thursday or Friday. Workshops are…
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Interesting Reaction…
…To the Free Promotions Post Last Night. Writers will pay more thousands of dollars than I want to think about to take a class on how to do paid ads on Amazon and other places from writers who have been around a year or so and have a “system.” And then spend more thousands on the ads. And then spend even more to fly to 20 to 50 Conference to learn even more methods, secrets, and systems of how to promote and make money without doing the work. Yet Amazon and the other places have free tutorials on how to do ads that work on their own site. Tutorials are…
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Free Advertising For Writers
There Is A Lot of It… I know that so much attention is paid to the young writers who spend all the money advertising to drive a lot of buyers and all that. And they are constantly telling other young writers that is the ONLY WAY TO DO IT!! And some of them, for a time, make a lot of money if they hit the right moment with the right combination of things. And they spend a lot as well. But honestly, I hear far, far more stories of writers who try it, spend a lot, and make no sales in those gimmick ways. While a lot of us just…
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Fun New Book I’m Going To Do
It All Started with a New iPad… A really big one, like my old one that had pretty much given up working a year ago. A new iPad and a desire to get out of the condo more often. Those two things are a deadly combination. And then add in an article in the daily paper about the buffets back open around Las Vegas. Oh, oh…. The thought hit my mind fairly quickly…. “I could take my new iPad with its fancy new keyboard and go write a short story while sitting in a buffet.” Yes, I could do that. Oh, fun. It would take some discipline to maintain my…
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Heinlein’s Rules
Just Finished Recording the Last Week… Heinlein’s Rules workshop was an eye-opener again for me. By teaching the rules this way, talking about aspects of each rule for six weeks, I could start to see the beauty in the simplicity of the rules and why they boil this incredibly complex business down to such a simple foundation. And why Heinlein called them “Business Rules.” They really are business rules. And motivational rules. And thinning-the-herd rules. I was so lucky to stumble on them in the fall of 1981 and decide to just do them without missing starting January 1st 1982. Over 40 years ago… (yikes) I would have been thinned…
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A Streak Without Desire
How to Get Through a Streak Lull. As I said back a week ago, I have been doing this blog for ten straight years, without missing a night. But truth of the matter, I sometimes had no desire to write anything and nothing I felt was worth writing about. And if you are doing a writing streak, that will happen as well. Just the brain says, “Nope.” Not a block or anything silly like that, just a lack of motivation at that moment in time. So how do you get through that? Write a line, then another line, then another until you hit your streak goal. They do not have…
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What to Study On Kickstarters…
Thinking of Doing a Kickstarter Campaign Some Day? Here are some things to study. And since we do not have a campaign going at the moment, I thought I would give some suggestions. First off, you need to study ongoing Kickstarters. Say you are thinking of launching your next book with a Kickstarter, here are some basic steps. Plus what to look for when you are following other Kickstarter campaigns. BASIC FIRST STEPS 1… Have the book done and going to be published out about six months. Up for pre-order when you can on each site. You want to do your campaign to give the book early to your fans,…
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Past Crimes
A Fantastic Storybundle… One week ago today a Storybundle at Storybundle.com/crime launched called Past Crimes. Now, I love crime stories, have published many over the decades, and I have a top-selling series of twisted mystery series with my Cold Poker Gang stories and novels, one of which is in this bundle. And I have had the luck of being able to curate a number of Storybundles. And I personally think this is the best one I have ever done, and also the best one I have been lucky enough to have a book in. And I sure don’t say that lightly. Being in the company of mystery writers like Lawrence…
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NOTICE!!! My Old E-Mail is Toast
Can’t Get It Working… So if you have been sending me things to dean@deanwesleysmith e-mail address, I have not seen them and have no idea where they are going. Not one clue. It seemed to be killed when we took this site to a new host. So please send them again to my workshop address, which is under the contact me tag above if you don’t know it. Sorry about that. I have spent far, far to much time trying to get that old address working. So I am tossing in the towel.