So Glad Challenge Is Almost Over…
So Tired of Looking Backwards…
Now granted, this challenge of getting 75 books ready to publish in my 75th year is very positive, but the problem is that I decided that I had to clean up and get into one place all my short stories that I wanted to take forward. So 37 of the 75 books will be original ten-story collections, holding 370 of my short stories.
This is not a series and the collections are not numbered except in my own filing. And I have zero doubts that I will add more collections in this bunch going forward as I find more stories I want to take forward.
And yes, they will all be for sale and in paper and hardback editions in different ways over this next year. And some have already been out in StoryBundles and Kickstarters. The full 37 collection should be a very, very cool set of books. And huge.
As of tonight I have four left to put together. But here is the problem I have faced with every collection. Every third or forth year, or depending on the challenge, or the phase of the moon or what computer I was working on, I labeled a story differently from the mid 1990s.
For numbers of months over the different years the label was Month/story # that month/Title or part of the title.
One year I just called each story Year/month/date/part of story title.
Sometimes I would just have two main words from the title as the file name.
Sometimes I had the market I sold to starting off the file name with only one word of the title.
You get the idea… Not one thought in my tiny little brain about the future. And this lack of thinking of the future in file names lasted from the mid-1990s until last year. (I only have one story from before 1994 for various reasons, much of which I forgot to bring the old computer files forward with each upgrade of my computer. And, of course, in 1985 I lost about 120 short stories and two novels in a house fire.)
My rough guess after all this is that I have written so far in this lifetime somewhere between 850 and 900 short stories total.
So I am really tired of looking back. Look back is not who I normally am as a person. But in four more books, I will have this challenge done and will turn fully to the fun of the future.
75 books in my 75th year and not one hint of AI touched any of them in any way.
Take that you lazy jerks who think you need AI to write or do covers or build a Kickstarter. You are so lazy, you will be gone in a flash and those of us who have learned our craft and care about our art will still be going on, telling stories, selling books, and having fun.