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A Challenge For Everyone for 2021…
My Challenge of 70 While I Am 70 Pushes Me… So I got a comment about structuring a short story publishing challenge for 2021 for others, especially writers just starting out. And I think it’s a great idea for a bunch of reasons for most writers. So I thought I would go into the reasons and the idea here. Challenge: Publish 52 Short Stories Stand Alone In 2021 Note, I did not say write, I said PUBLISH. Stories would have to be stand-alone, most selling for $2.99 electronic and $4.99 paper. (Under 3,000 words sell it for $1.99… never 99 cents.) A lot of writers I know have collections published…
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Well, I Did It… 26.2 Miles…
In My 70th Year on the Planet… I completed the Revel Mt. Charleston Limited Edition Marathon. Picture of my medal below. And sometime this week the race will post pictures from the run and I will post some here. As I said, I completed it, but not well. For years I had been working toward a marathon in November when I would turn 70. But all my great planning went out the window like so much other stuff last April with Covid. I did not dare go to a gym to run at my advanced age and the summer here in Vegas was the hottest ever recorded in the history…
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Card Sharp Silver… Day 18
One Month Since Day Seventeen… Wow, just as all of us had a crazy last month, mine was no different. Some people have been working harder than ever with this virus, others are laid off and killing time or trying to focus. I have been in the bunch working harder than I can remember. But now, thankfully, returning to my normal level of freelance work, so I started a new short story series in the last few days and today got back to writing on the Cave Creek novel. So as I did for the first seventeen days on this, I will detail out the general nature of my day…
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Licensing… Oh, My…
Taking A Day Or Two Away From the Novel… I will be back on Monday talking about my regular routine, but for today and tomorrow I don’t want to have to push the book into a small place and time as I have been doing. I want to give it more time. So going to get a ton of workshop and business stuff done first, then focus on the run to the end of the book. But in the mean time, licensing… It has now been suggested that we all wear face masks when going out. Now that “suggestion” from medical folks doesn’t mean we should all go out and…
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Card Sharp Silver… Day 14
Ramping Back Up… The day was swallowed by a ton of detail stuff, mostly business. Made it to this computer around 11 am and did email and some details on this web site fixes. Also some work on the Cats Bundle (see below) and some work on the Cave Creek Kickstarter, which ended successfully. Yeah! And thank you, everyone, for supporting that project. I promise it will be some fun. And surveys will go out soon. Then Kris and I headed out around 1 pm for a long walk (about four miles total) to run an errand and then picked up take-out lunch on the way back. A ton of…
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First Of The Month!
Good Time To Start A Challenge… Publishing Challenge, Short Story Challenge, or Novel Challenge. All are open and a great way to keep your goals on track for the year. And a number of writers are in sight of lifetime subscriptions on the short story challenge, one on the novel challenge, and one has already gotten a lifetime subscription on the novel challenge. Keep going, folks. Only four people are signed up for the Publishing Challenge. That one seems to scare hell out of writers. (grin) This weekend I will be doing a bunch of posts about the first of March in the Decade Ahead class. And also a bunch…
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Pulphouse Workshop
Special Project Day… Spent all day today working on a couple special projects. One we will announce later in the week, the second one I did the How to Write a Pulphouse Story workshop. Kickstarter surveys have gone out and I expect on Monday and Tuesday those who want to take the October special workshop will contact me. If you did sign up for the special How to Write a Pulphouse Story workshop through Kickstarter and have filled out the survey, write me if you want to join into October or November. If you have workshop credit, and want to take an October regular workshop, also write me. For the…
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Losing Weight
Might Be The Hardest Challenge I Have Ever Done… Now, granted, I am being successful at it. Frighteningly slowly and certainly not in a straight down line. But it dawned on me this week that this might be simply the hardest challenge I have ever taken on, and I’ve tackled some big challenges over the years. For three years now I have aimed at a marathon here in Las Vegas. For a year before I moved and also last year. Both previous times (and maybe one other a few years earlier) flat didn’t work because I couldn’t get the weight down fast enough to ramp up the running in time.…
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Great Challenges
Behind On My Reading… But hope to be caught up this next week. Both novels and short stories. Looking forward to the reading, actually. Just had a few weeks of silly amount of things to do. The Great Challenge for a story-per-week lost two writers this week. They both wrote me and said they would miss. One managed ten stories, the other twelve. Fantastic! Now each of them has $600 in workshop credits as well as the short stories. So now both the novel Great Challenge and the Short Story Great Challenge have openings if you want to jump in. You sign up on Teachable and then let me know…
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If I Can Make It
I Have A Blog Anniversay… In August, 2011, I lost one of my best friends, book dealer Bill Trojan. I was the executor on his massive estate and I lost almost a year of my writing and one of my eyes to that experience. So to get back writing, I came up with Smith’s Monthly for my fiction and started blogging daily on August 1st, 2012. Smith’s Monthly lasted 44 issues before going on hiatus for another emergency, but somehow, through it all this last year plus, my blog has continued. Not a clue how. (And Smith’s Monthly is about to return. Go figure.) So on August 1st, if I…