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Day Five: Novel Challenge
Day Five: Novel Challenge As I have been saying, this challenge this time is nothing at all like the first time I did this. And as I expected, I missed my word count today. Just not enough time in the day and energy in the old body to make it. But still two more days to go on this, so we’ll see how it ends up. Worst thing that could happen is that I need an 8th day to finish. Anyway, last night I got only just over five hours sleep because I needed to be up and to the WMG Publishing offices and store by 12:30 p.m. From around 1…
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Day Two: Novel Challenge
Day Two: Novel Challenge Again for Day Two, a weird day. For the first time all year, it turned sort of hot here. Maybe got up to almost eighty, which here at the coast is a killer for us locals. Silly, I know, but air conditioning is a lost art here. So it was too warm for me to work in my office at WMG, so went out for some walking, got a new pair of running shoes and some running socks as well. Home by 6 p.m., after only about one hour of work, 1 hour of exercise. Too warm to work in here, so I went downstairs and took a…
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Day One: Novel Challenge
Day One: Novel Challenge Really a strange start to this new novel challenge. I ended up getting to the WMG offices around 2:30 p.m., then headed out for errands, first going to our south store, then to a bank, then back to WMG offices, then to a second bank and the post office before heading to walk with two other writers. Got done with the walk around 5 p.m., headed to the grocery store for some lunch and to pick up what I needed for dinner, then back to WMG Publishing to work on workshop stuff. Home by 7 p.m., so 3.5 hours of work, 1 hour of exercise. Cooked…
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Novel Finished
Novel Finished Yup, finished the second novel of the month. Of course, the last one I started last month, but got this one done in ten days. ——- The Day I paid no attention to the day today, honestly. Got home from being out doing errands around 5:30 p.m. and I worked, off and on, until 4:30 a.m. on finishing the novel. Mostly on. I wrote about 7,100 total words and cut out about fifteen hundred total, which isn’t bad for me. Book came in just under 40,000 words. The Taft Ranch: A Thunder Mountain Novel will be in Smith’s Monthly #33. I will be turning in the issue to WMG,…
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Fun Workshop Poll Results
Fun Workshop Poll Results Thank you, everyone, for chiming in on what might interest you on the three workshops Kris and I were talking about. Very clear that the Expectations (writing on the rails) workshop and the Mystery workshop were the two big winners. More on that below.. ——- The Day Got out of bed late and missed one meeting and from that point on the afternoon seemed to be behind. So I did some work in our new bookstore and then headed home to take a nap. Kris cooked dinner, I did dishes and did e-mail and then went to reading a book I’ve been looking forward to reading.…
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Goodbye Miss Thang
Miss Thang The very sick elderly cat we have been trying to get back to health for the last two months didn’t make it. More on all that below. ——- The Day Started the day off with a visit to the vet. Then back to WMG store for the writer’s meeting and lunch in the back area. It feels sort of strange, actually, to have a writer’s meeting in a store I own. In my first bookstore, both the science fiction club and the writer’s workshop met in my store every week. One on Tuesday, one on Thursday. That was in 1982-1984. Things go around and come around again in…
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Bookstore and Writing
Bookstore and Writing Worked in the afternoon in our new bookstore and wrote a bunch as well. ——- The Day Saturday so no real errands. Ended up in the new store working in the bookstore part of the new store for a few hours. Fantastic fun. Yeah, I know, paper books don’t sell anymore, but you need to tell that to all the people in the store today. (grin) Then I worked on workshop stuff, including the new Teams workshop. I’m having a blast doing that workshop and actually putting some things together myself. We have three people signed up for the teams workshop in July. Not even full at five…
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Day 1,000
Day 1,000 Now ain’t that a kick? 1,000 days of writing this blog without missing a day. 95 more days before it becomes three years of counting. Now that’s a streak. I’ve talked about the power of streaks, but going to do so again in the topic below. ——- The Day Got to the office around 2 p.m. and then went off and did errands, then walked with two other writers, getting back to the store around five. I worked until about 7 p.m. in the new store, then home to cook dinner. Then assignments, getting that done around 11 p.m. and taking a nap before going to watch some…
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Author Earnings Report
AUTHOR EARNINGS REPORT Today a new Author Earnings report came out form Hugh Howey and Data Guy. Normally these reports are amazing, especially watching the trends from quarter to quarter over the last year plus. But this time they went even farther. They got 82% of all books sold in paper, audio, and ebook on Amazon. And they talked a lot about the dark matter, the huge area of books that sell very, very few copies yet make up a lot of the volume on Amazon. This report is a stunner. Take your time and read it. I’ll give a few of my opinions below in the topic of the…
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First Day
FIRST DAY As expected, knowing I was going to get started today on the run up to ground effect writing, I gave the writing more attention, meaning I actually thought about it during the day. And between now and the end of August, I will go back to detailing out the day as I have done at times in the past. Skip it if it bores you. ————— The Day Made it through a bunch of errands starting at 1 p.m. and then to the regular Wednesday meeting by 2:30 p.m. That lasted until 5:30, but good stuff happening. Then I worked upstairs for about two hours, including two trips to…