• Cave Creek,  Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    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…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    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…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Lost Five Challenge Writers

    Five Short-Story-Per-Week Writers… They didn’t make it through the holiday season. And actually, that is fewer than I would have expected to lose. Middle of the winter, flu and cold season, holiday, travel, and who knows what else. A ton of reasons to not complete a story in a week, or even think about writing for a few weeks. And this year, with the holidays smack in the middle of the week so none of us had a clue if it was Monday, Tuesday, Friday, or what? Sunday deadline just seemed alien to many, me included. And what was amazing is that all five writers that dropped out over the…

  • Challenge,  publishing

    Fear and Publishing

    Did Not Expect Some Comments… On the Great Publishing Challenge. It seems that writing and doing challenges on writing is popular, but not so much publishing. In fact, I got a number of comments about the fear involved. And I know for a fact that the fear comes from myths. And the fear of what might happen if you did it wrong. Well, you will do it wrong. I sure did when we started into indie publishing. I spent nine months putting up over 200 titles as fast as I could. I worked at it day and night. Mostly short stories, a few collections, some nonfiction, and a bunch of…

  • Challenge,  publishing

    I’m Doing The Great Publishing Challenge

    Yup, I Will Be Documenting What I Am Doing… For those who want to jump into the Great Publishing Challenge of publishing 12 books in a year, you will also get my progress reports regularly as videos in the challenge. But I am taking it to another level, as you might expect. I will be publishing three times the challenge, or 36 books in one year. And if you are doing the challenge, you can watch me do it. But first off, if I was in the stage many of you are, here is how I would do the 12 book challenge. (Think how fantastic it would be that one…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    Another Friday Night With Nothing To Say

    I’ve Been Reading Challenge Stories… Working to get caught up. And enjoying it, actually. Just slow because of bad eyes. Also not running much this week letting a muscle pull heal from falling off a curb while carrying a 40 pound box, but tomorrow is a fun run and then another on Sunday, so there will be pictures and I will try not to strain the muscle again. Beyond that I am working on getting ready for 2020 and beyond. And doing some recording of workshop videos and such. So busy, just not much to write about here on a Friday night. Maybe tomorrow…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Stupidly Slow Reading

    Because the Writers Are So Good… And they keep pulling me into the stories, forcing me to enjoy them and read all the way to the end. (grin) In case you are wondering what that is all about, on some of the writers in the Great Challenge, I am stupidly behind in my reading. Way, way behind, but the writers who have been working on the challenge for a time, are getting darned good, pulling me into stories. So it is taking time and I am enjoying it and I have to move from the computer every thirty minutes for my eye, so taking even longer. But I will get…

  • Cave Creek,  Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    New Videos in Shared Worlds Class

    Four New Videos… About the large shared worlds everyone thinks about when they think of a shared world. This class is just getting started and will last for nine months. So all the videos here at the beginning are basic stuff. But I wanted to detail out each type and level of shared world in the first month or so, and that’s what this is, four videos about the big guns, the Star Trek, Marvel, Star Wars, and so on. Not teaching you how to write for any of those. That is not what this class is about. The class is about how you can create a shared world of…

  • Challenge,  Fun Stuff

    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…

  • Challenge,  running

    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.…