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Judging, Gifts, and Golf…
Yes, I Am a Judge… Of the Writers of the Future writing contest. How it works for us professionals is that the editor of the book Jody Lyn Nye and a host of first readers wade through all the submissions every quarter and they send us professional-writer-judges 8 stories. I tend to judge two quarters a year is all. There are no names on the stories, but if I recognized a student’s style or story, I would disqualify myself. So total blind judging on our parts. Now here is what is interesting that most writers don’t know. Many, many writers were published out of the contest, which means they had…
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Drop the Trop
Got Behind Because They Imploded the Tropicana Tonight… To make way for the new A’s baseball stadium. They called the event “Drop the Trop.” And I have to say it was way cool to watch on television. They had a drone show and a ton of fireworks and then the drones formed a giant plunger with a countdown clock and when it hit zero white light went from the drones to the two remaining Tropicana towers and they came down. We could not hear it downtown (I listened), but got a hunch that dust cloud is going to make things pretty rough for the south end of the Strip for…
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Long Day Ends Well!!
I Love It When That Happens… Kris and I had a very long Monday for business reasons too stupid to ever talk about. So by the time dinner came around, I was ready for the planned pizza at Good Pie in the Arts District here in Vegas. We met an old friend from the old science fiction convention days, Steven Silver, who was visiting in town and the conversations were great. And fun. And of course the pizza was fantastic. TWO GREAT NEW IN-PERSON CRAFT CLASSES… Both taught by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I wanted to repost this to make sure everyone saw it with the Anthology Workshop in one…
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Fun Pictures…
Wonder What I Did Last Week… Here are a few pictures taken by the Writers of the Future people at the 39th year awards. Keep in mind that I was the first person across the stage 39 years ago… And with Jody Lynn Nye I was the co-editor of this volume in the transition after Dave Farland’s tragic death. (First, before the pictures, remember the May workshops are starting up. See yesterday’s post for details.) Here is that first picture 39 years ago of me being the first across the Writers of the Future stage. Oh, so young. Algis Budrys in tux, I am shaking Greg Benford’s hand. Behind me…
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Not Enough Hours
We All Have Those Kinds of Days… No matter how we try, there is just not enough hours in the day to do everything that needs to be done. In the old days, I would just short myself on sleep, but not these days. I think I burnt out that ability somewhere in my early sixties. So Advanced Character Development is a Tuesday Class, and responses and the new week will be posted on Tuesday. Late Tuesday, so many of you will already be in bed when that happens. Don’t write me. Just shows me you don’t read this. (grin) Today (which is now Tuesday), Kris and I run screaming…
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Another Fun Day
I Hope My Two Lectures and One Panel Went Well… I just got going and was my normal blunt self. Huge numbers of people in the two lectures, which was surprising to me, but they must have known that would happen since they put me in that big room. And fun being on the Kickstarter panel. Then I headed home in the late afternoon and an hour later walked down to the Arts District and met Kevin Anderson and the entire crew from D2D for pizza and a pub crawl. Fantastic fun, and Kevin and I got telling stories over beers about some of the old-timers in the field of…
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Fun Collection Class
Thieves Collection Class I think this might be the most fun collection 9-week class we have done. The topic of Thieves can be in any genre and cover just about anything. Got two other collection classes starting as well today, but the Thieves to me sounds like the most fun. At the end of 9 weeks you have written five new stories and published a collection. I’m thinking a romance thieves collection would be great. Or maybe a thieves in Space Opera. Thieves topic and focus just fits anywhere. Fun. Just started today. Also the first classes in the July Regular Workshops started today as well. And the second sessions…
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General Stuff… And Story Challenge
Five Stories So Far… Everything going fine. 3 stories in the 2,500 word range, two stories in the 4,000 word range. I got jammed today building a new Kickstarter, so didn’t get the stories uploaded to Patreon or the rest of what I was going to do there, but will shortly. And will do a challenge complete update here shortly as well, including how the days are working out as far as timing. Workshop Sale will finally end today (Thursday in the evening). Use code YearEnd if you want to grab one last class on 50% off sale. I have been holding up on my calorie limits and hitting my…
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Night Off
Santa Tomorrow… Me and Kris and Lisa and a number of other writers around town, plus 25,000 to 30,000 or more other humans are all going to dress up in our matching Santa outfits, hats and all, and do 5K around the streets of downtown Vegas. Oh, my, god, is that fun and just head-shaking stupid. So I will be announcing my 2022 challenge in the next few days and doing more posts on the Wet Blanket book, plus announcing some fun new workshops and classes and the start of Motivational Monday for writing and publishing. But tonight, since I have to get up slightly early, I am taking a…
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Filler Tonight
Just to Keep the Blogging Streak Alive… Night like tonight I wonder why I bother, but this streak after nine-plus years of not missing a day doing a blog is so powerful, I have to acknowledge it. Annoying. Granted, I am writing here, but can’t begin to tell you how many times I wished this streak was nine-plus years of fiction writing without missing a day. Maybe that will be part of the new challenge for 2022. More than likely not. I have a few more chapters of the Wet Blanket Reality written, just don’t feel like putting them up right now, so will do so in the next week…