• Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Two New Pop-Up Workshops

    #7 Second-Hand Sales and #8 Kickstarter for Writers… The Second-Hand Sales Pop-Up covers what are second-hand sales, why they are great for writers in so many ways, and how to successfully use second-hand sales to help grow your sales and your fan base. There are tricks, lots of trick to it. It is on Teachable now with an introduction video and also in the bundles. It will actually launch on Sunday evening the 20th. A second Pop-Up is also available and will launch on Sunday January 27th. This one is called Kickstarter for Writers. Basically all the details about how to set up a Kickstarter campaign for one of your…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Second-Hand Sales

    Another Topic I Get Lots of Questions About… And again, this topic is so full of myths about sales and publishing, it will be impossible for me to do this justice here. But we are going to do a Pop-Up on this topic soon that will go into why this isn’t a problem and how to use second-hand sales to help your own sales. Yeah, I know, crazy, but true. So for this topic, I’m going to use second-hand sales to mean sales out of used bookstores or garage sales or other places where the writer or publisher makes no money from that exact sale. To do a second-hand sale,…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    No One Cares

    And No One Will Notice… I constantly get comments and questions from writers worrying about putting out a book that someone might hate, or that might have a mistake in it, or whatever other excuse they can think of to not take a chance and put a book out on the market. All based on fear. All excuses. This sort of continues the last post about always wanting to go back and fix something you put out earlier. You think someone might care if you did that to your book, that someone might notice. Or even more stupid, they might notice that you didn’t fix it. Gadzooks!!! This area, among…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    The Book With Baggage

    An Idea for a Series of Posts… Or maybe a Pop-Up. Or a new writing book. Or all three. This came about when a number of professional writers were talking and writer J. Steven York mentioned a book he was going back to that he had struggled with. And then we got talking about that book (or two) that we all had that carried so much baggage with it, we either couldn’t finish it or don’t want to think about it ever again. I have never met a long-term professional writer that doesn’t have a book-from-hell story. Or a book so hard to work on that it is  just not…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Mentoring and Workshops

    First of the Year is Here… Four things tonight to make sure you all know about if interested. First… I have one spot open for anyone interested in having me be a mentor this year. I had one person drop out due to a nasty health issue that does not sound like a good way to start a year. So one spot open. I am just starting to get going with the other two in this program. All the details are in the post here. Second… I have decided to do the challenge again. You can write either three novels in three months or thirty short stories in two months.…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    Public Domain Day

    I Know… Copyright!… But hang on, it’s interesting, honest, because for the first time in a lot of years, major works are entering the public domain. Now granted, for some countries, this is a normal thing. For example, in Canada, any author who died in 1968 has works entering the public domain now because of life plus 50 year rule. But the United States has had some pretty messed up copyright laws since it was founded and copyright was put in the Constitution. Now finally, everything from 1923 has dropped into public domain and that will continue to move forward each year, one year at a time, until it catches…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Novel and Short Story Challenge Again

    Yes, Finally Decided… Just two nights ago I finished reading the last of the novels for the novel challenge and started working on typing up my notes on the short stories and novels from the challenge that started back in September. And to be honest, I flat loved the reading. Now granted, I am going to be doing a ton of reading for the Anthology Workshop soon. I love that. And Kris and I get to read stories for the Pop-Up story prompts from those who take those.  And I will be doing reading for the few in the mentor program. All that will be fun, but sporadic. But as…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Sixth Pop-Up Launching

    Writing Mysteries into the Dark… This is the sixth and last one for this year, of course. I will be announcing two or three more in a week or so. We will do at least two or more per month, and they are only up for two weeks at a time. Details of all of them are below. However, you can still get the earlier ones in the bundles. We have three bundles available. The first five, the second five, and the first ten. As of today there are six Pop-Ups available in the bundles. Information about them is below. But again, the first three are only available in the…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Soaking Up Story

    I Have No Idea What For… I know I will be really picking up speed with the writing over the next few days before the first of the year so that by the first I will be at full speed. (Doing the same with exercising and reducing food intake.) Watched most of two movies tonight and a good episode of The Rookie. Not a clue why I am watching and reading so much. Also finally finishing up the last stories from the challenge and will be getting everyone feedback once my notes are typed into an email. So story, story, story.  No idea why more than normal right now, but…

  • Challenge,  workshops

    5 Days Left

    Year Is Flashing to a Finish… I have about seven million things I want to do this week, which I feel is normal for this time of the year. Web site issues (now solved) and some other fun cost me most of the day today. But I wanted to make sure everyone knew about the second workshop in the Futures Series is starting on January 2nd. This one is called Opportunity: How to See and Evaluate Opportunities. Basically Create and Take Advantage of Opportunities. Two tag lines that fit the same workshop. The first Futures workshop is still available and you can take it at any point and turn in…