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Running Through A Novel
Ran Through the Dry Creek Crossing novel tonight… Kris is my first reader, and since both of us work on paper, she reads my books that way and when she spots a typo or something, she marks it. That means I need to run through and fix the marks I agree with. She often catches other small issues I tend to have. And, of course, it is copyedited at WMG before going into print. But tonight I was running through Dry Creek Crossing: A Thunder Mountain Novel I wrote in the third part of the challenge last month, getting it ready to be turned in with a Smith’s Monthly issue.…
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A Fun Day Once Again
Some Questions and Some Fun… Took most of the day off to play. And got into some warmth. Amazing how the long winter here is still affecting us. It felt great to go over to the valley with the 90 temps because here it was gray and 61. Normally I like the temperature. Just needed a touch of warmth today. And I got to do some picking. The really fun find this time was about 60 kids and young adult books for the store. $15 for all of them. Some Questions on Writing into the Dark workshop Mostly, the questions were around how much different this workshop will be than…
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WRITING INTO THE DARK: A New Online Workshop
WRITING INTO THE DARK… Learn how to write clean, first-draft novels and stories without ever outlining or rewriting. Yes, it can be done and most long-time professional writers do just that. Learn how to bring the fun of storytelling back to your writing and become more prolific along the way. This class will be full of techniques, myth-busting, and exercises to help you learn to write clean, first-draft novels that never need to be rewritten. If you automatically thought that can’t be done, you really need this workshop. If you are trapped in the myth of rewriting things until they are mush, you really need this workshop. If writing is…
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I Curated THE UNIVERSE BETWEEN Bundle
THE UNIVERSE BETWEEN BUNDLE Just Launched… The Universe Between Bundle I curated this bundle and I had great fun with it. I grew up on Twilight Zone back in the late 1950s and through the early 1960s. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I heard the sentence, “In the middle ground between light and shadow…” in that opening sequence to the Twilight Zone. Thankfully, my parents didn’t seem to mind that I watched that show every week. And for some reason that sentence out of the opening sequence stuck with me for my entire life. I loved living in that middle ground. All my writing falls in the middle ground…
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Fun Day
COLLECTING AND WORKSHOPS… I was out at our south store talking collecting, first with Shelly, then with a great guy who used to own a comic book store in Salem. Then, as I was about to leave to head out to do errands, a guy came in with some really neat stuff, one of which was a very strange CdV photo. CdV stands for Carte de visite, a form of photography out of France that was put on cards about the size of a playing card. This form became a fad for a time in the 1850s through 1870s. What was cool about this photo was it looked like a…
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Not Many Signed Up
AUGUST ONLINE WORKSHOPS STARTING… As is normal for August, very few people are signed up for the online workshops. They start on Tuesday and I think the list of workshops is a pretty good one, honestly. But summer seems to not allow people to spend the extra three hours a week or focus on the workshops. But that is normal. I see it every year. August is when a lot of writers wake up from the time of great forgetting to discover they have done little in the summer and are not behind on goals. If that is happening to you, just take a deep breath and reset the goals…
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Store and Auction
PLUS WORKSHOPS… I spent my entire afternoon and evening at the south store and at the auction that happens in the same small mall as our south store once a month. Wonderful fun and I got some stunning stuff. Stunning meaning I paid little and will be able to sell for a lot of money. (grin). Made it home by 9 p.m. to cook dinner and then do e-mail, some reading, some introductions I needed to do for a project, and then workshop stuff. And speaking of workshop stuff… If you are signed up for the August online workshops, you should have gotten a letter from me tonight. And if…
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Smith’s Monthly Issues
Two Issues Out… Those of you who have been hanging around here for a time might remember the novel I did in five days while traveling. The novel is called Ace High: A Cold Poker Gang Novel. I also wrote a book (basically my blogs) about how I wrote that novel in five days. Well, in the issue of Smith’s Monthly that just went out to subscribers and Patreon supporters, both the novel and the book about writing the novel are in there. Another issue will go out on Monday. And then later in the month another string of them as I work to get back on date. Means nothing…
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Read All Night
Workshops and Reading All Day… Now I have to admit, not a bad way to spend a day. I finished Kris’s new Diving Universe novel just a short time ago (sun is coming up). It is stunning and is going to make every Diving fan happy, trust me. Made me happy. (grin) I also worked on workshops at WMG and tonight here. And read some challenge stories and novels earlier in the evening. No writing. I will be back writing solidly on the new novel on Monday or Tuesday. But I did get the steps back up over 10,000 steps and the weight is coming off, those last pesky 15…
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Slow and Fun Day
DOING LOTS OF READING… I spent a lot of today either working on corporation taxes at the WMG offices or reading. Mostly reading. I am not only reading the stories and novels for the summer challenge, but Kris has a new Diving Universe novel that has been sitting near my reading chair for a week. I have been dying to read it. So I do some novel reading on the challenge, then Kris gives me this incredible mystery story to read. Actually a novella. So I ended up reading that, then taking a break, then reading some of the Diving Universe novel, which is stunningly good. It was everything I…