• On Writing,  publishing

    We Made It!! Goal Hit!

    WMG Holiday Spectacular Is A Go!! We hit our goal for the WMG Holiday Spectacular project. So now, all the backers of the project will get a story a day from November 28th to January 1st. 35 top stories from top professional short fiction writers. A gift that lasts an entire holiday season, every day. For 35 days. How much fun is that!! As Kris said, she spent years trying to figure out a way to make this work, and it has been a project that has been on the burner for over a year now at WMG Publishing. To see it make the goal in just six days, with…

  • Challenge,  publishing

    Reading and Going to Get Some Sleep

    Running Tomorrow Morning… We will be up and out very early tomorrow morning so Kris can run a 5k and I can run some and walk some the same distance. Still not down enough pounds to run the entire way. Too afraid of hurting my knees, to be honest. But the pounds are dropping, so maybe soon. Otherwise I am reading challenge stories. Not going to finish them all tonight, so don’t panic if I haven’t gotten back to you on week #3 just yet. You folks are making me read all the way through and my one eye only has so much computer time. Besides, it’s Friday night. Pictures…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Reading With A Focus

    I Am Very Lucky… With all this reading for the anthology workshop, I am reading as a Pulphouse Fiction Magazine editor. And wow does that make this reading easier. And sometimes more annoying. First off, let me explain why all this reading is easier for me than others. I start off reading and with most of these stories, the writers are good enough to catch me with their depth and openings. (If I was reading a real slush pile, I would reject nine out of ten because the writing didn’t catch me. Those poor openings are easy to reject, but very few of them in these manuscripts. Very, very few.)…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Kickstarter Update

    Books and Stuff… Over the next few days WMG Publishing will be sending out my collections that are now available to the supporters of my crazy Make 100 Paperbacks Project. Both stretch goals had collections involved. So everyone should be getting an email with those links to get the four collections. (Stories from July and three shorter collections.) Give us some time to get those out to everyone. The three collections that everyone will get of the Make 100 Books won’t be done until the fall, of course. Also, over the next few days you will be getting a letter from me on how to get into the first five…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Spent the Night Reading

    And Not Even For a Workshop… Yes, I always tell writers they must read for pleasure, but then never talk about my own reading here much.  Granted, I did mention reading a number of times when working on the 1.3 million words for the anthology workshop. But past that, I just think of reading for pleasure as something I sort of do all the time. Most in bits and pieces. I am a paper reader. I don’t own a reading device, although there are a number of them scattered around the house. I do own an iPad, but never use it for much of anything. And I do read workshop…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Saturday Night Reading

    Still finishing up some reading… Just about done. Which, actually, is kind of sad. I haven’t enjoyed reading this many great stories in a long time. I will be back reporting page counts, stories done, novels done, and all that shortly, including the exercise routine. (grin) Plus I have a few more rants/blogs/questions for this coming week that might be fun to talk about. We shall see. Don’t forget… just over a week until the March online workshops fire up. Openings in all of them at the moment.  

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Just Reading…

    Nothing to see here… Just piles and piles and piles of manuscripts. Kris and I are old-time editors and we read everything in paper manuscript format. Great fun and our cats are too old to care about the strange manuscript piles to cause issues. Clearly we need kittens. Now back to the pile… night.

  • On Writing,  publishing

    I’m Reading…

    …A lot of great short stories.  I’ll be able to talk more about why I am doing this in a couple of weeks. After the Anthology Workshop is finished. But note that I seldom talk about my reading in this blog. It’s just something I do. Kris calls me a stealth reader, so it feels odd to actually be sitting out in public where she can see me with a pile of manuscripts (like the old days when we were editing Pulphouse and F&SF). Reading in my family was a waste of time as far as my parents were concerned. So I learned early on to hide my reading and…