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Story #1 of Challenge
I Promise I Won’t Do This Every Day… But for the first story, I figured it was worth mentioning. And more than likely I’ll talk about the challenge once a week or so as it is going on. And post small thumbnails of covers. So for story #1 I wrote a story I needed to write for the Year of the Cat #11. It is called “Cat Running Wild” and it is a Pahket Jones story, who is a spin-off of my Poker Boy and Ghost of a Chance series. I have done 7 Pahket Jones stories so far. She is a superhero in the world of cats. Story was…
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Making a Living With Short Fiction 2021
Back By Popular Demand… Actually, I am bringing this forward from 2014 and then May 2016 and then again July 2018. It is mostly unchanged. I will put in BOLD ALL-CAP ITALICS when I have changed something. A note: I used to say it was possible to make a living writing novels in traditional publishing. I made a great living in traditional with novels for 15 years. That is no longer the case for novels for all but a tiny few in traditional publishing in 2021, but novels indie published you can make good money. ———— Can You Make a Living Writing Only Short Fiction? Every year or so I…
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New Poker Boy Story…
Published Today… Monday… In the WMG 2020 Holiday Spectacular. That’s right my story “Hidden Box Inn and Casino” is the Monday, December 14th story in the Spectacular. It’s a Poker Boy story and the newest. And it’s a holiday story, but not what you would think of as a normal holiday story. After all, it is Poker Boy. Here is what Kris said in the introduction to my story. (She writes an introduction to every story.) Hidden Box Inn and Casino by Dean Wesley Smith Genre/Mood: Light and fun fantasy After one of our bleakest stories, here’s one of our most fun stories. Dean Wesley Smith is a co-mastermind of…
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Story Twenty-Nine
DAY TWENTY-NINE… Almost there. One more day and Stories from April will be done. And once again Marble Grant caught my attention. I was working on workshop stuff and I got an image of a man sitting in a hallway in a hotel in Vegas. Now I never start any story with an image but went over and typed it in and low-and-behold, there was Marble Grant again. So 11 stories of hers. Maybe I should do just one more tomorrow and have an entire year of Smith’s Monthly start with her stories. We shall see tomorrow night. Took me two hours of actual writing with an hour in the…
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Story Twenty-four
DAY TWENTY-FOUR… Started off the day working at WMG Publishing and doing all the banking stuff and things like that which is my job as CFO. I also managed to do two covers for the stories of the last two days. Then home to take a nap, cook dinner, and get to the workshops assignments. Got that done around 1 a.m. and headed to watch a little television. Then around 2:30 a.m. I got to my writing computer. I grabbed my half-title sheets and one of the first half titles I saw was “A Lady…” which I am sure came from a mystery magazine. So I kept flipping through titles…
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I Opened My Mouth… So Here Is How It Could Work
A CHALLENGE… A few nights ago I mentioned that if anyone wanted to take up a story-a-day for thirty days, I could be their first reader for a price. Yup, said that. Now I understand how really difficult on so many levels this challenge is. This is the second time I have done it and over the years hope to do one in every month of the year. Over different years, of course. Like the first one was in July and got the book Stories from July. This one will be a book called Stories from April. The stories will also be in Smith’s Monthly, in collections, and published stand-alone.…
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Story Sixteen and Still Going
DAY SIXTEEN… Tonight I was again very late getting to the writing because of finishing up the Strengths Workshops. So I again looked at some old story starts and such and found a really interesting story start. I worked on it about an hour, adding about 1,000 words total to get it to a 2,000 word story. It is called “Habit.” And considering I spent all day, night, and into the late night in front of a computer finishing up the last of the Strengths workshop, I’ll take the win and another finished story. And I did not have time to do the cover for the story last night, so…
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Back to Writing
Finally Got Started Tonight… Started and finished a short story from a prompt from a fun challenge. A short Bryant Street story, Got it done and had fun, even with one false start. Here is how the writing night went for those interested on this Saturday night. Started with the prompt about subject sort of in the back of my mind. The prompt in summary was basically reburying an old skeleton. So off I went to my title sheets of half titles from old digest magazines. I grabbed a half-title “Tombstone” off of one list and “Cliff” off of another, slammed them together for “Tombstone Cliff” and started typing. I realized…