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Topic of the Night: Pulp Writers’ Abilities
Pulp Writers’ Abilities I got a great question today about some of the basics the really prolific pulp writers did to be so productive. And how to go about finding out about a lot of their styles. How I have learned about so many of the older pulp writers is by reading book about them in their own words, reading books about the era, and just finding anything I could to read about the pulp writers of the 1920s to 1950s. A great first book to start is Frank Gruber’s The Pulp Jungle. Oh, trust me, you will realize how little you have given to be a writer after reading…
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Topic of the Night: Some Costs of Short Fiction Publishing
Some Costs of Short Fiction In the old days, meaning ten years ago, we counted the price of selling short fiction in the cost of envelopes and postage. Not a small cost, actually. And printer ink and paper. Now submissions are electronic with no costs other than the ability to deal with rejection and the wait for an editor to read your work. Actually, in this new world, the wait is the worst part since things are done so quickly these days. So what are the indie publishing costs of what I described yesterday in trying to make a living with your short fiction? Office Costs Most of the costs of…
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Topic of the Night: Making a Living Writing Short Fiction
Can You Make a Living Writing Only Short Fiction? Every year or so I look at this topic once again, do the math, see if anything has changed over the last couple of years. And now, here in May 2016, things have changed some, but in my opinion it would still be possible to make a decent living writing only short fiction. Why do I like this topic? Actually, because I love short fiction, meaning any story under around 10,000 words. I love reading it and I love writing it. And doing this exercise is fun for me, even though no one will ever follow this path. Besides, I am…
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Topic of the Night: A New Online Workshop: Teams in Fiction
Kris and I have decided, once again, to tackle a really, really important area of fiction, but one we believe most writers flat don’t understand or even realize exists. Teams in Fiction Basically, when Lester Dent (under a pen name) invented Doc Savage, he broke an old fiction tradition of one character and a sidekick. With Doc Savage, he created five team members that worked around Doc and by doing so set the template for all modern fiction. Think about your favorite shows. NCIS, the number one show on television, has Gibbs in the middle and his team around him. Captain Kirk and his team. Luke and his team in Star…
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Thirty Fantastic Years
THIRTY FANTASTIC YEARS Thirty years ago today I pulled into a driveway at an address in Albuquerque, New Mexico that Algis Budrys had sent me to. As I walked in the door, I met Kristine Kathryn Rusch and we have been together ever since. We had a wonderful day today just having fun and talking about thirty years and about years to come. I can’t even begin to imagine where I would have ended up if not for AJ sending me to that address. Certainly not here doing this. More than likely I would no longer be writing and would have just ended up working a golf course counter and…
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Had Fun Working in Our New Bookstore
Fun Working in Our New Bookstore Yeah, that’s right, WMG Publishing will, in short order, be the owner of a brick and mortar bookstore. It’s a large area inside of the new Pop Culture Collectables store. Actually one third of the entire store is paperbacks, hardbacks, sf and mystery digests, and magazines. Another third of the store is a comic book store. Wait until you see the wall of comics. I’ll do pictures. And in the comic book room will be die cast cars as well. And larger cars. And the main room is toys, non-sports cards, cookie jars, sports collectables, jewelry, and collectable boxes and clocks. We also have in…
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Topic of the Night: Blaming the Reader
Topic of the Night: Blaming the Reader I got a letter from a very angry person about how his books weren’t selling at all and it was all because readers were too stupid and couldn’t find his books in all the crap on Amazon. Now normally, I just laugh and delete letters like that as hopeless. With this person, I should have done that, but instead I wrote him back a letter basically saying that the readers were never at fault, more than likely it was his covers or blurbs or writing. He might not like what I would say, but I offered to look at them if he sent a link.…
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Topic of the Night: Three Types of Thinking
Topic of the Night: Three Types of Thinking More than likely this will be a topic I’ll talk about regularly in numbers of ways. But for tonight, what got my focus on this was a comment made by the Passive Guy on a post he put up from Kris. (Scroll down to Kris’s post, his comment is under hers.) He said, “Under current contract practices, the author is the only person who has to think in the long term while everyone else in the publishing business is focused on the short term.” Wow, is that the truth. In so many ways. And so few writers focus on long term in business. In fact, my…
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Thinking Differently
Thinking Differently It’s been interesting how the long-term thinking topic has come up a lot this last week. So going to talk a little about that in the topic above. ——— The Day Made it up to WMG offices to work for a short time there before the 2 p.m. writer’s lunch. It was a good one, with a number of the writers from the romance workshop staying over. Then after a short run to the store for cat supplies, I worked in my office with the little new cat sleeping in Allyson’s office. Finally, around 6 p.m. I loaded all the cat stuff up in my van and then…
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Topic of the Night: Help Getting Through the Time of Great Forgetting
Help Getting Through the Time of Great Forgetting Every year now for the last three or four years I have talked about something I notice with beginning and early-career writers. It happens like this: Writers are all excited at the first of the year, make resolutions, plans, challenges. All great with great intentions for their coming year of writing and production. And for months, things are working great. Somewhere around the last of April to the first of June, life from the outside starts to intrude and the writing takes a back seat, slowly, over weeks or a month. And then the writing is forgotten for the most part, or…