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Superstars Workshop
Going Back for the Third Time… I wanted to announce that in the first week of February 2018, I will be once again teaching at the Superstars Writing Conference. I will also be going in a day ahead to do one of their craft days as well. I’ll talk more about this over the year, of course. But so far confirmed for next year are Brandon Sanderson, Jonathan Maberry, Jim Butcher, Kevin J. Anderson, Rebecca Moesta, Eric Flint, James A. Owen, Mark Leslie Lefebvre (Kobo), Dave Farland, and Mark Coker (Smashwords). Should be great fun.
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Busy Day for a Saturday
Auction, reading, some writing, some working on the estate, some workshop stuff… And I wouldn’t be reporting all this stuff if I didn’t have a streak going of blogging every day about something. (grin) Here is what the day was like. First to both our stores. Antiques Week is starting here and I wanted to see how things were doing. Starting off great. Then estate work since the day was nice and the light was good in the house. Almost got it. Monday should finish it for me. Then out to the auction for a while to talk with friends there. Then to the WMG offices to work for a few…
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There Can Be Only One Topic Tonight: Ed Bryant
Edward W. Bryant Jr. passed away this morning. Writer, teacher, and great person, Ed was only five years older than me. I’ve known him since 1982. He was like a solid core of the science fiction and horror publishing field. Everyone knew and seemed to love Ed. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he was a major supporter of Kris and my company Pulphouse Publishing. In fact, he seemed to spend more time in Eugene than Denver during that time and we loved it. Kris lead off the very first issue of Pulphouse Hardback Magazine with an Ed story, a classic called “While She Was Out.” And then he lead off…
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Workshops, Bundle, and Big Estate Move Day One
All Workshops for February Started… March Sign-up Available… If you are signed up for a February workshop and haven’t gotten the opening letter from me, write me at once. March workshops are now on deck. A good list. Winter Mysteries Bundle. I’m in a great bundle right now on Bundlerabbit with one of my Cold Poker Gang novels. It’s called The Winter Mysteries Bundle. This is a great deal and you might want to check it out, folks. Some great books in this one. Click on the image. And scroll down on the page. You can buy the bundle not only from Bundlerabbit, but from Amazon, Kobo, B&N and others.…
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Perfection and Writing
Some Tough Topics Tonight… I spent most of the day today at my friend’s house, going through stuff. Two great writers and friends, Chris and Steve York also spent their evening with me, going through stuff. Our main goal was to get things ready to be donated to the women’s shelter and to other charities around town. Thanks Chris and Steve!! They were also friends with the woman who died. In letters today I got numbers of questions about estates and wills for writers, but I want to deal with two quick questions tonight before I vanish into bed. The questions are related, so hold on. They are both about disease. And about…
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Throwing Away A Life
Estates and Writing and Some Observations… Today I found myself back in the position once again of going through someone’s personal papers and tossing them in a black bag. Old financial records, old pictures of her and her husband, a few journals, 4-H ribbons, letters from home during the Peace Corp years. You know… details about a life well-lived. Just over five years ago, I found myself doing the same thing for another friend. His name was Bill Trojan and was a well-known book dealer in the sf world. I realized he had numbers of degrees. I tossed away his old wedding pictures and all his medical records that told…
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Logic: The Lost Art in Being a Fiction Writer
Don’t Try Logic… Dangerous to Your Myths I have been going on now in numbers of posts about how we fiction writers sabotage ourselves. Fear without real cause is the normal reason. But I have another deeper reason tonight. Lack of logic. In a few posts I used math to try to make sense of the silliness of a few myths. Math tends to be very logical. Simply put, fiction writers, when it comes to the very basis of being a fiction writer, toss all logic out the window and listen to people who have never written or published a book. This goes on from the very beginning of every writer’s career.…
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Nifty Bundle from BundleRabbit
The Haunted Bundle… In case you folks are not familiar with Bundlerabbit, you should be. They are doing some really interesting new things. Get on their mailing list for some amazing deals from top writers. I am part of a bundle there called the Haunted Bundle. You can buy the bundle not only through Bundlerabbit, but through Kobo, Amazon, and other places. Nifty, huh? Twenty stories. Kris has a story in the bundle as well. (The story I have in the bundle is a “Ghost of a Chance” story that originally appeared in Stories from July.) One nifty feature of the site is go to the location of the bundle…
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Workshops and Stuff
Worked on Online Workshops… I did that until around 7 p.m. today, along with the standard errands and stuff normal for a Friday. Then home, cooked dinner, napped, and went back to writing. Great fun. And then a bunch of reading, which I will be doing all month for the coming anthology workshop. Tomorrow I will start back on the book I left off before the trip. I hope to finish that one and get to some short fiction at some point soon. Or maybe do some short fiction and then finish the book. I don’t know. We shall see. Another Smith’s Monthly got out. Patreon supporters and subscribers should have…
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Writing and Lost Track of Time
You all know how that happens… I planned tonight to write one of the longer blogs on one of the questions from last week. So I’m banging along on a fiction project and I had taken a few breaks, but didn’t think to look at the clock until I realized it was 5:30 a.m. Those longer posts take me an hour or more, and a clear mind. Not happening at this moment. (grin) So soon. Time… when you are writing a story and having fun, it sure zips past. (grin) —————- FEBRUARY ONLINE WORKSHOPS Workshops start next Tuesday and Wednesday. Yes, it is February already. Still room in all of them, but…