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A Holiday Weekend
A Holiday Weekend Here in the States this is a major holiday weekend, runs through Monday. However, only one of our employees took any time away, the rest are all working through the weekend. So it feels normal except there are a lot of people in town. The Day I managed to get a lot of things priced at the new store and work on workshop stuff. But once again too tired to get to the writing. Must still be recovering from the last few months. (grin) ————— Online Workshops Still lots of room in all of them. Class #51… June 6th … The Business of Writing Class #52… June 6th…
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Kris and Her Awards
Kris and Her Awards Over the years, Kris has won many, many awards and been nominated so many times, I doubt she knows how many. She is the only person ever to win a Hugo Award for both her fiction and her editing work. And one night at the Edgar Award ceremony for mystery, she was nominated for best novel under one name and for best short story under another. But this month Kris won two major awards. That’s right, two! I think that is amazingly cool. To me, an award voted on by readers only, without politics, is the best reward there is. Period. The Anlab Award for Analog SF Magazine and…
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Topic of the Night: Restarting Your Writing
Restarting Your Writing All of us, for one reason or another, stop writing for a time. Sometimes it is health reasons, sometimes it is family reasons, or sometimes it is because we just forget, which happens right about now for a vast number of writers. For me, I stopped about thirty days ago to focus on opening a new collectables store, comic book store, and book store combined. Great fun. And even though I thought about writing along the way since I was teaching and still around numbers of writers who were writing, I really flat didn’t want to write. And I didn’t force myself. And I had no illusion that…
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The Battle of the Restart
Great bundle with two of my books in it. And a wonderful book by Lawrence Block and a great book by Kris. Don’t miss it. http:/storybundle.com/writing The Battle of the Restart Back writing. So easy to say, so difficult to do for almost all of us after a layoff. I am no different. Annoyingly so. More in the Topic of the Night post above. ————- The Day Managed to get to the WMG offices and the new store around 2 p.m., after nine hours of sleep. I think I needed that. Ran a bunch of errands, including my third trip to the sign shop to pick up…
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Up Too Early
Up Too Early Went to bed at 5:30 a.m. and was back up at 8:30 a.m. Now that is just silly, but we got the new store open. Somebody asked me why I was up so early and I said “It’s not often you open a store.” Pictures soon. ————- The Day At the new store at 9 a.m. and worked there until I went off for a lunch meeting at 2 p.m. Then back to the store until Kris and I walked to dinner to meet another professional writer. Then home for a nap that felt like it almost killed me after only three hours of…
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Some Fantastic Writing Books!
Writing Bundle Folks, there is a new writing bundle that just started with ten writing books. Two are mine. Another by Kris, another by Lawrence Block, another by Gerald Weinberg, another by JoAnna Penn, and so on. Trust me, you don’t want to miss this one. I’ve read all but two of these books and trust me, they are worth a lot more than what you would pay in this bundle. Those of you who want to learn, this is the cheapest education you can get from people who know what they are talking about. The Write Stuff 2016 Bundle Here is Kris’s blog about the bundle: The Write Stuff…
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The Voice
The Voice If you did not watch the finals on The Voice tonight, you missed not only some amazing, stunning music, but some good writing moments. And I’m not talking about the original songs they wrote. More below in the topic of the night. ————- The Day Lots and lots of running around, took the stray cat to the vet, left her for surgery tomorrow. She might not make it through, but it’s the best choice we and two vets think she has in making it. I’ll let you know. Spent a lot of time today fighting glass shelves over three windows into place in the new store. Also a…
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Three New Smith’s Monthly Titles
Three New Smith’s Monthly Titles Monday, the third issue in one week of Smith’s Monthly will go out. It won’t get me completely caught up yet, but getting closer. Issue #28 went out last Monday to subscribers and Patreon supporters. Issue #29 went out Friday. Issue #30 will go out today (Monday). The reason for the delay was me, and not on the writing side. So the wonderful folks at WMG convinced me to give up where I was getting delayed slowly over the winter and just let me focus on the new store and then writing. Thanks, Allyson, Judy, and Dayle for making these three issues possible so quickly. Now…
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Store and Workshop
Store and Workshop Another full day at WMG offices (part of which will soon be our new store). I worked on one of the new workshops as well as did a bunch of stuff in the store. Got the second temporary sign hung outside, got some final trim work done, did a lot of work on all the die cast cars. And then spent the evening sorting through and getting some non-sports cards ready. (They are art cards mostly. But we have a lot of Trek, Star Wars, X-Files and other cards. We have one area of the store that is nothing but non-sport cards. And dug out some old…
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A Complete Store Day
A Complete Store Day From the moment I got out of the house until I got home at midnight (I ate lunch and dinner up at the store), I worked on the new store (except for a short trip out to our original store to pick stuff up). Turned out to be about 11 hours straight. I will show pictures of the store when we open on Wednesday. But below is one of me on a ladder working to put up one of our temporary signs. (Our nice wooden signs won’t be in for about a month. There will be five of them on the front of the huge building.) To give…