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Why Do We Do Kickstarters?
I Got That Question Today… The question sort of caught me by surprise, to be honest. First off, surface reasons. 1… It gets new books to readers ahead of the publication date and at a discount. Fans of a series or a writer enjoy that. I know I do, which is one of the reasons why I back so many campaigns. 2… It gets our work out to readers we might never find and they might then buy more of our work. This is called discoverability. 3… It is amazing promotion and advertising and you don’t have to pay for it. In fact, if you do it right, you get…
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Got Closer to Buffet Challenge
Took My New iPad to a Buffet… Sort of a test run. Didn’t plan on doing any writing, just mostly setting up a bunch of programs on my iPad, including Microsoft Word and Outlook. Got interesting, to say the least, but 90% there. Only killed the only email I have left twice, but managed to save it both times. Yikes… Even set up a word doc that I can use sort of for a template. And wrote the start of a story. The first line of the story is… “The 1950s called and they want their food back.” Yup, the buffet I was in was that bad. And I like…
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September Workshops Now Available
Including new Applied Depth Workshop Yes, Applied Depth as been added to the Lifetime Workshop Subscription. And yes, just sign up for any of them on Teachable. Depth in Writing workshop is required to take the Applied Depth, plus it is suggested to take the Advanced Depth workshop before as well. Applied Depth Workshop takes the concepts of Basic Depth and then applies those concepts to all the major genres. Openings of stories and novels are different from genre to genre. And yes, basic depth tends to work, but there are techniques for each genre, reader expectations of opening for each genre, that will help you get readers of a…
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A Fun Teaser
I Did a Podcast About Writing… With John Goodwin for the Writers of the Future Podcast. I always have a lot of fun talking with John and I think that comes across here. This is a very short teaser they put together on YouTube for the podcast I did with them, with a bunch of pictures of me and others at the event. One picture you can see me and my long-time good friends Keven J. Anderson and Rob Sawyer. Fun picture. So take a look. The topic of this teaser is a Hubbard essay on writing that even going on a hundred years after he wrote it is worth…
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Too Much In One Day…
I Managed A Ton of Stuff Today… But unless I get going now, going to miss the night’s story. Worked on Smith’s Monthly layout and recorded a bunch of the lectures from Kris’s class this coming week for the Study Along class online, Exercised some while Kris was using my computer to record videos for the Study Along class online. Cooked dinner, and then worked on the books for the challenge and more on Smith’s Monthly. I finally came up with a name for the entire series of books that will hold all the stories. Challenge Accepted Each book will have 33 stories in it, plus an introduction. If I…
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May 1st Restart
Some Months Make More Sense Than Others to Restart… For me, I am used May 1st to restart a number of things. First, I am restarting my minimum milage per day. I clock steps and for me 2,000 steps on my Fitbit is almost always exactly one mile. So starting May 1st I am going to hit 3 miles (6,000 steps) per day and then every week increase that by 500 steps. I need the exercise and why May 1st is a good time to do that is because as the weather warms up here in Vegas, I will be spending a lot of time daily at the gym, which…
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Catching Up… To Do or Not To Do?
A Great Question… I got that question from a writer just today and I had a pretty simple answer for him. But there is more to my answer than what I was able to give him at the spur of the moment. I said this: Try to catch up if doing so is possible and will be challenging. If impossible to catch up, then simply reset the challenge and start fresh. Sounds simple until you start figuring out if something is impossible or not. Sometimes you just know you have screwed the pooch. No catching up is possible. Reset and restart!!! But other times the added challenge makes it even…
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Watched Bridgerton
Yes, I Watched a Regency… For the second year in a row. Four episodes in the last two days. Kris had to explain a bunch of stuff to me, but some pretty good acting and the characters were likable, so I’ll watch the third season if there is one. Interesting difference in plotting from this show to others. These episodes were mostly an hour in length and if the characters had only talked, nothing would have happened, but as it was not a lot happens. Where, say, The Rookie fifty things happen, ten viewpoints, and a ton of stuff, and it is only 15 minutes into the episode. When Magnum…
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Why All The Stretch Rewards?
Why Give So Much Away? Got that question a lot this time, more than any other campaign we have done, although I must admit, that question is pretty normal for our campaigns. If a person does a $5 pledge to get an early copy of RESCUE TWO in electronic form, as I write this they get ten more books and nine workshops worth $1,350.00. But that is about to jump one more goal to eleven books and ten workshops. Why do this? Why give so much away? Two major reasons, actually. First, this is a campaign for my new Seeders novel RESCUE TWO. It stands alone, but gives a good…
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Reading a Lot of Great Stories
Study Along Workshop for Thriller/Humor I have been amazed at a number of things. First off, how many writers got stories in for this workshop. Writing thriller/humor short stories is a tough challenge and a lot of writers tried it. So that impressed me. Second thing that impressed me with the first assignment was how good they were overall. Some great mysteries and a bunch of writers actually hit thriller/humor short stories. Then with the story in 40 hours, a lot of writers made the deadline and again the stories were great. And the third story deadline of 24 hours had about three times as many stories as I expected,…