• Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Some Other Great Kickstarter Campaigns

    These Campaigns Are Worth Looking At… I know I have talked about the Kickstarter campaign I am doing called Smith’s Stories: Make 100 Paperbacks. But right now I am also supporting three other great campaigns and I thought I would list them and give links to them here so you can all take a look. First off Robert Greenberger who is a great writer and editor is doing a project called Thrilling Adventure Yarns. It’s an anthology (that he did not invite me into, but we won’t go into that. (grin)) that has some great writers doing great Pulp Era stories. Wonderful fun and a good campaign that looks like…

  • Challenge,  workshops

    Fun Stretch Goal

    Since The Original Goal Got Hit… I figured it was time to get a really cool stretch goal posted. This stretch goal has something for the readers and something for the writers. So if this campaign hits $9,000, I will give everyone who pledged at any level an electronic copy of my large collection Stories from July. It contains 32 short stories plus all the blogs I wrote about writing them. And also, on top of that, each person pledging to this campaign will get a credit for a Classic Workshop of their choice worth $150. (If you are a lifetime workshop subscriber, you can take the equivalent in lectures…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Still Working On A Writing Schedule

    Yeah, I Know, Silly… You would think someone of my decades in writing would have zero issue coming up with a writing schedule. I had one that worked just fine in the dark, damp, rain of Oregon for 32 years. Many days I never saw the sun and had no reason to be up in the morning at all. So I worked until very late at night. Very, very seldom did that cause any issue at all. Now I find myself happily in the sun and warmth of Las Vegas, with all the thousands of things to do here and runs to run and so on. And all during the…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  running

    Some Stuff

    Ran in a Five K Fun Run This Morning… Actually I am still in run/walk mode, but managed to run about 2 of the 3 miles total. In another month I’ll be running the entire distance. (Pictures below) And still averaging over 10,000 steps a day. ——— Fantasy Detective Story Bundle I curated is on the last few days. Don’t miss this one if you like really different fantasy mystery stories. For $15 you can get a ton of great reading. ——— New Pop-Up is Live!!! On Teachable. This one is about how to help your career by understanding Second-Hand Sales. I know this makes no sense to many of…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    Slow Start As Expected… Mentor Program Award Added

    When You Offer a Project Only You Are Excited About… You have to expect it to not fund, and to start very, very slowly. That is something I will talk about in the Kickstarter Pop-Up. Here is the Link to the Make 100 Kickstarter Project I started yesterday so you can take a look at it. But I had no illusions that I would be the only person excited about doing 100 Short Story Paperbacks and three major collections from those short stories. Basically I want to do this to rebrand my short stories and get them ready to put in the restart of Smith’s Monthly this spring. Kris and…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    Make 100 Short Story Paperbacks Launched

    A Kickstarter For Me To Make 100 Short Story Paperbacks… I just launched it. Going to be great fun. 100 short stories in paperback form, as well as electronic form, as well as in a set of collections. Most, if not all of these short stories will be original, never published anywhere. And I am doing all the work, including the covers, the layout, everything but the large collection books. Here is what one of the short stories will look like. And here is what a cover of a Smith’s Monthly looks like, which will be starting back up this spring. Notice the branding? (grin) YES, WORKSHOPS TOO… Yes, like…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Two New Pop-Up Workshops

    #7 Second-Hand Sales and #8 Kickstarter for Writers… The Second-Hand Sales Pop-Up covers what are second-hand sales, why they are great for writers in so many ways, and how to successfully use second-hand sales to help grow your sales and your fan base. There are tricks, lots of trick to it. It is on Teachable now with an introduction video and also in the bundles. It will actually launch on Sunday evening the 20th. A second Pop-Up is also available and will launch on Sunday January 27th. This one is called Kickstarter for Writers. Basically all the details about how to set up a Kickstarter campaign for one of your…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Second-Hand Sales

    Another Topic I Get Lots of Questions About… And again, this topic is so full of myths about sales and publishing, it will be impossible for me to do this justice here. But we are going to do a Pop-Up on this topic soon that will go into why this isn’t a problem and how to use second-hand sales to help your own sales. Yeah, I know, crazy, but true. So for this topic, I’m going to use second-hand sales to mean sales out of used bookstores or garage sales or other places where the writer or publisher makes no money from that exact sale. To do a second-hand sale,…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Trust the Character

    We Hear That All the Time… Trust the Character… What it basically means is just stay true to the character you have set up in the opening of a story and let them tell the story to you. It is your creative voice playing through the character, but it is great fun to just follow a character you are writing just as you follow a character you are reading in another author’s book. I am always surprised by my characters when writing. Well, this last week I’ve been puttering along on a novel, not doing more than a thousand or two thousand words a day, even though I really like…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Magic Bakery Workshop Moved to Classic

    I Pulled It From the February Line-up… I looked back over the records and no one had taken the Magic Bakery workshop since last spring I think. So no point in listing it as a monthly workshop anymore, even though I think it is one of the most important workshops we have done. So now only nine workshops offered in February. I will continue to work to clean up old workshops so there is room for new ones this spring. So the Magic Bakery workshop is now a classic workshop. And it has been added to the Lifetime Subscription as a Classic workshop, and I left the original one there…