• Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    CES Show

    Kris and I Are Both Going… For at least as long as our brains hold out from all the crowds and things to see. For us it starts on Tuesday. We are only planning to be there during the days, but my gut sense is that by Thursday we might both be burnt out. I might be wrong. The entire Consumer Electronics Show is spread over the entire city and I am not kidding. There had to be thirty or more places to pick up badges. We walked a few blocks downtown and got ours in the lobby of a hotel there. Free shuttles leave the four major downtown hotels…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing,  workshops

    A Crazy First Five Days

    Workshop and Mentor Stuff… It has been a wild and crazy five days for me, both in ramping up the writing and exercise, but mostly in the WMG Publishing side of work. You know, first of the year business stuff. Longest five days I have had in a long, long time. But now things are smoothing out. And tomorrow I even turn in two book projects to WMG Publishing. One on time, one ahead of time. (They might faint.) So to get some rest and make tomorrow my best fiction writing day in a long time, I am just going to give you the information I gave out earlier in…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    A Typical Day

    I Got A Question… And I had no answer at this point. The question was what is my typical day? Seems like such an easy question, except it is not easy when you have no typical day. And I have not had a typical, normal series of days for almost all of 2018. But I want to have a regular typical day and I want to set some schedules for writing and exercising and that is what I am working on these first days of the year. So far I have pretty much averaged 10,000 steps a day, but at different times each day. Not good. No typical schedule even…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    My Challenge

    Off To a Decent Start… I am working to write ten novels in one-hundred days. That is my challenge to start this year. Same challenge I tried to start twice this fall and didn’t even get off the ground. But this time I am gaining speed just fine. My goal is to get up to a minimum of 3,000 words a day. Some days will be more because that is the way it works for me, but I have to have that lower limit every day. And to get to that lower limit, I needed to ramp up. So on January 1st I wrote 1,000 words on a project that…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Mentoring and Workshops

    First of the Year is Here… Four things tonight to make sure you all know about if interested. First… I have one spot open for anyone interested in having me be a mentor this year. I had one person drop out due to a nasty health issue that does not sound like a good way to start a year. So one spot open. I am just starting to get going with the other two in this program. All the details are in the post here. Second… I have decided to do the challenge again. You can write either three novels in three months or thirty short stories in two months.…

  • On Writing,  publishing

    Public Domain Day

    I Know… Copyright!… But hang on, it’s interesting, honest, because for the first time in a lot of years, major works are entering the public domain. Now granted, for some countries, this is a normal thing. For example, in Canada, any author who died in 1968 has works entering the public domain now because of life plus 50 year rule. But the United States has had some pretty messed up copyright laws since it was founded and copyright was put in the Constitution. Now finally, everything from 1923 has dropped into public domain and that will continue to move forward each year, one year at a time, until it catches…

  • Challenge,  On Writing

    Novel and Short Story Challenge Again

    Yes, Finally Decided… Just two nights ago I finished reading the last of the novels for the novel challenge and started working on typing up my notes on the short stories and novels from the challenge that started back in September. And to be honest, I flat loved the reading. Now granted, I am going to be doing a ton of reading for the Anthology Workshop soon. I love that. And Kris and I get to read stories for the Pop-Up story prompts from those who take those.  And I will be doing reading for the few in the mentor program. All that will be fun, but sporadic. But as…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Sixth Pop-Up Launching

    Writing Mysteries into the Dark… This is the sixth and last one for this year, of course. I will be announcing two or three more in a week or so. We will do at least two or more per month, and they are only up for two weeks at a time. Details of all of them are below. However, you can still get the earlier ones in the bundles. We have three bundles available. The first five, the second five, and the first ten. As of today there are six Pop-Ups available in the bundles. Information about them is below. But again, the first three are only available in the…

  • Challenge,  On Writing,  publishing

    Soaking Up Story

    I Have No Idea What For… I know I will be really picking up speed with the writing over the next few days before the first of the year so that by the first I will be at full speed. (Doing the same with exercising and reducing food intake.) Watched most of two movies tonight and a good episode of The Rookie. Not a clue why I am watching and reading so much. Also finally finishing up the last stories from the challenge and will be getting everyone feedback once my notes are typed into an email. So story, story, story.  No idea why more than normal right now, but…

  • Challenge,  workshops

    5 Days Left

    Year Is Flashing to a Finish… I have about seven million things I want to do this week, which I feel is normal for this time of the year. Web site issues (now solved) and some other fun cost me most of the day today. But I wanted to make sure everyone knew about the second workshop in the Futures Series is starting on January 2nd. This one is called Opportunity: How to See and Evaluate Opportunities. Basically Create and Take Advantage of Opportunities. Two tag lines that fit the same workshop. The first Futures workshop is still available and you can take it at any point and turn in…