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Harlan Has Left The Building
Harlan Ellison Died In His Sleep… I am sure that over the next few days you will hear good and bad things about Harlan, and a ton of Harlan stories, as people like to call them. I have my share as well. Not going to give you many. At least not here. I considered Harlan a friend. Kris and I got to know him in 1987 when we started up Pulphouse and he was a friend and mentor to us for a lot of years. And I had read his writing for years before that, including The Glass Teat columns. We were not in touch much the last decade because…
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A Great Take On Writing Into The Dark
Writer Michael La Ronn Video… Michael La Ronn, a fine writer of a lot of great books who also does a great podcast, is doing a series on YouTube about writing books, and he featured my book Writing into the Dark. At first I thought this would be a sort of review, and since I don’t tend to read or watch reviews, good or bad, of my own work, I had thanked him and not watched what he had done. Then a friend watched it and said it was so much more than a review and I needed to watch it. So I did. And it is so much more…
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I Seem To Have Fallen Off
Heinlein’s Rule #4… As I am moving into my new office here in Las Vegas, I am organizing as well, as would be normal. Making lists of things to do, where I need to be caught up and where it can wait a week or so to get solidly in place again. And as I am sorting papers and other stuff I am finding things I had forgotten about. And in the papers I am uncovering unpublished short stories. And not just a few short stories. Nope. A ton of short fiction, meaning a very large stack. In fact, I have found more short stories unpublished from this year than…
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July Through October Workshop Schedule Posted
And Yes, Two New Workshops Are There… Both Information Flow and The Magic Bakery workshops are starting in July. Lifetime subscribers, the workshops are already in your subscription and no need to sign up. You can take it in July as it unfolds per week, or do it at any time after July when you want. Everyone else, to sign up for any workshop, just go to Teachable. Or if you have a credit you want to use, write me and I’ll give you a code to get in. Full list of workshops from July through October is now posted. With a couple spots left open for new workshops later in…
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We’re Lucky In Practice
Writers Are Very Lucky… We can practice and get paid for it many times. I realized that once again as I was driving back from a poker practice session at a local casino. I went to the $45 buy-in tournament early in the week to practice some on basics and give myself a must needed mental break from the move. It has been some time since I have played any serious poker and I know I need to get back tuned up. (Writers never forget how to write.) But poker at the level I play is a sport and it takes bringing back skill levels to sharpness when away for…
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That Was Very Interesting…
THANK YOU!… Everyone, for the feedback, both in the comments and in letters. Both Kris and I were surprised, to be honest. The desire for a depth-like workshop talking about information flow was across the board. And even the Magic Bakery had a lot of people wanting to take it. Plus we got a bunch of other ideas for workshops. Some were on our lists like a Romance online workshop (very different from the intense craft Romance workshop Kris will do in Vegas next year). But one idea hadn’t occurred to us and that was a workshop about how to use tags. Tags are one of the most powerful tools…
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Two Possible New Workshops
Scheduling and Trying to Decide… Working on the next four months of regular workshop schedules and I have sort of settled on two new workshops I would love to put together with Kris. So feedback is welcome. And yes, lifetime subscribers you will get any new workshop we do automatically. So first off, I like the idea of doing a Magic Bakery Workshop. Six weeks covering all kinds of details about how writers make a living and run a business with the focus on copyright and IP valuation. Now we did two advanced lectures on those two topics, but this would be so, so much more detailed and into the…
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Controlled By Fear
Needing an Agent is an Irrational Fear… I said that in a webinar today and got a couple comments later from writers who had heard it. And it dawned on me that even though needing an agent is based completely in irrational fears, most writers don’t understand that. Even though it is obvious to me. So here I am again, trying to talk logic at a myth once again. Almost always a failure, but I keep trying. And Kris and I talking about agents sure stirs up the trolls out there. Wow, you would think it was us that just recently stole the 3.4 million from writers instead of agents.…
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Webinars Sunday for The Indie Game and Fear Workshops
They Will Both Be Fun… The Insider’s Guide workshops The Indie Game and Fear in Writing will be great fun tomorrow (Sunday) for an hour-plus each in webinar format. Both of these could have some amazing discussions and questions as the weeks go by. Lifetime subscribers stop by even if you didn’t turn in an assignment. The link is at the bottom of the first week’s assignments in both workshops. The Game webinar will be at 11 a.m. West Coast Time US and the Fear webinar will be at 1 p.m. West Coast US. We did both workshops originally as the weekend workshops. We are not changing out the videos…
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A Picture of Me Typing
On My Little iPad… Since my office in the condo in Las Vegas is not set up yet, I was sitting at the table in our condo dining room working on something when Kris got this picture as I was paying no attention. Since today I spent all day shuttling cars around here on the Oregon Coast (returning rental car, having our Cadillac tuned up), and in meetings at WMG and stores and cleaning up stuff, I figured I would just do something easy here tonight. So here comes the picture. You can see the mountains to the west of Vegas through the shades. And I had a fun dinner…