Month: August 2023

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Royalty Free Photos * More on AI (sigh) * The Writing * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “One of the main reasons why I embrace the indie method of publishing is not only for the additional cash it makes me, or will make me down the road, but because of the independence it offers me both as a creative and a businessperson.” Vin Zandri, in the lead-in to his recent YouTube offering Royalty Free Photos A fellow writer emailed to ask where I get royalty free photos … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * More on Selling Direct * Invitation to a Challenge * On Earning with Substack * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “In two more weeks (after this one), the challenge will have been going half a year! Pretty amazing.” KC Riggs “Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.” (grin) P.J. O’Rourke Selling Direct, from Vin Zandri For more on selling direct to readers, please watch Vin Zandri’s YouTube recording. You can find it at https://www.youtube[dot]com/live/qh-bPT8bebU. Invitation to a … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Cyberpunk? * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “Be yourself. The world worships the original.” Ingrid Bergman “[I]f you use one of the AI writing services, you are taking other writer’s work … and secondly you don’t own the copyright.” Dean Wesley Smith “[A]bsent a book’s creator admitting she/he used artificial intelligence to write a book, how is anyone going to know for certain whether the author used AI to assist in the creation of a book or parts of a book?” The Passive Guy More on AI … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Expanding the Bradbury Challenge * Why Amazon Kindle Unlimited? * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “I’m Larry Niven, and I daydream for a living.” Larry Niven, at a conference, as reported by Peggy K. “That myth (writing is hard) seems to come back every now and then. I blame all the English teachers I had who fawned over published writing and made us go ever word of say Shakespeare’s Hamlet as if it was magic. The guy sat on his butt and wrote. Thats all.” George K. … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Dean Hits One Out of the Park * A Thought on Abandoning Amazon et al for Direct Sales * Saturday * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “Writers are desperate people and when they stop being desperate, they stop being writers.” Charles Bukowski “I sit alone, in a room, and make stuff up. That’s my job description. I have, without a doubt, the easiest and best job in the world. It is a giant myth that my job is hard work.” Dean Wesley Smith “[W]hen we are really … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * A New Story * Stephen King on AI writing fiction * The Writing * A Reminder and Two New ePulp Magazines * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “I decided I didn’t want to waste any more time…. I revisited my favorite stories and writers, listened to Brabdury’s lectures at UCLA on YouTube, and even looked through your Journal Archives to give myself a hard reset. I did this for a few days before showing up at my writing desk. I’m throwing my hat back into the Bradbury … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quote of the Day * Finally a Great Writing Day * Of Interest * The Numbers Quote of the Day “Writers, we are so flipping weird.” Dean Wesley Smith Finally a Great Writing Day After a few days layoff while I was dealing with some medical issues, I had a great day of writing on yesterday. For the first time on this novel, I cleared 3000 words. Barely, but I cleared it. Then some interruptions occurred. Today I have an appointment with my heart guy (the plumber, not the electrician) in the early afternoon. I wrote … Read more

In today’s Journal * More on Kindle Vella * Vin Zandri on Vella * Of Interest * The Numbers More on Kindle Vella Since I talked about Vella briefly yesterday, I poked around a little. To learn more about it, I recommend “Kindle Vella: What Is It?” at https://prowritingaid.com/kindle-vella. (Note also this is ProWritingAid touting their own services.) You can also check out “Kindle Vella: Description, Features, and Tips for Authors” direct from KindlePreneur, a great source of information on all things Kindle, at https://kindlepreneur.com/kindle-vella/. Finally there’s “Kindle Vella – Start a Story” at https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GKWM7L5U6ESNFT5X. See the “Contents” section for … Read more

In today’s Journal * Quotes of the Day * Sentence Length * An Old Review Is New Again * You DO Know About Draft2Digital, Right? * Of Interest * The Numbers Quotes of the Day “For whatever weird reason my mind wanted to write a ‘sweet romance’ genre story and it grew into a [short novel of 26786 words] of all things. Go figure. I stayed the hell out of the way and let this character tell her story…. I’ve never written romance and I don’t write romance—I’m strictly a speculative fiction guy—but there you go.” George Kordonis I love … Read more

In today’s Journal * Correction #2 * Bradbury Challenge Participants Correction #2 Well, crap. I won’t go into a long-winded explanation, but somewhere or other I lost a day. I was thinking today was Sunday. Only the arrival of the trash truck convinced me otherwise. Apologies to George, Balázs and KC, who tried to tell me. Anyway, in an extremely rare second post in one day, here are the Challenge results for the past week. Yeah, I could’a waited until tomorrow, but this should get everything back on track. Bradbury Challenge Participants During the past week, in addition to whatever … Read more