A Great Question Answered

In today’s Journal

* Quotes of the Day
* Another Short Story
* A Great Question Answered
* Dean Wesley Smith
* Of Interest
* The Numbers

Quotes of the Day

“Imagination is the highest kite one can fly.” Lauren Bacall

“I tend to splurge for convenience. I’ll pay a lot to not waste time.” Tom Anderson

Another Short Story

“Real Characters” went out to subscribers yesterday. To read it , click https://stanbroughwrites.substack[dot]com/p/real-characters. If you want to subscribe, when you finish the story scroll down and click the button. It’s free.

A Great Question

When I’m teaching something I’ve been doing for a long time, sometimes I unintentionally skip over things I take for granted as routine. That’s exactly why I encourage folks to ask questions.

In a comment on yesterday’s post, Peggy asked a great question regarding organization:

“Do you separate your story folders by category, length, or similar? Like all your shorter works in a ‘Short Fiction’ folder, or maybe a ‘Western’ or ‘Thriller’ folder? Or are they all lumped in under ‘Fiction’?”

Thank you, Peggy. As I said, it’s a great question. And thanks for waiting until today for the answer so I could do it justice in a full blog post.

In my HarveyStanbrough.com folder I have the following folders in this order:

• 0 Novels
• 0 Unpublished
• 1 Short Fiction
• 2 Collections
• 3 Nonfiction
• 4 Poetry
• 5 Lecture Series Stuff

Then some other folders that have nothing to do with my writing.

The numeric prefixes are only to keep the folders in the order that I usually access them. Everything is nested.

Inside the 0 (zero) Novels folder are

• Action-Adventure and Thriller
• Crime Detective PI
• Science Fiction Fantasy
• Western

I lump the first five genres together in two folders because I don’t have enough individual novels in any of them to justify a separate folder. That will change later. I also include my one magic realism novel in my SFF folder.

Inside the Action-Adventure-Thriller folder are

• AA A Rough New World
• AA Jobs Like That
• Blackwell Ops Series (8 novels)
• Cazadores Lounge & Lonely Place
• Jonah Peach
• Nick Spalding Series (4 novels)
• No Kind’a Time
• Nothing for Nothing

The AA designates a novella vs. a novel

The Blackwell Ops Series folder contains folders for Blackwell Ops books 1 – 8, the Blackwell Ops Bible, and a few other folders.

Same for the Nick Spalding series, except there are only 4 novels.

The others in Action-Adventure-Thriller are stand-alone novels.

Inside each individual book folder, as I mentioned in an earlier post, is the original document for the book as well as the .mobi, .epub and .pdf files, the cover art and covers, the all-important promo doc, etc. That remains the same through all of these.

The nested structure is the same for Crime Detective PI, Science Fiction Fantasy, and Western genre folders. Each contains a folder for each stand-alone novel as well as a folder for each series, which in turn contains folders for the individual books.

In the Crime Detective PI folder, there are

one novella, five stand-alone novels, and a folder for the Pulp PI series. Inside that one are three novellas and seven stand-alones, all featuring my PI character, Stern Talbot.

In the Science Fiction Fantasy folder, there are

• Galaxy Series (only 2 novels so far)
• Journey Home Series (10 novels plus a bible file)
• an SF novel and its sequel, and
• 8 more stand-alone SF novels

In the Western folder, there are three novellas, Crowley Series, then Rider Jones and Two Old Gringos (both stand-alone novels).

Inside Crowley Series are Crowley Gap Series, Crowley Original Saga, and Wes Crowley Series Other (contains notes, maps, the series bible, etc.).

Going back to the top, the Unpublished folder under Novels is for unpublished novels and is currently (and happily) empty. I used it back when I was turning out a novel every two weeks but releasing them once each month.

That’s all for the novels and novellas.

Still back at the top level, in 1 Short Fiction, there are

• Eric Stringer
• François
• Gervasio Arrancado
• Harvey Stanbrough
• Nick Porter
• Unpublished

Four of those are my personas. The name folders contain the stories written under those names.

Unpublished contains short stories I hadn’t published before. (Many of those are now published through my free story of the week at substack, though most are still not published wide either individually or in collections.)

Back to the top again, in 2 Collections are folders for

• Anthologies (I published three anthologies of other writers awhile back, results of a contest)
• Arrancado
• Harvey
• Porter
• Stringer

Each folder contains the short story collections published under those names.

Arrancado, for example, had only two collections:

• Ramon Collection and
• Stories from the Cantina.

Each of those folders contains the master document for the collection (plus the cover art, covers, etc. as I discussed earlier) as well as one copy of each original story that went into the collection.

The Harvey folder contains 16 collections. (I didn’t record how many stories were in each, either 5 or 10, except one. The Six Years in May collection contains 13 short stories, but it also contains a vignette that is not listed in the TOC after each story. Taken together, the 12 or 13 vignettes form another story. That was fun to do.)

The Porter folder contains 6 collections (four 5-story and two 10-story)

The Stringer folder contains 8 collections (five 5-story and three 10-story)

The 3 Nonfiction folder contains folders and all files for 19 nonfiction titles, some of which are available free to readers of the Journal on the Archives page.

Back to the top again, the 4 Poetry folder contains folders and all files for four poetry collections, including the first-ever book-length poetry collection published as an ebook (Lessons for a Barren Population, HardShell Word Factory, 1996 and my Pulitzer nominated (but not short-listed) Beyond the Masks (1998).

There is also a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood (or Little Red Cap) in iambic pentameter in “The Magic Cakes”; Residua (a long poem); and a still-in-progress poem on the ’60s. There are also two folders titled Poems and All Poems, but I know they aren’t all there.

If you’d like a copy of “The Magic Cakes,” email me at harveysanbrough@gmail.com. Nothing wrong with curiosity. (grin)

The Lecture Series Stuff folder contains the .mp3 files and document handouts that I send out when anyone buys an audio lecture.

So that’s my way of organizing my files. You’re welcome to borrow anything from this structure that will make things easier for you in the long run.

YouTube Channel

My YouTube channel is still there. I’m in the midst of rebuilding my writing practice, and I’m seriously considering redoing my author website.

Once those two projects have smoothed out and become more or less routine, I’ll think about YouTube again.

Dean Wesley Smith

There are two days left on the current 50% sale. For details, see https://deanwesleysmith.com/two-new-stretch-rewards-posted/.

Talk with you again soon.

Of Interest

See “Pulp Fiction All Over Again” at https://www.youtube[dot]com/watch?v=8Scrg1rF6ZQ. Hang in there. It gets good.

See “Amazon Reverses Course…” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/amazon-reverses-course-on-garbage-books-after-public-uproar/.

The Numbers

The Journal……………………………… 1150

Writing of Blackwell Ops 9: Cameron Stance (novel)
Brought forward………………………… 4087

Day 1…… 1595 words. To date…… 5682
Day 2…… 2101 words. To date…… 7783

Writing of Rose Padilla (WCG10SF5)

Day 1…… 4283 words. To date…… 4283
Day 2…… 3963 words. To date…… 8246
Day 3…… 1463 words. To date…… 9709
Day 4…… 2445 words. To date……12154

Fiction for August……………………… 14299
Fiction for 2023………………………… 128846
Fiction since August 1………………… 14299
Nonfiction for August…………………… 10070
Nonfiction for the year……………… 159970
Annual consumable words………… 288816

2023 Novels to Date……………………… 2
2023 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2023 Short Stories to Date……………… 4
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………… 73
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 9
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)… 221
Short story collections…………………… 31

Disclaimer: I am a prolific professional fiction writer. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Following the myths of writing will slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.