In today’s Journal
* Quotes of the Day
* New Releases
* Of all the blogs I visit and read
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
Quotes of the Day
“[Y]our words are how you see yourself, your actions are how other people see you.” Farnam Street blog
“Talent sets the floor, character sets the ceiling.” Bill Belichick
“If you’re too busy to read the fine print and figure out what it means, don’t enter the contest.” The Passive Voice
New Releases
Well, Wes Crowley: The Final Chapter went live yesterday. You can see it at https://books2read.com/u/3Lw9le. That’s the 12th and final book in the Wes Crowley Saga, a story that spans roughly 50 years. I’m particularly fond of the cover, in which a silhouetted Wes is tipping his hat against a western sunset. (grin)
Of course I’m still writing the Wes Crowley Gap Series. In the original saga, there’s about a 15-year gap between Books 3 and 4, and Wes wanted to explore that gap. Happily, he invited me along to record his story. And I’m glad he did. So far, it’s been high action, high adventure, and a ton of fun.
Three novels in that one so far, and I’ll finish the fourth in the next day or two. When I come out of my mental fog, I’ll probably dive back into that series. Then again, I might write in one of my other series. I have three series in SF, plus Detective PI, Action-Adventure, and one or two others I can’t bring to mind right now.
In the meantime, again I’m back to releasing a novel every two weeks. All are available for pre-publication sale, and each provides a few hours of sheer entertainment for a lot less than the cost of a movie ticket. The schedule of releases looks like this:
Terra 2 (Book 10, FOH series), August 15
Assignment: Brownsville (Gap series), August 30
The Comancheros (Gap series), September 15
In the New Mexico Territory (Gap series), September 30
Return to the New Mexico Territory (Gap series), October 15
Of all the blogs I visit and read (and share in “Of Interest”) only Dean Wesley Smith’s blog has been invaluable, indispensible, to me as a writer. Think about that.
In “Of Interest” today, Dean marks the occasion of his ninth year of blogging every day.
From other sources, I get a spark of an idea here, a worthwhile tip there. Now and then. Maybe. But without Dean’s blog, I literally wouldn’t be where I am today as a fiction writer. Or as a blogger, come to think of it.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
See “Nine Years” at https://www.deanwesleysmith.com/nine-years/.
See “The How and Why of Epigraphs” at https://killzoneblog.com/2021/08/how-and-why-of-epigraphs.html.
See “Renowned Toxicologist Dr. M. Fredric Rieders Joins 2021 MurderCon Lineup!” at https://leelofland.com/renowned-toxicologist-dr-m-fredric-rieders-joins-2021-murdercon-lineup/.
See “Fatal Flaw — What Really Caused The Titanic Tragedy” at http://dyingwords.net/fatal-flaw-what-really-caused-the-titanic-tragedy/.
See “Adult Child and Elderly Parent” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/adult-child-and-elderly-parent/. Interesting. And as an elderly parent of adult children, I tend always to take the elderly parent’s “side” because that character actually knows what the other characters can only assume.
See “How Bad Contest Entry Rules Can Be Mitigated: The Medium Writer’s Challenge” at https://www.thepassivevoice.com/how-bad-contest-entry-rules-can-be-mitigated-the-medium-writers-challenge/.
See “Twitter Suspends Science Writer After He Posts Results Of Pfizer Clinical Test” at https://jonathanturley.org/2021/07/31/twitter-suspends-science-writer-after-he-posts-results-of-pfizer-clinical-test/. More censorship.
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………………… 820 words
Writing of WCGN 4: Return to the New Mexico Territory (novel)
Day 1…… 1965 words. Total words to date…… 1965
Day 2…… 2624 words. Total words to date…… 4589
Day 3…… 1824 words. Total words to date…… 6413
Day 4…… 3160 words. Total words to date…… 9573
Day 5…… 3504 words. Total words to date…… 13077
Day 6…… 4704 words. Total words to date…… 17781
Day 7…… 2552 words. Total words to date…… 20333
Day 8…… 2234 words. Total words to date…… 22567
Day 9…… 2227 words. Total words to date…… 24794
Day 10… 3968 words. Total words to date…… 28762
Day 11… 4779 words. Total words to date…… 33541
Day 12… 3875 words. Total words to date…… 37416
Day 13… 3346 words. Total words to date…… 40762
Total fiction words for July……… 87670
Total fiction words for the year………… 616349
Total nonfiction words for July… 20640
Total nonfiction words for the year…… 146430
Total words for the year (fiction and this blog)…… 762779
Calendar Year 2021 Novels to Date…………………… 12
Calendar Year 2021 Novellas to Date……………… 1
Calendar Year 2021 Short Stories to Date… 3
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………………………………… 65
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………………………… 8
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………………… 217
Short story collections……………………………………………… 31
Disclaimer: In this blog, I provide advice on writing fiction. I advocate a technique called Writing Into the Dark. To be crystal clear, WITD is not “the only way” to write, nor will I ever say it is. However, as I am the only writer who advocates WITD both publicly and regularly, I will continue to do so, among myriad other topics.