BO-42, and If You Need a Website
In Today's Journal
* Quote of the Day
* BO-42: Sam Granger
* If You Need an Author Website
* Browse the Obits? Browse Graveyards?
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
BO-42: Sam Granger
goes live on Your Morning Serial tomorrow at 5 a.m. Arizona time! So I think that's 8 a.m. Eastern at this time of year. (Arizona does not change to daylight savings time.)
Note: I was going to post the chapters one at a time, and I started doing that.
But when I was about a third of the way through scheduling new posts, my creative subconscious told me the story would be more cohesive for readers if I grouped the chapters, posting a "story" (2-4 chapters) in each post.
So I went back, deleted 10 of the first 11 posts, and started over. Still, no grouping of chapters is longer than a few thousand words.
On the upside, you'll get the complete novel in the first 13 days of May, about the length of time it took me to write it. (grin)
Note: If you're thinking of serializing your novel, re-read the above and learn from my mistake. Readers always enjoy reading a story more when it isn't chopped up into incoherent pieces.
Help me out with this experiment. Visit Your Morning Serial and subscribe free!
Stay Tuned
I'm not sure how long this experiment will run, but I'm thinking I'll continue it through at least one more novel, and maybe two. Then I'll see how things settle out.
The next one will probably be something from another genre (probably mystery or SF), but it will definitely be presented in "stories" of up to a few chapters for each post.
If You Need an Author Website
BookBub is working on "a simple tool for authors to create and manage websites, with features and template options specifically built for marketing yourself and your books."
You can try it out here. Just FYI, if I were younger or didn't have an author website, I would leap at this opportunity. I might anyway.
Browse the Obits? Browse Graveyards?
A friend emailed me yesterday with a link (see Of Interest) about reading obituaries as a creativity hack.
As I wrote in my response, I've been reading obits for years specifically to 'mine' them. I also visit graveyards in cities and towns that are new to me and browse the headstones for interesting names.
Often a name will key "How'd you get there?" and a story or story starter comes forth. These have informed my short stories and novels for years.
Including a long (for me, at around 100,000 words) 'they came here' SF novel I hope to serialize in the near future.
Of Interest
The Creativity Hack No One Told You About: Read the Obits Great idea if you can still find real obits these days. (Thanks to Bob C for the link.)
Your Uncomfort Zone will Save Your Life and Your Writing
The Numbers
The Journal…………………………… 480
Writing of Blackwell Ops 43: Sam Granger | The Quiz Master
Day 1…… 2242 words. To date…… 2242
Day 2…… 3315 words. To date…… 5557
Day 3…… 3192 words. To date…… 8749
Day 4…… 3439 words. To date…… 12188
Day 5…… 3017 words. To date…… 15205
Fiction for April……………………….. 107422
Fiction for 2025………………………. 374372
Nonfiction for April………………........ 19560
Nonfiction for 2025…………………… 101090
2025 consumable words…………….. 468952
Average Fiction WPD (March)……... 3727
2025 Novels to Date…………………….. 9
2025 Novellas to Date…………………… 0
2025 Short Stories to Date……………… 26
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..... 113
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 296
Short story collections……………………. 29
Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.
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Questions are always welcome at harveystanbrough@gmail.com. But please limit yourself to the topics of writing and publishing.
Enjoyed the article about reading the obits. I used to drive my dog around at the cemetery so she can hang her head out and enjoy the day.
Got pulled over once in town because it's against city ordinance for 🐕 to be hanging out car window. So we started going there. It's relaxing for me and I can see the different names and some cool stones.
Also enjoyed two articles that were linked from the obituary article. One about corporal punishment in schools from a survivors point of view and another about someone who moved many times and places before finding a place to really feel at home. Interesting stuff to make it's way into a story somehow someday perhaps.
Oh, you lucky Arizonans... DST is definitely not one of my favorite things in life.
I subscribed to Your Morning Serial earlier. I realized that even though I've been reading The New Daily Journal (first on the WordPress site you have, then here on Substack), I have yet to read your fiction. So I figured I'd better remedy that. Looking forward to the novel! :)