The anthology is out in paperback now — proceeds go to support the Western Fictioneers so we don’t have to pay so much for our conferences and such — we’ve all signed our royalties over to the club so you can be sure every penny goes to support your local Western writers!

I got my authorial copies today and it’s a great paperback! 5×8 and nearly 400 pages — it’s a nice handful of stories. We’ve got 22 stories for your reading pleasure and each one a gem.

It’s still free on Kindle Unlimited — but you know you want that high-quality paper in your hot little hands! You can even get it “signed” if you ship me a book plate! PO Box 3671 Greenville, SC 29608 — shoot me an email if you do so I can check the box more frequently than I usually do…

On Day 2 we learned about Economics in the Old West, Weird Westerns, Legal Labyrinths (the “rights” side of the law), Women Professionals of the Old West, Other Markets for Western Writers — and my own Social Media panel seemed to go over well.

 

Today we learned a lot of interesting facts about Horses in the Old West, World-Building & World-Keeping, and had a great panel discussion from Legends Bob Vardeman and James Reasoner. Then we had a fun visit to the Cowboy Museum.

So I have a couple of projects cooking at the moment, and I thought you’d be interested in what’s going on.

First, Western Fictioneers like my story for Luck of the Draw and have asked that I create a character for the shared-universe setting of Wolf Creek. This is very exciting – I love the series and am fascinated with working in a shared world.

I’m working on a character that is basically Chance if he’d grown up in a different sort of world. Dublin is a mixed-race street kid from New York City who gets caught in a police raid and sent to the orphanage, where he is promptly shoved onto one of the Orphan Trains that operated back then, carrying orphans West (presumably to happy homes, but more often to families that just wanted extra labor for the farm). Dublin’s having no part of that, so he manages to escape when the train stops for fuel and water at Wolf Creek, Kansas.

Dublin is convinced he will have no trouble surviving in the country, though his ultimate goal is to get back to his home in New York. He’s going to learn that surviving in the street of a big city takes totally different skills than surviving in a small town on the middle of the prairie. I envision Dublin as a go-between for the town, shuttling information back and forth between the “good” side of town and the “bad” side – his fingers in every pie, feelers out for all secrets and gossip, willing to sell his knowledge to the highest bidder. He’s not above an honest day’s work, but he’d much rather earn his money quasi-legally without what he thinks of as actual labor.

The second project is another Kye and the Kid story. My agent sent me a link to the latest Malice Domestic anthology, “Mystery Most Historical.” I’ve got until July 31 to send in a 3,500-5,000 word mystery story set in the past.

Kye and Chance are in San Francisco for this story, still in their teens and new to the city. They visit a carnival and Kye talks Chance into seeing a Gypsy fortuneteller. The story revolves around a mysterious stranger, nefarious doings (that weren’t orchestrated by Chance), and a cryptic warning about ravens. I think it’s going to be pretty good.

Keep an eye peeled for these two projects – I’ll post links once the Wolf Creek story is published, and I’ll let you know what happens to the Malice Domestic entry.

Here are some shots from the convention. We all had a great time, and it was a real pleasure to meet all of my online writing buddies!

Here are some of the gems of wisdom from the convention.

 

From the Living Legends panel:

 

“Write every single day. It doesn’t matter how you feel or what’s happening. You’ve got to do it all the time.

~Bob Randisi

“I get up in the morning and take the dog out for a necessary poop. Around lunchtime, I take him for a recreational poop. In the evening, I take him for a courtesy poop. In between poops, I’m writing.”

~Dick Vaughan

“I don’t have a dog…”

~Dusty Richards

“It’s a great and wonderful gift. I do a lot of my work with my eyes closed, before I get out of bed.”

~Frank Roderus

“I know I’ve been writing when I get to a break and can’t remember what music I was listening to.”

~Dusty Richards

“I don’t think there’s a lot of what we do that can be learned … it just comes naturally. I’ve listened to dialogue all my life so it’s easy for me.”

~Bob Randisi

“I was supposed to be a professional football player…”

~Dick Vaughan

“I get brain dead on one book after a chapter or two … switch to a new book with new characters and it’s fresh again.”

~Frank Roderus

“I’m a real estate agent for books.”

Agent Cherry Weiner

One of the panels at DragonCon this year was all about social media. Most of the authors agreed that it was a “necessary evil.” What you have to remember is that the more time you spend on any social media, the less time you’re actually spending writing.

Here are some tips I’ve developed for maximizing your time on different social media sites:

• Facebook – I follow a lot of other writing pages, and every day I cycle through the list and share anything interesting. I usually post a link to this blog, and also may add a very short blurb about what’s going on with my author self. I also have a file of writing quotes that I spent a few hours making on one of those “create-a-sign” sites – I can upload one of those if there’s nothing else interesting going on. Facebook usually takes me 15-20 minutes a day.
• Twitter – I post one writing prompt every day, and I post a link to this blog. About once a week or so, I cycle through my Twitter contacts and “retweet” interesting tweets. Twitter takes me less than 5 minutes a day.
• Instagram – Again, I have a file of interesting photos that I draw from. I try to post 2-3 images a day, and I usually do that while waiting in line for my coffee. Instagram takes me less than 5 minutes a day.
• Pinterest – It took me several hours to create a good Pinterest board for Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid, plus I also have one for general history (Back in My Time). Now, I only post to the board when I find an interesting photograph during my research – pinning a photo to your board takes less than a minute.
• LinkedIn and Google+– I’ll admit that I don’t do much at all with these sites. I have a presence, and I do link to other authors and editors, but I don’t actively post anything because I just don’t hear the “buzz” about these compared with the first four sites.

As you can see, I’ve pared my social media time down to around 30 minutes a day, which isn’t a horrible slice cut out of my writing time.

Other time-wasters I admit to:

• This blog – I try to post once a week with a “real” article, but I’ve started putting in those “short-shorts” giving my readers links to fun and interesting things I find during my research. Short-shorts take about 5 minutes a day, but the big articles can take up to 30 minutes to compose and post. I think it’s worth the effort because of the connection with the readers.
• Western Fictioneers – I have a monthly column (every second Friday), and usually spend 30-60 minutes writing the post. This is more involved than my personal blog because I have to research historical data and locate old photos to include, but I enjoy sharing my research and networking with other Western writers.
• WikiAnswers.com – I’ve been a supervisor with Answers.com for nearly 10 years, so it’s a habit I’m not willing to break myself of. I usually spend less than 15 minutes a day, however, with occasional bouts where I take an hour or so and try to answer some of the older questions that are languishing, or greeting new members.

How much time do you spend on social media? Do you think you spend too much time or not enough?

This week, I’m part of a Writing Process Blog Tour, where authors talk about their process and why they write what they write.

At the end of this post, I’ll tag three other authors who will post about their writing process on their own blogs next Monday, thus continuing the Blog Tour – follow them as they tell their tales

What am I working on?

DOWN THE OWLHOOT TRAIL is out on the market – available on Amazon  and Barnes and Noble, and on the JMS Books website.   

I’m now working on a novel featuring Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid, tentatively titled OUTLAW SECURITY. The lads have succeeded in their goal of becoming the two most successful outlaws West of the Mississippi, and their alter egos of Kye Devon and Chance Knight are two of the wealthiest (and most eligible) young men in San Francisco. They have everything a couple of rogues could ever want — until Federal Agent Kirkham tracks them down! I’m hoping to complete the manuscript to my satisfaction within the year, and start shopping it around.

I’m also working on a short story for the Western Fictioneers’ Wolf Creek series. The anthology is called LUCK OF THE DRAW, and concerns a marathon poker tournament in the fictional town of Wolf Creek. The only thing Chance likes better than robbing the big bugs of the world is playing a rousing hand of poker, so he’ll be there with bells on.

How does my work differ from others in its genre? I think I have more humor than you’ll see in most Westerns. Chance and Kye are wise-acres, and they handle stress by ragging on each other and making smart-ass remarks. It’s also a bit unusual to have your heroes be unrepentant outlaws. These fellows are going to “retire” one day — they know they’re bucking the odds, and aren’t going to keep going more than a few more years — but that’s going to be because of their age and the chances of getting caught. They suffer not a qualm about the morality of what they do.

Why do I write what I do? I’ve always loved Westerns, particularly those with memorable characters, and most particularly where one of those characters is a trickster. The trickster character has fascinated me since childhood, when I first realized that you could use your wits instead of your brawn to solve a problem. All of my stories have a trickster character, though I hope they don’t get into quite as much trouble as some of the traditional tricksters.

I enjoy writing about the Old West because it was a “simpler” time when people were judged on their actions instead of how much money they had or how photogenic they might be. The idea that you had to be polite or risk getting shot is also appealing! The characters who made it out West were tough people, fighting nature as much as each other, and that makes for good story characters. I love the American Southwest, too, and like putting the haunting vistas into my stories.

 

How does my writing process work? When I’m “in the groove,” I usually get up early and get in half an hour of writing before I start work. On my days off, I try for at least 2,000 words, though if I’m on a roll, I can do more than that. If I’m editing, I try to finish at least one chapter to my satisfaction.

I tend to start at the beginning and write straight through to the end, though I have on occasion jumped right into a scene that fired my imagination. I do a lot of research before I start writing, because I like to get the history right, but I can also find myself surfing the internet during a chapter if I discover something I forgot to look up beforehand. I got halfway through a scene at the lads’ house when I realized I had no real idea what the inside of a typical house in that era would look like. I found an entire book on the subject and downloaded it.

 

I write using two basic programs: Microsoft Word and Scrivener. I use Word for short fiction and blog articles, just because it’s easy to pull up a new page and save it. Scrivener is great for the novel, because you have so much you can do on it. Character charts, side notes, research articles — they even have “index cards” you can slide around to rearrange your scenes.

A Thank-You tag:

Thanks to the talented Meg Mims for tapping me to join The Writing Process Blog Tour!  Meg is the author of the Double Series: Double Crossing and Double or Nothing, (both of which you should read!) and is currently working on a new cozy mystery series with Sharon Pisacreta, writing as D.E. Ireland. The first book, Wouldn’t It Be Deadly, is coming out in September, 2014, and is already available for pre-order on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Meg also writes for the Western Fictioneers’ Wolf Creek series.

Tag – You’re It!

Thanks for stopping by today to read about my writing process. Now it’s my turn to tag three other authors to talk about their process and why they write what they do. Follow these authors’ posts in the next few weeks. Learn about them and discover a whole host of new books to read

J.M. Kelley – author of Drew in Blue and Daddy’s Girl