The Great Challenge – Week 31

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It’s week 31 of The Great Challenge with Dean. And…more success.

Hardly a surprise, right?

This week, I’ve been taking a special workshop with Dean about how to write a story for Pulphouse Magazine. I got into it because I supported his recent Kickstarter to fund the next couple years of subscriptions for the magazine.

Anyway, this week had a short writing assignment, the beginning of a story, written with depth and attitude. I did the assignment. Then just went ahead and finished the story for the challenge.

Cool. 🙂

Here are the stories from the Great Challenge so far:

  1. Red Orchid – Romance – 3,800 words
  2. Debts And Obligations – Sword and Sorcery – 14,200 words
  3. Naughty And Nice – Modern Fantasy – 4,800 words
  4. Popper’s – Mystery – 4,100 words
  5. The Case Of The Missing Rocker – SciFi/Mystery – 7,200 words
  6. Fences And Neighbors – Post-Apocalyptic – 4,800 words
  7. Give A Dog A Bone – Doggy Mystery – 3,200 words
  8. Untitled – Romance – 5,300 words
  9. Lost On Cordant Station – Science Fiction – 8,560 words
  10. Kicking The Anthill – Urban Fantasy/Adventure – 3,863 words
  11. VIP Treatment – Modern Fantasy – 6,012 words
  12. A Man Of Faith – Religious/Supernatural Thriller Maybe? – 9,013 words
  13. Abe’s Liquors – Romantic Suspense – 2,951 words
  14. Cave Diving For Dummies – Sea Story/Suspense – 3,491 words
  15. Work Release – Science Fiction – 4,910 words
  16. Miss Melody And The Elf Spa – Fantasy – 4,175 words
  17. Joyride To The Moon – YA Science Fiction – 5,444 words
  18. Moonstruck – Fantasy/Horror – 4,683 words
  19. Wire Runs – Science Fiction – 2,119 words
  20. Miss Melody And The Knight Gallant – Fantasy – 5,573 words
  21. Lost Credit – Fantasy/Sword And Sorcery – 4,407 words
  22. Hunting For Game – Mystery/Crime – 2,474 words
  23. Caledonia – Science Fiction/Horror – 4,870 words
  24. Love In The Apocalypse – Science Fiction/Horror – 3,389 words
  25. Playing For Scraps – Science Fiction – 5,307 words
  26. Terran New Year – Scifi/Romance – 3,103 words
  27. Santa Fe Station – Mystery/Crime – 5,486 words
  28. Finding Bobby Jenkins – Science Fiction – 7,552 words
  29. Warden’s Trial – Sword and Sorcery – 3,790 words
  30. On The Road To Hopefell – Post-Apocalyptic – 4,041 words
  31. Wolves On Cornell Street – Fantasy – 5,032 words

That brings it to 157,673 words total for this challenge, and 195,560 words for the year over the span of 99.25 hours (1,979.38 words/hr on average).

Fun fact I discovered this week. I went and saw an attorney since I realized I am WAY behind the 8-ball when it comes to estate planning. My will is…10 years old? Something like that? It was drafted way before I started even thinking about writing. And all this intellectual property can make for a very complicated time for a writer’s estate, since copyright lasts for 70 years after the death of the writer. That makes valuing copyright extremely, shall we say, dicey. Depending on how you do the computations, even a few short stories can be worth a serious amount of money, if you consider all the possible licensing opportunities and possible cash flow streams that can come from those stories.

Last thing I want to do is have my heirs get hit by, for instance, a huge estate tax bill that could leave them bankrupt. Even barring that, having to go through probate is very costly and takes a really long time. So for both those reasons, I’ve decided to get my act together on this front.

Thus, I need to set up a trust. I also need to incorporate (or I will, probably in the very near future – spoken the next year or two). But the trust thing comes first.

In preparing for the meeting with the attorney, and for financial disclosures associated with closing escrow on a house next month, I went and counted up every piece of intellectual property I’ve created.

Well, everything I’ve written anyway. The audiobooks I’ve recorded myself and hired others to record are other bits of IP, as are the videos and podcasts I’ve created for Story Time With Michael Kingswood (and boy am I really behind on that….I’m getting to it. I promise).

Anyway, turns out that I now have 46 unpublished stories, that I need to do something with so they can get to earning revenue. Considering I currently have 50 titles published….that’s a significant backlog.

So that leaves me with two things to do in the very near future:

  1. Get that trust set up. After I close on the house, because it’ll cost about $1,800 and I can’t make any big purchases until after closing.
  2. Get all those stories out into the world, published

And, of course, write more stories and finish those novels that have been hanging out there in progress for-freaking-ever.

Fun, fun! 🙂

I’m participating in the Fantastic Frontiers promotion through Bookfunnel for the next few weeks. I’m giving away Passing In The Night (Prelude To The Pericles Conspiracy) along with 49 other writers and their stories. Lots of great writing there for you to enjoy. Go check it out!

As well, to promote my new Short Mystery 10-Pack release I’ve joined in a sales promotion on Bookfunnel called New Releases October/November Romantic Suspense And Mystery. Original title, but it tells the tale, amiright?

If you enjoy my work and wish to help me continue creating fun stories, consider becoming a supporting patron here on the website. Just a few dollars a month will go a long way toward enabling me to produce more great works for your enjoyment.

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Copyright © 2019 by Michael Kingswood. All rights reserved. No copies may be made or distributed without the express written permission of the author.

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