Okay, as promised, this is a short summary of my opinion about the value of going to a convention or a writer’s conference.

First off, a definition of the difference. A convention in my language means a gathering such as the World Science Fiction Convention, or BoucherCon, which is the World Mystery Convention. Conventions are attended by fans, by writers, by readers, book dealers, and many others. There are thousands of these types of conventions ranging down the scale of size around the world every year. If you are a well published writer at these conventions, you do book signings and are on panels.

A conference for this discussion is a gathering of writers, editors, agents only. RWA Nationals is the largest of these and very educational focused on the writing business, both in and out of the romance genre. But there are thousands of these around the world every year as well.

Kris and I used to go to a wonderful writer’s conference in New Mexico before it folded its tent. We then were invited for years to a conference in Vancouver B.C. until I said something that pissed off the new people running it. Last year, and upcoming this January, Kris and I will be attending another wonderful small writer’s conference in Cocoa Beach, Florida in January. As you might guess, we are pretty selective on which writer’s conference we attend.

So, to the value of attending.

For professional writers of any age, any level, you flat must get out to conferences. And if you are working tightly inside of one genre, you also need to hit one or two of the conventions in that genre. You must get out and meet the editors. That simple. But there is another reason for my opinion on this. Young writers, and older farts like me, must get out and learn.

Let me say this clearly right here: The learning never stops, no matter how many books you have published or how much you think you know it all.

You can only learn so much reading books, reading blogs, going to your local writer’s group. Kris and I offer workshops for young professionals to help them learn how to jump to the next level, but going to conferences is also a highly intense learning experience. Not only do you get face time with editors at appointments, but there is a ton of paneling you can go to where people talk about subjects you might need to know about.

Often in this business it is one tiny piece of advice, often tossed off by a speaker, that hits a bell, jumps you forward and into selling regularly. And unless you put yourself into the position of getting that tiny piece of advice, you will never know and struggle alone, maybe eventually giving up.

Saying you can’t afford to travel to learn in this modern world of writing is like saying you want to be a lawyer but just can’t afford to go to law school. You have to pay the price for your craft. Part of that price is sitting alone in a room and practicing hour after hour, day after day, but part of that price is getting out and learning from people farther down the road than you are.

Now, a caution about both conferences and conventions. The speakers are sometimes a person no father down the road than you are, or a person who is just flat giving bad advice. You must go in with your bull-sh*t meter running at full speed, watch the speaker bios, and maybe even ask when the writer broke into the field to figure out if the advice is old or modern advice. For example, this year in Denver at the World Science Fiction Convention, the person doing the programming thought for some strange reason that they needed to fill the panels with Denver people. So the older pros were often shuttled to the back or just talked over by younger people with no credits who happened to live in the area. Kris and I had two panels the entire five days. Yeah, silly, but part of the problem.

At writer’s conferences, there are all kind of scam artists as well working the crowds. So very large doses of caution are needed in which information you take or leave.

Kris and I go to conventions for a number of reasons. One, we want to see old friends, both writers and editors, who we seldom see except at conventions and conferences. Second, we want to learn. For example, I sat in a fantastic panel given by Melinda Snodgrass, the novelist and Hollywood writer. She was talking about plotting and I learned a bunch, in fact regretting I didn’t have my notebook with me at the time to take notes. I learned a ton as well talking with old friends, listening how they were handling different business decisions, getting advice on different things. I spent five days in Denver and learned a ton.

I have edited, been a publisher, and have over ninety novels sold, and I went to Denver to keep learning.

The learning never stops. I tend to go out to three events per year outside my local area. And without fail, every year I get the tapes from RWA Nationals and listen to much of it. It was eleven years since I had been to a World Science Fiction Convention, but that does not mean in those eleven years I had just sat home. Nope, I had been out all the time at difference conferences and other genre conventions. Learning.

You want to be a professional fiction writer, pay the price and get out there and learn. You never get good enough, you never know everything about this business, and this business is always changing just ahead of you. You must go out to learn, and trust me, that’s part of the fun of this business.

Cheers,

Dean

I had a great time, to put it simply.

This was my first Worldcon in eleven years, but many times it felt as if I had been there every year. Lots of new faces and even more old friends.

As for what happened?  Well, it is far too much to detail out in one post, especially as tired as I still am. But let me do a few general details now and some later.

Worldcon this year was spread out over most of downtown Denver, with the dealer’s room and signings upstairs in the very back of the convention center. Someone said it was about a third of a mile from the front of the convention center to the door into the dealer’s room. I can believe that. And it was another half mile or more from the front of the convention center to where the party hotel and some programming was. One fine afternoon, Kris and I had a signing until 5:30 near the dealer’s room and then Kris was scheduled to be at the Sidewise Awards at 5:30 in the party hotel. We are from sea level, so that hike at near run speed was tough.

But leaving the signing a little early, we were not very late getting there and Kris won that award for her story Recovering Apollo 8. She got second for the same story in the Hugo Awards the next evening.

I’ll go on at some length in another post about the value and lack of value for a writer of attending a convention like this one. But for the moment I just wanted to say that I am back, I had a blast, and I enjoyed seeing everyone.

Cheers, Dean

A number of months back I talked about how I came into professional fiction writing, the short story per week and such. But Laura asked a question after my last post that I figured might be helpful to talk about. In so many words, the question is simply “Did I always write in this same push/rest style?”

Nope. Along the way I’ve tried just about every work method there is. Every one. And I still lust after being more of a regular writer. And I really lust after writing fiction like a day job, eight hours a day, five days a week. I have not managed to do that for any length of time yet, mostly because I’m too lazy. But I keep thinking about it. <g>

So let me back up and talk a moment about how I wrote my first five novels. The first one I mentioned before was written on a typewriter, ten pages per day, thirty days, very rough draft, without much use of white-out. I had forced myself to do it that way because up to that point I had started a half dozen novels and finished none. The time was winter/early spring of 1985. For four years I had been pounding out a short story per week. So that was my first attempt at very consistent writing and it worked.

Second novel was started shortly after the first one and done the same way. Both were destroyed and lost in a house fire just as I was finishing the second novel in early May of 1985. I have no memory of those two books, to be honest, more than likely because they were bad, and partially from the loss aspects of not wanting to think about them.

So, time passed. Remember, during all this, I was working jobs to keep rent paid and all that. I was starting to sell short stories, but the money was always just found money to me. So after the fire, one and a half years passed until I got a letter from an editor at Bantam books asking me if I had a novel. She had seen a couple of my stories in Night Cry Magazine, the little horror sister of Twilight Zone Magazine. She had liked my stories and hoped I was marketing a novel.

Now I had no ideas that letters like that existed. Trust me, that was a very good day.

In a snail mail letter back I said, “Sure, I got one.”

A complete lie.

I went to work, pounding on my new computer as fast as I could, in pure panic mode.

“Send me the first three chapters and a proposal,” she said in a follow up letter one week later. I sent her the first three chapters, freshly off the dot matrix printer, and a suckie outline that next week. (Thank heaven’s I had been following Heinlein’s Rules up to that point and could do just that.)

Then, I went back to work, writing as fast as I could, which during those days was not very fast it seems. The fear of an editor actually reading the book slowed me down something awful and two months passed with me writing, or trying to write, and driving Kris and Nina nuts until the editor asked for the entire book. No consistency at all. None.

One month later I managed to release the book off to the editor. Winter 1987. Entire process just under four months of stop/start/stop/start/panic.

She bounced it, but in the mean time, I had another editor I met at a convention really excited to see it and he bought it in May of 1987 and the book came out of Warner. So book #3 was my first published book.

Now, the week after I mailed the book to the first editor, I was so angry at myself for taking four very long months, I decided to write another novel quickly. I took a week off of work and sat down and typed, hard, fast, and laughing, since the book was a thriller political satire that made me laugh. Ten days later I had a finished draft. Short, about 65,000 words, but a finished draft. I have never mailed that book. Not completely sure why, to be honest, since I still remember and like it. This was the spring of 1987.

Then came Pulphouse Publishing. Years passed. Here comes 1992. Five years later. I was still selling short fiction when I got around to writing it, but mostly I just did Pulphouse. Then John Ordover calls and in the conversation with Kris wants to know if we would write a Deep Space Nine novel. Two months later we turned it in and I have never stopped writing novels since.

Five novels written from the Winter/Spring of 1985 to the summer of 1992. Over 90 novels written since those first five.

Now, during the years since 1992, I have had some times where I wrote every day, like it was a job, but mostly I wrote to deadline, often pushing back starting until I had to really panic and write hard to get to the deadline, which I never missed. Ever.

In the last few years, I am working to learn once again how to be more of a regular writer, going upstairs to my writing office at about the same time every night. It is working some at the moment, but to be honest I would rather work to editorial deadline. That’s how I do my best work.

But I suppose old dogs can learn new tricks, and since I have written regularly in the past, I know how. I just don’t enjoy it as much as play/play/play/panic/write fast and long/play/play/play.

But to each his own. Try every method. You will, over the years, find what works for you. However, if you are not producing pages, then your method is not working. But that’s a topic for another post.

Cheers, Dean

I get lots of questions about writing fast and how I do it? Often the question goes something like this: “How do you put out so many books?” Or more bluntly, “I wish I could write as fast as you, how do you do it?” Or they hear I have sold over 90 novels and just shake their heads in disbelief.

They often treat me like I have some secret. Nope, no secret. I just plant my butt in my chair longer than most writers. Nothing more.

Actually, I am what is known as a sprint writer, while my wife, Kris, is a steady writer. We both type about the same number of words per hour when going, anywhere from a page to three pages an hour, maybe four when a story is really moving. But she works a set amount per day, while I tend to take large chunks of time off playing around with other things, then when I write, I do long sessions, day after day, often late into the night.

I do that because I discovered that is what works best for me. I wish I could be more like Kris, but it seems my brain likes to work hard and fast and long, then take long breaks off.

So how do I write so fast? Answer, I don’t. But I am a professional writer, so I report for work, and when I report for work, I work. Of course, that answer never really makes anyone happy, so I tell the person asking to go ahead and just do the math.

One page per day, a simple 250 words, more than likely an amount shorter than this post, will get a writer to finish a 90,000 word plus novel in one year. Fred Pohl, a grandmaster of science fiction, wrote four pages every day no matter what. And he did that for decades and decades. He often wouldn’t allow himself to do anything else until his four pages were done. That turns into three or four novels a year.

I am like almost every other writer I have ever talked to. I struggle with openings, I have to often drag myself through the middle, and I write like a mad man when nearing the end of a book. I can spend days trying to figure out an opening on a novel, writing drafts and tossing them away, until I get the right opening. I can spend chunks of a book writing one or two pages an hour, and other chunks of the same book writing three or four pages per hour.

So, back to doing the math. Let’s say I can manage an average of 500 words per hour on a novel. Let’s say I am under an extreme deadline for a publisher, so I work ten hours a day, not counting taking time off for lunch, a nap, dinner, another nap. So I do that, I manage 5,000 words a day at the pace of two pages an hour. Actually, on days like that I tend to get about 7,000 words.

At that pace, I always have down days or bad days, so figure one of those every five days or so. That means I am writing about 40,000 words a week, a novel in about three weeks, give or take. But that’s under pressure when I have been paid to write fast.

Really, I am lazy. (Remember, I do nothing else but write.) So most of the time I manage, when under an easier deadline, to get about four hours a day in. That produces about 2,500 words a day. That pace takes me about seven to eight weeks to write a book. Then, of course, because I worked so hard at 4 hours a day, I have to take a month or so off and just play around. <g>

That still produces four or five books a year and causes me to get all those questions about how I write so fast. But the reality is just simple math. Put one page on your novel every day and in a year you have a finished book. Put two pages and it will take you six months to write a book and you will be considered very fast.

Write four pages a day and you write about four books a year and you have to write under pen names or in romance, where they like that pace for their authors. It is just math, nothing more. No great secret.

Of course, there are very few of us on this planet who can do what I think is simple. Everyone has their excuses and reasons why they don’t write, why they can’t make it to the computer to write 500 words, but yet can write huge blogs like this one, and a ton of e-mail. I call these excuses the “myths” of writing, and there are a ton of them. We spend a lot of time in the workshops we teach helping writers through the myths.

Professional writers who get to the computer and finish books regularly have worked through or over or around most of the myths of fiction writing. Me, I just follow Heinlein’s Rules and keep going. They worked for him and hundreds of other professional writers, and they work for me just fine. In fact, without those rules, I doubt I would be a professional writer, and I doubt I would be known as a fast writer.

So, to answer the question about how to write fast one last time (I wish). Simply put your butt in the chair and type regularly until the book is done, then repeat on the next book and then repeat again on the next book. Beyond that, there is no right way, just the way that works for you. But until you plant the butt and type, nothing else matters.

Cheers

Dean

I got a lot of responses from my post about agents and the state of the industry right now. And most of those asked how to get an unusual book in front of editors these days if they couldn’t get an agent to bite. Well, there is one way. Go to writer’s conferences that have editors from major houses and make a five minute appointment with the editor.

I can hear the “Huh?” from many of you out there.

In this new world of publishing, there has developed a wonderful learning tool for all types of writers called a writer’s conference. There are hundreds of these around the country. Kris and I teach at a few every so often. But mostly, the reason for all of you to go is to meet editors and agents. Let me add the word “good” in front of both editor and agent.

Of course, the conferences have wonderful panels with top people speaking.  You will learn a ton about craft, about business, about plotting, about editing, everything.  Nonfiction or fiction writers.  Doesn’t matter.

Many of these conferences are set up so that the editors meet for a few minutes with people who sign up. Now this is a horrid grind for the editors, but the editors do it because they are hoping to meet that one special writer, find that one special book that will fit their line, discover that one new talent and maybe the next bestseller.

So that allows you to get your book in front of an editor.  Easy, huh?

Well, not really. First off, you have to know what type of book you have FINISHED. Don’t bother meeting with an editor unless you have a finished book. If you know the type of book you wrote, then you have to research the editors attending the conference you are looking at. Say you wrote a paranormal romance. Are there any editors going to the conference who edit those kind of books? Or even better yet, two editors.

Are the editors with major New York houses? Research the companies, the book lines as well as the editors.

Then you have to work out your pitch, boil your entire book down into a really nifty “elevator pitch.” An elevator pitch is this. You get on an elevator on the 4th floor and an editor is there. Editor turns to you as the doors close and the elevator starts down. “What are you working on these days?” You have until the doors open on the first floor to light up that editor with your book, control their interest, make them want to read it. That’s an elevator pitch. Or sometimes called a Hollywood Pitch, or a High Concept Pitch.

Before you go to the conference, have that pitch ready and practiced. And be ready to answer questions in an excited manner about your book. If you’re not excited about it, how do you expect an editor to be excited?

If you are saying, “But I can’t afford to go to conferences, or workshops, or conventions.” Find another profession. You really don’t want to be a writer. What you are saying is “I really want to be a lawyer, but I don’t want to spend the time and money to go to law school.”

Kris and I could not afford to go to conventions in our early days of writing. We once shared a room at a hotel with seven other writers. One convention I had no money to eat and didn’t really know editors enough to buy me a few meals, so I managed to get enough food by taking a cooler from home and grazing the free food at a couple of parties. If you want this career bad enough, you do what you need to do.

And one good way to get around the agents is go to a writers conference prepared with a finished book sitting at home. You might need an agent if the editor is interested in your project, and if they make an offer, you MUST get an agent. But at least you can meet editors and get your book looked at by simply going to writer’s conferences.

And don’t forget that while you are preparing to try to sell your first novel, write the second one.

Cheers, Dean

As I continue to slowly work on the bibliography section of this site, I thought this book might be a fun one to mention up front here. Actually, this is only one book in a four book series I wrote under this title for Adventure Boys. None of these books, plus the four books I wrote as Sandy Schofield for them, have seen print yet in any real fashion. Bummer, I had a blast writing them.

The idea for Adventure Boys was a great one while it lasted. And who knows, it might still happen.

This was a really fun series, set in the Wild West, and actually, this is the second book in the series. It follows five boys as they try to make their way across the west following a really bad guy and his gang. A perfect setting for all kinds of adventures, that’s for sure.

The company had some top writers working on different projects. Kevin J. Anderson, Michael Stackpole, Loren Coleman, Steve Perry. All of us wrote books for them that have never come out. I had a blast writing them and was under contract to write three more in this series when the entire thing went down.

I suppose that I should talk to the newer writers here for a moment about how often this happens in publishing. Simply, a great deal. Over the years I have been contracted for over ten books that fell through for one reason or another, not counting these eight. I have written, counting the Adventure Boys eight books, twelve books total that were under contract and yet never appeared. For those of you who think that one book, your novel, is going to make your career, this ought to scare the pants off of you. This is one of the major reasons that Kris and teach that writers are people who write. Period.

Sure, the point is to get your book published, but what matters is the writing. You have to do your best on every book, do you best getting it into editor’s hands, and then move on. Write the next book. And then the next. Because the publishing side of things is out of your control. You have a contract with a publisher, but past that, you have no control over what happens on the other side. None.

So, I had a blast writing these Wild Boys books. I got paid. I hope they come out at some point down the road. But if not, it won’t stop me from writing more young adult novels, more thrillers, more mystery novels, whatever. I am a writer. That’s what I do.

Cheers

Dean

Okay, I am going to be very careful with this post. I get a ton of questions about agents, and Kris and I spend a week in the marketing workshop dealing on this topic and other submissions of novels topics. (Check out the workshop list if you are interested. The workshop is called Marketing and there is one in November.)

In the current world of publishing, agents hold a very strange place. First off, they are an employee of the writer. Yet at the same time, publishers require in their guidelines that the writer hire this employee before they will consider work from that writer.

Now by all business thinking, this is a very strange practice. How can someone come into my business and tell me to hire an employee? Yet, because of events over the last fifty years, this has become the norm in fiction publishing. And to understand all the events that lead to this takes time, but is critical to understanding how to deal with this as a new writer. So for now, just take it as a strange practice. I don’t have the week of typing here to try to explain it all.

Agents are in a bad way with these new guidelines by publishers. They are forced to look at all the crap, the total garbage that this rule stops writers from sending to publishers. They, in essence, have become the slush readers for publishing, a job that used to be done by low employees in the publishing houses.

Now trust me, as a person who has read slush for years, this is not something you ever want to do. Yet publishers, without consent from the agents, have forced this onto them. And every agent is dealing with it differently.

Most top agents have full lists of writers and thus pay almost no attention to the stuff coming at them. If they look at all, they search for something really catching and hot for the current market. Many try their best to read the query letters they get. But remember, they work for their authors and reading query letters is something that makes their other writers no money at all.

Newer agents who open up to this wave soon become overwhelmed and have to cut back. This often means they take on writers who end up getting shorted in one way or another as certain writers sell and go to the top of the agent’s list. But these new agents also try to look at every query they get.

Scam agents who couldn’t sell an ice cream cone in a heat wave make a ton of money off the hungry newer writers in more scams than anyone can imagine.

And, of course, this pounding causes the agents to be so busy, they encourage their writers to slow down, to take their time with books because the agents are just too busy, for the most part, to handle an old-style writer who does three or four books a year. Not all agents, but I have been hearing it more and more, especially from newer agents who have been slammed by this.

But for the publishers this is a two-edged sword. They don’t have to pay for slush readers, their already fantastically busy editors and assistant editors don’t have to deal with this either, and thus the tide of garbage is pushed aside. But, of course, there is one problem with this slowing of the flow and jamming of the agents. Good product is also slowed down or often blocked completely. They (the editors and publishers) don’t even know what they are not seeing. What they do see has already been preselected, pre-edited for them. Fine and dandy if book lists didn’t have to be filled every month. Somehow, editors need to see good books, yet agents have only so much time, can send out only so many books. At the moment, the balance seems to be holding, but there might come a time when the demand goes past what the agents can supply.

So, how is this new twist in the business of fiction publishing going to iron out? How is this massive road block between writer and publisher going to be solved? Not a clue. Right now it is doing what the publishers need, sort of. And more agents are pouring into the business to help take up some of the shortfall. But publishing is a growing business, with lists expanding and more and more books being published every year. And those new authors somehow have to get through this mess, get their good work in front of editors in some way or another.

And I have a hunch that editors will start worrying about what they are missing. New trends, new books, the strange, the different, do not get through this system as it stands at the moment. And that’s a bad thing for readers, for publishers, and for writers.

Okay, now that all the newer writers reading this want to slash their wrists, let me add this. In my opinion, this is the best time in my memory to come in as a new writer. And actually the easiest. You think this system is bad, you should have seen some of the earlier ones in the history of this business. This system allows a writer to help agents sell books. This system allows you to go around agents at certain times. This system does allow good books to be read by editors. But the writer has to take a ton of responsibility for having this happen.

Let me repeat that in a slightly different way. It is the responsibility of the writer to get his or her book read by either a good agent or a good editor. No one can do it for you.

Again, Kris and I spend a full week teaching writers how to market their novels (and surprisingly, there is still room in both November and May marketing workshop.) We teach how to get around this problem.

How? It sounds impossible. (I could hear the shouts <g>.)

Lots and lots of ways. To start off with, learn how to write a really good query that uses your voice, the voice of the novel, and is standard enough to fit, yet different enough to draw attention from either an agent or an editor. (Starting to see why learning this takes at least a week? <g>) You must sell your novel from word one, and I have read a ton of great novels in novel workshops that never got sold because the writer sucked at query letters, proposals, cover letters, and simple marketing.

First, to come into this business now, you have to write a good book, just as it always was. But secondly, you now must also learn how to write great query letters, great proposals, and great cover letters. And thirdly, you must understand how to market your work, how to find the right agent, the right editor. And how to even know when an agent is a good agent or a bad agent for you. A good agent for me might be horrible for you. Or the reverse. You have to understand that.

And so, so much more. After all, this is an international business you are trying to write for. If you can be stopped early in this business, you should be. It never gets easier. If you don’t know how to find the information in this information age, then maybe another business is a good idea for you as well. If you are unwilling to go out to workshops, to conferences, to find professional writers and talk to them, then just stop now. You don’t stand a chance.

But for the writers who know how to learn and have the drive to go the distance, this is the best time to come into this business and make a living with your fiction.

Agents are employees of the writers. Publishers require agents to be hired by the writer. I have a hunch that given time, this very strange practice will change. I just have no idea to what. As a former slush reader, I know that something has to be done to stop the waves of garbage while at the same time finding the new, dangerous, fresh voices in fiction. But will this current system work or will something else take its place? It will be interesting to see what the next step is, that’s for sure.

Cheers

Dean

As I slowly put together the bibliography section of this web site, I decided to talk about some books up front here, as I did under the Schofield name. And I do mean slowly, especially when there are about eighty novels I can talk about and well over a hundred short stories. I won’t talk about them all up front, but every so often I have a book that I am fond of and proud of, so I’ll banter about it here before putting it over on the other page.

This book came back to mind yesterday when I found a tee-shirt I had never worn while cleaning out a drawer in my closet. It is bright red and has a picture of The Shadow Warrior cover on it, and on it the saying “Who want some Wang?” is printed in bold. I am still saving it to wear at a special workshop or something.

SHADOW WARRIOR #1. For Dead Eyes Only. Pocket Books. October 1997.

I don’t think there were many Shadow Warrior novels ever done after this first one, even though I left the very last scene on a cliff hanger like a pulp fiction novel for the next author. This was a complete voice novel because in the game, the Shadow Warrior has a real voice and attitude, and for some reason, I really got into the voice, walking around the house for a month while writing this novel sometimes breaking into Shadow Warrior talk. Drove Kris nuts.

And there is one line in here that got me a call from the editor at Pocket. He was laughing so hard, all I could manage to make out was, “Can’t believe you did that.” Now trust me, that’s a phone call you want from an editor when you are writing comedy.

I remember writing the first fight scene in the restaurant and then walking around for a day laughing and worrying that I had taken it too far. I just reread that first scene and it still makes me shake my head and laugh. I learned a number of years back that this book, because it had gone out of print after about 40,000 copies sold, had become a collector’s item on the secondary market. I doubt it is anymore, since the so much time has passed, but at conventions, I tend to sign a bunch of these and have great discussions with fans about the Shadow Warrior. However, make note if you want to talk to me about this, I never played the game and have no clue about it. I just listened to a few lines from it before writing and tried to nail the voice. Everyone tells me I got it.

A fun book. And someday soon I’ll sit in a workshop with a bunch of writers and I’ll be wearing the “Who want some Wang” tee shirt. After all, if you can’t have fun writing, what’s the point. And I had a blast writing this book.

Cheers, Dean

I have a wonderful office. It is a full building, where my writing office is the entire upstairs with a fantastic view of the Pacific Ocean. Downstairs is a kitchen, living room, and Kris and my business office. It is where we do all of our e-mail and I play on eBay. Kris has her own building as her office and we live in yet another building here in the compound.

Yeah, it doesn’t get any better. <g> See why we don’t travel much?

I am sitting at my downstairs e-mail computer now in our business area. A few days back, on one of the nice days, I turned and stared out the window at the yard after finishing up on some business. I just sat and stared, marveling at how beautiful it was with the flowers and the ocean beyond. So instead of turning back to this computer, I got up and took a picture.

So, here is a picture of what it looks like out the window from this computer.

Cheers, Dean

The one writing question I tend to get the most is a simple one. “Why do I write under so many names?”

I usually want to say, but never do, “Because I can.”

Actually, that’s the most accurate answer. But before I jump into that aspect of this, let me talk about the obvious business reasons.

1) I write in a number of different genres. A reader of one of my romance novels might not want to pick up a copy of one of my thrillers. So the best way to keep them apart is just use a different name.

2) Sales of books in different genres are at different levels, and sales numbers are tracked in computers by name. So I have a small 10,000 copy science fiction novel and a 40,000 copy romance. I don’t want those numbers confused in any sales meeting or computer generated sales orders. Thus different names.

3) Dean Wesley Smith is known as a tie-in writer. So I write a thriller under Dean Wesley Smith and every review starts, “Star Trek writer… ” Thus a different name for those as well.

4) Speed. I write too damn fast for one name. This industry limits an author (unless you are a brand name) to one or two or three books a year. So I can have two books under one name, another book under my real name, another book under yet another name, and no one in the business cares. How do you think I got to over 90 novels sold? One novel per year, starting when I was 37 when I sold my first novel, would make me on the upper side of 130 years old. Nope, I write too fast for this business, so guess what, I can be a lot of names.

5) I am a writer. I don’t have an ego about a name, or care in the slightest if someone knows a book is mine or not. I know it is mine, that’s all that matters. I once stood in Safeway late one night staring at the paperback section, just smiling.  I had three novels there under three names. One Trek under my own name and two others under other names. That was a cool thing. Most writers have trouble with this part of many names. They must have EVERYONE know it is their book for some ego reason or another. Get over it or write one or two books a year.

6) Making a living with my fiction. Let me think, one writing career (name) vs three or four writing careers (names) pumping money into the house? Which is better? Duh. I have three unseen roommates who pay expenses yet never eat or cost me a thing. And my wife Kris has two or three unseen roommates as well in her office bringing in money. Makes it a ton easier to make a living at this business when you have a bunch of names working.

So, those are the business reasons, plus a few other minor reasons. But let’s look at the real answer: “Because I can.”

An actor, an artist, a business person. They are all stuck with their name, their reputation, their faces. With the exception of a very few brand names like King, no one knows what a writer looks like. Our work is not attached to our face, just our name.

Our work is not attached to our age, or our skin color, or our social level. It is only attached to our name. And anyone can change a name at any point. Women often change their name when they get married. No big deal.

Writers have the freedom to change their name from story to story, novel to novel, always being a fresh young face in the field.

Once, way back in the ancient history, I did a new writer column for a magazine Orson Scott Card edited. My job was to find and point out the new writers coming in through the magazines and books. I was a new writer as well, so it fit. And I got to pick up the phone and call the editors to get information about the new writers they published. A great assignment that Scott gave me.

Every time I did this, I was shocked to discover that so many of the “new writers” I was discovering and loving were simply pen names of long established writers. In one issue of one magazine, the same author had three stories under three names. As a new writer myself, this stunned me, until I started to understand the clear meaning of it.

Here is what it meant:

— Editors couldn’t find enough good material, first off, so they turned to established professional writers to fill their pages because deadlines didn’t change. A monthly magazine had to be out every month.

— Professional writers could make more money having more names.

— Professional writers could be thought of as new writers, getting around the baggage they might carry with their own name.

— Many professional writers found it was fun to write something completely different from what they normally wrote, what their fans expected. So, for example, a hard sf writer could publish a high fantasy under a pen name and enjoy the task of writing it without fear of what it would mean to his own name.

And so on and so on.

I’m fast, I enjoy writing across genre restrictions, I like more money, I enjoy the simple aspect of writing.

Writers write. Professional writers get paid for what they write. I am a professional writer. I couldn’t give a crap which name it is published under, or if anyone pats me on the back or not after reading it, or gives it a good review or not. Makes no difference to me, because what’s important is the writing.

Nothing more. Just the writing.

I write under many names because I can.

There, I said it.

Cheers, Dean