Month: May 2015

  • The Philosopher Gambit is off to the copyeditor!

    Finally. I’m having the folks at Silver Jay do an in-depth proofread for me—I’ll do the clean-up and publish when I get it back. I’m considering offering a print version of the first three stories, which would give the reader the equivalent of a 90,000-word novel. I KNOW I’m going to offer this book later,…

  • Writers, I Want You.

    After the fix is in, and the store is reopened, I will be announcing a plan for inviting writers to help maintain, build and operate the systems Holly uses to write and teach, including her websites, databases, servers, and writing tools on her personal computer. Specific jobs need doing on a regular basis, such as…

  • Lessons from the Fall: Beta Test Hell

    To see if I could make things easier for writers using the How To Think Sideways site, (still with the shop locked while it awaits installation of the interim site), I put together a beta test site using a theme I thought would help, and a plugin I REALLY thought would help. (Both theme and…

  • HowToThinkSideways.com Is Moving to A New Site

    If you have ever purchased a class or a book from me using the old HollyShop or any of my sites, please put yourself on the list below. We’ll be moving HowToThinkSideways.com to a new URL, and I need to let my readers, as well as past and present students know the following: How to…

  • Before I was so RUDELY interrupted…

    I had just put together my schedule for the next couple of months. (Link opens in new tab). The VERY next day, a WordPress update broke an old plugin on my HowToThinkSideways.com site that just happened to have been delivering about 90% of my readers’ and writers’ purchased downloads. I finished manually locating and manually…

  • Helping to Clear Holly’s Schedule – Work on Her Systems

    I wanted to let people who read Holly’s blog know I took a hard look at asking if people here are interested in helping with the work of putting together the systems she needs.  With so many people showing such a willingness to help, I thought there must be  way to put that energy to…

  • Scheduling a writing life: Follow-up #1

    I’m following up on the “How Would You Clear My Schedule” post. First, INTERNS!!! was the cool and awesome suggestion that I leapt on, only to discover that the legal ramifications made it impossible for me to do. (Enormous thanks to Margaret Fisk, who did the research and let me know about this.) There are…

  • Now available to everyone: The Indie Pub Live Chat plus links

    I think this particular chat—covering some of the issues of indie publishing, is one of the best live events I’ve done in a while. You can watch it and get the links, plus all the other chats in this series, here: http://howtothinksideways.com/2862749/htts-qa-live-chat-3/ No login necessary. Just go ahead over. HOWEVER: I experienced technical difficulties. What…

  • Live Writing Chat #3: Today, May 5th at 1 PM ET

    If you haven’t yet signed up for this chat, you can do so here: http://app.webinarjam.net/register/4436/e963ecd928 This is what I’ll be discussing: WEBINAR #3: Tuesday, May 5th, 2015, 1 PM ET PUBLISHING 1 Building A Backlist Existing Backlist Indie Publishing Beta Readers Editors ISBNs Copyright Pricing In order to make tomorrow’s live chat run a bit…