Last fall, Dean Wesley Smith launched a one-of-a-kind online learning event on our Teachable platform called “Shared Worlds: What Are They, How to Do Them, and Why,” which teaches the ins and outs as well as the good and the bad of writing in someone’s shared world. The shared world for this event is called Cave Creek. The tagline: Where the Unexpected Meets the Real World. (You can still sign up on Teachable if you’re interested…click here.)
The shared world of Cave Creek has proven so popular, in fact, that Dean just launched a Kickstarter to raise the funds to be able to publish three anthologies in this world, along with a novel written by Dean himself.
Here’s the description of the Cave Creek shared world from the Kickstarter page:
A Mythical Town
Cave Creek, Nevada, where the unexpected meets the real world. It exists, but only in stories, written by some of the best fiction writers working today.
Cave Creek hides to the north of Las Vegas, on the California side of Highway 95, in a shallow hidden canyon. Various rock caves and a natural spring made the valley a perfect place for miners to explore. Gold and silver were found in 1900, causing a gold rush that caused the town to grow to over 8,000 residents.
One mine owner built a massive hotel and a rail line ran up to the town to get the ore out. A dozen saloons lined the main street filled with music and gamblers. But, right from the beginning, strange events happened to the residents. Unexplained things that often chased a resident down the valley and to safer locations. Finally, when the gold and silver played out, only a couple hundred hearty souls remained by 1910.
And for a time, Cave Creek was mostly a ghost town.
In the Depression things started to turn around. A couple mines were reopened, the hotel was remodeled and a dam was built a few miles below the town to form a lake. Rich movie stars and company presidents loved the scenic beauty of the valley and bought land in the 1950s and 1960s. Today the town and shallow valley around it boasts a population of over 10,000, two championship golf courses, and a lot of winter homes for sunbirds. And the lake is one of the most popular recreational lakes within fifty miles of Las Vegas.
But strange and unexpected things still happen with a frightening regularity. Think of Cave Creek as a place where The Twilight Zone kind of story still lives. In fact, if The Twilight Zone had a hometown, it would be Cave Creek.
The Cave Creek Kickstarter has all sorts of cool rewards. In addition to rewards for the anthologies and novel (in ebook, paperback, and perhaps hardcover), discounts on other WMG books and magazines and workshops, and a second chance at some previous Kickstarter offerings, this Kickstarter offers an exclusive online workshop called “How to Write an Historical Story.”
You can read more about the Cave Creek Kickstarter; see all the rewards, stretch goals and add-ons; and watch the awesome video here.
And speaking of past Kickstarters, the final volume in Dean’s Make 100 series (from the Smith’s Stories: Make 100 Paperbacks Kickstarter) releases tomorrow. That’s 100 short stories ranging across most of his different series, published in three volumes: The First Thirty-Three, The Second Thirty-Three and The Final Thirty-Four.
To read more about the books or for ordering information, click here.
That’s enough reading to keep you busy for a couple of weeks, easy.
Allyson Longueira is publisher of WMG Publishing. She is an award-winning writer, editor and designer, working mother, and brain tumor survivor.