International bestselling editor and writer with over 35 million books in print, Kristine Kathryn Rusch writes in many genres, from science fiction to mystery, from western to romance. She has written under a pile of pen names, but most of her work appears as Kristine Kathryn Rusch. Her novels have made bestseller lists around the world and her short fiction has appeared in eighteen best of the year collections. She has won more than twenty-five awards for her fiction, including the Hugo, Le Prix Imaginales, the Asimov's Readers Choice award, and the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine Readers Choice Award.

Publications from The Chicago Tribune to Booklist have included her Kris Nelscott mystery novels in their top-ten-best mystery novels of the year. The Nelscott books have received nominations for almost every award in the mystery field, including the best novel Edgar Award, and the Shamus Award.

She also edits. Beginning with work at the innovative publishing company, Pulphouse, followed by her award-winning tenure at The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, she took fifteen years off before returning to editing with the original anthology series Fiction River, published by WMG Publishing. She acts as series editor with her husband, writer Dean Wesley Smith, and edits at least two anthologies in the series per year on her own.

To keep up with everything she does, go to kriswrites.com and sign up for her newsletter. To track her many pen names and series, see their individual websites (krisnelscott.com, kristinegrayson.com, krisdelake.com, retrievalartist.com, divingintothewreck.com).

Goals & Dreams: Freelancer's Survival Guide by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

Everyone has dreams, but most people don't know how to achieve them. Goals help people achieve their dreams, but how do you know if you've set the right goals?

In this book-length excerpt from the massive Freelancer's Survival Guide, international bestselling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch will help you set the right goals to achieve your dreams. She also has tips for staying positive and remaining patient while you're on the road to success.

CURATOR'S NOTE

In a conversation I had many years ago with other writers, I realized they had no idea that goals and dreams were two different things. Want to be remembered as the best writer ever 100 years from now? That's a dream. Want to make a living at your writing? That's an attainable goal, if you follow some concrete steps. There's more to it than that, and I'm not going to repeat it all here…because I already wrote it down, and you can get that information if you pick up the book. – Kristine Kathryn Rusch

 
 

BOOK PREVIEW

Excerpt

Introduction

Everyone has dreams. Most of us have goals. However, many of us don't realize when our goals cross into our dreams or even get in the way of them. And most of us don't know how to make our dreams a reality.

These posts from my Freelancer's Survival Guide discuss how to turn your dreams into achievable goals. The posts also examine whether or not to postpone your dreams as well as figuring out when you're giving up on yourself.

Since April of 2009, I have written The Freelancer's Survival Guide on my blog, kristinekathrynrusch.com. Most of the advice in the Guide is practical—how to set up a business plan, for instance. The Freelancer's Survival Guide is also available in book form.

However, I've also divided the Guide into short books for people who don't need or want more than one section. Again, most of those short books involve business things, like handling finances or how to negotiate a contract. But this book is a little different. It's about the emotions of freelancing, about dreams and wishes and aspirations. In other words, this short book is the important one.

These posts were written at separate times throughout the course of a year. I've tried to keep the flavor of the real-time posting, while making sure the book itself has a flow. If you want to see the original blog posts, you can find them—and reader comments—on the blog itself.

The point of this short book, however, is to help you achieve your dreams. I hope it does that and so much more.

Enjoy.

—Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Lincoln City, Oregon
August 29, 2010

I updated the "Giving Up On Yourself" section in 2011 on my website. Things are changing dramatically. It took longer than I expected to update this book, but now I have, and I hope that makes it even more useful for you.

—Kristine Kathryn Rusch
April 19, 2012