Mercy Loomis

Time Flies

2012-02-17T06:30:00.000-06:00

Holy crap, it's halfway through the month already. And here I kept thinking I had all this time to get stuff done...

Not that this is really news, but oi. Sometimes I wonder how I ever got any writing done back in the day, before I got laid off from my old job.

Oh, yeah, I didn't...just in short bursts every few weeks.

Sigh.

Must find a way to fit more hours into the day,

Demon's Asylum Free Through Valentine's Day

2012-02-13T19:50:00.003-06:00

Just in time for Valentine's Day, my gay male erotic romance Demon's Asylum is free at Amazon.com! Tonight and tomorrow you can download the novella at no charge.

Set in London in 1794, this Aether Vitalis story follows George Wickham, a human who can see supernatural creatures for what they are. When a truth spell gets Wickham thrown in Bedlam asylum, he's dismayed to discover that his doctor, Thomas Thornton, is a vampire in hiding.

Thornton, a murderer with a tragic past, is intrigued first by Wickham's ability, but that quickly takes second place to the camaraderie of shared secrets; not only can Wickham see monsters, he's gay--a secret which could destroy his social standing and everything he's worked for since his lover Edwin died.

But somewhere out there is the person who set him up, and this unknown enemy isn't finished with Wickham yet. As the stakes get raised, Wickham's only ally is the vampire he's falling in love with. But with Thornton becoming increasingly possessive, is Wickham's greatest threat from his persecutor, or his lover?

Rejections

2012-02-09T21:17:00.003-06:00

Got two rejections this week, which puts me up to three for the year. Last year I only had 5, so I'm making a much better start this year.

Why are rejections good? Because it means I'm submitting.

Even though I self-publish regularly, I still want to be getting into anthologies and webzines and other paying markets. The only way to do that is to submit. If you submit, you will get rejections.

It still sorta sucks to come home to that "thanks but no thanks" email, but heck, it's really not that big a deal. Eventually the stories will go up one way or another.

Rejections are also on my mind because one of the ladies from last year's workshop just got her first agent rejection on her novel since she finished the workshop revisions. It made me sorta proud, like when your kid takes their first steps or something. (Of course, I don't have kids...) Or maybe more like the first time your kid falls flat on their face. It's okay, little writer, just get back up and keep going! Which is, of course, what I'm going to do too. Time to hit my market list...

Image: David Castillo Dominici / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

An Awesome WWII Book

2012-02-07T06:30:00.002-06:00

I haven't read this yet, but saw a news article about it. World War II Remembered sounds like exactly the kind of stories I was thinking of in my Veteran's Day post. If you are at all interested in that period of US history, or in personal accounts of wartime, or in our vanishing Greatest Generation, check out this book. In our fast-paced and increasingly digital world, collections like this one are a top-notch idea. We need to preserve this heritage before all the eye-witnesses are gone. I hope other communities do this as well.

A wonderful thing about this book is that it's also available in ebook. (Overpriced, certainly, but available.) That means it won't just end up languishing in a few museums and local libraries, but will be available to interested parties all over the world, now and years from now. Gods, I love this new era of publishing! I hope more academics will electronically publish their works as well--so much research goes to waste because of lack of availability and access. Forth, knowledge!

New Short Story Available!

2012-02-01T06:52:00.006-06:00

My newest short story, "When the Bough Rakes," is now available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords!

Dillon’s a solitary masochist with who’s found a unique solution to his needs—a pine grove in a windy valley on his parents’ property. But when Dillon comes home for his first visit since starting college, his secret is discovered by a handsome new neighbor. Contains adult situations.

Of course, I forgot to include the "an erotic short story" subtitle when I pubbed the story last night, which resulted in zero sales at Smashwords. Usually I get one or two in the first few hours. It should be fixed at all sites shortly, but it'll miss the "new release" ticker on Smashwords. Sad. I'll remember that for next time.

Experimenting

2012-01-31T06:30:00.004-06:00

I'll have a new short story coming out tomorrow, and I'm experimenting with doing the front matter as an image instead of as text. So the title will be in the same font as the cover, and the title and copyright info will all fit on one easily-skippable page. Plus I can include the Rookery Creek logo, which just makes me happy for some odd reason.

So far it's looking good on the Kindle. I haven't made an epub version yet, but I don't foresee any issues. I'll be interested in seeing how it looks on Smashwords--and whether they'll realize the "Smashwords Edition" requirement is met in the image. Will be interesting.

I'm also planning to redo the blurbs for most of the short stories. Or, more precisely, write longer blurbs to go with the short ones. Those will go up in March. For those of you who buy single short stories, are you influenced by seeing that the story has been previously published? Is that something that would make you more or less likely to purchase a story?

Cleaning House

2012-01-27T06:30:00.000-06:00

I'm officially sick. Yeay. Fortunately it doesn't seem too bad (knock on wood). I slept a lot yesterday and am heading back to the day job today.

While I was on vacation in December I cleaned out the computer room, which involved sorting all the papers on my desk. I have a giant stack of things to scan sitting next to the scanner. This week I started doing a little each night while we watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.

Part of me wonders why I bother. Do I really need to scan all the bills and the payment receipts, so I can keep them forever and ever?

I suppose that even if I am just transferring my pack-ratness from physical to digital, at least it doesn't take up room. It's not a mess. It's just going to be this giant file sitting on my hard drive. I'll be able to show my nieces and nephews, Look, this is what it cost to heat the house in 2008. Of course, it's hard to say whether any of them will have my bent for history. I'd find a heating bill from 1952 fascinating, myself. But I'm weird like that.

Exhausted

2012-01-23T22:12:00.002-06:00

So The Husband has a head cold, which I am trying to stave off. Meanwhile, we've had 4 emergency vet trips in the last two weeks. Three trips for The Bulldog, and one for one of the cats, who went into diabetic shock in the middle of the night. Fortunately for him, he fell over into his water bowl, and we heard the splash. He's ok now.

The Bulldog, on the other hand, should be thanking his lucky stars that he's so cute.

Ok, so the first three trips were not his fault. We thought he was sick, then we thought it was pancreatitis, then we thought he had swallowed something and it was stuck in his stomach, so they did exploratory surgery. Didn't find anything, but they tacked his stomach while they were in there, so we didn't mind so much. Turns out he had some sort of "bacterial overgrowth" so they gave him antibiotics.

The antibiotics have let his surgery incision heal up beautifully, by the way.

So he's starting to feel better now. Surgery was the 14th, and we're starting to wean him off the pain killers. So he's getting his old energy back, but we're not walking him much. I wanted to take him out last night, but it was too icy to walk.

Today we get home, Husband is tired and cranky, and we discover that The Bulldog has decided to eat half of an oven mitt.

Back to the e-vet.

Some vomiting and x-rays later, we've recovered a portion of what was missing from the mitt. No idea where the rest is. Probably in his intestines by now. So we're giving him a boatload of pumpkin and watching to see what comes out the other end.

I am officially exhausted. And desperately trying not to get sick myself.

100 Words About: Story Ghosts

2012-01-20T06:30:00.000-06:00

I’ve been looking through some of my old files. I’m a pack rat. I have tons of story fragments and things, although most of them are in dead tree at this point. (Really must scan those now that I have a scanner.) I have some on my hard drives, though, going back 6 or 7 years. A few are older, doc files so old that Windows doesn’t know how to open them anymore. (Must task The Husband with finding a solution to that…)

Looking through the old files is like being haunted by the ghosts of unborn stories. Most of these are fragments, where I wrote down just enough to get the story idea to be quiet before going back to work on Scent and Shadow. A few are just notes. But some are pretty good, if I do say so myself. The character voices jump out at me, echoing in the chaos that is the back of my brain, asking why I never finished them.

Because I don’t know what happens next, I usually reply.

Um, hello, they snap back. You’re the author. That’s your job.

Stories are all about me, me, me. They don’t like to share, and they hate being upstaged. But they are stubborn ghosts. Hell, I have one character that’s been waiting for a story for fifteen years at this point.

Someday…

Demon's Asylum and Geargirl Released!

2012-01-17T06:30:00.002-06:00

In keeping with my goals for 2012, I'm pleased to announce the first of Rookery Creek Media's new publications for the year.

First, the long awaited Demon's Asylum is finally available!

London, 1794. George Wickham has always been able to see the true natures of the creatures around him; it’s just that up to now he’s always been able to lie about it. When a truth spell and a conspiracy land Wickham in Bedlam asylum, he finds an unlikely ally and lover in vampire Thomas Thornton.

But Thornton’s in no hurry to get Wickham free of Bedlam, and as the plot against him takes a sinister turn, Wickham must decide which poses the greater danger: the person who had him committed, or the demon he’s falling in love with. Contains explicit sex.

I've decided to experiment with Amazon's KDP Select, so for now Demon's Asylum will only be available through Amazon. It will be released in other formats through B&N and Smashwords in mid April. For those of you with Amazon Prime, you can borrow the novella through the Kindle Online Lending Library.

For those of you without Kindles, don't fret! Also available is my erotic short story Geargirl, originally published in Sex Toy Stories: Erotic Tales of Naughty Play from Ravenous Romance (2010).

Briony is a cyberpunk mercenary longing for a little personal action, but dating your coworkers is just a nonstarter. Fortunately for her, the autopilot in her vehicle has other plans. Contains explicit sex.

Geargirl is available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

So the plan for the next few months--while I evaluate KDP Select--will be to release one new story via KDP Select and one story via all channels each month. That will give me a chance to compare sales between the two methods, both with concurrent releases and with the stories released last October. Should be interesting.

100 Words About: Forgetfulness

2012-01-13T06:30:00.000-06:00

I was totally going to rant about something, but I have no idea what it was now. I know I had a great post in mind earlier in the week. You'd think I'd know to make a note about it by now. But no. Instead I get to Friday and have no post topic.

I blame my new story idea. I haven't had an idea be this persistent in a while. Fortunately I'm fobbing it off with world building. "Well, I can't write you until I figure out why X happens." Sometimes that works and I get a little epiphany into the nature of the universe. And sometimes the story just says, "I don't care. Write me. Write me NOW."

(This is not helping me finish Paul Galati's origin story...)

In other news, edits for Demon's Asylum are pretty much done. Now I'm writing the metadata so I can make the beta ebook files. Then I just need to proof it and finish the cover, and you'll all have 25,000+ words of historical m/m vampire erotica. What could be better? ;)

Print and Progress and 'Puters

2012-01-10T06:30:00.002-06:00

Scent and Shadow is now available for order in print at Amazon. I also (as I mentioned on Friday) got a new review over the weekend from my friend Zombie Joe over at Wicked Lil Pixie. Thanks Joe!

I got very little done last week, as I was hit by the dual blows of nasty headaches and a dying computer. The Husband has now set me up with a new computer (new as in new-to-me) and we are mostly done with the setting back up of stuff.

I did get a small start in on the next Gabriel Chapel book, and got hijacked by a completely unrelated idea that would flesh out another section of Aether Vitalis that has been kicking around in the back of my head since I started listening to The Book of Werewolves at work. (I love you, LibriVox!) I might be able to squeeze that one into a short story, more likely a novelette.

Demon's Asylum is partly edited, but I have to compare my saved files to see which one is the most recent. Stupid dying computer. I should have the cover done shortly. Fortunately I hadn't done much on it yet, just made a mock-up before buying my stock photos, so no work lost there. I use CrashPlan, but the computer kept locking up during backup so it was hard to tell what was good and what wasn't. For the most part, everything seems to have come through ok, it just needs a little sorting.

Ow

2012-01-06T21:28:00.000-06:00

Migraine no love me. But in the meantime, check out this nice review from Zombie Joe at Wicked Little Pixie!

2011: The Year in Review

2012-01-03T06:30:00.000-06:00

2011 was not so much a "Year in Writing" as it was a year in publishing. I didn't set any particular goals for last year, which is good, because things ended up going in directions I never would have envisioned last January.

For one thing, I had trunked Scent and Shadow back in July of 2010, and had every intention of letting it sit until 2015. But then my writing buddy convinced me to un-trunk it.

I submitted it to a writing workshop, and it was rejected.

Yes, originally, they took a pass. But I emailed back, thanking them for their time and asking for a recommendation as to where I should take it next. I wasn't submitting the novel because I thought it was ready - I knew damn well it wasn't. But I needed another set of eyes, because I couldn't see it anymore.

My attitude impressed them enough that they gave me some of the best feedback I've ever gotten. They told me to rewrite and to resubmit the first 20 pages. Which I did.

And I got in.

So, long story short, I started the year with a trunked novel, rewrote it, workshopped it, wrote whole new scenes and rewrote other parts, had it professionally edited while I learned how to self-publish, and then self-published it October. Along with 11 other stories.

And I'm pleased to announce that Scent and Shadow is now available for print at the CreateSpace store, and should hopefully be available at Amazon later this week.

So, yeah. Not what I'd had in mind a year ago. But oh, so worth all the work.

2011 (not counting unfinished projects):
Short stories written: 2
Short stories sold: 1 (two awaiting contracts)
Short story submissions: 8
Short story rejections (including revoked submissions): 5, plus one that's probably a no response
Short stories published: 2
Total short story word count (final drafts written 2011): approximately 4900
Total novel word count (final draft): approximately 103,000

Most of my achievements were on the publishing side of things, but I really let the publishing side take over my writing last year, which is a mistake I don't plan to repeat. Granted, I had a lot to learn about publishing - ebook formatting, creating covers, finding editors to work with, uploading ebooks, setting up loads of accounts, creating my own publishing business, doing print layout, marketing, pricing, metadata - but I still need to be writing.

So for 2012, the writing comes first!

Writing goals: 4000 words of new writing a week.
Publishing goals: a new story published every month, either self-published or otherwise. Also, I want to self-publish two 5-story anthologies.

I'm hoping to do another full-length novel this year, but no promises. I'm toying with the idea of doing a novel as a serial, as the story I have in mind breaks out quite conveniently. I haven't decided yet. But I will promise that you'll see more Gabriel Chapel this year.

On Failure

2011-12-27T06:30:00.000-06:00

My proof copy arrived on Friday after I made the post, and I've been reading through it since. Found a handful of things to fix, most of which aren't major. I'd wanted to be done with the read-through by now, but holidays and social time got in the way. Oh, well, I'm hoping to finish up in the next couple days, and upload the corrected text. And then we're live, baby!

I suppose that's an odd way to start a post titled "On Failure," but for me it's a great example of what you can do when you are willing to fail. Dean Wesley Smith wrote a fantabulous post about failure and how failure is not an option. It's just going to happen. Learn from it and move on. If you aren't failing, you aren't trying often enough.

I know a lot of people who think self-publishing is a kind of failure. For me, not self-publishing would be failure. I'm getting out there now, in what is possibly the best new-book market I'm likely to see in my lifetime. If I fail, so what? I'm going to keep putting stuff out there, and every sale is a success. How can I consider self-publishing a failure when I make money every month off of work I did two years ago?

Image: jscreationzs / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Vacation!

2011-12-23T08:22:00.003-06:00

I'm on vacation! (/happydance) No day job for me until January 4th! Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

As if that weren't awesome enough, I ordered my proof copy of the print edition of Scent and Shadow, and it shipped yesterday. SQUEE! Is it here yet? Is it here yet? How about now?

While I wait (trying to remember to breathe) for the mail, The Husband and I are going to go see the new Sherlock Holmes movie, and we're going to go shopping for a new refrigerator (yeay!), and we're going to do our favorite holiday activity - getting hot drinks at the mall and walking around slowly, not buying anything and just enjoying the schadenfreude. Happy holidays, folks!

KDP Select

2011-12-20T06:30:00.001-06:00

(This is a comment I originally made over at Adventures in SciFi Publishing in response to episode 156--which has a fabulous interview with Dan Wells, BTW--and I thought I would post it here as well.)

I think everyone is taking Kindle Select way too seriously.

For some authors KS makes sense. These are the indie authors who, for whatever reason, already don’t have their books up at other outlets. I don’t know why authors do this, but I know there are authors out there who do. In which case, KS has no real downside.

Other authors may want to try it out for awhile, particularly if they don’t have many sales outside Amazon. It may make sense for one title, but not another. Up to the author. But no one is “forcing” them to participate.

Personally, I chose not to participate. I want my titles to have the widest possible distribution, aside from the fact that I generally don’t approve of exclusives. (Unless SciFi Book Club wants an exclusive on the hardcover edition of my book. In that case, I am totally on board. ;) Email me, please!)

I also don’t like the payment arrangement. If they want to offer up a straight royalty, it might make more sense. But I don’t like the “pot” and I won’t participate in a program that encourages that model.

And that’s my choice. No one is forcing me to do anything.

People need to keep in mind that Amazon, like all publishers, is a business. They are not in the business of making friends with authors. They are in the business of growing their market share and making money long term. (Please see Kris Rusch’s recent article on traditional publishers and their suppliers for a more detailed insight.)

Amazon is not evil, nor are they the indie author’s best friend. They’re a business. They distribute books. I supply books, as a business. End of relationship. If I don’t like their model, I can go elsewhere. Hell, I have one story that I don’t distribute through Amazon because they won’t let me sell it for free from the get-go, and I have chosen not to make any money from that story. Therefore, even though I would get more exposure via Amazon, and even though I’ve gotten two of my other stories to show up for free, I don’t “sell” that story with them.

(Note: I sell my novel for $4.99, and short stories for $0.99, and have a few freebies so people can see if they like my writing. Plus I give away a new free story every Halloween, because I like to. My novel sells. My short stories sell. There is no race to the bottom unless you choose to participate.)

Also, I disagree with the freaking-out about KS titles getting extra ranking. So what? I don’t worry about my ranking. I sell copies of my works every month, through many different channels. That’s all I care about. The ranking system is too fluid to lose sleep over. Besides, Amazon SHOULD pimp its partners. Just like a publisher can buy co-op at a bookstore, these authors are essentially buying co-op with Amazon. That’s just business, and frankly, doesn’t effect my sales one way or the other. Someone else’s success does not diminish my sales. Hell, if I’m lucky, one of those best-sellers will be an “also viewed” for my book or something.

In short: worry less, write more. That’s how an indie author will succeed in this biz.

100 Words About: Bottled Water

2011-12-16T06:30:00.000-06:00

Talk about an answer to a problem no one had. I mean, yes, it's nice that you can buy water for those rare times when your water utility doesn't work (yes, I live in a first world nation), or to keep around in case of a natural disaster, or for when you go camping or something. But really. Buy some reusable jugs and just fill them from your tap.

I have worked in a few buildings where the tap water tasted weird, and then we had a water cooler. My favorite part of having a water cooler around is the hot water spigot. Instant tea! Yeay! But I'm thinking less of water coolers and more about the 12 or 20 or whatever ounce bottles you buy at the grocery store.

I mean, when I go to a restaurant, and they ask me what kind of water I want (tap or bottled or uber-filtered-blessed-by-the-Pope), a little part of me dies inside. It's water, people. H2O. We have the miracle of modern plumbing and water filtration. USE IT. What a freaking waste of money, not to mention all the plastic bottles.

I'll buy water when I'm on the road, but that's because I was too dumb to remember to bring a reusable bottle with me. And because if you want something to drink that isn't sweet, water is pretty much your only choice. When I'm really lucky I can find bottles of Lipton Unsweetened Black Tea. (Thank you, Lipton!) Otherwise I have to find a fast food place that has unsweetened tea. (Which, sadly enough, is usually cheaper..)

Image: Keattikorn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What Makes a Romance?

2011-12-13T06:30:00.001-06:00

This week I'm pulling a little you-tell-me.

What makes a romance?

For me (as a reader), there are two big things that a romance must have: love, and a HEA/HFN ending.

Love is the biggest part of a romance for yours truly. These characters don't just have to be attracted, they don't just have to like each other; they need to be in love. I want to see a textbook case of Consummate Love at the end of the story. We're talking selfless, nurturing, makes-you-grow-in-good-ways sort of love.

And (again, my opinion) it's not a romance if there isn't a happily-ever-after or happy-for-now ending. If the two romantic characters are not together at the end, no matter how much foreshadowing or set-up there is for the next book, to me that ain't a romance. It's something else with romantic tension.

What about you? What makes a book a romance? What do you want to see in "romance" books? Do you think a book can still be a romance even without the ending? What definition of love do you use? There's no right or wrong answer, because it's totally subjective. Leave a comment with your thoughts!

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Sick Pets

2011-12-08T21:12:00.003-06:00

Oi. It's a little after 9pm and I've just gotten home. The Bulldog started acting weird, and then started acting really sick, so off to the vet we went. Fortunately, my awesome vet is open late on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so we didn't have to go to the emergency vet this time.

He may be suffering complications from some gastric misadventures he had on Sunday - in particular, a fist-sized hunk of bleu cheese that was wrapped in foil and inside a ziploc baggie, which magically disappeared. X-rays indicate it may still be in the dog, four days later. Joy. We gave him some meds tonight and we get to take him back to the vet in the morning to see if the x-rays look different. If not, we may be looking at surgery.

It's so frustrating when your pet is sick. You know they're in pain, and there isn't a damn thing you can do about it, and you can't even explain to them what's going on. You just feel so helpless.

Photoshop, Layouts, and Eyestrain

2011-12-06T06:30:00.000-06:00

Ok, so I didn't get any of the writing done last month that I wanted to. But I did complete one Adobe Photoshop class and start another, mostly completed the print edition book cover (have to finish the logo, but the rest is done), and am about a third of the way through doing the layout of the print edition. I had hoped to finish it this weekend, but then The Bulldog got into some stuff he shouldn't have, and long story short, I didn't get ANYTHING done on Sunday.

But! I'm hoping to have the layout done soon! The logo shouldn't take me long either. My eyes are killing me though. I stare at a computer all day at my day job, and while I'm used to doing that and then writing, doing that and then staring at photo pixels or the shape of text (while trying not to read it) is a whole other level of eyestrain.

I have to tell you, it is majorly exciting to see the full cover layout. Not only is it super cool, but I get the whole "I did that!" feeling when I look at it.

I did do a little bit of editing on Demon's Asylum, a new Aether Vitalis novella which is my next release. Also, I got a start on the cover, which was great because I had no idea what I was going to do for the cover on that one. And then I was futzing around in Photoshop class and found some stock art and hey-presto, background for the novella cover. Sweet!

Long-time readers may remember me talking about project 1794 now and again. That's Demon's Asylum. I originally started it in late 2009, but then my cousin died and my writing went to hell for a little bit. I'm trying to focus really hard on getting the print edition done this month, but I'm going to try really hard to get Demon's Asylum ready for you all as well.

The story takes place in London in 1794. George Wickham has been able to see supernatural creatures for what they are since he was born, so maybe getting thrown into Bedlam asylum was inevitable. But Wickham knows better; he was set up. He finds an unexpected ally in his doctor, two-hundred-year-old vampire Thomas Thornton, but when the two men become lovers, Wickham realizes he's only traded one danger for another, with no way of knowing which is the more deadly.

Unlikely Skills, and a Great Non-Profit

2011-12-02T06:30:00.004-06:00

I have always been a bit of a jack of all trades. I like the idea of having a wide skill base, plus I'm pretty good at it. "It" being the ability to learn and (at least somewhat) retain a lot of random stuff.

This week I had cause to be grateful to the Milton Bradly game Operation. All those hours of my youth spent carefully teasing small objects out of tight spaces came in damn handy when I had to get a stuck piece of paper out from behind the hot fuser in the office copier. (And of course the paper kept tearing into smaller and smaller pieces...) But, I managed to un-jam the copier without burning myself! See, skills you never knew you'd actually use in real like can indeed be useful.

And speaking of useful and skill, how about sending our skilled troops overseas some useful Kindles? Ebooksfortroops.org is a wonderful non-profit organization that sends Kindles to American troops! If you're getting a new ereader this holiday season, you might want to consider donating your old ereader to this awesome cause.

Holidays Are Different From Vacations

2011-11-28T21:39:00.004-06:00

I don't know if I really take vacations much. (This includes weekends.) I know there are a lot of writers out there who write lots and lots every day. I'm not one of those. I have been, for a few months at a time. But in general, no.

And yet, my weekends and vacation days tend to fill very quickly. Sure, I squeeze in time for formatting, research, cover design, and even a little writing. But a lot of my time gets taken up with caring for our animals, doing dishes and laundry, and other sundry chores.

Not to complain, exactly: everyone is like this, really. But I know lots of people who are happy to do nothing on a vacation day. I actually have to schedule myself to not do things. If I'm at home, I feel like I should be doing something productive. There are always so many little projects in the back of my mind. I would love to declutter the house at some point, for instance. I've been wanting to do that for ages. But I also don't want to do it in little chunks. Therefore, it keeps getting pushed out until I can find a nice big block of time to do it in. (Like that's going to happen.)

And Facebook! Good gods. We had a day this last long weekend where we left town and deliberately stayed disconnected. I kept wanting to make a status post. Or check my email. What the hell? I did not used to be like this. I shudder to think how twitchy I'm going to be when I finally break down and get a smartphone. I might actually tweet more than once a week.

I know no one drives me to do this to myself but me, but ugh. When else am I going to to all this stuff? If I don't do it, who will? (If not me, who? If not now, when?) And yet, when the heck am I going to relax? I just got back from Photoshop class (print covers are mostly done now, just need to do the spine) after a full day of dayjob, did the Monday chores, and still feel like I'm not getting enough done today.

Anyone have some valium I can borrow? And a Quith worker to do my chores for me?

Writing and Reading

2011-11-25T12:46:00.003-06:00

I find lately that I have less energy for reading than I used to. My to-read list is at an all-time high, but fewer books make me excited.

I've heard other authors talk about something similar, which leads me to believe that this is a phase many of us go through: when you spend so much time on your own stories, it's harder to invest the energy into someone else's. If it is a phase, I hope it passes quickly, as reading is one of the great joys of my life.

Once I find a book that does suck me in, I'll still burn through it in my usual voracious style. But without that level of interest, even books that I normally would have finished and enjoyed languish on my to-read shelf, or have to get returned to the library before I'm even a third of the way through.

What books have you read that grabbed you by the short hairs and wouldn't let go?

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Thank Yous, Updates, Reviews, Etc

2011-11-22T06:30:00.001-06:00

Hey all. Kinda swapping this time: did the long post on Friday and the short post on Tuesday. But I am beat. Just spent 2.5 hours redoing the cover for Scent and Shadow so it'll look right for the print version. I more or less had to start from scratch, but fortunately I've got it just about right now. A few more tweaks and I'll be ready to dive into formatting the manuscript for print as well.

I love the creative control of self-publishing, but wow, it's a lot of work!

Lots of huge thank-yous to everyone who has liked or commented or reviewed one of my stories! Some of the reviews for Scent and Shadow nearly had me in tears! I'm so happy that it seems to be coming across exactly the way I wanted it to. SQUEE! I mean, what's a book without readers, you know?

Speaking of squee, "Not Quite Casper" finally got marked down to free in the Kindle store. As of right now, it's #174 Free in the store, and #11 in the Kindle ebooks erotica category! Check it out if you haven't, it's a fun one. (And did I mention it's free?)

Hopefully they'll mark down "A Wild Hunt" soon too. C'mon, Amazon, everbody's doing it.

I hope to have another new story for y'all this month. (I know, I'm getting down to the wire here.) Next month for sure if not this month. I should also (hopefully) have a new anthology sale to share next month too.

For all my fellow Americans, have a safe and wonderful Thanksgiving! See you all on Friday!

The Mythology of Vampires

2011-11-18T06:30:00.000-06:00

Funny that I should decide to do this post this week; the Dead Robots just had a conversation touching on how monsters have changed over the last few decades. (Congrats on 200 episodes, guys!)

One of the fun things about writing is that you get to make your own mythology. There are so many legends and tales, and they’ve been done so many ways over the years, that yes, even sparkly vampires with skin like rock make sense after awhile. (I kinda felt they were more gargoyle-like, but hey. Once you got into it a little bit, it was an interesting take on the mythology.)

When I first started writing about Gabriel and Amanda, I had to decide very quickly what some of the basic tenets of my vampires were going to be. Some things changed over time, and the biology got more and more refined, but there were two basic things that I knew I wanted to define my vampires: no sunlight, and the need to kill.

Long before Twilight, there were stories about vampires that could go out in the day. Some, like My Best Friend is a Vampire (and, more recently, the Kim Harrison novels), differentiated between “living” vampires and “dead” or “undead” vampires. Other authors went for a special talisman approach (LJ Smith’s Vampire Diaries) or a special condition, such as being able to be in sunlight if the vampire had fed recently (Kindred: The Embraced).

While I enjoyed all of those versions (yes, even Kindred: the Embarrassed), I decided it made things too easy. Vampires can be hugely powerful. The thing that keeps them in check more than anything else is the problem with sunlight. It’s also instant conflict. Things getting boring? Just add sunlight! (Fortunately, I’ve never had to fall back on that one yet.)

There were also a lot of stories where vampires didn’t have to kill, or even feed on humans (again, long before Twilight). Heck, I used to roleplay a vegetarian Gangrel. (Yes, White Wolf used vegetarian for animal-only vampires long before Twilight did.) But I wanted my vampires to be monsters. Even back then (daydreamer that I am) I had intellectual property aspirations, and I wanted to make sure that no one playing in my universe later on could pussify my vampires. So not only do my vampires have to drink human blood, they have to kill. In fact, they have to kill a lot. Every night for the first ten years or so, and they usually don’t learn enough control to feed without killing the human until they’ve been a vampire for close to fifty years.

After that, it got down to the details. Hypnosis? Heck yeah, it’s too much fun to leave out. But then I decided I needed a foil for the charismatic vamps, which is where the skinshifters’ psychic immunity came from. (And then I needed to explain it, but I’ll get to that in another post.) Mirrors? Not having a reflection struck me as very silly, although it’s been done well (the Vampire Files spring to mind), and I couldn’t think of a good reason that made sense physics-wise, so my vampires have reflections. Ditto for garlic and running water, although I could certainly see a river spirit refusing to let a vampire pass, for some reason. (Running water is still good for screwing up a scent trail, and my vamps are big on scent.)

Originally, my vampires could change shape. I eventually did away with that, as it was too convenient, and I couldn’t see why, mythologically and physically speaking, they should have that ability. (Note: Empusa is not a vampire. She’s what the vampires were modeled after.)

To me, retractable fangs make sense. My vampires are supposed to be able to live among humans. This is also why they aren’t preternaturally beautiful. They have abilities which allow them to charm and attract and fascinate, but they also want to be able to not attract attention. Especially once I decided they were territorial, it made huge amounts of sense for them to blend in as much as possible, because otherwise people will start wondering why that gorgeous hunk they keep seeing around town never seems to get older.

The territorial thing was a later addition. As I started thinking beyond Gabriel to vampires in general, I had to decide whether they had communities. Was there structure, government, laws and consequences? If so, what kept the vampires from taking over Lumley-like? If not, then why not?

I eventually decided against organized vampires. I hate politics, and it was another way to put limits on creatures that were already pretty darn powerful. I took some lessons from nature: predators who marked out a territory, protected their food sources, and only allowed interlopers for reproductive purposes--in this case, keeping the young around long enough that they can learn to take care of themselves. And then I had to explain why and how, and got caught up in world-builder's disease again. (I'm going to assume no one but me cares about the cellular biology of vampires.)

What are your favorite bits of vampire lore? What conventions do you hate? Which version of vampires is your favorite? Leave a comment and let me know!

Thank You!

2011-11-15T06:30:00.002-06:00

Wow, that was a fabulous tour! Over 150 comments! That's a heck of a lot of free books! I'm really touched and proud of the online book community. I got home from the day job and my Photoshop class Monday night to a stuffed inbox. It was great! If you haven't scanned through the comments, there were some really neat stories shared. Thank you all again for making the tour such a great success! And please check back with the Indie Book Collective next Memorial Day to see if they do another tour.

I have answered all the comments/emails as of 7am CST this morning. IF YOU HAVE NOT RECEIVED A RESPONSE, PLEASE EMAIL ME! There were a few people who didn't leave email addresses, and a few that bounced for various reasons. Your comments should still be counted, but I want to make sure you get your free book too!

A number of you commented in emails on the tagline I used in my signature: "No soulmates. No love triangles. No sparkles." Thanks for the feedback! I've added the tagline to the product descriptions on the various distributor sites.

To new followers, welcome! I normally post on Tuesdays and Fridays, and I try not to talk your ear off. (Sometimes I fail.) Please check out the list on the left for more of my work, especially the free stuff. I love free stuff.

Here's where I beg: I would be ever so grateful for any likes, ratings, comments, or reviews that you feel appropriate, at Amazon or Barnes & Noble or Smashwords or iTunes or Goodreads or whereever. (If you do a review on your blog, let me know and I'll pimp it! I'm also happy to do interviews and stuff.) PLEASE be honest! No one's writing is for everyone, and as you can see from the awesome reviews linked in my last post, there are some things in Scent and Shadow that are disturbing. Honest reviews help the readers who will enjoy the book regardless find it, and keep me from damaging the more gentle readers. :) (They should read A Wild Hunt. That one's probably as tame as I get.)

Ok, enough of that! The Bulldog needs his walk. I hope you all enjoy the book, and check back here on Friday for a little inside info on the vampires of the Aether Vitalis universe.

Stories of Service - Blog Tour de Troops

2011-11-11T05:00:00.004-06:00

“I was in World War II.”

I don’t spend a lot of time on the phone at my day job, but sometimes it does involve some lengthy phone conversations, especially when walking people through our website or our paperwork.

This was a new one. “Really?”

He certainly sounded the right age. “Yep. I was there for the Normandy invasion.”

Goddamn, I thought. My mind immediately filled with images from documentaries, supplimented by my own rather vivid imagination. Which beach? I wanted to ask. What was it like? Did they shoot at you? Were you scared? How on Earth did you find the courage? Of course, my writer’s mind wanted the little details, the parts that make it seem real. How cold was the water? How deep was it where you had to jump in? How long was it before you got dry again? How long before you got a chance to eat? Or were you even hungry?

But I couldn’t ask any of those things. Even if I hadn’t been on the job, what if those memories were painful? Wouldn’t it be rude to ask?

All I could think to do was thank him for his service. Which is nice, I suppose, but seems hollow to me.

That man was much more than “service.” He was a story. A hero story. Even if no one ever shot at him and he never shot at anyone else. He was there. He went and served. And he managed to come home again, when so many others didn’t.

My dad was in Vietnam. When I was little, I was sort of obsessed with the idea that my daddy was a soldier. I was very proud of him. (I still am!) But he never liked to talk about it. I think the longest conversation I’ve ever heard him have about the Army was a few sentences traded with my husband regarding combat boots.

A couple years ago, my dad’s mom gave my nephew a little ivory Buddha. “Your grandpa brought me that from Vietnam,” she told my nephew, who shares my dad’s name.

“I found it in a field we were walking through,” was all Dad said about it.

My mind reels. I want to know. Was he in enemy territory, or friendly? Was the field mined? How hot was it? Was Vietnam as pretty as they say? What did he think when he found the statue? Were there lots of bugs there? Did anyone shoot at him? But I can’t ask. Look up “stoic” in the dictionary, and there’s a picture of my dad. When he doesn’t want to talk about something, he doesn’t talk about it.

But it makes me wonder – what about the vets who do want to talk about it?

I can imagine someone coming home, fresh from the field since we don’t really let the troops decompress first anymore (I agree with Lt. Col. Grossman, there was definitely something to be said for the long voyage home with the rest of your unit), and here’s this poor soldier who wants to work through all this craziness, and everyone at home is like me: too “polite” to ask.

Is it consideration, or cowardice on our parts? We don’t want to be rude. We don’t want to seem morbid or bloodthirsty or insensitive by asking all the questions that we have in our heads. And so we ignore what we feel we can’t talk about.

Everyone’s life is a story. With luck, mine won’t be very interesting. It saddens me to think of so many stories – people whose lives have been cursed (or blessed) with interesting times – going quietly into the long night, untold.

How can we get it right if we don’t ask? How else can we learn?

On Veteran's Day, in addition to saying a big Thank You to our veterans, I hope we can also take a moment to learn a story or two.

I want to welcome everyone who is stopping by today as part of the Blog Tour de Troops! You should be joining me from Brian Jeffreys's blog. The next stop on the tour will be at Dianne Venetta's blog. Please leave a comment – every comment wins a free eBook of Scent and Shadow for you and a soldier! (Make sure to include your email in your comment so I can contact you.)

In addition, we're also collecting donations toward Kindles for our troops! The Memorial Day blog tour raised enough funds for seven Kindles. If you'd like to donate money toward those Kindles for our soldiers, simply use Paypal and ibcprograms@gmail.com as the address to send money to. Please note on your payment that it's a Troops donation.

Huge thank-yous to my review sponsors! Check out the links for reviews of my novel Scent and Shadow:
The Romanceaholic
Alisha Robinson
From Me to You
Diary of a Bibliophile

Image: Damian Brandon / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

How Do You E-Read?

2011-11-08T06:30:00.000-06:00

I was not a big fan of ereaders in the beginning. I love print books, like so many other bibliophiles. I hate reading books on my computer, regardless of whether it's on the laptop or the desktop or the giant TV.

I hadn't really planned on getting a dedicated ereader, but I knew if I did get one, I wanted a Nook. I wanted e-ink, and I wanted EPUB. This was because many of the books I wanted to read were ones I found from Project Gutenberg or Google Books, and most of those were available as EPUB, but not as PRC or MOBI.

The Husband bought me a Nook when I was getting ready to start self-pubbing, so I could make sure my files worked and stuff. I very quickly grew to love it. The e-ink was everything I thought it would be, and a Ziploc baggie helped allay my fears about bathtub reading. Plus I could put so many books on it! All those books! With me, whenever I wanted! Joy!

Unfortunately, my Nook doesn't display PDFs for crap. All my contributor copies were in PDF. I was very sad.

However, we already had an iPod Touch. The iPod displays PDFs just fine. Yeay!

Except the screen is, of course, very small. Page-turning is kinda a pain--for some reason, I usually have to swipe twice. Although, and I have no idea why, reading on the iPod's screen doesn't bother me like reading on the computer screens. Maybe because I can control how close to my face I hold the iPod.

My Nook and my iPod are old, technology-wise. So I have no idea what the newest models are like. I've never tried reading on a Kindle or a color tablet of any flavor.

What is your favorite way to read ebooks? What devices do you love/hate? Are you picking up a Kindle Fire or a Nook tablet?

Don't forget to stop back on Friday for free books and Blog Tour de Troops!

Image: Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Free Books Next Friday

2011-11-04T07:07:00.003-05:00

Make sure to check the blog next Friday. I'll be participating in Blog Tour de Troops, by the Indie Book Collective. Everyone who leaves a comment with their email address will get a free digital copy of Scent and Shadow, AND a copy will be donated to our troops! Plus there are a bunch of other authors doing the same thing all weekend long!

On top of that, one lucky commenter at this blog will receive an additional prize from me, which will be announced next week, and one really lucky commenter will win a Kindle from the Indie Book collective!

Music and Writing

2011-11-01T06:30:00.001-05:00

I know a lot of writers who will make soundtracks for different projects, or who have particular songs or albums that inspire them as they write. For the most part, I can't have music on while I'm writing. It's too distracting. But I definitely will use music in other ways in regards to my writing.

I Burn For You is an example of music inspiring a story idea. I forget what finally prompted me to write the story down, but that was one time where I had the song playing as I wrote, trying to get the rhythm into the prose a little.

My short story "Good Neighbors" was inspired by a scene from the movie The Wicker Man. (The original version, not the remake.) There's a scene where a woman is trying to seduce the hero by singing to him through the wall of his room and tapping on the walls, and it's hot, hot, hot. (And has a catchy song too!)

Scent and Shadow took me a long time to write, so there was a lot of music that helped keep me in the mood. While I didn't listen to anything while actually writing it, I would play particular songs in the car or before I started writing to try and capture the feeling I wanted. A few favorites from the playlist are:

"Poison" by Alice Cooper
"Voodoo" by Godsmack
"Wulf" and "Slave to Evil" by :wumpscut:
"Ribbons" by Sisters of Mercy

As well as large sections of Pretty Hate Machine by NIN, Violet by The Birthday Massacre, and The Lost Boys Soundtrack.

One late addition was "Beg Steal or Borrow" by Ray LaMontagne & The Pariah Dogs. Although it was a bit of a switch-up from the rest of the playlist, the song very quickly became Amanda's theme.

Image: anankkml / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

New Free Story and Free Novel For a Day!

2011-10-30T21:35:00.006-05:00

Happy Halloween!

Without further ado, I present this year's Free Halloween Fiction! Click on over to Smashwords to download the ebook in your format of choice, or read the story at my website.

Jake has never taken Kary seriously—in his mind, she’s still his little sister’s best friend. So when Jake discovers Kary’s a witch, he doesn’t take that seriously either, and dares her to put a love spell on him. But Kary’s been waiting for this opportunity, and Jake gets a firsthand lesson on why it’s dangerous to taunt a witch. Especially a sexy witch. This story contains explicit sex and is not safe for work.

Is it an Aether Vitalis story, or is it not? I leave that up to the reader.

I've always really loved the song "I Burn For You," ever since I first heard it. It's not one of The Police's better-known songs. I don't think I've ever heard it on the radio. But in the back of my head, I thought it would make a really great love spell.

If you aren't familiar with the song, I really recommend picking it up from Amazon or iTunes or wherever you get your music. You can certainly enjoy the story without having heard the song, but I personally think it works better if you kinda have the music in the back of your head as you read.

Also in honor of Halloween, for today only you can pick up a copy of my novel Scent and Shadow for free at Smashwords with the coupon code GF52N! If you like the book, I would really appreciate it if you'd leave a comment or review at Smashwords, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Goodreads. Or just tell a friend! Happy reading!

Even More Stories!

2011-10-28T06:30:00.006-05:00

Just in time for the weekend come two short stories sure to get you in the Halloween mood! Yesterday The House That Pip Built went up for sale. That was my first m/m story (as opposed to m/m/f), and it's a hot and sweet little tale of lust and loneliness. And ghosts. Or something like a ghost, anyway. Pip is available at Smashwords, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.

Today, for your reading pleasure, is The Sub Fairy. This little D/s gem is set (mostly) at a Halloween party, where the female narrator is enjoying being a costume accessory for her husband/dom. Is it exhibitionism if no one else knows you're getting worked up on it? Decide for yourself. Available at Smashwords, and soon at Amazon and B&N.

Stay safe at your Halloween parties this weekend, my lovelies, and check back on Monday for this year's Free Halloween Short Story!

Empusa Uploaded at Smashwords

2011-10-20T22:19:00.006-05:00

And will be available at the other outlets soon, but right now you can get your fix at Smashwords for $0.99! Everyone's favorite people-eating demon is ready to seduce you...for a price.

Empusa is one of my favorite characters, and it's nice to get to share her with a wider audience. This was one of the first erotic short stories I wrote, and it is THE first menage story and the first time I wrote men having sex with each other. M/M wasn't something I expected to be writing when I dove into erotica in 2009, but damn, it's fun!

Check back tomorrow morning, when I plan to upload The Power That Dreams Have, which is the sequel to Empusa.

Finally! Ebooks are Available!

2011-10-19T19:59:00.007-05:00

Yeay! At long last, the ebooks are going up. Originally I was hoping to dump them all in at once, but since that didn't work out, instead I'm uploading a new short story each day. Check Smashwords for the latest uploads, as Amazon and Barnes & Noble take longer to verify files. (Also, for my non-American readers, the books WILL be cheaper at Smashwords or Goodreads than at Amazon, with very few exceptions.)

On Monday, up went my 2009 Free Halloween story, A Wild Hunt. This is an updated and slightly expanded version of the novella, with a fantabulous cover (if I do say so myself!). It also includes the first chapter of my new never-before-published novel, Scent and Shadow. Like all the Halloween stories, A Wild Hunt is free. At least, it is on Smashwords and Goodreads. I've submitted the lower price at Smashwords to Amazon, but I can't control if they'll actually lower the price. If there's a way to get B&N to lower the price too, let me know!

Also on Monday, Scent and Shadow was released! YEAY!!!! After so many years, it feels good to send Gabriel and Amanda out into the world. (Wait a minute. Gabriel's a monster. That should not sound right...) Scent and Shadow retails for $4.99. This novel explores Madison, Wisconsin in the Aether Vitalis universe, explaining such bizarre things as why anyone would build a major city (okay, major for Wisconsin) on an isthmus of all freaking places, and why a city with such a limited footprint has laws limiting how high the buildings can be. I just had to find an explanation for that one! Also available at Amazon, B&N, and Goodreads.

And check out this great review of Scent and Shadow from author Jesi Lea Ryan at her blog Diary of a Bibliophile! Thanks Jesi Lea, I'm glad you liked the book!

Yesterday I uploaded the 2010 Free Halloween story, Not Quite Casper. This baby is free at Smashwords and at Goodreads, and for not-free-yet at B&N and Amazon. This is a short and spicy Aether Vitalis story about a very naughty ghost. Thank you to Sir's Kitten for the unbelievably quick review! I'm glad you liked the story!

And just uploaded tonight, my BDSM erotic romance Floggers Last Longer Than Flowers, a short story which originally appeared at the now-defunct MainstreamErotica.com. It's currently only available at Smashwords, but should show up at the other websites in a day or two. This story retails for $0.99, as will most of the rest of the short stories.

Keep checking back to see which short story gets uploaded next! There will be a new short story uploaded each weekday until Halloween, when the 2011 Free Halloween short story goes up!

What is Aether Vitalis?

2011-10-18T06:30:00.002-05:00

Aether Vitalis is the series name for my stories wherein the rules of the universe work in specific ways. You'll see the name attached to stories as the stories become available as single titles. The series does not, as a whole, follow any particular character or set of characters, although some characters will recur frequently.

A lot of my stories have paranormal elements, but not all of them do. Truthfully, any story set in the reality we're all used to could be an Aether Vitalis story, but the stories marked as Aether Vitalis are stories where the there is a definite touch of the paranormal consistent with the rules of the Aether Vitalis universe.

And just what are the rules?

When I started figuring all this stuff out, I decided I wanted a story universe that explained the real world. I tried to reason out exactly how (insert supernatural thingie here) would work in the real universe, assuming things like conservation of energy and mass, and postulating additional factors like aether (think dark matter, or neutrinos) and vitality (life). I won't go into the minutiae here, mostly because I suffer from world-builder's disease and I doubt many of you care about how quantum physics relates to my fiction. (Although eventually I will have a webpage for stuff like that.) Instead, here are some things that you can count on from an Aether Vitalis story:

Vampires kill people. A lot. In fact, they have to, especially when they're young. There are no vampires who feed on animals, or through blood banks, or on fake blood. Vampires are a very specialized predator/parasite, and need not only blood but human energy in order to survive. They are also territorial, so you don't get big bunches of them hanging out together and plotting how to take over the world, although a few can coexist in the same city if it's a very large city and the vampires are all hunting different demographics. (And for you folklore fans, they do have reflections, but the sun sets them on fire. Also, no soulmates. I promise.)

The most common type of shapeshifter (though certainly not the only kind) are the skinshifters. (Although they're called pookhas in Britain and other names in other places.) The skinshifters are a type of faerie, whose ancestors broke away from the control of the gentry, the faerie ruling class. Unfortunately, as part of the breaking away, the skinshifters became mortal. Their forms were also limited. Before, they were purely aethereal-bodied creatures and could be anything. Now, most skinshifters are born with two skins, and the rest have to be "acquired." While they still have their aethereal form, it's rare for a skinshifter to spend much time in it, as they become ridiculously susceptible to magic while out of their skins. On the upside, they handle metal and technology better than most of the other fae.

Speaking of magic, there are a lot of different kinds of magic. (Magic being the generic term for the act of using purely energical means to influence matter, energy, vitality, or probability, regardless of method.) The generic term for a magic-user is mage. Beyond that, it depends on where you get the energy from, and what you do with it, and how you do it: sorcery, necromancy, theurgy, witchery, demonology, voodoo, shamanism...

Separate from magic (especially if you ask the mages) is psionics. Psionics are human psychic gifts, and they come in three main flavors: Extrapathy – energy influencing other energy or vitality (ie the mind or the soul); Extracognition – energy gathering information (not from vitality); and Extrakinesis – energy influencing matter or probability. Of course, I have the lexicon; the characters don't, so they are often less precise with their terminology. Extrapathic gifts are the most common, and extrakinetic gifts the most rare, based purely on genetics.

And there are gods. There are the gods that we would call gods, and then there are the gods that our gods call gods.

Of course, there's lots that I haven't touched on yet (especially in Faerie!) but this should give you some idea of the kinds of creatures and forces you might encounter in an Aether Vitalis story.

Just a Brief Note

2011-10-14T06:30:00.002-05:00

I've been attempting to stay sane and stay in touch with people outside of my own head, which means that I'm not quite done with all the formatting and covers yet. Go figure. But Scent and Shadow and A Wild Hunt are pretty much done, so we'll see. I may upload those first and then upload the shorts as I finish them, or I may wait and just do it all on Monday. Of course, just because it's uploaded doesn't mean it'll be available right away, but I'll let you all know as soon as I know, of course. Have a great weekend everyone!

Close to Launch

2011-10-11T06:30:00.001-05:00

Edits are all done. Most of the formatting is done. I still need to convert everything to HTML and then clean up the code, and I still need to finish the covers. I have keywords for everything, but not back cover copy (although the descriptions I have on my website already will do in a pinch for most of the short stories).

I'm shooting to upload Friday night or Saturday morning.

Am I insane? Maybe. But I want to be done. I have other things I need to move on to.

I'm really excited about getting Scent and Shadow out there. Not just because I've been working on it for a long time, but because it's a book I would want to read, if I hadn't written it. (I'm hoping I'll want to read it myself in a year or two, but right now I've read it a bit too much. I'm weird, I re-read my own fiction the same as I re-read other people's fiction.)

For those of you who've read "A Wild Hunt," you'll recognize Madison's resident vampire, Gabriel Chapel. He's not your daughter's vampire heartthrob; he's a ruthless killer and he likes it that way.

Scent and Shadow takes place about ten years before "A Wild Hunt." You also get to meet Ariane's dad, Martin Conant, as well as other members of Madison's supernatural community.

If you haven't read "A Wild Hunt," don't worry! It'll be available, expanded and updated, as a free ebook with a really cool cover, and will also have the first chapter of Scent and Shadow as a sneak peek! Plus last year's Halloween story, "Not Quite Casper," and this year's Halloween story will both available as free ebooks as well.

100 Words About: Football

2011-10-07T06:30:00.000-05:00

(And yes, I mean American Football.)

I only got into football last year, which I totally blame on Scott Sigler's GFL series. Despite living amidst some of the most fanatic football fans in the nation (Badger fans and Packer fans), I had never pursued the sport. I enjoyed it when it happened to be on, but (like all other sports, except local roller derby) I never sought it out.

And, of course, now that I have the NFL Rewind and the Krakens jersey and the fantasy football team, I'm too busy to watch it. Even though I can watch it darn near whenever I want.

Ahh, the things we sacrifice for art.

I take comfort in the fact that the season runs for longer than this current flurry of activity will. I've got edits done on all the short stories, and now I need to do blurbs for all of them and finish the covers, but I'm still on track.

Which is good, 'cause roller derby starts up in December!

Covers Covers Covers

2011-10-04T06:30:00.002-05:00

I'm having a lot of fun going through photo sites and figuring out what I want to do for book covers. Short stories don't take too long to format, but covers take more time. I like piecing together several photos into something new. Granted, it's more time-consuming than just finding one picture, but given the fact that I've had good luck finding a mix of free and very cheap photos, it's a lot less expensive than buying something more ready-made.

I just started looking at fonts last night. Wow. I don't know why it's so fascinating, but I get the same giddy feeling looking through the font websites that I do when I walk into a used book store. Oh, the possibilities! Pathetic, no?

I start a class on Photoshop on Friday, which I'm pretty excited about. One of my friends helped me out with a couple of the covers I'd already started, and wow! Some of those tools are just awesome! I can't wait to get into the nuts and bolts of things.

Here's hoping I can not get so caught up in covers that I don't get any writing done...

100 Words About: Wind

2011-09-30T07:03:00.003-05:00

It was really windy last night. The kind of windy where tree limbs fall off. I love that kind of weather, especially in the fall. It's hard to describe exactly how it makes me feel; I guess wild is the best word. If the Wild Hunt were sweeping around you, and you couldn't see them ('cause it's not Halloween or Walpurgisnacht), I imagine it might feel something like that. Unfettered and insidious, tempting you to follow.

The next day after a fall wind storm is almost like a hangover. There's trash blown everywhere because the bins have all blown over, and tree limbs and twigs all around, and what pretty fall leaves there were have all been ripped from the trees, so the foliage that's left is bare and patchy like a two-day beard. I hope there's some color left up by the apple orchard when we go.

Image: Tina Phillips / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Novel Updates

2011-09-27T06:30:00.000-05:00

The novel is off to the copy editor, yeay!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm trying really hard not to start a new project, because I still have a ton of work to do. I'm working on the cover for Scent and Shadow when I'm at home, and after work I'm formatting short stories on my laptop in preparation for ebook conversion.

Of course, I still have to do covers for all those stories. I haven't even started looking at fonts yet. Fortunately I've taken some artsy classes before, including one on typesetting. (This jack-of-all-trades thing comes in such handy!) I've got an idea of what I want my fonts to look like, so hopefully I won't go completely ga-ga when I start going through the font sites.

That could be wishful thinking though. I've spent hours already just looking at stock photos...

So anyway, I'm trying to get the art part done first, and then I'll add the text once I figure out what fonts I want. For formatting I'm going clean and basic, nothing fancy, so it'll work the best on the most ereaders. I've seen a number of ebooks where they tried to get funky with the font size or the spacing and it ended up all wrong. My story should be what the readers are focusing on - I think most people only notice the formatting when there's something wrong with it. Then it becomes distracting. But when it's fine, only formatting or font buffs notice, I assume (I could be wrong).

All in all, I hope to have a whole bunch of stuff available next month. Some old, some new, and some of it free to download! Including this year's brand-new free Halloween story. Muahahahaha!

Commoditites

2011-09-23T08:02:00.004-05:00

Not much to say today, my time is being sucked up by going through my Facebook friends list and making sure I'm subscribed to everyone and All Updates is checked. Stupid Facebook. (Although being able to uncheck Games is nice.) If you make a List and add all of your friends to it, and add it to your Favorites, it's almost like your old news feed - just without all the fan pages. :( Haven't figured that part out yet. Hopefully Facebook Purity has a fix soon.

In the meantime, here's a funny-but-true demotivator someone sent me. I don't know where it originated.

Empty Brain

2011-09-20T06:30:00.002-05:00

The line edits are done, the scenes are rewritten, and I've searched out my adverbs and words I use too much. Now I'm going over one last time, finding places where I can tighten up phrasing and break up long paragraphs to help with pacing.

And then, copy editing.

My brain feels empty.

I've had this feeling before. The first time I finished the novel - by which I mean the first time that I wrote the ending - my brain was quiet for almost a week. It was so peaceful. No characters poking at me, no scenes to figure out. Just...quiet.

This time it's less peaceful. It's more like being numb, like I've powered down. I write a lot more than I did back then, so I've gotten used to all the action in my head. Sort of like when you go to the dentist. Even when you aren't using your lip for anything, you know it's there; you miss it when it's numb. You can't help noticing it, even though when you can actually feel it, you don't notice it at all.

Of course, as soon as I start taking notes for Ashes of Empire (the Constantinople storyline), I know my brain will tingle painfully back to life. I'm just putting that off for a few days while I finish the read-through, to keep my head in the game.

Man, I'm looking forward to that though. I'm dying to do something totally new. I think I'm more excited about starting a new project than I am about finally putting Scent and Shadow to bed after over thirteen years.

I love this job.

Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Closer and Closer!

2011-09-16T07:02:00.004-05:00

The line edits that I got from my Write By The Lake instructor are done, yeay! So with that and the rewrite of the big battle at the end, all I have left to do are:

Finish the rewrite of the hunters' introduction
Rewrite/touch up the other hunter scenes to match (six scenes or so)
Make another pass for adverbs and words I use too much
Reread the whole thing and look for things I broke during the fixes

And then it's off for copyediting!

That may look like a lot, but I'm hoping I can get it all done this week. Next week at most.

I'm less scared and more excited at this point as I get closer to being done with the writing side of things. Also, this great post by Dean Wesley Smith helped too. I love Dean and Kris. They've always got great advice.

One Step Closer

2011-09-13T06:30:00.000-05:00

I finished one of the rewrites on the novel, the biggest single thing I had to do to it. It feels good; I feel close to being done.

It's hard not to freak out.

I'm going to be putting my stuff out there soon. Without the gatekeepers.

It's scary. And exciting.

It's a risk. I know the novel is good. It might be really good. It might well be good enough for a big agent, a big contract. I think it is. But without submitting it to the gatekeepers, how do you know?

And yet, I'm not going to.

For years I dreamed of getting published by a big publisher. I dreamed of the big advance, the contract, of seeing my book on a bookstore shelf. And now I'm turning my back on all that, and taking a book that might well be worth a five-figure advance and publishing it online for roughly $3.50 gross, each. Doing my own marketing. Investing in editing and cover art and classes on how to format. I could easily lose money on the deal.

But I'm still going to do it myself.

I believe in my work. I believe the audience is out there. I believe I can find them.

Maybe I'm wrong. But at least, if my venture fails, it won't be anyone's fault but mine. And I'll be free to try again, and again, and again.

And I will. No one can stop me but me.

100 Words About: Actually Honoring 9/11

2011-09-09T06:40:00.000-05:00

Yeah, it's been ten years, and I can kinda see maybe wanting to do something in remembrance of that fateful day. I don't know if we did anything for the ten year anniversary of Pearl Harbor. But we sure as hell weren't selling commemorative coins or bits of blasted boats back then. Back in those days, if you wanted to spend money related to the attack, you bought a freaking war bond.

What the hell changed?

Every year around this time I have to start filtering my media consumption. I wish it was just because listening to sad stories makes me cry, but mostly it's because all the 9/11 "coverage" just pisses me off. Most of it is selling something, whether it's a trinket that won't help either the survivors or the families or the war or the first responders (I won't get started on that one right now, Congress) or selling an idea: racial or religious hatred; fear, uncertainty, and doubt; or "vote for me."

You want to honor the fallen? How about you get something done with that big empty hole that's been sitting there for ten years now? Our grandparents' generation would've had the twin towers rebuilt in six months just as a giant "fuck you."

Right after the attack, this country came together, neighbor united with neighbor in a way that made me proud to be an American. Since then, people have done nothing but use its memory to tear us apart from each other and take away our liberties.

So have one last three-ring circus. But then, let's put this thing to bed and move on to something relevant.

Image: Paul Martin Eldridge / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Happy Labor Day!

2011-09-05T18:44:00.003-05:00

Posting a little early this week. I hope you all had a lovely weekend! I ransomed The Husband back from Vegas (cost: gasoline and a couple hours of driving) and got a computer virus. Good thing they happened in that order, as The Husband is the technologically-savvy person in this household. All I can say is I LOVE CrashPlan. :)

Do you have a backup plan? Huh, do ya, punk?

I did not get nearly as much work done on the novel this holiday weekend as I would have liked, but I'm making progress. Speaking of which, I need to get back to the grind before The Husband gets back from his guy night.

Outta My Way, Me

2011-08-30T06:30:00.000-05:00

The Husband is out of town until Friday. I should have the whole week to get my edits done, right?

Except I have friends who want to make plans every night this week.

I like my friends. Normally I wouldn't have a problem being that social. (Ok, I would, but I'd still do it. I find groups of any real size to be very tiring.)

Problem is, I haven't worked on the novel in days. I have no real excuses except wanting to spend more time with The Husband before he had to go out of town. (Noble excuse, in my own mind.)

I'm back to being sick of the novel. Not because I think it's bad, but because I'm pretty happy with it. And I'm tired of working on it. Isn't this close enough???

No. I want this novel done. Done done done. Outta my hair and out into the ether for good or ill. But it still needs to be done right.

And the only thing standing in my way is...me.

So Monday I went out and was social. Tonight is my writing group, and while that isn't writing, it is useful. So I hereby pledge that I will work hard Wednesday night and Thursday night, and quite possibly Friday if The Husband crashes out when he gets home. (He'll either be a walking zombie or totally wired, I give it 50/50 odds.)

So outta my way, me. I want this thing done this week if I can at all humanly do it. Then it's off for copy editing while I (gulp!) try to find a cover.

Just Had to Share

2011-08-26T06:36:00.004-05:00

Sometimes you just find a picture that resonates with you. The drawing is by begemott.

While the monster is awesome, it's the teddy bear that really holds my attention. The posture and attitude are just perfect, and I love the use of color.

Happy Friday!

Online Resources for Writers: An Example

2011-08-23T06:30:00.002-05:00

I'm adding a new scene to the novel, and I decided I wanted it to be somewhere on the eastern seaboard, eventually settling (rather randomly) on the Carolinas. Since my vampires need fairly sizable populations to sustain them while they're young, I had been thinking Charleston. However, a young vampire would be too weak to hold territory in a bigger city, so I needed a suburb.

A Google search for "charleston sc suburbs" netted (ha, pun!) me an article that mentioned Huntersville, NC as one of the fastest-growing and most affordable suburbs to live in. A local real estate website showed that yes, the kind of house I wanted to describe did exist there, and furthermore, the real estate site also listed what year the houses were built. This was very important as my story takes place in 1999. The first subdivision I looked at had houses built in 2006. About 15 minutes of looking at listings got me a subdivision built in 1996.

Then it was on to Google Maps! God, I love street view. I wanted something out of Patio Man and the Sprawl People, and this place fit the bill. Perfect.

Now, since my story takes place on a specific day, it was off to Weather Underground. The archives for Huntersville only go back to 2001, but nearby Charlotte, NC goes back to 1941. So picking the date I needed in the History & Almanac section showed me what time sunrise was (very important) as well as hourly temperature, wind speed, and weather condition information. While that may seem a bit obsessive, it's great for describing what it's like for my characters as they stand outside on this quintessentially suburban street. (The weather is really the only thing that distinguishes one suburb from another...)

And there you are. A little bit of time on the web and I have all the resources I need to recreate in writing a real place I've never been to.

Image: Michelle Meiklejohn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Distractions and Some Cool Links

2011-08-20T11:47:00.003-05:00

Yeah, I'm late. Sorry about that. Not only did I get my novel edits in the mail this week, but we signed up for NFL Game Rewind. All the football I can watch, whenever I want (mostly), no commercials. Dear God, when am I going to have time to write???

Anyway, here are two links, somewhat related, to get you thinking.

First, the ever-entertaining Blue sent me this link on 25 Ways To Fuck With Your Characters. Not only amusing, but good advice too. (I liked this so much I had to buy Chuck's books.) Remember, author, you are the puppetmaster. And not only are you the puppetmaster, but you're a sadistic puppetmaster at that. Revel in it.

Second, the ever-insightful Lori Devoti has a post over at the Writer's Salon about how to create conflict and shift power between characters using dialogue. What, me play with power dynamics? Never!

Have fun kids, I'm off to try to get some edits done on 1794 before The Husband gets home. 'Cause after that it's gonna be nothin' but pigskin.

Image: Marcus74id / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Post-Activity Slump

2011-08-16T06:30:00.001-05:00

I've written about patience many times, as I truly believe that patience is one of the most important skills a writer can nurture. But right now I'm kinda caught up in the insidious flip-side of patience: the post-activity slump.

I have a novel and four short stories out to editors, as well as two short stories out on submission. It's hard not to check the email every five minutes, but I have to have patience.

The problem I'm having right now is that I have a ton of stuff to do - a novella to finish, rewrites on another, six covers to make, blurbs to write, and I still haven't come up with a good title for the novel - but it's really hard to get motivated. I've gotten so much done in the last couple months, and I'm waiting waiting waiting to hear back from the editors so I know how much more work I have to do and can start planning a more firm timeline...and all I want to do is chill out for a couple weeks while I wait.

It almost even makes sense. Once I know my timeline, it'll be easier to prioritize, right? And I've spent so much time recently writing and doing business stuff, surely it would be good to take some time off for research and catching up on other authors. (Especially since my one research book is due back at the library any day now and I've used up all my renewals.)

Granted, I did spend a lot of hours last week learning Paint.NET and getting two covers mostly done, but I still sorta feel like I'm slacking, because I'm not writing. I haven't written anything new in months. It's all been edits and rewrites. And I keep looking forward to when all these stories are up and epubbed, because then things should slow down. I can get back to writing. I just want to know when. And until I know when, it's hard to concentrate.

Image: graur razvan ionut / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

100 Words About: Talent

2011-08-12T08:15:00.004-05:00

Dean Wesley Smith had an interesting post over at his blog, talking about "The Myth of Talent." I agree with a lot of it. I think labeling someone as "talented" or "untalented" (especially at an early age) can be incredibly damaging and counterproductive.

However, I do believe in talent, which Dean doesn't.

The Husband and I had a great discussion about this topic last night, which led me to post a comment over at Dean's blog. Here are my thoughts on the subject:

My husband did bring up a good point after I showed him this post. You can say that talent doesn't matter up to a point, but you also have to take into account certain limiting factors. Just as there are physical limitations, like my poor eyesight making it so I will never be a fighter pilot, there are also mental limitations. He reminded me of a couple friends in high school who worked their butts off trying to learn stuff, and could just never wrap their heads around it. Certain maths just didn't make sense to them, no matter how it was explained. And it's not that they weren't trying, but they just couldn't grasp the fundamental concepts needed to improve their skills.

I think hard work can improve anyone. Those friends of mine certainly understood more than they would have without the hard work. But there is a limit, and that limit is different for different people on different subjects, and I think that is what true "talent" is. Talent without hard work will only get you so far, and hard work without talent will only get you so far (although I'd wager that hard work will get you farther than raw talent 99 times out of 100). In the cases where you hit a limit, though, telling those folks that they just aren't trying hard enough is cruel. They haven't discovered a surgery yet that would make my eyesight good enough for me to be a fighter pilot, no matter how hard I worked at learning to fly planes.

Ultimately, I think talent is anything you can't take credit for. I learn things very quickly, much more quickly than most of my peers in school. That's not something I did, and I can't take credit for it. It's a talent, and one I am grateful to have. I exercise and make use of it by always learning about new things, but ultimately, I can't take credit for it. And I think recognizing the talents we do have helps keep us humble. Be grateful for the talents you have, and work your butt off in appreciation to make the most of them. I bristle when people say "well, you can be a published writer because you have talent," because writing IS something I can take credit for. I've worked hard for years to get to the level I'm at now, and I'm going to continue to work hard, hopefully for the rest of my life. There may be some talent there, but it's mostly hours and hours and hours of hard work.

If someone tells me I'm "just talented" at something and it makes me uncomfortable, it's usually because it's something I can't take credit for. That's a talent. If someone tells me I'm "just talented" at something and it pisses me off, that's not talent, that's hard work. And that's how I tell the difference.

Image: dan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

New Short Story Release!

2011-08-09T06:30:00.000-05:00

My newest short story is now available from Burning Bulb Press. The anthology is The Big Book of Bizarro, and my story is called "Succor the Child."

I love weird fiction, and Lovecraft in particular, and this anthology let me range in different directions from my more romantic works. While "Succor" isn't specifically a Mythos story, it might as well be. I sure as heck lost sanity writing it. Fortunately it was only temporary. (Or at least, that's what they tell me.)

Seriously though, the story is based on a dream I had. I woke up, got the dream fixed in my head, and then ran to my computer. Six or so hours later I had a first draft, and my world-view was pretty skewed for about 18 hours before it finally got back to normal. Channeling this baby messed with me hard, but reactions have all pretty much been "creepy!" so I'll take that as a win.

Stop by my website to read a excerpt!

100 Words About: Progress Update

2011-08-05T06:30:00.000-05:00

My novel is off to my Write by the Lake instructor for final polishing and tweaking. Of course, I've already thought of a couple more things to fix, but such is life. (Must make a note somewhere...) I still have to come up with a better name. Names are usually not too bad for me, but this one has never really suggested a good name to me so I'm still kicking it around. And of course, no idea what to do for a cover. I want to get a professional cover for the novel, but I need to come up with a name first.

I have 2-3 short stories that I can do a little extra polishing on, but which are pretty much good to go. I just need to format them and make covers. I have some software to learn so I can make the covers myself (hiring out for short stories doesn't seem very cost effective), but I'm not sure when I'll have time to go through the tutorials. Summer is so busy! Maybe I'll take another vacation day.

I have two novellas that are close to being ready also. My hope is to have 5-6 items at varying prices (free to $4.99) available all at once initially, and just keep adding more. Timing is going to depend on how long my novel edits take. It's all a ton of work and planning, but very exciting!

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Infinite Tiny Monopolies

2011-08-02T06:30:00.002-05:00

On Friday I talked about book buying and a purchasing-eye-view of what's up in publishing, in which I emphasized the importance of immediate gratification in our cultural buying habits. If the book's not on the shelf, you risk the reader picking up something else instead.

Now for the other side of that coin: Every book is a tiny monopoly.

This is the same in the gaming industry as it is in books. Someone who goes to the store to purchase "a game" or "a book" is likely to leave with "a game" or "a book" regardless of whether they had a specific item in mind. But people who are looking for a specific book or game that is out of stock are much more likely to leave without buying anything.

An example:

Bob goes to his local game store to buy a game because he's having some friends over on Friday. He was sorta thinking about getting Uno, but the store doesn't have it, so he gets a copy of Fluxx instead. He might also pick up another game or two, just in case the first one sucks, or maybe a few packs of Magic cards, or some shiny thing that catches his eye that he didn't know was available. (We gamers like shiny things.)

The Settlers of Catan is one of the most successful board games of all time. If Bob goes to his local gaming store specifically to buy Settlers and the store has it in stock, Bob is going to buy that copy of Settlers, and maybe an expansion for the game or something shiny as well (see above). Whereas if the store is out of Settlers, then Bob is most likely going to leave and try somewhere else without buying anything.

Why? Because he doesn't just want "a" game. He wants "that" game. Settlers is its own tiny monopoly.

The same is true for books. If Bill goes to Barnes & Noble just to browse, he's probably leaving with at least one book even if the specific book he was kinda thinking of buying is out of stock. But if Bill goes to Barnes & Noble looking for a copy of Chalice by Robin McKinley, and the store doesn't have it, it's off to the next store, or off to order it online. (If you have to order it, you might as well order it online where it's going to be cheaper, arrive faster, and probably won't cost you shipping if you combine it with those impulse buys you would've made anyway.)

What all this boils down to is that, as an author, I need my book to be on the shelf. If it's not on the shelf, that big distribution channel is kinda useless. If my book isn't big enough to warrant a chunk of that shrinking shelf space, then I'm probably not going to lose many sales by not being in Barnes & Noble at all versus being in as a special order item.

Buying: Books vs Magazines

2011-07-29T11:01:00.004-05:00

Mike Stackpole had an interesting post this week about how books are being handled more like magazines than books by publishers and retailers. I thought I'd add my two cents in on that thought. And my two cents is that this is very, very bad for bookstores.

For several years, I was a buyer, then head buyer, for a distribution company that handled, among other things, role-playing game books (RPGs). We sold very few novels, so those tended to be special order only affairs; unlike bookstores, we didn't get full returnability. The RPGs (also mostly not returnable) sold much like books do in traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores. We also handled a few specialty magazine lines, which, for the most part, were also not returnable.

When it came time to order the magazines, I ordered just a handful over what I thought we would sell in the first week, and I almost never reordered. Why? Because those magazines were only relevant for the first week or so that they were available. Unless there was something REALLY cool and fairly timeless in that particular issue, after the first month the stupid things never sold again.

Book sales have always been front-end heavy. There's a rush for the first few weeks, and after that it slows to trickle. The more popular the book, the steadier the trickle, but it's still a trickle. Now, that trickle can over time amount to more sales than the initial rush...but only if the book is available.

If, as I've heard from several sources now (including this great post by Kris Rusch), book buying is really turning to the magazine model of buying, this is going to severely impact backlist sales, and it will also drive people to online buying. I know that anything I had full returnability on got overbought by at least 20%, and a lot of buyers overbuy by more than that, but with the increasingly limited shelf space, the bookstores just don't have room for all of those books even though they aren't out money if the books don't sell right away.

What this means is that backlist sales from brick-and-mortar stores will virtually disappear except for a very few titles from a small percentage of authors. People who want any of the other books will have to either find them at a used bookstore (no money to author), get it from the library (no money to author), or they'll have to buy it online. For some people, online sales are still impulse buys; they may go to the bookstore, find out they can't get the book without ordering it and waiting, and they may go online right then and there and buy it for their e-reader.

I'm willing to bet that the majority of people are not at that point yet.

We live in a culture that thrives on instant gratification. When we want something, we want it now. If we have to wait for it, or work for it (ie running around to more than one store, or make an order online), odds are we'll lose interest. I foresee a lot of this scenario:

Reader goes to bookstore, and wants to buy X book. Reader is told by staff that they don't have a copy, but they can order one. Reader thinks "If I have to order it, I might as well order it online because I can get it cheaper than I can ordering it from the bookstore, plus I won't have to come back to the bookstore." Reader goes on about Reader's business, and by the time Reader gets home, Reader has forgotten about ordering the book. Reader, being a reader, probably already has a stack of books waiting to be read and picks up one of those because Reader wants something to read right now. If this happens often enough, Reader will probably stop going to the bookstore at all, and will just buy all of their books online.

So my guess is there will be a downtick in backlist sales for awhile as readers migrate more permanently to online book buying. Then backlist sales will probably start to climb again, but only online. Meanwhile, traffic in bookstores as a whole will dwindle, because people are used to not finding what they want at bookstores and will buy their new books online too, wrapping backlist sales into new release purchases so they can get free shipping. This will lead to more bookstores closing, less shelf space, fewer readers finding what they want at brick-and-mortar stores (or being able to find brick-and-mortar stores)... You get my drift.

I also think used bookstores will see increased traffic. People will learn that if they want a backlist title right now and they don't want a digital copy, the used bookstores are the place to look. And if they don't find the title they're seeking, well, there are lots of other backlist titles there that might fit the bill and satisfy their immediate gratification need (making it less likely that the reader will remember to order book X later). Plus a lot of used bookstores also carry a limited selection of new titles, and that's one less online order for Reader to make.

Don't get me wrong, I love used bookstores. But this will impact sales. And impacts on sales can have very weird effects on what publishers decide to publish down the road.

Image: Pixomar / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Publishing Podcasts I Listen To

2011-07-26T06:54:00.003-05:00

I'm always on the lookout for more awesome podcasts, an you might be too, so here are the ones I hit every week, in no particular order:

Writing Excuses - The best 15-20 minutes of listneing a writer can spend all week.
I Should Be Writing - Fun interviews, and follow Mur Lafferty as she traverses the worlds of publishing and podcasting her own books.
Adventures in SciFi Publishing - Great interviews with authors, editors, and publishers, plus fun commentary and discussions.
The Reading and Writing Podcast - interviews with authors about their books, writing, and the weird hobbies authors pick up.
eBook Ninjas - Occasionally a bit technical, but informative. The folks from eBook Architects discuss ebook formatting, digital readers, and publishing news.
The Creative Penn - Interviews with authors, podcasters, cover artists, and basically anyone who has useful information for authors, with indie author Joanna Penn.
SF Signal - As powered by the Functional Nerds, these podcasts cover everything SF&F, including panel discussions and interviews.
The Dead Robots' Society - young author hosts provide interviews, con panel recordings, commentary and discussion on everything writing and publishing.
The Hopkinson Report - The Marketing Trends That Matter from Wired Magazine's Jim Hopkinson. Includes some awesome interviews with authors, social media marketers, website people, and more.

If you have any publishing/reading/writing related podcasts that you like, leave a comment and I'll add them to my list. I'll update this periodically as I find new ones.

100 Words About: Book Buying

2011-07-22T07:10:00.002-05:00

Kris Rusch had a great post yesterday about the upcoming third quarter sales slump. The short short version (and I do recommend reading the whole thing) is that with Borders gone, there is less shelf space for books. And Barnes & Noble is also reducing its shelf space for books. Since 70% of books sold are still paper copies of one form or another, that means that third quarter sales are likely to drop. Which means that a lot of authors whose work would normally be selling will have a hard time convincing their publishers that the drop in sales is not because their writing has suffered. (Kris points out that, traditionally, publishers fail to take external factors into consideration when looking at sales numbers.)

Times just keep getting more interesting...

Writing as a Business

2011-07-19T06:30:00.000-05:00

I've been doing a lot of reading and research on the small business side of writing lately. It seems to me that a lot of writers are not very good businesspeople. Of course, in the days when our only option was traditional publishing, we didn't necessarily need to be. We didn't have to think about layout, had no control over the cover art, and nothing at all to do with the money save catching what fell through at the end.

With more and more writers going indie, that's all changing. But what's a newbie business-writer to do? If you don't know the first thing about business, it's hard to figure out what questions you should be asking, much less where to look for answers.

Enter Dean Wesley Smith. Man, if I had found his Think Like a Publisher series sooner, I wouldn't have taken that small business class. If you're thinking about delving into self-publishing, do yourself a favor and read these posts first! Not only do they provide lots of wonderful real-world-experience advice, they answer the most important questions of all: the ones you didn't know to ask.

100 Words About: Overtime

2011-07-15T06:33:00.002-05:00

I'm working 16 hours of overtime this weekend, which basically means I don't get a weekend. This is voluntary, but still rather daunting. The money is great and much appreciated, but it's going to seriously cut into my writing time. (Much of my writing gets done on Sunday mornings when The Husband sleeps in.) I continue to make good progress with my revisions, and I'm proud of that and very happy with the way the book is turning out, but ugh, I'm going to need a vacation soon. I just don't know if I should take it before or after the revisions are done.

Image: renjith krishnan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Twitter, Novel, and Dog

2011-07-12T06:30:00.004-05:00

I have joined The Twitter (as Stephen Colbert likes to say). You can see my feed over on the right there. I'm not making the best use of it yet, as far as the whole social-media-for-writers-thing goes. I'm just getting my feet wet at first. But I'll be posting links to neat articles and things as I find them, as well as updates on my own writing, and things will pick up as I get closer to some bigger things later this year.

Speaking of my own writing, things are going pretty well. I'm making some changes to the novel, nothing too huge. (Well, if you don't call adding two chapters and rewriting one from scratch too huge.) I'm hoping to have all the edits done by the end of the month. I'm also doing research for a new novella, and I'm pleased to announce that my short story "Succor the Child" has been accepted for Burning Bulb Publishing's Big Book of Bizarro (Sept 2011). Oddly, it's not one of my erotic pieces. Bizarro for me.

We've discovered that The Bulldog acts very differently at home than he does at other people's houses. Or, more precisely, on other dogs' territories. We tried bringing over a shar pei that he'd met over at the shar pei's house. At the other house, no problems. Here, The Bulldog started resource guarding: water, treats, bones, even entry into the living room (where The Bulldog sleeps and hangs out with his humans).

The Husband and I have no idea of how to work on this, because The Bulldog doesn't resource guard with humans at all. Just other dogs. And mostly just here. We may just have to be a single-dog family. Which we could do, because The Bulldog has enough awesome for two dogs, but it would've been nice for him to have had a playmate, since he doesn't play with toys. Sigh.

Picture by CarrotCreative

100 Words About: Amazon and Piracy

2011-07-08T06:30:00.000-05:00

Not that long ago I had a post about piracy. Today's post is about a whole new level of piracy: not only stealing someone else's work, but "publishing" it yourself for profit.

PG over at the Passive Voice alerted me to the plight of Ruth Ann Nordin. It seems someone has taken one of her free stories and published it on Amazon and is charging money for it.

Ms. Nordin has tried contacting Amazon, but they aren't doing anything about it. She's actually having to get a lawyer over it.

Now, it's hard to imagine anyone paying $21.99 for "the-path-to-christmas.pdf" but that's not really the point. Amazon needs to respond to these issues quickly. Given that their business depends on internet sales, they need to be careful that they don't develop a reputation as a digital fence for stolen goods.

Happy Fourth of July! (Now With Vuvuzelas)

2011-07-04T22:31:00.004-05:00

It's just after 10:30pm on our first July 4th with The Bulldog. Poor boy. It's so easy to forget just how messed up this dog was when we first got him. I mean, wind was new to him. Wind. He was three and a half years old, and he'd never had wind in his floppy ears.

He's still a little sound sensitive, but he's made huge progress. Normally he alert-barks when he hears a new noise, and then we go see, and he's fine after that.

Fireworks, apparently, are a bridge too far. Trust me, a 90lb American bulldog can make a lot of noise when he feels like it, and loud noises are definitely on his short list. And then there's the freaking vuvuzela. I mean, really, whose bright idea was it to give the tween neighbor kid a vuvuzela? In the middle of town, at night, when I have to work tomorrow?

I love fireworks. I love the Fourth. But for the love of apple pie, stop with the noise making at 10:30p. That's not so much to ask, is it? Assemblage 23 is apparently just not thumpy enough to disguise all the firecrackers. And A23 (among other bands) has gotten the Bulldog through several weeks of road construction outside our house.

At least he doesn't do this during thunderstorms...

Image: Chris Sharp / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

100 Words About: Newspapers

2011-07-01T06:30:00.003-05:00

At my day job, we get three newspapers: the Wisconsin State Journal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and the Wall Street Journal. Every day on my breaks I pour through the Wall Street Journal, looking for news about publishing and technology, as well as reading the book review. Not to mention all the neat articles I find just by skimming the titles--articles I never would've found otherwise, but which I'm glad to have read.

You know what else I love about the newspaper? I get all sorts of interesting news about what's going on in the world, but I don't have to listen to or watch or read anything about some comedian I've never heard of from a show I've never seen who said something stupid, or what reality TV star is currently having a meltdown, or which movie celebrity is adopting a kid from some foreign country. You know why? 'Cause that crap's not news, that's why. The only reason that crap gets play nowadays is because the 24-hour news cycle needs stories, and they know they can get the soap-opera crowd to tune in if they have celebrities and human interest stories.

I'll be very sad if newspapers ever really do go away, because even if they are slanted, they're slanted a heck of a lot less than television. And I'd hate to have to rely solely on BBC for honest-to-God news.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Tuesday Tip: More Contract Stuff

2011-06-28T06:30:00.002-05:00

Lots of interesting articles lately.

Eric at Pimp My Novel talks about the vanishing advance and why it seems to be going the way of the dodo. As far as I'm concerned, publishing might want to rethink that; advances are one of the few remaining advantages to traditional publishing over self-publishing.

The wonderful folks at e-reads provide two emails from Harlequin, who is apparently changing e-book royalties retroactively My new favorite blog, The Passive Voice, gives us a breakdown on the Harlequin contracts.

Keep in mind that 25% of net royalties is average these days even for Big Six publishers, and that 25% of net is probably 15% or less of retail. 15% of net is peanuts.

Novelists, Inc has an in-depth review of some Harlequin contracts. These are a great example of why you really need to understand just what you are signing. Yes, it's technical; so are contracts. Read this one.

And lastly, PG over at The Passive Voice is looking for author feedback on what you would want to see in a book about publishing contracts. This is a book I very much want to read! Please stop by the post and leave a comment for PG with your contract questions or concerns.

Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

100 Words About: Dignity

2011-06-24T06:30:00.000-05:00

I'm watching Stephen Colbert, and I have to wonder: was he born with no shame, or did he have a dignity-ectomy? I wonder that about a lot of the Daily Show crew, but Stephen really takes the cake sometimes. I mean, he makes such a fool of himself that I can't bear to watch and I had to come do my blog post while that bit finished up.

Don't get me wrong, I love The Colbert Report. I think Stephen is awesome; he's often very funny and he does a lot of good things. It's just sometimes the humor is all about making the interviewees as uncomfortable as possible, and I don't much like watching it. (To be fair, I can't watch humiliation movies like Meet the Fockers or that sort of thing either.)

Tuesday Tip: Contracts

2011-06-21T06:30:00.000-05:00

I've not talked a lot about contracts before now because I'm not a contract lawyer and I'm not qualified to give legal advice. Fortunately, Passive Guy is a retired contract lawyer and, while he no longer gives individual advice, he does keep the rest of us informed over at his blog, The Passive Voice.

I'd like to direct your attention to a post PG made yesterday regarding a trend in publishing contracts: the non-compete clause. This tiny clause can mean a world of pain for you, oh intrepid author, so be forewarned.

I've fortunately not run into this yet, as short story contracts don't get quite that ambitious. But whenever you find contract language you don't understand, you should consult an expert. Don't be afraid to propose changes to contracts; just be aware that the party who is most willing to walk away is the one with the better bargaining position. I recommend reading Richard Curtis's How to Be Your Own Literary Agent, and thinking about what contract issues are non-negotiable, and what issues you're willing to compromise on. Thinking about this ahead of time will make it less likely that you'll just sign on the line in blissful glee when that first contract crosses your desk.

Remember, an advance is fleeting, but a deep-seated contract screwing can be forever.

Image: Jeroen van Oostrom / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

100 Words About: Brain 'Splodey

2011-06-17T14:38:00.003-05:00

Write by the Lake is over. I'm sad, but also excited, because I feel like I'm really close to having this thing done--and done in a way I'm proud of, not sick of. Not only that, but I had the privilege of helping five other budding novelists get improve their novels, and boy, those are going to be some FANTASTIC novels! I can't wait to read the revisions that will hopefully be showing up in my inbox soon.

It's been a great week, but my brain is very full. Not so full that I can't work, or that I don't know what to do next, but don't ask me any complex questions right now, ok?

I had expected this would be a one-and-done for me, that I'd bring my novel here and get it fixed and then I wouldn't be back. But I'm thinking maybe next year, I'll bring my next novel. Because not only am I confident that I'll have some novel to bring, but that it'll totally be worth coming back. I'm totally re-energized about my writing, and that's a feeling that's hard to come by in this solitary profession.

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I'm at Write By The Lake!

2011-06-14T06:30:00.000-05:00

Mercy isn't home right now. She's off having her novel critiqued and critiquing other novels and doing overnight revisions and having a marvelous but insane time. Please leave a message after the beep, and she'll return your comments at her earliest convenience. Which may be next year, depending on how revisions go.

BEEP!

100 Words About: Cleaning

2011-06-10T06:30:00.000-05:00

We're looking at adopting a second dog, and the nice people are coming out to the house tomorrow to make sure we're not hoarders or something. (I kid.) So I've spent three hours cleaning, and still have to vacuum the living room. Blarg. Fortunately The Husband is handling the upstairs, which is Cat Litter Mess Central.

There is something sort of primal about a deep clean. Not the brush-the-crumbs-off-the-counter kind of cleaning, but the my-elbows-hurt-from-scrubbing kind. It's like once I get started I just keep going and going. When I realized the mopping cloths I'd bought wouldn't fit my Swiffer, I even (briefly) considered the old hands-and-knees scrubbing routine.

Fortunately I came to my senses. I'm getting too old for that crap. (Or so I tell myself.) So I'm off to try skating around my kitchen with mopping cloths under my feet. Wheee!

Image: scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Contest! Post Me a Book

2011-06-07T06:30:00.006-05:00

Times are definitely too interesting for my taste, as they have involved trips to the ER for both The Husband and The Bulldog, as well as several things around the house breaking. On the upside, Write by the Lake is next week (OMG!) and I and my fellow attendees are busy reading and critiquing our first assignments in preparation. I can't wait!

In the meantime, I've broken out The Cheerleader by Caroline B Cooney, a novel I read back in eighth or ninth grade. Something like that. I can't remember. It's reminiscent of The Picture of Dorian Gray or Faust, but in high school. With a vampire. And cheerleaders. Um.

The reason I took up this particular tale after so many years is that it's one of the few I can recall where the main character is more or less corrupted by the end. Yes, she does eventually "redeem" herself, but loses everything she corrupted herself to gain. And she doesn't redeem herself because she's realized how selfish she's been (she's known that all along) but because she realizes that she's turned into nothing but a junkie looking for her next fix, the vampire's little puppet.

It's as close as I could ever find to a vampire book where the bad guy wins. And I soooo wanted to find one.

I'm sure there are some out there by now, but I haven't had much luck. What I wanted was a book where, instead of freeing the unicorn, Lily succumbed to Darkness. A book where, instead of choosing Stefan, Elena chose Damon. Where Christine chose Erik instead of Raul. In fact, preferably without the love triangle. I want a novel where someone is obsessed, seduced, and corrupted, and is either completely destroyed by it while the seducer lives on to charm another day, or just rolls with it and joins the dark side.

Anyone know of books like that? (Adult or YA, either works. Heck. I'll even allow short fiction.) If so, leave them in the comments! The person who posts the book or story I like best by June 18th, 2011 will get a short story written in their honor. You get to pick the subject, have one of the characters named after you, whatever tickles your fancy. (Excluded from the contest: Phantom by Susan Kay, 'cause she still ends up with Raul at the end, any book mentioned in this post, any Anne Rice books (because I don't want to read them again to try and remember if they fit, I obviously wasn't impressed the first time, although I could see someone making an argument for The Witching Hour) and anything I've written.)

Image: Simon Howden / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

100 Words About: Power Naps

2011-06-03T06:51:00.003-05:00

Every weekday morning, my alarm goes off at 5:45am. It then goes off every 9 minutes after that until 6:30am, when we finally get up.

We have mastered the morning power nap.

For whatever reason, by the time the alarm goes off at 6:30am I'm more or less ready to be awake and alert, whereas when we used to just set the alarm for 6:30am I'd be groggy and zombie-like.

I'm not entirely sure how this works.

I first learned to power nap in college, when I would catch catnaps in the hallway in between classes. (People thought this was weird, but I didn't care.) Now I can drop off to sleep fairly quickly most nights, and in between the alarms I'm usually back asleep and dreaming within seconds.

I think it's a way for my brain to ramp up to full consciousness. By the time that last alarm goes off, I'm usually just dozing and sort of thinking ahead to what I need to do that day.

Do any of you power nap? What's your morning routine?

Image: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Arrr!

2011-05-31T06:45:00.000-05:00

I've talked to many people about piracy (and no, not the Jack Sparrow kind). I've gotten reactions ranging from rabidly anti-piracy to "I wasn't going to buy it anyway."

I don't like piracy, but it doesn't keep me up at night. Thieves steal, that's what they do, and they'll continue to do it no matter what you do or what kind of DRM you come up with. They're smarter than you that way. Not that I wouldn't go through the motions if it was brought to my attention, and I'd certainly be annoyed, but I'm pretty jaded about it, and I don't believe in DRM. All DRM does is make your legitimate customers angry and frustrated, and less likely to buy your stuff in the future.

But if you're going to freaking pirate, at least admit it's stealing. The Husband and I talked to one guy, a few years ago now, who was a total white-bread yuppie-geek college student who bragged about how much stuff he'd pirated. And yet, no matter how we talked him in circles, he wouldn't admit it was theft.

"I wasn't going to buy it anyway, so it's not like they would've gotten my money."

Well, then, if you weren't going to pay for it, you shouldn't have gotten to play it, now should you? Why "waste time" on something that's not worth "wasting money" on?

"The artists got paid, this is just denying my money to big corporations."

No, this is stealing from big corporations. Who pay the artists. Who might decide not to pay the artists if the sales are too crappy because of pirating. Also, if you break into my house and steal my stuff, you are not stealing from my insurance company. You are stealing from me.

"It's not like it cost them anything. It's not like I'm taking a physical CD or something."

Bull. You're taking sales from them. That game or music or book or whatever cost someone money and time to put together. You are stealing because you are reaping the benefits of having the media without having paid for the media. End of story. If you don't want to pay for it, don't partake of the media. Most things have a demo nowadays anyway, so you can try before you buy and make sure it's worth it. Gods, the number of songs I've bought after listening to them for free on YouTube videos put up by the bands...

"Everybody does it."

Don't make me get all Mommy on your rear, punk. Odds are I hit a lot harder than your mommy did, or you might not have this entitlement attitude.

Besides, there is so much stuff out there that is legitimately free, why do you need to steal stuff? If you want that particular media that badly, then it's worth paying for. (Note: The Husband and I are patient people. He waits until the games he wants go on sale at Steam. I wait until SciFi Book Club has a sale, and I make crazy use of the library. We both wait for movies and TV shows to be available on Netflix. Etc.)

I know thieves. Like, people who used to break into your car or mug you on the street kind of thieves. (They got better.) And you know what? They admit that it was stealing. No one justifies lifting a car stereo by claiming that the owner played crappy music, so it's okay.

People are going to pirate stuff. I know that. People are mean, and selfish, and self-centered. But at least sack up and admit that you're stealing, to yourself if no one else.

Image: FreeDigitalPhotos.net

100 Words About: Cold

2011-05-27T23:05:00.003-05:00

I'm from Wisconsin. I'm used to cold, I deal with it for long stretches every year.

I've lived in Wisconsin my whole life, and I have to say this is one of the weirdest springs I can recall. (Caveat: my memory sucks.) Here we are, nearly to June, and I had to put the quilt back on the bed. The low yesterday was 37 degrees. The average low is 50 degrees.

It took forever this year to finally be done with snow, and frost is still a real possibility. The only upside to that is that the crops got planted so late that they probably suffered little damage from all the hail we've had.

The really weird part is that all the trees and the spring plants did their thing anyway, so the maples are nearly fully leafed, and the violets are done and the dandelions have gone to seed and the lilacs are out. You look out the window and it looks like it should be warm.

Please tell me we're not going to skip straight to hot and humid? The nice spring warm-but-not-muggy weather lasts such a short time normally, can we please not just skip it entirely? Pretty please?

Image: Suvro Datta / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

A Quick Post and a Ballgame

2011-05-24T00:26:00.004-05:00

Just got home from a Brewers game, so today's post is going to be a quickie. (Don't you love quickies?) Trash is put out and The Husband is out walking The Bulldog--thank goodness, because I don't think my tendons would take much more tonight.

This was the first Brewer game I've been to in, oh, nearly 30 years. (And yes, I like the old logo better than the new ones.) I don't follow baseball so I had no idea who any of the players were; but oddly, that didn't matter. How quickly one settles into the rhythm of the game, and the cheering for the home team, the hot dogs and fried food, the singing of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" during the seventh inning stretch. (This is traditionally followed by "Roll Out the Barrel" in Wisconsin, which confused the Iowa-born Husband. Hey, we like to polka.)

It was great to see the Brew Crew win, and I had a great time, but I don't think I'd pay regular price to see them play. (Not even against the Twins, our traditional enemy.) Tonight was the $6-a-seat night. Tomorrow (well, today), the seats we had go for $38.00. That's a lot of money to go to a place where a beer costs $7 at a minimum, and Crackerjack costs $6. I can't imagine taking a family of four on a regular price night. Admission alone is astronomical, much less the food. And they wonder why attendance is down?

100 Words About: May Flowers

2011-05-20T07:01:00.003-05:00

Gods know April was rainy enough to bring some awesome May flowers. Every year my yard gets closer to my goal of being nothing but violets and creeping charlie. The violets are just starting to wilt in some of my neighbors' yards, but my honeysuckle are starting to bloom, and while the dogwood has lost most of its petals, the chives are about to flower.

And the lilacs have started blooming. Bliss! I swear there's heroin in lilac blossoms.

The roses had been off to a good start, but the Husband cut them back and now one is taking awhile to put out new growth. The other is well on its way. My lavender plant has new shoots, and the woody nightshade is starting to put out leaves. I transplanted some along the fence, and I think some of the transplants will take. And the creeping bellflower is, well, creeping farther and farther into the rosebed, but I like the stuff. Like the honeysuckle, it just showed up one year, and I approve of that kind of initiative.

Tuesday Tip: The Whiteboard, Post-Its, and Cheat Sheet Method

2011-05-17T06:30:00.006-05:00

The whiteboard-and-Post-Its method is something I learned from Amy Knupp, and it really helped me in planning out my revision process on the novel. Apologies for the picture quality; that's not really what my cellphone is good at, but it works.

The method is similar to storyboarding, but I find it to be even more visually useful. Everyone has different things that work for them; this is just something that seems to work well for me. Take from it what you will.

You start out with a whiteboard that has been divided (use permanent marker, it makes life easier) into a number of squares. You want the squares to be around 5" by 5" so there is plenty of room. Each square represents one chapter.

Then you go to the office supply store (such a dangerous place!) and get a whole bunch of colored Post-Its. Amy recommends the Super Sticky kind, because regular ones will start to fall off after you move them around a couple times. Some of my Super Sticky ones started falling off anyway, so your mileage may vary.

You're going to be using the Post-Its on the board to help you figure out your storyline. If you know this scene comes before that plot point, you can arrange them in roughly where you think they will be, and you can always move them around later as you need to.

Use notes stacked on top of each other to denote separate scenes. "Scene" is sort of loose here—I mostly used it to mean changes in setting, but if the action moved through more than one setting I counted it as one scene.

Figure out what you want your colors to mean. I used the following colors:

Green = setting. This is just a note to myself saying where the scene is taking place.
Pink = scene contains female main character's point of view
Blue = scene contains male main character's point of view
Yellow = Subplot #1
Purple = Subplot #2
Orange = something important to the main plot
Red = blood, sex, or death (hey, it's a vampire novel)

But you can use whatever colors to denote whatever you want, like character arc, clues or red herrings, romantic arc, etc.

Since I already had a working draft, I used the whiteboard to lay out where my novel was currently. I'd already started the revision, so the first two rows (chapters 1 to 8) were pretty well fleshed out. You can see that I left a bunch of white space in the third row. I knew that part needed a lot of revision, and I only had a little idea of what needed to be there (hence the two scenes in that row). You also might notice that a number of scenes are on the line between chapters. This is because the scene starts in one chapter and continues into the next.

As I kept revising and breaking longer chapters in to several shorter ones, I would update the whiteboard and also consult the Post-Its to see what I was short on. One thing I could see was a serious lack of yellow, purple, and blue in the middle. Now, I didn't need a lot of blue for this story, but I wanted to sort of check in between the blue section at the beginning and the blue section near the end. Here you can see I've added a little to the beginning of row three and made a few notes that I haven't found a place for yet down on the bottom row.

After much staring at the whiteboard and scribbling notes, I've found places for the scene bits I came up with previously, and filled in row three. Row four's been modified a little, and I've found places to add in the blue, yellow, and purple I was looking for. The red seems to be nicely distributed.

Then it was on to breaking up my super long chapters at the end. The old manuscript was 15 chapters; the new one ended up being 28. At this point I've got 24, and I've realized I'm going to have to add a chapter into row three. I also need more yellow at the end. In fact, I end up adding a whole bunch to that subplot, which rocked.

Finally, I've got all 28 chapters laid out. I can see that the subplots and the red bits are fairly evenly distributed. Now, as I move into the tweaking and editing stage, I make one more tool to help me. Like a cheat sheet for my novel, I make a document where each chapter is reduced to one line of text which contains the date in story-time (the novel takes place in 1999), the chapter word count, a brief summary, and what color Post-Its I used (not counting green or orange). Here's an example:

"1. 3442. F 05/14/99. Introduce [list of names], world. (PK, BU, YW, PU)"

The cheat sheet lets me find a particular scene faster than the whiteboard does, and also lets me see if any of the chapters are significantly longer or shorter than the others. It also helps me keep track of story time.

Between the cheat sheet and the whiteboard, I have a detailed map of the novel to use as I move around making editorial changes. It made my revision process soooo much easier. For example, by looking at the whiteboard I could see that I needed to add a little more yellow between chapters 13 and 22. By referencing the cheat sheet, I easily found a place in the action where I could slip in an aside, and added a cut scene to chapter 16. (I thought I had taken a final pic, but apparently not.)

When I was done using the whiteboard, I taped all the Post-It stacks to blank pieces of paper and numbered the chapters. I have these in a folder in case I need to go back to them during or after the writer's workshop next month.

While I don't think I could use this method to outline, which is what Amy does (I just can't outline, I have to pants it), I absolutely love it as far as revision goes, and I intend to use it on my next project.

Reading

2011-05-10T06:32:00.003-05:00

Still haven't been able to get the pictures off my phone. Will have a great post once that happens. Hopefully next week.

Books are a sickness and lately I've been having a relapse. I'm listening to two audiobooks at work, The Prestige and How to Win Friends and Influence People. We're listening to A Storm of Swords in the car on the way to and from work.

I have twelve books out from the library, including three books on Constantinople, one on the dark ages, one on Mehmet II, The Forgotten Founding Father, The Gray Man, two books on blogging, Podcasting for Dummies, How to Be Your Own Literary Agent, and The Writer's Journey.

I also have a bunch of books I recently ordered online that I'm dying to read. Plus at least three shelves-worth of books I already own that I either haven't finished or haven't started.

And what did I do yesterday while out running errands?

Stop at the used book store, of course.

Image: Maggie Smith / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

100 Words About: The American Cultural Dichotomy

2011-05-06T06:30:00.001-05:00

Growing up as a WASP in small-town America, many moral values were impressed upon me. I was told that honesty was valued, and honor, and chastity, and loving one's neighbor. I was told that compassion was important, and sharing was praised, and understanding and empathy and charity were supposed to guide my actions.

All of these virtues were given lip service.

But we are a country where cunning is often valued more highly than honesty, and skillful manipulation is admired. People talk about honor to their kids, but they don't practice it, and it's often derided in favor of "sense." ("She said she would do X and he believed her? That boy don't have a lick of sense.")

Maybe it comes from being a country founded on using guerrilla tactics against "honorably" ranked and drawn-up troops. The founding fathers weren't terrorists; they had "sense."

This dichotomy has often left me feeling conflicted. Honesty is the one that gets me the most often. I admire honesty, but I also admire sophistry. (More in the classic sense than the modern, but both apply.) Sophistry requires skill. Honesty requires courage. The fable of George Washington and the cherry tree never seems to end with the serious ass-whuppin' his honesty probably would've gotten him. If it did, I think most Americans would probably have the attitude of "well, snaps to him and all, but that was dumb."

We admire bravery. But we admire it more when it's coupled with cleverness. And we never forgive or forget when it comes to getting caught out.

Image: vichie81 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Tuesday Tip: When to Be Done

2011-05-03T06:30:00.001-05:00

I have until May 15th to make changes to my novel before turning it back in to Write By the Lake, but I realize I'm already mostly done revising this draft.

How do I know? The law of diminishing returns.

As things stand right now, there are still improvements to be made to the prose, but the improvements I'm making now are generally not worth the time I'm putting into them. I'm making small tweaks here and there, tightening things up a little, and yes, it's making the novel better. But not that much better.

This is the point where you need to set the project aside. Submit it somewhere, send it out into the world, and start something new.

I have this nagging feeling in the back of my head that there's a connection I forgot to make involving the new subplot, but for the life of me I can't find it. So my plan is to print the whole thing out again and read through it one more time, and then be done until the retreat starts.

I'm looking forward to getting back to the other projects I was working on before Write By the Lake said yes. 1794 is going down, by God. And then probably the three sample chapters of my non-fiction book proposal so I can get that circulating. I'm hoping to have a draft of 1794 finished by Write By the Lake, but I doubt the non-fiction will be done by then. After that we'll have to see, but there are at least four projects on my back burners that I'd really love to get back to.

If only I didn't need to sleep...

Image: nuchylee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

100 Words About:

2011-04-29T19:25:00.003-05:00

Recently it was revealed that a tenth-grade teacher in Pennsylvania writes erotica on the side.

Now she's looking at losing her job, or at best having to choose between teaching and writing.

Seriously, WTF people? She's been described even by her detractors as "a top-of-the-line teacher." You'd rather get rid of a top-rate teacher than possibly have a frank discussion with your kid about erotic fiction?

What she does on her own time is none of your business. If she writes under a pseudonym and doesn't discuss her work in the classroom, what is your problem? Do you think tenth graders don't know about sex yet? (If so, you're doing your kids a serious disservice.)

One comment from an offended parent said, "Now my son knows, so how is he thinking when he's sitting in her class knowing what she does on the side."

First off, do you expect your kid to be sitting in class thinking about the fact that all their teachers who have kids had sex at some point? Besides, you have a tenth-grade boy. He's going to be thinking about sex all the time anyway. (Don't believe me? Read Angela's Ashes.)

Hell, one of the books I had to read in my ninth-grade English class was Fade by Robert Cormier. That's a book that deals with inappropriate relations between an aunt and nephew, and incest between a brother and sister. That was far more messed up than finding out one of my teachers wrote erotica would be.

(And see, I turned out fine...oh, wait, I turned out to be an erotica writer. Um. But I'm willing to bet the rest of my class didn't. So there.)

Yes, this touches a nerve for me. A couple of nerves, given the systematic attacks on public-school teachers across our nation lately. (Public-school educated and proud of it!)

Of course, I wouldn't care if it turned out my kid's teacher was a stripper on the side, so maybe I'm already going to have a hard time seeing eye-to-eye with these folks.

Things I Would Like to Do

2011-04-26T06:30:00.000-05:00

As I sit here staring at my monitor, wondering what to blog about, I am struck by all the stuff I want to do that I keep pushing off.

I want to clean out the house, first off: a really thorough deep cleaning that involves getting rid of a lot of the crap I've accumulated over the years. Clothes, games, books, knick-knacks, all of it. Fine toothed comb. But that would take a good solid week, I think, to do it like I want to, and if I took a whole week off, shouldn't I be writing?

I want to weed my garden. When we first started looking at houses I couldn't wait to have a garden. But by the time I got a house, I didn't have the energy to garden. I can't even keep up with the small flower-bed that I do have, much less keep the landscaping looking the way it should.

I want to make a wiki for my world-building. Oh, that would be fun. I could spend hours cataloging, cross-referencing, researching... It might even be helpful. But it's not writing.

I want to make a new hat. I lost my old hat. It really wouldn't take more than a few hours. (I haven't made this pattern before.) I used to do a lot of sewing, but it's a lot like writing: it always takes longer than I think it will, and it's a whole lotta work while I'm doing it even if I do love the results. I'm not sure which the Husband dislikes more: me when I've started a sewing project, or me when I have a writing deadline coming up.

I sort of miss having hobbies. I get to game a little bit, but other than that, most of my "hobbies" are related to writing anymore. And I volunteer, when the writing doesn't get in the way. But I don't really consider the volunteering as a hobby. It's above hobby but below writing and day job. I miss feeling like I had time to waste. Not that I don't waste time, but I feel guilty. I should be getting something done! Even though sometimes you really just need to do nothing.

Maybe I need to come up with the envelope-method version of budgeting time. Except whenever I try to schedule my time like that I end up making myself crazy because I try to fit too much in. Hmm, ok, maybe the Husband should budget my time...

100 Words About: Working at Work

2011-04-22T06:30:00.002-05:00

A federal jury ruled yesterday that Mattel does not own the Bratz dolls IP and the company must pay $88.5 million to MGA Entertainment.

The long-running dispute (seven years and counting - Mattel is expected to push for a new trial) centers around whether creator Carter Bryant worked on the Bratz dolls idea while employed by Mattel, with whom Bryant signed an invention agreement in 1999.

How does this apply to writing?

In short: know your contracts, folks. Also, doing work for yourself while you're on the clock is a bad, bad idea. Even though, as things stand now, the jury ruled that Mattel doesn't own the copyright, this is the third ruling on the suit, and Mattel did win one of those. Mattel is also rumored to have spent $400 million on the ongoing litigation.

Do you have $400 million? I sure as hell don't.

Image: scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Pricing Debate

2011-04-19T06:30:00.000-05:00

There's been much talk in the industry regarding the pricing of ebooks, as recently as yesterday over at Nathan Bransford's blog. The industry as a whole still hasn't settled down to a pricing structure for ebooks.

The Big Six have more or less all ascribed to the agency model, wherein the publisher sets the pricing, usually between $10.99 and $14.99. Amazon.com had been setting prices at $9.99. Indie authors (however you want to use the term) have prices starting at free and moving up from there to prices comparable with the Big Six.

Personally, I think $0.99 is too low for a novel, but it's a great price for a short story. I also think more than $10 is too high for most books: I grew up in an era where mass-market paperbacks were $3.99, and that's sort of stuck in my head as the baseline price for a book. (I'm not only dating myself here, I'm also showing the fact I do a lot of book shopping at the half-price stores, which is about the only place you can find a paperback for less than $5 anymore.)

I recently found a non-fiction book I was interested in purchasing because my library doesn't have a copy. I looked it up on Amazon, and it was $16.49 for the paperback, discounted from $24.99. The Kindle edition was $14.74. I don't have a Kindle, but I do have a Nook, so I popped over to B&N where it was selling for $16.82 print, and $14.99 Nookbook.

Now, I like my Nook a lot, but I hate not being able to flip through it, especially with reference books like the one I was contemplating. However, I also hate paying shipping. So my options were: drive to my local B&N and probably have to pay list price; buy it online and either have to pay shipping or find another book to add to my order that I wasn't planning on buying (and would probably blow my book-buying budget for the month [yes, I have to budget for that]); or buy the ebook version, which I could get right now without having to pay shipping or full price or even leave my freaking chair, but then I wouldn't be able to flip through from bit to bit as I like to do with reference books.

My decision?

I didn't buy the book.

Now, if the ebook version had been significantly cheaper than the print version, I probably would've downloaded it and just dealt with the search function. However, with only a couple of dollars difference between the ebook and online pricing, it just doesn't make sense to me to buy the ebook. And since I'm not planning on placing an order in the next couple of weeks, and I have the $17 price point stuck in my head from looking at the websites and don't feel like paying full price, I just added the book to the long list of "books I want to get eventually."

Some people prefer ebook to print, and for them the book might be worth $15, but I still prefer print. I have a really hard time paying $15 for a digital book. However, what really killed this sale was the online discounting of the physical book. Other than a selfless desire to support my local brick-and-mortar chain store (which still employs local people), I'd feel like an idiot paying $24.99 for something I can get for less than $17. Hell, even paying shipping, it would still be cheaper to buy online. But if I looked online and saw a price closer to list, I would either have bought the ebook which would now be closer to $10 off, or I would've driven out to the local store if I really wanted a print copy, because driving out to buy it would be cheaper and much faster than getting it online.

In economic times like these, when feeling like a smart shopper is so key to many people's buying decisions, I think the industry has more to worry about than just the pricing on ebooks.

Image: scottchan / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

100 Words About: Digital Publishing (and Whiskey)

2011-04-15T10:49:00.004-05:00

Publisher's Weekly has an interesting "whiskey poll" from the London Book Fair wherein of those who responded "nearly 80% of publishers expect e-book sales to surpass physical books within 15 years. Of that number, 32% expect e-book sales to overtake print sales within 10 years and 5% within five years. On the other hand, 18% said that e-book sales will never surpass physical book sales."

I spent this week doing an online seminar through How To Write Shop on Digital Self-Publishing for the Newbie. I'm also reading some books on the subject. (Oddly, one digital, one not. BTW, The Husband bought me a Nook! Go, Husband!) While many of the anthologies I've been in have been ebook only already, or had mostly ebook sales, I expect to jump into self-pubbing a few short stories in the next couple of months, just to see what the response is like. I don't know if that 80% of publishers are going to be right...but it doesn't hurt to try to get in before the train leaves, right?

What e-readers do you all use, and where do you download your books from? So far I've gotten a few from Barnes and Noble, of course, but I've also gotten several from Google Books and Archive.org. I expect I'll be using Smashwords, B&N, and Amazon. Where and in what formats would you like to see my work? Leave a comment and let me know!

And now I'm off to WhiskeyFest, woohoo!

Image: Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Short Post

2011-04-12T06:30:00.000-05:00

Short post today as I have lots of studying to do. I'm taking two online courses, plus putting some more time into the novel since the instructor says we can keep reworking them until the 15th of May. My brain's going to explode at some point soon, I'm sure, but hopefully next week things will be back to normal!

100 Words About: Construction

2011-04-08T07:11:00.004-05:00

You know, when the city sent us a letter saying they were going to be doing some utility work and would be replacing part of our sidewalk and driveway apron, I thought the most annoying part would be the $1800-$2000 it was going to cost. But no. I forgot to factor in my sound-sensitive bulldog.

The poor boy just doesn't know what to do. There are noises outside! Noises! Outside! Alert! Alert!

So he's on some meds "to take the edge off," and we've got a little DAP plug-in, and I'm leaving music on when we're out of the house, but ugh. He's making me insane. And I can't even blame him, 'cause he's a guardian breed. This is what he's supposed to do. It's just that now he's gotten so overstimulated that even the cats meowing will set him off.

Besides walking him more or taking a pet-inclusive vacation, anyone have any further suggestions?

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Quiet in My Head

2011-04-05T06:30:00.000-05:00

So I finished the latest draft of the novel last week and sent it off to my instructor for Write By The Lake. For the first time in a long time, I'm excited about that project again. And the fun part will be looking at it at the retreat in June, because a lot of it is really new and I haven't read it much. (Yes, I wrote it, but I haven't read it.) I'm hoping to be pleasantly surprised.

The best thing about finishing a long project like that is the day or two of quiet in my head. That's my brain's vacation. No nagging worries about how I can make the plot tighter, or how I'm going to introduce more conflict. No characters talking to me, trying to work out their scenes. Just quiet. Ahhhhhh.

Of course, that doesn't last long, because there's always another project (or three) waiting in the wings. But at least my brain gives me a couple days of rest before we pick up again.

So far I've re-read the first six chapters of 1794, picked up a bunch of nonfiction research books from the library for the Constantinople novella, and found two short story anthologies I want to submit to. I've got one short story mostly outlined in my head, and another that's about halfway there. And of course Project Toadstool is simmering impatiently on the back burner.

I have to wonder how many other writers write so that they can have that day or two of quiet in between projects... I like the voices in my head, don't get me wrong, but they aren't exactly restful.

Image: luigi diamanti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

100 Words About: April Fools

2011-04-01T17:56:00.004-05:00

It's April first, and Wisconsin played the best April Fool's Day prank.

It freaking snowed.

Great big huge puffy flakes for hours. It was really pretty.

Fortunately, it didn't stick. I guess Wisconsin isn't that cruel.

Spring in Wisconsin is such a see-saw. For weeks we wait with baited breath for the day when the snow finally melts, and I mean really melts, so that when you walk outside you don't have to wonder if the sidewalks are icy. And then we wait on tenter-hooks, wondering if we dare put away the snowblower yet, or the shovel, or our winter boots.

Once my heavy winter coat is hung upstairs in the storage closet, it's staying there until fall, by God. I spent several days shivering on the corner waiting for my carpool when I put it away a little too soon this year. (Note: my gloves have not yet been banished. I'm not that optimistic.)

Still, I love it here. Signs of spring are everywhere. The robins and the redwing blackbirds and the sandhill cranes are all back, and my chives have started to put up shoots, and Lake Monona is almost, almost open. A few more days and the ice will be a memory until next November or so. So I can laugh at my state's little prank.

Ha ha, Wisconsin. Good one.

Now make with the warmer weather already.

Tuesday Tip: Scene Revision Tools

2011-03-29T06:30:00.000-05:00

I've got one more scene to write from scratch before I go back through the novel for the last couple edits. One of the things I'll be taking a real close look at is scenes.

I have a hard time making good scenes. My tendency to pants my way through things means I spend a lot of time figuring out what's going on by writing it out, and that leads to a lot of scenes that are full of extra stuff, as well as scenes that just don't need to be there.

To help make sure my scenes are as tight as possible, I'm going to be using two tools.

The first (courtesy of Amy Knupp) is WITFITPOT. That stands for "what the fuck is the point of this?" Basically, that involves going through each scene and writing down at least three things that make that scene important. If I cut that scene out, what would I have to move to another scene in order for the story to move forward and make sense?

The second (courtesy of James Scott Bell) is HIP, which stands for Hook, Intensity, and Prompt. So, in addition to supplying important information or action in the story, the scene must hook the reader, the scene must have some sort of tension, and the scene must end on a prompt that will make the reader want to find out what happens next.

I'm pretty sure the scenes I have now will all pass muster, but this will allow me to boil the scene down to its essence, and then strengthen the important parts and trim the stuff that's either repetitive or unnecessary. I want this novel to be fairly fast-paced, so I want to make it compact without losing color. I want the action to keep moving without losing the vibrancy of the setting or the nuances of the character interactions.

I'm excited about trying this approach. I've never done quite this in-depth of a postmortem on one of my drafts, and I'm eager to see how it turns out.

Image: twobee / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

100 Words About: The Publishing Industry

2011-03-25T11:12:00.002-05:00

Even established authors are starting to move to self-pub. Other authors are decrying Dorchester's bad practices. The Google Book Settlement is rejected (again), and the judge's suggestion that the parties be able to opt-in instead of opt-out brings up the fact that for many works, even though the author is still alive and kicking and the publisher is still around, sometimes people still aren't sure who has the digital rights.

All this (combined with the fact I recently read Laura Resnick's delightful Rejection, Romance, & Royalties) makes me wonder why anyone would still want to get published traditionally. The horror stories are enough to give me an ulcer and I don't even have an agent yet.

I have to wonder if all we're hearing is the negative side. Surely there must be authors out there who are happy with their publishers? Anyone have some stories about the upside of traditional publishing?

I Need a Personal Assistant

2011-03-22T06:30:00.000-05:00

First, I want to say thanks to Rachel Kramer Bussel for hosting a great chat on Blog Talk Radio on Saturday. It was a lot of fun!

Next up, a lot of writers that I talk to lately are commenting on how they manage their time. "What's your schedule like?" is probably the second most-asked question for writers (right behind "where do you get your ideas?"). People want to know how a writer does what they do.

Nathan Bransford also posted yesterday about how to balance writing with the rest of your life, and if you read the comments you can see that this topic resonates with the writers as well as the readers.

Local (to me, anyway) writer Keir Graff is hosting a few talks about not quitting your day job.

I've talked about priorities before, and I still find that having a clear, delineated schedule is the only way I can keep my sanity. The way I carve out my writing time is to ask myself, "is what I'm doing right now more important to me than getting published?" Sometimes the answer is yes. Then I don't feel bad. Sometimes the answer is no, and I go hit the keyboard. Sometimes the answer is "no, but I really really really need to de-stress right now."

I get caught up in what I "should" be doing. I should be working out. I should clean the house better/more regularly. I should do the checkbook more often. I should call my parents/grandparents/sister/etc. I should spend more time with my pets, who sometimes only see me for five minutes a day.

That kind of thinking will kill you. There is never enough time for everything. Period.

If something is important to you, add it to your priority list. Working out is important to me, and so is volunteering at the animal shelter and spending time with my friends, but finishing the revisions I'm working on in time for the Write By The Lake deadline takes priority right now. After April 1st, the list will shift a bit.

(The Husband still trumps everything, but he's low maintenance, bless him. I think anyone married to a writer needs to be low maintenance, but with enough backbone to occasionally say "I'm stealing you tonight and you can't stop me.")

I've squared with being a bad correspondent. I don't talk enough to the people who are important to me. I admit it. I also admit that people make me tired. They suck away my mojo, which makes it hard for me to write. I think if I didn't have a social butterfly for a husband I'd be a total hermit. I generally only see people regularly if I schedule a recurring event. How pathetic is that? But I don't make time for things unless I schedule it. That's why Monday is for chores, Tuesday is my writing group, Wednesday and Saturday are for volunteering, every other Thursday is one board game night, every other Sunday is my role-playing game, and Sunday evenings are for the rotating board game night. If I didn't schedule things like that, I would never see any of those people or get any of those things done. If I don't schedule my time, I find other ways of filling it up.

(And I don't know how my family would react to "I want to talk to you more, but I need to find a time when we're both free. How are Monday nights from 8pm to 8:30pm? Or every other Thursday at 7pm?")

I used to be very spontaneous, but now I need to have a schedule. I have too much to do, and people I don't want to lose touch with. What I could really use is a personal assistant to just schedule things for me and let me know where I'm supposed to be right now. Then at least I could take the scheduling off my plate...

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Talk to Me Tomorrow!

2011-03-18T17:34:00.003-05:00

I'll be on Blog Talk Radio with editor Rachel Kramer Bussel and others from 2pm to 3pm EST on 03/19/11. Call in with your questions, or listen to the archived show later!

100 (ok, 400) Words About: Writing Facial Expressions

2011-03-18T06:30:00.000-05:00

When I write I get a lot of sensory information in my head, especially for characters that have strong personalities. I see their facial expressions and body language; I hear slight changes in inflection when they speak. My supernatural characters tend to be very heavily scent-influenced as well, but smells are actually easier for me because I can use a few punchy words to get the effect that I want, and who's going to tell me that fear doesn't smell like tin?

Normally you'd think this all this visualization is good, but at times it can be a total PITA. One of my favorite characters, Gabriel (who has a cameo in A Wild Hunt), has a very strong personality but communicates very often by slight changes in facial expression. (Or, more precisely, he's not trying to communicate and the slight changes are all the other characters have to go on.) This frustrates the hell out of me. One of his favorite expressions looks like this: one eyebrow raised, head cocked slightly to one side, a smile on his lips that quirks up higher on one corner than the other, with the smile being mild or hard or thin or brittle or predatory (etc) depending on his mood.

It takes far longer to write that than it would to see it, and it's boring to read as well. And there are only so many times you want to write variations on "he smiled," "he smirked," and "his mouth quirked up at one corner."

Then there are expressions I can hardly put into words. You know the expression people get when they're weighing one thing against another, and their face screws up, their eyes squint, their shoulders hunch and they either make a weighing gesture with both hands or hold one out flat and tip it from side to side, usually while saying "eh"? I hate trying to write that expression. I usually end up giving the character bits of dialogue that they wouldn't normally say, because (again) there are only so many times you can write "he considered" or "he shrugged," and they just don't convey quite the same information as the visual. Sometimes it's just not worth the effort of trying to get that across.

What are some of your favorite expressions? Which ones do you have trouble writing? Which do you never want to see in print again? (I'm betting "she bit her lip" is on that list…)

Image: Salvatore Vuono / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

The Ides of March

2011-03-15T06:30:00.005-05:00

I was going to make a joke to the effect of "otherwise known as 'Stab a Dictator Day'" but I didn't want one of my fellow Wisconsinites deciding to take it as a call to action. :\ Still, I'd like to take a moment to reflect on the great event.

2055 years ago 60 senators stabbed Gaius Julius Caesar to death.

Why do we still know this?

It certainly wasn't the first time the Roman Senate had gotten their hands bloody. You'd think we'd all remember Tiberius Gracchus, that revolutionary Roman who figured out ways to game the Roman system and so angered the Senate with his appropriations of what they considered their prerogative that they eventually murdered him and many of his followers. Tiberius Gracchus was (as far as I know) the very first Roman to be murdered by a pack of senators, but few moderns have ever even heard of him.

In fact, Tiberius Gracchus's heir and younger brother Gaius met basically the same fate a decade later. You'd think two brothers being beaten to death and thrown in the Tiber River by an irate Senate ten years apart would be more impressive than one man getting stabbed to death.

And as for generals getting crazy with the dicatorship, Caesar had nothing on Sulla.

So what was it about Caesar's death that made it such a big part of world history that it resonates down to today?

Two things.

The first is Caesar himself. The man was a master of the cult of personality - at least, he was with the lower orders. With the Senate, not so much. Still, he was a charismatic person with strong goals and the will to achieve them, who was not afraid of hard work or battle, who was incredibly clever and tenacious and not afraid to take risks. In short, Caesar was the man every man dreams of either following or being.

Not that he was perfect. He was arrogant and greedy for honors and prestige, among other things. He had a weakness for women and was on many occasions forgiving of his enemies when he needed to be ruthless.

Dynamic and flawed, Caesar is a perfect main character.

The second thing that keeps the Ides of March so alive in modern societies is that it kicked off the fall of the Roman Republic and the beginning of the Roman Empire. I won't go into the whole story here, but all that stuff with Octavian (later Augustus), and Marc Anthony and Cleopatra? That all happened because 60 senators decided Caesar had gotten too big for his britches.

The Ides of March is one helluva hook. From there you have stirring speeches and political theater. You have Anthony and Octavian working together against the senators only to turn on each other once the mutual threat was vanquished. You have the great love story, the fabulous locales and lavish feasts, the pitched battles, the impending doom and the tear-jerker of the lovers' committing suicide rather than falling into the enemy's hands, and the underdog triumphing despite all odds to go on and found one of the greatest empires the world has ever seen.

Of course we're all still talking about it!

This is good storytelling on an epic scale! And even better, it actually happened!

Even if you, young writer, take nothing away from learning about these events in regards to politics or the broader impact on history, it's worth studying for no other reason than learning about what makes a gripping story. These events happened over two thousand years ago, and we're still fascinated. We're still finding new ways to tell the story. It's that good.

Now go forth and make your own stories just as epic.

100 Words About: "Cry Wolf"

2011-03-11T06:30:00.006-06:00

Check out EM Lynley's blog to read a post I did for her on my short story "Cry Wolf," as well as posts by some of the other authors of Bedknobs and Beanstalks! I talk about my favorite fairy tales, how I came up with the story, and a bit about world-building. You can read an excerpt of this fun m/m erotic romance at my website.

For more about pookhas/skinshifters, read my free m/f romantic novella "A Wild Hunt."

If Bedknobs and Beanstalks isn't enough to slake your thirst for revisiting classic fairy tales, or if you prefer the girls to the boys, you can also check out Like a Thorn: BDSM Fairy Tales, which includes my story "The Princess and Peony." An excerpt can be found here.

Interesting Times

2011-03-08T06:30:00.003-06:00

It's interesting times all over the world, and yours truly has not been excepted. Politics aside, I've started volunteering at the local animal shelter that we got The Bulldog from, which has been very rewarding and relaxing, for the most part. (It's sad, of course, when the animals have to get put down, and heartbreaking at times to see the terrible shape they're in when they come to us.)

The publishing industry continues to get stood on its head, and the ever-awesome Nathan Bransford has a great post on self-publishing ebooks and what it all means.

Speaking of which, I'm signed up to learn how to join that bandwagon with Lori Devoti's Digital Self-Publishing for the Newbie class. (I have my eye on you, 1794.)

And I'm stoked (yes, just dated myself there) to announce that it's official - I'm going to Write by the Lake! My dreams of getting professional-level feedback on the beast that is my vampire novel are soon to be realized! Just the feedback I got on the first twenty pages has already helped me make the stupid thing tons better (yes, I'm still sick of it, but now I'm excited about it as well as sick, LOL) so I can't wait to see how the full week turns out.

So, the game plan: finish novel revisions by April, finish draft of 1794, Digital Self-Publishing for the Newbie, and see where that takes me. Then possibly work up the Constantinople story I've been dying to do, and see about self-pubbing it and 1794 as a test. Then it's back to Project Toadstool (and possibly some kids books I've thought of in the meantime) before Write by the Lake. Oh, and reading all the other stories for WbtL. Yeah, that'll keep me busy.