Is this what I really want?
That's the question I find myself
asking right now. For a month or so after publishing Jack Manley I was
awash with enthusiasm for writing. I had an Amazon store to maintain, an
internet presence to establish, blogs to run and most importantly,
books to write. This was going to by the focal point of my existence for
the foreseeable future, and I was happy with that. I felt like I had
found what I wanted to do with my life.
So why in the last
fortnight has my productivity slowed to a crawl? Why am I watching
Doctor Who, browsing message boards, playing Hearts and basically
spending my spare time doing anything else except for writing? It's
certainly not that I don't have the time. Yes, I have a full-time job
and a family, but I can always find time to write. If I can play Hearts
for three hours as I did on Friday night, there are no excuses.
So
I find myself asking the question: do I really want to be a writer?
The answer in my head is always yes, and yet my actions say the
opposite, and I don't know why. It could be fear of failure. It could
be the thought that my writing probably won't have any lasting value, so
what's the point of doing it. It could just be plain laziness. I
really don't know what the problem is.
What I do know is that
this is a pattern. I go through cycles. Sometimes I feel like I need
to experience everything the world has to offer, to constantly fill my
brain with stories and songs and ideas, and to create as much as I can.
Then there are times when I feel the futility of life, and the
realisation that in a hundred years I and everyone I ever met will be
gone and forgotten, and anything I accomplish with my life is probably
pointless. Needless to say, those are not my most productive periods.
The
good news is that I eventually snap out of my black moods, and get back
to the business of living. Tonight I've been productive. Perhaps I
just need to accept that this is how I am, and that there will be
periods of productivity mixed with periods of procrastination. And to
always answer the question I keep asking myself: hell yes, I want to be a
writer.
WHAT ELSE I'M DOING
I'm on a big Edgar
Rice Burroughs kick at the moment, devouring his Tarzan novels. I've
read the first two, and they are much more interesting than I would have
suspected. You would never see movie Tarzan wandering the streets of
Paris in a depression, drinking absinthe and going to the opera. Or
working as a French secret agent.
As a novelist, Burroughs is
what I would charitably label "unpolished". His books are a structural
mess, and his reliance on coincidence to move the plot forward borders
on the absurd. Nevertheless, they work. They just barrel forwards with
breathless prose, and if a certain plot twist doesn't make sense it
doesn't matter, because Tarzan's about to snap a lion's neck with a full
nelson. Burroughs is probably the earliest writer that I can read for
pure pleasure, because his books are just packed with event. You never
have to worry about slow patches in one of his books, that's for
certain.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I've Been Reading
The Beasts of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
About Time Vol. 2 by Tat Wood and Lawrence Miles
What I've Been Watching
Doctor Who: The Highlanders
Doctor Who: Revelation of the Daleks
Doctor Who: Remembrance of the Daleks
Iron Man 3
Looper
Oblivion
What I've Been Playing
Need for Speed: The Run on the Nintendo Wii
Monday, September 23, 2013
Tuesday, September 17, 2013
The Proof Copy
Last Monday I received the proof copy of Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity
from Createspace. It was a big surprise to get it so early. I ordered
it on Wednesday September 4th, and it arrived on the 9th. Keeping in
kind that it had to be delivered from America to Australia, that is some
prompt service. I paid for the fastest shipping, because there was no
way that I could wait two months for the book to get here, and it was
money well spent. This what the book looks like below:
On the whole I'm pretty happy with how it looks. It is unmistakably a book with designed by an amateur, but I am okay with this. I am an amateur designer after all, and I've tackled this project as something of a control freak; for my first book, I really wanted to do everything from soup to nuts. It's a minor problem, and did little to dull the giddy thrill I got when I first opened this bad boy up. It's one thing to have my book for sale in the digital ether, but quite another to hold it in my hands and rifle the pages.
I'm super-keen to approve the proof and get it up on the Amazon store, but instead I have to exercise patience. There are things to be checked. I have to make sure that the page numbers are all correct, and that the headers are formatted properly. The whole book needs to be scoured for errors, which is going to take a few days at least. I have already found a few, which is galling. How did they escape my notice the first thousand times I read through it? Never mind, there's nothing for it but to roll up my sleeves and get back to work perfecting the print and digital versions. It seems that I have work to do on Jack Manley yet.
WHAT ELSE I'M WORKING ON
The Lightless Labyrinth, my second novel, proceeds at a good clip. I'm nearly 8,000 words in, and I feel like it's coming together. The biggest concern I had was with the sheer number of characters to introduce: there are nine main characters, six of lesser importance, and about a dozen extras milling around in the first chapter. It really is a lot of people to get in there, and I had doubts about my ability to introduce them all organically. On the other hand, with the story I'm telling I see no logical way to leave them out.
One thing working in my favour is that I'm using a lot of archetypal fantasy characters. There's a knight, a thief, a barbarian, a sorceress, and other such fantasy stereotypes. It's not an original set-up by any means; I'm taking the standard Dungeons & Dragons subterranean delve and trying my best to wring a damn good story out of it, and to do that I'm using archetypes. What I've found is that this helps me introduce the characters without using a flood of names. I could introduce Artis, Beren, Garath and Myrio all at once. But I know that I have trouble keeping up with names at the beginning of a book, and I doubt that I'm the dumbest guy to ever pick up a fantasy book. So I'm introducing them instead as the thief, the priest, the knight and the swordswoman, archetypal descriptions that I feel stick in the mind better. The opening scenes are interspersed with flashbacks in which the characters explain their reasons for wanting to enter the Lightles Labyrinth, and thereafter I use their real names. The characters are introduced at the start with easily-defined roles and labels, and I intend to gradually flesh them out and move past the stereotypes into more interesting territory. That's the plan, anyway.
Using labels instead of names could get clunky, of course, and it still hasn't helped me with introducing my lesser characters. Still, its the best solution I've hit upon so far, and I think it's working well.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I've Been Reading
Grammar Essentals for Dummies by Wendy M. Anderson
The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
What I've Been Watching
Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons
Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks
Doctor Who: The Caves of Androzani
Despicable Me 2
The Neverending Story
What I've Been Playing
Need for Speed: The Run on the Nintendo Wii
On the whole I'm pretty happy with how it looks. It is unmistakably a book with designed by an amateur, but I am okay with this. I am an amateur designer after all, and I've tackled this project as something of a control freak; for my first book, I really wanted to do everything from soup to nuts. It's a minor problem, and did little to dull the giddy thrill I got when I first opened this bad boy up. It's one thing to have my book for sale in the digital ether, but quite another to hold it in my hands and rifle the pages.
I'm super-keen to approve the proof and get it up on the Amazon store, but instead I have to exercise patience. There are things to be checked. I have to make sure that the page numbers are all correct, and that the headers are formatted properly. The whole book needs to be scoured for errors, which is going to take a few days at least. I have already found a few, which is galling. How did they escape my notice the first thousand times I read through it? Never mind, there's nothing for it but to roll up my sleeves and get back to work perfecting the print and digital versions. It seems that I have work to do on Jack Manley yet.
WHAT ELSE I'M WORKING ON
The Lightless Labyrinth, my second novel, proceeds at a good clip. I'm nearly 8,000 words in, and I feel like it's coming together. The biggest concern I had was with the sheer number of characters to introduce: there are nine main characters, six of lesser importance, and about a dozen extras milling around in the first chapter. It really is a lot of people to get in there, and I had doubts about my ability to introduce them all organically. On the other hand, with the story I'm telling I see no logical way to leave them out.
One thing working in my favour is that I'm using a lot of archetypal fantasy characters. There's a knight, a thief, a barbarian, a sorceress, and other such fantasy stereotypes. It's not an original set-up by any means; I'm taking the standard Dungeons & Dragons subterranean delve and trying my best to wring a damn good story out of it, and to do that I'm using archetypes. What I've found is that this helps me introduce the characters without using a flood of names. I could introduce Artis, Beren, Garath and Myrio all at once. But I know that I have trouble keeping up with names at the beginning of a book, and I doubt that I'm the dumbest guy to ever pick up a fantasy book. So I'm introducing them instead as the thief, the priest, the knight and the swordswoman, archetypal descriptions that I feel stick in the mind better. The opening scenes are interspersed with flashbacks in which the characters explain their reasons for wanting to enter the Lightles Labyrinth, and thereafter I use their real names. The characters are introduced at the start with easily-defined roles and labels, and I intend to gradually flesh them out and move past the stereotypes into more interesting territory. That's the plan, anyway.
Using labels instead of names could get clunky, of course, and it still hasn't helped me with introducing my lesser characters. Still, its the best solution I've hit upon so far, and I think it's working well.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I've Been Reading
Grammar Essentals for Dummies by Wendy M. Anderson
The Return of Tarzan by Edgar Rice Burroughs
What I've Been Watching
Doctor Who: Terror of the Autons
Doctor Who: Genesis of the Daleks
Doctor Who: The Caves of Androzani
Despicable Me 2
The Neverending Story
What I've Been Playing
Need for Speed: The Run on the Nintendo Wii
Wednesday, September 4, 2013
Measuring Success
I'm not really sure whether to call this week a success or not.
On the one hand I completed formatting my novel for Createspace, and redesigned the cover for print. The files are currently with the Createspace team, and I will find out soon if they are ready to print or not. If they are I'll have physical copies ready to go pretty shortly. That sounds to me like a good week's work.
On the other hand, I have been procrastinating like mad. I haven't written any blog entries, and I have barely done any work at all on The Lightless Labyrinth. What I have done a lot of is spending time with my family, going to bed at a reasonable hour, and watching movies. All of these are good things, but they don't help me get any writing done. My plan once I posted Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity was to write every night, both fiction and blog entries. That hasn't happened as often as I would like.
I think that I'm going to have to put this week square on the middle of the success/failure scale. I've accomplished some important things, but not gotten as much work done as i should have. Part of the reason I've started keeping this blog is to call myself out for being a lazy bastard, so I guess that I had to test it out eventually. If all goes to plan, this will be the first and last time.
WHAT ELSE I'M DOING
I'm watching (and planning to watch) a lot of Doctor Who. With the 50th anniversary of the show fast approaching, I've decided to do a Who mini-marathon, watching one story per Doctor. With eleven stories to watch, I figure I will be kept busy with this for the next month or so.
For the first Doctor, William Hartnell, I chose The Aztecs. It's an artifact from the days when the show did pure historicals, untainted by sci-fi influences (aside from the main character's conveyance, of course). It's also my favourite from the first season, a great piece of pseudo-Shakespearean drama in which the cast gets embroiled in Aztec culture and the practice of human sacrifice. What's notable about it from a modern perspective is the character of the Doctor, who is quite prepared to move on without doing anything to stop the sacrifices, or help those being killed. It wouldn't be too long before the character's attitude would change, a necessary step in the process of him moving from ensemble player to heroic lead, but I still love Hartnell's original portrayal.
The Invasion is the story I chose for the second Doctor, aka Patrick Troughton. It's only five years on from The Aztecs, but it feels like a completely different show. Not only has the cast changed completely, but the show has moved from the studio-bound feel of a stage-play to a slick thriller with plenty of location filming. The Doctor is firmly in hero mode by this time. The TARDIS is the only recognisable feature between this and The Aztecs.
I've only watched half of The Invasion so far, and it's a very slow build. I'm a fan of the measured pace of classic Who, but even I admit that it drags sometimes. This story avoids that by constantly introducing new players and elements, and using them in different combinations. Doctor Who has a lot of long stories, and the successful ones are those that don't get stuck with the same characters and situations for too long.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I've Been Reading
Grammar Essentals for Dummies by Wendy M. Anderson
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
What I've Been Watching
Doctor Who: The Aztecs
Doctor Who: The Invasion
Despicable Me
What I've Been Playing
Need for Speed: The Run on the Nintendo Wii
On the one hand I completed formatting my novel for Createspace, and redesigned the cover for print. The files are currently with the Createspace team, and I will find out soon if they are ready to print or not. If they are I'll have physical copies ready to go pretty shortly. That sounds to me like a good week's work.
On the other hand, I have been procrastinating like mad. I haven't written any blog entries, and I have barely done any work at all on The Lightless Labyrinth. What I have done a lot of is spending time with my family, going to bed at a reasonable hour, and watching movies. All of these are good things, but they don't help me get any writing done. My plan once I posted Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity was to write every night, both fiction and blog entries. That hasn't happened as often as I would like.
I think that I'm going to have to put this week square on the middle of the success/failure scale. I've accomplished some important things, but not gotten as much work done as i should have. Part of the reason I've started keeping this blog is to call myself out for being a lazy bastard, so I guess that I had to test it out eventually. If all goes to plan, this will be the first and last time.
WHAT ELSE I'M DOING
I'm watching (and planning to watch) a lot of Doctor Who. With the 50th anniversary of the show fast approaching, I've decided to do a Who mini-marathon, watching one story per Doctor. With eleven stories to watch, I figure I will be kept busy with this for the next month or so.
For the first Doctor, William Hartnell, I chose The Aztecs. It's an artifact from the days when the show did pure historicals, untainted by sci-fi influences (aside from the main character's conveyance, of course). It's also my favourite from the first season, a great piece of pseudo-Shakespearean drama in which the cast gets embroiled in Aztec culture and the practice of human sacrifice. What's notable about it from a modern perspective is the character of the Doctor, who is quite prepared to move on without doing anything to stop the sacrifices, or help those being killed. It wouldn't be too long before the character's attitude would change, a necessary step in the process of him moving from ensemble player to heroic lead, but I still love Hartnell's original portrayal.
The Invasion is the story I chose for the second Doctor, aka Patrick Troughton. It's only five years on from The Aztecs, but it feels like a completely different show. Not only has the cast changed completely, but the show has moved from the studio-bound feel of a stage-play to a slick thriller with plenty of location filming. The Doctor is firmly in hero mode by this time. The TARDIS is the only recognisable feature between this and The Aztecs.
I've only watched half of The Invasion so far, and it's a very slow build. I'm a fan of the measured pace of classic Who, but even I admit that it drags sometimes. This story avoids that by constantly introducing new players and elements, and using them in different combinations. Doctor Who has a lot of long stories, and the successful ones are those that don't get stuck with the same characters and situations for too long.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I've Been Reading
Grammar Essentals for Dummies by Wendy M. Anderson
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
What I've Been Watching
Doctor Who: The Aztecs
Doctor Who: The Invasion
Despicable Me
What I've Been Playing
Need for Speed: The Run on the Nintendo Wii
Tuesday, August 27, 2013
Spreading My Influence
It's been a little over a week since I put Jack Manley up for sale, and it's consuming my life.
I mean this in the most positive sense possible. I spend nearly every waking moment excited about the prospects of being a self-published author. I am constantly checking my sales reports, and thinking of ways that I can get my book into more people's hands and brains. It's an obsession, but in a way it's what I always wanted to be. For the first time in years I feel as though my life is on the right track.
Since I launched the book I have enrolled it in the Kindle Select Program. This means that for about the next three months the e-book is exclusive to Amazon's Kindle Store. In exchange for that, the book is available for free to Kindle Prime subscribers. I also get five days on which I can give away the book for free. I'm not looking to do this just yet, but maybe in a month or so. I'm very interested to see how effective the free promo is as a way of getting the book out there.
More importantly, I am preparing to launch Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity in print. I'm using Createspace, which is Amazon's print-on-demand service, and so far it seems very user friendly. The formatting is a little tricky, but there are plenty of blogs and tutorials that show how it's done. All I need to do now is prepare the cover (including the back cover and the spine) and I will be good to go.
WHAT ELSE I'M DOING
To be honest, with all the work I've been doing above there hasn't been time for much else, but I have just finished reading Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos by Terrance Dicks.
You may scoff, but for Doctor Who fans in the 1970s and 1980s, the Doctor Who book range was important. Here in Australia the show was on permanent repeat every week-night, but you never saw anything from earlier than about 1975. In England I understand that repeats were very few and far between. For most fans the books were the only way that older stories could be experienced, and so the books are significant in a way that novel spin-offs of other sci-fi shows just aren't.
I bought some of these books out of nostalgia a year or so back, and finally pulled one down from the shelf last week because I was looking for something light to read. I chose a book by Terrance Dicks, because he wrote probably about 90% of them. If I was going to sample the style of these books, I might as well go to their most prolific author.
I was instantly struck by how brutally efficient the prose is. Dicks has to cram almost two hours of television into a 140 page book, and he absolutely does not piss about. The descriptions are terse, and a lot of things are said up-front in blatant disregard for the "show-don't-tell" rule. Viewpoint skips from one character to another within a single scene. A lot of things that various writers and teachers have warned me against are in this book, and yet it works. Dicks has to be as efficient as possible, to cram as much exposition and plot as he can into the smallest number of words. I think he does it rather well. It's an interesting example of form dictating style.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I'm Reading
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
English Grammar Essentials for Dummies
Marvel Comics circa 1964
What I'm Listening To
Powerslave by Iron Maiden
What I'm Playing
Hot Wheels: Beat That! on the Nintendo Wii (yeah, I know I've been weeks on this one. My son is obsessed with it, and playing with him is about the only video gaming I do these days.)
I mean this in the most positive sense possible. I spend nearly every waking moment excited about the prospects of being a self-published author. I am constantly checking my sales reports, and thinking of ways that I can get my book into more people's hands and brains. It's an obsession, but in a way it's what I always wanted to be. For the first time in years I feel as though my life is on the right track.
Since I launched the book I have enrolled it in the Kindle Select Program. This means that for about the next three months the e-book is exclusive to Amazon's Kindle Store. In exchange for that, the book is available for free to Kindle Prime subscribers. I also get five days on which I can give away the book for free. I'm not looking to do this just yet, but maybe in a month or so. I'm very interested to see how effective the free promo is as a way of getting the book out there.
More importantly, I am preparing to launch Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity in print. I'm using Createspace, which is Amazon's print-on-demand service, and so far it seems very user friendly. The formatting is a little tricky, but there are plenty of blogs and tutorials that show how it's done. All I need to do now is prepare the cover (including the back cover and the spine) and I will be good to go.
WHAT ELSE I'M DOING
To be honest, with all the work I've been doing above there hasn't been time for much else, but I have just finished reading Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos by Terrance Dicks.
You may scoff, but for Doctor Who fans in the 1970s and 1980s, the Doctor Who book range was important. Here in Australia the show was on permanent repeat every week-night, but you never saw anything from earlier than about 1975. In England I understand that repeats were very few and far between. For most fans the books were the only way that older stories could be experienced, and so the books are significant in a way that novel spin-offs of other sci-fi shows just aren't.
I bought some of these books out of nostalgia a year or so back, and finally pulled one down from the shelf last week because I was looking for something light to read. I chose a book by Terrance Dicks, because he wrote probably about 90% of them. If I was going to sample the style of these books, I might as well go to their most prolific author.
I was instantly struck by how brutally efficient the prose is. Dicks has to cram almost two hours of television into a 140 page book, and he absolutely does not piss about. The descriptions are terse, and a lot of things are said up-front in blatant disregard for the "show-don't-tell" rule. Viewpoint skips from one character to another within a single scene. A lot of things that various writers and teachers have warned me against are in this book, and yet it works. Dicks has to be as efficient as possible, to cram as much exposition and plot as he can into the smallest number of words. I think he does it rather well. It's an interesting example of form dictating style.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I'm Reading
Tarzan of the Apes by Edgar Rice Burroughs
English Grammar Essentials for Dummies
Marvel Comics circa 1964
What I'm Listening To
Powerslave by Iron Maiden
What I'm Playing
Hot Wheels: Beat That! on the Nintendo Wii (yeah, I know I've been weeks on this one. My son is obsessed with it, and playing with him is about the only video gaming I do these days.)
Tuesday, August 20, 2013
The Thing Is Done!
I am now an official self-published author.
On Sunday I posted Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity up on the Kindle store, and it became available for purchase early Monday morning. It's a pretty exciting experience, and I spent all day at work with one eye on my Kindle profile page.
Sales have been sluggish so far, but I'm not particularly concerned about that yet. It's early days, and my marketing has been somewhere slightly above zero. I'm currently perusing sites like Goodreads and Bookdaily, to see if I can use them to spread knowledge of the book's existence. Mostly I'm happy that somebody - anybody - is going to be reading the thing.
Uploading the book was a mostly painless experience. All I needed was the cover as a JPEG file and the book as a Word document. Then I filled in a few fields, set the price, ticked a few check boxes and it was done. Choosing the categories that the book would be listed under was a bit of a head-scratcher. I opted for Action/Adventure and Sci-fi - Action/Adventure; a bit of an overlap, but there weren't many other categories that seemed appropriate.
The most time-consuming part of the process was checking what the book's format looked like. There's a preview option, which supposedly shows how the book will appear on various Apple devices. It's a bit finicky and inconsistent: if you look at a page, then go back to it later, chances are some bit of the formatting will look different. In the end I threw my hands up and declared good enough. If there are problems, I trust my people to notify me of them.
The book is currently selling for $2.99, which I think is very reasonable for a short novel (a bit over 200 pages). You can find it here; I'd appreciate it if any of you went over there and at least checked out the free preview. As a friend of mine pointed out, Jack Manley does rocket-punch a giant dinosaur in the prologue; you'll work out very quickly if this book is for you or not.
WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN WORKING ON
Last night I started work on my second novel, The Lightless Labyrinth. (I can do this now that the weight of Jack Manley has been lifted from my conscience.) The premise is simple: ten sociopaths go into a mine together looking for treasure. More accurately, it's the average Dungeons & Dragons set-up, which I think has a lot of story potential when you boil it right down. What would happen if you took a bunch of social outcasts who barely know each other, and put them in a dangerous labyrinth where their goals may or may not match up? Murders is the obvious answer. I'm about 2,000 words in and it's all progressing quite well. The major difficulty at the moment is introducing the characters. There are a lot, and they're all in it right from the beginning. It's a challenge, and I don't think I'll know if I've succeeded until I'm a few more chapters in.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I'm Reading
Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos by Terrance Dicks
Arounf the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
Marvel Comics circa 1964
What I'm Watching
Hulk (the movie that starred Eric Bana)
What I'm Listening To
Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden
What I'm Playing
Hot Wheels: Beat That! on the Nintendo Wii
On Sunday I posted Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity up on the Kindle store, and it became available for purchase early Monday morning. It's a pretty exciting experience, and I spent all day at work with one eye on my Kindle profile page.
Sales have been sluggish so far, but I'm not particularly concerned about that yet. It's early days, and my marketing has been somewhere slightly above zero. I'm currently perusing sites like Goodreads and Bookdaily, to see if I can use them to spread knowledge of the book's existence. Mostly I'm happy that somebody - anybody - is going to be reading the thing.
Uploading the book was a mostly painless experience. All I needed was the cover as a JPEG file and the book as a Word document. Then I filled in a few fields, set the price, ticked a few check boxes and it was done. Choosing the categories that the book would be listed under was a bit of a head-scratcher. I opted for Action/Adventure and Sci-fi - Action/Adventure; a bit of an overlap, but there weren't many other categories that seemed appropriate.
The most time-consuming part of the process was checking what the book's format looked like. There's a preview option, which supposedly shows how the book will appear on various Apple devices. It's a bit finicky and inconsistent: if you look at a page, then go back to it later, chances are some bit of the formatting will look different. In the end I threw my hands up and declared good enough. If there are problems, I trust my people to notify me of them.
The book is currently selling for $2.99, which I think is very reasonable for a short novel (a bit over 200 pages). You can find it here; I'd appreciate it if any of you went over there and at least checked out the free preview. As a friend of mine pointed out, Jack Manley does rocket-punch a giant dinosaur in the prologue; you'll work out very quickly if this book is for you or not.
WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN WORKING ON
Last night I started work on my second novel, The Lightless Labyrinth. (I can do this now that the weight of Jack Manley has been lifted from my conscience.) The premise is simple: ten sociopaths go into a mine together looking for treasure. More accurately, it's the average Dungeons & Dragons set-up, which I think has a lot of story potential when you boil it right down. What would happen if you took a bunch of social outcasts who barely know each other, and put them in a dangerous labyrinth where their goals may or may not match up? Murders is the obvious answer. I'm about 2,000 words in and it's all progressing quite well. The major difficulty at the moment is introducing the characters. There are a lot, and they're all in it right from the beginning. It's a challenge, and I don't think I'll know if I've succeeded until I'm a few more chapters in.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I'm Reading
Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos by Terrance Dicks
Arounf the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
Marvel Comics circa 1964
What I'm Watching
Hulk (the movie that starred Eric Bana)
What I'm Listening To
Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden
What I'm Playing
Hot Wheels: Beat That! on the Nintendo Wii
Tuesday, August 13, 2013
Pre-Publication Preparations
As shown in my post from a few days ago, I'm publishing my first e-book
on Sunday. I haven't been writing anything else in the lead-up to this;
getting Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity up to scratch
has been my sole focus. I want to unburden my mind of it before I
embark on another novel, and to be honest I'm daunted by the idea of
working on something else. I just spent eight years working on and off
on the same thing, so it's a little hard to switch gears, you know?
The process of getting the book ready hasn't been as difficult as I had feared. I designed the cover myself, with a minimum of fuss and (most importantly) no expense. I even designed the thing using MS Paint, which has got to be against some kind of law. What can I say, it's the only image manipulation program that I can wrap my head around.
The editing process has been pretty time-consuming, I'll admit. Officially there have been seven drafts, but in reality it's probably double that. I didn't get the book professionally assessed, but I did get some professional feedback from some editors after it won second prize in a competition. Mostly I went with my own instincts based on that feedback and the feedback of some trusted associates. The final draft bears only a mild resemblance to my chaotic first draft, so at least I can say that I put a lot of work into it, regardless of the final result.
I've read in various places that an e-book writer should not design their own cover, or do their own editing. I'd love to have gotten some outside help, but unfortunately money has been very tight for me lately. It wasn't an option, so I knuckled down and did the work on my own. I'm also something of a control freak when it comes to my own stuff; I'm actually happier to have done my own cover design, and I think the result is great. I guess I'll know in a few weeks time if anyone else agrees.
Aside from the writing, the hardest part of the process so far was getting my tax sorted out. As an Aussie trying to sell my wares through an American company, I am subject to the IRS taking their tax cut from my earnings. I could have ignored it and let the IRS take 70% of my profits, but luckily there's a tax treaty between Australia and the USA that cuts this significantly. All I had to do was fill in a form and apply for a US Tax Identification Number. Then apply for the treaty. Two forms doesn't sound like much to fill in, but I am a dunce when it comes to accounting and finances. It was hard going, with a weeks-long before hearing back to find out whether I'd filled out the damn things correctly. So far everything seems to be legit, and I am clear to do business in the US. Still, there's always that element of nervousness when it comes to the IRS...
The last few nights I've been doing research on marketing and pricing. The current consensus seems to be that $2.99 for e-books is the sweet spot, so that is what I will probably go with. It's also the point where Amazon's royalty rate jumps from 35% to 70%, which works in my favour. As for marketing, my budget is zero. I'm okay with this, because what I've been reading suggests that the effects of paid advertising and publicity on sales is virtually zero. I always suspected that any sales bump from paid advertising wouldn't be enough to cover the cost of the ad, so I'm fine with ignoring that option. For the moment my promotion will remain here, on Facebook and on Twitter, and I'll try not to spam any of those too hard.
WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN DOING
As my job affords me a lot of time on my own with a minimum of human interaction, I listen to tons of podcasts and audiobooks. Since I discovered librivox.org I've been getting through a lot of audiobooks, taking the chance to sample some supposed classics. Currently I'm slogging my way through 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.
I say slogging, but that's not entirely fair. When the book focuses on the mysteries surrounding Captain Nemo, and the efforts of the three main characters to escape their captivity on the Nautilus, it's rather good. The problem comes in the chapters that focus heavily on the "wonders of the undersea realm". Beware any chapter that is named after a sea or an ocean, because you're in for page after page of descriptions of fish.
It reminds me of a story I wrote when I was ten. When it came time to describe the Black Wizard's army, I literally named every evil creature from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Terrible stuff, but I had an excuse: I was ten. I suppose that Jules Verne has an excuse as well, because part of the whole point of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is an exploration of the awesome stuff that's in the ocean, exotic fish included. It makes for bloody tedious reading, though.
Moby Dick was much the same. There's a lot of fascinating material in that book, and a masterful command of language, but it often gets side-tracked with the minutiae of whales and whaling. There's a whole chapter devoted to listing the books that have illustrations of whales, and discussing the accuracy of each.
The thing is, I can see where all of this is coming from. People in 1850 didn't have TV (no shit Sherlock). How would most of them know what a whale looked like? Books would be the only possibility, and Herman Melville used that to provide his readers with the most accurate depiction he could, pointing the reader to specific volumes for the most accurate depictions.
Older books and stories tend to have too much description and exposition for modern audiences; just listen to the constant complaints about the dialogue in Silver Age comics. Or my complaints about classic works of literature. No doubt there are examples of stories that did exposition badly even at the time they were printed. Just as some stories that seem over-expository now were perfectly pitched for the audience back then. I suppose the lesson I have to learn is to think about this stuff, and where it's coming from, so that I can look past it and take the good elements from those stories.
For my own writing, I need to think about my audience and what needs to be explained and described for them to understand the story. Jack Manley is quite terse, which is something I did on purpose. I didn't do long descriptions, because I wanted the book to be about action. If it's not necessary to move the plot forward, I cut it out. I took a similar tack with exposition. Alternate universes are central to the book, but I didn't bother explaining the concept. Modern audiences are savvy, they know about these things. But if I was writing, say, Moby Dick for a modern audience, I wouldn't include the lengthy descriptions of whales, or talk about books with whale illustrations. There are photos now, and videos, and aquariums. I would keep all the stuff about whaling ships, though, and harpooning, and how the whales are carved up once they've been caught; chances are very high that a modern reader doesn't know that stuff. So what I've learned today (and it's not exactly a profound lesson, but it is an important one for any writer) is to know your audience, and what they do and don't need explained.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I'm Reading
Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos by Terrence Dicks
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Marvel Comics circa 1964
What I'm Listening To
Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin
What I'm Playing
Hot Wheels: Beat That! on the Nintendo Wii
The process of getting the book ready hasn't been as difficult as I had feared. I designed the cover myself, with a minimum of fuss and (most importantly) no expense. I even designed the thing using MS Paint, which has got to be against some kind of law. What can I say, it's the only image manipulation program that I can wrap my head around.
The editing process has been pretty time-consuming, I'll admit. Officially there have been seven drafts, but in reality it's probably double that. I didn't get the book professionally assessed, but I did get some professional feedback from some editors after it won second prize in a competition. Mostly I went with my own instincts based on that feedback and the feedback of some trusted associates. The final draft bears only a mild resemblance to my chaotic first draft, so at least I can say that I put a lot of work into it, regardless of the final result.
I've read in various places that an e-book writer should not design their own cover, or do their own editing. I'd love to have gotten some outside help, but unfortunately money has been very tight for me lately. It wasn't an option, so I knuckled down and did the work on my own. I'm also something of a control freak when it comes to my own stuff; I'm actually happier to have done my own cover design, and I think the result is great. I guess I'll know in a few weeks time if anyone else agrees.
Aside from the writing, the hardest part of the process so far was getting my tax sorted out. As an Aussie trying to sell my wares through an American company, I am subject to the IRS taking their tax cut from my earnings. I could have ignored it and let the IRS take 70% of my profits, but luckily there's a tax treaty between Australia and the USA that cuts this significantly. All I had to do was fill in a form and apply for a US Tax Identification Number. Then apply for the treaty. Two forms doesn't sound like much to fill in, but I am a dunce when it comes to accounting and finances. It was hard going, with a weeks-long before hearing back to find out whether I'd filled out the damn things correctly. So far everything seems to be legit, and I am clear to do business in the US. Still, there's always that element of nervousness when it comes to the IRS...
The last few nights I've been doing research on marketing and pricing. The current consensus seems to be that $2.99 for e-books is the sweet spot, so that is what I will probably go with. It's also the point where Amazon's royalty rate jumps from 35% to 70%, which works in my favour. As for marketing, my budget is zero. I'm okay with this, because what I've been reading suggests that the effects of paid advertising and publicity on sales is virtually zero. I always suspected that any sales bump from paid advertising wouldn't be enough to cover the cost of the ad, so I'm fine with ignoring that option. For the moment my promotion will remain here, on Facebook and on Twitter, and I'll try not to spam any of those too hard.
WHAT ELSE I'VE BEEN DOING
As my job affords me a lot of time on my own with a minimum of human interaction, I listen to tons of podcasts and audiobooks. Since I discovered librivox.org I've been getting through a lot of audiobooks, taking the chance to sample some supposed classics. Currently I'm slogging my way through 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne.
I say slogging, but that's not entirely fair. When the book focuses on the mysteries surrounding Captain Nemo, and the efforts of the three main characters to escape their captivity on the Nautilus, it's rather good. The problem comes in the chapters that focus heavily on the "wonders of the undersea realm". Beware any chapter that is named after a sea or an ocean, because you're in for page after page of descriptions of fish.
It reminds me of a story I wrote when I was ten. When it came time to describe the Black Wizard's army, I literally named every evil creature from the Dungeons & Dragons Monster Manual. Terrible stuff, but I had an excuse: I was ten. I suppose that Jules Verne has an excuse as well, because part of the whole point of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is an exploration of the awesome stuff that's in the ocean, exotic fish included. It makes for bloody tedious reading, though.
Moby Dick was much the same. There's a lot of fascinating material in that book, and a masterful command of language, but it often gets side-tracked with the minutiae of whales and whaling. There's a whole chapter devoted to listing the books that have illustrations of whales, and discussing the accuracy of each.
The thing is, I can see where all of this is coming from. People in 1850 didn't have TV (no shit Sherlock). How would most of them know what a whale looked like? Books would be the only possibility, and Herman Melville used that to provide his readers with the most accurate depiction he could, pointing the reader to specific volumes for the most accurate depictions.
Older books and stories tend to have too much description and exposition for modern audiences; just listen to the constant complaints about the dialogue in Silver Age comics. Or my complaints about classic works of literature. No doubt there are examples of stories that did exposition badly even at the time they were printed. Just as some stories that seem over-expository now were perfectly pitched for the audience back then. I suppose the lesson I have to learn is to think about this stuff, and where it's coming from, so that I can look past it and take the good elements from those stories.
For my own writing, I need to think about my audience and what needs to be explained and described for them to understand the story. Jack Manley is quite terse, which is something I did on purpose. I didn't do long descriptions, because I wanted the book to be about action. If it's not necessary to move the plot forward, I cut it out. I took a similar tack with exposition. Alternate universes are central to the book, but I didn't bother explaining the concept. Modern audiences are savvy, they know about these things. But if I was writing, say, Moby Dick for a modern audience, I wouldn't include the lengthy descriptions of whales, or talk about books with whale illustrations. There are photos now, and videos, and aquariums. I would keep all the stuff about whaling ships, though, and harpooning, and how the whales are carved up once they've been caught; chances are very high that a modern reader doesn't know that stuff. So what I've learned today (and it's not exactly a profound lesson, but it is an important one for any writer) is to know your audience, and what they do and don't need explained.
OTHER TIME-WASTING ACTIVITIES
What I'm Reading
Doctor Who and the Claws of Axos by Terrence Dicks
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne
Marvel Comics circa 1964
What I'm Listening To
Physical Graffiti by Led Zeppelin
What I'm Playing
Hot Wheels: Beat That! on the Nintendo Wii
Friday, August 9, 2013
Jack Manley and the Warlord of Infinity
Jack Manley - soldier, adventurer, traveller of the Wild Multiverse and veteran of the All-Worlds War - has quit. After years of endless fighting he has seen too much death, and taken too many lives. But an interdimensional emperor known only as the Warlord has pledged to destroy Jack Manley for his crimes, and even Manley is not certain of his innocence. With the might of thirteen Earths at his command, the Warlord is a danger to all of reality, and Jack Manley must fight through soldiers, dogs with guns in their mouths, manticores, the dreaded annihil-apes and more before he can face him. It's cover-to-cover pulp sci-fi action adventure, as Manley battles his enemies, and confronts his bloody past. The Warlord is coming, and only death can stop him. But how can Manley defeat him without sinking back into a life of blood and destruction?
Coming to the Amazon Kindle store on Sunday, 18th August 2013.
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