The Early Nerd Catches the Earworm…

Who Killed Cock Robin? – John Anster Fitzgerald, c. 1855–1860

I've somehow gotten a mashup of Huey Lewis and the News and an old nursery rhyme stuck in my head. Now I've got this echoing in the thought chamber:

"They say the heart of Cock Robin is still beatin'.
But from what I've seen, I don't believe 'em!"

I guess it was that or John Lithgow grilling the Gingerbread Man about the Muffin Man, who lived on Drury Lane.

Yeah, I'm such a nerd…

The Writing Process Blog Tour

The Writing Process Blog Tour is a series of linked blog posts by various authors about how their writing process works when creating a new story. Fellow author, Heidi Garrett, popped up with an invitation to other authors to join the tour and I gladly accepted.

The idea behind the tour is each author answers four questions (listed below) about their writing and then lists three authors to visit on the tour. Not all the writers on the tour link to three, but it makes an interesting thread to follow. It will give you an idea of how each writer works out their stories and produces them.

Now, I actually have two writers before me in the Blog Tour. There was a last minute scheduling snafu, so I switched slots so we could continue a proper flow.

The first writer before me on the tour is Cat Amesbury, writer of contemporary fantasy who just released her first book on April 6, 2014, The Guests of Honor: Tales of the Virtue Inn (Book One).

The second writer before me on the tour is Michael Patrick Hicks, another first time writer with his book, Convergence, published in February, 2014. Michael was also a nominee for Amazon’s Breakthrough Novelist Award. That should say something about his book.

The hardest thing for a new author is getting noticed by the readers. This is difficult for established authors, too! So I urge you to take a chance and read their books. You might like them. Ebooks cost less than a coffee at Starbucks, they are more entertaining and they last a lot longer. So buy their books, give them some stars in their reviews, and watch out for toasters with bad attitudes.

Looking for a Cover Artist

I have a placeholder cover for Dragon. Now I have to find an artist who can do the real cover. Unfortunately, that's been a difficult search; the queries I sent out have gone ignored. There is a pretty big demand among independent writers for good cover artists.

Test Cover for Dragon.

First off, I have to find someone whose style I like. I found a few, but as I noted above they weren’t interested. The search continues.

Second, I have to find someone I can afford. As an independent writer, I don’t have the fantastic budgets that large publishing companies have.

The second point is probably the bigger issue. I wonder how many artists have been screwed over by self-publishing wannabes. There is another side to that coin, where a lot of self-publishing writers have complained about artists who disappear upon receiving payment.

I’ve been looking at artists on DeviantArt.com. But the response rate to my queries has been poor—non-existent actually. So, I need to find other collections of artists to peruse. I’m also considering giving Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) a call to see if they have any students doing work in this area. Might be a good opportunity for a student to break into the industry.

My primary requirement for the covers of my books is it MUST reflect a scene in the story. That means that any artist wanting to do a cover for me must read the story.

The search is on. Hopefully I’ll be able to find someone soon, as none of the current artwork I have can be used for print as it is too small.

If anyone has any suggestions or knows someone who is up to the challenge, I can be contacted here.

Pity I can't afford an artist like Michael Whelan.

Progress on Dragon

There’s something exciting about looking at the progress bar and seeing a visual representation of how far along my work is and seeing just how close it is to the goal. It’s nice to be able to say, “Oh, yeah! Almost there!”

The time it took (so far) to write Dragon is about one-fourth the time it took to write Nobody. It’s an accepted notion that the first book always takes the longest to write. I find I have to agree, based on my own experience. I am definitely writing faster now; perhaps I can say I’m writing smarter.

Yet I can still see I could do much better.

I’m already looking ahead to Oracle and considering a spring-2015 release, putting that five to six months ahead of schedule. Part of that effort is just a matter of better time management. While Dragon is out for editing, start work on Oracle.

What makes this possible is that I’m writing Dragon differently from how I wrote Nobody. The first book was written in separate pieces and each of those pieces was edited individually. Dragon is being written as one solid manuscript and will go out as such. Because of that, I won’t have anything to be hammering on during the edit. I may as well turn my attention forward and get started on Oracle right away.

On Monday, I’m posting my entry in the Writing Process Blog Tour. That actually got me thinking on just how it is I go about writing. The mistakes I make, the places where I need to change or be more disciplined, and what I’m doing right. It’s a good thing to look at how you work and to analyze it on a regular basis. I know I can work better and by looking at what I’m doing in a critical way, I can see the mistakes.

With that being said, time to put my nose to the grindstone and my fingertips to the keyboard and get back to work.

SFWA and Self-Published Writers

The Science-Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) is a professional organization for professional authors of science fiction, fantasy, and related genres. They offer professional services and courtesies to members of the organization including contract guidance, emergency medical assistance, and a community of peers with whom to touch base. It is also an organization where writers can meet peers and discuss issues they face among people who understand.

Kickstarter Post Mortem

The Kickstarter campaign is over and it failed to reach its goal. The last shovelful of dirt has been laid down upon its resting place. It was an interesting experiment despite the disappointing result.

I did get a good surge in pledges at the beginning.  Better than I expected, not quite as good as I had hoped. But then it went silent. Based on what other reported about their Kickstarter campaigns, this was not unexpected.

KICKSTARTER GO!!

Game on!

The Kickstarter campaign has begun!

I have 30 days to raise $6,600.

Kickstarter campaigns are an all or nothing affair. If you hit the goal, then contributors are charged the money they pledged and the raised funds get delivered. If the goal isn’t reached, then nothing. Contributors are not charged 1¢ and no funds exist to be delivered.

Goal or Bust!

What happens if the goal isn’t reached? Is the campaign a failure? Not really. First, it means I won’t be able to afford to go to print for a few years. Second, even if the campaign doesn’t work, at acts as a good promotional vehicle to get word about my book out to the public. If I can get even just 100 copies of my ebook sold via Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, or Kobo, that’s still a great success. It generates visibility. Even a bad review generates visibility about a book, sometimes better than a good review because fans that love the book tend to jump all over trolls. What kills a book is becoming invisible—completely out of public attention so no one even knows it exists. If you really want to kill a book, give it no mention.

How Can I Help?

The most obvious: donate $50 for the serial numbered book. I just need 132 people to donate $50 to hit the goal.

Spread the word!

Share this link: http://goo.gl/DMpKsD

(The full link is: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2055392783/bring-nobody-to-print)

On Facebook, don’t just “Like” it, “Share” it. State that you “know the guy who wrote it” and that you are spreading the word to grow support.

On other social networks, tell your friends and colleagues about it.

At work, if you have coworkers who like to read or collect books, let them know about it.

You would be amazed at how much more people will consider participating if you simply state that you know the person who you are trying to help.

What Happens After?

Assuming the fund raiser is successful:

It takes two weeks for Kickstarter to collect all the donations. Then 10% is taken off the top to cover Kickstarter’s commission for running the fund raising campaign (5%) and for covering credit card fees and accounting (3%–5%).

Once all the money has been collected and accounted, it is sent to me.

With that, I go to King Printing with the exact number of books I need, get a final quote for the printing run and place the order. Part of this process is nailing down the materials and design of the book. Plus, setting the date by which the printing will be completed.

Once the printing is done, I rent a trailer and pray my car will make it to Lowell and back with a load of books.

Then I get a new hobby to pursue for the next few months: signing books. (By this point, the manuscript for Dragon should already be in editing, so I won’t have to think about writing for a couple of months.)

When/As the books are signed, they get shipped to the contributors. My goal is to have the whole process completed by the end of September. The number of books being rewarded for donations will determine just how long this will take.

At the end, I should have at least 500 books left over for selling at events, book signings, town craft fairs, libraries, schools and reading groups who have inquired about having me come in and talk.

From the proceeds raised by those sales, I hope to put Dragon through its first printing and continue the process.

From There Onward…

One of the key effects I’m aiming for is to grow buzz for my books so I can sell as many as possible and continue writing as a career.

The more attention I can garner, the more likely copies of my book(s) will sell. It’s getting the first book to sell that is the tough part.

My ultimate goal is to sell 50,000 copies of Nobody this year. My absolute minimum is 10,000—because that will allow me to at least pay off my bills. The 50K allows me to pay off my bills, pay back money I owe to those who have been helping me out, put the money back into my IRA accounts that I drained so I could pay the bills during all this, and build up my savings again.

And if there is anything left over after that, buy a new car. I’m not sure the Subaru is going to make it to the next winter after 15 years of use. Rather than trade it in toward a new car, I’m thinking it could better serve to be donated to a technical school so the students have a car with problems to go over and fix. Learning to diagnose a problem and determine how to fix it is a more valuable skill over just knowing how to replace one part or another. Then the school can sell or raffle it off to further raise money for the school; the gift that keeps on giving.

Here’s hoping…

A Close Encounter of the Natural Kind

Tryggvi Már Gunnarsson – Iceland

You must click on this image

to enjoy it in all its glory!

The sun had belted out a couple solar flares and sent a couple of large CMEs (Coronal Mass Ejections) towards the Earth, and this resulted in a fairly strong G6 geomagnetic storm—all that means: we had some pretty good auroras last night that were visible as far south as Maine. With conditions like that there is a chance that something could slip a little further south and we could see an aurora down here in Massachusetts. I am ever the optimist on this point. Every once in a while, we get lucky down here…

As one would expect, whenever there is a possibility of seeing an aurora in these parts, the weather does not cooperate. At the height of the G6, we were clouded over and had a snow squall moving through. Dejected, I turned and headed inside and gave up on the possibility of seeing the northern lights.

Just around midnight, I glanced out the window and noticed I could see stars. With a clear sky, there could be just a chance of catching a glimpse of electric fire dancing over the northern horizon. So, I popped on my boots and scooted out the back door.

There I was! Out in the cold winter air (1°F/-17.2°C) under the crystalline sky filled with stars, wearing nothing by my boots and underwear. The chill breeze (wind chill -9°F/-22.8°C) rustling through my hair.

My tracks are center-right, the rest are the coyote's.

(In case you couldn't tell the difference.)

Face-to-face with a coyote.

Yes. Right there. Not more than ten feet away, was a coyote.

We made eye contact for a moment or two. Maybe three. Then the coyote lowered its head and trotted away. It did take a pause by the swimming pool, gazing back to size me up.

Overwhelmed by my manly visage, radiating masculine confidence and power as I stood there in my undies and boots, the coyote decided discretion was the better part of valor. It quietly turned and made for the woods. (There will be no mention of Hello Kitty boxers nor the hyena-like laughter emanating from the trees behind my house for ninety minutes…)

Thus, we are reminded of the glory and beauty of nature. That we can always see something amazing in our own backyards. And Ex-Lax ain't got nuthin' on staring down a large carnivore in your underwear at midnight.

KICK OFF!

I’ve created a Kickstarter campaign in order to raise money to bring Nobody to print. It’ll be starting in just a couple days and run for 30 days.

The goal is to raise $6,000 to print as many copies of Aggadeh Chronicles Book 1: Nobody as I can. I’m hoping I can raise more money than that, but I had to make sure I had a realistic goal set so I can actually get this project going.

I have received a many requests for autographed copies, a few requests or opportunities arising for book signings, and the market numbers for books show there is still strong demand for print books. Admittedly, it isn’t a huge demand at the moment, but there is need to have physical copies of Nobody.

What is Kickstarter?

Kickstarter is a fund raising site. It’s a poor man’s venture capital resource. There are other sites that compete with Kickstarter, but Kickstarter has had a lot of success raising money for people trying to self-publish.

How It Works…

A creator sets up a campaign to raise capital of $X as the goal. The campaign has several different contribution levels that contributors can choose. Each level offers a different reward for the contributor.

Contributors interested in the project pledge donations toward the project, choosing a reward tier they would like.

IF the campaign reaches the goal of $X, then everyone who pledged gets charged the amount they pledged, the money is tallied up and (after 10% is taken out for fees and credit card processing) the raised monies are deposited in the account of the campaign creator.

Then the campaign creator can use the money to push the project through and then send out all the rewards to the contributors.

If the campaign does NOT reach the goal of $X, then the campaign is cancelled. No one is charged anything, and the contributor has to go back to the drawing board.

It is a fairly safe bet for contributors. If a campaign doesn’t work, then you don’t pay anything.

My Project

As stated above, my project is geared to raising the money necessary to print books.

What I’m offering as rewards for donations are:

• $1 – Thanks!
• $10 – Copy of the ebook
• $25 – Autographed copy of the hardcover book
• $50 – Autographed and serial numbered copy of the hardcover book
• $500 – Two autographed and low serial numbered copies of the hardcover book plus dinner in Boston. (How the contributor gets to Boston is their concern.)
• $5,000 – Two autographed and low serial numbered copies of the hardcover book plus I travel to the contributors location to do a private book signing for the venue of their choice. (School, library, book club, etc.)

Now, for those of you looking at this and quickly jumping onto your keyboards to send me messages that I must be completely nuts and naive asking for those last two items, I have this to say: “Aim for the stars, shoot for the moon.”

I am neither aiming for, nor expecting to get donations as huge as those last two. I’m aiming for the two middle items: $25 and $50. Those last two items are merely "shoot for the moon" tiers. I am always fond of saying, “If you don’t ask, you’ll never know.” Well, the corollary to that is, “If you don’t ask for it, you’ll never receive it.”

“How Can I Help?”

Spread the word!

I only need 120 people to sign up for the $50 tier of the kickstarter campaign to hit my goal. That’s all!

All you have to do is say, “A friend of mine wrote and self-published a book and is trying to raise money to bring it to print. Help him out!,” and include a link to the Kickstarter campaign.

How likely am I to get that many people looking at my fund raising campaign?

I have 282 friends on Facebook.

All of those friends combined make up one degree of separation. The second degree of separation is the group composed of the friends of my Facebook friends. And that number? It took me 10 minutes to go through my friend list and punch the numbers into a calculator: almost 102,000 people! The average number of friends people seem to have is around 360 people.

That means the third degree of separation is in excess of 35 million people. That’s almost 10% of the population of the United States.

Ever wonder why so many businesses want you to share them on Facebook? That’s why!

If all my friends of Facebook share—and I mean share, not just like— the link about my Kickstarter campaign, then 102,000 people will see that link. Of that number, if only 1% goes to visit, then over 1,000 people will look at my campaign and consider helping out. Of that, I need only 120 people to actually make the donation. (For those of you who are truly OCD about statistics, I am already aware that many of those friends are interconnected, so the outreach is actually probably about 10%–20% smaller. I’m trying to keep it simple.)

Just .1% needs to help out. It seems like such a small number, but that’s what I need.

The difference between “Sharing” and “Liking” something on Facebook is significant in how your friends react to something depending on whether you shared or liked it.

Sharing carries a lot more weight to it, and your friends are much more likely to read and pay attention to something you share. When you simply like something, people look at it and then pass on by without taking anything else into account about it.

But more importantly, you have to make a comment about why you shared the link. This significantly raises the likelihood that people will pause and look at why you shared the link. And this will increase my chances of success.

Why Am I Doing This?

Why raise the money to print the books with a printer instead of using a Print On Demand (POD) service?

Price.

And my own insistence on high quality. I want books that in fifty years from now will still be in good condition when pulled off the book shelf. POD books in general are paperback books. Paperbacks don’t hold up well over the years.

But the price is a big driver behind my decision.

If I put my book into a POD service, in order for me to get copies to sign and hand out to people at events means I have to pay the full retail price for each book. That means the price I would have to set to sell books at book stores would be prohibitively expensive. The same for selling books at a book signing; I have to make enough money at least to pay at least for my travel expenses. But what about living and food expenses at home?

Going directly to a printer and not through a middleman service, I can print the books at the manufacturing price. This leaves me much more room to set wholesale, list, and retail pricing. Not only do I have to raise money to print books, but I have to pay utilities, put food on the table, get the car repaired, buy gas. Also, bookstores have employees they have to pay and so on.

The Kickstarter campaign serves another purpose: promotion.

In order to make a career as a self-published writer, you need at least 10,000 people who will buy the books you write, each year. In order to find those 10,000 people (.003% the population of the United States), you have to make a lot of noise to be noticed.

So– HELP!

Let people know I need support to pull this off. Share it on Facebook and suggest your friends share it too to reach more people.

It’ll all be over by the end of March, so spread the word and let’s hope I get enough interested people sign on.

Rise of the Independent Editors?

I'm trying something a bit different with Dragon than how I did things with Nobody.

I wrote Nobody in separate chapters and sent each chapter out separately to be edited. My thinking was it would be easier on those who were doing the editing to do it in small chunks. Instead, it proved to be a bit of a logistical nightmare. I would get the pieces at different paces from different people, sometimes after I had already decided that a given chapter was set. Going back and forth between chapters, writing corrections or making alterations, introduced continuity errors. It also broke up the flow of the story.

Another issue that popped up from doing the chapters separately was assembling the final document. I figured all that needed to be done was simple cut-and-pastes of each chapter into the final document. This introduced a lot of potential for error that I didn’t expect. It took a number of attempts before I finally had the completed file for Nobody ready to be converted into an ebook.

My reasoning to do each chapter as a separate document wasn’t a bad  technical choice, either. Inside an EPUB file, each chapter is actually a separate HTML document. If you want to construct an ebook by hand, you would separate out each chapter to create a unique document. On that basis, I was on the right track.

It just proved to be a bear to manage.

With Dragon, I’m writing the manuscript as one, large document. Everything included. So when it goes out for editing, everyone will get the complete story instead of chunks of it. I figure this will also help avoid any continuity errors. It should also help with everyone being able to help correct the flow of the story.

One of the prime arguments against self-published books is the lack or poor quality of the editing. I will say that this is a valid argument. A few years ago, I did my own survey of self-published ebooks that were being offered for free. I downloaded a bunch of them and started reading. One stood out from all the others. It’s summary was superb and the story idea had a lot of promise. But the way it was written suggested the author’s compositional skills didn’t extend much beyond fourth grade. It was so terribly written and  hard to read, I couldn’t finish it.

Yet, there were gems in there, too. Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Elven Princess by Wesley Allison. Written so badly (on purpose) it’s good. I got a such a good laugh reading it, I also downloaded Eaglethorpe Buxton and the Sorceress. Both stories are now included in his new book—just released on January 1, 2014, The Many Adventures of Eaglethorpe Buxton. I haven’t read it yet, but it is definitely on my “To Read” list. Probably the best wasted $3 you’ll throw away this year. Costs less than a greasy chesseburger at a fast food restaurant and probably about as healthy for your brain as the cheeseburger is for your body—but based on the quirky humor of the first two short stories I read before, it ought to be just as satisfying.

Back to today's subject…

I like to think my raw, unedited writing is better than most. But the evidence proves otherwise when copy comes back from proof readers and editors with all the errors circled, highlighted, and commented. It happens.

A writer needs an editor. A self-published writer really needs an editor.

You could edit your own writing. That’s a part of my process. But I really slow myself down when I do that. I stop focusing on creating the story. I probably could edit my own work, but it would take twice as long. When I’m done writing something, I set it aside for a while. A long while. When I return to it, I can usually catch most of my mistakes.

Having an extra set of eyes looking at my work makes things go much faster. Those other people will also catch things that I completely missed.

There is so much talk in the media about the rise of the independent writer. How the existence and wildly growing success of self-publishing writers is reshaping the publishing industry.

But there has been a quiet growth in the second part of the publishing industry: the appearance of the freelance editor.

A lot of self-publishing writers turn to friends and family to do their editing. To look over their writing and help uncover and smooth over any rough patches that appear in their manuscripts. Unfortunately, in most cases their efforts aren’t enough.

I’m lucky. I have family and friends who have a real talent for doing the editing work. One in particular has the skill to do this work professionally—and, happily, is taking steps to do so.

One of the things I noticed in reviews of my book on Amazon, is many of the readers have commented that it was well edited. This should come as a warning to wannabe self-publishers: your readers do notice and it is an issue!

Now that self-publishing authors are becoming mainstream and the talk of the media, I see a new trend on the horizon: the rise of the freelance editor.

I think 90% of the independent writers fail because even though their story ideas were good, their books and ebooks were poorly edited. Yes, spelling and grammar does make a difference. Writing the way you speak—I do—is not good. When you speak, people can hear the inflections in your voice, see your facial expressions, and they can hear the rhythm of your speech. But the written word cannot express all this. The way it is done, is through proper grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Get that wrong, and reading your work becomes tedious.

The growth of independent writers means there is now a wildly growing market for freelance editors.

There is even now, the Editorial Freelancers Association. A good place to turn to if you are looking for an editor. There are freelancers represented in each of the many genre’s of writing. It’s a good place to start looking for potential editors you can hire to go over your work. 

The story I mentioned above that had a good premise but was written terribly comes to mind. I wonder if this person could have found a mentor who could have helped the writer wrestle that idea into a real story.

I think back to the very first—and last—time I ever tried to submit a story for publication. 

I was just fourteen.

I had a story idea that suddenly popped into my head. So I typed like crazy to get it down onto paper, popped it into an envelope, and mailed it off to Omni Magazine. I titled it, Landship/Starship.

To the person who actually read that dreadful piece of drivel, you have my sincere apologies. Even after I sent it, I began to rethink what I had written and realized that the story was not beyond the concept stage.

It was absolutely terrible.

I knew it was going to be rejected. But I was surprised that I got a letter of rejection from Omni. Someone read it—again, I apologize—and judged it.

Even now, I look back on that story in my memory and I can see so many technical details that were wrong in the story. Yet, there is still a part of me that sees the potential in it.

The adult me can slip into my memory and talk to the adolescent me and explain that the story was nothing more than a framework describing the idea of the story. Not a readable story in itself.

That framework could be hammered into an outline, characters sympathetic could be created, and a more compelling background chiseled and that story could potentially fly. Maybe someday I’ll dredge it back up.

But it is recognizing those very things that is why writers need editors. The writer can get too caught up in the excitement of putting their imaginations on paper for others to read. So much so, that they may forget how to properly tell that story. Often, the writer can get distracted by an idea in the story and go off on a tangent, away from the main narrative. I’m certainly guilty of this.

It is the job of the editor to reel in mistakes like this and put the writer back on track.

So on the heels of the rise of the independent writer, I see the rise of the independent editor. When these two beings begin to join together, we are going to truly see a change in the publishing world. Perhaps the rise of something new. Something that is not a fad but a trend. And the industry will begin to respond.

It’s kind of exciting to think of what might come in the next few years.