If you want to get "Forbidden Love" (with my story "Deliverance") at 50% off, check out this link: Smart Bitches, Trashy Books has a coupon that gives you a 50% discount when shopping at AllRomanceEbooks and Omnilit.
The rules: You will receive 50% off on all titles purchased on AllRomanceeBooks.com and OmniLit.com through this weekend if they use the code SBTBARe1.
Enjoy. :)
Saturday, 30 January 2010
My review of "Heartache Cafe" by J S Cook
My review of J S Cook's "Heartache Cafe" just went online at Speak its name.
You can find it here.
In other news, I'm still fiddling with the cover of Test of Faith. And editing. And pondering to clear out my bookshelf because I'm getting desperate for space again. And the fact I keep buying books doesn't help.
I think I might end up selling all the roleplaying/gaming stuff. Let's see.
You can find it here.
In other news, I'm still fiddling with the cover of Test of Faith. And editing. And pondering to clear out my bookshelf because I'm getting desperate for space again. And the fact I keep buying books doesn't help.
I think I might end up selling all the roleplaying/gaming stuff. Let's see.
Friday, 29 January 2010
"Test of Faith" - getting excited
I've just spent an hour making sure "Test of Faith" is set up. Thanks to Lulu.com taking most of the cut, the book will be pretty expensive, at more than 13 USD - 2 of those is "creator revenue", which means one dollar per author (out of which we still have to apy taxes, so for me it's more like 80 pence). But, regardless of that, it's done, and the ebook will be cheaper than that. It's the physical object that is, thanks to Lulu, pretty expensive, and we'll be making more by far from the ebook.
But doesn't matter, I think the cover alone is worth all the work that went into creating this. My test copies should arrive tomorrow at some point, and if the cover looks good and the interior isn't messed up, I'll order some more copies for reviewers (ARCs) and if then everything's fine, the book goes live. Not long now, not long at all.
See entries below on how to claim *your* copy. :)
But doesn't matter, I think the cover alone is worth all the work that went into creating this. My test copies should arrive tomorrow at some point, and if the cover looks good and the interior isn't messed up, I'll order some more copies for reviewers (ARCs) and if then everything's fine, the book goes live. Not long now, not long at all.
See entries below on how to claim *your* copy. :)
Crazy times
Crazy times at work, I'm ridiculously busy (hey, the title of the blog is "letters from the front", so, yeah, being rushed by the enemy from all sides), but on the good side, we have a weekend coming up and I'm on track for most of my deadlines.
In addition, I reworked the remaining 4k of the second chapter of the spy menage, and in total cut the 8k chapter by about 1,000 words total. Almost everything gains when you cut 10-15% in writing, so I'm not bothered.
Surveying the third chapter, that one's 15k total, so definitely needs cutting in half at least. I might even consider turning all "scenes" into chapters, just to really cut down the size of chapters and make them more palatable. Got to see how that turns out when it's done. In the end, it'll have to be right in terms of pacing, and shorter chapters make for faster reading - or the impression of faster reading in any case.
Checking back with my outline, there are missing scenes in this chapter, too, so from now on, the rework will slow down significantly. Still, there's a weekend, and I'm meeting another writer in the library tomorrow to write in peace and silent accord. It'll be nice to get out of the house for a couple hours.
On a side note, my giveaway for "Test of Faith" continues until 1 March. Just comment on the blog post here, and you're entered. I'll use a randomiser program to pull one of you from the hat.
If you want to increase your chances - another copy will be given away to a member of my mailinglist. I'll give away free books to members on there every time I have a release, so join now for free paper and ebooks. So far, there are fewer members on the mailinglist than comments on the blog, so, statistically, it makes sense to try your luck with the mailinglist.
And now I'm off back to work to write financial analysis.
In addition, I reworked the remaining 4k of the second chapter of the spy menage, and in total cut the 8k chapter by about 1,000 words total. Almost everything gains when you cut 10-15% in writing, so I'm not bothered.
Surveying the third chapter, that one's 15k total, so definitely needs cutting in half at least. I might even consider turning all "scenes" into chapters, just to really cut down the size of chapters and make them more palatable. Got to see how that turns out when it's done. In the end, it'll have to be right in terms of pacing, and shorter chapters make for faster reading - or the impression of faster reading in any case.
Checking back with my outline, there are missing scenes in this chapter, too, so from now on, the rework will slow down significantly. Still, there's a weekend, and I'm meeting another writer in the library tomorrow to write in peace and silent accord. It'll be nice to get out of the house for a couple hours.
On a side note, my giveaway for "Test of Faith" continues until 1 March. Just comment on the blog post here, and you're entered. I'll use a randomiser program to pull one of you from the hat.
If you want to increase your chances - another copy will be given away to a member of my mailinglist. I'll give away free books to members on there every time I have a release, so join now for free paper and ebooks. So far, there are fewer members on the mailinglist than comments on the blog, so, statistically, it makes sense to try your luck with the mailinglist.
And now I'm off back to work to write financial analysis.
Wednesday, 27 January 2010
Comment and win free "Test of Faith" (paper, signed)
I'm just finishing up "Test of Faith" and I'm giving away a signed paper copy (yup, that's right, dead tree), shipping international from London.
Here's more on the book:
Excerpt here:
If you comment on my blog here, I'll draw the winner 1 March and ship the book out to you. :) Good luck!
(Feel free to link and spread the news. :) )
And progress was made
I wrapped up TCaS chapter 1 yesterday night, then started today on the train on chapter 2 (another 8k of text), which should be relatively easy to fix. Fiddly, yes, much concentration needed, but no major rewrites, just re-arranging text blocks. Plot-wise, character-wise and research-wise, that chapter is rock-solid. The main challenge will be to make it look seamless after I've rearranged 50% of all the sentences. Ideally, nobody will notice it got the shit edited out of itself. But that's one thing about the massive Special Forces edit - it has made me fairly unafraid of "losing good bits". Much better at streamlining text now.
Raev finished the covers of Test of Faith (which is now a PDF of rather ridiculous 48 MBs), which I uploaded this morning. I also ordered a test copy, which I suspect will take about a week to arrive here so I can see on paper how the cover looks and if the layout is alright. There's already two small things I want to see fixed, so I fully expect doing another set of test copies before it all goes online. The next question will be to determine the price point, and that's a biggie. It's a 130 pages paperback. How much are people willing to pay for that?
I kinda see it a bit as a collector's item, something for the 'keeper shelf'. It's the kind of book I would want to buy and it's certainly something Il'l be giving away signed to reviewers and friends. I've also had costs (at this point, with licensing rights for images, test copies and print-outs just under $100 - and I fully expect to spend another $200 at least on review copies, copies for my co-writer Raev, my historical beta and collaborator on the essays Kate Cotoner, and another one for my long-suffering beta Alison). Which means, most likely, that I will never make the money back on this one. But it's a test, and I'm very curious how it pans out. But above all, I want this book sitting on my shelf, next to the others. The story deserves to be on paper, exactly as it is at the moment.
Yeah. Excited.
If you're a reviewer of m/m &gay historical fiction and reading this, contact me to get a copy.
Raev finished the covers of Test of Faith (which is now a PDF of rather ridiculous 48 MBs), which I uploaded this morning. I also ordered a test copy, which I suspect will take about a week to arrive here so I can see on paper how the cover looks and if the layout is alright. There's already two small things I want to see fixed, so I fully expect doing another set of test copies before it all goes online. The next question will be to determine the price point, and that's a biggie. It's a 130 pages paperback. How much are people willing to pay for that?
I kinda see it a bit as a collector's item, something for the 'keeper shelf'. It's the kind of book I would want to buy and it's certainly something Il'l be giving away signed to reviewers and friends. I've also had costs (at this point, with licensing rights for images, test copies and print-outs just under $100 - and I fully expect to spend another $200 at least on review copies, copies for my co-writer Raev, my historical beta and collaborator on the essays Kate Cotoner, and another one for my long-suffering beta Alison). Which means, most likely, that I will never make the money back on this one. But it's a test, and I'm very curious how it pans out. But above all, I want this book sitting on my shelf, next to the others. The story deserves to be on paper, exactly as it is at the moment.
Yeah. Excited.
If you're a reviewer of m/m &gay historical fiction and reading this, contact me to get a copy.
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
Spy's Progress, chapter 1
Work is being unfunny, but at least I managed to edit/rewrite/fix chapter 1 of TCaS, that's more than 9k, and sent it to 2 betas. Eight more chapters to go. Not bad timing considering how long those chapters are.
Tomorrow, I'll repeat the procedure - print out chapter 2, make notes on how to fix chapter 2 in detail, decide which POV to use where and then implement it. I think I'll be able to finish this in February and then be done with it. Of course, "Pawn" will be next, since it's the prequel.
I should be able to do that by weekend/end of the month. Then slowly more, one after the other. I think this is looking good.
Tomorrow, I'll repeat the procedure - print out chapter 2, make notes on how to fix chapter 2 in detail, decide which POV to use where and then implement it. I think I'll be able to finish this in February and then be done with it. Of course, "Pawn" will be next, since it's the prequel.
I should be able to do that by weekend/end of the month. Then slowly more, one after the other. I think this is looking good.
Spy's Progress
Yesterday, I finished "The Why Not", by Victor J Banis, which blew me away. I spent an hour or two writing my (five star) review of that text.
Some great fiction can be discouraging ("why do I even bother?"), but this seems to happen less and less to me. There is no competition. A writer always races against himself. Editors, agents, publishers, readers they are all behind the finishing line. There are betas/test readers/critique partners, and they help with cheering (which is very important). There are co-writers and pace makers, which help get stuff done and pitch in with text or motivation.
(Actually, I enjoy the job of "pace maker" for fellow writers, which is basically just sharing writing with a friend and being accountable for word counts - there's hardly a writer that I can't speed up significantly when I go into frantic!mode).
In the end, it's my race - I'm the only one accountable for my standards of writing, use of craft and sheer muscle to get through it. Somehow, someway. My job, nobody else's. Reading great writing just shows me that it can be done, and how people did it.
After typing up my review for "The Why Not", I had a productive evening. I chatted with an Australian guy who's sending me his historical novel for review at Speak Its Name and exchanged some lines on self-publishing and www.lulu.com. Then, I double-checked a story for "Voices of the Future", the m/f sci-fi anthology and sent it off to the publisher, then I made a Bolognese (which turned out crap).
Then I sat down to work on "To Catch a Spy".
I guess laughing like a loon at the second scene was a good indication that the text itself is pretty good. I totally forgot about that scene, but it turned out funny; a rare occurrence.
Due to how TCaS was written, the POV is all over the place, and telling it in omniscient POV doesn't actually add anything to the text, so I'm currently re-writing it into three separate close-third POVs. It's what I do best - get deep into the characters.
The first scene was a bit of a bastard to fix (and I'm not sure it's the best scene to start the novel, but at the moment, it kinda works), but one character had more weight anyway, so she was the natural POV choice. Scene 2 is from one guy's POV, so that needed no changing at all, which still meant that I tweaked it a little. Once I get my editing boots on, I find it hard not to edit.
Third scene is another mixed POV, and will be re-written from the guy's perspective. I just did outlining for that work on the train into work. I'm probably losing some great sentences and writing there, but that's OK. "Kill your darlings," isn't it? It's not like there isn't more where that came from, and I always put the cut-out bits into a file - which I often end up deleting.
If yesterday's perogress is any indication, I can do one chapter a week easily. In its present form, TCaS has nine chapters, so that puts it towards my birthday for finishing. I'm quite likely to speed up (read: get obsessive) when I really hit my rhythm. I might even do this as my lunch break entertainment at work. There's one hour in the day that I can work really hard and mostly totally focused (unless people stop by and ask me "what are you doing?" and I have to quickly switch windows to not have a sex scene on the screen). If I really get into it, there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to finish the second draft in February.
There's no reason not to aim for that - would also mean I have the rest of the year to sell the story. I pitched it to a number of people and interest seems high, so I'm positive I can sell this. Maybe I'll even try Kensington. It's not like the money would be unwelcome, and that's one of my big dreams - step off the bus on Strand in London, here just around the corner, to meet "my" publisher. :)(And why on earth does my partner get all those raises and bonuses and I get diddly squat? Oh, right, I'm in business media, and he's in financial IT, that's why. Hard skills beat soft skills).
"Iron Cross" needs some fact-fixing in the first eight chapters, so next step is to print out a clean "master copy" and fix the issues in those 26k on paper. That should only take a long train ride or commuting for a week (and I'm the king on beating myself up in notes. I expect to be writing things like "POLAND, not France, YOU IDIOT" or "yeah, right, because they had $item in 1941 - and you call yourslef trained historian in your bio?").
Maybe I'll relocate to a coffee shop/bookstore on the weekend and sit and work. Editing and reworking really benefits from me not having internet access (interestingly, it doesn't seem to influence my writing that much. It's the editing and tweaking that suffers most from distractions). And adding 1k words to that every day should only take me 1-2 hrs every day. I might even get some exercise in.
Plenty of time. I'm on my game here. Good times.
Some great fiction can be discouraging ("why do I even bother?"), but this seems to happen less and less to me. There is no competition. A writer always races against himself. Editors, agents, publishers, readers they are all behind the finishing line. There are betas/test readers/critique partners, and they help with cheering (which is very important). There are co-writers and pace makers, which help get stuff done and pitch in with text or motivation.
(Actually, I enjoy the job of "pace maker" for fellow writers, which is basically just sharing writing with a friend and being accountable for word counts - there's hardly a writer that I can't speed up significantly when I go into frantic!mode).
In the end, it's my race - I'm the only one accountable for my standards of writing, use of craft and sheer muscle to get through it. Somehow, someway. My job, nobody else's. Reading great writing just shows me that it can be done, and how people did it.
After typing up my review for "The Why Not", I had a productive evening. I chatted with an Australian guy who's sending me his historical novel for review at Speak Its Name and exchanged some lines on self-publishing and www.lulu.com. Then, I double-checked a story for "Voices of the Future", the m/f sci-fi anthology and sent it off to the publisher, then I made a Bolognese (which turned out crap).
Then I sat down to work on "To Catch a Spy".
I guess laughing like a loon at the second scene was a good indication that the text itself is pretty good. I totally forgot about that scene, but it turned out funny; a rare occurrence.
Due to how TCaS was written, the POV is all over the place, and telling it in omniscient POV doesn't actually add anything to the text, so I'm currently re-writing it into three separate close-third POVs. It's what I do best - get deep into the characters.
The first scene was a bit of a bastard to fix (and I'm not sure it's the best scene to start the novel, but at the moment, it kinda works), but one character had more weight anyway, so she was the natural POV choice. Scene 2 is from one guy's POV, so that needed no changing at all, which still meant that I tweaked it a little. Once I get my editing boots on, I find it hard not to edit.
Third scene is another mixed POV, and will be re-written from the guy's perspective. I just did outlining for that work on the train into work. I'm probably losing some great sentences and writing there, but that's OK. "Kill your darlings," isn't it? It's not like there isn't more where that came from, and I always put the cut-out bits into a file - which I often end up deleting.
If yesterday's perogress is any indication, I can do one chapter a week easily. In its present form, TCaS has nine chapters, so that puts it towards my birthday for finishing. I'm quite likely to speed up (read: get obsessive) when I really hit my rhythm. I might even do this as my lunch break entertainment at work. There's one hour in the day that I can work really hard and mostly totally focused (unless people stop by and ask me "what are you doing?" and I have to quickly switch windows to not have a sex scene on the screen). If I really get into it, there's no reason why I shouldn't be able to finish the second draft in February.
There's no reason not to aim for that - would also mean I have the rest of the year to sell the story. I pitched it to a number of people and interest seems high, so I'm positive I can sell this. Maybe I'll even try Kensington. It's not like the money would be unwelcome, and that's one of my big dreams - step off the bus on Strand in London, here just around the corner, to meet "my" publisher. :)
"Iron Cross" needs some fact-fixing in the first eight chapters, so next step is to print out a clean "master copy" and fix the issues in those 26k on paper. That should only take a long train ride or commuting for a week (and I'm the king on beating myself up in notes. I expect to be writing things like "POLAND, not France, YOU IDIOT" or "yeah, right, because they had $item in 1941 - and you call yourslef trained historian in your bio?").
Maybe I'll relocate to a coffee shop/bookstore on the weekend and sit and work. Editing and reworking really benefits from me not having internet access (interestingly, it doesn't seem to influence my writing that much. It's the editing and tweaking that suffers most from distractions). And adding 1k words to that every day should only take me 1-2 hrs every day. I might even get some exercise in.
Plenty of time. I'm on my game here. Good times.
Monday, 25 January 2010
Iron Cross, To Catch a Spy, Clean Slate
Anybody thinking I'm changing priorities every day might have a point. So, priorities right now:
- Edit TCaS
- Write Iron Cross
- Finish Clean Slate
At least the two first ones are seriously hard work - they are both novel-sized, so need a lot more focus than a short story or a novella. Iron Cross now has just under 25k, with an estimated final word count of at least 80k. I need to do some serious research there, too, largely into military horsemanship, Third Reich and a couple historical people. (I'll have a scene with Himmler, Goering and Speer... which makes me a little nervous, because so far I don't actually know what they were like, only that Himmler was terribly boring as a person.) To hit my word count and my personal deadline, I'll attempt to write 1,000 words of IC per day from now on. Deadline for me: end of March/beginning of April. I'll post updates how it goes. You'll be the first to know.
TCaS is fiddly work. Lots of re-writing and re-arranging of already-written text. I've made a deal with myself to work on it every day for 30-50mins. Short, intense bursts tend to accomplish more than long, drawn-out painful all-evening editing sessions (even though those got "Special Forces" done). Plus, I enjoy it more. Deadline: similar to Iron Cross, which is a bit of a bummer, because that means divided attention, and I'm not really good with that when it's two novels.
Plus, if the house sale goes through as planned in February/March, all of my planning in terms of deadlines might get shot to shit anyway. That's the risk, that's why I'm frantically finishing up stuff. But it'll be good to sell a novel again.
"Clean Slate" should be done fairly soon, and in any case, that's just a few hundred words a day. Now that we know how it ends, we should be on the safe side there.
I hope the muse is being gentle with my brain for a little and doesn't force another project on me before I'm done with these three. I've been willfully ignoring Nicolai from "Moscow Spring" for three weeks at least. I hope he won't leave - or at least come back to me when I have time for him.
And I can't *wait* to post outtakes of all those stories here - but that'll happen closer to the release dates. Bear with me. I'm at capacity.
- Edit TCaS
- Write Iron Cross
- Finish Clean Slate
At least the two first ones are seriously hard work - they are both novel-sized, so need a lot more focus than a short story or a novella. Iron Cross now has just under 25k, with an estimated final word count of at least 80k. I need to do some serious research there, too, largely into military horsemanship, Third Reich and a couple historical people. (I'll have a scene with Himmler, Goering and Speer... which makes me a little nervous, because so far I don't actually know what they were like, only that Himmler was terribly boring as a person.) To hit my word count and my personal deadline, I'll attempt to write 1,000 words of IC per day from now on. Deadline for me: end of March/beginning of April. I'll post updates how it goes. You'll be the first to know.
TCaS is fiddly work. Lots of re-writing and re-arranging of already-written text. I've made a deal with myself to work on it every day for 30-50mins. Short, intense bursts tend to accomplish more than long, drawn-out painful all-evening editing sessions (even though those got "Special Forces" done). Plus, I enjoy it more. Deadline: similar to Iron Cross, which is a bit of a bummer, because that means divided attention, and I'm not really good with that when it's two novels.
Plus, if the house sale goes through as planned in February/March, all of my planning in terms of deadlines might get shot to shit anyway. That's the risk, that's why I'm frantically finishing up stuff. But it'll be good to sell a novel again.
"Clean Slate" should be done fairly soon, and in any case, that's just a few hundred words a day. Now that we know how it ends, we should be on the safe side there.
I hope the muse is being gentle with my brain for a little and doesn't force another project on me before I'm done with these three. I've been willfully ignoring Nicolai from "Moscow Spring" for three weeks at least. I hope he won't leave - or at least come back to me when I have time for him.
And I can't *wait* to post outtakes of all those stories here - but that'll happen closer to the release dates. Bear with me. I'm at capacity.
Another step closer and a change of direction
yesterday I tweaked a few things on my website again (minor fixes, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference unless you've memorised it) - and did the layout for "Test of Faith".
Owing to the complexities of LuLu, Raev has to redo/resize the cover to fit the book, but once that is done, I'll order a test copy to check how it looks in reality. Since LuLu needs a couple days to make the book and then about a week until it's fair to assume we're talking a February release here. Early February if everything goes ahead as planned, late February if I need to do two or three test copies to make this work. As with all print-on-demand books, "Test of Faith" will be relatively expensive. I might consider printing some off-set, but I'd have to finance a hundred copies or so, which might be really just a way to burn a lot of money and block up a lot of space in the Casa Voinov, but I'll consider it. I do like to be able to give away tangible books to reviewers.
I'm currently also getting back into "To Catch a Spy", and re-read the first chapter. And some of that is nothing short of brilliant. Laughing at my own jokes on the train was a good start into the dreary London office morning. Whether m/m/f is en vogue or not (I'm hearing different things from different angles), TCaS has a kick-ass first chapter and I can't wait to get back into working on it.
New writing has been slow, though. My brain is mostly concerned with fixing old text rather than creating new stories. The only thing I'm currently writing is a story called "Clean Slate" with Barbara Sheridan, which will be short and sweet. Not enough for a proper-sized novel, too much for a short story.
In other news, I'm waiting for responses from a number of publishers; PD Publishing, Loose Id (twice) and MLR Press (twice). I'm waiting for way too many things - my house, and five stories to be accepted, and of course whether my new job leads go anywhere.
On the other hand, the publishing schedule is filling up:
February - Test of Faith (print) & Spoils of War (ebook)
March - Burn (ebook)
April - Not America (ebook)
May - Test of Faith (ebook, eXcessica)
June - Blood Run Cold (ebook, eXcessica)
I'll only need releases now for July, August, September, October, November and December to fill up the year. But I'm working on that.
Owing to the complexities of LuLu, Raev has to redo/resize the cover to fit the book, but once that is done, I'll order a test copy to check how it looks in reality. Since LuLu needs a couple days to make the book and then about a week until it's fair to assume we're talking a February release here. Early February if everything goes ahead as planned, late February if I need to do two or three test copies to make this work. As with all print-on-demand books, "Test of Faith" will be relatively expensive. I might consider printing some off-set, but I'd have to finance a hundred copies or so, which might be really just a way to burn a lot of money and block up a lot of space in the Casa Voinov, but I'll consider it. I do like to be able to give away tangible books to reviewers.
I'm currently also getting back into "To Catch a Spy", and re-read the first chapter. And some of that is nothing short of brilliant. Laughing at my own jokes on the train was a good start into the dreary London office morning. Whether m/m/f is en vogue or not (I'm hearing different things from different angles), TCaS has a kick-ass first chapter and I can't wait to get back into working on it.
New writing has been slow, though. My brain is mostly concerned with fixing old text rather than creating new stories. The only thing I'm currently writing is a story called "Clean Slate" with Barbara Sheridan, which will be short and sweet. Not enough for a proper-sized novel, too much for a short story.
In other news, I'm waiting for responses from a number of publishers; PD Publishing, Loose Id (twice) and MLR Press (twice). I'm waiting for way too many things - my house, and five stories to be accepted, and of course whether my new job leads go anywhere.
On the other hand, the publishing schedule is filling up:
February - Test of Faith (print) & Spoils of War (ebook)
March - Burn (ebook)
April - Not America (ebook)
May - Test of Faith (ebook, eXcessica)
June - Blood Run Cold (ebook, eXcessica)
I'll only need releases now for July, August, September, October, November and December to fill up the year. But I'm working on that.
Sunday, 24 January 2010
"Test of Faith" - one step closer
My beta reader and friend Kate has already sent back the edits for "Test of Faith", which means...yeah, we're one step closer. I'm starting to get quite excited about this, actually. It'll be great to hold the book in my hands. At the rate this is going, that might already happen next week.
Yowzah.
Spent the morning talking business with my partner, and it's interesting to compare notes between ebooks and indie computer games, where he knows his way around. I'm still not quite sure which way we're heading, only that it's very exciting to be part of it and experiment. I can say "exciting", largely because I have a rent-paying job. If I didn't, I'd likely choose words such as "unsettling", or "disturbing" or "challenging", or even "scary".
Right. I'll now spend the rest of the day doing layout; hopefully, it will be easier than I fear. (I've done it before, but I haven't attempted to work with graphics - that's the one bit I hope will not throw me).
I have to keep my eyes on the goal: the book in my hands.
Yowzah.
Spent the morning talking business with my partner, and it's interesting to compare notes between ebooks and indie computer games, where he knows his way around. I'm still not quite sure which way we're heading, only that it's very exciting to be part of it and experiment. I can say "exciting", largely because I have a rent-paying job. If I didn't, I'd likely choose words such as "unsettling", or "disturbing" or "challenging", or even "scary".
Right. I'll now spend the rest of the day doing layout; hopefully, it will be easier than I fear. (I've done it before, but I haven't attempted to work with graphics - that's the one bit I hope will not throw me).
I have to keep my eyes on the goal: the book in my hands.
Back to the menage
Now that three or four projects are with other people (to get covers made, to get edited/feedbacked...), the next one on the list is the m/m/f menage "To Catch A Spy". I've just spent 30 minutes sorting through my files, but I'm back on top of things.
This will need some adding, tweaking, POV-fixing, and so on. Estimated time needed: 2-3 months. There will be a lot of changes and a lot of work and effort, but I think I'll be able to get it to the point where it can be. No problem. It's just that novels that grow so fast usually require a lot of time fixing. But I love the characters, so it'll be all worth it.
"Iron Cross" is still going to happen, but this one is more urgent. It has waited for a lot longer, and baring acceptance from a publisher, IC is not the top priority right now. Things will change when I hear back from the publisher who has the first 16k, obviously, but in the meantime, I can mess around with TCaS some more.
Right. Pile of printed-out manuscript to my right, desktop cleaned up, reference books further right. Notepad with pen to my left side.
Having set the stage for tomorrow, I'm now heading off to bed.
This will need some adding, tweaking, POV-fixing, and so on. Estimated time needed: 2-3 months. There will be a lot of changes and a lot of work and effort, but I think I'll be able to get it to the point where it can be. No problem. It's just that novels that grow so fast usually require a lot of time fixing. But I love the characters, so it'll be all worth it.
"Iron Cross" is still going to happen, but this one is more urgent. It has waited for a lot longer, and baring acceptance from a publisher, IC is not the top priority right now. Things will change when I hear back from the publisher who has the first 16k, obviously, but in the meantime, I can mess around with TCaS some more.
Right. Pile of printed-out manuscript to my right, desktop cleaned up, reference books further right. Notepad with pen to my left side.
Having set the stage for tomorrow, I'm now heading off to bed.
Saturday, 23 January 2010
"Test of Faith" - website update
I just updated the website for "Test of Faith" here.
This is the first of many updates of those "placeholder sites". Gradually the "Bookshelf" is going to fill up.
The next site to be updated is "Burn", for which we have a release date, namely 8 March.
So, one release in February (Test of Faith paper edition), one in March (Burn), one in May (Test of Faith e-book), and one in June (Blood Run Cold).
We're starting to get somewhere. :)
This is the first of many updates of those "placeholder sites". Gradually the "Bookshelf" is going to fill up.
The next site to be updated is "Burn", for which we have a release date, namely 8 March.
So, one release in February (Test of Faith paper edition), one in March (Burn), one in May (Test of Faith e-book), and one in June (Blood Run Cold).
We're starting to get somewhere. :)
"Test of Faith" - done
Just cleaned up the essay texts for "Test of Faith" and sent them out to Kate. I'm now going to fiddle with its website to reflect the progress (which means renaming the website, so will link this later).
Now it's just about layout and cross-checking everything, and I think we can release this is February.
One project down, another 24 to go. This was hard, much harder than expected.
Next one will be the translation of my zombie story. Just a little fun project and almost not gay at all, let alone romantic.
Now it's just about layout and cross-checking everything, and I think we can release this is February.
One project down, another 24 to go. This was hard, much harder than expected.
Next one will be the translation of my zombie story. Just a little fun project and almost not gay at all, let alone romantic.
Tying up the loose ends of "Test of Faith"
I'm currently going through a book on sexuality in the Middle Ages to check some facts for "Test of Faith". I expect to finish that little essay I have left to write today, and then it goes out to my friend Kate to get checked for grammar, writing and facts. The covers are done, so I fully expect to be able to get everything set up on LuLu.com in the next week. First, I want a "review copy" and check if it all comes out right, and then everything goes public.
That will end a long, long history of that particular story - one of the first things I wrote with Raev Gray, and possibly one of the most emotional tales I've ever done. If it made me cry, and I'm a cynical, jaded bastard, it's good. I know it's good. I wish I could always write at that level, and I'd be set for life.
So, watch this space, I'll post outtakes and more stuff about how publishing this progresses in the next days. I don't think I'll do much else. :)
That will end a long, long history of that particular story - one of the first things I wrote with Raev Gray, and possibly one of the most emotional tales I've ever done. If it made me cry, and I'm a cynical, jaded bastard, it's good. I know it's good. I wish I could always write at that level, and I'd be set for life.
So, watch this space, I'll post outtakes and more stuff about how publishing this progresses in the next days. I don't think I'll do much else. :)
Friday, 22 January 2010
Russian State vs Journalists - another casualty
Russia seems to be the world's worst place to work as a journslist. Not only it is the place where people like Politkovskaya can just be shot with no real attempt to work out who did it, no, now some backwater policeman "relieved his stress" by raping a journalist with a broom handle, killing the man:
Police took him a holding cell where, his friends allege, officers subjected him to a sadistic beating, raping him with a broom handle and causing severe internal injuries.
Popov – who worked for the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper – was taken to a hospital in a coma. He died without regaining consciousness.
Officials in the Siberian town have charged the police officer allegedly responsible, 26-year-old Alexei Mitayev. But they have sought to mitigate his crime – claiming the officer, who has young families from two women, was suffering from stress.
Popov's death is another embarrassment for the police, who are under severe pressure to restore public confidence after a string of damaging scandals. There are about 100 grave crimes a year committed by officers.
Thugs and homophobes, a brutal system with very little regard for its own citizens or even the rule of law. Well done, Valdimir and Dmitri, "reforming" that country. Well done indeed.
Police took him a holding cell where, his friends allege, officers subjected him to a sadistic beating, raping him with a broom handle and causing severe internal injuries.
Popov – who worked for the Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper – was taken to a hospital in a coma. He died without regaining consciousness.
Officials in the Siberian town have charged the police officer allegedly responsible, 26-year-old Alexei Mitayev. But they have sought to mitigate his crime – claiming the officer, who has young families from two women, was suffering from stress.
Popov's death is another embarrassment for the police, who are under severe pressure to restore public confidence after a string of damaging scandals. There are about 100 grave crimes a year committed by officers.
Thugs and homophobes, a brutal system with very little regard for its own citizens or even the rule of law. Well done, Valdimir and Dmitri, "reforming" that country. Well done indeed.
"Test of Faith" - we're nearly there
I think I'll publish "Test of Faith" in the next three weeks. The covers are nearly done, and yesterday I finished one of two remaining essays I had to do. I have hopes that I'll be able to write the last essay today when I get home from work and my co-author might be able to fix the back cover for publication.
That means I'll play with the layout and then upload the files and order a "review copy" from Lulu.com (which should take a week to arrive). Then I'll make the necessary tweaks and check stuff again. And then I'll order a small stack of the books and send them out to friends and a few reviewers. I'll have to check which reviewers like paper copies and how to make sure people are aware of the upcoming release, so the time it takes Lulu to make and ship the books should be interesting in terms of research and marketing.
It's definitely a learning experience. Never thought I was any good at selling, but I'm doing Ok when I believe in a product - in this case, my writing and that of writer friends.
And I'm totally aware that "Test of Faith" won't be a huge commercial success - doesn't matter, I believe in the book, and it has to be out there, for those few dozen people that will love it. And it's going to be a handsome book indeed. I want it on my shelf, too.
The e-book will be released with eXcessica just a day before my birthday, and that's that project taken care of. Incidentally, it'll be released about a year after it was written.
"Spoils of War" will need a cover, and "Not America" will need a cover and a translation. All these are what I call "easy victories", when I'm too busy or drained to do big projects. Just a few days of work, quick results, nothing outrageous, no pressure.
So, that would be three projects done.
In reading news, I finished Barbara Sheridan's "Their Lover" and "Samurai Captive". "Their Lover" is a bisexual menage with a great premise, but I would have liked for it to be much longer (66 pages is just a snack for me); "Samurai Captive" is mostly a m/f romance, but it has some f/f and m/m in there and I really enjoyed that one - gripping, suspenseful, with characters I really enjoyed and very good, sexy writing. So a four and a five star, respectively.
I have to find a bit I want to quote for my review of "Heartache Cafe", and that can then go out to "Speak Its Name" pretty soon. I'm definitely in a reading phase, I'm flying through books at the moment and can't seem to get enough. Looks like I'll make a dent in my TBR shelf. Thankfully, most of those reads are on my e-reader, and I just delete them when I'm done, so I have a pretty good idea of what needs reading and it gives me a sense of accomplishment. Those books I like and will want to re-read, I keep on my computer in an archived folder, the others just get deleted - like clearing out the cheap paperbacks.
And two of my writer friends just found out that their books are pirated. It's painful to see other writers suffer and go through the cycle of rage, helpless rage, and feeling betrayed, then defeated, then uninspired, and then often arrive at the "why do I even bother?" stage. Pirates are doing more than "freeloading". They take the writers' joy away, in addition to their livelihoods.
And of course it feels like that. Something you worked hard on for months is just being "shared" at the click of a button, and you get nothing, absolutely nothing. The honest souls who pay for it might not be enough to generate a second income from, but, what's worse, you receive those Google Alerts with the notice that your book is being stolen all over the internet - and you receive those alerts right in the moment when you have to decide whether to write the next chapter or maybe not.
Lately, I've seen a lot of writers make the decision to "maybe not" - they feel betrayed, backstabbed by their own readers, the very people who so often keep us going. Somewhere amongst your supporters, your allies, the people you depend on, there's a traitor who damages you the only way they can. Personally, I find it bad enough when people steal my stuff (and they do), but it's much worse when somebody posts "I love Aleksandr...can you send me the file off list?" (Yes, we do see those requests. We are on the internet, too)
You don't love me. You're taking my joy and my rewards away and make it harder, every time, to sit down and get that chapter written, all so you save a few bucks.
Is that worth it?
Those pirated copies aren't "free" - they cost our joy, and often enough our livelihoods, and might just kill the book that you would really have loved to read, but stealing our other work has killed it before you could steal it, too.
That's a steep fucking price.
(I do believe that most readers are honest, so the "you" is directed at the small selfish minority that doesn't care)
That means I'll play with the layout and then upload the files and order a "review copy" from Lulu.com (which should take a week to arrive). Then I'll make the necessary tweaks and check stuff again. And then I'll order a small stack of the books and send them out to friends and a few reviewers. I'll have to check which reviewers like paper copies and how to make sure people are aware of the upcoming release, so the time it takes Lulu to make and ship the books should be interesting in terms of research and marketing.
It's definitely a learning experience. Never thought I was any good at selling, but I'm doing Ok when I believe in a product - in this case, my writing and that of writer friends.
And I'm totally aware that "Test of Faith" won't be a huge commercial success - doesn't matter, I believe in the book, and it has to be out there, for those few dozen people that will love it. And it's going to be a handsome book indeed. I want it on my shelf, too.
The e-book will be released with eXcessica just a day before my birthday, and that's that project taken care of. Incidentally, it'll be released about a year after it was written.
"Spoils of War" will need a cover, and "Not America" will need a cover and a translation. All these are what I call "easy victories", when I'm too busy or drained to do big projects. Just a few days of work, quick results, nothing outrageous, no pressure.
So, that would be three projects done.
In reading news, I finished Barbara Sheridan's "Their Lover" and "Samurai Captive". "Their Lover" is a bisexual menage with a great premise, but I would have liked for it to be much longer (66 pages is just a snack for me); "Samurai Captive" is mostly a m/f romance, but it has some f/f and m/m in there and I really enjoyed that one - gripping, suspenseful, with characters I really enjoyed and very good, sexy writing. So a four and a five star, respectively.
I have to find a bit I want to quote for my review of "Heartache Cafe", and that can then go out to "Speak Its Name" pretty soon. I'm definitely in a reading phase, I'm flying through books at the moment and can't seem to get enough. Looks like I'll make a dent in my TBR shelf. Thankfully, most of those reads are on my e-reader, and I just delete them when I'm done, so I have a pretty good idea of what needs reading and it gives me a sense of accomplishment. Those books I like and will want to re-read, I keep on my computer in an archived folder, the others just get deleted - like clearing out the cheap paperbacks.
And two of my writer friends just found out that their books are pirated. It's painful to see other writers suffer and go through the cycle of rage, helpless rage, and feeling betrayed, then defeated, then uninspired, and then often arrive at the "why do I even bother?" stage. Pirates are doing more than "freeloading". They take the writers' joy away, in addition to their livelihoods.
And of course it feels like that. Something you worked hard on for months is just being "shared" at the click of a button, and you get nothing, absolutely nothing. The honest souls who pay for it might not be enough to generate a second income from, but, what's worse, you receive those Google Alerts with the notice that your book is being stolen all over the internet - and you receive those alerts right in the moment when you have to decide whether to write the next chapter or maybe not.
Lately, I've seen a lot of writers make the decision to "maybe not" - they feel betrayed, backstabbed by their own readers, the very people who so often keep us going. Somewhere amongst your supporters, your allies, the people you depend on, there's a traitor who damages you the only way they can. Personally, I find it bad enough when people steal my stuff (and they do), but it's much worse when somebody posts "I love Aleksandr...can you send me the file off list?" (Yes, we do see those requests. We are on the internet, too)
You don't love me. You're taking my joy and my rewards away and make it harder, every time, to sit down and get that chapter written, all so you save a few bucks.
Is that worth it?
Those pirated copies aren't "free" - they cost our joy, and often enough our livelihoods, and might just kill the book that you would really have loved to read, but stealing our other work has killed it before you could steal it, too.
That's a steep fucking price.
(I do believe that most readers are honest, so the "you" is directed at the small selfish minority that doesn't care)
Thursday, 21 January 2010
To accomplish today
Heading out home - I want to type up my review of "Heartache Cafe" by J S Cook for Speak Its Name, and then work on "Test of Faith".
Discovered an interesting discussion on the BBC Tech blog about e-readers here.
The discussion - especially the comments - reminded me that most people out there (even readers of tech blogs, which I'd place towards the gadget/tech loving end of the spectrum) are still largely uninformed or ignorant about the delivery channel I've been taking for granted for about 6 months now. Yeah, that makes me a technological grandfather.
I do wonder when newspapers and magazines will actually *get* e-books and take them seriously. My money is on once the format wars are done/won and we have a device that becomes as dominant and chic as the iPod or the iPhone and e-readers manage to dublicate the success of the netbook category. The whole industry (okay, baby industry) is already in place, all it has to do now is scale. There are many clever people involved, and the traditional publishers might just get left behind... unless they get on the train much faster than the music industry did when it came to delivering content in the format and the channel that the consumer wants it. Potentially, they are already staring at the red lights of the departing train.
Who knows. But I expect some radical changes very soon, and the strategists at Amazon are clearly seeing the signs of the times - and those aren't dumb people. hey know that the "first mover advantage" and their economy of scale can be replicated and isn't really the decisive factor. It's not about whether, but how, in what shape, and driven by which factors this whole thing s is goingt to happen.
For authors, it's the opportunity of the century, no doubt about that.
Discovered an interesting discussion on the BBC Tech blog about e-readers here.
The discussion - especially the comments - reminded me that most people out there (even readers of tech blogs, which I'd place towards the gadget/tech loving end of the spectrum) are still largely uninformed or ignorant about the delivery channel I've been taking for granted for about 6 months now. Yeah, that makes me a technological grandfather.
I do wonder when newspapers and magazines will actually *get* e-books and take them seriously. My money is on once the format wars are done/won and we have a device that becomes as dominant and chic as the iPod or the iPhone and e-readers manage to dublicate the success of the netbook category. The whole industry (okay, baby industry) is already in place, all it has to do now is scale. There are many clever people involved, and the traditional publishers might just get left behind... unless they get on the train much faster than the music industry did when it came to delivering content in the format and the channel that the consumer wants it. Potentially, they are already staring at the red lights of the departing train.
Who knows. But I expect some radical changes very soon, and the strategists at Amazon are clearly seeing the signs of the times - and those aren't dumb people. hey know that the "first mover advantage" and their economy of scale can be replicated and isn't really the decisive factor. It's not about whether, but how, in what shape, and driven by which factors this whole thing s is goingt to happen.
For authors, it's the opportunity of the century, no doubt about that.
New angle on an old story
I'm an old school (or should that be old skool?) fan of cyberpunk - going way back before its recent re-emergence. But cyberpunk is now, really, and has been for years. Thanks, William Gibson (and the others).
Now, "cyber warfare" is nothing new. Some armies have even hired specialists. The combat hacker attacking military installations is almost an old hat now. (We played stuff like that in roleplaying games, now its real). Usually, it used to be corporations versus other corporations, but now it's
The US and Google versus China.
Now, I love how the Chinese government says that Google has to respect cultural traditions. Yeah, let's go back to executing hostages and prisoners of war, discriminating against ethnic minorities, ban abortion, put cats and monkeys on trial for witchcraft, kill all the Protestants/Catholics (a pan-European bestseller in the 17th century) and kill everybody who blasphemes against the immortal Sky Fairy.
I have some serious issues with Google (their treatment of copyright holders is absolutely appaling), but seeing them stand up to China (at least for the moment) is very interesting. A global corporation against one of the largest states on earth, an emerging super power - if not "the" emerging super power. Clash of the titans.
There are so many stories in this basic set-up that I really want to sit down and write cyberpunk again. Corporate mercenaries vs state-sponsored secret service. We're seeing the beginning of something fabulous (in terms of stories) and very scary. China, when messing with Google, messes with all of us. My main email account is with Google, Google hosts this blog, I rely on Google for my work and research (okay, that could be substituted with Bing).
Interesting times.
Now, "cyber warfare" is nothing new. Some armies have even hired specialists. The combat hacker attacking military installations is almost an old hat now. (We played stuff like that in roleplaying games, now its real). Usually, it used to be corporations versus other corporations, but now it's
The US and Google versus China.
Now, I love how the Chinese government says that Google has to respect cultural traditions. Yeah, let's go back to executing hostages and prisoners of war, discriminating against ethnic minorities, ban abortion, put cats and monkeys on trial for witchcraft, kill all the Protestants/Catholics (a pan-European bestseller in the 17th century) and kill everybody who blasphemes against the immortal Sky Fairy.
I have some serious issues with Google (their treatment of copyright holders is absolutely appaling), but seeing them stand up to China (at least for the moment) is very interesting. A global corporation against one of the largest states on earth, an emerging super power - if not "the" emerging super power. Clash of the titans.
There are so many stories in this basic set-up that I really want to sit down and write cyberpunk again. Corporate mercenaries vs state-sponsored secret service. We're seeing the beginning of something fabulous (in terms of stories) and very scary. China, when messing with Google, messes with all of us. My main email account is with Google, Google hosts this blog, I rely on Google for my work and research (okay, that could be substituted with Bing).
Interesting times.
When RL gets in the way
I was planning to get some Test of Faith-related things done yesterday, but ended up tweaking my CV and then played internet potato. Also worked on a strategy to face today's work appraisal meeting with my boss (I didn't expect anything good out of that), and was pretty nervous about the whole thing. Well, shouldn't have been, I ruined a perfectly good evening with fretting. High standards and perfectionism cuts to the bone regardless of situation or context. I do prefer to be proud of my job and my feeling of disenchantment with the company feels like something of a failure to me.
I'm quite ridiculous in that I'm happy to be a "corporate drone" or a "sarariman" (Japanese-English term from "salary" and "man") - I like having a rent-paying job and I like working hard and being productive, only recently I've also been bored and not up to my usual standards, so I really feared the worst, but the appraisal went well. Boss might have been gentle because she's leaving on maternity leave, but the overall vibe was good. By London financial sector services standards, I have a pretty short work week and a fairly relaxed environment. There are many, many people that work much harder and longer than me.
The good part of the appraisal, obviously, is that if I leave (because I've sent applications), I'd be going on a high note rather than a down note, and since my boss would be my reference, that's worth a lot.
I sent an application to a job that fits me 99%, and the job agent said German native speakers are popular. He expects to place me at at least 50% more of my current salary - and it would be a great new challenge. And a challenge and more money is what I really want, as long as it doesn't mess up my writing schedule.
So, yeah, relieved. Still not very creative - I'm planning to do that when I get home tonight, possibly during lunch - but one worry is sorted. I expect my head to get back to normal when February is over - all my deadlines fall into February, and I expect to hear back from 4 publishers (or really 3 publishers on 4 projects) by then.
Until then, I'll just have to keep my head above water.
I'm quite ridiculous in that I'm happy to be a "corporate drone" or a "sarariman" (Japanese-English term from "salary" and "man") - I like having a rent-paying job and I like working hard and being productive, only recently I've also been bored and not up to my usual standards, so I really feared the worst, but the appraisal went well. Boss might have been gentle because she's leaving on maternity leave, but the overall vibe was good. By London financial sector services standards, I have a pretty short work week and a fairly relaxed environment. There are many, many people that work much harder and longer than me.
The good part of the appraisal, obviously, is that if I leave (because I've sent applications), I'd be going on a high note rather than a down note, and since my boss would be my reference, that's worth a lot.
I sent an application to a job that fits me 99%, and the job agent said German native speakers are popular. He expects to place me at at least 50% more of my current salary - and it would be a great new challenge. And a challenge and more money is what I really want, as long as it doesn't mess up my writing schedule.
So, yeah, relieved. Still not very creative - I'm planning to do that when I get home tonight, possibly during lunch - but one worry is sorted. I expect my head to get back to normal when February is over - all my deadlines fall into February, and I expect to hear back from 4 publishers (or really 3 publishers on 4 projects) by then.
Until then, I'll just have to keep my head above water.
Wednesday, 20 January 2010
Other activities
Been discussing two new projects, but at the moment, I feel like dumb rock with no gold veins - interest in new projects feels almost academic, I'm not getting really excited. Maybe they have to percolate, maybe I have to just start on them, maybe I'll be better when I have finished other stuff. Maybe my brain is maxed out, or I have to recharge, reading, researching, and simply accept that right now is not the moment to start something completely new. Sometimes wish there were hard and fast rules about the writing thing.
I'm mostly done with "Heartache Cafe" by JS Cook and expect to finish today. Reviewing that will be easy. It's a good story. I now just want to see Mrs Cook bring them all home/wrap up her plot.
Feedbacked a 15k mini-novella, too, a quick read in between writing emails and chatting with friends.
Dreading doing my part in an online workshop soon. It'll mean writing and reading lots of emails, and much less time for writing. But it's paid work, and with no raises or massive book sales yet (I wish!), I'm glad for every buck I make, and the workshop pays promptly and it's a grand at the end of the year for work I can do in my sleep.
For today, I want to write one essay for "Test of Faith". Just one. It's not difficult, but I feel blocked enough that I'd pay somebody to do it for me. And how stupid is that, because all those are topics I know backwards. My mind, sometimes I don't "get" you. Maybe I should attempt writing those during my lunch break - limited time and limited resources, as well as the environment at work help a bit when I'm stuck.
Next will be experimenting with Smashwords, and putting my zombie banker story online there, which still needs translating and a cover, and "Spoils of War", which also needs a cover. More "finished" entries on the spreadsheet.
I'm mostly done with "Heartache Cafe" by JS Cook and expect to finish today. Reviewing that will be easy. It's a good story. I now just want to see Mrs Cook bring them all home/wrap up her plot.
Feedbacked a 15k mini-novella, too, a quick read in between writing emails and chatting with friends.
Dreading doing my part in an online workshop soon. It'll mean writing and reading lots of emails, and much less time for writing. But it's paid work, and with no raises or massive book sales yet (I wish!), I'm glad for every buck I make, and the workshop pays promptly and it's a grand at the end of the year for work I can do in my sleep.
For today, I want to write one essay for "Test of Faith". Just one. It's not difficult, but I feel blocked enough that I'd pay somebody to do it for me. And how stupid is that, because all those are topics I know backwards. My mind, sometimes I don't "get" you. Maybe I should attempt writing those during my lunch break - limited time and limited resources, as well as the environment at work help a bit when I'm stuck.
Next will be experimenting with Smashwords, and putting my zombie banker story online there, which still needs translating and a cover, and "Spoils of War", which also needs a cover. More "finished" entries on the spreadsheet.
"Breathe"
I didn't do anything, really. Last bit of writing I did was last lunch break, and I feel like a slacker doing just around 500 words. Writing, at the moment, is hard. I seem to be in the "inhale" phase of the writing cycle. To explain, reading and writing follow cycles. I either read a lot or I write a lot, never really both together. Reading and editing is "inhaling", letting fiction and facts and other voices resonate through me, and writing is "exhaling" - making my thoughts and images visible (in a manner of speaking).
There's no point trying to reverse the two. I'm soul blind when I try to read during a writing cycle. I get impatient with the text, and that affects me and my perception of the text, and it never really gets through my skin that way. Similarly, when I'm reading, I tend to be much less prolific. I feel passive, receptive, in-drawn, withdrawn, while my brain orders and restructures thoughts and images and makes them part of the greater whole which I'll jokingly call my "mind". Being aware of those cycles is important, because accepting that I'm currently reading and not writing takes down the stress a notch. That's how I roll, that's how I work. I can still write (a bit), but it's slow. I'm not churning out 2,000 words/day, or even just 1,000, but maybe 300 or 500. I can very well clean up the text, edit, tighten the prose, fix mistakes.
I'm also getting to the point where I begin anticipating hearing back from publishers. Anticipation is bad. I try to forget my texts are out there and am then often pleasantly surprised when I hear from them. Right now, I'm waiting for three responses, each one bloody important, and already my mind runs around, frantic, doing that old dance of "what if, what if, what if?" And the Greek chorus in the background goes "you might get three rejections, you know?" in an ominous rising voice. Mocking.
Having to wait for three months to hear back feels inhumane. Month one, I was OK, because, yeah, no point expecting anything. Month two, same. End of month two - anticipation starts. They might get faster through the text. They promised to return as fast as possible. Is my text on the "perhaps" pile, where it can stay for six months (it has happened, and thank the Fates that I'd already given up on the text in question...)? What did I do wrong that I haven't wowed the editor?
Another reason why building relationships with publishers is so important: you go to the top of the reading pile when they know you and you already made them a tidy sum. But nobody really knows me yet. As far as most editors out there are concerned, I'm a nobody. I couldn't bring my five to ten thousand German readers with me when I made the change and the switch over to the English market. That's the harrowing part of this writing thing. Waiting, anticipating, wondering. Looking into my internal mirror, facing myself, directly, and asking; "did I do the best work I can? Am I good enough? Did that experiment backfire? Am I commercial enough?"
The best way to distract myself is fresh writing. Reading just keeps me open to the outside world, and while waiting for a "yay" or "nay", that's the last thing I want. I don't want to see the outside, I'm happy on the inside, peering out only enough to stay functional in my "mundane life".
There's no point trying to reverse the two. I'm soul blind when I try to read during a writing cycle. I get impatient with the text, and that affects me and my perception of the text, and it never really gets through my skin that way. Similarly, when I'm reading, I tend to be much less prolific. I feel passive, receptive, in-drawn, withdrawn, while my brain orders and restructures thoughts and images and makes them part of the greater whole which I'll jokingly call my "mind". Being aware of those cycles is important, because accepting that I'm currently reading and not writing takes down the stress a notch. That's how I roll, that's how I work. I can still write (a bit), but it's slow. I'm not churning out 2,000 words/day, or even just 1,000, but maybe 300 or 500. I can very well clean up the text, edit, tighten the prose, fix mistakes.
I'm also getting to the point where I begin anticipating hearing back from publishers. Anticipation is bad. I try to forget my texts are out there and am then often pleasantly surprised when I hear from them. Right now, I'm waiting for three responses, each one bloody important, and already my mind runs around, frantic, doing that old dance of "what if, what if, what if?" And the Greek chorus in the background goes "you might get three rejections, you know?" in an ominous rising voice. Mocking.
Having to wait for three months to hear back feels inhumane. Month one, I was OK, because, yeah, no point expecting anything. Month two, same. End of month two - anticipation starts. They might get faster through the text. They promised to return as fast as possible. Is my text on the "perhaps" pile, where it can stay for six months (it has happened, and thank the Fates that I'd already given up on the text in question...)? What did I do wrong that I haven't wowed the editor?
Another reason why building relationships with publishers is so important: you go to the top of the reading pile when they know you and you already made them a tidy sum. But nobody really knows me yet. As far as most editors out there are concerned, I'm a nobody. I couldn't bring my five to ten thousand German readers with me when I made the change and the switch over to the English market. That's the harrowing part of this writing thing. Waiting, anticipating, wondering. Looking into my internal mirror, facing myself, directly, and asking; "did I do the best work I can? Am I good enough? Did that experiment backfire? Am I commercial enough?"
The best way to distract myself is fresh writing. Reading just keeps me open to the outside world, and while waiting for a "yay" or "nay", that's the last thing I want. I don't want to see the outside, I'm happy on the inside, peering out only enough to stay functional in my "mundane life".
Tuesday, 19 January 2010
25+ projects going at the same time
I just checked my spread sheet which lists all the things I'm currently doing (one way or other). The list has 31 items. Six projects are done-done, so no things outstanding, they are published, edited, done, so I will never have to worry about them again.
That leaves me with 25 projects that are in various stages, most are started or done and need to be edited. That's a huge amount for me. (And it's all in addition to the ten things or so I have going on at work at the same time and maybe another ten or so in my real life). I'm quite amazed that I still manage to function. Of course it's all a question of priorities, but there is an awful lot of things going on in my head.
To which I'll soon add job hunting (again). Job market might be coming back, possibly, but I'm getting quite tired of all this here... despite the fact that I had a really productive day at work, which is not nearly as bad as twiddling my thumbs and being bored.
In terms of reading, I just finished the Josh Lanyon story in "Partners in Crime: Committed to Memory" and quite enjoyed it (well done, Josh, that was gripping and well-written!), and now I'm reading JS Cook's story "The Heartache Cafe", which I'll likely finish tomorrow or the day after. I really only read fiction on the train. Originally, I was supposed to read "Partners in Crime" for Speak Its Name, and after about 20 pages into Josh Lanyon's story, I realized that *his* story isn't historical - the other story is. But by that point, I was already too deep in the text and character to pull back, despite me wanting to only review the historicals because I'm a bit behind on my TBR pile. Drat! Tricked again. :)
Goal for today: write a little bit, answer a couple important emails, catch up with sleep. Sometimes, a working writer's life revolves around making it to the weekend.
That leaves me with 25 projects that are in various stages, most are started or done and need to be edited. That's a huge amount for me. (And it's all in addition to the ten things or so I have going on at work at the same time and maybe another ten or so in my real life). I'm quite amazed that I still manage to function. Of course it's all a question of priorities, but there is an awful lot of things going on in my head.
To which I'll soon add job hunting (again). Job market might be coming back, possibly, but I'm getting quite tired of all this here... despite the fact that I had a really productive day at work, which is not nearly as bad as twiddling my thumbs and being bored.
In terms of reading, I just finished the Josh Lanyon story in "Partners in Crime: Committed to Memory" and quite enjoyed it (well done, Josh, that was gripping and well-written!), and now I'm reading JS Cook's story "The Heartache Cafe", which I'll likely finish tomorrow or the day after. I really only read fiction on the train. Originally, I was supposed to read "Partners in Crime" for Speak Its Name, and after about 20 pages into Josh Lanyon's story, I realized that *his* story isn't historical - the other story is. But by that point, I was already too deep in the text and character to pull back, despite me wanting to only review the historicals because I'm a bit behind on my TBR pile. Drat! Tricked again. :)
Goal for today: write a little bit, answer a couple important emails, catch up with sleep. Sometimes, a working writer's life revolves around making it to the weekend.
The fun book vs the hard book
I didn't get much done yesterday (not nearly as much as hoped) - I only went throught one of the m/f stories for the upcoming sci-fi anthology, and after a record turnaround, I sent that on to the publisher, which means only three stories now left to be submitted, but my part in the whole endeavour is pretty much done at this point. At least I was optimistic enough to change the "to edit" to "finished" in my own spread sheet.
I did compile the spread sheet of projects and the number of projects since August 2008 comes down to 31, which includes translations, edits, writes, but all my stuff (or co-written stuff). Very impressive; I had been wondering about why my brain feels so crowded. I'll likely spend the rest of the year changing more fields saying "to edit/finish/write" to "finished". At the same time, new stuff keeps cropping up, so who knows how many will be there at the end of the year.
Received two more feedback emails for "Underground" and one was "I love it!" and the other was "I hate it". With another statement from a friend on Barbara's side, that's 3:1 in favour of "Underground". Fair odds. Some people do hate some texts, or can't relate to them. That's fine. Nobody can please everybody all the time, and I've been writing long enough to get my share of one star reviews on Amazon. At first, it's a shock, and I can't say it's exactly nice even now, but the final arbiter of whether a text is OK is whether I achieved what I set out to do with this particular text, whether any publisher likes it enough to take a chance on it, and finally, if there's one person in the world (apart from me), who enjoyed the text and got something out of it.
If I'd try to please everybody all the time, I'd end up with books like that Mormon woman writes or that other guy who thinks "symbology" is actually a valid university subject. I wouldn't mind being filthy rich, but if I was planning to be a commercially successful, rich writer, I'd be writing the totally wrong thing. So, by deciding to write what I write, I kinda take the liberty to experiment and do totally different texts every time rather than chase the lowest common denominator. The quickest way to turn me off writing forever is to force me to do "formula". I've tried writing things that I didn't feel, and it ended in me being miserable and hating every minute of it.
With every project, I'm trying to do something different; I jump all over genres, tones, styles, time periods, exploring my few core themes of loyalty, religion, identity and war, always in a slightly different way. What's the point of repeating myself? Repeating myself smacks of not having done it right the first time, and of not trusting the reader to have "understood" it first time. No point.
I understand that there are readers that love some of my texts and hate others. That's cool. I much rather hear a "hated this" than some half-baked truth. It means I'm varied enough to engender both love and hate from readers, both very strong emotions, and how marvelous is that, to spark off emotions with some black on white?
The good, the bad and the ugly come from the same brain and the same heart and guts. Personally, I think versatility is a strength, and I love my muses for being so whimsical at times - sometimes, I do really angsty, deep stuff and explore the foundations and core of people, but sometimes, all I have is one idea, one character, one scene/image I always wanted to do, and then I go with it. "Burn" is based on one idea. I'm not re-inventing cyberpunk with that one, but I completely enjoyed writing that story. "Deliverance" was a tone and a mood I wanted to express.
The deep stuff, the hardcore stuff, that's a totally different matter. Those are books that haunt and possess me and sit in my brain like a bullet in my frontal lobes. Those are books that I research for for months, even years, books I can't let go for ten years, books where writing 2-4k words a week is real progress because every sentence is written in blood, sweat and tears. That's not the nice kind of writing. The rush and high I get from those is, often enough, the adrenaline/endorphine release coming with serious strain and exertion (dare I say "pain"?). Those leave me drained rather than energized in that "fuck yeah" feeling of ruling the world that I get when I simply use my craft and do it right...totally regardless of the "seriousness" of the project.
"Iron Cross", "Return on Investment", and the others are bloody hard work. Everything else is play, but just as important to me. The fun projects are not even taking time from the "serious" books - I can only write so much of the serious stuff because it's emotionally and intellectually draining like hell. I'm lucky if I do 1 or 1.5 of those per year, and if I'd do only those, nothing else would have been written. But I believe in writing as much as possible, to keep those writing muscles fit and get better and better. And there are readers for my lighter stuff. Many of the readers that give me regular feedback (thank you guys!) just love my "voice" or my "way to do things" and are just as happy reading the light as they are happy to read the dark.
"Special Forces" started as a "fun project"(and turned into writing hell during 2008), "Deliverance" was challenging myself if I could write that length at the press of a button with limited time, "Collateral" gave me my joy back in writing at all at the worst point in 2009.
"Return on Investment" burst out of my head like Athena, driven by two sexy scenes and stuff going on at work, and turned into an exploration of some of my deepest issues, "Test of Faith", by all means a very serious piece of writing, came out with "Deliverance" - it's almost a companion piece. Both were triggered by the same book I read and fed from the same energy, one from the light side, the other from the dark side, and I'll let you decide which one's which.
"Spoils of War" was "just fun", but it's some of the best writing I've been involved in, recently. "Pawn" is the very very dark sequel to much more whimsical "To Catch a Spy".
"Transit" and "Cold Feet" started as answers to submission calls. "Blood Run Cold" is the (late) afterbirth of "Return on Investment". They are all connected, some stories are companion pieces, and I'm pouring what I know of craft into those, means I always try to write the best I can. (Obviously. Which self-respecting author doesn't?)
But there are outliers, and those are hard books that I have to fight every step on the way and wrestle home like a dead mammoth. But I honestly don't want to wrestle 10 mammoths home every year. One or maybe two is plenty for me.
I can never tell whether a project will be an easy victory or one of those books I anguish over for years and that haunt me for the rest of my life, but I know that I'm strangling myself if I don't follow where the energy is, and the energy is sometimes in the strangest places. I'm risking not doing my best work, but the alternative is not "better writing", the alternative is "not writing".
And I rather write a turkey than not at all.
I did compile the spread sheet of projects and the number of projects since August 2008 comes down to 31, which includes translations, edits, writes, but all my stuff (or co-written stuff). Very impressive; I had been wondering about why my brain feels so crowded. I'll likely spend the rest of the year changing more fields saying "to edit/finish/write" to "finished". At the same time, new stuff keeps cropping up, so who knows how many will be there at the end of the year.
Received two more feedback emails for "Underground" and one was "I love it!" and the other was "I hate it". With another statement from a friend on Barbara's side, that's 3:1 in favour of "Underground". Fair odds. Some people do hate some texts, or can't relate to them. That's fine. Nobody can please everybody all the time, and I've been writing long enough to get my share of one star reviews on Amazon. At first, it's a shock, and I can't say it's exactly nice even now, but the final arbiter of whether a text is OK is whether I achieved what I set out to do with this particular text, whether any publisher likes it enough to take a chance on it, and finally, if there's one person in the world (apart from me), who enjoyed the text and got something out of it.
If I'd try to please everybody all the time, I'd end up with books like that Mormon woman writes or that other guy who thinks "symbology" is actually a valid university subject. I wouldn't mind being filthy rich, but if I was planning to be a commercially successful, rich writer, I'd be writing the totally wrong thing. So, by deciding to write what I write, I kinda take the liberty to experiment and do totally different texts every time rather than chase the lowest common denominator. The quickest way to turn me off writing forever is to force me to do "formula". I've tried writing things that I didn't feel, and it ended in me being miserable and hating every minute of it.
With every project, I'm trying to do something different; I jump all over genres, tones, styles, time periods, exploring my few core themes of loyalty, religion, identity and war, always in a slightly different way. What's the point of repeating myself? Repeating myself smacks of not having done it right the first time, and of not trusting the reader to have "understood" it first time. No point.
I understand that there are readers that love some of my texts and hate others. That's cool. I much rather hear a "hated this" than some half-baked truth. It means I'm varied enough to engender both love and hate from readers, both very strong emotions, and how marvelous is that, to spark off emotions with some black on white?
The good, the bad and the ugly come from the same brain and the same heart and guts. Personally, I think versatility is a strength, and I love my muses for being so whimsical at times - sometimes, I do really angsty, deep stuff and explore the foundations and core of people, but sometimes, all I have is one idea, one character, one scene/image I always wanted to do, and then I go with it. "Burn" is based on one idea. I'm not re-inventing cyberpunk with that one, but I completely enjoyed writing that story. "Deliverance" was a tone and a mood I wanted to express.
The deep stuff, the hardcore stuff, that's a totally different matter. Those are books that haunt and possess me and sit in my brain like a bullet in my frontal lobes. Those are books that I research for for months, even years, books I can't let go for ten years, books where writing 2-4k words a week is real progress because every sentence is written in blood, sweat and tears. That's not the nice kind of writing. The rush and high I get from those is, often enough, the adrenaline/endorphine release coming with serious strain and exertion (dare I say "pain"?). Those leave me drained rather than energized in that "fuck yeah" feeling of ruling the world that I get when I simply use my craft and do it right...totally regardless of the "seriousness" of the project.
"Iron Cross", "Return on Investment", and the others are bloody hard work. Everything else is play, but just as important to me. The fun projects are not even taking time from the "serious" books - I can only write so much of the serious stuff because it's emotionally and intellectually draining like hell. I'm lucky if I do 1 or 1.5 of those per year, and if I'd do only those, nothing else would have been written. But I believe in writing as much as possible, to keep those writing muscles fit and get better and better. And there are readers for my lighter stuff. Many of the readers that give me regular feedback (thank you guys!) just love my "voice" or my "way to do things" and are just as happy reading the light as they are happy to read the dark.
"Special Forces" started as a "fun project"
"Return on Investment" burst out of my head like Athena, driven by two sexy scenes and stuff going on at work, and turned into an exploration of some of my deepest issues, "Test of Faith", by all means a very serious piece of writing, came out with "Deliverance" - it's almost a companion piece. Both were triggered by the same book I read and fed from the same energy, one from the light side, the other from the dark side, and I'll let you decide which one's which.
"Spoils of War" was "just fun", but it's some of the best writing I've been involved in, recently. "Pawn" is the very very dark sequel to much more whimsical "To Catch a Spy".
"Transit" and "Cold Feet" started as answers to submission calls. "Blood Run Cold" is the (late) afterbirth of "Return on Investment". They are all connected, some stories are companion pieces, and I'm pouring what I know of craft into those, means I always try to write the best I can. (Obviously. Which self-respecting author doesn't?)
But there are outliers, and those are hard books that I have to fight every step on the way and wrestle home like a dead mammoth. But I honestly don't want to wrestle 10 mammoths home every year. One or maybe two is plenty for me.
I can never tell whether a project will be an easy victory or one of those books I anguish over for years and that haunt me for the rest of my life, but I know that I'm strangling myself if I don't follow where the energy is, and the energy is sometimes in the strangest places. I'm risking not doing my best work, but the alternative is not "better writing", the alternative is "not writing".
And I rather write a turkey than not at all.
Monday, 18 January 2010
My readers & co-writers, they are awesome
Firstly, I'm relieved that one of my readers (and regular commentators on this blog), Elaine, has returned from hospital after an operation to her hand and things seem to be alright. Get better soon, Elaine!
Then, another much-abused beta (who offered to check my US military-related facts), Rhi, sent back "Underground" and seemed to have enjoyed it, apart from finding mistakes, but that was expected and welcome and I want to focus on the positives right now. :) Positives being, of course, that I have that kind of beta who's willing and eager to help. Big 'thank you' in that direction.
Was reminded today how short life is. An investor guy was murdered in Munich for his car, 36 years old, wife, two small children. I'm a liberal, but some criminals make it bloody fucking hard. I never dealt with him, but could quite easily have. I talked to his colleagues quite a bit last year. Crappage. Just two years older than me, and suddenly a life is just cut short, just like that, for a car worth 50k. What the hell?
So this is a post to say "thank you" to my readers, and all the people in my life who make this game on earth so much better, who've supported me through dark times and don't laugh at me (too much) when I'm riding a high. The small gestures, the large gestures, the time and friendship, the affection, the praise, the backing, the support, in short, the emotion is such a precious thing.
My sane and friendly co-writers, thank you for sharing your time, vision, characters and plots with me. It's such a kick to see stuff grow, to see other writers stretch their wings, to laugh at the jokes and feel like part of that is a film just created and directed for me, and thanks for being so great when you read my part of it, and the help fixing what needs fixing, putting in the work and going the extra hundred miles or so.
Collectively, you guys rock my world.
Then, another much-abused beta (who offered to check my US military-related facts), Rhi, sent back "Underground" and seemed to have enjoyed it, apart from finding mistakes, but that was expected and welcome and I want to focus on the positives right now. :) Positives being, of course, that I have that kind of beta who's willing and eager to help. Big 'thank you' in that direction.
Was reminded today how short life is. An investor guy was murdered in Munich for his car, 36 years old, wife, two small children. I'm a liberal, but some criminals make it bloody fucking hard. I never dealt with him, but could quite easily have. I talked to his colleagues quite a bit last year. Crappage. Just two years older than me, and suddenly a life is just cut short, just like that, for a car worth 50k. What the hell?
So this is a post to say "thank you" to my readers, and all the people in my life who make this game on earth so much better, who've supported me through dark times and don't laugh at me (too much) when I'm riding a high. The small gestures, the large gestures, the time and friendship, the affection, the praise, the backing, the support, in short, the emotion is such a precious thing.
My sane and friendly co-writers, thank you for sharing your time, vision, characters and plots with me. It's such a kick to see stuff grow, to see other writers stretch their wings, to laugh at the jokes and feel like part of that is a film just created and directed for me, and thanks for being so great when you read my part of it, and the help fixing what needs fixing, putting in the work and going the extra hundred miles or so.
Collectively, you guys rock my world.
Weekend roundup
First feedback arrived on "Underground" and my usual beta/editor loved it. She ran through the text in two days. Wow. Some people are incredibly fast about this editing thing. Now awaiting feedback from a couple more people and then see what the bottom line is. The text itself is sent out, so changes will be part of the edit/rework we'll do for the publisher. The text itself was already very clean, but you always miss something.
I've done some minor edits/feedback on the m/f sci-fi anthology I'm putting together. Three out of four stories are back with their authors, I'll wrap up the last one today during lunch and when I come home after work, and send it back to the author. Once I'm getting the texts back, I'll forward the lot to the publisher, and that should have been my involvement in the project. I love doing anthologies, but it's pretty hard work and does take time away from the writing, so won't do that again anytime soon (or at least not this year/the next 6 months).
I need to get organized a little better about my texts (and submitting them), so I'll start an Excel spreadsheet about the state of each manuscript. I need to edit and feedback some stuff (like an exposee, which is hard work, but I'm getting paid for that) and translate a story to put on Smashwords. I've determined that I'll be translating my German stuff into English, or at least rip out the good ideas and re-use them - I'm not feeling guilty about that, because very very few of my readers read both German and English, and people have been asking about the German stuff which is inaccessible to them. It's not self-plagiarising if it come with huge warning labels.
The weekend itself was really mostly about cleaning out projects - I finished the "Soldiers" edit, I pulled most of the anthology together, and I finished "Underground", which is subbed to the first publisher on the list...and started a new project, called "Clean Slate" (working title), again with Barbara Sheridan, but we wrote actually very little because writing felt like something I "should" do rather than wanting to do it. Still, despite the fairly impressive list, I feel I haven't done enough, like I should have done more, like I've squandered too much time with livejournal, Twitter, and aimlessly surfing the internet.
I'm hopeless. I'm a workaholic and I wonder what in the world I could achieve if I cared this much about the real world and my actual rent-paying job.
I've started reading "Partners in Crime" by Josh Lanyon and J S Cook for Speak Its Name and was 30 pages into the Josh Lanyon story before I realised that, d'oh, it's NOT a historical story. Ooops. I still want to finish it. Funny, how the amnesia plot mirrors my own amnesia plot for "Clean Slate". I'll just have to handle it differently and it should be OK.
Back to work.
I've done some minor edits/feedback on the m/f sci-fi anthology I'm putting together. Three out of four stories are back with their authors, I'll wrap up the last one today during lunch and when I come home after work, and send it back to the author. Once I'm getting the texts back, I'll forward the lot to the publisher, and that should have been my involvement in the project. I love doing anthologies, but it's pretty hard work and does take time away from the writing, so won't do that again anytime soon (or at least not this year/the next 6 months).
I need to get organized a little better about my texts (and submitting them), so I'll start an Excel spreadsheet about the state of each manuscript. I need to edit and feedback some stuff (like an exposee, which is hard work, but I'm getting paid for that) and translate a story to put on Smashwords. I've determined that I'll be translating my German stuff into English, or at least rip out the good ideas and re-use them - I'm not feeling guilty about that, because very very few of my readers read both German and English, and people have been asking about the German stuff which is inaccessible to them. It's not self-plagiarising if it come with huge warning labels.
The weekend itself was really mostly about cleaning out projects - I finished the "Soldiers" edit, I pulled most of the anthology together, and I finished "Underground", which is subbed to the first publisher on the list...and started a new project, called "Clean Slate" (working title), again with Barbara Sheridan, but we wrote actually very little because writing felt like something I "should" do rather than wanting to do it. Still, despite the fairly impressive list, I feel I haven't done enough, like I should have done more, like I've squandered too much time with livejournal, Twitter, and aimlessly surfing the internet.
I'm hopeless. I'm a workaholic and I wonder what in the world I could achieve if I cared this much about the real world and my actual rent-paying job.
I've started reading "Partners in Crime" by Josh Lanyon and J S Cook for Speak Its Name and was 30 pages into the Josh Lanyon story before I realised that, d'oh, it's NOT a historical story. Ooops. I still want to finish it. Funny, how the amnesia plot mirrors my own amnesia plot for "Clean Slate". I'll just have to handle it differently and it should be OK.
Back to work.
Sunday, 17 January 2010
How to make three guys work
Everybody says that m/m/m menages are hot right now. Well, "Underground" started as a three-guy-menage, but the main couple was so much in love there was simply no space for a third guy.
While I'm pretty happy how it turned out (I always think I'm a genius right after the writing...it's only with the editing that reality sets in, months later) - I regarded the fact that it didn't turn into a menage as a bit of a failure. After all, we're craftspeople, we should be able to build something as we see it?
Kinda wrong. It would have messed up the chemistry, so we didn't do it.
Cue Aleks, lying in bed this morning and pondering the menage dynamic (I do most of my plotting in bed, under the shower, in the bath or...too much information) and had an idea.
And now I have another book in my head.
It just keeps happening.
While I'm pretty happy how it turned out (I always think I'm a genius right after the writing...it's only with the editing that reality sets in, months later) - I regarded the fact that it didn't turn into a menage as a bit of a failure. After all, we're craftspeople, we should be able to build something as we see it?
Kinda wrong. It would have messed up the chemistry, so we didn't do it.
Cue Aleks, lying in bed this morning and pondering the menage dynamic (I do most of my plotting in bed, under the shower, in the bath or...
And now I have another book in my head.
It just keeps happening.
Yes, done!
Couple things today - so a bit of a round-up post.
First of all, I've finished editing "Soldiers" of Special Forces, which stands at a very healthy 19 chapters, 651 pages, and 256,408 words and can be got here. All in all I cut 30k words, usually repetition and simply bad, flabby writing.
Then Barbara Sheridan and I have finished "Underground" (working title) in first draft, which features two great guys. We're just polishing this up and then it goes out to make the rounds. A tidy 26k novella which was great fun.
Finally, Terry Kate of Romance in the Backseat (RITBS) has developed an online marketing course for authors. Get more information here. She really covered all angles here, and that course should prevent most trainwrecks that I see in author marketing. She gave me some very valuable pointers.
And with this, I shall go to bed to read a little more.
First of all, I've finished editing "Soldiers" of Special Forces, which stands at a very healthy 19 chapters, 651 pages, and 256,408 words and can be got here. All in all I cut 30k words, usually repetition and simply bad, flabby writing.
Then Barbara Sheridan and I have finished "Underground" (working title) in first draft, which features two great guys. We're just polishing this up and then it goes out to make the rounds. A tidy 26k novella which was great fun.
Finally, Terry Kate of Romance in the Backseat (RITBS) has developed an online marketing course for authors. Get more information here. She really covered all angles here, and that course should prevent most trainwrecks that I see in author marketing. She gave me some very valuable pointers.
And with this, I shall go to bed to read a little more.
Friday, 15 January 2010
The trophy shelf - fossil collection
In this mad thing we writers do - the constant fear of "that's it, I'm written out, I have nothing else to give/write", the issues of self-exploitation, potential burn-out, writer's block or any of the million traps we can fall into and lie at the bottom, bleeding - it's incredibly important to look after ourselves. Writers are people who choose what too cook based on how long it takes to prepare and eat, exploit their partners to do the shopping, and are quite likely to hire cleaners rather than sacrifice writing time to household maintainance, even if, typically, we can't afford cleaners and they make more per hour than we do with our writing.
One of the prime duties, or at least it feels like a duty, is to "feed the writer" or "refill the well". I assume the expressions come from Julia Cameron's successful books on "author wellness", a pretty lovey-dovey set of lovey-dovey books on how to look after your emotional needs as a writer, which almost borders therapy. While I used to sneer a bit at that "soft approach" to being a writer (I preferred the hard-core, technical books on construction), she's totally right. Like any activity pursued relentlessly, the mind that cooks up all these things needs to be taken care of. The body that sits all day needs to exercise at least a little to keep going, or we end up with lumbar issues (been there) and overweight. Not that we care as long as the stories keep flowing.
Another very important thing to do is to keep what I call the trophy shelf. Finance people have that in their offices - so-called "tomb stones" with are plexiglass squares with their deals inscribed on them. They are always placed in a way that a casual visitor (like a journalist) can't help but see them. No exception. I have such a shelf with my books on them, books I wrote, and, to the other side, books I had a hand in, that I edited, feedbacked and contributed a small measure to.
When the inevitable slump come ("I'll never write again, I have no worthwhile ideas...") looking at that trophy shelf gives me little boost. I can do it, I did have worthwhile ideas..., so I can extrapolate - logically, rationally - that I will most likely be able to do it again. Sometimes I have to rationally kick my own ass to get myself where I have to be. Positive feedback loop rather than the negative spiral of tension, resentment, guilt, and block that writers often slip into.
That's really why I want "Special Forces" on that shelf. As proof that I have done it, can do it, and will do it again. Also, in a way, the text then "lasts", it will survive my computer crashing, and it's something tangible.
But the finished book means something different to reader and author. To the reader, it is the thing - for the writer, it's the result of the thing. The fruit of the labour, but having dealt with the text for months and months, the writer has a completely different perspective. We know the blue prints, the models, the sketches, but the reader can ony enter the building and usually has no access to anything regarding the process itself. Which, to the writer, is more important.
The finished book is nothing but a fossil and can serve as a reminder of the process ("yes, I remember that scene was a bastard to write"), but it isn't the process. If you read writer's blogs, they talk far less about the finished book than the process of getting there. At the same time, many of us are reluctant to write too much about the process, because, necessarily, our focus is towards the *inside* during writing rather than the outside. Not every writer can talk about something that's not written, and the fear of idea/title theft is another factor.
What I see when I read my own texts, when I trace the lines of fossil in the stone, is that I remember emotions, heureka! moments, I remember where I was blocked and which scenes came out easily. Often, I'm amazed at what I wrote, because after about two or three years, I can't remember the words themselves (but at the same time, in co-projects, even after many years, I can tell exactly which sentence was mine). Often, a book is a snapshot of my psychological state while I wrote it ("Boy, I must have been down writing that!"), but the book itself is a token of the process, much like a gift from a lover. It makes you think of the lover, but it's not the lover.
And while you caress that book, what you really want to do is get back together with your lover and back to the process.
One of the prime duties, or at least it feels like a duty, is to "feed the writer" or "refill the well". I assume the expressions come from Julia Cameron's successful books on "author wellness", a pretty lovey-dovey set of lovey-dovey books on how to look after your emotional needs as a writer, which almost borders therapy. While I used to sneer a bit at that "soft approach" to being a writer (I preferred the hard-core, technical books on construction), she's totally right. Like any activity pursued relentlessly, the mind that cooks up all these things needs to be taken care of. The body that sits all day needs to exercise at least a little to keep going, or we end up with lumbar issues (been there) and overweight. Not that we care as long as the stories keep flowing.
Another very important thing to do is to keep what I call the trophy shelf. Finance people have that in their offices - so-called "tomb stones" with are plexiglass squares with their deals inscribed on them. They are always placed in a way that a casual visitor (like a journalist) can't help but see them. No exception. I have such a shelf with my books on them, books I wrote, and, to the other side, books I had a hand in, that I edited, feedbacked and contributed a small measure to.
When the inevitable slump come ("I'll never write again, I have no worthwhile ideas...") looking at that trophy shelf gives me little boost. I can do it, I did have worthwhile ideas..., so I can extrapolate - logically, rationally - that I will most likely be able to do it again. Sometimes I have to rationally kick my own ass to get myself where I have to be. Positive feedback loop rather than the negative spiral of tension, resentment, guilt, and block that writers often slip into.
That's really why I want "Special Forces" on that shelf. As proof that I have done it, can do it, and will do it again. Also, in a way, the text then "lasts", it will survive my computer crashing, and it's something tangible.
But the finished book means something different to reader and author. To the reader, it is the thing - for the writer, it's the result of the thing. The fruit of the labour, but having dealt with the text for months and months, the writer has a completely different perspective. We know the blue prints, the models, the sketches, but the reader can ony enter the building and usually has no access to anything regarding the process itself. Which, to the writer, is more important.
The finished book is nothing but a fossil and can serve as a reminder of the process ("yes, I remember that scene was a bastard to write"), but it isn't the process. If you read writer's blogs, they talk far less about the finished book than the process of getting there. At the same time, many of us are reluctant to write too much about the process, because, necessarily, our focus is towards the *inside* during writing rather than the outside. Not every writer can talk about something that's not written, and the fear of idea/title theft is another factor.
What I see when I read my own texts, when I trace the lines of fossil in the stone, is that I remember emotions, heureka! moments, I remember where I was blocked and which scenes came out easily. Often, I'm amazed at what I wrote, because after about two or three years, I can't remember the words themselves (but at the same time, in co-projects, even after many years, I can tell exactly which sentence was mine). Often, a book is a snapshot of my psychological state while I wrote it ("Boy, I must have been down writing that!"), but the book itself is a token of the process, much like a gift from a lover. It makes you think of the lover, but it's not the lover.
And while you caress that book, what you really want to do is get back together with your lover and back to the process.
Thursday, 14 January 2010
Authors repeating repeating themselves
I love to hang out at the Guardian website (I guess that makes me a "pseudo-intellectual lefty", but I don't care) - not only to surf for new jobs, but because of their Culture/Books section.
This article examines authors repeating themselves and recycling tropes and themes.
Which is kind of amusing me, because I have my tropes, too, and am terribly attached to them. Hence I often deliberately go the other way, or twist them and mess around with them and try and wring a new aspect out of them. Of course, going the way of some authors that seem to only have one book in them and keep repeating that with the names changed (or serial numbers filed off) would be weird. I'd get too bored.
My tropes are clear... what are yours?
This article examines authors repeating themselves and recycling tropes and themes.
Which is kind of amusing me, because I have my tropes, too, and am terribly attached to them. Hence I often deliberately go the other way, or twist them and mess around with them and try and wring a new aspect out of them. Of course, going the way of some authors that seem to only have one book in them and keep repeating that with the names changed (or serial numbers filed off) would be weird. I'd get too bored.
My tropes are clear... what are yours?
Special Forces: The burden's been lifted
I may have said it before, but I really don't like editing. Of all the parts of writing (cooking up ideas, developing them, outlining, writing, editing, pitching, marketing and I may be forgetting some of them), I like editing least. My mind is usually elsewhere already, the muse has two new things going at least, and then there's this chunk of text I'm dragging behind myself.
The first draft text hovers in that purgatory-like state of being not quite saved and not quite damned; it's not done, so I can't pitch and sell it, and it's not bad text that needs to be discarded. I assume many really bad submissions to publishers happen in this stage. While the author knows that the text isn't done, what he hopes for is somebody to motivate him with a "sure, we'll take it, just change X, Y, and Z" or an opinion, or really anything. Getting turned down can be less painfull than editing.
Directly at odds with this stance of "all editing is pain", is my enjoyment of editing/feebacking other people's text. In almost all cases, I can actually offer something that will make the text better. I've encountered some texts that were impenetrable, or texts that were unconventional or texts that worked fine in their own way, but still were unsellable or very noncommercial at least.
The other driving factor is perfectionism. I simply cannot accept having anything out there that's not the best I can make it. I have to force myself to let a manuscript go and accept that every manuscript will undergo further changes and improvements along the way, as much as I was striving for perfection. Hence about three or four months work on "Special Forces: Soldiers". I still care about that part of the epic (somewhat less about Mercenaries and Veterans, because I believe Mercenaries is critically flawed and both parts simply lack the energy and drive that Soldiers had - but that's just my opinion in hindsight).
Well, as of this morning at 0:30, "Soldiers" is done in first editing pass. My beta is now chipping away at chapters 18 and 19, we'll discuss a couple issues, then I'll update the file, and "Soldiers" is complete. After that, I'll format the text, which then goes up on LuLu as a not-for-profit paperback, and possibly hardcover, so readers and fans of the epic can put it on their bookshelf. I certainly want to put "Soldiers" there, amongst the other six books I've done (plus the short story collections...). Taking care of the trophy shelf is important for a writer - everytime you doubt you can do it, you can always look over your shoulder and see them sit there, proof of your dedication, discipline, and, yeah, editing skills/stamina. Every finished book says "yes, I can do this."
The first draft text hovers in that purgatory-like state of being not quite saved and not quite damned; it's not done, so I can't pitch and sell it, and it's not bad text that needs to be discarded. I assume many really bad submissions to publishers happen in this stage. While the author knows that the text isn't done, what he hopes for is somebody to motivate him with a "sure, we'll take it, just change X, Y, and Z" or an opinion, or really anything. Getting turned down can be less painfull than editing.
Directly at odds with this stance of "all editing is pain", is my enjoyment of editing/feebacking other people's text. In almost all cases, I can actually offer something that will make the text better. I've encountered some texts that were impenetrable, or texts that were unconventional or texts that worked fine in their own way, but still were unsellable or very noncommercial at least.
The other driving factor is perfectionism. I simply cannot accept having anything out there that's not the best I can make it. I have to force myself to let a manuscript go and accept that every manuscript will undergo further changes and improvements along the way, as much as I was striving for perfection. Hence about three or four months work on "Special Forces: Soldiers". I still care about that part of the epic (somewhat less about Mercenaries and Veterans, because I believe Mercenaries is critically flawed and both parts simply lack the energy and drive that Soldiers had - but that's just my opinion in hindsight).
Well, as of this morning at 0:30, "Soldiers" is done in first editing pass. My beta is now chipping away at chapters 18 and 19, we'll discuss a couple issues, then I'll update the file, and "Soldiers" is complete. After that, I'll format the text, which then goes up on LuLu as a not-for-profit paperback, and possibly hardcover, so readers and fans of the epic can put it on their bookshelf. I certainly want to put "Soldiers" there, amongst the other six books I've done (plus the short story collections...). Taking care of the trophy shelf is important for a writer - everytime you doubt you can do it, you can always look over your shoulder and see them sit there, proof of your dedication, discipline, and, yeah, editing skills/stamina. Every finished book says "yes, I can do this."
Wednesday, 13 January 2010
e-Pirates = looting mobs (today's news round-up)
Here's an interesting article in the New York Times:
"In theory, public officials could deter piracy by stiffening the penalties, but they’re aware of another crucial distinction between online piracy and house burglary: There are a lot more homeowners than burglars, but there are a lot more consumers of digital content than producers of it.
The result is a problem a bit like trying to stop a mob of looters. When the majority of people feel entitled to someone’s property, who’s going to stand in their way?"
I really think that says it all.
In addition, the British guy who started "Oink" alledgedly did it to freshen up his computer skills. Well, I should really get back into martial arts. I think I'll get up and punch my team a bit. You think that'll work?
I still hold the idea that micropayments and shutting down torrent trackers is a good start (if the people who run torrent trackers go to jail and are banned life-long from the internet).
But artists shouldn't forget that the main torrent tracker out there isn't Astatalk or Demoid or any of the dozens and hundreds of trackers out there... but Google.
Google finds you whatever ebooks are out there, and Google's position towards copyright of authors has been amply demonstrated with the Gogle bookscan projects (which had many friends' books scanned completely without their knowledge so Google could sell advertising).
I think/hope that the internet's legal system will eventually catch up with the real world in terms of enforcement. What we are currently going through is the "Wild West" phase, but the Internet will settle down, eventually. Maybe there will even be some authors left who make a profit on their books.
"In theory, public officials could deter piracy by stiffening the penalties, but they’re aware of another crucial distinction between online piracy and house burglary: There are a lot more homeowners than burglars, but there are a lot more consumers of digital content than producers of it.
The result is a problem a bit like trying to stop a mob of looters. When the majority of people feel entitled to someone’s property, who’s going to stand in their way?"
I really think that says it all.
In addition, the British guy who started "Oink" alledgedly did it to freshen up his computer skills. Well, I should really get back into martial arts. I think I'll get up and punch my team a bit. You think that'll work?
I still hold the idea that micropayments and shutting down torrent trackers is a good start (if the people who run torrent trackers go to jail and are banned life-long from the internet).
But artists shouldn't forget that the main torrent tracker out there isn't Astatalk or Demoid or any of the dozens and hundreds of trackers out there... but Google.
Google finds you whatever ebooks are out there, and Google's position towards copyright of authors has been amply demonstrated with the Gogle bookscan projects (which had many friends' books scanned completely without their knowledge so Google could sell advertising).
I think/hope that the internet's legal system will eventually catch up with the real world in terms of enforcement. What we are currently going through is the "Wild West" phase, but the Internet will settle down, eventually. Maybe there will even be some authors left who make a profit on their books.
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
Special Forces update
Thanks largely to my intrepid beta, the new update's done. Last time was hardly worth mentioning, so I waited for two chapters and a substantial amount of text before uploading a new version.
So, "Soldiers" has 17 (out of 19) chapters, 217k words, 552 pages all in all.
Get it here.
Chapter 18 is with the beta reader, and I've just started on chapter 19, which meand "Soldiers" will soon be done.
So, "Soldiers" has 17 (out of 19) chapters, 217k words, 552 pages all in all.
Get it here.
Chapter 18 is with the beta reader, and I've just started on chapter 19, which meand "Soldiers" will soon be done.
Change, work, committment
After the crazyness of the last weeks, I'm starting to fall back into a sustainable routine (and I'm healthy again, which helps). I'm still getting used to my bread-winning job again, but at least I don't have the strong urge anymore to walk out. I assume pain is blunted by routine.
Yesterday, I finished my editing pass of "Special Forces" chapter 18, which was a whopping 79 pages (or 31k words) and thus both pretty intimidating and painful. The next (and last) chapter is "just" 20k, which seems like a walk in the park now. I'm assuming I'll finish the first round of edits before the weekend is up. After that, no more editing of "Special Forces" before May. I have other stuff to edit and other things to do, and my beta is now employed as an editor, so I'm losing her valuable time to Noble Romance. Shucks. :) (No, Alison, in all seriousness, congratulations to the job!)
Plus, I care a great deal less about "Mercenaries", but the main reason is, it's 500k words. That is an amount to edit that would make anybody's brain melt if done in one go, under pressure. I'll tackle the beast between May and December this year, but at the moment, I really want to step away from it and think a bit about its structure before I force myself through what is several hundred hours of work.
There's "BRC" to edit, which is nearly 200k, and which will be published. It needs to go through a couple betas, possible a few more editing passes, but it's scheduled for release in June, so I better get cracking on that.
There's also "Test of Faith", which needs another five or ten hours of work and then will be ready to go, too.
And there's the m/f anthology I'm putting together, which needs a new title, and some editing and work on the texts, and then will happen, too. Then I'll step away from acting as an editor, too; I've done it, I enjoy it, but all those bits are "extra" work. With my new releases coming up and many texts in advanced stages, I do have to focus to get stuff written, finished, edited, and out there. Of course, having become eXcessica's "errata monkey" hasn't really helped with that, but that assignment is quick and painless. I don't actually have to edit, and quick mechanical work hardly registers.
So, yeah. Much stuff happening, in addition to what I expect is going to be a turbulent year for my personal life. Moving house, changing job (I can hope!), and seriously pushing that writing thing now.
On a positive note, there's a German short story coming out in a David Bowie-themed anthology in Germany. I think I'll translate it and put it on Smashwords, just for the hell of it. But that's it in terms of German writing. I'm not even sure I'm any good anymore in German. I will keep plugging away at a mainstream historical novel in German, but my characters speak English and do stuff in English, and they do things that aren't very interesting for German mainstream publishers. I might just let my German writer self die and focus on this stuff - until it's time to present that German manuscript maybe in a year or two. Writing is a long-term thing.
The "dying" thing was triggered by a reminder to extent my German domains, and I've decided to let the German blog die. There's no point to it anymore, I don't think in German, I have very little to tell to my "German readers", and everybody who matters can find me here.
I used to fret a lot about losing my identity along with my language, but that's just the fear of change, I'm guessing. Embracing what I can't change and what come natural actually has me served much better than clinging to old stuff because it was part of my identity ten years ago.
Change? Bring it on.
Yesterday, I finished my editing pass of "Special Forces" chapter 18, which was a whopping 79 pages (or 31k words) and thus both pretty intimidating and painful. The next (and last) chapter is "just" 20k, which seems like a walk in the park now. I'm assuming I'll finish the first round of edits before the weekend is up. After that, no more editing of "Special Forces" before May. I have other stuff to edit and other things to do, and my beta is now employed as an editor, so I'm losing her valuable time to Noble Romance. Shucks. :) (No, Alison, in all seriousness, congratulations to the job!)
Plus, I care a great deal less about "Mercenaries", but the main reason is, it's 500k words. That is an amount to edit that would make anybody's brain melt if done in one go, under pressure. I'll tackle the beast between May and December this year, but at the moment, I really want to step away from it and think a bit about its structure before I force myself through what is several hundred hours of work.
There's "BRC" to edit, which is nearly 200k, and which will be published. It needs to go through a couple betas, possible a few more editing passes, but it's scheduled for release in June, so I better get cracking on that.
There's also "Test of Faith", which needs another five or ten hours of work and then will be ready to go, too.
And there's the m/f anthology I'm putting together, which needs a new title, and some editing and work on the texts, and then will happen, too. Then I'll step away from acting as an editor, too; I've done it, I enjoy it, but all those bits are "extra" work. With my new releases coming up and many texts in advanced stages, I do have to focus to get stuff written, finished, edited, and out there. Of course, having become eXcessica's "errata monkey" hasn't really helped with that, but that assignment is quick and painless. I don't actually have to edit, and quick mechanical work hardly registers.
So, yeah. Much stuff happening, in addition to what I expect is going to be a turbulent year for my personal life. Moving house, changing job (I can hope!), and seriously pushing that writing thing now.
On a positive note, there's a German short story coming out in a David Bowie-themed anthology in Germany. I think I'll translate it and put it on Smashwords, just for the hell of it. But that's it in terms of German writing. I'm not even sure I'm any good anymore in German. I will keep plugging away at a mainstream historical novel in German, but my characters speak English and do stuff in English, and they do things that aren't very interesting for German mainstream publishers. I might just let my German writer self die and focus on this stuff - until it's time to present that German manuscript maybe in a year or two. Writing is a long-term thing.
The "dying" thing was triggered by a reminder to extent my German domains, and I've decided to let the German blog die. There's no point to it anymore, I don't think in German, I have very little to tell to my "German readers", and everybody who matters can find me here.
I used to fret a lot about losing my identity along with my language, but that's just the fear of change, I'm guessing. Embracing what I can't change and what come natural actually has me served much better than clinging to old stuff because it was part of my identity ten years ago.
Change? Bring it on.
Monday, 11 January 2010
So many projects, so little time
I'm still reading for "Iron Cross", but two new projects are worming themselves into my brain. I will have to find a way to work on ten things at the same time, or I'm in trouble at the rate that my ideas go at the moment. I'm almost worried our house sale goes through faster than expected - because job, house move, and ten projects going on at the same time might just about break my brain.
I've teamed up with Barbara Sheridan to write a sci-fi/military/action m/m/m project (which is very hot; Barbara is a master in sexual tension). After two days, we have 9k words and are going strong indeed.
"Project Loki" is, I guess, about 30-50% in and looks good, too. Can't say too much about it, but it's set just after WWII, days before the German capitulation. It's been a theme/topic I've been interested in for months.
I wish I could get all the editing done that I need to get done. I'm editing only "Special Forces" in a madcap drive to finish the edits at the end of the month and release the whole thing in February. There, it's about 50-60k left to edit, then it needs to go to the beta, and then it's done.
After that, I'll step away from "Special Forces" for a few months and will do nothing but edit finished texts for release. First of all, "Blood Run Cold" will need an edit before it's getting released with eXcessica (in June).
I'm very very productive, but there's always a measure of guilt, like I don't get enough done, not enough published, I should be further into this edit/this project/this side project than this. Bah.
I had a character rampage through my head last night and didn't catch nearly enough sleep. It's like this character stands next to my bed, grabs me by the shoulder, shakes me awake and yells at me "did you know I'm descended from Cossacks?!" --- don't laugh, I have the saved iPhone notes to prove it.
I've teamed up with Barbara Sheridan to write a sci-fi/military/action m/m/m project (which is very hot; Barbara is a master in sexual tension). After two days, we have 9k words and are going strong indeed.
"Project Loki" is, I guess, about 30-50% in and looks good, too. Can't say too much about it, but it's set just after WWII, days before the German capitulation. It's been a theme/topic I've been interested in for months.
I wish I could get all the editing done that I need to get done. I'm editing only "Special Forces" in a madcap drive to finish the edits at the end of the month and release the whole thing in February. There, it's about 50-60k left to edit, then it needs to go to the beta, and then it's done.
After that, I'll step away from "Special Forces" for a few months and will do nothing but edit finished texts for release. First of all, "Blood Run Cold" will need an edit before it's getting released with eXcessica (in June).
I'm very very productive, but there's always a measure of guilt, like I don't get enough done, not enough published, I should be further into this edit/this project/this side project than this. Bah.
I had a character rampage through my head last night and didn't catch nearly enough sleep. It's like this character stands next to my bed, grabs me by the shoulder, shakes me awake and yells at me "did you know I'm descended from Cossacks?!" --- don't laugh, I have the saved iPhone notes to prove it.
Sunday, 10 January 2010
Say goodbye to Shakespeare & Virgil - or derivative works
Pursuant of my review of "Because You Despise Me" by J S Cook, the question has arisen whether it's OK to write texts clearly inspired by "classics". "Because You Despise Me" is very much the gay "Casablanca" and for two weeks, I sorted through my feelings about this and the argument whether it's OK to do that.
The battle has raged across what is commonly called "fandom" and everybody who engages in so-called "transformative work". And it's not just fiction that is based on TV shows; I have writer friends and friends who write Shakespeare fanfiction and completely transform the story, but it's very clearly fanfiction, in that you need to know the original to enjoy it fully.
I've written fanfiction based on The Punisher and Iron Man. I wanted to do it, but I'm not deluding myself for one moment about the copyright and rights to the characters. Do I think it's a valid expression of artistic drive and talent? Hell, yeah.
Literature analysis/history shows us that many "original works" are, in fact, retellings of classic stories. "Romeo and Juliet" is a retelling of a story by an obscure Italian writer that I don't even remember the name of. Virgil's Aenead is fanfiction to Homer's work, no doubt about it. I believe that all retellings and reworkings are valid and legit, creatively and artistically speaking. It's even ok to demand money for the work--as long as the source isn't hidden and there is a suffcient amount of stuff added to the work. I can't just rewrite Shakespeare and take out the metre, or change two names and put my name on the cover, to be fair to readers and the original, I believe it should be marked in some way to provide the context.
"Because You Despise" me so clearly references "Casablanca" and adds plenty to the classic tale. It can stand on its own feet, and I felt that the adaptation was done without "abusing" the classic. There is no abuse of classic works. Real classics protect/ defend themselves, simply by outshining and outlasting whatever is stuck to them.
And who knows where the inspiration for "Casablanca" came from?
The battle has raged across what is commonly called "fandom" and everybody who engages in so-called "transformative work". And it's not just fiction that is based on TV shows; I have writer friends and friends who write Shakespeare fanfiction and completely transform the story, but it's very clearly fanfiction, in that you need to know the original to enjoy it fully.
I've written fanfiction based on The Punisher and Iron Man. I wanted to do it, but I'm not deluding myself for one moment about the copyright and rights to the characters. Do I think it's a valid expression of artistic drive and talent? Hell, yeah.
Literature analysis/history shows us that many "original works" are, in fact, retellings of classic stories. "Romeo and Juliet" is a retelling of a story by an obscure Italian writer that I don't even remember the name of. Virgil's Aenead is fanfiction to Homer's work, no doubt about it. I believe that all retellings and reworkings are valid and legit, creatively and artistically speaking. It's even ok to demand money for the work--as long as the source isn't hidden and there is a suffcient amount of stuff added to the work. I can't just rewrite Shakespeare and take out the metre, or change two names and put my name on the cover, to be fair to readers and the original, I believe it should be marked in some way to provide the context.
"Because You Despise" me so clearly references "Casablanca" and adds plenty to the classic tale. It can stand on its own feet, and I felt that the adaptation was done without "abusing" the classic. There is no abuse of classic works. Real classics protect/ defend themselves, simply by outshining and outlasting whatever is stuck to them.
And who knows where the inspiration for "Casablanca" came from?
Review of "Because You Despise Me" by J S Cook
My review of "Because You Despise me" went online Speak Its Name:
What we are reading with this book is probably best described as “the gay ‘Casablanca’”. The set-up of the plot, the setting, the time, and the overall feel reminded me strongly of ‘Casablanca’, and what I remember of that film after about fifteen or twenty years seems to match up. A little research on www.imdb.com unearthed the full range of parallels; we have the police officer, the Nazi plot, the resistance fighters desperate to leave, and a love story, but the love story in “Because You Despise Me” naturally happens between two of the men rather than the heterosexual couple in the 1942 classic.
(Long version behind the link)
I'm also still editing "Special Forces" and expect to finish at the end of the month, knock on wood. Writing a couple other things, one is "Project Loki" and the other is something short and sweet with Barbara Sheridan. So far, very hot and great fun. More when we have more text - but those who like soldiers and action thrillers should get a kick out of this.
Yeah. Productive.
What we are reading with this book is probably best described as “the gay ‘Casablanca’”. The set-up of the plot, the setting, the time, and the overall feel reminded me strongly of ‘Casablanca’, and what I remember of that film after about fifteen or twenty years seems to match up. A little research on www.imdb.com unearthed the full range of parallels; we have the police officer, the Nazi plot, the resistance fighters desperate to leave, and a love story, but the love story in “Because You Despise Me” naturally happens between two of the men rather than the heterosexual couple in the 1942 classic.
(Long version behind the link)
I'm also still editing "Special Forces" and expect to finish at the end of the month, knock on wood. Writing a couple other things, one is "Project Loki" and the other is something short and sweet with Barbara Sheridan. So far, very hot and great fun. More when we have more text - but those who like soldiers and action thrillers should get a kick out of this.
Yeah. Productive.
Saturday, 9 January 2010
Friday, 8 January 2010
Madcap plan: the fully transparent novel
I'm assuming many writers have done it (I'm good at coming up with ideas that somebody has done, oh, 5 year ago), but I'm wondering if it would make sense to really document a whole novel-writing process in public.
From thought to research, to the grubby bits, doubts, fears, and so on, and with documented changes and feedback to the text up until the very last draft. I've often wondered if this process - which happens behind closed doors, with critique partners, in mailinglists, or "under cover" isn't absolutely fascinating for an outsider.
Outsiders believe that the novel, in the end, is the only way a book could have been written. And ideally, the finished book makes the most sense out of so many possible worlds. But text has become more fluid, more negotiable, and more interactive thanks to our close contact with the reader and the occasional urge to "over-share", where some readers can end up influencing the book or even get first draft text.
Main troubles at the moment - would this be more than a PR exercise? Could I sell the finished book? Does anybody even care about this?
I may give it a try. So much of the process is really only "shared" in the writer - only I know what every feedbacker wrote, only I really know my intentions and characters, and only I can really make it happen. There are platforms to do this, the infrastructure exists with Google Docs and Blogger. I'm mainly concerned about being unable to sell the text once it's done (but then, there's LuLu and Smashwords and eXcessica).
Maybe I'll try it with a short story first. Less complex in terms of work involved. Or maybe I'm cooking up mad schemes again that come to naught. Wouldn't be the first time.
From thought to research, to the grubby bits, doubts, fears, and so on, and with documented changes and feedback to the text up until the very last draft. I've often wondered if this process - which happens behind closed doors, with critique partners, in mailinglists, or "under cover" isn't absolutely fascinating for an outsider.
Outsiders believe that the novel, in the end, is the only way a book could have been written. And ideally, the finished book makes the most sense out of so many possible worlds. But text has become more fluid, more negotiable, and more interactive thanks to our close contact with the reader and the occasional urge to "over-share", where some readers can end up influencing the book or even get first draft text.
Main troubles at the moment - would this be more than a PR exercise? Could I sell the finished book? Does anybody even care about this?
I may give it a try. So much of the process is really only "shared" in the writer - only I know what every feedbacker wrote, only I really know my intentions and characters, and only I can really make it happen. There are platforms to do this, the infrastructure exists with Google Docs and Blogger. I'm mainly concerned about being unable to sell the text once it's done (but then, there's LuLu and Smashwords and eXcessica).
Maybe I'll try it with a short story first. Less complex in terms of work involved. Or maybe I'm cooking up mad schemes again that come to naught. Wouldn't be the first time.
Thursday, 7 January 2010
It's the eeeeend of the woooooorld
Wow. Most impressive image I've seen all week:
The death of all mobility in the UK.
I'm currently under the cloudy swirl in the South-East.
The death of all mobility in the UK.
I'm currently under the cloudy swirl in the South-East.
The Book is at the heart of it
Just because I found this quite uplifting - it can't hurt to remember one thing. The book is the most important thing in a writer's existence/career. All the marketing, networking, bitchfighting, hard- and soft selling in the world will not get you anywhere if you can't back it up with the book.
The book's the thing.
This is a good link for all my writer and writing friends who are too introvert to do the "constant sell" thing. I don't actually like pushing my books into people's faces all the time, mostly because I react negatively to "being sold to" and I think lots of salespeople are inconsiderate, rude, pushy scumbags (certainly holds true in most organizations I've worked in).
Do the work. Write a really good book. It's the tortoise approach in the mad race, I imagine, but who says you can't get to the finishing line that way. There are plenty of writers who don't hard-sell all the time, and many people that keep sending excerpts through mailinglists that clearly can't put a sentence together in a way that anybody would want to read them.
The book's the thing.
This is a good link for all my writer and writing friends who are too introvert to do the "constant sell" thing. I don't actually like pushing my books into people's faces all the time, mostly because I react negatively to "being sold to" and I think lots of salespeople are inconsiderate, rude, pushy scumbags (certainly holds true in most organizations I've worked in).
Do the work. Write a really good book. It's the tortoise approach in the mad race, I imagine, but who says you can't get to the finishing line that way. There are plenty of writers who don't hard-sell all the time, and many people that keep sending excerpts through mailinglists that clearly can't put a sentence together in a way that anybody would want to read them.
Thursday... bring on Saturday
Revisiting yesterday's post - in the meantime, it has snowed a little more. The boss even sent me home at 15:00 because she wasn't sure I'd make it home otherwise. Snow was coming in thick and fast - enough so that my long woolen coat was several kilos heavier when I got home, two-and-a-half hours later.
I'm amazed how a major European city can be so ill prepared and the staff of the transport system be either ill-prepared, ill-briefed, helpless/ressigned, or unhelpful (or several of those). How a little snow can reduce trains to twice an hour even from major hubs and those trains that do make it are all 40-45 minutes late.
And this is the city that wants to host the Olympics in 2012? With a few hundred thousand or a million guests? I'm scared. I'm honestly scared.
Well, I made it into work today and I am keeping an eye on the sky, because I don't want to be trapped in London after work. Last time that happened ("torrential rain incident"). It took me almost four hours to get home by bus... which was, what, a 12-15 mile bus ride?
The worst part is the snow clearing. Uhm. Which snow clearing? Nobody bothers to clean the pavement, which means that after a day, you have a slick, trampled, solid surface of ice. In Germany (forgive me for harping on about how much better Germany is in that regard) everybody has to clear the snow from the pavement in front of their own house or they are liable for injuries. Here, nobody cares. I do wonder how many people break their legs. Who cares? NHS pays for treatment, after all. It's disgusting. My seven-months pregnant boss has already fallen once and doesn't leve the house today because last time she fell, she spent five hours in a clinic to make sure the baby is OK.
What a nightmare - just because the UKians can't get themselves sorted and clear away the frigging ice. Hell, I broke a shin bone on an unsalted stretch of pavement once and it fucking hurt (to be fair, it was my own fault, I did walk down an unsalted path in minus 13 degrees celsius). I still feel a bit queasy when I have to traverse iced pavement like that. I don't want to spend 2-3 weeks in hospital/undergo surgery and then learn to walk again like I did in the mid-eighties (granted, surgery has made advances). It's stuff I don't need on top of everything else.
I'm thoroughly tired of this job, too, and have been looking at other places to work for. I will start sending out CVs soon and go to interviews again.
Edit to add: Wow, just got an interesting job forwarded from a friend. Thank you, universe. You do look after me. :)
I'm amazed how a major European city can be so ill prepared and the staff of the transport system be either ill-prepared, ill-briefed, helpless/ressigned, or unhelpful (or several of those). How a little snow can reduce trains to twice an hour even from major hubs and those trains that do make it are all 40-45 minutes late.
And this is the city that wants to host the Olympics in 2012? With a few hundred thousand or a million guests? I'm scared. I'm honestly scared.
Well, I made it into work today and I am keeping an eye on the sky, because I don't want to be trapped in London after work. Last time that happened ("torrential rain incident"). It took me almost four hours to get home by bus... which was, what, a 12-15 mile bus ride?
The worst part is the snow clearing. Uhm. Which snow clearing? Nobody bothers to clean the pavement, which means that after a day, you have a slick, trampled, solid surface of ice. In Germany (forgive me for harping on about how much better Germany is in that regard) everybody has to clear the snow from the pavement in front of their own house or they are liable for injuries. Here, nobody cares. I do wonder how many people break their legs. Who cares? NHS pays for treatment, after all. It's disgusting. My seven-months pregnant boss has already fallen once and doesn't leve the house today because last time she fell, she spent five hours in a clinic to make sure the baby is OK.
What a nightmare - just because the UKians can't get themselves sorted and clear away the frigging ice. Hell, I broke a shin bone on an unsalted stretch of pavement once and it fucking hurt (to be fair, it was my own fault, I did walk down an unsalted path in minus 13 degrees celsius). I still feel a bit queasy when I have to traverse iced pavement like that. I don't want to spend 2-3 weeks in hospital/undergo surgery and then learn to walk again like I did in the mid-eighties (granted, surgery has made advances). It's stuff I don't need on top of everything else.
I'm thoroughly tired of this job, too, and have been looking at other places to work for. I will start sending out CVs soon and go to interviews again.
Edit to add: Wow, just got an interesting job forwarded from a friend. Thank you, universe. You do look after me. :)
Wednesday, 6 January 2010
Snowkalypse averted - writing life
Much has been made of the impending "extreme weather event" (read: snow fall) in the UK, with "extreme weather warnings" sent out everywhere and spreading like wildfire. True to form, panicked Englishfolks ran into the supermarket in WWII-style panic buying sprees. I have to admit, I did check how much milk and eggs we have in the fridge. I hate buying food when everybody else does.
The situation is decidedly anti-climactic this morning. Trains are running late (but that's no different from normal times), there's a bit of snow, but no shutdown of overall British civilization. The snow has made all headlines, but it's just a couple inches, and not a snow flake in sight in inner city London. I am rather amazed that this is the same country that stoically bore the Blitz and built an empire in which the sun never set - panic buying and inability to salt the streets and get trains running on time seem inconsistent. It's been snowing in other countries in continental Europe and none of that makes headline news. Yes, I checked. (Update: Okay, there seem to be a couple articles about generally "cold weather", and some mocking of the Britons going on).
News-wise, the day is slow, but this just went through the team emails:
What happens when Cadbury and Nestle merge.
What is quite interesting is the question why our "pre-book lives" matter. The Guardian blog talk about the question here.
I'd argue that our "outside lives" matter even more. There are so few writers who turn fulltime after one sale that those numbers are statistically insignificant. The vast majority is the "working writer". Fulltime job, and writing. A few (very few) work part time. Most fulltime writers I know are on disability benefits, are subsidised by their partners/families, are still in education, or retired. Many of them live in financially extremely hazardous situations. One illness for many of my US friends means bancruptcy, for example. Others live very frugal lives. The rich writer is a myth. Writing is not a lifestyle, it's often an affliction that keeps us from devoting ourselves to careers such as banking which pays much better. You can't really write novels on an 80-hour-work week. Okay, I can't.
I've done any number of odd jobs over the last twenty years. Paper rounds, teaching English, German, and whatever I knew better than other people willing to pay for it, editing, I even worked at a gas station making sandwiches (since then, I've never again eaten a sandwich from a place I don't know/trust, go figure). I did security work and ghostwriting/research, even layout. I worked on a construction site for a little. I now feed a newswire as a journalist.
Even though there's sometimes this "I wish I could write full-time" feeling/discussion, I actually do think that a writer should experience "real life", and as much of it as possible, as long as it doesn't destroy the writing.
I've read too many books where writers write about writing, but who really cares about writers, who can relate to that? What we are doing is profoundly boring. If we don't stare at a screen, typing, we talk to/about people that don't exist in the flesh, we despair over finding the right turn of phrase - when really any turn of phrase would do - we suffer post-partum depression after every novel, we are those that have to be dragged to parties, then stare glassy-eyed into the distance, scribble on napkins, and plot our escape to the nearest computer.
Most often, I prefer the company of my "story people" to that of real people (this doesn't include my writer/reader friends) and I have to make an effort, every time, to relate to the real world. My time is measured in deadlines. January and February are the months in which I'll finish a first draft of "Iron Cross", end of February is when I'll contact the publisher about the novel I sent off in late November. The time in between? Who cares, as long as I'm writing.
My year is deadlines, my weeks are measured in word counts (and what I read), my real life is what I do so I gather inspiration and new "people", I eat and sleep (often I feel that's lost time), and the greatest thing I can imagine is sitting in front of my computer and finishing more chapters than planned. I'm a workaholic, I look at people like a startled deer when they interrupt me in a creative moment, the creative "flow" is everything. My grave will likely bear the inscription: "Wasn't really in this world", and my decision on whether to change jobs is at east 50% decided by "Will it affect my writing time/schedule"?
It's a life and "career" (*cough*) built around the one, single compulsion. Writing. Everything's geared around making it possible, sustaining it, maximising output. People ask me how I write so much, and there are a couple answers: I type like a beast, I write all the time, I don't watch TV and have a limited social life. I'm driven, fanatic, and I like it that way. It's the one thing I want to do - always, for the rest of my life.
Now, a job forces me out of that insulation and experience "real life". For me, that's a good thing. If I know I only have one hour a day to write (say, lunch break), I get more done than if I have an indeterminate stretch of time before me. I get to watch people, the real kind, those who are actually born, and watch what life is like outside my own head. Still means I'll stare off into the distance, don't go to office parties and am difficult to find without a book, a notebook or some electronic gadget in my hand, and not having Internet or a computer drives me insane after a few hours.
Being forced to make concessions is certainly a good thing. I got novels and people from living "real life", so to speak. I now understand how the corporate world works, that's more stories. I see what my readers have to put up with, I can research "first hand". I'm actually more productive with a fulltime job than jobless (which depressed me no end), and while I sometimes think it would be nice to be a fulltime writer, I need that connection to "outside".
It works the other way round, too. As a writer, I'm fairly unaffected by the small dramas of job life. My real job is writing, after all. I don't have to care all that much what's going on in the real world, because I'm like an iceberg - most people only ever get to see those 10-15%, and that's plenty for them. I don't particularly care about what's going on there, I'm more observer than participant, which is a brilliant position. My life isn't about my job, so I'm not devastated if I don't get promoted or don't garner fame and fortune. In addition, the one thing I'm good at and care about is totally under my control, everything else is just about paying bills and having a roof over my head.
I think that's freedom.
The situation is decidedly anti-climactic this morning. Trains are running late (but that's no different from normal times), there's a bit of snow, but no shutdown of overall British civilization. The snow has made all headlines, but it's just a couple inches, and not a snow flake in sight in inner city London. I am rather amazed that this is the same country that stoically bore the Blitz and built an empire in which the sun never set - panic buying and inability to salt the streets and get trains running on time seem inconsistent. It's been snowing in other countries in continental Europe and none of that makes headline news. Yes, I checked. (Update: Okay, there seem to be a couple articles about generally "cold weather", and some mocking of the Britons going on).
News-wise, the day is slow, but this just went through the team emails:
What happens when Cadbury and Nestle merge.
What is quite interesting is the question why our "pre-book lives" matter. The Guardian blog talk about the question here.
I'd argue that our "outside lives" matter even more. There are so few writers who turn fulltime after one sale that those numbers are statistically insignificant. The vast majority is the "working writer". Fulltime job, and writing. A few (very few) work part time. Most fulltime writers I know are on disability benefits, are subsidised by their partners/families, are still in education, or retired. Many of them live in financially extremely hazardous situations. One illness for many of my US friends means bancruptcy, for example. Others live very frugal lives. The rich writer is a myth. Writing is not a lifestyle, it's often an affliction that keeps us from devoting ourselves to careers such as banking which pays much better. You can't really write novels on an 80-hour-work week. Okay, I can't.
I've done any number of odd jobs over the last twenty years. Paper rounds, teaching English, German, and whatever I knew better than other people willing to pay for it, editing, I even worked at a gas station making sandwiches (since then, I've never again eaten a sandwich from a place I don't know/trust, go figure). I did security work and ghostwriting/research, even layout. I worked on a construction site for a little. I now feed a newswire as a journalist.
Even though there's sometimes this "I wish I could write full-time" feeling/discussion, I actually do think that a writer should experience "real life", and as much of it as possible, as long as it doesn't destroy the writing.
I've read too many books where writers write about writing, but who really cares about writers, who can relate to that? What we are doing is profoundly boring. If we don't stare at a screen, typing, we talk to/about people that don't exist in the flesh, we despair over finding the right turn of phrase - when really any turn of phrase would do - we suffer post-partum depression after every novel, we are those that have to be dragged to parties, then stare glassy-eyed into the distance, scribble on napkins, and plot our escape to the nearest computer.
Most often, I prefer the company of my "story people" to that of real people (this doesn't include my writer/reader friends) and I have to make an effort, every time, to relate to the real world. My time is measured in deadlines. January and February are the months in which I'll finish a first draft of "Iron Cross", end of February is when I'll contact the publisher about the novel I sent off in late November. The time in between? Who cares, as long as I'm writing.
My year is deadlines, my weeks are measured in word counts (and what I read), my real life is what I do so I gather inspiration and new "people", I eat and sleep (often I feel that's lost time), and the greatest thing I can imagine is sitting in front of my computer and finishing more chapters than planned. I'm a workaholic, I look at people like a startled deer when they interrupt me in a creative moment, the creative "flow" is everything. My grave will likely bear the inscription: "Wasn't really in this world", and my decision on whether to change jobs is at east 50% decided by "Will it affect my writing time/schedule"?
It's a life and "career" (*cough*) built around the one, single compulsion. Writing. Everything's geared around making it possible, sustaining it, maximising output. People ask me how I write so much, and there are a couple answers: I type like a beast, I write all the time, I don't watch TV and have a limited social life. I'm driven, fanatic, and I like it that way. It's the one thing I want to do - always, for the rest of my life.
Now, a job forces me out of that insulation and experience "real life". For me, that's a good thing. If I know I only have one hour a day to write (say, lunch break), I get more done than if I have an indeterminate stretch of time before me. I get to watch people, the real kind, those who are actually born, and watch what life is like outside my own head. Still means I'll stare off into the distance, don't go to office parties and am difficult to find without a book, a notebook or some electronic gadget in my hand, and not having Internet or a computer drives me insane after a few hours.
Being forced to make concessions is certainly a good thing. I got novels and people from living "real life", so to speak. I now understand how the corporate world works, that's more stories. I see what my readers have to put up with, I can research "first hand". I'm actually more productive with a fulltime job than jobless (which depressed me no end), and while I sometimes think it would be nice to be a fulltime writer, I need that connection to "outside".
It works the other way round, too. As a writer, I'm fairly unaffected by the small dramas of job life. My real job is writing, after all. I don't have to care all that much what's going on in the real world, because I'm like an iceberg - most people only ever get to see those 10-15%, and that's plenty for them. I don't particularly care about what's going on there, I'm more observer than participant, which is a brilliant position. My life isn't about my job, so I'm not devastated if I don't get promoted or don't garner fame and fortune. In addition, the one thing I'm good at and care about is totally under my control, everything else is just about paying bills and having a roof over my head.
I think that's freedom.
Tuesday, 5 January 2010
Cover me!
I've been tremendously lucky with my covers. See, I'm a visual person, and I buy (or at least consider buying) books also for their covers. Taurus is a child of Venus, they say, so I like "Teh Pretty"/aesthetic. (I argue that I'm using an iPhone also because it's simply so, so pretty).
I like good design. I'm not great at designing myself, but I have a reasonably developed taste. My website, for example, is fairly different from many other websites out there in that the design is "clean", "straight", "clear". I don't do glittery, singing/dancing pink/rainbow flags, for example. It's not that I don't like the rainbow as a symbol, but what I call my "corporate identity" doesn't absolutely depend on rainbows and glitter and fairies and pink. I'm not, in the strict sense of the word, a romance writer. I'm a writer. I may move on to write more straight stuff. So I'm more about expressing myself rather than go with the received wisdom of "glitter, rainbow, and pink means gay romance" - and who on earth came up with that? Clean design is what I like to look at (Erastes and Alex Beecroft's sites are very good examples of expressing something without pink glitter).
I believe the best way to express what I'm about is through text. Like a blog. A blog needs to be clear and readable first. No weird colours, no weird fonts. Straight, clean, simple. KISS me.
For example, I was pointed towards an epublisher today. This epublisher has an atrocious website - it looks like a GeoCities leftover page from approximately the early nineties. Horrible. Animated background, bad photoshop jobs all over the place, fifteen fonts and thirty colours, and singing, dancing banners. A friend told me she was concerned buying from that site, because... it didn't look professional for a publisher, never mind the "shopping cart" and "pay here" PayPal buttons.
Dear publishers: authors check out your website. If I've never heard from you in my life, I check out your website first. Just like we humans decide whether we like somebody in the first, uhm, ten seconds or so, a surfer on the internet sees an ugly website and decides "you know what, I can't trust you/I don't want to shop from you/I don't like you." Off they go. If the writer's any good, s/he'll get accepted elsewhere, and you end up with the desperate and multi-rejected. Not the effect you want to create.
Dear authors: same, likewise. You send a proposal, editors go to your website first to get a "feel" for you as a writer and as a person. Text matters. Rants about how much you hate to be edited? Not good. A publisher wants to work with a professional author, not a drama queen. Lots of typos in your text samples? Strike against you. Scrub up, present a professional face, put information where it can be found.
It's simple. First impressions count. Second impressions count, too, but the first impression needs to be good for it to even progress to a second impression.
The worst text in the world can't be laid out well enough to hide the fact it's a terrible text. The best design in the world - is very nearly invisible. I don't want you, reading this, to stare at my banner or get side-tracked by pop-up advertising. I want you to engage with my words and do so in peace, calm, and clarity. That's it. If I put any barriers between you and me - you struggle to make out my pink text on purple background, for example - I'm making this deliberately difficult for you. Why on earth would I do that?
Returning to the design question; the "safe" or default design is that of the "headless torso" in m/m lit. But people are starting to get tired of this. What used to be sexy is now the norm. Many people (like me) are simply bored of the headless torso. This is not invisible, great design, this is one lost chance to stand out, make a difference, draw interest. In my visual mind, all naked torso covers blend into one. They all look exactly the same in the online shops, too. Faced with a wall of naked, sculpted, anomymized man flesh, I'm deliberately checking out those that look different.
Speak Its Name currently discusses this here.
Boring the reader is bad. Few realise that the constant repetition of headless underwear models conveys a message. Such as "we didn't care enough about the book to make it stand out", "we think it's safer to do what everybody else is doing", "we think our readers won't mind typos if the guy on the cover's hot" or simply "sex sells"?
But does it really? I've seen so many naked torsos (torsoi? Torsi?) I'm simply bored by them. Beauty or physical perfection is a commodity. It's everywhere, it's cheap and plentiful. It's like those formulaic sex scenes in porn: blow job, intercourse, cum shot, or the "insert tab A into slot B" sex scenes I am getting tired of. It's almost time to start playing "porn bingo", inspired by "corporate bullshit bingo".
But is that a way to stand out? Do I really want (to write/design/publish) that? My main problem is, I'm getting simply bored by what everybody does, and turned off by what's done badly. And both together annoy me.
Full disclosure: when I decide whether to submit to a publisher, not only is their website important (if they look like amateurs, will I get professional support? Unlikely), but their covers, too.
There are publishers out there that I will never publish with, even some "big names", because I simply don't want to be associated with sucky covers. I know that the cover is one of the things that can be sorted out in a publishing contract. There are a couple publishers that I really, really want to publish with, but only under the caveat that I want to be able to hire a freelancer to do my cover for me. It's a major point for me. Publishers who tell me off the bat "fuck you, we have a cover artist and WE decide what goes on the book" and their covers suck donkey balls, simple don't get my business. Not only do they look like amateurs, they act like pratts, too.
I like pretty things. I haven't worked on a text for months or years to have some half-assed "Poser" cover slapped onto it in five minutes that will turn off most readers that are not mind-numbed or manage to contain Teh Cringe when they buy it.
There are many books out there. I prefer mine to be well-written and pretty, or at least not offensively ugly.
I like good design. I'm not great at designing myself, but I have a reasonably developed taste. My website, for example, is fairly different from many other websites out there in that the design is "clean", "straight", "clear". I don't do glittery, singing/dancing pink/rainbow flags, for example. It's not that I don't like the rainbow as a symbol, but what I call my "corporate identity" doesn't absolutely depend on rainbows and glitter and fairies and pink. I'm not, in the strict sense of the word, a romance writer. I'm a writer. I may move on to write more straight stuff. So I'm more about expressing myself rather than go with the received wisdom of "glitter, rainbow, and pink means gay romance" - and who on earth came up with that? Clean design is what I like to look at (Erastes and Alex Beecroft's sites are very good examples of expressing something without pink glitter).
I believe the best way to express what I'm about is through text. Like a blog. A blog needs to be clear and readable first. No weird colours, no weird fonts. Straight, clean, simple. KISS me.
For example, I was pointed towards an epublisher today. This epublisher has an atrocious website - it looks like a GeoCities leftover page from approximately the early nineties. Horrible. Animated background, bad photoshop jobs all over the place, fifteen fonts and thirty colours, and singing, dancing banners. A friend told me she was concerned buying from that site, because... it didn't look professional for a publisher, never mind the "shopping cart" and "pay here" PayPal buttons.
Dear publishers: authors check out your website. If I've never heard from you in my life, I check out your website first. Just like we humans decide whether we like somebody in the first, uhm, ten seconds or so, a surfer on the internet sees an ugly website and decides "you know what, I can't trust you/I don't want to shop from you/I don't like you." Off they go. If the writer's any good, s/he'll get accepted elsewhere, and you end up with the desperate and multi-rejected. Not the effect you want to create.
Dear authors: same, likewise. You send a proposal, editors go to your website first to get a "feel" for you as a writer and as a person. Text matters. Rants about how much you hate to be edited? Not good. A publisher wants to work with a professional author, not a drama queen. Lots of typos in your text samples? Strike against you. Scrub up, present a professional face, put information where it can be found.
It's simple. First impressions count. Second impressions count, too, but the first impression needs to be good for it to even progress to a second impression.
The worst text in the world can't be laid out well enough to hide the fact it's a terrible text. The best design in the world - is very nearly invisible. I don't want you, reading this, to stare at my banner or get side-tracked by pop-up advertising. I want you to engage with my words and do so in peace, calm, and clarity. That's it. If I put any barriers between you and me - you struggle to make out my pink text on purple background, for example - I'm making this deliberately difficult for you. Why on earth would I do that?
Returning to the design question; the "safe" or default design is that of the "headless torso" in m/m lit. But people are starting to get tired of this. What used to be sexy is now the norm. Many people (like me) are simply bored of the headless torso. This is not invisible, great design, this is one lost chance to stand out, make a difference, draw interest. In my visual mind, all naked torso covers blend into one. They all look exactly the same in the online shops, too. Faced with a wall of naked, sculpted, anomymized man flesh, I'm deliberately checking out those that look different.
Speak Its Name currently discusses this here.
Boring the reader is bad. Few realise that the constant repetition of headless underwear models conveys a message. Such as "we didn't care enough about the book to make it stand out", "we think it's safer to do what everybody else is doing", "we think our readers won't mind typos if the guy on the cover's hot" or simply "sex sells"?
But does it really? I've seen so many naked torsos (torsoi? Torsi?) I'm simply bored by them. Beauty or physical perfection is a commodity. It's everywhere, it's cheap and plentiful. It's like those formulaic sex scenes in porn: blow job, intercourse, cum shot, or the "insert tab A into slot B" sex scenes I am getting tired of. It's almost time to start playing "porn bingo", inspired by "corporate bullshit bingo".
But is that a way to stand out? Do I really want (to write/design/publish) that? My main problem is, I'm getting simply bored by what everybody does, and turned off by what's done badly. And both together annoy me.
Full disclosure: when I decide whether to submit to a publisher, not only is their website important (if they look like amateurs, will I get professional support? Unlikely), but their covers, too.
There are publishers out there that I will never publish with, even some "big names", because I simply don't want to be associated with sucky covers. I know that the cover is one of the things that can be sorted out in a publishing contract. There are a couple publishers that I really, really want to publish with, but only under the caveat that I want to be able to hire a freelancer to do my cover for me. It's a major point for me. Publishers who tell me off the bat "fuck you, we have a cover artist and WE decide what goes on the book" and their covers suck donkey balls, simple don't get my business. Not only do they look like amateurs, they act like pratts, too.
I like pretty things. I haven't worked on a text for months or years to have some half-assed "Poser" cover slapped onto it in five minutes that will turn off most readers that are not mind-numbed or manage to contain Teh Cringe when they buy it.
There are many books out there. I prefer mine to be well-written and pretty, or at least not offensively ugly.
Monday, 4 January 2010
Back at work - and a rant against vanity publishers
Like most writers, I'm now back at the bread job. In my case, that means feeding a newswire and putting a specialist magazine together. In this particular case, I spent the morning reading and (mostly) deleting around 800 emails, meaning I've now filtered the stuff I don't have to act on from the stuff I do have to work with/on/from.
There's always a moment of shellshock and trauma when returning to work, and a phase of mourning. To add insult to injury, a job I applied for and got to the second interview phase has been filled, which is OK because I felt a little queasy about it, anyway; on the other hand, there's that nagging feeling of the "habitual over-achiever" that somebody was better than me. Can't win, can't lose, but I wish the new person working on Strand in London all the best. Was even considering sending her a congratulatory email, but then thought it wouldn't do her any good and there's no point to it.
My post pile included a "limited" (X/100) print of artwork, sent to me from a PR company. Thing is, it's limited and all that, but it's ugly like hell, and at the same time I can't just rip it up and throw it away. I guess this one goes into the next Oxfam shop. Really can't stomach people selecting artwork for me like that. I'm a bit particular about what I surround myself with, and semi-naive sailor type clad boys with a cheesy grin and binoculars might be a good commentary on the economic situation ("Where the hell are we going?"), but certainly won't make it into the Casa Voinov.
I should actually take a photo and if anybody wants it, I'll be happy to send it on. Somebody must have a grandmother who'd like something like that.
Then an old contact (a transaction lawyer) sent me his book, which actually made me smile - there's nothing we can do for each other in a professional capacity, but he's so friendly and great to chat with that we just kinda stay in touch because we like each other. How nice.
Mostly, though, I'm trying to get through this Monday and get stuff done so I can go home and write. The older I get, the less patient I am with time-wasting. Also started a small side-project (it's been forever since I've been writing small fun things), inspired by my current reading material.
Talking of which, "The Third Reich at War" now tells me about the attack on the western neighbours. Should be interesting and provide background for the beginning of the novel. Will have to make sure a certain incident in "Iron Cross" doesn't happen after the 24th August 1941, which squishes my timeline a little. Oh well. I'll keep it historically accurate.
I think what I resent most about returning to work is that my "natural sleep pattern" (10:00 to 03:00) gets messed up on a 9:30 to 17:30 schedule.
Tired and cranky, but I responded, I hope helpfully, to a poor bastard who asked me (or rather, a different "me") what to do about his book he'd published with a vanity publisher to the tune of 15,000 EUR.
Uhm. Nothing. You're fucked, mate. Well and truly fucked. There's often a reason why publishers turn down books, and pig-headedly insisting "I'm brilliant and I'm doing it alone" only works if you are brilliant and a marketing genius, or if you decide that a couple hundred sales is all you want/need.
I wish there weren't so many writers out there who still fall for scams like this. The heartbreak is one thing, but these parasites making money out of young writers' opes and ambitions is despiccable.
It does remind me of one of those scammers who masqueraded as a legitimate literary agency in Munich. In around 1999ish, they got my 660 page strong fantasy novel (debut) and said it was brilliant, but needed some help and editing, which they were offering for just (!) 14,400 EUR, and I'd easily earn that back once the book was accepted and would fetch the price "it clearly deserves".
Well, no. Knowing what I know now, it wouldn't have. But I was tempted when they offered me a "partial rework for the first chapters" for just 2,500 EUR. Bargain! (Good then that I couldn't afford even that or I would be telling a different story today).
There are people that do have that kind of money, and are willing to part with it, to realize their hopes and dreams. Not knowing that making a couple books doesn't mean anybody buys them or they'll be in circulation or they are anything but a very costly mistake. So, yes, I told the guy he'd been skinned alive and should cancel his contract with the vanity publisher, try and recoup losses (apparently he wasn't properly edited, either) and get help on his novel from a proper script/novel doctor.
I told him I do that kind of work, but I didn't send him an offer for several reasons, one, it's immoral to make an offer like that before I've seen the text itself, it might be unsalvageable and spending more money on it would be a major mistake regardless of what the proud daddy feels about it, and two, I might simply not have the time to do it. If I can make a few hundred bucks or write a novel that eventually makes me a few hundred bucks, I know what makes me happier and more fulfilled.
Lastly, he should go with his reworked novel to a literary agent and/or traditional publishers, and do it again. The old adage, "this sucks, do it again", holds very true for manuscripts that are turned down.
I'd only ever advocate self-publishing in extreme cases (say, the writing is good, but not "commercial" - nevertheless, there are people who want to read this and the text is professionally edited and laid out) - and vanity publishing never. Not ever.
These scamming vanity publisher bastards should get hung by their testicles until they fall off.
There's always a moment of shellshock and trauma when returning to work, and a phase of mourning. To add insult to injury, a job I applied for and got to the second interview phase has been filled, which is OK because I felt a little queasy about it, anyway; on the other hand, there's that nagging feeling of the "habitual over-achiever" that somebody was better than me. Can't win, can't lose, but I wish the new person working on Strand in London all the best. Was even considering sending her a congratulatory email, but then thought it wouldn't do her any good and there's no point to it.
My post pile included a "limited" (X/100) print of artwork, sent to me from a PR company. Thing is, it's limited and all that, but it's ugly like hell, and at the same time I can't just rip it up and throw it away. I guess this one goes into the next Oxfam shop. Really can't stomach people selecting artwork for me like that. I'm a bit particular about what I surround myself with, and semi-naive sailor type clad boys with a cheesy grin and binoculars might be a good commentary on the economic situation ("Where the hell are we going?"), but certainly won't make it into the Casa Voinov.
I should actually take a photo and if anybody wants it, I'll be happy to send it on. Somebody must have a grandmother who'd like something like that.
Then an old contact (a transaction lawyer) sent me his book, which actually made me smile - there's nothing we can do for each other in a professional capacity, but he's so friendly and great to chat with that we just kinda stay in touch because we like each other. How nice.
Mostly, though, I'm trying to get through this Monday and get stuff done so I can go home and write. The older I get, the less patient I am with time-wasting. Also started a small side-project (it's been forever since I've been writing small fun things), inspired by my current reading material.
Talking of which, "The Third Reich at War" now tells me about the attack on the western neighbours. Should be interesting and provide background for the beginning of the novel. Will have to make sure a certain incident in "Iron Cross" doesn't happen after the 24th August 1941, which squishes my timeline a little. Oh well. I'll keep it historically accurate.
I think what I resent most about returning to work is that my "natural sleep pattern" (10:00 to 03:00) gets messed up on a 9:30 to 17:30 schedule.
Tired and cranky, but I responded, I hope helpfully, to a poor bastard who asked me (or rather, a different "me") what to do about his book he'd published with a vanity publisher to the tune of 15,000 EUR.
Uhm. Nothing. You're fucked, mate. Well and truly fucked. There's often a reason why publishers turn down books, and pig-headedly insisting "I'm brilliant and I'm doing it alone" only works if you are brilliant and a marketing genius, or if you decide that a couple hundred sales is all you want/need.
I wish there weren't so many writers out there who still fall for scams like this. The heartbreak is one thing, but these parasites making money out of young writers' opes and ambitions is despiccable.
It does remind me of one of those scammers who masqueraded as a legitimate literary agency in Munich. In around 1999ish, they got my 660 page strong fantasy novel (debut) and said it was brilliant, but needed some help and editing, which they were offering for just (!) 14,400 EUR, and I'd easily earn that back once the book was accepted and would fetch the price "it clearly deserves".
Well, no. Knowing what I know now, it wouldn't have. But I was tempted when they offered me a "partial rework for the first chapters" for just 2,500 EUR. Bargain! (Good then that I couldn't afford even that or I would be telling a different story today).
There are people that do have that kind of money, and are willing to part with it, to realize their hopes and dreams. Not knowing that making a couple books doesn't mean anybody buys them or they'll be in circulation or they are anything but a very costly mistake. So, yes, I told the guy he'd been skinned alive and should cancel his contract with the vanity publisher, try and recoup losses (apparently he wasn't properly edited, either) and get help on his novel from a proper script/novel doctor.
I told him I do that kind of work, but I didn't send him an offer for several reasons, one, it's immoral to make an offer like that before I've seen the text itself, it might be unsalvageable and spending more money on it would be a major mistake regardless of what the proud daddy feels about it, and two, I might simply not have the time to do it. If I can make a few hundred bucks or write a novel that eventually makes me a few hundred bucks, I know what makes me happier and more fulfilled.
Lastly, he should go with his reworked novel to a literary agent and/or traditional publishers, and do it again. The old adage, "this sucks, do it again", holds very true for manuscripts that are turned down.
I'd only ever advocate self-publishing in extreme cases (say, the writing is good, but not "commercial" - nevertheless, there are people who want to read this and the text is professionally edited and laid out) - and vanity publishing never. Not ever.
These scamming vanity publisher bastards should get hung by their testicles until they fall off.
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