November was a thing. People I don't know slept in my house, I ran a race, I got sick, I went to concerts, I got sick again, I ate more Thanksgiving dinners than a family of four, I drank a few bottles of whiskey which made me get sick a third time, and saw some friends I haven't seen since college. Along the way, I came up with a plan that will see me with six published titles by this time next year.
Here's the deal. I'm THIS many chapters from finishing the draft of The Nomad Wilds. If I continue kicking my word counts in the face, it'll be done by the end of the month. The first novel I wrote needs a new title, new plot, and a good once-over, but I can make edits on that in a couple of months once Nomads is done. That comes out in March. Six short stories need the same treatment and will take a week each and another week to organize them into a couple of collections. That puts me at the beginning of April. Start the edits on Nomads then, and I'll be working on the new non-fiction book I have in mind throughout. Assuming I am not delayed, both of those get out next fall. Six titles in time for the next Christmas spender bender.
As far as the present is concerned, I'm a little more confused. Battlesongs of Hope is still selling, even though I've been acting like it doesn't exist for more than a month. No forums, no promotion of any kind, and it's still plugging along. Hell, I haven't so much as updated Facebook more than twice in the last five weeks, and in November I had twice as many pageviews as I did in my previous best month. I don't know who you people are or where you come from, but I hope you stick around. Welcome.
But on to the important things. I mentioned a non-fiction book. Well. I has an idea. And since I think in words I'm going to be working through it here before it goes into book form. It goes back to conversations with Girlfriend and working through her myriad bits of individuality.
My current embryonic belief is that that the tendency towards positive or negative decisions is primarily a function of a person's relations to input and their perceptions of output. In turn, a person's inputs and outputs are affected by a number of paired relationships. I currently call the sum of these paired relationships the dimensions of discipline because they create a matrix in which a person can be highly disciplined in some areas and highly undisciplined in others. And the real kicker, the thing that got me to start this exploration, is that in a single given person, two IDENTICAL inputs in IDENTICAL circumstances can produce two entirely DIFFERENT yet equally logical outputs. Yet there is a pattern and predictability to those outputs, and I intend to discover it.
The factors at play are these:
• Long term vs short term
• Self love vs self destruction
• Peace vs progress
• Resting vs working
There may be more, but those are the ones that I'm working with now. I'll have more in subsequent posts; for now I have to do my squats because I have not lifted in several weeks and am visibly withering.
Onward...
Showing posts with label bsoh. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bsoh. Show all posts
Monday, December 5, 2011
Friday, September 2, 2011
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
Thursday, August 25, 2011
"Sooner or later...
... if you're any kind of man, you got to step up, step out, and see what the fuck you got."
Battlesongs of Hope manuscript went out to Lucky Bat Books today for formatting.
Battlesongs of Hope manuscript went out to Lucky Bat Books today for formatting.
Friday, August 19, 2011
The blurb process
Whether you call it a blurb, a product description, or a pitch, writing it sucks. The goal is to convince someone in 200 words or less why they should read your 200+ page book. If you have a short book and a long blurb, you get one word per page. This is something you've spent, at minimum, several months writing, and you have about 30 seconds and one or two paragraphs to convince someone that it's worth reading.
It SUCKS.
When I first sent off Battlesongs of Hope to agents, writing the queries was a nightmare. My thought process while writing the pitch part of the query went something like, "JUST PLEASE READ THE FIRST PAGE YOU'LL LOVE IT PLEASE JUST SKIM THE ACTUAL BOOK IT'S SO GOOD!"
What it actually said was this:
This is a decent summary of what happens in Battlesongs, even three years and some extensive edits later. But it kind of... skips. There's no coherent story, because it's missing about 350 pages that turn that summary into a story. You can see my intent in this blurb; the descriptions might be interesting enough to get someone to say, "Huh. I like wizards, maybe I'll take a look." But this approach depends on two assumptions I have no right to make.
1: The summary of the setting of BSOH is interesting to someone who is unfamiliar with it.
2: People are willing to take a chance with their time reading an unfamiliar fantasy by an unknown author. There are THOUSANDS of books that fit this description, and there's nothing in the blurb above to set me apart.
Both of the above assumptions violate one of my key tenants as an author: NO ONE CARES!
People do not owe me their time. Fact is, no one cares about my story unless I give them a good reason to, and because the above blurb does nothing to set me apart from anyone else, I haven't given the reader a good reason to give me their time.
That blurb racked up about 20 some rejections, for good reason. Two years later, Girlfriend came along and made me revise it. My thought process went something like, "Hey, movie trailers get people interested in movies; why not make my blurb read like a movie trailer?"
This is how it turned out:
If you squint, you can see how a particularly active imagination could tag along with this blurb and become interested enough to give the first page of the book a try. It's certainly more exciting than the first, but it still jumps around for someone who's unfamiliar with the book. In 192 words I introduce the main character, Jacob, Wizards capital W, some major events in Jacob's life, something called the Anarchist Murmur that somehow relates to Wizards capital W, and then an army that somehow Jacob has to fight because of the Anarchist and oh dear I've gone crosseyed.
No one owes me the time it takes to decipher this. It works as a moderately interesting account of events in the book, but there's too much proprietary information in too small of a package for anyone to really get their brain around it in the time it takes them to throw the query away or click off the Amazon page.
This second blurb racked up another half dozen rejection letters from agencies, but did get one small publisher interested enough to extend an offer which I ultimately walked away from. It was better, but it wasn't good.
When I started working with Lucky Bat, I now had to write something that ACTUAL READERS would see when the "Buy Now" button was staring them down. This is for actual dollars, not a contract, and I came up with this:
First, it's cleaner. Not nearly as much information, about half as long, and a much more direct focus. At this point, the real underlying problem starts to emerge: this paragraph says what HAPPENS in Battlesongs. What it does not do is describe what the book is ABOUT. Girlfriend, being the editor she is, had some stern words for me when I showed her this.
Something wasn't clicking for me. And because I need to kick ass wholesale at this blurb if anyone is going to buy the book, I strip mined my bookshelf and spent a couple of hours studying the back covers and trying to figure out why I bought the books I bought.
I thought I bought books because of all of the cool shit that happens in them. I expected to see blurbs talking about how bitchin the stories were, because that's what I remember from reading them.
What I actually found was that was true for exactly ONE of the books I own. The VAST majority of the other back cover blurbs made me interested in the main character, in one way or another. A slightly smaller majority doubled up on that and made me interested in the main character's personal conflict. This is NOT the main conflict of the story (news to me). When I revealed my discovery to Girlfriend, she had more stern words for me, but in the "How the hell didn't you know that?" sort of way.
She explained that the appeal of books for most people is NOT:
"Isn't it cool that [plot happens / setting exists]."
Instead, the appeal is:
"Wouldn't it be cool if I[were the MC / did these things]."
A couple of days later I sent the blurb that is going to accompany BSOH when it goes off into the wild.
Each of the first three blurbs took one or two solid writing days to craft. The final one took a week. I have no idea how much it will help or hurt BSOH when real people read it, but I do know that I have a much better chance to get someone to sample the first page of the book now than I did when I was begging them to.
Onward, in 150 words or less.
It SUCKS.
When I first sent off Battlesongs of Hope to agents, writing the queries was a nightmare. My thought process while writing the pitch part of the query went something like, "JUST PLEASE READ THE FIRST PAGE YOU'LL LOVE IT PLEASE JUST SKIM THE ACTUAL BOOK IT'S SO GOOD!"
What it actually said was this:
Civilization fell apart, and no one knew why. After years of anarchy, broken spirits languish in the ruins waiting to die.
Jacob Vogel scrapes together a living and a sense of purpose by working as a mechanic in a sprawling, ruined city once ruled by an oligarchy of Wizards. But the violent murder of his only surviving friend drives him out of the city on the verge of suicide.
Jacob wanders the hinterlands battling disease, dehydration, and wild animals for weeks. His travels bring him to clues about civilization's fall, a woman who teaches him to love life, and to the discovery of an impending crisis that dwarfs what came before.
Jacob's story is told in honest, direct language that shows the reader a man who doesn't consider himself or his experiences extraordinary. Four chapter-length flashbacks broaden the scope of the story beyond Jacob's immediate perspective.
This is a decent summary of what happens in Battlesongs, even three years and some extensive edits later. But it kind of... skips. There's no coherent story, because it's missing about 350 pages that turn that summary into a story. You can see my intent in this blurb; the descriptions might be interesting enough to get someone to say, "Huh. I like wizards, maybe I'll take a look." But this approach depends on two assumptions I have no right to make.
1: The summary of the setting of BSOH is interesting to someone who is unfamiliar with it.
2: People are willing to take a chance with their time reading an unfamiliar fantasy by an unknown author. There are THOUSANDS of books that fit this description, and there's nothing in the blurb above to set me apart.
Both of the above assumptions violate one of my key tenants as an author: NO ONE CARES!
People do not owe me their time. Fact is, no one cares about my story unless I give them a good reason to, and because the above blurb does nothing to set me apart from anyone else, I haven't given the reader a good reason to give me their time.
That blurb racked up about 20 some rejections, for good reason. Two years later, Girlfriend came along and made me revise it. My thought process went something like, "Hey, movie trailers get people interested in movies; why not make my blurb read like a movie trailer?"
This is how it turned out:
Five years ago something killed the Wizards and plunged all of civilization into anarchy. No one knew how, or why.
The Chaos that followed forced Jacob Vogel to become as hard and as cruel as the gangs that claimed his friends and family. Years of violence and futilely trying to forge an honest, dignified life drive Jacob to the verge of suicide and into the untamed hinterlands.
The hinterlands offer Jacob a new life. A wife and family, peace, work that makes people’s lives better; unimaginable blessings after a lifetime of suffering. But the city’s mysteries and malice have a long reach. In an abandoned farmhouse, Jacob learns the true nature of the Anarchist Murmur, the Wizards' bane, as well as the terrifying reason for the Wizards' extermination. A monstrous army led by the last magic-users in the world survived the Anarchist Murmur’s crusade, and have returned to scourge humanity from the Wizards’ realm.
Fighting means launching an impossible crusade, returning to violence to defend the only peace he’s ever known. But the truth behind the Anarchist Murmur turned Jacob’s life upside down, and he swears he'll never be a slave again.
If you squint, you can see how a particularly active imagination could tag along with this blurb and become interested enough to give the first page of the book a try. It's certainly more exciting than the first, but it still jumps around for someone who's unfamiliar with the book. In 192 words I introduce the main character, Jacob, Wizards capital W, some major events in Jacob's life, something called the Anarchist Murmur that somehow relates to Wizards capital W, and then an army that somehow Jacob has to fight because of the Anarchist and oh dear I've gone crosseyed.
No one owes me the time it takes to decipher this. It works as a moderately interesting account of events in the book, but there's too much proprietary information in too small of a package for anyone to really get their brain around it in the time it takes them to throw the query away or click off the Amazon page.
This second blurb racked up another half dozen rejection letters from agencies, but did get one small publisher interested enough to extend an offer which I ultimately walked away from. It was better, but it wasn't good.
When I started working with Lucky Bat, I now had to write something that ACTUAL READERS would see when the "Buy Now" button was staring them down. This is for actual dollars, not a contract, and I came up with this:
When the Wizards died, Jacob Vogel thought humanity could finally throw off the shackles of slavery. The years of chaos that followed left Jacob's family dead, his personality warped, and the Wizards' city in ruins. Wracked by guilt after failing to prevent his only remaining friend's murder, Jacob wanders to the edge of suicide and there discovers the truth. The mysterious force that killed the Wizards has been driving the violence plaguing humanity, ensuring no one would be prepared for the unthinkable. The Wizards have transformed into a monstrous, genocidal army, and they're returning for revenge.
First, it's cleaner. Not nearly as much information, about half as long, and a much more direct focus. At this point, the real underlying problem starts to emerge: this paragraph says what HAPPENS in Battlesongs. What it does not do is describe what the book is ABOUT. Girlfriend, being the editor she is, had some stern words for me when I showed her this.
Something wasn't clicking for me. And because I need to kick ass wholesale at this blurb if anyone is going to buy the book, I strip mined my bookshelf and spent a couple of hours studying the back covers and trying to figure out why I bought the books I bought.
I thought I bought books because of all of the cool shit that happens in them. I expected to see blurbs talking about how bitchin the stories were, because that's what I remember from reading them.
What I actually found was that was true for exactly ONE of the books I own. The VAST majority of the other back cover blurbs made me interested in the main character, in one way or another. A slightly smaller majority doubled up on that and made me interested in the main character's personal conflict. This is NOT the main conflict of the story (news to me). When I revealed my discovery to Girlfriend, she had more stern words for me, but in the "How the hell didn't you know that?" sort of way.
She explained that the appeal of books for most people is NOT:
"Isn't it cool that [plot happens / setting exists]
Instead, the appeal is:
"Wouldn't it be cool if I
A couple of days later I sent the blurb that is going to accompany BSOH when it goes off into the wild.
In this final version, Jacob as a character takes precedence over Jacob's experiences. His internal struggles take precedence over the external conflict that drives the plot. This gives the reader a foothold in an unfamiliar world, because Jacob's character and conflict are familiar: someone who stands up for what's right, even when the whole world is against him. It's short, it's focused, and it's interesting.Jacob Vogel considers himself one of the few decent men left in the world. During the riots following the ruling Wizards' downfall, he tried to provide for those close to him through his work as a mechanic. But the chaos kept spreading, and his skills with machines couldn't keep the violence at bay; he watched his sister's murder and killed his best friend with his own hand. The years of brutality finally broke him and drove him from the ruined Wizards' city. The hinterlands are a new world and offer a chance to build a new life. He finds peace, compassion, even love. But the city's corruption has spread farther than he could have imagined.
When the Wizards' legacy returns to enslave humanity, Jacob has a choice. He can run, abandon his family to their fate, and acquiesce to the world's depravity like he has so many times before. Or he can face his past, discover the power of redemption, and wield the human spirit as the only hope against tyranny.
Each of the first three blurbs took one or two solid writing days to craft. The final one took a week. I have no idea how much it will help or hurt BSOH when real people read it, but I do know that I have a much better chance to get someone to sample the first page of the book now than I did when I was begging them to.
Onward, in 150 words or less.
Monday, May 2, 2011
The timeline starts today
This is when things start to get interesting.
Today I sent out for quotes for formatting and cover design suitable for ebooks. The plan is to release Battlesongs of Hope on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords by the end of August.
I decided to self-publish rather than follow my one lead with a for-real-life publisher after I started following Joe Konrath. In September, I'd gotten farther with a publisher than I ever had before; they read the entire manuscript at least, and requested further edits before they could offer me a contract. Which is a rejection, but it's a qualified, not entirely final rejection.
But after I made the changes and started following Joe, I realized that even if I could get a book deal with this publisher, I may not be much better off. They are an ebook only publisher, which means no shelf space in Walmart, and they charge $5-$6 per ebook, regardless of the author. I don't know what their royalties are, but I'm willing to bet they pay a lower percentage than Amazon's 70% for a $2.99 copy.
So I'm jumping in the self-publishing world. I'm looking at $200-$500 for cover design and formatting, and plan on releasing at $1.99 per copy. Self-pub royalties scale with price, so I'm looking at about $1 per copy. If I can make $1 more in royalties than it takes to get this thing out there, I'll at least have not failed.
But however far I go past that, well, I'll find out in time.
Today I sent out for quotes for formatting and cover design suitable for ebooks. The plan is to release Battlesongs of Hope on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords by the end of August.
I decided to self-publish rather than follow my one lead with a for-real-life publisher after I started following Joe Konrath. In September, I'd gotten farther with a publisher than I ever had before; they read the entire manuscript at least, and requested further edits before they could offer me a contract. Which is a rejection, but it's a qualified, not entirely final rejection.
But after I made the changes and started following Joe, I realized that even if I could get a book deal with this publisher, I may not be much better off. They are an ebook only publisher, which means no shelf space in Walmart, and they charge $5-$6 per ebook, regardless of the author. I don't know what their royalties are, but I'm willing to bet they pay a lower percentage than Amazon's 70% for a $2.99 copy.
So I'm jumping in the self-publishing world. I'm looking at $200-$500 for cover design and formatting, and plan on releasing at $1.99 per copy. Self-pub royalties scale with price, so I'm looking at about $1 per copy. If I can make $1 more in royalties than it takes to get this thing out there, I'll at least have not failed.
But however far I go past that, well, I'll find out in time.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Battlesongs of Hope World Almanac Part 2: The Ancients
When humans first settled into cities, they did so alongside or at the behest of creatures known as Ancients. Unlike Dragons, which were part of the world itself, or Wizards, which were born naturally from humans in a magical world, Ancients instead evolved out of the energy of Humanity as a whole. The Delphi Archives note that there is some debate whether the Ancients shaped humanity as an amalgamation of themselves, or whether humanity unwittingly created the Ancients to embody aspects of human psyche. Whatever their origin, the Ancients were long the driving force of Humanity's history.
They were powerful creatures, taking the names given to them by humans but never changing their forms, which were as varied as their personalities. No single description could possibly fit all Ancients. Save perhaps for these: the Ancients did not age. Nor were they immortal, as the Two Houses displayed. They could exert great influence upon the world and its inhabitants, although the form by which this took varied widely. Some were exceptionally physically powerful, others raised armies of their progeny, others could conjure magical devices, and still others could transform life into their own image.
The Ancients spawned many of the magical creatures in the world. Shadow men, vampires, orcs, gremlins, fairies, nymphs, and a dozen other species were either created to serve the Ancients, or as a result of their influence. These societies were as varied and as lively as their human counterparts, and lived alongside Humanity for thousands of years. They feuded with humans and each other, had kings and presidents and merchants and parents, and found their way in the world just as humans did.
Few of these societies and even fewer of their founding Ancients survive today. There used to be an Ancient of alchemy and plants, one who was very tied to the earth, but they killed her. There used to be a great inventor Ancient, who created machines for every use and user, but they killed him. There used to be one who was like the sun, a bringer of light, but they killed her too. Michael the storyteller survived, as stories often do. There is still an orc lord living in the mountains, a lord of war, who fought and lost against the Wizards before the Two Houses arose, and his being driven to the mountains at the top of the world saved him from the Two Houses.
Some wonder if the Ancients could return, now that The Anarchist Murmur has come and gone.
They were powerful creatures, taking the names given to them by humans but never changing their forms, which were as varied as their personalities. No single description could possibly fit all Ancients. Save perhaps for these: the Ancients did not age. Nor were they immortal, as the Two Houses displayed. They could exert great influence upon the world and its inhabitants, although the form by which this took varied widely. Some were exceptionally physically powerful, others raised armies of their progeny, others could conjure magical devices, and still others could transform life into their own image.
The Ancients spawned many of the magical creatures in the world. Shadow men, vampires, orcs, gremlins, fairies, nymphs, and a dozen other species were either created to serve the Ancients, or as a result of their influence. These societies were as varied and as lively as their human counterparts, and lived alongside Humanity for thousands of years. They feuded with humans and each other, had kings and presidents and merchants and parents, and found their way in the world just as humans did.
Few of these societies and even fewer of their founding Ancients survive today. There used to be an Ancient of alchemy and plants, one who was very tied to the earth, but they killed her. There used to be a great inventor Ancient, who created machines for every use and user, but they killed him. There used to be one who was like the sun, a bringer of light, but they killed her too. Michael the storyteller survived, as stories often do. There is still an orc lord living in the mountains, a lord of war, who fought and lost against the Wizards before the Two Houses arose, and his being driven to the mountains at the top of the world saved him from the Two Houses.
Some wonder if the Ancients could return, now that The Anarchist Murmur has come and gone.
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Battlesongs of Hope World Almanac: Part 1 - The World
Battlesongs of Hope takes place in a world that most readers will recognize as Earth, even though it isn’t. Most readers would also recognize the time period as mid-20th century, but those years mean nothing there.
Battlesongs takes place on a large continent that is demarcated primarily into those lands which have been recently under Wizard influence, and those that have not. The boundary between these lands is fuzzy, primarily because the Wizards' lands were so vast and their power so great that there were no other powers on the continent to whom a boundary would be useful, and also because the Wizards are now dead, and so their influence has been waning of late.
The Wizard continent is presumably surrounded by an ocean, although because its role in the book is solely to help regulate the weather, it warrants little more mention.
The Wizard lands span mountains and coastlines, swamps and forests, but the greatest area of land is occupied by vast rolling fields that experience a temperate four seasons. Few cities dot the plains, due to the Wizards’ tendency to consolidate people and resources. Expansive farms turn the fields into a checkerboard of crops from horizon to horizon. The characters of BSOH are not particularly educated regarding life outside of the city, and therefore unfortunately do not know the proper names for many of the landmarks and features in the hinterlands.
The largest Wizard city, which the characters usually refer to as “the sprawl” when discussing it in aggregate, forms a centerpiece in BSOH. This city is so massive that it is much more useful to refer to the districts within the city, which take the names given by the Wizard clan that presides (or rather, presided) over them. The size and population of each district is variable, as Wizards control territory in the city according to their clan’s relative strength and favorability in the eyes of the Two Houses.
Resources and technology in the Wizard lands generally tend to obey the laws of physics. If there is oil in the Wizard lands, it has not yet been found. Liquid fuel is instead produced from algae or plant material, and is generally far more valuable than gasoline. Oddly, electronic computing does not work at all in the BSOH world, despite all theories and calculations indicating that it is possible. The Wizards and most other scholars have concluded that this one discrepancy in natural law must be due to magic.
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