A Writer's Device: Branches and Skews as experiments.
There is a tremendous amount of writing required to produce even a novella in a timely manner. Writing a full novel is like running a marathon. With all that writing to do just to get the job done, why on Earth would you willfully add more writing about things outside the planned telling that you won't be using?!?
Well, I guess I had best start with the negative case: Most writers of fiction seem to write way too much and often too much about things that will be cut from the manuscript in editing. Or should be. They may well already explore all the alternate outcomes and repercussions of changes as part of their massive output. They sure don't need to add this device to their process.
But for the rest of us, it remains a truism that we often don't get to write about "what we want to focus on writing about" and instead have to "write what the story needs to be told". c.f. all my previous complaints about wanting to write more Sherri stories but knowing full well her story is -told- in Remember When and that's done. Far more commonly we need to write the scene the story calls for, and then move on to the next such scene or chapter. Many things may result because the first scene occurred, but only the obviously important ones to the plot are referenced later. But you, the writer may feel like you don't fully understand all those results. That makes it harder for you to explain to the reader that the meaningful result didn't occur in a vacuum, when you write those later chapters.
If that is a thing that bothers you, then try these sort of things before you take on those later chapters:
Make notes, perhaps even write short scenes or bits of dialogue, during the "scenes missing" part immediately after the first scene (in our example above). Set those aside after convincing yourself you know how that scene more widely influences the "world of the story". Worst case, write an off-genre version of the missing part of the scene to teach yourself about it. That would be a Skew, by the way. More on those later.
Write a branch; Look at that first scene and its outcome, and then write a brief passage as if there was alternate outcome instead. Look especially at how the characters would be different in the future chapters if "what if" had occurred. You can note those things as what a particularly self-aware character might think back and consider, in those future chapters.
Write a skew: In this case "skew' means a completely off-genre or off-perspective retelling of a scene already planned or written to the form you intend.
Example: If you are writing a desperate Techno-thriller where time is of the essence and every character is on-edge with tension and one character is absent from a scene, said to have had to spend part of a day with their spouse doing something mundane... and then you try to just write the next scene, you might miss appreciating any effect that might have on the returning character's mindset. But if you write that as a scene in the novel... let's just say that genre fans might SCREAM about 5 pages of browsing through departments at Macy's together talking about whether or not the matter with the spouse's uncle's health issue was resolvable.
You as the writer can benefit from knowing or exploring how the character would change for reintroduction in later chapters, but your readers probably don't need to go through the motions with you. So, one afternoon while ordering your seasonally spiced beverage from the barista down the block, write such skews after critical moments. Not to use them. To know them.
Besides, you might just discover that you do have more to tell worthy of publication about a scene or a character, or that you have a marvelous opportunity to write an Unreliable Witness telling of your epic tale two or three more times. Or, you know, you might discover a previously unknown talent of your own for a genre or style you've never tried.
Just don't ever forget that the goal is to finish the manuscript, not to explore all the options, yeah?
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
Sunday, October 28, 2018
Sunday Fun Day: Three passports, a couple of visas...
How about a post that connects music, the writing of the new novel, and a really top-quality Danger International campaign, all referencing roughly the same era?
In the new novel, set in spring and then late summer of 1984, there are several lengthy parts about all the layers of identities that the key operatives for the mission have built. They each have a base identity; their normal life. They may have a purely temporary travel cover, used while moving as if they were in the military for one example. They each have an elaborate intermediate cover, built to withstand a ton of scrutiny if discovered and to misdirect any discoverer into thinking that identity worked for someone other than American official interests. On top of that, they each have an operational identity as someone with a reason to be going to the place the mission will happen and, in this operational plan, a reason to be doing specific things together there.
Coincidentally, in this author's real life it was only a year or two later that he ran (game mastered, story-told) one of the better role-playing game campaigns he had the pleasure to be a part of. Good players, very enthusiastic about the game, and very into the movie-style spy stories of a Danger International (HERO Games, 1985) campaign. As part of the mood building for the campaign's play sessions, I would bring some music that had some connotation of the genre. The players brought more music, too.
But not the "Bond Movie" soundtrack stuff that everyone already knew. Don't get me wrong, some of that was awesome. But songs like Talking Heads "Life during wartime" were the kind of music that was still popular around college campuses, and had lyrics that -spoke- to the listener about some of the things that went along with clandestine operations.
Here's a link to an appropriately 1984 concert movie version of "Life during wartime".
Enjoy! Oh, and as I know a couple of the players from that campaign are still around out there, feel free to comment about the old campaign as well as about the new writing.
How about a post that connects music, the writing of the new novel, and a really top-quality Danger International campaign, all referencing roughly the same era?
In the new novel, set in spring and then late summer of 1984, there are several lengthy parts about all the layers of identities that the key operatives for the mission have built. They each have a base identity; their normal life. They may have a purely temporary travel cover, used while moving as if they were in the military for one example. They each have an elaborate intermediate cover, built to withstand a ton of scrutiny if discovered and to misdirect any discoverer into thinking that identity worked for someone other than American official interests. On top of that, they each have an operational identity as someone with a reason to be going to the place the mission will happen and, in this operational plan, a reason to be doing specific things together there.
Coincidentally, in this author's real life it was only a year or two later that he ran (game mastered, story-told) one of the better role-playing game campaigns he had the pleasure to be a part of. Good players, very enthusiastic about the game, and very into the movie-style spy stories of a Danger International (HERO Games, 1985) campaign. As part of the mood building for the campaign's play sessions, I would bring some music that had some connotation of the genre. The players brought more music, too.
But not the "Bond Movie" soundtrack stuff that everyone already knew. Don't get me wrong, some of that was awesome. But songs like Talking Heads "Life during wartime" were the kind of music that was still popular around college campuses, and had lyrics that -spoke- to the listener about some of the things that went along with clandestine operations.
Here's a link to an appropriately 1984 concert movie version of "Life during wartime".
Enjoy! Oh, and as I know a couple of the players from that campaign are still around out there, feel free to comment about the old campaign as well as about the new writing.
Friday, October 26, 2018
Viva la revolución mundial
Heh, not really. But I am writing a lot from the viewpoint of the opposition forces in the new novel chapters I am working on, so it seemed appropriate as a title.
Just a few Cubans. Not like the 30,000 that were in Angola in the early '80s.
Wish me luck on that, and here's to more progress today!
Heh, not really. But I am writing a lot from the viewpoint of the opposition forces in the new novel chapters I am working on, so it seemed appropriate as a title.
Just a few Cubans. Not like the 30,000 that were in Angola in the early '80s.
Wish me luck on that, and here's to more progress today!
Wednesday, October 24, 2018
She's catching me...
I have had the joy of meetings with my Editor the last few days, where she does a First Read through a chapter of the new novel to spot major structural problems. Along the way, some of the basic proofreading happens, too. We went four Reads through every chapter in Remember When during that production process, each pass refining details all the way down to word choices. It really makes the book better, but it takes a lot of effort. I'm deeply grateful, to say the least.
She's already through three chapters, while I am mid-way through writing the sixth and still have an obligation to go back and expand the bare-bones of Chapter Five. With a concerted effort on my part, Chapter Six may be in her hands by this evening (PDT, same time zone as this blog uses).
So off I go to try and stay ahead. Enjoy the 'blog today, please, and do recommend Remember When to your friends!
I have had the joy of meetings with my Editor the last few days, where she does a First Read through a chapter of the new novel to spot major structural problems. Along the way, some of the basic proofreading happens, too. We went four Reads through every chapter in Remember When during that production process, each pass refining details all the way down to word choices. It really makes the book better, but it takes a lot of effort. I'm deeply grateful, to say the least.
She's already through three chapters, while I am mid-way through writing the sixth and still have an obligation to go back and expand the bare-bones of Chapter Five. With a concerted effort on my part, Chapter Six may be in her hands by this evening (PDT, same time zone as this blog uses).
So off I go to try and stay ahead. Enjoy the 'blog today, please, and do recommend Remember When to your friends!
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
A Writer's Device: Description needed.
A post about style, again, but this is a chance to comment about a process error in my own writing and a work-around I've found to correct it.
As discussed in many of the Character posts about Remember When, I tend to instinctively describe characters more if they are central to the story being told or if their appearance will figure into some scene about to occur. More distant, or "bit" characters, get the short end of the description effort. But when working at novel length instead of novella, there are both lots more room to fit in descriptions and a lot more expectation that everyone that matters at all will get described.
Fair enough. The process error that I mentioned above is that I tend to want to write a given scene for the scene's content to the overall story. If it's an important discussion, I try to get all the dialogue said and the feeling and thoughts of the characters speaking all down first. Notice any character descriptions in that list? Yeah. That means, if the first appearance of a character is in one such dialogue scene, they are very short if not lacking the description that is necessary for the reader to appreciate them.
What's the fix?
When I recognize that I've a new character that appeared first in a scene where I'd not properly described them, I stop other thoughts and list a ton of descriptive things about that character. Then roll back into the main draft and look at where they can be added to the existing work as adjectives.
Example:
Man A said to (the Main Character) "It's nice to meet you. We don't get many main characters around here." Then Man A went over to the window. After (the Main Character) greeted him in return, Man A offered "A caution if you are to go outside today, sir. It looks like rain."
Man A is a new face. He's got nothing to hang on to in the way of a description.
(( think fast, writer guy))
tall
graceful
dressed casually
dark haired
surprised
friendly
polite
Okay then... application where appropriate? Pick a few that fit.
Man A said politely to (the Main Character) "It's nice to meet you. We don't get many main characters around here." He seemed only a little surprised to meet (the Main Character). The tall, casually dressed fellow (Man A) went over to the window. After (the Main Character) greeted him in return, Man A considerately offered "A caution if you are to go outside today, sir. It looks like rain."
Still not as good as if the character description had been formed fully before writing the original passage, but vastly better at giving the reader points of reference that can be referred to in later passages.
Hope this helps you solve any problems you have of the same sort!
A post about style, again, but this is a chance to comment about a process error in my own writing and a work-around I've found to correct it.
As discussed in many of the Character posts about Remember When, I tend to instinctively describe characters more if they are central to the story being told or if their appearance will figure into some scene about to occur. More distant, or "bit" characters, get the short end of the description effort. But when working at novel length instead of novella, there are both lots more room to fit in descriptions and a lot more expectation that everyone that matters at all will get described.
Fair enough. The process error that I mentioned above is that I tend to want to write a given scene for the scene's content to the overall story. If it's an important discussion, I try to get all the dialogue said and the feeling and thoughts of the characters speaking all down first. Notice any character descriptions in that list? Yeah. That means, if the first appearance of a character is in one such dialogue scene, they are very short if not lacking the description that is necessary for the reader to appreciate them.
What's the fix?
When I recognize that I've a new character that appeared first in a scene where I'd not properly described them, I stop other thoughts and list a ton of descriptive things about that character. Then roll back into the main draft and look at where they can be added to the existing work as adjectives.
Example:
Man A said to (the Main Character) "It's nice to meet you. We don't get many main characters around here." Then Man A went over to the window. After (the Main Character) greeted him in return, Man A offered "A caution if you are to go outside today, sir. It looks like rain."
Man A is a new face. He's got nothing to hang on to in the way of a description.
(( think fast, writer guy))
tall
graceful
dressed casually
dark haired
surprised
friendly
polite
Okay then... application where appropriate? Pick a few that fit.
Man A said politely to (the Main Character) "It's nice to meet you. We don't get many main characters around here." He seemed only a little surprised to meet (the Main Character). The tall, casually dressed fellow (Man A) went over to the window. After (the Main Character) greeted him in return, Man A considerately offered "A caution if you are to go outside today, sir. It looks like rain."
Still not as good as if the character description had been formed fully before writing the original passage, but vastly better at giving the reader points of reference that can be referred to in later passages.
Hope this helps you solve any problems you have of the same sort!
Monday, October 22, 2018
New Novel Progress: a bit part, but a memorable one.
In an effort to cleverly segue from yesterday's Fun Day post into the more serious weekday stuff, there will be a brief excerpt from the new novel from late in Chapter 4, below.
But first, a progress report. Chapter 5 is in to Edit, although it immediately got marked as "good dialogue; needs more descriptions". Chapter 6 is underway and good progress is being made there. I'll bundle it off in the next day or two, then dive back to expand 5 appropriately before pressing on. Milestone for this week is Chapter 7 in to Edit by the coming weekend. That would be 1/3 of the novel in rough draft form if I hit that. Note however that rough draft is still a long way from ready to go to print with. Editing can take 3x as long as writing, easily.
Anyway...
Since yesterday was about building an intermediate cover, albeit as a game for readers to try, it seemed fitting to mention who actually approved builds of intermediate covers for the "disposable" operatives of The Project. Here's an excerpt about her. The "he" at the start is the Mission Planner, Dean Conway. The candidate for the Two slot on the mission is our returning character from Remember When:
He sent word over to the office that actually saw to the care and feeding of the “disposables” about this, and the office boss there took it over for the interim. She was called The Librarian by everyone, although never to her face. Her role was to make sure all the intermediate covers were as solid as they could be, and that the operatives wore them seamlessly. It had been her call regarding the Two-slot candidate’s last intermediate cover getting the ol’ 86, and her budget took the hit for building a new one.
Enjoy!
In an effort to cleverly segue from yesterday's Fun Day post into the more serious weekday stuff, there will be a brief excerpt from the new novel from late in Chapter 4, below.
But first, a progress report. Chapter 5 is in to Edit, although it immediately got marked as "good dialogue; needs more descriptions". Chapter 6 is underway and good progress is being made there. I'll bundle it off in the next day or two, then dive back to expand 5 appropriately before pressing on. Milestone for this week is Chapter 7 in to Edit by the coming weekend. That would be 1/3 of the novel in rough draft form if I hit that. Note however that rough draft is still a long way from ready to go to print with. Editing can take 3x as long as writing, easily.
Anyway...
Since yesterday was about building an intermediate cover, albeit as a game for readers to try, it seemed fitting to mention who actually approved builds of intermediate covers for the "disposable" operatives of The Project. Here's an excerpt about her. The "he" at the start is the Mission Planner, Dean Conway. The candidate for the Two slot on the mission is our returning character from Remember When:
He sent word over to the office that actually saw to the care and feeding of the “disposables” about this, and the office boss there took it over for the interim. She was called The Librarian by everyone, although never to her face. Her role was to make sure all the intermediate covers were as solid as they could be, and that the operatives wore them seamlessly. It had been her call regarding the Two-slot candidate’s last intermediate cover getting the ol’ 86, and her budget took the hit for building a new one.
Enjoy!
Sunday, October 21, 2018
Sunday Fun Day: Who would you be?
In Remember When, I explored the idea of an operative being capable of wearing a new identity as if that was who he actually was. The risks of taking that to an extreme were a big part of the Main Character's personal story, too. He almost realized how far gone he was...
She stepped back, still holding both hands, and pulled him toward the hotel again. “Who… are you?” she said. “Hell if I know right now.” he replied. “Let’s go.”
In fancy terms, this was a manufactured dissociation. Plainly put, it was lying so completely that they even lied to themselves as to who they were. Done as an intermediate cover usually, this acted as a cut-out when the operational cover they would actually be using would fail or be abandoned without closure. It also cost a ton of money to build that solid an intermediate cover, with all the documentation in place as if that was a real person. With just a little hint here or there that the intermediate cover was working for... well, anyone besides "our" side.
So, just for fun...
If -you- were a Disposable, an operative selected to take on such an intermediate cover as part of your new career in the world of espionage, and a secretive but efficient organization with access to the tools of bureaucracy in a wide number of countries (but not any of the "opposition nations") was willing to spend up to a million or two U.S. dollars circa 1980 to back up your cover with documentation and a history...
What intermediate cover would you build?
It would have to be based on skills you possessed, or could learn in less than about six months, and you really couldn't change your appearance much. No magic tricks are possible, but all the details you'd need to oh-say apply for a Security Clearance could be documented to match your fabrication. What would your cut-out be, as in if someone investigated your identity, what (incorrect but intentional) traces were there of who you "worked for"?
You can post your choices in the comments for everyone to see or, you know, keep your secrets to yourself.
Enjoy!
In Remember When, I explored the idea of an operative being capable of wearing a new identity as if that was who he actually was. The risks of taking that to an extreme were a big part of the Main Character's personal story, too. He almost realized how far gone he was...
She stepped back, still holding both hands, and pulled him toward the hotel again. “Who… are you?” she said. “Hell if I know right now.” he replied. “Let’s go.”
In fancy terms, this was a manufactured dissociation. Plainly put, it was lying so completely that they even lied to themselves as to who they were. Done as an intermediate cover usually, this acted as a cut-out when the operational cover they would actually be using would fail or be abandoned without closure. It also cost a ton of money to build that solid an intermediate cover, with all the documentation in place as if that was a real person. With just a little hint here or there that the intermediate cover was working for... well, anyone besides "our" side.
So, just for fun...
If -you- were a Disposable, an operative selected to take on such an intermediate cover as part of your new career in the world of espionage, and a secretive but efficient organization with access to the tools of bureaucracy in a wide number of countries (but not any of the "opposition nations") was willing to spend up to a million or two U.S. dollars circa 1980 to back up your cover with documentation and a history...
What intermediate cover would you build?
It would have to be based on skills you possessed, or could learn in less than about six months, and you really couldn't change your appearance much. No magic tricks are possible, but all the details you'd need to oh-say apply for a Security Clearance could be documented to match your fabrication. What would your cut-out be, as in if someone investigated your identity, what (incorrect but intentional) traces were there of who you "worked for"?
You can post your choices in the comments for everyone to see or, you know, keep your secrets to yourself.
Enjoy!
Saturday, October 20, 2018
Big words, old words.
Here's a little bit about two extremes that make writing fun... until they make your writing utterly impenetrable to new readers. As in *DANGER!* don't do this without a good reason.
My experiences over the years have had me in several communities professionally that value precision in communication. They valued that so highly that they tended to have jargon of a highly specific nature, and a habit of ascribing a very tight meaning to any one possible synonym applicable in a use. Basically, find all the hairs of meaning, and split them.
Even in the case of simpler and more specific words, there was a habit of picking one that applied precisely to a required meaning and then attaching all the related nuances to it. The use of the words "a make" as a noun that meant a positive identification with complete understanding and confidence, and the parallel use of "make someone or something" meaning to form such a positive identification in real-time, was used in Remember When. It comes originally from 1950's or 60's police detective jargon, if I recall correctly.
Big words are fun. They are also intellectual self-gratification to the writer and a small number of readers. "I'm so... smart!!!!" Yeah. spare me. I'll roll out the "lascivious" rather than "wanton" or "lustful" as appropriate, and I certainly will use dialogue that is appropriate to a character's speaking style, but really... if the right word for the description is short, to the point and accessible to the average reader, it's probably better.
Same rule applies to archaic meanings and usages. I happen to love the descriptive term "Minx" for a certain type of female character. Yes, that says something about me, too. The primary meaning of that appellation is "A pert, flirtatious or impudent young woman", which is fine... until one realizes that "impudent" is functionally archaic at this point in modern English-using society. When used at all, it deals with a failure to show respect due to someone or thing for social status reasons. That word's original meaning of "shameless" in a more general case is pretty much lost now. Yet that shamelessness is the part of impudent that is referred to in the definition of Minx, above.
So, yeah... when you toss open the Thesaurus and go looking for synonyms, show a care about it. Your readers will appreciate it.
Here's a little bit about two extremes that make writing fun... until they make your writing utterly impenetrable to new readers. As in *DANGER!* don't do this without a good reason.
My experiences over the years have had me in several communities professionally that value precision in communication. They valued that so highly that they tended to have jargon of a highly specific nature, and a habit of ascribing a very tight meaning to any one possible synonym applicable in a use. Basically, find all the hairs of meaning, and split them.
Even in the case of simpler and more specific words, there was a habit of picking one that applied precisely to a required meaning and then attaching all the related nuances to it. The use of the words "a make" as a noun that meant a positive identification with complete understanding and confidence, and the parallel use of "make someone or something" meaning to form such a positive identification in real-time, was used in Remember When. It comes originally from 1950's or 60's police detective jargon, if I recall correctly.
Big words are fun. They are also intellectual self-gratification to the writer and a small number of readers. "I'm so... smart!!!!" Yeah. spare me. I'll roll out the "lascivious" rather than "wanton" or "lustful" as appropriate, and I certainly will use dialogue that is appropriate to a character's speaking style, but really... if the right word for the description is short, to the point and accessible to the average reader, it's probably better.
Same rule applies to archaic meanings and usages. I happen to love the descriptive term "Minx" for a certain type of female character. Yes, that says something about me, too. The primary meaning of that appellation is "A pert, flirtatious or impudent young woman", which is fine... until one realizes that "impudent" is functionally archaic at this point in modern English-using society. When used at all, it deals with a failure to show respect due to someone or thing for social status reasons. That word's original meaning of "shameless" in a more general case is pretty much lost now. Yet that shamelessness is the part of impudent that is referred to in the definition of Minx, above.
So, yeah... when you toss open the Thesaurus and go looking for synonyms, show a care about it. Your readers will appreciate it.
Friday, October 19, 2018
Back on pace.
Marketing things finally done for Remember When. A weekend with time to just write... even if I've outpaced the Editor's free time to read what's already done on the new novel.
If I'm going to have time available to travel late in the year, I need to get further along.
Meanwhile, you all get a day to go back and read any 'blog posts here you've skipped over.
Oh yeah, I have time to have side discussions about things now, so feel free to jump in with comments, too.
Forward!
Marketing things finally done for Remember When. A weekend with time to just write... even if I've outpaced the Editor's free time to read what's already done on the new novel.
If I'm going to have time available to travel late in the year, I need to get further along.
Meanwhile, you all get a day to go back and read any 'blog posts here you've skipped over.
Oh yeah, I have time to have side discussions about things now, so feel free to jump in with comments, too.
Forward!
Thursday, October 18, 2018
Sales Day: Keys to Kindle sales, part 3.
Hey, guess what? Remember that bit at the end of the 1.October post here about "What can the author do?" about pushing Amazon to list his book higher? Yeah, that's what we are trying TODAY ONLY.
KINDLE COUNTDOWN SALE for Remember When. 18.Oct 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. PDT 99 cents! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HF7MTKM #Amazon
#Kindledeals You can gift a copy at this price, too!
This is what is being pushed out on the Social Media platforms. Stay tuned; I'll be adding to this post later in the day about what happens!
***
90 minutes left to go, got some 3rd-order referrals and Organic Sales out of this, which is huge. Signal Boosting efforts were not orchestrated today, so I've only seen a few people Retweeting or Sharing the announcement around... but hey, people have priorities. I'm happy with any support that happens.
Early peak was into the double digits of Ranking on Kindle Short Reads (our best genre listing) but slipped to #119 by 1900hrs PDT (2 hours left in the Sale).
Here's hoping for a good "after dinner" close to this!
***
Nope, no tail to it. Did 80% of the action on the Countdown Sale in the first 4 hours, now that I can see the actual numbers on the day. That's a bit of a downer, but here's something in the opposite direction: upon chasing down some of those referrals ("I'll buy it then! Tell me when the Sale starts."), some of them didn't. Will be coming back and buying later, and well, 3 bucks and shame is about the same as 1 buck from my perspective...
So when those numbers in total are looked at now, we actually did better than expected on what can only be Organic sales. Certainly more than the expected handful. I'm very pleased. Thank you all who helped, and welcome to new readers!
Hey, guess what? Remember that bit at the end of the 1.October post here about "What can the author do?" about pushing Amazon to list his book higher? Yeah, that's what we are trying TODAY ONLY.
KINDLE COUNTDOWN SALE for Remember When. 18.Oct 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. PDT 99 cents! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07HF7MTKM #Amazon
#Kindledeals You can gift a copy at this price, too!
This is what is being pushed out on the Social Media platforms. Stay tuned; I'll be adding to this post later in the day about what happens!
***
90 minutes left to go, got some 3rd-order referrals and Organic Sales out of this, which is huge. Signal Boosting efforts were not orchestrated today, so I've only seen a few people Retweeting or Sharing the announcement around... but hey, people have priorities. I'm happy with any support that happens.
Early peak was into the double digits of Ranking on Kindle Short Reads (our best genre listing) but slipped to #119 by 1900hrs PDT (2 hours left in the Sale).
Here's hoping for a good "after dinner" close to this!
***
Nope, no tail to it. Did 80% of the action on the Countdown Sale in the first 4 hours, now that I can see the actual numbers on the day. That's a bit of a downer, but here's something in the opposite direction: upon chasing down some of those referrals ("I'll buy it then! Tell me when the Sale starts."), some of them didn't. Will be coming back and buying later, and well, 3 bucks and shame is about the same as 1 buck from my perspective...
So when those numbers in total are looked at now, we actually did better than expected on what can only be Organic sales. Certainly more than the expected handful. I'm very pleased. Thank you all who helped, and welcome to new readers!
Wednesday, October 17, 2018
One Month Day for Remember When.
Yep. That's happened. Remember When has been available on Amazon Kindle for one month now. I've hit all the goals for the release, for both quality and expectations, and did marginally better the first week than I had any right to do.
It took a little longer that would have been optimal to see the results of that, but as of yesterday close-of-business there were 11 Reviews up on Amazon, 2 more full Reviews on Facebook, all very favorable. Five for Five on the score, to date, which astounds me.
Thank you, All.
I have one very happy Muse dancing and singing about this. (and one pleasantly amused Editor.)
Stay tuned here and on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/RememberWhenNovella for a special announcement tomorrow. I've got something in mind...
Yep. That's happened. Remember When has been available on Amazon Kindle for one month now. I've hit all the goals for the release, for both quality and expectations, and did marginally better the first week than I had any right to do.
It took a little longer that would have been optimal to see the results of that, but as of yesterday close-of-business there were 11 Reviews up on Amazon, 2 more full Reviews on Facebook, all very favorable. Five for Five on the score, to date, which astounds me.
Thank you, All.
I have one very happy Muse dancing and singing about this. (and one pleasantly amused Editor.)
Stay tuned here and on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/RememberWhenNovella for a special announcement tomorrow. I've got something in mind...
Tuesday, October 16, 2018
A Writer's Device: Details, as seen.
Short post today, but a fun example of this came to mind while doing a little "for fun" project with someone yesterday...
One of the simplest ways to let the reader get inside the way characters see and react to the situation in a story is to clearly "voice" the differences in perception of the same thing seen by more than one of the characters.
In the bigger picture, this can be part of an Unreliable Witness telling of the story. But, it's very effective just within a scene. For example, two characters, who have just had an extraordinarily... passionate... first date. The next day, after a shower, they've both gone back to the bedroom to get dressed for the day, both see the condition they left the bed in.
She's in the Performing Arts as her trade. She sees "a mess" and is more overwhelmed by the recollection of the night before without seeing the details. She worries one of the pillows may "never recover".
He's in a different and more analytical line of work. He sees the exact interrelation of how blankets and bed sheets got twisted up and pulled loose. His curiosity addresses the "how" of that happening for a moment, before reacting at a more wistful and... self-satisfied level.
The both laugh a little at each other's sense of it, probably with another embrace.
So yeah... show your readers how your characters see things. It's fun to write, and it matters!
Short post today, but a fun example of this came to mind while doing a little "for fun" project with someone yesterday...
One of the simplest ways to let the reader get inside the way characters see and react to the situation in a story is to clearly "voice" the differences in perception of the same thing seen by more than one of the characters.
In the bigger picture, this can be part of an Unreliable Witness telling of the story. But, it's very effective just within a scene. For example, two characters, who have just had an extraordinarily... passionate... first date. The next day, after a shower, they've both gone back to the bedroom to get dressed for the day, both see the condition they left the bed in.
She's in the Performing Arts as her trade. She sees "a mess" and is more overwhelmed by the recollection of the night before without seeing the details. She worries one of the pillows may "never recover".
He's in a different and more analytical line of work. He sees the exact interrelation of how blankets and bed sheets got twisted up and pulled loose. His curiosity addresses the "how" of that happening for a moment, before reacting at a more wistful and... self-satisfied level.
The both laugh a little at each other's sense of it, probably with another embrace.
So yeah... show your readers how your characters see things. It's fun to write, and it matters!
Monday, October 15, 2018
New Novel Progress: this guy just showed up.
After taking a day to do a Marketing task for Remember When over the last 24 hours, which worked great by the by, I am getting to write more this week on the new-novel project. As Chapter Four is taking shape, look who has shown up (in a reference)...
*from the Chap 4 draft*
That guy chosen to go in the Two-slot was generally less specialized than the other team members, but was the Trained Observer of the lot. That meant an ability to take detailed impressions into memory of things seen, and in this case to be very good at actually seeing most everything in his field of view. He was the Operational Analyst, which was as close to a leader as this collective effort would have, and thus would handle all the real-time integration of information into a bigger picture and constantly amend the plan based on that. He was perfectly at home on direct action tasks, had limited but useful field medical skills, and was recently refreshed on all the finer points of explosives and detonators used around the world.
This candidate for Two was also the problem child of the scenario, at least in the work-up phase of things. He’d been involved in an operation inside the U.S. last year that wasn’t quite what everyone hoped it would be going in...
Yaaa boi, he's back! I'll be on this chapter and Chapter Five this week. Enjoy!
After taking a day to do a Marketing task for Remember When over the last 24 hours, which worked great by the by, I am getting to write more this week on the new-novel project. As Chapter Four is taking shape, look who has shown up (in a reference)...
*from the Chap 4 draft*
That guy chosen to go in the Two-slot was generally less specialized than the other team members, but was the Trained Observer of the lot. That meant an ability to take detailed impressions into memory of things seen, and in this case to be very good at actually seeing most everything in his field of view. He was the Operational Analyst, which was as close to a leader as this collective effort would have, and thus would handle all the real-time integration of information into a bigger picture and constantly amend the plan based on that. He was perfectly at home on direct action tasks, had limited but useful field medical skills, and was recently refreshed on all the finer points of explosives and detonators used around the world.
This candidate for Two was also the problem child of the scenario, at least in the work-up phase of things. He’d been involved in an operation inside the U.S. last year that wasn’t quite what everyone hoped it would be going in...
Yaaa boi, he's back! I'll be on this chapter and Chapter Five this week. Enjoy!
Sunday, October 14, 2018
Sunday Fun Day: Celebrating a bit.
It is almost to the One Month post publication for Remember When, and I've gotten a lot of support from folks to get to this point. We did great, and I hope the novella will keep doing well. One more push for that still coming, this week.
Speaking of support...
How about a day without any? "No Bra Day" passed this last week, too. I'm not one to argue the merits of that from a political point of view, but will sure voice my support for no support.
Here's an appropriate reference picture, tangentially related to Remember When things. Photo property of the photographer and Getty Images:
It is almost to the One Month post publication for Remember When, and I've gotten a lot of support from folks to get to this point. We did great, and I hope the novella will keep doing well. One more push for that still coming, this week.
Speaking of support...
How about a day without any? "No Bra Day" passed this last week, too. I'm not one to argue the merits of that from a political point of view, but will sure voice my support for no support.
Here's an appropriate reference picture, tangentially related to Remember When things. Photo property of the photographer and Getty Images:
Saturday, October 13, 2018
Unanswered questions.
In Remember When, there are lots of things that a reader might have noticed or connected together that led them to having "unanswered questions" about what a thing was or why it happened. Loose ends are a natural part of story telling. Really good loose ends are sequel hooks, by the by.
I tried to keep them to a minimum, and even did an epilogue with some of those explicitly addressed and closed off. There was one, however, that stayed unanswered because... well, it was taken to a great extent from a telling of something actual, and to this day I don't know the answer. I have a guess, but it is based only on a personality judgment about the active hand, who is unknown to me other than in an almost stereotypical perception of them.
Do you think the Medellin Main hit men intended to shoot David as well as Guillermo, at the time of the kill? David sure thought they would try, and there was the shoot-through round...
What do you think?
In Remember When, there are lots of things that a reader might have noticed or connected together that led them to having "unanswered questions" about what a thing was or why it happened. Loose ends are a natural part of story telling. Really good loose ends are sequel hooks, by the by.
I tried to keep them to a minimum, and even did an epilogue with some of those explicitly addressed and closed off. There was one, however, that stayed unanswered because... well, it was taken to a great extent from a telling of something actual, and to this day I don't know the answer. I have a guess, but it is based only on a personality judgment about the active hand, who is unknown to me other than in an almost stereotypical perception of them.
Do you think the Medellin Main hit men intended to shoot David as well as Guillermo, at the time of the kill? David sure thought they would try, and there was the shoot-through round...
What do you think?
Friday, October 12, 2018
Grinding, 2.
Got Chapter Three of the new-novel project handed over to Ms. Nicky only ~30hours behind plan... but I have time this weekend to grind more and get ahead while my good Editor and her spectacularly tolerant husband get to spend 3+ days at a Shakespeare Festival.
I might even get to write about the Main Character finally. (( grin))
While I do this, you all should keep up the sharing-the-news about Remember When... get more people who haven't seen it to try it... and maybe read up on 'blog entries you've overlooked. They've been here daily since Release Day for RW. There are a lot of little details and some fun to be found.
Enjoy!
Got Chapter Three of the new-novel project handed over to Ms. Nicky only ~30hours behind plan... but I have time this weekend to grind more and get ahead while my good Editor and her spectacularly tolerant husband get to spend 3+ days at a Shakespeare Festival.
I might even get to write about the Main Character finally. (( grin))
While I do this, you all should keep up the sharing-the-news about Remember When... get more people who haven't seen it to try it... and maybe read up on 'blog entries you've overlooked. They've been here daily since Release Day for RW. There are a lot of little details and some fun to be found.
Enjoy!
Thursday, October 11, 2018
What comes next? 2. a tease from Chapter One.
Since it cleared one pass of Editing (there will be many more before it is done), I feel I'm comfortable with letting this go up. If you don't know what the hell LDG is talking about here, *LOOK HERE FIRST* please. That's the first announcement on what's in-process. Status on that is: wrapping Chapter Three for handoff to the Editor today.
and now, your blog item for today. This is the introductory paragraph from Chapter One of the new-novel. Yes, novel.
Since it cleared one pass of Editing (there will be many more before it is done), I feel I'm comfortable with letting this go up. If you don't know what the hell LDG is talking about here, *LOOK HERE FIRST* please. That's the first announcement on what's in-process. Status on that is: wrapping Chapter Three for handoff to the Editor today.
and now, your blog item for today. This is the introductory paragraph from Chapter One of the new-novel. Yes, novel.
Western Sahara always made two sharp first impressions on a
visitor. The emptiness, even around the useful triangle part of the region, was
palpable. Then there was the wind, which only slackened at times, seemingly
never ceasing. When that impression was coupled with the discomfort of several
days moving from place to place in the back of a five-ton truck, there wasn’t
much good to say about it. Nature was full of beauty in the details, but that
was lost when seen through sand goggles, heard and smelled through the full
head wrap needed to endure a ride in the wind.
Enjoy!
Wednesday, October 10, 2018
Music defines.
I absolutely believe that music, musical styles, and particularly any association between music and events is the most powerful way to define the era of a period piece of fiction. Big surprise coming from the bloke who wrote Remember When, yeah?
With that in mind, what do you think happened when I accidentally came across a Rolling Stone magazine article that was actually about music? Looked at the names listed, sorted by era almost immediately. It's a good crop of nominees this year, even with Kraftwerk (the perpetual bridesmaid of recognition ceremonies) on the ballot for the 5th time... the Cure in for a 2nd try... but I really am happy to see a few of the first timers get a chance too. Any of these names get you interested?
Def Leppard
Stevie Nicks
Devo
Roxy Music
There are more on the ballot, but those seemed most appropriate to connect with here.
As always, I'll happily discuss such in the comments. Enjoy!
I absolutely believe that music, musical styles, and particularly any association between music and events is the most powerful way to define the era of a period piece of fiction. Big surprise coming from the bloke who wrote Remember When, yeah?
With that in mind, what do you think happened when I accidentally came across a Rolling Stone magazine article that was actually about music? Looked at the names listed, sorted by era almost immediately. It's a good crop of nominees this year, even with Kraftwerk (the perpetual bridesmaid of recognition ceremonies) on the ballot for the 5th time... the Cure in for a 2nd try... but I really am happy to see a few of the first timers get a chance too. Any of these names get you interested?
Def Leppard
Stevie Nicks
Devo
Roxy Music
There are more on the ballot, but those seemed most appropriate to connect with here.
As always, I'll happily discuss such in the comments. Enjoy!
Tuesday, October 9, 2018
A Writer's Device: Scale factors.
Whether it is in your notes or in your manuscript, you'd better have a clear idea of how "big" and how "usual" your fictional constructs (non-character) in the story will be. One of the most glaring tells of the absurd is when the Two Guys and Their Faithful Dog defeats the thousand or so evil barbarians assaulting the village... unless you're talking about the Canadian Army's expeditionary capability these days. Those two guys might have it covered, if they didn't run out of ammo. (( grin ))
More to the point, you need to be honest with yourself as to how unlikely or out of scale something is. Are you writing about the 5 people who are the exception to the 10,000 employee corporation they work for? Are they just another drone in the local School District office until that fateful day came for them? Does Imperial Terra clone a million such space marines to replace losses every year? I think you get the point.
Here's a part of the scale factor notes in the Dear Diary for the Main Character in Remember When:
"There was also a vast scramble of other resources and assets available to the people organizing The Project. Scattered through the U.S Government were, and are, an alphabet soup of other agencies with supposedly limited areas of interest in the clandestine sides of Law Enforcement, Diplomacy, and things Scientific. I'm not sure if the U.S. Postal Inspectors had a covert infiltration section, but let's just say I wouldn't have been surprised. I do know we weren't given the opportunity we were because we had an uncanny ability to investigate mail fraud. The Project looked for other, more difficult-to-assess, things.
"To pause a moment for perspective, if you please: The entire U.S. Special Operations community, uniformed, was a very small number of people (in the years 1978-1980) compared to the post-2000-era military. Then, across all services, the total was roughly 5,000 personnel assigned. There were a few hundred non-uniformed, and some bare handfuls of non-military-or-intelligence-agency pools of field-worthy espionage assets. The numbers in more recent times are more like 50,000 and 10,000, although drawn from a much smaller military and intelligence structure overall. Adding a capacity of a hundred or so (intended; we never got that many as far as I know) uniquely suited personnel was a big deal in the late '70s; Doing so now is round off error."
Okay then... pretty clear that The Project is a pretty small group of bad asses, who could get wiped off the face of history by one bad operation and a few thousand modestly competent enemies... or one line of red ink through their place in the "black budget".
As the author, I'd better be careful with them, right? At least now I know the risks, and I hope this example helps you know yours. Comments are open for more banter about this.
Whether it is in your notes or in your manuscript, you'd better have a clear idea of how "big" and how "usual" your fictional constructs (non-character) in the story will be. One of the most glaring tells of the absurd is when the Two Guys and Their Faithful Dog defeats the thousand or so evil barbarians assaulting the village... unless you're talking about the Canadian Army's expeditionary capability these days. Those two guys might have it covered, if they didn't run out of ammo. (( grin ))
More to the point, you need to be honest with yourself as to how unlikely or out of scale something is. Are you writing about the 5 people who are the exception to the 10,000 employee corporation they work for? Are they just another drone in the local School District office until that fateful day came for them? Does Imperial Terra clone a million such space marines to replace losses every year? I think you get the point.
Here's a part of the scale factor notes in the Dear Diary for the Main Character in Remember When:
"There was also a vast scramble of other resources and assets available to the people organizing The Project. Scattered through the U.S Government were, and are, an alphabet soup of other agencies with supposedly limited areas of interest in the clandestine sides of Law Enforcement, Diplomacy, and things Scientific. I'm not sure if the U.S. Postal Inspectors had a covert infiltration section, but let's just say I wouldn't have been surprised. I do know we weren't given the opportunity we were because we had an uncanny ability to investigate mail fraud. The Project looked for other, more difficult-to-assess, things.
"To pause a moment for perspective, if you please: The entire U.S. Special Operations community, uniformed, was a very small number of people (in the years 1978-1980) compared to the post-2000-era military. Then, across all services, the total was roughly 5,000 personnel assigned. There were a few hundred non-uniformed, and some bare handfuls of non-military-or-intelligence-agency pools of field-worthy espionage assets. The numbers in more recent times are more like 50,000 and 10,000, although drawn from a much smaller military and intelligence structure overall. Adding a capacity of a hundred or so (intended; we never got that many as far as I know) uniquely suited personnel was a big deal in the late '70s; Doing so now is round off error."
Okay then... pretty clear that The Project is a pretty small group of bad asses, who could get wiped off the face of history by one bad operation and a few thousand modestly competent enemies... or one line of red ink through their place in the "black budget".
As the author, I'd better be careful with them, right? At least now I know the risks, and I hope this example helps you know yours. Comments are open for more banter about this.
Monday, October 8, 2018
Grinding.
If the thing I want to do is to see Remember When succeed, and there is little more I can do to make that more likely directly, then I need to channel this into the next project.
Yesterday-into-today was a bit of a "dive". The result of that was Chapter Two of the new-novel project in very rough 1st draft form handed off to the Editor.
Still feel the urge to grind some more. Novel-length is both harder to write each chapter, requiring more -everything-, and one that needs to be taken on in pieces.
Note to self: It is terrifying to write a story where the Main Character hasn't even appeared almost 9k words into the telling. That's all part of the plan and it is well-outlined what his role will be when he is brought in, but still takes some strength to stick to it.
Don't worry, though. I'll be fine. Him, maybe not so much. (( wry grin))
If the thing I want to do is to see Remember When succeed, and there is little more I can do to make that more likely directly, then I need to channel this into the next project.
Yesterday-into-today was a bit of a "dive". The result of that was Chapter Two of the new-novel project in very rough 1st draft form handed off to the Editor.
Still feel the urge to grind some more. Novel-length is both harder to write each chapter, requiring more -everything-, and one that needs to be taken on in pieces.
Note to self: It is terrifying to write a story where the Main Character hasn't even appeared almost 9k words into the telling. That's all part of the plan and it is well-outlined what his role will be when he is brought in, but still takes some strength to stick to it.
Don't worry, though. I'll be fine. Him, maybe not so much. (( wry grin))
Sunday, October 7, 2018
Sunday Fun Day: Trivia Time.
There are tiny details in Remember When that can be spotted even though the book is a novella and as such have very few precise descriptions in the name of brevity. Here are five questions about details either mentioned or implied. Answer in the comments if you want to, but please justify those. I shall add to the comments if there are questions in turn. and to commend anyone publically who nails these answers!
1) What year is the Panama flashback? bonus points if you expand upon the one clear marker for the year by mentioning who replaced the man mentioned.
2) How many loose rounds of .45ACP did David have after preparing his carry (pistol) and spare magazines?
3) Why did the band play on Saturday at the '83 US Festival, and not Sunday? bonus points if you know when the fourth day of the Festival was.
4) What highway did The Roomie and Ed drive on the return to their apartment from the After Party?
5) It was implied that Sherri (and the band) would dress in fancy stage wear for shows and media appearances, but Sherri had a particular favorite article of clothing that was mentioned that she wore when dressed down in the evenings. What was it?
Enjoy!
There are tiny details in Remember When that can be spotted even though the book is a novella and as such have very few precise descriptions in the name of brevity. Here are five questions about details either mentioned or implied. Answer in the comments if you want to, but please justify those. I shall add to the comments if there are questions in turn. and to commend anyone publically who nails these answers!
1) What year is the Panama flashback? bonus points if you expand upon the one clear marker for the year by mentioning who replaced the man mentioned.
2) How many loose rounds of .45ACP did David have after preparing his carry (pistol) and spare magazines?
3) Why did the band play on Saturday at the '83 US Festival, and not Sunday? bonus points if you know when the fourth day of the Festival was.
4) What highway did The Roomie and Ed drive on the return to their apartment from the After Party?
5) It was implied that Sherri (and the band) would dress in fancy stage wear for shows and media appearances, but Sherri had a particular favorite article of clothing that was mentioned that she wore when dressed down in the evenings. What was it?
Enjoy!
Saturday, October 6, 2018
Appropriate Filler.
Music from back then, same band. This extended mix, based on what was used to walk-on when on tour, recorded for use as album filler as their first "album" was little more than an EP.
What makes this fun is how 1 Vinyl Fetish (the YT poster) did a great montage to go with it. the picture 0m18s into the selection is particularly appropriate.
Enjoy!
Music from back then, same band. This extended mix, based on what was used to walk-on when on tour, recorded for use as album filler as their first "album" was little more than an EP.
What makes this fun is how 1 Vinyl Fetish (the YT poster) did a great montage to go with it. the picture 0m18s into the selection is particularly appropriate.
Enjoy!
Friday, October 5, 2018
About the writing itself, of Remember When.
Today's post is a technical one, but I wanted to revisit some things mentioned in passing about the process by which Remember When came to be... and how that process has had to change to get going on the new-novel.
Remember When, as a story, emerged from an inspiration... but that inspiration wasn't about the beginning of the tale. It was an attempt to reconcile my reaction to something only tangentially related to the story. There was a period of time of roughly twelve hours between the inspiration causing me to immediately write down notes that became the first page of the novella, and the desire to then write the story. When that desire hit home, however, it was sure a good thing I didn't have any plans or obligations for a couple of days. I use the terms "Writing Fugue" and "a deep dive" to try and describe what happened. In plainer language, I wrote for about twenty hours with only incidental breaks, had the body of the story written and a clear idea of the parts that weren't. All and all, it was just under forty hours over three days to get a complete first draft that I felt... relieved... to have written. It also was in desperate need of editing and rewrites. Several sections were confused to the point of being inexplicable to anyone other than me.
So, in the finest tradition of "just get it done, right", I called upon some friends who had experience writing or editing for published writers. Somehow, not a one of them burst out laughing at me. Go figure. A week of hacking at obvious mistakes, senseless pronoun usage, and some very confusing linkage issues, it was a lot better. Three parts were identified that needed rewrite work. Those took more time to get right, and while I fixed those (twice in the case of one of them) the first round of Critical Reading happened. These brave "beta testers" found more things, and a lot of grammar to polish up. Two more weeks past to get things in a shape I finally felt proud of.
Three and a half weeks to get a 16k word novella as a "final" draft manuscript. A bit more time after that to migrate it to a platform suitable to then generate the e-pub files, and some last minute corrections. A desperate delay over getting the Cover Art done, which was overcome by amazingly good fortune alone. 10.August start -> 17.September on-sale.
Kids, don't try this at home.
Lessons learned for future application:
1) The greatest single motivator is a burning desire to actually see a job through to the end. Promise yourself a reward; Make it a matter of Pride; Hell, imagine that there is someone who will be proud of you for achieving a job done right, even if there isn't a real person in your life who would feel that way. Just get it done.
2) Inspired is great... essential really. Planned is better. Making an orderly plan that then can be addressed in inspiration-fueled "dives" will result in a whole lot less effort to clean up in editing.
3) Know how big a bite you are trying to take. There is a reason most properly planned fiction writing is fully outlined prior to any significant writing: you really can only produce about 10k words that aren't craptastic fluff text in a single push. That's a fraction of any project bigger than a short story. Milestone any longer effort, and apply that Motivation mentioned in (1) above to hitting each milestone. A novel of 40-100k words is probably going to be months of writing even if madness occasionally takes you. Hit those marks and the time will be well-used.
4) Get your Editor involved early. If they are someone you want to have input into the outline, put that in front of them. As you finish a first draft of a chapter and move on, kick that over to the Editor. They need time, too. Good editing often takes several passes at it, over a time far longer than it took you to write it. If you want to get to a final draft anytime this decade, you probably want to have the editing well underway by the time you get to the first draft of the last chapter.
Now, if you'll kindly excuse me, I have one more Marketing thing to do for Remember When...
*** If you purchased Remember When and have not submitted a Review of it to the Amazon Kindle page you purchased it from, Please Do Leave A Review. We really need more reviews. If you haven't already recommended this novella to everyone you know, yeah, that would help too.***
...and then I have two weeks of serious milestones to hit on the new-novel. I'll try to do things here and respond to comments as I go. Thank you all!
Today's post is a technical one, but I wanted to revisit some things mentioned in passing about the process by which Remember When came to be... and how that process has had to change to get going on the new-novel.
Remember When, as a story, emerged from an inspiration... but that inspiration wasn't about the beginning of the tale. It was an attempt to reconcile my reaction to something only tangentially related to the story. There was a period of time of roughly twelve hours between the inspiration causing me to immediately write down notes that became the first page of the novella, and the desire to then write the story. When that desire hit home, however, it was sure a good thing I didn't have any plans or obligations for a couple of days. I use the terms "Writing Fugue" and "a deep dive" to try and describe what happened. In plainer language, I wrote for about twenty hours with only incidental breaks, had the body of the story written and a clear idea of the parts that weren't. All and all, it was just under forty hours over three days to get a complete first draft that I felt... relieved... to have written. It also was in desperate need of editing and rewrites. Several sections were confused to the point of being inexplicable to anyone other than me.
So, in the finest tradition of "just get it done, right", I called upon some friends who had experience writing or editing for published writers. Somehow, not a one of them burst out laughing at me. Go figure. A week of hacking at obvious mistakes, senseless pronoun usage, and some very confusing linkage issues, it was a lot better. Three parts were identified that needed rewrite work. Those took more time to get right, and while I fixed those (twice in the case of one of them) the first round of Critical Reading happened. These brave "beta testers" found more things, and a lot of grammar to polish up. Two more weeks past to get things in a shape I finally felt proud of.
Three and a half weeks to get a 16k word novella as a "final" draft manuscript. A bit more time after that to migrate it to a platform suitable to then generate the e-pub files, and some last minute corrections. A desperate delay over getting the Cover Art done, which was overcome by amazingly good fortune alone. 10.August start -> 17.September on-sale.
Kids, don't try this at home.
Lessons learned for future application:
1) The greatest single motivator is a burning desire to actually see a job through to the end. Promise yourself a reward; Make it a matter of Pride; Hell, imagine that there is someone who will be proud of you for achieving a job done right, even if there isn't a real person in your life who would feel that way. Just get it done.
2) Inspired is great... essential really. Planned is better. Making an orderly plan that then can be addressed in inspiration-fueled "dives" will result in a whole lot less effort to clean up in editing.
3) Know how big a bite you are trying to take. There is a reason most properly planned fiction writing is fully outlined prior to any significant writing: you really can only produce about 10k words that aren't craptastic fluff text in a single push. That's a fraction of any project bigger than a short story. Milestone any longer effort, and apply that Motivation mentioned in (1) above to hitting each milestone. A novel of 40-100k words is probably going to be months of writing even if madness occasionally takes you. Hit those marks and the time will be well-used.
4) Get your Editor involved early. If they are someone you want to have input into the outline, put that in front of them. As you finish a first draft of a chapter and move on, kick that over to the Editor. They need time, too. Good editing often takes several passes at it, over a time far longer than it took you to write it. If you want to get to a final draft anytime this decade, you probably want to have the editing well underway by the time you get to the first draft of the last chapter.
Now, if you'll kindly excuse me, I have one more Marketing thing to do for Remember When...
*** If you purchased Remember When and have not submitted a Review of it to the Amazon Kindle page you purchased it from, Please Do Leave A Review. We really need more reviews. If you haven't already recommended this novella to everyone you know, yeah, that would help too.***
...and then I have two weeks of serious milestones to hit on the new-novel. I'll try to do things here and respond to comments as I go. Thank you all!
Thursday, October 4, 2018
Characters in Remember When, 6. He's a crowd.
You might recall that I said there was a risk in talking about how the characters in Remember When came to be. Specifically, I said: This is one of those "okay, I might be begging trouble here" sort of posts, but hey let's take a whack at it. There is a delete button for posts if this goes wrong. Well, that goes double for the Main Character... kind of fitting, that, as he is a double character.
He is "The Roomie", a name defined by his introduction as Ed's roommate at the apartment. That's the only name you get for his base identity. You do get a physical description, and hear and see the first expressions of his voice and thinking.
In that same scene, readers also get their first reference to one of his other identities, under the name of "David Cox", and a whole lot of cryptic reference to his doing something quite different from a normal life as a job. It's made clear that David is an artifice, a cover identity, but one so complete as to be functionally an alternate personality for the Main Character. Oh, and also... one that has gone a bit wrong in the compartmentalization department. That sort of thing can happen to anyone whose career life and home life are governed by different rules of success and conduct; My Editor actually fed back to me a story of a Trial Lawyer she knows who made the decision to stop doing that and move into a non-representational specialty of law, because the way they had to think and act to be a successful Trial Lawyer was incompatible with having real relationships with people like their spouse in their home life. They recognized the "bleed-back" of their work attitudes into their private life, and that wasn't a way they wanted to be. Well, that was the same process by which the manipulative, cold-hearted, and very selfish David Cox had changed The Roomie over the years. In fairness, The Roomie did "create" David, with the approval and assistance of the organization he worked for, as an identity he was comfortable in. That should have been a warning that such a base nature was there in The Roomie to some degree before that, and that it would only be reinforced by his living and working as David. Professionally, no one noticed such damage had occurred until recently. The Roomie was very good at his job as David, or any other cover he was using. Apparently someone inside The Project (his employers) had recently observed how much of a risk this was becoming, because The Roomie had been taken out of the operational rotation for nearly half a year "to go find normal."
He's been busy the last six years. It is implied or outright said in Remember When that he'd been through some years of training in the military and in The Project, he'd been deployed several times, and then had been given assignments that he had to conduct with very little direct support. His most valued skill, other than being capable of believing any lie he was telling or living, was that of observation. He saw details other people didn't see, could communicate those details to others, and was trained as an Operational Analyst who could turn a mix of observations and other information gained while out on a job into real-time actionable intelligence on the fly. "Look at a boot print in the mud and tell us what unit flash is on that man's uniform shoulder." would be Sherlock Holmes-level fantasy, but what he could and did do wasn't far behind that in the amazing category.
His career so far has been a very well planned place, at least pre-mission, for years now. But in Remember When, he's dragged back from finding normal into an operation that someone up the chain has decided has to be done, and it's a throw-together. The whole damn thing seems to have been planned in less than a week, and he got to be David Cox and dropped into it with no work-up time at all. This alone would be a challenge., but in this case there was more to deal with.
The Roomie, as part of being home, had gone back to doing a lot of the things he used to like to do. Some of those were pretty reasonable, like doing things with his hobbies and interests, and making plans with his now-fiancée for the future. Some of them were not, like spending too much time wanting to do more of the things with Rock & Roll that he'd come to enjoy while building the David Cox identity, and then there was all the cheating on his fiancée... recreational fornication taken to an extreme. He might not even have realized how poor a job of coping he was doing, until he met Sherri.
I'm not going to explain it further here other than this; the telling is in the novella, and referred to in the Character study here about Sherri. The very first time The Roomie met Sherri, they both realized that they were people who always had a false front up, to everyone, and yet that they both had instinctively dropped any pretenses within seconds of starting to converse. They fascinated each other, even if they were consciously unaware of why. Neither of them had ever had a love-at-first-sight, so they didn't even think to apply that label to it. Everyone who watched it happen to them did.
The rest of the tale is one of reality overtaking hope, for them both. Sherri probably dealt with it, given time. The Roomie didn't, and it would be a long time and a lot of damage all around him until he came to understand. But that, my friends and readers, is a tale for future tellings.
Did he "live" for you, as The Roomie, as David Cox? I'll happily discuss some of the finer points in the comments.
You might recall that I said there was a risk in talking about how the characters in Remember When came to be. Specifically, I said: This is one of those "okay, I might be begging trouble here" sort of posts, but hey let's take a whack at it. There is a delete button for posts if this goes wrong. Well, that goes double for the Main Character... kind of fitting, that, as he is a double character.
He is "The Roomie", a name defined by his introduction as Ed's roommate at the apartment. That's the only name you get for his base identity. You do get a physical description, and hear and see the first expressions of his voice and thinking.
In that same scene, readers also get their first reference to one of his other identities, under the name of "David Cox", and a whole lot of cryptic reference to his doing something quite different from a normal life as a job. It's made clear that David is an artifice, a cover identity, but one so complete as to be functionally an alternate personality for the Main Character. Oh, and also... one that has gone a bit wrong in the compartmentalization department. That sort of thing can happen to anyone whose career life and home life are governed by different rules of success and conduct; My Editor actually fed back to me a story of a Trial Lawyer she knows who made the decision to stop doing that and move into a non-representational specialty of law, because the way they had to think and act to be a successful Trial Lawyer was incompatible with having real relationships with people like their spouse in their home life. They recognized the "bleed-back" of their work attitudes into their private life, and that wasn't a way they wanted to be. Well, that was the same process by which the manipulative, cold-hearted, and very selfish David Cox had changed The Roomie over the years. In fairness, The Roomie did "create" David, with the approval and assistance of the organization he worked for, as an identity he was comfortable in. That should have been a warning that such a base nature was there in The Roomie to some degree before that, and that it would only be reinforced by his living and working as David. Professionally, no one noticed such damage had occurred until recently. The Roomie was very good at his job as David, or any other cover he was using. Apparently someone inside The Project (his employers) had recently observed how much of a risk this was becoming, because The Roomie had been taken out of the operational rotation for nearly half a year "to go find normal."
He's been busy the last six years. It is implied or outright said in Remember When that he'd been through some years of training in the military and in The Project, he'd been deployed several times, and then had been given assignments that he had to conduct with very little direct support. His most valued skill, other than being capable of believing any lie he was telling or living, was that of observation. He saw details other people didn't see, could communicate those details to others, and was trained as an Operational Analyst who could turn a mix of observations and other information gained while out on a job into real-time actionable intelligence on the fly. "Look at a boot print in the mud and tell us what unit flash is on that man's uniform shoulder." would be Sherlock Holmes-level fantasy, but what he could and did do wasn't far behind that in the amazing category.
His career so far has been a very well planned place, at least pre-mission, for years now. But in Remember When, he's dragged back from finding normal into an operation that someone up the chain has decided has to be done, and it's a throw-together. The whole damn thing seems to have been planned in less than a week, and he got to be David Cox and dropped into it with no work-up time at all. This alone would be a challenge., but in this case there was more to deal with.
The Roomie, as part of being home, had gone back to doing a lot of the things he used to like to do. Some of those were pretty reasonable, like doing things with his hobbies and interests, and making plans with his now-fiancée for the future. Some of them were not, like spending too much time wanting to do more of the things with Rock & Roll that he'd come to enjoy while building the David Cox identity, and then there was all the cheating on his fiancée... recreational fornication taken to an extreme. He might not even have realized how poor a job of coping he was doing, until he met Sherri.
I'm not going to explain it further here other than this; the telling is in the novella, and referred to in the Character study here about Sherri. The very first time The Roomie met Sherri, they both realized that they were people who always had a false front up, to everyone, and yet that they both had instinctively dropped any pretenses within seconds of starting to converse. They fascinated each other, even if they were consciously unaware of why. Neither of them had ever had a love-at-first-sight, so they didn't even think to apply that label to it. Everyone who watched it happen to them did.
The rest of the tale is one of reality overtaking hope, for them both. Sherri probably dealt with it, given time. The Roomie didn't, and it would be a long time and a lot of damage all around him until he came to understand. But that, my friends and readers, is a tale for future tellings.
Did he "live" for you, as The Roomie, as David Cox? I'll happily discuss some of the finer points in the comments.
Wednesday, October 3, 2018
A Writer's Device: "interview" the character you'll write about.
There is a lot to the old adage about Write What You Know. This is easy if you are writing about things, and places and documented times. It gets harder when writing about a character, and hardest when writing *as* them. Some stories allow for copying someone real into your fictional telling, just changing the name. Unless that is you, you might not still really know them. It's a bit more challenging the further into a created character things go. Composites can have traits you-the-writer know about, even if their total perspective has to emerge. Outright fabrications are the biggest risk, as you need to keep a very good record of everything you have them think or say. There is a problem for many fiction writers with that, though:
If you are too busy filling notebooks with "what's inside their head" for every character that you'll write as a point of view, then what you likely are not doing is actually writing your story.
So, how to keep a balance to it? There are lots of ways, and lots of people with weblogs and books about "how to write" with opinions about the ways. I won't even try to address all the techniques, but I did have one that was useful to me. I "interviewed" the main character, as if it was years later... about the general and specific things that led to him doing what he did. Got it written down as if he had a diary, or more properly a memoir like he'd use as a basis for an autobiography.
Here's a sample, not directly related to the telling in Remember When, but probably something fitting to post here the day before I put up the Character Study about him. The person being interviewed you know as The Roomie:
***
About The Project...
The other thing they seemed to select for was a bit further off standard. They looked for a particular personality of the candidate. Now, almost every job search ever looks at personality at some point. In the civilian world, fairly loose checks for compatibility with the established group or department happen. The more rigorously selected professions often add focus, concentration, or confidence to the list, but also often do the selection as a part of a lengthy training that attrits away the unsuitable. Major League Baseball recruits a lot of pitchers who can throw 90 miles an hour; they then toss them into the Minors to see if they have a "Major League Head" to go with that arm, and most fail. Special Forces in the U.S. military select for equanimity; the ability or nature that stays level headed no matter how bad things are. This project seemed to want to get all of the above in a candidate, and one more thing. A feckless ability to lie to themselves, so convincingly that they projected into whatever they were saying or doing a confidence in the "truth" of that lie. For those of you keeping score, yes, that is borderline dissociative behavior. On the first pass through the list, they found about thirty or so, both from candidates and currently serving personnel. Sixteen made it to being fit to deploy.
***
I've used this as a way to both know more about how self-aware, if only in hindsight, that character is of himself, and am one step closer to know how he would choose to express himself.
What works for you when you write, or story-tell, or just imagine?
There is a lot to the old adage about Write What You Know. This is easy if you are writing about things, and places and documented times. It gets harder when writing about a character, and hardest when writing *as* them. Some stories allow for copying someone real into your fictional telling, just changing the name. Unless that is you, you might not still really know them. It's a bit more challenging the further into a created character things go. Composites can have traits you-the-writer know about, even if their total perspective has to emerge. Outright fabrications are the biggest risk, as you need to keep a very good record of everything you have them think or say. There is a problem for many fiction writers with that, though:
If you are too busy filling notebooks with "what's inside their head" for every character that you'll write as a point of view, then what you likely are not doing is actually writing your story.
So, how to keep a balance to it? There are lots of ways, and lots of people with weblogs and books about "how to write" with opinions about the ways. I won't even try to address all the techniques, but I did have one that was useful to me. I "interviewed" the main character, as if it was years later... about the general and specific things that led to him doing what he did. Got it written down as if he had a diary, or more properly a memoir like he'd use as a basis for an autobiography.
Here's a sample, not directly related to the telling in Remember When, but probably something fitting to post here the day before I put up the Character Study about him. The person being interviewed you know as The Roomie:
***
About The Project...
The other thing they seemed to select for was a bit further off standard. They looked for a particular personality of the candidate. Now, almost every job search ever looks at personality at some point. In the civilian world, fairly loose checks for compatibility with the established group or department happen. The more rigorously selected professions often add focus, concentration, or confidence to the list, but also often do the selection as a part of a lengthy training that attrits away the unsuitable. Major League Baseball recruits a lot of pitchers who can throw 90 miles an hour; they then toss them into the Minors to see if they have a "Major League Head" to go with that arm, and most fail. Special Forces in the U.S. military select for equanimity; the ability or nature that stays level headed no matter how bad things are. This project seemed to want to get all of the above in a candidate, and one more thing. A feckless ability to lie to themselves, so convincingly that they projected into whatever they were saying or doing a confidence in the "truth" of that lie. For those of you keeping score, yes, that is borderline dissociative behavior. On the first pass through the list, they found about thirty or so, both from candidates and currently serving personnel. Sixteen made it to being fit to deploy.
***
I've used this as a way to both know more about how self-aware, if only in hindsight, that character is of himself, and am one step closer to know how he would choose to express himself.
What works for you when you write, or story-tell, or just imagine?
Tuesday, October 2, 2018
Characters in Remember When, 5. She's there for a reason.
Let's see if I can manage to discuss a bit about Sherri, without stumbling over my words too much. It wouldn't be unfair of readers to accuse me of focusing an entire parallel story on her simply to have the opportunity to write a love letter to someone from long ago. When I went back and read the scenes involving her, it was pretty clear that a couple of things had happened during the Writing Fugue that resulted in the 1st draft of Remember When, and one of those was that I'd drawn from an odd mix of experiences to write about her. She's written as a composite of an image of a person I've never had the pleasure of meeting, a second person I knew well for some of her mannerisms, and a third person's way of thinking and expressing themselves. What made that a surprise to discover was that that third person was someone I only knew briefly, that she looked stunningly similar to first person (at the same age)... and she was someone who left one hell of a mark on me.
She's the focus of everything beautiful and wonderful in the story, and one of the not-beautiful parts. She's the embodiment of the last real opportunity The Roomie had to realize how much he'd become some very bad things in four years plus of doing what he did, and how much of that came home with him when he tried to be himself again. She somehow knew from their first meeting that she was important to him, in a way she wasn't important to anyone else... and liked that a lot. Sherri had been around the block in the L.A. Scene since she was in high school. She had the looks to have been courted by agents and photographers since she was 15. She had confidence and no small amount of natural skill as an actress. She was gifted with an amazing singing voice, and that ended up being the moneymaker for her as a career. To get to have that career, she'd had to work at it. Unmentioned in the story, but also a part of how things came to be for her, one of her parents had basically committed their entire effort to helping her get opportunities, too. So proper schooling in the Performing Arts, expensive music teachers, and a whole lot of support for her dream were all there to help shape her. To give her the skills to compete in a ruthless business... and to look away and not notice when she did all the things a young, beautiful, and entirely purposeful lady would do to get ahead in the Scene. She'd had a lot of guys; hadn't cared about any of them. Had joined a band full of guys she could be friends with, but also who made her stand out as the one really memorable member of the band. She was almost the opposite of the real life Debbie Harry from Blondie in the N.Y.C. Scene... Debbie wanted to be a part of the band, and was uncomfortable her entire career about being the focus. Fictional Sherri was the opposite; she loved being the stand-out, the mistress of her own success. The band needed her. She probably didn't need the band other than as a way up the ladder. She wasn't mean about it, though. She genuinely liked the guys, especially Jon writing specifically for her.
What she didn't have was someone who just wanted her because of who she was inside. She knew that about the Scene, tolerated the fact that people were wanted for what use they were or could do, but when an unexpected meeting resulted in her just dropping it all and being Sherri... that mattered to her. As the story went on, and the opportunity to do something wonderful with The Roomie happened, she ended up with the worst confusion of wants and needs possible. She also got dragged into something very dangerous. Astoundingly, and yes based on one of those real people who contributed to the composite of her character in the story, she was also very competent and mostly coolheaded in the face of danger.
She's one of the fully described characters in the novella, as much because I took such joy in writing about her as because it mattered to the story to know almost everything I mentioned about her. She moves in certain ways, choses when to speak and act in certain ways, and is almost always aware of the effect she has on people around her. She also genuinely wanted to find a way to make things work with The Roomie. Maybe she knew that he'd have made her whole, just as she was capable of saving him from himself. In the end, all she could give him were words. It sure took a long time after that for him to realize that was how she'd always remember him.
I hope Sherri "lived" for you as you read the novella. As always, the comments are open for questions and commentary.
Let's see if I can manage to discuss a bit about Sherri, without stumbling over my words too much. It wouldn't be unfair of readers to accuse me of focusing an entire parallel story on her simply to have the opportunity to write a love letter to someone from long ago. When I went back and read the scenes involving her, it was pretty clear that a couple of things had happened during the Writing Fugue that resulted in the 1st draft of Remember When, and one of those was that I'd drawn from an odd mix of experiences to write about her. She's written as a composite of an image of a person I've never had the pleasure of meeting, a second person I knew well for some of her mannerisms, and a third person's way of thinking and expressing themselves. What made that a surprise to discover was that that third person was someone I only knew briefly, that she looked stunningly similar to first person (at the same age)... and she was someone who left one hell of a mark on me.
She's the focus of everything beautiful and wonderful in the story, and one of the not-beautiful parts. She's the embodiment of the last real opportunity The Roomie had to realize how much he'd become some very bad things in four years plus of doing what he did, and how much of that came home with him when he tried to be himself again. She somehow knew from their first meeting that she was important to him, in a way she wasn't important to anyone else... and liked that a lot. Sherri had been around the block in the L.A. Scene since she was in high school. She had the looks to have been courted by agents and photographers since she was 15. She had confidence and no small amount of natural skill as an actress. She was gifted with an amazing singing voice, and that ended up being the moneymaker for her as a career. To get to have that career, she'd had to work at it. Unmentioned in the story, but also a part of how things came to be for her, one of her parents had basically committed their entire effort to helping her get opportunities, too. So proper schooling in the Performing Arts, expensive music teachers, and a whole lot of support for her dream were all there to help shape her. To give her the skills to compete in a ruthless business... and to look away and not notice when she did all the things a young, beautiful, and entirely purposeful lady would do to get ahead in the Scene. She'd had a lot of guys; hadn't cared about any of them. Had joined a band full of guys she could be friends with, but also who made her stand out as the one really memorable member of the band. She was almost the opposite of the real life Debbie Harry from Blondie in the N.Y.C. Scene... Debbie wanted to be a part of the band, and was uncomfortable her entire career about being the focus. Fictional Sherri was the opposite; she loved being the stand-out, the mistress of her own success. The band needed her. She probably didn't need the band other than as a way up the ladder. She wasn't mean about it, though. She genuinely liked the guys, especially Jon writing specifically for her.
What she didn't have was someone who just wanted her because of who she was inside. She knew that about the Scene, tolerated the fact that people were wanted for what use they were or could do, but when an unexpected meeting resulted in her just dropping it all and being Sherri... that mattered to her. As the story went on, and the opportunity to do something wonderful with The Roomie happened, she ended up with the worst confusion of wants and needs possible. She also got dragged into something very dangerous. Astoundingly, and yes based on one of those real people who contributed to the composite of her character in the story, she was also very competent and mostly coolheaded in the face of danger.
She's one of the fully described characters in the novella, as much because I took such joy in writing about her as because it mattered to the story to know almost everything I mentioned about her. She moves in certain ways, choses when to speak and act in certain ways, and is almost always aware of the effect she has on people around her. She also genuinely wanted to find a way to make things work with The Roomie. Maybe she knew that he'd have made her whole, just as she was capable of saving him from himself. In the end, all she could give him were words. It sure took a long time after that for him to realize that was how she'd always remember him.
I hope Sherri "lived" for you as you read the novella. As always, the comments are open for questions and commentary.
Monday, October 1, 2018
Going Organic: Keys to Kindle sales, part 2.
As a new author, getting your book out the door, that is to say finished-uploaded-and-for-sale, is an obvious challenge. Getting it noticed on Day One is an exercise in tapping into every connection you have in Friends, Family and people with Favors-owed to you. That gets you some sales, and more importantly some people to start writing Reviews. I've spoken before about how important those are here. But to talk about getting to the next stage of the published life of your book, I'd like to revisit that a bit.
Those first few days of sales will tail off, and might tail off very quickly. That's because a new author has no audience out there anticipating his work that has a sense of his style and interest in seeing more of it (hopefully). They don't talk about Established Authors having an advantage for nothing; it's a big advantage to be a known success. The other thing you are up against is getting the Amazon SEO to kick into higher gear and actually place the link to your Sales page where someone browsing can see it. They have Rankings based on sales made, listed by genre and subgenre, but you have to have had pretty substantial sales already to actually get listed high enough to make the first page of those ranking recommendations. Most people just browsing don't page down very much when searching.
Reviews, a lot of reviews, and at least a few superb ones, can get you more out of the Amazon SEO. Again, however, a caution: Don't "seed" reviews. Readers are very able to recognize there might be something fishy about 10 reviews on the same day using the same language to speak of how wonderful the book is. Hell, I've gotten eight reviews so far on Remember When, all top-grade, over the last couple of weeks... and still had a friend pull me aside and ask "did you tell people to give you good reviews?"... um, well, no. I sure begged reviews from everyone and their brother who I knew had the book, whether customers or Critical Readers from the time of the editing process. But seed them, or tell them what to say? Hell. no. For one thing, just accepting what ever someone chose to write has made my reaction to seeing a Review come up on the Amazon Sales page a lot more fun! I'd note that a couple of the Reviews were from completely blue-sky sources, too... people I had no idea would Review the book until I saw what they put out there.
Which leads to the rest of this topic today: At some point, people will learn of your book by word-of-mouth, referrals, or just finding it. Sales that come this way are called "Organic", as they no longer depend on buyers having any direct connection to the author. Let's be serious about this: a marginal sales success, measured long term for a modest e-book, is in the thousands of sales. If you did put out a marvel of modern writing *and if anyone noticed*, you will sell more by far. For a first-time author... not happening without kismet visiting you. Your only guaranteed sales with be from that Friends, Family and Favors-owed list above. For most people, that's less than a hundred sales. To get past that, you have to somehow get to the Organic part of the sales curve.
How do fans help a book get there?
Branching is a big help; If you liked the book, recommend it to people. Mention that they should recommend it too, if they like it. This word-of-mouth spread can get very powerful if repeated a couple of branches out... if someone you recommended it to then recommends it, and so on.
Social Media references help too: Obviously the author has expended all those sort of contacts, in the F, F & F-o stage of things, to get people to Share and Re-tweet and what all. But there is more to be gained if a fan of the book originates their own supportive posting about the book, which is then shared to their circle of friends who are mostly unlikely to be in the circle that the author has already sent promotional messages to.
Keep those Reviews coming: On Amazon Sales pages more Reviews are better, so long as they aren't a slam on the book. Customer reviews are more valuable than pre-release reader reviews, too.
What can the author do?
Blessed little once it is past the initial push. A bit of continued Social Media presence so people don't forget you exist is good. Having a discounted price sale one day, with wide announcement of it, to boost the units-sold count helps, especially if no one is reviewing the book. Paid promotion is an option, but a very costly one to risk for most authors and most books.
So do say so in the comments if you think of anything else, and otherwise I'll just keep plugging away at things and building for the future! Going Organic is all the fashion, after all.
As a new author, getting your book out the door, that is to say finished-uploaded-and-for-sale, is an obvious challenge. Getting it noticed on Day One is an exercise in tapping into every connection you have in Friends, Family and people with Favors-owed to you. That gets you some sales, and more importantly some people to start writing Reviews. I've spoken before about how important those are here. But to talk about getting to the next stage of the published life of your book, I'd like to revisit that a bit.
Those first few days of sales will tail off, and might tail off very quickly. That's because a new author has no audience out there anticipating his work that has a sense of his style and interest in seeing more of it (hopefully). They don't talk about Established Authors having an advantage for nothing; it's a big advantage to be a known success. The other thing you are up against is getting the Amazon SEO to kick into higher gear and actually place the link to your Sales page where someone browsing can see it. They have Rankings based on sales made, listed by genre and subgenre, but you have to have had pretty substantial sales already to actually get listed high enough to make the first page of those ranking recommendations. Most people just browsing don't page down very much when searching.
Reviews, a lot of reviews, and at least a few superb ones, can get you more out of the Amazon SEO. Again, however, a caution: Don't "seed" reviews. Readers are very able to recognize there might be something fishy about 10 reviews on the same day using the same language to speak of how wonderful the book is. Hell, I've gotten eight reviews so far on Remember When, all top-grade, over the last couple of weeks... and still had a friend pull me aside and ask "did you tell people to give you good reviews?"... um, well, no. I sure begged reviews from everyone and their brother who I knew had the book, whether customers or Critical Readers from the time of the editing process. But seed them, or tell them what to say? Hell. no. For one thing, just accepting what ever someone chose to write has made my reaction to seeing a Review come up on the Amazon Sales page a lot more fun! I'd note that a couple of the Reviews were from completely blue-sky sources, too... people I had no idea would Review the book until I saw what they put out there.
Which leads to the rest of this topic today: At some point, people will learn of your book by word-of-mouth, referrals, or just finding it. Sales that come this way are called "Organic", as they no longer depend on buyers having any direct connection to the author. Let's be serious about this: a marginal sales success, measured long term for a modest e-book, is in the thousands of sales. If you did put out a marvel of modern writing *and if anyone noticed*, you will sell more by far. For a first-time author... not happening without kismet visiting you. Your only guaranteed sales with be from that Friends, Family and Favors-owed list above. For most people, that's less than a hundred sales. To get past that, you have to somehow get to the Organic part of the sales curve.
How do fans help a book get there?
Branching is a big help; If you liked the book, recommend it to people. Mention that they should recommend it too, if they like it. This word-of-mouth spread can get very powerful if repeated a couple of branches out... if someone you recommended it to then recommends it, and so on.
Social Media references help too: Obviously the author has expended all those sort of contacts, in the F, F & F-o stage of things, to get people to Share and Re-tweet and what all. But there is more to be gained if a fan of the book originates their own supportive posting about the book, which is then shared to their circle of friends who are mostly unlikely to be in the circle that the author has already sent promotional messages to.
Keep those Reviews coming: On Amazon Sales pages more Reviews are better, so long as they aren't a slam on the book. Customer reviews are more valuable than pre-release reader reviews, too.
What can the author do?
Blessed little once it is past the initial push. A bit of continued Social Media presence so people don't forget you exist is good. Having a discounted price sale one day, with wide announcement of it, to boost the units-sold count helps, especially if no one is reviewing the book. Paid promotion is an option, but a very costly one to risk for most authors and most books.
So do say so in the comments if you think of anything else, and otherwise I'll just keep plugging away at things and building for the future! Going Organic is all the fashion, after all.
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