genre series

Fighting With Both Hands

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This post by David Gaughran originally appeared on his Let’s Get Digital site on 4/17/15.

This blog has been quieter than usual lately and I thought I should let you know what I’ve been doing.

I’m going to prattle on for quite a while; you might want to get comfortable (or head off to Tumblr).

So…

It’s good to do a bit of soul searching now and then, to look at what you have achieved, where your career is headed, and to decide if you are on the right track.

My goals and dreams have changed a lot since I started self-publishing in 2011. I haven’t been a big success, but I’ve been able to tick off little career milestones along the way. Some months my sales are wonderful, some months they are terrible – generally a function of how long it is since I released or promoted something. Overall, the good months more than outweigh the bad and I’ve been scratching out a living for a while now.

Dream: achieved.

But the sales maw, as all writers know, is insatiable. So I’ve been noodling ways to take my career to the next level.

I feel like I’ve got a good handle on the publishing/marketing side of things, but I’m still serving my apprenticeship as a writer – especially as a writer of fiction. Non-fiction comes naturally to me. I find it quicker and easier and (much) less of a brain-melting puzzle. Whereas, fiction is much more of a challenge – probably why I find it ultimately more satisfying.

My goals tend to focus on aspects of the craft, rather than some notional sales number. There is always something particular I want to achieve (that’s a euphemism for “work on”) with each book, aside from the general desire to make it better than the last one – and I think that’s something most writers do.

But, perhaps partly because of the above, I wasn’t necessarily selecting my projects with my “career” hat on. I gave an interview to Simon Whistler at Rocking Self-Publishing last September, during the launch of Digital 2 (disclosure: he subsequently became my narrator for the audio edition).

Simon asked why I wrote all over the map: short stories, science fiction, literary fiction, historical fiction, non-fiction, and asked if that was something I would recommend to others.

 

Read the full post on Let’s Get Digital.

 

Series v. Serial and Why I’m Weary

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This post by Lisa Torcasso Downing originally appeared on her site on 6/25/13.

Over the last few days I consumed David Farland’s engaging Nightingale, a YA tale of the SFF persuasion. When it comes to leisure reading, I’m much more likely to pick up SFF if it’s a YA novel because I like to read what my kids like to read. To be completely forthcoming, I probably wouldn’t have purchased my Kindle copy of Nightingale were it not for the recent Facebook campaign to promote the book. I knew I’d enjoy Dave’s book because he’s a wonderful storyteller, even if weird stuff happens in his books. Like suction cups appearing on the fingtertips of the protagonist. Most of the time, I just can’t make the leap SFF writers hope I can make, but every Farland (or Wolverton) SFF novel that I’ve read has made me a believer. Heck, when I hit the 70% mark in my read-thru of Nightingale, I texted a friend who loves SFF and told her not to miss this one.  I was completely taken in.

And then the ending hit. Or rather, the non-ending. Okay, I admit I didn’t love the wind-up of his historical fiction, In the Company of Angels, but for an entirely different reason. I simply didn’t agree with where he chose to end that one. The “problem” I have with Nightingale’s ending  isn’t so much a problem with the ending as with the trend it successfully follows. The truth is, Dave ended Nightingale with the skill and craftsmanship a great writer should. I just don’t like the trend toward serials that has taken over YA fiction. My complaint, then, is not about Nightingale, which achieves its aims with great success, but with the current love affair YA publishers are having with serial fiction.

 

Click here to read the full post on Lisa Torcasso Downing’s site.

 

Series Readers—What They Really Want To See In Our Books

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This post by Elizabeth Spann Craig originally appeared on her blog on 5/21/14.

I’ve just finished the latest Southern quilting mystery—book five in that series, due to release in late 2015.  So that means, right now, I’m no longer under a contract until Penguin decides if they’d like to acquire more books for the series (likely something they would determine after seeing sales figures for book four, coming out in August).

For the first time…ever, really…the only project I have to work on is my self-published Myrtle Clover series. I started book seven at my usual full throttle, and then slowed my writing pace down a bit and decided to take a more thoughtful approach.

I have a completed outline for the book.  The mystery looks pretty sound. Readers told me they especially wanted more humor and the book’s outline has plenty included.

But then I remembered some of the other emails I’ve gotten.  Readers have been writing me and mentioning things they’d like to see in my Myrtle stories. Others wrote that they were “so glad to hear more about____”. I remember reading these emails and being baffled because the elements the readers liked and wanted to hear more about seemed very incidental to the story.

But I know by now that anything readers like, even if it seems incidental to me, is simply a sign that I’m not getting it.

 

Click here to read the full post on Elizabeth Spann Craig’s blog.