Sucessful Book Sale Event

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Civil War Days in Belle Plaine, Iowa was last weekend. My preparations were perfect for my book sale event. Both poster boards I mentioned in my last blog post worked. People were comfortable buying from a local person when they saw the words Keystone Author. Others who knew me made the comment they didn’t know I had written so many books or that I write books at all. So I received exposure in my area plus for miles around with reenactors that came from Minnesota, Wisconsin and around Iowa. The weather cooperated. All three days were beautiful; low wind, sunny, warm days. Since I was in period clothes (a homesteader/pioneer dress and bonnet), I asked if I could play first person like the reenactors. The man in charge said I could but the person had to be real. Wonderful! My Civil War book "Ella Mayfield’s Pawpaw Militia" is full of real people.

I picked Ella Mayfield, lady bushwhacker which is the main character to call attention to my book. I asked if there were any other bushwhackers in the park. The man in charge yells over to the shelter house to Union soldiers, "Are there any other bushwhackers here?" The reply was, "What’s a bushwhacker?" After three days of non stop talking and pointing to my Missouri poster board for visual effect, everyone that came to that park now knows who a Missouri bushwhacker was.

The first day was for schools. An outing away from the classroom is always fun. With this field day, the students learned so much more than they will read about the Civil War in a history book. They were able to experience what gunpowder smells like and the loud explosive sound of a gun going off. A drummer boy beating for a march, a trumpet player playing revelry, an up close look and explanation about a cannon, a talk with Abe Lincoln and a look at army camp setups on the Union and Confederate sides were the things the children experienced. I enjoyed being on the side lines of all that. Also, I received as many interesting stories from the reenactors as I told about Ella. They each are a walking history book about their portion of the Civil War.

My son was a volunteer that helped the event run smoothly and with clean up when it was over. Something that big with so many people coming and going is not an easy undertaking to pull off. The good part about Duane being there was he watched for me to show up and helped me set up. At closing, he came along and helped me pack up which was a big help. He enjoyed watching me go into character and sell books. Before I left Sunday afternoon, he bought both of us a Civil War 2009 Belle Plaine, Iowa shirt. He said we need to go to more reenactments. The shirts were for advertising. Reenactments wind down about now so we will see what next summer brings.

Friday, I sold two books to a reenactor. The thought might be that I should have skipped being there that day. My answer would be no. First, I needed the practice, speaking on Ella Mayfield’s behalf. The reenactors speak in first person, and I wanted to join in. Second, I developed a following of students that came back over the weekend to talk to me again. One girl brought her mother over to buy a book. I suspect on Friday it took the reenactors some time to get used to me. When they stopped to talk to me, I was in period dress, but I wasn’t just trying to sell books. I had a story of my own to tell and was well versed about my potion of the Civil War between Missouri and Kansas.

Saturday and Sunday, the public came. I had a good location next to a photographer’s tent full of 1800’s costumes. The public had to walk by me. They couldn’t miss my posters which made them curious enough to stop. Once they did, I gave a brief synopsis of each of my books and ended with the Civil War story. Setting up a table at the event was well worth it for me. My book sale was successful. Saturday at the end of the day, I and my son walked through the reenactors camp sites and talked to people. I wanted a feel for the passion these people have that makes them do the reenactments all summer.

This was one of those one thing leads to another events. I was approached by a woman who is writing a book. She has a blog. Now I have an invitation to be a guest blogger on her blog. A woman from a small town nearby asked me to come speak and sell books at her church group meeting soon. A newspaper reporter came to take pictures of the school children Friday. She stopped to talk to me. So I’m hopeful I might have a brief mention in her article.

At the end of Sunday, the reenactors had a First Person Contest. Someone told me about it about at the time the contest was happening. Afterward, a reenactor came by and told me he would like to see me enter next year. I was flattered to have been accepted by their group. That told me I must have been doing something right when they stopped to hear me talk about Ella Mayfield. I can’t wait to go back next year and be Ella all over again.

　

To sum it up, I had a very successful book sale at the Civil War Days in Belle Plaine, Iowa. The preparations I made to catch prospective buyers attention as they walked by my table paid off. From posters to period dress and my knowledge of the Civil War, I sparked attention and interest. The fact that I was the author of the books and signed them impressed the buyers. My Civil War book helped give me an introduction for being there and lead to buying my other books. I was well pleased with this event and looking forward a repeat performance. My Civil War book turned out to be a hit with the reenactors as well. Word of mouth from one reenactor to another brought me many sales. Now those books will go back to Minnesota, Wisconsin and around Iowa. Later, I should get more sales from the reenactors as well as buyers I gave bookmarkers.

5 Lessons I've Learned About Writing Dialog In Fiction

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This post, from Brad Vertrees, originally appeared on his Brad’s Reader site on 9/21/09.

One of my biggest weaknesses is writing dialogue. A lot of times, my characters ramble on about nothing and I end up cutting a lot of dialogue out while editing. So I decided to read up on how to write better dialogue so I can improve this very important element of fiction. Here’s a little of what I learned.

I decided to read the book Write Great Fiction – Dialogue (aff link) and although I’m still reading it, I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons on the art of dialogue. First and foremost, dialogue is not easy to write. Beginning writers, and even seasoned writers, tend to struggle with it. So if you’re like me and have trouble making your characters talk, you’re not alone.

Here are 5 things you should consider the next time you sit down to write a scene with dialogue:

1. Dialogue needs to propel the story forward. If your characters are just standing around chatting, talking about the weather or their weekend plans, chances are the dialogue is not being effective and you need to cut the scene or rewrite it. Dialogue needs to move the plot forward and keep readers interested.

2. Dialogue is used for pacing in a story. Long and drawn out narratives in a story will slow the pace down. At the same time, dialogue generally speeds things up. Good fiction should be a balanced combination of the two. If your story has too much narrative you are likely to put your readers to sleep. On the other hand, if your story is all dialogue with little narrative, you will probably lose your readers and they’ll have a hard time following the story.

The bad news is that pacing isn’t something that can easily be taught. It’s more intuition than anything. The good new is that you can get better at it by reading a lot of varied genres and practice, practice, practice.

Read the rest of the post, including lessons 3-5, on Brad’s Reader.

The Fiction Writing Workshop: Point of View

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This post, from Kristin Bair O’Keefe, originally appeared on Writers On The Rise site on 9/15/09.

Confusion
When I ask a student, “In which point of view is this story written?” I often get a blank stare, a long “uuummmmm,” or a wrong answer with a question mark tacked onto the end (for example, “First person?”).

Clarity
When making decisions about point of view, you must consider two important questions:

From whose perspective is this story going to be told? (In other words, whose story is it?)

Who is going to tell the story?

The Breakdown

First Person: an “I” (or sometimes a “we”) tells the story; everything in the story is filtered through that narrator

          Example: The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
           1.   This is Holden Caulfield’s story. No doubt about it.
           2.   Holden is the first-person narrator. He is the “I” in the story.
 
Advantages: strong sense of intimacy; constant opportunity for characterization; a strong voice that draws readers into the story
 
Challenges: a first-person narrator walks a fine-line between interesting and self-indulgent; readers might doubt the narrator’s interpretation of events (thus creating an unreliable narrator); readers can only climb into the head of the narrator

Read the rest of the post, which includes a breakdown on second and third person POV, on Writers On The Rise.

Break Through By Taking Breaks

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This post, from Matthew E. May (In Pursuit of Elegance), originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum. While it was originally aimed at small business owners, the advice here is equally applicable to writers struggling with writers’ block, or who are feeling creatively "stuck".

Ever wonder why our best ideas come when we’re in the shower, driving, daydreaming, or sleeping? Most people know the story of Archimedes’ shouting “Eureka!” upon suddenly discovering volume displacement while taking a bath and of Einstein’s theory of special relativity coming to him in a daydream. But there are many others:

  • Friedrich von Stradonitz’s discovered the round shape of the benzene ring after dreaming about a snake biting its tail.
     
  • Philo Farnsworth was plowing a field gazing at the even rows when the idea for projecting moving images line by line came to him, leading him to invent the first electronic television.
     
  • Richard Feynman was watching someone throw a plate in the air in Cornell University’s cafeteria when the wobbling plate with its red school medallion spinning sparked the Nobel Prize-winning idea for quantum electrodynamics.
     
  • Kary Mullis, another Nobel winner, was driving along a California highway when the chemistry behind the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) came to him, stopping him in the middle of the road.
     
  • Car designer Irwin Liu sketched the innovative new lines of what became the shape of the first Toyota Prius after helping his child with an elementary school science project involving the manipulation of hard-boiled eggs.
     
  • Author J. K. Rowling was traveling on a train between Manchester and London, thinking about the plot of an adult novel, when the character of child wizard Harry Potter flashed in her mind.
     
  • Shell Oil engineer Jaap Van Ballegooijen’s idea for a snake oil drill came as he watched his son turn his bendy straw upside down to better sip around the sides and bottom of his malt glass.
     

When you look deeper into these ingeniously elegant solutions and brilliant flashes of insight you can see that they came at strange times and in random locations. They didn’t occur while actually working on the problem but after an intense, prolonged struggle with it followed by a break. A change of scene and time away seems to have played a part.

Read the rest of the post on the American Express OPEN Forum.

Curmudgeon, late, as usual.

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Foiled again!  I had been sent a specific , well-written set of directions for posting my article to the proper location on Publetariat: Indie Indie Curmudgeon.  Of course, within a couple of days, I inadvertenly deleted it. Before I printed it for safe keeping. So this morning, frantically searching for a solution to get today’s column posted, I posted it in the wrong place twice! 

THEN… I had my only flash of brilliance for the day: I looked in the email "Sent" folder, where my reply, including the quoted original message still resided.  I always knew there was a reason not to clean up too often! 

One Electronic Thingie an Indie Author Can’t Do Without….

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It’s been another strange week, in a strange year.  The wholesale adoption of the previously (all through the “dark ages”) shunned Print On Demand production model by the mainstream publishing industry continues unchecked.  The last reported Big Publisher to succumb is Hatchette as reported in Publisher’s Weekly.  Soon, I’m sure at least publishers and agents will have to admit that POD alone is not sufficient grounds to disregard a writer’s work!  But then, I’m not here to rant on…

As technology, especially communications technology continues to spin out new and improved ways to spread the word, Indie Authors may face a dilemma.  What gear do I really need to promote and sell my work? 

Now I’ve been called a gear-head by my wife – repeatedly – and something of a luddite by younger friends.  If a Blackberry or I-Phone is on your horizon, don’t let me stop you.  There are plenty of blogs and articles out there explaining how to use these devices along with web-based social networking sites and Twitter.  I don’t tweet.  At least not yet, and not in mixed company.

Today, I want to discuss adding traditional, consumer-targeted promotion tools to your arsenal.  We’ll assume relative computer literacy – you’re reading this online, after all.  You have a computer, can operate some photo editing/design software and probably a laser printer to handle the manuscript printing and submission letters, but do you have a photo printer?

Now I don’t mean one of those tiny, snapshot machines, although they do have some promotional applications.  I’m speaking of an inkjet or dye sublimation printer sufficiently large to handle at least letter sized stock.  The current crop of offerings by most manufacturers produce beautiful results – good looking photo prints, but they can also be used to produce excellent point-of-sale tools and mailers.  Important, for most of us, they are not terribly expensive. Be sure to choose one for which you can get supplies (ink, paper) locally. My favorite online gear seller is Tiger Direct, but there are many out there who discount quality hardware.

I use a Canon PIXMA ip6600D a few years old, which prints up to letter size, full bleed (no white borders) images on up to 10 point (fairly stiff) coated card stock.  It has helped me secure bookstore accounts for my first novel.  Along with a sample copy of the book and a nice, to the point cover letter offering direct sales with a good margin based upon the cover price, I enclose a counter postcard. This is made from the book cover graphic, and includes a very truncated pitch. At the bottom is a space that says simply, “Bookseller’s Imprint Here”.  I offer these, customized with the seller’s logo and contact info, free to the bookseller, the same as a book distributer would offer.  The last part of the package is a letter-sized full color poster of the book cover & blurb for the bookseller to use wherever it fits.  Letter size is actually better than larger for most booksellers as space for display is often at a serious premium. 

By using my photo printer to produce collateral promotional materials, customized for the bookseller, I improve my chances in two ways.  First, it makes my sales pitch more professional and businesslike. It shows that I’m serious about helping the bookseller make money with my work – not a small idea. Most independent booksellers are “Mom & Pop” operations that need any help they can get in stretching their profits.  If your promotional items are used, it will give your book better recognition with readers, and not just while they’re in the book store. 

As readers enter the visual clutter of a bookstore, they’ll be bombarded by images – hundreds of them, from posters to book jackets.  Despite the apparent confusion, marketing tests have shown that our human brains may not recall exact words, but a good image will be retained.  A color image, is retained much better than a black and white or grey-scale image.  An image displaying excellent composition and a clear subject focus are the very best. Like an excellent jacket cover design.  Retained images (of your excellent jacket cover) will come in handy when the shopper passes the table or shelf where your book is displayed, and ..something…calls out to them to pick it up.  That’s where recognition comes in very handy.  Of course, once they’ve picked up the book, your writing skills are put to their biggest test: presenting the pitch a reader can’t say no to.

If they drop your gorgeous, full color postcard into a pocketbook or briefcase, it will surely surface again, often where others can be exposed to its wonderfully insidious pitch and presentation.  Think: Ralphie with the ad for the Red Ryder BB Gun stuck in Mommy’s magazine, heh! heh!. Hopefully, as long as it gets passed around (intentionally or not) it can pitch your book and establish recognition.  This continues until it finally enters the trash bin.  We can discuss the green implications at a later time, if you think it’s important.  For my money, it sure beats a bumper sticker on a Hummer. 

We operate a small – tiny, really – online and mail-order company.  That’s where I got the idea, initially for the cards.  Using 4×6 photo glossy sheets, I began printing postcards years ago, with our store images and information to pack inside of each sale shipment.  Now when one of our customers opens their shipping box, they not only get a nice full-color store promotional card, but another card which offers “A Fine Addition to Your Fall Reading List”. As the seasons change, it will be easily revised to read: Winter, etc. 

My first book sales, outside of immediate friends and family came directly from these cards.  You may have your own business, or not, but you may be able to approach your employer about including a book postcard in shipments or correspondence.  It may not be possible, but it may, and it’s worth the risk to inquire.

There is another use for the photo printer that I’ve found very important.  Business cards.  You can purchase letter-sized sheets of glossy or matte card-stock that are pre-perforated, actually scored.  Each sheet can produce 20 beautiful business cards that you break apart with no ragged edges at all.  They look just like the ones I used to have printed by a color gang press in Texas. The really neat thing is, if I need a card with my personal contact information on it, as opposed to our business info, I can print whatever I need. They even make up fold-over cards that can make nice gift attachment notes, etc.  Small, full-color cards also make excellent postings for community bulletin boards, often found in bookstores and libraries.  I’m not too proud to hang my shingle and promote my book wherever I can. 

Now, you might be thinking that this doesn’t sound like what a successful author should have to do, but Indie Authors must wear at least two hats: writer as well as book promoter and publicist.  Also, try to get used to the idea of being a manufacturer of a product.  Once the writing is over, your job is to sell product.  It will put you in a very exclusive club with members such as Samuel Clements who, writing a short novelette under the name Mark Twain – his first commercial fiction work – resorted to distributing handbills himself to sell copies of The Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

He lost his shirt in the effort, but he didn’t have a color photo printer, did he?

Next Time: My Tips for Designing & Proofing a Cover with Impact! Nuts & Bolts 101

The Indie Curmudgeon is Richard Sutton, Indie Novelist, graphic designer, marketing consultant, guitar picker, Indian Trader and online retail merchant since 1995.

Starting Your Story

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This post, from Nicola Morgan, originally appeared on her Help! I Need A Publisher! blog on 9/17/09, and with NaNoWriMo right around the corner, it couldn’t have come at a better time.

"Begin at the beginning," the King said, very gravely, "and go on till you come to the end: then stop." Lewis Carroll makes it sound so simple.

Thing is, where is the beginning? Where does any real story start? And in fiction, where should you choose to start it?

Although it was a blog-reader or two who asked me to talk about beginnings, it’s also a sore point for me because I’ve been struggling with a beginning of a new novel. Sometimes the beginning is the easiest bit – in fact, we’d probably agree that usually the beginning is the easiest bit. It’s certainly the most important bit, because if it’s not good enough no one will get to read the middle or end.

I think there are three aspects of beginnings that we need to look at. [God I sound serious / pompous today.]
 

  1. When to start
  2. How to start
  3. Things to avoid

1. When in the story should I start?

Simple: start at the point of the story which will hook the readers and draw them in quickly.

This could be with a flashback or a much earlier event which triggered the main narrative. Examples are Kate Atkinson’s brilliant latest novel, When Will There Be Good News? and [if you don’t mind my mentioning my own books but they are the ones I seem to know most about] Fleshmarket, by me. Both start with a shocking event which happened years before the main story. Both also enable a childhood event to be related, with a child’s POV, but then for the main narrative to be from a more interesting and sustainable viewpoint than a child’s.)

Or it could be a flashforward, but only if relevant. You can’t contrive a flashforward: it must be intrinsic. And, you have to be careful because you risk giving the game away. I used this device in The Passionflower Massacre and it is also how The Moth Diaries by Rachel Klein, my favourite book in the world, starts.

Or it may not be an earlier event, but simply "in medias res". Jump right in with a compelling episode; get right to the point. This is the method with fewer drawbacks. Perhaps the most common way to start and one which readers find most comfortable?

Or you might decide to begin with backstory /scene-setting straightaway. Clearly this has got to be very carefully done and the back story has to be compelling enough. Never start this way just because you feel the need to explain things – only start this way because you think that’s what’s going to draw the reader in most compellingly.
 

Read the rest of the post on Help! I Need A Publisher!

Make A Good Impression With A Custom Twitter Background

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This post, from Hugh Briss, originally appeared as a guest post on the Twitip site on 11/12/08.

A Custom Twitter Background can make a real impression and enhance your brand – but how do you make one? In this guest post post Hugh Briss from Twitter Image (a service that offers custom Twitter backgrounds) shares some tips on how to make your own.

I know what they say about making assumptions but I’m going to make one now and assume that most of you already understand the potential of Twitter, especially for those of us with something to promote. If you aren’t yet convinced that Twitter is going to do for the Internet what sliced bread did for the sandwich, I encourage you to spend more time reading Twitip. My job today is not to evangelize Twitter — which I love to do — but to talk about how to create cool Twitter backgrounds and show you how valuable the proper use of that space can be.

Generic is Only Good for Prescriptions

In addition to the generic Twitter background, Twitter currently offers 12 stock backgrounds along with pleasing preset colors for the elements on the page. You can also modify the colors of the overall background, text, links, sidebar background and the sidebar border. The first thing any Twit (easier to say that Twitterer) should do is change the generic background, unless you don’t like standing out from the crowd, in which case you can stop reading now.

Switching backgrounds and changing the color palette of your Twitter page is easy to do. Simply select "Settings" in the top row of links on your Twitter page, click on the "Design" tab and then either select a "theme" or click on "Change background image" or "Change design colors" and get creative. Don’t worry about goofing anything up. Any changes you make will not be visible to anyone but you until you click "save".

screen1.jpg screen2.jpg screen3.jpg

 

Themes are Good but Why Stop There?

Now I know that some of you will be perfectly happy with one of the themes Twitter has provided for you but there are still going to be thousands of Twits with the same background as you. It’s like going out in public wearing the same exact clothes as a bunch of other people — which is only cool if you’re going to a football game or a funeral.

With the holiday season fast approaching, this would be a good time to start looking for a nice Christmas-themed background, or Hannukah, Kwanzaa or whatever holiday you celebrate.

The best way to make sure that your Twitter page doesn’t look like anyone else’s is to upload your own background image. Those of you with the necessary skills might want to use Photoshop or a similar program to create your own from scratch. If that’s not a possibility, then there are other options. You can simply upload a photograph you’ve taken, for example. Another option is to find an image that will tile (repeat) in an appealing way. Search Google for "tile background" and you’ll find thousands of places to get them.

Colour Lovers is an excellent place to start if you want to make your own tiling background patterns. They also offer palettes that will help you pick colors that go well together so your Twitter page doesn’t look like you picked the colors with your eyes closed or let your 3-year old do it for you.

Twitter Patterns is another great place to find patterns for your tiled background.

Here are some pattern generators that are a lot of fun to play around with:

Read the rest of the post, which includes much more information and links to some excellent free Twitter resources, on Twitip.

Preparing For A Book Sale

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Friday the 18th Civil War Days begins in Belle Plaine, Iowa. I’m going to sell my books in the park on the fringes of North versus south battles. So am I ready?

I’ve watched the weather forecasts. Looks like perfect days for having a table full of books outside. To help the customers visually see what kind of books I write, I made place cards that states the genre to place by each pile of books. It would be a good thing if the wind wasn’t too strong, or I will spend time chasing those place cards down. Also, the bookmarkers I printed that list my inventory and address for future reference.

I’ve been doing a mental list in my head this morning. It has taken a lot of preparation for this three day event. I’ve got an aluminum folding table left over from my craft sale days. (Those craft sales are where I learned some salesmanship.) An Indian blanket for a table cover, doesn’t go along with the Civil War but in that century. Dressing in a pioneer dress and wearing a bonnet should give me some attention. (How did I come by a pioneer dress and bonnet? I revamped a dress and sewed the bonnet years ago when I volunteered at Ursher Ferry in Cedar Rapids. I was spinning in a one room log cabin as the woman who lived there. When visitors came in, I had to tell them about my life. It was fun to act the part.) I still have my money box from craft show days (a small fishing tackle box). It’s perfect with a top divided shelf for change and the bottom for bills. I bought a mesh folding chair with a canopy top so I wouldn’t have to sit in direct sunlight. Haven’t had it out of the bag to see if I can set it up. Every time I buy something in a bag or box that needs put together, I’ve found it a struggle to put the object back in the bag. So guess I’ll wing putting the chair together in the park after I have the table set up.

After some fall house cleaning, I found a four by four poster board upstairs to use for a sign to lean against the table. This advertisement shows that I am a local person. That might help get me some interest if not sales. So I printed large banners and tacked them to the poster board. The sign reads Keystone Author Fay Risner – Book Sale – Featuring – Ella Mayfield’s Pawpaw Militia . On each side of the Book Sale line was a blank space so I put a picture of my book cover on one side and a Confederate Flag on the other. That definitely states which side of the war I’m on. Figured I might as well join. You can’t hear it in my writing, but I have a southern accent. That would be a dead give away if I tried to join the Union forces. They might shoot me for a spy.

I have no idea where I am to set up. The man I talked to said I could be by a building where reenactors sell their wares. Guess someone will point me in the right direction.

Friday is the day the schools bring students to learn about the Civil War. I wanted to be a part of that education. Besides, a presentation will go along with my book. So I made up another poster board. While the reenactors will be talking military feats, I will be discussing Bushwhackers and Jayhawkers. A time line of the border war between Kansas territory and Missouri is on the poster. A large Missouri map dominates the board with stars for important places and Vernon County drawn in so the children can see where my history comes from.

I won’t have anyone to watch my table and I don’t know how far it will be to the concession stand. I baked an apple cake. That will be meals and snacks plus I’m taking a large container of ice tea.

My husband isn’t so sure all this stuff will fit in my small car. Best be prepared. Today I pack the car just to see how is the best way to fit everything in. It will be good to have that much done. I’ll have to get an early start to be set up before 9 a.m.

No matter what, this will be a fun experience going back in time amid the smell and explosions of gunpowder, war cries and crowd appreciation of the battles. Lincoln will give his Gettysburg Address, a church service will be held under the open sky and much more. I can’t wait to get there.

As Literary Fiction Dies, Science Fiction Must Take Over

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This post, from Dennis Jernberg, originally appeared on his Spanner’s World: The Blog! blog on 9/6/09.

Face it: the traditional literary fiction that defined the mainstream in the 20th century is on its way out, much like the newspaper it drew from starting in the late 19th century. During its period of dictatorship, anything outside its narrow boundaries was ruthlessly relegated to the lowbrow genres of pulp fiction by the cultural establishment’s literary police. But now literary fiction is almost extinct. Why? Because its ideology, called Naturalism, no longer reflects the daily lives of ordinary people.

What does? Science fiction. You see, far more than in Isaac Asimov’s day, we are living in the world predicted by science fiction. Rockets and space stations? Check. Supercomputers, internets, virtual reality? Check. Robots do more of our manufacturing work. Cyborgs are increasingly banal. Androids and jetpacks are in development. Can interstellar spaceships, wormholes, antigravity, and time travel be far behind? And there’s some amazing stuff now commonplace or in development that were inconceivable to the likes of Asimov, Robert Heinlein, and their contemporaries: nanotechnology, personal area networks, quantum computing, augmented reality — the list goes on…

The conclusion should be obvious. The central place in the mainstream of modern literature that was once held by the now dying Naturalist literary fiction properly belongs to science fiction. Why, then, is it still relegated to genre and fandom? Because the old literary establishment still controls the publishing industry.

Not that there’s anything wrong with fandom. I myself am a comics fan of long standing. Without a fandom, a genre or medium is dead. Literary fiction has no fandom; the only thing resembling one is a shrinking hard core of the cultural elite, the modern survivors or descendants of the once all-powerful literary snobs that not only exiled most fiction to the pulp genres but also murdered poetry. Conversely, all the vital genres have fandoms, especially those that belong to that family of genres collectively known as fantasy, which includes horror as well as science fiction. The strength of a genre in the culture can be gauged by the conventions its fans hold.

Anyway, back to my point: the Naturalist method of traditional literary fiction no longer reflects our common reality. The method of science fiction does. Here’s why:

Naturalism is based on the deterministic assumption of Newtonian mechanics, which claims that every single thing that ever happened or ever will happen can be precisely predicted into the infinite past or future. This strikes people as absurd today, but this was the common assumption in the 19th and 20th centuries. So traditional literary fiction came to restrict itself to the petty lives of insignificant people stuck in static or slowly deteriorating situations. It resembles the 19th-century social novel at least on the surface, but the method is supposed to be scientific or at least journalistic. The writer who most strongly defined the Naturalist school and its method was Émile Zola.

Read the rest of the post on Spanner’s World: The Blog!.

Novel Matters: Walking The Highwire And Other Techniques

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This post, from Sharon K. Souza, originally appeared on Novel Matters on 8/19/09. 

I really enjoyed Debbie’s post on Monday about artistic license in story structure, and I enjoyed the several comments to the post. Katy said, "I love it when authors walk the high wire." I love the image that conjures, because, really, don’t we all feel like we’re working without a net from the first sentence we write to the last, every time we write a novel?

~
Nicole said, "Rules were made to be broken in my world." We’ve all heard that saying, of course, along with the caveat that you must know the rules in order to break them. And I completely agree on both counts. But Nicole goes on to say, "If (emphasis mine) the story works, bravo to the one who told it in a different way."
~
Ah, therein lies the rub.
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Because in taking artistic license, we take the chance that it won’t work. And not simply that it won’t work, but that it could fail miserably, and do so even before it gets past the pub committee.
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And then there are the copycats who think "because a long, rambling letter worked for Marilyn Robinson, it’ll work for me." Well, probably not. Because the whole idea is to be unique in our breaking of the rules. And once it’s done, it’s old news. That’s not to say another novel written in the form of a letter can’t work, and work well; it just means it must break the new rules established by the former rule breaker. See how complicated this becomes? Yet, what’s the alternative? Tried and true, safe, ho-hum fiction, of which there’s already for more than enough in the world.

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Humorist Chris Dunmire writes, "A rule is 1) A guide or principle for governing action; 2) The usual way of doing something … While guides and principles are in place for good reason, ‘the usual way of doing something’ as a rule in your creative work is flexible and open to change." http://www.coachingyourcreativity.com/

Read the rest of the post on Novel Matters. 

Get it Right!

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Unlike Dan Brown, most of us Indies won’t be printing a 5 million book first run.  I know I won’t be.  For one thing, I haven’t made up a cross-marketing pact with the Tourism Dept.  of Washington DC.  Now I don’t really think the author of The Lost Symbol really made a point to discuss his upcoming book with DC’s tourism folks, but …what an idea?  Every single new tourist to visit the Washington monument would be bringing a copy of the book along.  It wasn’t lost on CBS news who covered the expected tourism increase this past Sunday. 

Indie authors need to keep wacky ideas like this in mind as they hone and finesse their work before publishing.  Connections matter.  So does recognition.  Readers make reading decisions based upon flap and cover content as well as recognition and connection with things they already retain in memory.  It’s a big part of creating hard-hitting advertising. As producers with a product to sell, it should be part of our marketing arsenals in any way we can implement this concept.

On a completely different note, I’ve been active on several writers and publishers sites.  One, in particular has attracted my attention and has provided some really interesting discussion.  While I will leave it un-named, for now, during a rather prolonged discussion of POD publishing, a comment was made that 99.995% (give or take a thousandth…) of all POD Published work is rubbish. 

While, of course the actual figure was created by the writer of the post to underscore a point, it does resonate with me… in the way of a challenge.  Those of us who are going to go the Indie publishing route, had better be aware of how our work is considered by many in the publishing business, BEFORE they’ve even read it.  We need to be absolutely sure that every time we publish, we’re proving them wrong!  Wrong! Wrong!

POD/Indie Publishing requires us to make sure our work is first rate — better than much of what is mainstream published. Otherwise, it will take even longer before POD/Indie work is recognized as simply another variety of published work, not the poor, sad joke that self-publishing has been for many, many years.  We know better. Let’s make sure we teach them with the power of fine quality writing, plotting and production.

 

Black Coffee Press now seeking Manuscripts

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We at Black Coffee Press are now seeking Manuscripts. Please visit www.blackcoffeepress.net for more details.

 

Should You Blog? And If So, What Are Best Practices?

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This post, from Jane Friedman, originally appeared on her Writers Digest There Are No Rules blog on 9/14/09.

More writers are blogging than ever. And if you’re not blogging already, you’ve probably considered it. Recently, a writer asked me via Facebook about blogging.

 She said:
 

[It is] my impression that blogs related to writing are primarily written by people with expertise in their field and who have valuable advice and connections within the industry. Now, however, I am checking around and I see that many writers, even writers who are unpublished — and some who appear very far from being published — have blogs, also where they discuss writing and their completed works and/or works in progress. These people generally have direct links to their blogs that become available when they sign their name (or their blog name) when commenting on another blog. So, I suppose they are doing some marketing for themselves.

So, my question is: Should I have a blog?

This writer had some serious reservations about starting a blog, and here’s how I answered her questions.

1. I don’t feel like I have much in the way of valuable advice. What kind of advice do I have to dispense?

For aspiring writers (especially novelists), it often comes down to a matter of voice—an engaging voice, humorous insights, or a unique perspective to bring to the table.

Sometimes you may have specific advice, sometimes not. For many aspiring writers who blog, it’s about a community—writers who are learning from one another. It helps if you can identify what about your experience sets you apart, but this insight may not occur for 6 months or more of blogging.

Don’t assume your blog should be specifically about writing. It could be about whatever sets you apart, makes you unique. The writing life can simply be an accent.

2. One person mentioned on his blog that a literary agent looked at his blog, saw his complaints about the issues remaining with his book, and decided not to look at his book. I suppose it seems obvious that you shouldn’t write negative things about your work on your blog, but to me this seems like one example of potentially many examples of why a BAD blog could be worse than no blog at all.

There’s always that risk that an editor/agent will be turned off by your site or blog. Frankly, though, if you’re sending out material knowing there are still issues to resolve, you should be getting rejected. (Never send material out that isn’t as final as you can make it!)

If an agent/editor is turned off by your site/blog, they may not like your style or voice, regardless of content or professionalism. If your blog is a good representation of who you are as a writer (and most blogs are), then it would be like worrying about a potential mate who decides not to start a relationship with you because he/she doesn’t like your personality. Saves you both some trouble, right?

3. I know nothing about blogging, so I feel my chances of writing a bad blog are sufficiently high that I should be concerned.

Maybe you worry too much. This could a unique angle to your blog.
 

Read the rest of the post, including questions and answers #4-6, on There Are No Rules. Also see the follow-up piece, The Benefits of Blogging, in which Jane responds to reader feedback on this article.

Reviews And How To Take Them

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A recent post on Musings Of An Aussie Writer that made direct reference to me and reviews of my work got me thinking about reviews. A lot of people react badly to reviews, even when they’re primarily positive. I don’t know why.

As far as I’m concerned, as an author, once I put my work out there I have no right to tell people what to think of it. I always make my writing the best I think it can be before I let it go public. Often that’s the only way it can or will go public.

After that I always remind myself of that old adage: “You can’t please all the people all the time.” I just hope to please as many people as possible as often as possible. I at least want to please more people than I piss off.

There’s another old adage that’s more writing related: “The reader is always right.”

If a reader interprets something I’ve written differently to how I intended, that’s my fault. It doesn’t matter what I want the reader to experience, or what I meant by a certain passage, the reader is always right. The way they read something and interpret it is their reality and there’s no point in me saying, “But you don’t get it! You don’t understand my genius!” It was my writing that resulted in their interpretation. If that’s not what I wanted them to think or feel then I need to learn from that and improve my craft.

When I send out a book for review I’m asking for that reviewer’s honest opinion of it. I’m not asking them to tell everyone how great it is. I’m asking them to tell everyone what they thought of it, and I desperately hope that they think it’s great.

I’ve yet to have a really scathing review for either RealmShift or MageSign. I’m very pleased and humbled about that. It’s become pretty evident from many reviews that my second book is an improvement on my first. I’m really pleased about that too – it’s much better than the other way around.

Certainly reviewers have had issues with a number of things in both books. They’re right about that. Other people might disagree with them. They’re right too. I genuinely mean it when I say that I’m happy if a review is overall positive and pretty much says, “I was a bit disappointed by this and that, but on the whole this is a good read and you should check it out.” Obviously, the more glowing the review the happier I am, but anything that brings attention to my books without downright slamming them is invaluable as far as I’m concerned.

BT’s Horrorscope review of RealmShift finished this way:

“Still, it is definitely worth the time spent reading it as Baxter manages to work with an intriguing list of characters, throws a thought provoking explanation of religion at the reader, and keeps everything moving at a rapid pace, while making some nice observations about today’s society and those within it. I look forward to reading the second instalment, MageSign, to see where the authors goes from here.”

His Horrorscope review of MageSign finished this way:

“Baxter has delivered a book which is better than the first one, which was pretty good to start with. If this trend continues, I’ll be looking forward to the next instalment.”

Regardless of various issues he had with the books (you can read the full reviews by clicking the links), these are the final thoughts that will resonate with people that read the review and they are the final thoughts of BT as a reviewer. I’m really happy with a result like that. One day I hope to get reviews for my work that do nothing but sing the praises of my flawless novels, but I can’t expect that from the outset. I can’t expect that for a long time yet, if ever.

And as for the things that reviewers have raised as issues within the work, things that made those reviews three or four star reviews rather five star reviews, well, I’ve certainly paid attention to those. I’ve thought about what’s been said, why it was said and what I can do to stop reviewers saying things like that in the future. Sometimes a reviewers negative comments will reflect more on the reviewer than the writer – a person’s personal preferences are often going to be at odds with mine. But it’s my job to recognise the things that I can use to improve my craft and work at implementing those every time I write something. If I’m precious about reviews all the time and just huff and puff about these useless reviewers that have no idea what they’re on about then I’ll never improve as a writer.

This is a cross-posting of a blog entry dated 9/13/09 from Alan Baxter Online.