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Posts Tagged ‘e-publishing’

Not Much New Around Here

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on October 12, 2011| 2 Comments »

With Wolf Tracks

This is one of those days when it’s just really hard to think of a topic to blog about. Nothing much new is going on with my writing–it’s going, just in the same directions as in my recent posts. I haven’t had any revelations or discoveries to report.

I guess I’ll just have to revert to a status report.

BLOOD WILL TELL: I’m still waiting to hear back from the agent who has the full ms. It hasn’t really been that long (though sometimes it feels like it). I’m still playing around with ideas for the cover, just in case. I really want to try to insert a wolf into the oval made by the dragon’s tail. I have a couple of

With Background

images to play with, but I’m not sure whether my skills are up to it. Won’t know until I try, I guess.

 

 

BLOOD IS THICKER: Just starting Chapter 9. This story and these characters are just fun to work with. I have to think up more trouble to get them into, though, besides the main conflict. I have a couple of ideas. (Possibly one of my characters may get to thwart a kidnapping attempt. That could be fun.)

MAGIC’S FOOL: Still going slowly, but going. I’m just about to start Chapter 6.

MAGE STORM: I need to get serious about those revisions. I’d like to be ready to start querying it again at the beginning of next month. Too much later, and it’ll have to wait until after the first of the year. (A lot of agents shut down for submissions over the holidays.) I’ve identified one scene that either needs to be cut or expanded. As it is, it doesn’t serve enough of a purpose. How did that one escape the last revision? Oh, yeah. I like the way it ends. That’s not enough.

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Cover Art

Posted in writing, tagged , , on October 9, 2011| 11 Comments »

Well, in the midst of all my writing, I’ve spent some time playing around with what might be cover art for BLOOD WILL TELL in case I decide to e-publish it.

As stated in my last post, I’m no graphic artist. And the gyrations I’ve had to go through to get to this point would take far too long to catalog.

Since I don’t know what I’m doing, I spent some time studying the covers of some successful books. In particular, the HUNGER GAMES trilogy and, more within the correct genre, some of Sherilyn Kenyon’s books. (BLOOD WILL TELL is a paranormal romance, but the only thing it has in common with Sherilyn Kenyon’s books is that there are werewolves–or, more precisely, one particular half-werewolf.) These are novels that got the very best covers their publishers could create, so it seemed like a reasonable place to start figuring out what makes a good cover.

So, what I took away from that: A solid color background with some interest–a lighter highligt across a dark bacground or some geometric shape in a color only slight lighter or darker than the background and a single image or symbol.

I’m nowhere near that, yet. But, here’s what I’ve got so far:

 No text yet, obviously. I’m going to have to go through another whole step for that.

In the end, of course, I may opt for having an actual artist do the cover–if I can afford it. But it won’t hurt to have some ideas to talk about in any case.

The beauty of this cover design is that with minor variation in color, it could pretty much work for all three books in the series.

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Oops!

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on October 6, 2011| 4 Comments »

I got so busy writing I forgot to blog.

So, here’s an update on my progress:

  1. I finished this round of revisions to SEVEN STARS and closed the file. I intend to leave it closed for about six months. Then I’ll come back, read it through, hopefully do only a polishing edit (but who knows what I’ll find after six months) and then get ready to start sending it out. I may start the query and synopsis during those six months. It’s not too early.
  2. I got through Chapter 5 of MAGIC’S FOOL. A tricky chapter because one of the characters dies. And getting to that point made it clear to me at least part of why I wasn’t happy with the first 4 chapters. It’s a first draft. It doesn’t have to be perfect or anywhere close at this point, but it is comforting to know what I need to fix in the second draft. I think (well, I hope, anyway) that I’ll be able to move along faster, now.
  3. I’m hard at work on Chapter 6 of BLOOD IS THICKER. The central problem has been set up, but the characters aren’t yet agreed on a course of action. In fact, there’s a certain amount of conflict over Rolf’s choice. Conflict is good.
  4. I’ve just started looking over the early chapters of MAGE STORM. So far, it’s just tinkering. There are more significant problems in Chapters 2 and 3 that I have to resolve. Chapter 2 is not giving the reader a good enough sense of Rell as the main character. Chapter 3 isn’t setting up Rell’s decision to go off and seek an answer “out there” nearly well enough. I’m anxious to get this back out there.
  5. I’ve just about made a decision on BLOOD WILL TELL. I think its time is now or very soon. I haven’t heard back from the agent who has a full manuscript, yet. (It’s still really early for that.) But, if this one falls through, I think I will go ahead and e-publish this one. I even started a mock-up of the cover art. I am not nor will I ever be a graphic artist.
  6. I’ve started research for THE BARD’S GIFT, my YA alternate history. This story will ake place far enough (physically) from the main events of its time that I’m not too concerned about historic events or people beyond what I already know. But I do need to have a feel for what daily life would have been like for these characters.

Whew! I guess that’s why I was too busy to remember to blog.

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Serialization

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , on August 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

It’s a topic in e-publishing right now, in a couple of different contexts.

I know a couple of writers who are either serializing stories for e-publication or thinking about it. Actually it’s a very attractive concept.

You take a 100,000-word novel and break it down into, say, five pieces. Hopefully, of course, each installment ends with some sort of hook that will make the reader want to purchase the next installment. Then you release installments a week to a month or so apart.

It’s something that e-publishing is very well suited for and something that wasn’t even remotely possible with traditional paper publishing. That is, unless you count the endless series that extend to a dozen or more books. But in those cases, readers had to wait years between installments. This is much less painful.

Another interesting thought that I read about earlier this week is the idea of e-publishing segments of your work in process. Not for free, but on some sort of arrangement where readers pay for the finished work, but get to read the story as it progresses. This potentially allows the writer to get feedback from a much wider audience than a writers’ group and lets the readers see some of their ideas or comments incorporated into the story.

Both are intriguing thoughts that I’m going to have to research more. I even know where I can find an online course on the subject.

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E-Publishing Considerations

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on July 10, 2011| 3 Comments »

I’ve got two projects that I may decide to take to e-publishing within the next few months to a year.

The first is BLOOD WILL TELL and its sequels. In order to do this right, though, I need to have the sequels written, critiqued, revised and polished. Therefore, this likely won’t happen for at least a year. In the meantime, I will start querying BWT again. Might as well.

The other would be a collection of short stories. I have three right now that are nearing the last of the markets I would be willing to sell them to. It’s not that they’re not good enough. Some of them have come close. Most of them have been vastly improved from their original versions, too. That’s a problem because most publications don’t want to see revised stories unless they request the revision. So, a story I sent out to one market and then later revised and improved, can’t go back to that market again. Two of those stories are actually novelettes (in the 10,000-word range), so there aren’t that many markets available for them in the first place.

At least not markets I’m interested in. There are a couple of places I could send them that just don’t pay much. In fact, they pay so little that I’m willing to take my chances on doing it myself. So those short stories are very likely to end up in an e-published collection by the end of the year or so.

It used to be, not so very long ago (perhaps as recently as this time last year) that there was a real stigma against self-publishing, including e-publishing. That’s been changing rapidly and it’s no so true anymore.

What is still a concern is that I’ll have to come up with (or pay to have someone better at it than me come up with) cover art. That’s doable.

And the real issue is marketing. Not in the traditional sense, of course. But I will have to find some way to make my stories stand out so interested people can even find them among the literally thousands of e-published story collections and novels out there now.

That’s going to require some thought.

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Decision Time

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , , , on July 3, 2011| 2 Comments »

Well, I’ve come down to the last 20% or so of the revisions to BLOOD WILL TELL. The time to make some hard choices is coming right up.

I’ve already made the decision to give this one another try by the traditional route. I’ll redo the query letter, research some new agents, and start sending it out there again, this time as paranormal romance. That’s not the hard choice.

The decision is this: Do I want to be prepared, in case this one still doesn’t get anywhere through traditional channels, to put it out there myself.

If so, then I have more work to do. Not just learning more about e-publishing. If I want to make it a success, then I really need to be able to put the sequels out at or close to the same time. Sequels that aren’t written yet.

You see, up ’til now I’ve pretty much concentrated on the traditional route. And the conventional wisdom in that arena is that it’s better not to start the sequel until you’ve sold the first book. The reason is that if the first book doesn’t sell, the rest of the series has about the same chance as a snowball in . . . well, you know the rest of that saying. It’s better, in that venue, to write something new that may have a better chance.

But, for e-publishing, that turns around completely. Those who’ve done best with e-publishing have been able to follow up with more books in the same series to really build readership.

So now, as I complete the revisions to BLOOD WILL TELL and then a revision to the beginning of MAGE STORM and send both of them back out there into the world, and wait for first reader responses to SEVEN STARS, I have to choose what to work on next.

New stories, like THE BARD’S GIFT (alternate history) and THE HARBINGER (a total re-imagining of my earliest novels).

Or the sequels to BLOOD WILL TELL (BLOOD IS THICKER and SPILLED BLOOD) and MAGE STORM (WILD MAGE and DRAGON MAGE).

Happy Independence Day

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What to Do with a Rejected Story

Posted in writing, tagged , , , , , on March 30, 2011| 4 Comments »

First, I want to take a moment to acknowledge the death of Diana Wynne Jones last weekend. She was one of the truly great writers of young adult fantasy, weaving magic with her words. A very sad loss.

Second, if you haven’t checked out Farland’s Authors’ Advisory Conference Calls yet, tonight’s the night to do it. David Farland will be talking about How to Sell Your Novel.

Now, on to BLOOD WILL TELL:

I’m beginning to make good progress on my revisions, working through scene by scene. First making any changes I think are necessary, then working through the three full critiques. I’ve gotten some excellent critiques that have made me look at the story and characters in a new light. That’s invaluable. I liked this story before, but I think it’s going to be much stronger when I finish. 

My current goal is to work through a chapter a day. Some days I may get more done and some chapters or scenes may need less work. That should fill up about a month before I’m ready to return to SEVEN STARS for the second draft.

The question then becomes what to do with BLOOD WILL TELL. Last year, I sent out 34 queries on this one. I got two requests for a partial, both of which ended in rejections. That’s not a very good showing.

Now, I’ll never know for certain why all those agents chose to pass. I can’t tell if the new first chapter and the revisions to the early chapters might have gotten a better response. But in my gut I have a feeling that part of the problem is that it’s a werewolf story.

It’s only a guess, but I have a feeling that the agents and editors of traditional publishing (who have to think about a book that might hit the bookshelves of Barnes and Noble three years from now, at best) just aren’t interested in werewolf stories right now. At least, unless your name happens to be Patricia Briggs, Gail Carriger, Sherilyn Kenyon, Charlane Harris, or Stephanie Meyer. I suspect, even, that when they open their inboxes they find half a dozen werewolf or vampire stories every day and it’s just easier to hit the next button than to try to sort out which ones might be good. I know that I’ve seen at least one or two agents’ websites that said specifically something like “Please don’t send me any more werewolf stories”.

So, what to do with BLOOD WILL TELL? One option is to change the title, write a new query, and try again. Frankly, I haven’t found another title I really like. And I’m not sure it would make a difference, really. It’s still a werewolf story.

The other option that I am considering very strongly at the moment is to e-publish it myself, probably under a psuedonym. The pen name would be mostly because this story (and it’s sequels) don’t really fit with the rest of what I’m writing. It’s adult, probably new adult, and I write mostly young adult and middle grade.

It’s a decision I’m likely to take with one or two of my short stories, too. In fact, I’ll probably do the short stories first, just to test the waters.

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