Chronicles

I love Amazon

2012-02-17T15:18:00.000-08:00

I just came across this new Author's Guild post, courtesy of the Passive Guy. The article is entitled, "Amazon, innovation, and the Rewards of the Free Market." Sounds pretty benign for an article that goes on to basically say Amazon is Satan. Were I to believe the Author's Guild, I might suspect that Amazon is a freedom-destroying behemoth that wants to turn your children into slaves rather than an effective free-market warehouse (like an online version of Costco or Walmart) that cleverly manages to sell just about everything, to just about everyone.

The Guild wants me to believe Amazon destroyed competition and they're the reason we soon won't have bookstores... and this is the reason that the Author's Guild must protect Barnes & Noble at all costs. That's right. They're talking about the same B&N that ran all of the other bookstores out of business. But that's not all. It gets better. This is my favorite part:

"We aren’t Barnes & Noble’s champions, or at least we aren’t their champions by choice. We’d favor a far more diverse and robust retail landscape for books, and we encourage all readers to patronize their local bookstores as they would their farmers’ markets or any other businesses that enrich the quality of life in their towns and neighborhoods. But here’s where we are: Barnes & Noble is book publishing’s sole remaining substantial firewall. Without it, browsing in a bookstore would become a thing of the past for much of the country, and we would largely lose the most important means for new literary voices to be discovered."

Note that last line: "..we would largely lose the most important means for new literary voices to be discovered."

Ahem.

Where should I start? Is there anyone alive that doesn't know yet that tens of thousands of writers have published through Amazon without the benefit of a publisher? And that most of those were never published by legacy publishing houses for one reason or another? Is there anyone who can successfully argue that B&N played any role whatsoever in the discovery of new literary voices? To the contrary, B&N has enjoyed mutually exclusive relationships with publishers that allowed them to drive independent bookstores and small publishers out of business by the thousands. Big 6 publishers have dominated a landscape where bestsellers were created, not discovered, and new voices rarely appear at all, unless this year's new favorite celebrity or up-and-coming politician has decided to pen (read: farm out to ghostwriters) a new memoir. I don't consider those new voices. Do you? Apparently the Author's Guild does.

And what about this idea: People like bookstores. Would the absence of Barnes & Noble mean the end of brick and mortar stores forever and ever and ever as the Guild would have me believe, or would it actually create an opening for hundreds or thousands of small, independent, niche-based bookstores? Doesn't the absence of B&N make it easier to run a small bookstore? It does in my world. And despite the growing dominance of e-books, I have a feeling some of us will ALWAYS want to browse bookstores and go home with something on paper now and then. Does Barnes and Noble really make that easier for us, or did they somehow manage to limit our choices and then tell us they were victimized by Amazon who gave us those choices back?

Do I even need to add here that, as a writer who currently sells about 1,500 books a month, I don't even qualify to join the so-called Author's Guild? How many books do you think I need to sell? 5,000? 10,000? Don't bother guessing because it's not possible. The Author's Guild only accepts members who've been traditionally published by legacy publishing houses (read the Big Six.) They're not alone here. I can't join the Mystery & Thriller Writers of America or the Writer's Guild of America either. But right now I'm looking at AG and wondering what they offer that I would need. In fact, I'm wondering why they're called the Author's Guild in the first place, when based on their statement in this article, they're not really looking out for author's interests at all.

If I may add one more quote from the Passive Guy, because he says it better than I ever could:

"Ah, farmers markets. If the whole world would just patronize farmers markets and buy plug-in hybrids and quit paying attention to Amazon, wouldn’t all authors be better off? Maybe we could collect our royalties as bushels of organic spinach."

Shadow Rising available NOW!

2012-02-08T13:49:00.000-08:00

Shadow Rising, book two of the Shadow Born Trilogy ~~will be available February 14~~ is available NOW!

LINK HERE!

Teenage assassin Gabriel Frost is back, and this time he’s going to find out the truth about his mysterious past. It’s been one year since the events of Shadow Born and Gabriel has settled into his new life at Winschfield Manor as a field agent for the Top Secret organization known as D.A.S. Gabriel is on his first solo mission when something goes horribly wrong and the shadowfriends escape not only with hostages, but also with a rare and unusual relic -an ancient gemstone statue.

Gabriel soon learns that the shadowfriends are collecting the statues because the artifacts have immense power, power that could change the world forever. But before D.A.S. can act, the Shadow attacks. Reeves and Julia are gone and the children are taken captive by a secret government agency. To make matters worse, Gabriel’s powers are growing rapidly and he can’t seem to control them. Just when his friends need him most, Gabriel may not be able to save anyone - not even himself.

2,000 downloads. In one day!

2012-01-29T13:52:00.000-08:00

I love Cabernet Sauvignon but my IBM laptop does not. The delicate nature of unshielded direct-current electronics is compounded by the aging circuitry in an IBM T-40 to such an extent that even a small amount of fine red wine may spell instant, irreparable disaster. This is one of many important lessons I have learned in the last week. In this case there was no pop, no hiss, no telltale puff of smoke. The glass tipped and the screen went black. And ten years of constant companionship ended like the dousing of a candle.

In retrospect it was probably time. This computer has had a hard drive replaced along with memory, a wifi card, a keyboard, and a fluorescent back light for the screen. Most of this in the last two or three years. I'd say I have made a valiant effort to maintain the relationship, but at last it's time to part.Thankfully, I've learned from previous experience to keep most of my important files backed up. Even so, it's hard to count the toll of lost time and productivity when something like this happens. I've had to transfer the files I backed up on a USB drive to another computer, an old desktop in the back corner of my bedroom where I do lots of publishing work but I really don't like to write because it's at best uncomfortable. From there I have proceeded with the final revisions of Shadow Rising along with other work that I would have preferred to do from the comfort of my laptop.

Fortunately, I had the room on my credit card to replace the laptop, at about 30% interest- I'm not kidding! But I found a good deal on a new computer, which I have ordered after spending several hours shopping and another two hours in the local Best Buy only to learn it's only available online. But if anyone's looking, Best Buy has a great deal on a Samsung with an AMD quad-core processor, 4 gigs of RAM, and a 500 gig hard drive. It looks good in the reviews and I've had good experiences with Samsung in the past, but I'm used to names like Dell, IBM, and HP on my computers. And frankly, this computer is a little more than I was looking for. What I wanted was compact and light, with a great battery life. Turns out that costs $1,000. So my budget largely made the decision for me, but my initial impression is that this really is a great deal, if not exactly what I wanted. Time will tell...

In other news, The Tinkerer's Daughter had 2,000 downloads in a single day this week.

I'm just giving that a moment to sink in.

In my last post, I discussed the almost foregone conclusion that I might have to join Amazon's new Kindle library program. The explanation is fairly well covered in that post. I did so, with several titles. As an experiment, I promptly gave Tinkerer away for free, for one day. I just wanted to see what would happen What happened was 2,000 downloads in a single day. I'd heard of writers doing this, and of people giving away 500, 1,000, or even more. In my mind, 1,000 downloads would have been a success. But as the numbers kept climbing, I began to worry. As I approached the 2,000 mark I had to wonder if I'd just given my book away to the only 2,000 people who might have bought it.

The next day, it seemed my worst fears were confirmed. I had no sales that morning. I checked in at ten o'clock and had two or three. By that afternoon it was four. And I was pretty sure my writing career was over. But then I checked the numbers one last time before bed and found that I was up to fourteen for the day. That wasn't bad. Fourteen sales of Tinkerer was just about what I'd been doing since I raised the price. So maybe I hadn't destroyed everything by giving my book away. If nothing else, things seemed to be getting back to normal.

Then, the next day, I sold 50. That was more books than I'd ever sold in a single day. And at the new, higher prices. And that wasn't even counting my other titles. I'd sold 50 copies of Tinkerer alone! I checked back at Amazon and found that my book had reappeared on a couple of lists in the top 100. And I was feeling pretty good. Still, you never can be sure about something like this. Was it a fluke? Had I gotten my bump, and that was the end of it? Turns out it was not. The next day I sold 100. And today, as of ten o'clock in the morning, I've sold more than 50. If this pace continues, my numbers will double again before the day's out.

This is where Tinkerer is sitting at the moment:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #754 Paid in Kindle Store
- #4 in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Fantasy > Historical
- #5 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Fantasy > Historical
- #18 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Genre Fiction > Science Fiction > Adventure

I'm feeling pretty good about that. I'm in the top 10 on two lists, very close to the top, and in the top 20 on another. But those are small lists; niche markets. The big one is the first one: #754 Paid in Kindle Store. That's 754 out of literally millions of titles in the kindle store. Tinkerer broke right through the top 1,000 and didn't even pause.

Of course, I take all of this with a grain of salt. 100 sales yesterday does not guarantee 200 today, nor does 200 today guaranty anything tomorrow. I could wake up and find it's all over. But right now I'm praying it's not, because I've been waiting for this for a long time. And as far as the Kindle Library thing? Yeah, you could say I'm sold.

The Fire Sale is Over... kind of.

2012-01-24T11:10:00.000-08:00

When I first uploaded Karma Crossed in December of 2010, the big question was: How much should Indies charge? Those were the days when Joe Konrath and Amanda Hocking were all the news, and nary a title could be found that was more than $2.99. There was a reason for that.

When Kindle publishing first started, Amazon set forth the rules: If you sell your e-books for $2.99 or more, we'll pay you 70% of the cover price. Charge less than $2.99, and we'll take 70%. Oh, and no giving books away for free. Only big publishers can do that... The answer was obvious. Price everything at $2.99, and only go lower if you want a loss leader. Sacrifice profits on a title or two in order to make a decent income off the rest. And for a few months, that seemed to be working. Then Amazon changed the rules.

Early last summer, Amazon began marking down titles at random to $0.99 in order to entice more readers to buy more books (and more Kindles, no doubt). To their credit, they paid the authors the full amount. But unfortunately, hundreds (or even thousands) of us no-name authors were suddenly left hanging with most of our titles priced at $2.99 while Kindle buyers were suddenly jumping on $0.99 deals. I, like a great majority of Indie authors, lowered my prices. It was the only way to compete. I sacrificed a huge amount of profit in order to compete with Amazon's fire-sales.

My sales increased and I got my titles into the hands of literally thousands of readers. In a way, I exchanged profit for a large base of readers, and hopefully a growing brand.At the time, it worked. But now, the game has changed again. I alluded to price increases recently, and you've probably noticed them by now. This is the full, boring explanation:

In December, Amazon began a new program. They gave new Kindle owners a free month of Amazon Prime, which gave them a few perks such as access to Amazon's Kindle Library. This gave new Kindle owners access to tens of thousands of titles for free. Great for Amazon. Great for Kindle sales. Not so great for those of us trying to sell books. For the first time in a year, my sales flatlined in January. I didn't take a major hit, I just lost all growth and on some days, saw less than average sales compared with the previous month. Obviously I had to do something. So what do you do, when Amazon gives books away for free? How do you compete? Answer: Raise Prices!

Okay, you're laughing. That doesn't make sense, right? Sure it does, because things have changed. There's no point at all in trying to compete with free. I'm trying to make a living here. I'm trying to build a career. And if I really want to give my books away for free, I can join the program. I just have to pull my titles from every other e-book retailer. Yeah, did I forget to mention that part? Once again, The Bix Six don't have to do that, but I do. Ah well, who am I to complain. Clearly I'm just a pawn in this chess game. All I can do at this point is hope that my books are good enough that some people will still be willing to pay for them, even when they can download other books for free. A week ago I changed the price on Tinkerer to $3.99. I immediately lost about thirty percent of my sales. And my profits multiplied by ten.

All that being said, I am considering joining Amazon's library. I don't like the exclusivity. I don't think it's fair. But then again, it's Amazon who sells my books. Smashwords distributes my books to sellers who more or less ignore them. Barnes & Noble treat Indie publishers like an embarrassment to be hidden in the back room. Amazon puts my book on the same shelf as everyone else. They promote my book through sales and ads, and when they drop the price of my books, I still get paid my full share. So my objections to this program are clearly based more on principle than anything else. And as much as I'd like to stay on my high horse, I've got a business to run. I can't sell books if nobody knows about them, and only Amazon seems interested in helping me to do that.

New year, new covers!

2012-01-16T11:01:00.000-08:00

The other day, I alluded to the fact that I had new covers coming. It's been a year (and a few weeks more) since I first uploaded Karma Crossed in December of 2010. The formatting was horrible, the cover looked disappointing online, and at the time I didn't even own a Kindle to see how it looked in the reading device. Needless to say, I had to make some changes. By Christmas, I was reasonably satisfied that I had a worthwhile product.

Throughout 2011, I published ten titles. I learned something each time. I got better at formatting, at finding cover material, and at translating my final product into multiple versions for use across all the different e-book platforms. I even published paperback versions for all of my novels. But for some of those books, the time has come for a facelift. I'm in a much better position now to provide the covers for those books that I would have liked them to have originally. I'm not sure if they will all get new covers, because I still really like some of the old ones, but some of that had to go. So, this weekend I uploaded the first two. Here's what they look like:

And for Hank Mossberg, Private Ogre:

2012 is a year of trying new things, and some of you may have noticed new prices on my books as well. This is my announcement that I will no longer be keeping all of my titles at $0.99. Over the coming days and weeks, most of my books will be returning to the $2.99 or higher range. More about this later. The subject merits a full discussion, and I won't bore you with the details just yet.

Bring on the New!

2012-01-14T10:12:00.000-08:00

We're well into January and I'd like to wish everyone a belated Happy New Year! Then again, we have another celebration coming up in just a few weeks around here. Chinese New Year is big in San Francisco, complete with fireworks and parades of dancing dragons. Hmm. Maybe we should have a New Year's celebration every other month, all year long. I'm game. You can never have too many holidays. Am I the only one here who thinks Americans work too hard?

Anyway, the primary purpose of this post is to thank Dale at Chilli Tween Reads for the fantastic interview he put up this weekend, with yours truly as his guest. It was a lot of fun doing the interview, and Dale asked some great questions. There were a few that I really had to think about for a while. Chilli Tween Reads is a great site dedicated to reviewing young adult and middle grade books, so swing by and check it out.

Also, another heads up: I have new covers coming! I won't reveal too much about them right now, but I've found a new resource for material and I'm working hard to bring some very exciting ideas to life. Some of my older books will probably be getting facelifts soon, including my best-selling book, The Tinkerer's Daughter. The timing of all this will be tricky of course, because I'll also be releasing Shadow Born II: Shadow Rising in the next few weeks, and I've just finished the first draft of the sequel to Hank Mossberg, Private Ogre: Murder in the Boughs. I have a third book in the series planned already and another written that I may or may not release by this summer. More details on that later.

In summary, thanks again for the interview Dale, it was great and I love your website. May 2012 bring us all peace, prosperity, good health!

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-15T13:39:00.000-08:00

Image borrowed from www.irenesdreams.com wallpaper designs.

Well, it's that season. The nights are cold, the wind howls through the eaves and snow blankets the land... unless you live in northern California, where the air turns crisp, fog obscures the landscape, and rain falls for weeks at a time. I don't mind, I love the fog and rain. I'd like a little snow now and then and I miss the four seasons I grew up with, but I can't complain. In fact, I have so many blessings. I try to remember to be thankful for them each and every day. I also try to remember that so many others have so little, especially in times of economic turmoil like these. When I can afford to, I try to give to charity. When I can't, I still offer my prayers and best wishes. I would encourage you to do the same.

Reflections:

It's been a strange, wonderful year for me. Financial hardships seemed trifling as I reached for my dreams and took my destiny in hand. With a whole new landscape of possibilities, I turned my back on years of meaningless come-ons, long-waited rejections and apathetic disregard. I took the leap into the great unknown one year ago. I followed the footsteps of the very few, walking a path that at the time seemed fraught with peril. Until this last year, self-publishing was the last resort of talentless losers who were doomed to be forever rejected by the all-powerful gatekeepers of our sacred treasury of commercial literature. Those who dared, inevitably failed. Their humiliation was public, and they were forever kept in disregard by those powerful figures who frowned down upon us from above. Then something changed. A few new opportunities opened up. A few brave people took those first steps, and a lot more of us followed.

I live in a world that has changed so much I can barely quantify it all. Self-publishers are now Indie Authors or Indie Publishers, not the hapless rejects we've always been told they were. In fact, some of them are making millions of dollars. Many of them are outselling traditionally published authors. E-books outsell paper books to the tune of millions of dollars now, and sales are increasing more than 100% year over year (paper sales are dropping nearly as fast as e-book sales are rising). Big publishing houses are struggling to keep their doors open and to keep e-books down, but it's not working. Big bookstores are vanishing at astonishing speed, along with their small independent counterparts.

In my little corner of the landscape, sales are climbing as they have been all year. When I first began publishing this spring, I was seeing an average of two or maybe four sales per day. Over the summer, Amazon juggled things around and a lot of e-publishers lost market share. Not me. My sales crept up to eight per day, then ten, then twelve. I now average almost twenty book sales per day and that number keeps rising.

Compared to the big boys, I suppose that's not a lot, but it means a lot to me. First of all, it's validation. It tells me that I can write sell-able books. It tells me that some people out there do like my writing. In fact, some of them like my writing enough to buy all my books, give me five-star reviews, and tell all of their friends about me. And the fact that my sales have built steadily throughout the year confirms to me that what is happening is word-of-mouth. It has to be, because unlike the big boys, I have no ad money. I have no marketing campaign, no commercials, no standup at the front of Barnes & Noble. And when it comes to visibility, I'm at the back of the line. My books don't show up on the front page anywhere, and they won't until I've sold tens of thousands. But maybe, someday...

In the meanwhile I'm going to savor the rest of the season. I'll watch my trivial book sales add up with a growing sense of satisfaction, but I'll keep writing. And I'll enjoy the company of family and friends. I'll enjoy good food and health, and I'll relish the many blessings that I enjoy, and I'll wish the same for all of you.

Tinkerer's Daughter featured on Daily Cheap Reads, and a great (and touching) review!

2011-12-07T09:00:00.000-08:00

First an announcement: The Tinkerer's Daughter will be featured on Daily Cheap Reads on Thursday. This is a great site that goes out of their way to provide exposure for Indie authors and books. They require a minimum of reviews, so they don't just put every $0.99 novel up there. They're trying to promote books not just based on price, but on value. Please check it out, and bookmark the site for future reference. If you own a Kindle this is definitely a place to visit frequently.

Now, onto other matters. I don't like to pay too much attention to reviews because a writer can easily obsess over these things. If we take them too seriously, a bad review can seem devastating and a great review can be unduly ego-inflating. When it comes to matters of the ego and depression, writers are notorious, so it's best to take everything we read with a grain of salt and focus on putting our creative energies into our work. I try to do that, and for the most part I think I do it fairly well.

Some readers may remember the last time I mentioned a review here. It was a turning point... my first ever one-star review. You can read that post here. I won't revisit it now, but... I've never pointed out a review that made me feel especially good. I have had a decent number of four and five star reviews since I began publishing earlier this year, but as I said, I've done my best to take it all with a grain of salt. This weekend I got a review that I couldn't just ignore, because it was so touching. The review was done by Dale at Chilli Tween Reads. This is a sample of what he had to say about The Tinkerer's Daughter:

"I cracked this open on my kindle reader this morning and found myself unable to put it down. The story unfolds beautifully with just enough action and drama to quickly draw you into Breeze's world... The story is well set in a pre-industrial revolution time period. A time that conjures up the amazing worlds of Jules Verne or H. G. Wells. To spice things up and add a new twist to the nascent steampunk world he adds a touch of elfish type high fantasy.

"Sedgwick has a narrative style that is reminiscent of the old masters like Edgar Rice Burroughs, (he wrote Tarzan). His narration powers ahead like a locomotive on full steam. Smashing through chapter after chapter of suspense and excitement... The last story of Sedgwick's I reviewed was so fundamentally different to the story here, the only commonality is the excellent writing."

Wow. Did Dale really mention my name in the same sentence with Edgar Rice Burroughs? Now mind you, I'm not going to blow this out of proportion. It was a compliment, and I'm sure Dale in no way meant to compare me to the literary greats he mentioned. I know better than anyone that I walk in the shadow of these giants and I'll never come close to their talent except when I read (re-read) their books. But to have a reviewer tell me that I cast their reflection is the greatest compliment I could possibly receive. I grew up on books by Burroughs, H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, and J.R.R. Tolkien. They were my literary bread and butter, and I still consider them to be some of the best writers who ever put pen to paper.I know I don't have the literary skill nor the imagination of these writers, but to hear that my words recall something of them, is the greatest possible compliment. I hope someday I can live up to it.

Thanks Dale, and all the other bloggers and reviewers out there who take the time to spread the word about my books. I don't have the deep pockets it takes to promote a novel. I can't buy commercials or ad space, and I can't afford much more than the few dollars that I spend on stock photos for my covers. It's word of mouth and reviews that get my books to new readers, and I couldn't do it without you guys. I know you're overwhelmed by the number of authors looking for a review these days, but take heart in the fact that we really do appreciate you. We need you. And here's something else for you to think about:

The publishing business used to have 'gatekeepers,' people whose sole job it was to determine who got in and who didn't. Originally, it was editors. Then it was assistants. Then the publishers passed the job on to agents. Then the paradigm shifted, and you know all about that. This is the fallout. Writers publish themselves. Retailer/ distributors get our books to readers. Up until that point, there are no more gatekeepers. No more literary agents, junior editors, or editors in chief. It's all up to the people now. Those who seek out our work, who enjoy it enough to review it and share it with others; these are the gatekeepers who make or break our careers. Bloggers can pass the word on to hundreds or even thousands of potential customers all at once. We need you guys in ways you don't even know.

R.I.P. Anne McCaffrey (1926-2011)

2011-11-23T11:04:00.000-08:00

Fantasy author Anne McCaffrey has passed away this week at the age of 85. I will never forget her books or the magical world of Pern, where humans ride dragons, flitting back and forth between the dangers of reality and the stark emptiness of the nether. Anne's work was inspirational, unique, and unforgettable.

I first experienced Pern in the third or fourth grade when a teacher handed me Dragonflight, the first book of the series Dragonriders of Pern. I went on to voraciously read everything else Anne had written. I can't deny there were many times I fantasized about writing my own books about people who ride dragons and communicate with them telepathically. The idea was just so cool, so unique. It spoke to me in the same way that the elves of Middle Earth did. In my mind, Pern almost became real. It was a place I wanted to visit, if not live.

In time, I grew up and began building my own worlds. I didn't copy Anne, even if I might have liked to, but I still allow myself the luxury of returning to her world now and then. I guess it's time to pull those old books off the shelf. Rest in Peace Anne McCaffrey, and thank you for everything you've given us.

New release! Murder in the Boughs, Nov. 15, 2011

2011-11-08T07:00:00.000-08:00

UPDATE: Murder in the Boughs, Hank Mossberg, Private Ogre Book One is now available:

Amazon
Barnes & Noble
Smashwords

Murder isn't showing up on the B&N page or search results yet, but I am assured it's live. It can take some time to start showing up in search results. Also, for posterity, here's the shortened version of the blurb:

Mike Hammer meets Grimm's Fairy Tales in a world where nymphs walk darkened streets, imps are slave traders, and gnomes are elite hackers. In Jamie Sedgwick's new mystery, Murder in the Boughs, Hank Mossberg is a hard-boiled San Francisco detective who must race against time to rescue a kidnapped girl, expose a ring of "pixie dust" dealers, and find the killer of a high-elven San Francisco kingpin

Original post:

Murder in the Boughs will be available Nov. 15. Those of you who get my newsletter already have the info on how to get a FREE advance review copy of the e-book. I will also be giving away several paper copies through Goodreads, and maybe a copy or two through this blog as well. I'll post all pertinent links when they're available. In the meanwhile, this is what it's all about:

Murder in the Boughs,

Hank Mossberg, Private Ogre Book 1

Mike Hammer meets Grimm's Fairy Tales in Jamie Sedgwick's new mystery, Murder in the Boughs. Hank Mossberg is a hard-boiled San Francisco detective with his feet in two very different worlds. The first is the gritty concrete jungle, where Hank's unique skills allow him to track down the city's most notorious criminals, some of whom the police can't or won't even believe in. The second is the undercity, the hidden side of San Francisco where elven mobsters rule the underworld, nymphs walk darkened streets, imps are slave traders, and gnomes are elite hackers.

The trouble begins when Hank stumbles onto a briefcase full of the illicit drug known as pixie dust. He finally has the evidence he needs to bring down the notorious Kaiser gang, but then the gang's leader is murdered and the pixie dust disappears. Hank is hot on the trail of the killer when he gets an urgent call from a desperate woman whose daughter has been kidnapped, only the kidnapper is no ordinary criminal, and even Hank's unique skills might not be enough to bring the girl home.

Review: Velocity Cruz Android 2.0 tablet

2011-10-31T05:00:00.000-07:00

We all know about the Kindle and the forthcoming Kindle Fire. We also know about the iPad and the tsunami of tablets converging on the market. I was curious about some of these gadgets, and I had the opportunity to do some shopping for a relative's birthday this weekend. After a lot of comparing, I chose the T103 Cruz by Velocity, based on a combination of features and price. I purchased this particular Android tablet on sale for about $89 from Tiger Direct's Amazon storefront.

Velocity Micro T103 Cruz Android 2.0 Internet Tablet - 7" Touchscreen, 512MB, Mini USB, SD, Wi-Fi

Features:

    Full color TFT display
    7” diagonal 16:9 800x480 screen
    Capacitive touch screen – ultra responsive!
    Android 2.0
    512MB RAM
    4GB AND 8GB bundled SD cards
    Supports PDF, TXT, HTML reader files
    MP3, WMA, AAC, WAV audio support
    MPEG-4, H.264, H.263, MOV, AVI video support
    JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP image support
    802.11n wifi
    Built in speakers
    Microphone
    Headphone jack
    Mini USB
    Li-Ion battery - up to 10+ hours of life, 24+ standby
    Dimensions: 7.5"x 4.75"x .6"

Pros:
Of immediate note is the battery life of 10+ hours. At this point, we don't have a full 10 hours on the device but the battery life is definitely holding up. After several hours of use both Saturday night and throughout Sunday, the battery is still at 50% capacity. Most of this time was spent surfing the internet and watching YouTube movies (the proud recipient of this device is a 12 year-old boy). The video and sound on this thing are crystal clear! I was amazed by the quality of video. The 7 inch back-lit display left me in awe; it's perfectly suited for the type of video you find on the internet, probably producing a higher quality image than a desktop monitor due to the small screen.

The wifi setup was quick and painless. Email was a bit trickier but still not difficult, once I understood the menu interface. Being an Andriod system, the menu button brings up options on just about every screen, from the home screen to the various addons and apps. A number of apps come preinstalled, including email, internet, app store, a notepad and an office suite. I must also mention that this is a capacitive touch screen(like an iPhone), which is fast becoming the standard. You can smoothly navigate the menus and apps with a touch, and you can also flip the pages of your e-books by sliding your finger across the edge of the screen. The display also turns automatically when you rotate the tablet side to side, or even upside down, and it has similar zoom and scroll features to what you'd find on an Android or iPhone.

Obviously, the pros of a device like this are many. The color touchscreen is gorgeous and provides most of the functionality we've come to expect from much higher priced devices. Battery life is phenomenal so far. The built-in 500 megabytes of memory are supplemented by two SD cards with an additional 12 gigs of storage space! Sound and video are good, setup is easy and intuitive, and features abound. It can play and store music and movies as well as e-books, and can run numerous e-book apps (I installed the Kindle app right away and it works just fine).

The cons:

With all the features and accessories for this device, for some reason the manufacturer chose not to to include a paper manual. This is a minor inconvenience since the manual is available in electronic format in the apps menu... if you can figure out how to operate the menu system and then locate the strangely titled app. (Couldn't they just call it the Owner's Manual, or something similarly obvious?)

Start-up is surprisingly slow. I expected it to turn right on like a cell phone or any other electronic device that doesn't have a hard drive, but no, this thing takes forty-five seconds to start up.

Obviously this $100 (or less) tablet doesn't come with 3g or any other cellular network. (That may be a con to some, but in my opinion this type of device doesn't need it. Why pay $40 a month for a digital plan when most of us are rarely more than a few minutes away from wifi? And for those times we are away, we've got 12 gigs of storage. That's a lot of music, video, and e books.)

Daylight, full-sun viewing: Ain't gonna happen. This is a backlit screen, and in this aspect it's inferior to the Kindle's e-ink. Surfing the internet or checking your email under these circumstances will be tough, and this is NOT how you want to read a book. The screen glare is horrible in sunlight. There may be screen accessories on the market to improve this problem, but I still don't think the experience would compare to the Kindle's simple, elegant screen.

Summary:

This technology is amazing and is certain to change the world. We can purchase a device with this capability for less than $100, and that price is only going down. That said, a tablet like this is not a PC, or even a laptop. This device is awesome for surfing the internet and entertainment, but I wouldn't want to write 100,000 words on it. Or even 10,000. As cool as it is, its not a replacement for a laptop, nor is it a replacement for a Kindle if you're an avid reader. The true Constant Reader will want a device that can download books as well as display them anywhere, under any circumstances. The fact that you need shade to use this device knocks it out of that competition for a lot of people.

If you're looking for something with vast functionality, a sort of electronic jack-of-all-trades, this or a similar device may be for you. Kids will LOVE these. However, if you're looking for a device specifically for reading, you may find the Kindle to be a more appropriate purchase.

I'll give the Cruz a few weeks and update this review. I'll be taking note of things like battery life, performance, and (hopefully) consistent functionality. I'll also be looking for a chance to try out a Kindle Fire and compare features.

The Death of Publishing

2011-10-23T05:00:00.000-07:00

I've never been one to cheer on the death of the publishing industry. I've questioned their policies and I've wondered about their business practices, but it has always been my dream to walk into a bookstore and see my books on the shelf. Over the last few years, I've watched mystified as they shunned their own midlist authors and closed their doors to new writers. I've watched them completely ignore espresso printing machines that can sit in a bookstore and print on demand any book you want in less than ten minutes. I've watched them do their best to destroy this new electronic e-book medium. Instead of opening their doors and giving everyone a shot (ultimately allowing only the best sellers to reach print) they've shut their doors entirely and overpriced digital books, in many cases even more than their paper counterparts.

In April of 2009, Mary Walters wrote a blog post that was something of an open letter to literary agents and publishers. This post set the internet aflame at the time. I remember reading seething responses on a number of agents' websites, followed by page after page of comments agreeing with everything the agents had to say. Of course, in those days you had to follow an agent's blog if you ever hoped for that agent to read your submission, thereby giving it a chance to get to an editor at a publishing house. Agents didn't actually say that you had to kiss butt, but the implication was there and nobody did anything to downplay the idea. After all, if an agent says you must read and comment on my blog, research my preferences, and mention these things when you submit to me, that agent is clearly fishing for something other than great writers.

If you take a look at her bio, Mary is an award winning writer who has published books traditionally and served as Editor in Chief for a legacy publisher. The publishing world looked different a few years ago, and Mary made this post at no small peril to her own career. In those days the e-book was really just a fledgling idea and no one was really making money at it. Careers were both made and destroyed by those we once called the gatekeepers. You may know them as 'literary agents.' Here's a sampling of what Mary said:

"...I am a member of a growing company of writers of literary fiction whose works you have never seen and probably never will.It’s not that we are lacking in the talent and credentials that might attract your interest: indeed, we have already published one or two or three books with respectable literary presses, attracting not only critical acclaim but even awards for writing excellence. Our work has been hailed as distinctive, thoughtful, darkly comic. As fresh. Even as important! Reviewers have compared us to Atwood, Boyle and Seth. To Tyler, Winton, Le Carre.That you have never heard of us nor read a single paragraph we’ve written is not—as you might think—a side effect of the cutbacks, mergers and downsizings that have devastated the book-publishing industry in recent months. Nor is it yet more evidence of the impact of electronic media on the printed word.
No.
The substantial and nearly unassailable wall that separates you from us has been under construction for decades. You can find the names of its architects and gatekeepers on your telephone-callers list, and in your email in-box. They are the literary agents—that league of intellectual-property purveyors who bring you every new manuscript you ever see, those men and women who are so anxious to gain access to the caverns of treasure they believe you sit upon like some great golden goose that they would likely hack one another’s heads off were they not united by one self-serving mission: to ensure that quality fiction never hits your desk..."

Writers are still adding new comments to this post, and no wonder. It seems a lot of people got tired of playing the waiting game with agents who were too busy blogging and taking month-long vacations to respond to their submissions. It was that bad, and even worse. The internet is still of complaints about how agents signed authors and then ignored them, how agents made them jump through hoops revising again and again only to finally reject the finished work, or agents who never bothered to respond at all. These same agents who required writers to research them, read and comment on their blogs, and address their submissions by name, could not be bothered to respond at all. In some cases, they couldn't even be bothered to respond to writers who they were contracted with.

A few days ago, Kristine Kathryn Rusch made a similar post, this time regarding the practices of publishing house editors. Kristine is another award winning and incredibly prolific writer (numerous genres and pseudonyms), and says:

"In the past two days, two different editors have told me that I don’t know how publishing works. One deigned to explain to me how something in book production worked when I questioned a scheduling problem in the publishing house. The other told me I had no idea how to write a good book in my genre...
I probably wouldn’t be this mad if it weren’t for the other editors who have treated me this way. The mystery editor with two years experience who told me—an Edgar-nominated, multiple-EQMM reader’s choice winner, and a bestselling mystery writer—that I don’t know the mystery genre. The agent who told me—the award-winner in every genre I’ve tried including mainstream—that I don’t write well enough to publish a novel into the mainstream. The sf editor who told me—the bestselling, Hugo-award-winning editor & writer—that I don’t know what science fiction is. The unreturned phone calls, the unanswered important emails, the unfulfilled promises, and the lies.
I’m really tired of the lies."

Ouch. I can only shake my head when I read stories like this. It seems that publishing houses think they're too big to fail. I guess that's easy to believe if you also believe you're just selling paper. Problem is, that's not true. There is a degree of skill and creative talent involved in the creation of a novel, and now some of those pesky authors have decided to work for themselves. Agents are turning into publishers and authors are turning into publishers and publishers are turning into... what?

Wine Country Update and Seasonal Wrap-up

2011-10-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

Well, it's that time of year, as the image to the left shows. I took this picture a few days ago. At the time I had just racked my first ever batch of Chardonnay. For the non-initiated, that means that after my wine finished fermenting, I allowed the dead yeast and 'lees' to settle to the bottom of the fermenter, and then I transferred the wine into clean containers to rest and age. I have about 5 1/2 gallons of chardonnay, which will make about 25 bottles when it's ready.

I also have 1 1/2 gallons of wine I made from wild california grapes (vitis californica) which I found growing along the riverbanks. That batch was high in acid and low in sugar, but with a few adjustments I think it might turn out okay. Next to that, I have two gallons of pear-mead, thanks to my sister's vigorous pear tree. That was from earlier this summer and I think it's almost ready to bottle :-)

And now the best part... tomorrow, I'm scheduled to go pick up 250 lbs. of Cabernet grapes. Cab has been trouble the last couple of years. It's the last grape to finish, and between the late frosts, early rain, and generally cooler summers, Cab has suffered. Anybody who tells you different is lying. 2010-2011 Cabs will only be good based on the experience and skill of the winemaker, presuming they came from NorCal. A few vineyards with good sun and high altitude might skate by with little damage, but as of last week local vintners were scrambling to pull the Malbec and Petit grapes before they exploded. Literally. That's what happens when the grapes are almost ripe and then we get rain. They swell up like water balloons and explode when you touch them. Or look at them. Or walk by.

Anyway, the weather has warmed this last week, creeping up into the low 80's. Hopefully, that will be enough to put my grapes in the right sugar/acid balance so I don't have to fuss with them too much. If all goes well, my 250 pounds of grapes might turn into 75+ bottles (I know, small play but I'm working up to a full barrel). So wish me luck!

So, as of October 2011, here's the damage (both in wine and text):

Vino:

2 Gallons Strawberry Wine
1 1/2 Gallons Blackberry Wine
1 1/2 Gallons Wildvine Wine
2 Gallons Pear-mead
5 1/2 Gallons Chardonnay (skin-fermented)
15-20 Gallons Cabernet Sauvignon (coming soon!)

Literature:

5 Novels published
1 Anthology published
2 Shorts published individually

3 Novels written (two in revision for late 2011 publication, one on hold until the time is right)

Plans:

By the end of the year I'd like to finish one more book, but I'm torn about what to write. I could work on the sequel to Tinkerer, which would be the logical step since Tinkerer is far and away my best seller, but I'd like to work on a sequel to Murder in the Boughs, even though the first book isn't pubbed yet and I have no how the public will receive it. Yeah, I know what my agent would say right now, but I don't have an agent. So do I follow my heart, or do I follow the $$$? Can I do both? We'll see how the year pans out.

I hope the rest of you are enjoying your autumn, and I hope you're ready for the holiday season... it's almost here!

Hank Mossberg, Private Ogre...

2011-10-07T14:17:00.000-07:00

Coming this fall:

Mike Hammer meets Grimm’s Fairy Tales in Jamie Sedgwick’s new mystery, “Murder in the Boughs.” Hank Mossberg is a hardboiled San Francisco detective with his feet in two very different worlds. The first is the gritty concrete jungle, where Hank’s unique skills allow him to track down the city’s most notorious criminals, some of whom the police can’t or won’t even believe in. The other is the undercity, the hidden side of San Francisco where elven mobsters rule the underworld, nymphs walk darkened streets, imps are slave traders, and gnomes are elite hackers.

Hank’s troubles begin when he stumbles onto a briefcase full of the illicit drug known as “pixie dust.” Hank thinks he finally has the evidence to bring down the notorious Kaiser gang, but when the gang’s leader, a high-elven kingpin known as Anthony Kaiser is murdered, it’s Hank’s job to solve the crime. Then Hank gets an urgent call from a desperate mother whose daughter has been kidnapped. But the kidnapper is no ordinary criminal, and even Hank’s unique skills might not be enough to bring the girl home.

Murder in the Boughs will be available soon. Also coming this year, Shadow Born, part two: Shadow Rising.

To get a free advance release preview of my upcoming titles, sign up for my newsletter! In the meanwhile, stay tuned here for more news!

Amazon sets the e-book world on Fire

2011-10-04T18:16:00.000-07:00

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know about Amazon's latest gadget, the Kindle Fire. Amazon announced this beauty a few days ago and since then the internet's been burning up with speculation about how this will affect the tablet business, e-books, media devices, and more specifically the Apple iPad.

I can only speculate (just like everyone else) as to how this will work, but here are my thoughts:

First, this gadget is cool. It's everything I want that a Kindle is not. It has a full color screen, and full media capabilities. It also has a touchscreen, and it has wifi. That means I can access Amazon's content just about anywhere, as long as I'm near a coffee shop, McDonald's, or a town square. Some reviewers have already bemoaned the lack of 3G. Okay, fair enough. These people don't want convenience, they want more. Being able to access the internet just about anywhere is convenient. Being able to access it anywhere, all the time, is more than convenient. And frankly, it's more than 3G provides.

For $199 bucks, that's something I'm willing to accept. I don't need to download a movie or e-book from the top of a mountain. I'll download it before I go and save an extra $600 or so over buying an iPad. I'll also save $50 a month on the data plan they've been trying to force down my throat, thank you very much.

The Kindle Fire runs an Android operating system which means it will run apps, and Amazon will have a convenient app store waiting for you. Here's another cool feature. Note the book covers lined up on the screen below, almost like a bookshelf. Full color and magnificent, almost real books on an almost real shelf. You touch them and scroll back and forth, allowing you to view your entire library with a touch of your finger, or shop for new titles just as easily. That's pretty cool.

What more can you do, besides read books, magazines, and comic books? You can listen to music, watch movies, surf the internet, and no doubt play games. There's no telling where this will go but in my opinion, the $199 price point and the extreme value of this personal media device mean that iPad may be in trouble. Eventually. Check out this quote from the Harvard Business Review:

"...for a relatively lengthy time period, both Amazon and Apple will thrive. But at the same time, both will be improving their products. Apple will continue to pump out more powerful, often higher-priced, tablets... Meanwhile, the Kindle Fire will improve as well — coming to be able to perform ever more of the functions that an iPad can perform at a significantly lower price point... At that point, it will be too late for Apple to respond and the tablet market leader will no longer be Apple. It will be Amazon.

"Students of disruptive innovation have seen this phenomenon play out in numerous industries: steel, disk drives, microchips, computers, automobiles, retail, music recordings, and aerospace to name a few. And the initial symptom is always the same — a competitor enters the market with an "inferior" product offering that the incumbent player simply refuses to worry about..."

Is Apple going to get in front of this and do something about it? It's hard to say, but there's a lot of skepticism out there. I've lost count of the articles and commentary I've read over the last few days claiming this device is a failure and that it can never compete with the iPad. Are they right? I don't know. But I know which one I'm buying.

And the ear-shattering question that nobody seems to be asking? How will this affect the paper book market?

Dark Shadows

2011-10-02T11:25:00.000-07:00

I have a hard time keeping up on the news about upcoming movies, especially since Hollywood has finally realized that good fantasy and horror can draw an audience and therefore it seems every studio must release a new genre film every few months, at most. The latest news that snuck up on me: living legends Tim Burton and Johnny Depp have teamed up once again, this time in a film remake of the 60's Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows.

It appears that the release date for this film has already been changed once or twice (no surprise with Depp working on Pirates of the Caribbean films) but IMDB now shows the release date as May, 2012. As with every Burton flick, an entire cast of wonderful actors will work alongside Depp, including: Chloe Grace Moretz (Kick-Ass and others), Helena Bonham Carter (Harry Potter films, etc.), Christopher Lee, and the gorgeous Michelle Pfeiffer.

I've been aware of this old TV series for a long time, but I don't think I've ever watched an episode, which is probably unusual considering I love vampire films and monster movies. I have a collection of old films on DVD that includes all of the old black & white Dracula, Frankenstein, and The Wolf Man movies, including the sequels and most of the remakes. I have the entire Blade series on DVD, including the TV show. Also, The Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned, and the Dracula 2000 movie with Johnny Lee Miller, who's also in the Dark Shadows cast. I could go on but I think you get the point. I've even considered writing some vampire fiction, though lately I've been consumed by my fantasy writing and since vampires have become so... sparkly lately, I'm not sure my book ideas would sell right now.

I think I was probably dissuaded from watching the series by the angst and drama of soaps in general, in which it can take forever for anything to happen and most of the efforts towards tension and conflict are quite poorly done. I don't know. I suppose I'm going to have to go look up the series on Netflix or Hulu and watch it all now. Thanks, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. I think.

Cineplex Movie Blog

Dark Shadows News

Have I got an idea for you!

2011-09-30T12:27:00.000-07:00

That's one of the usual reactions you get when you tell someone you're a writer.

It's incredible how forthcoming people are with their great ideas. Don't they know that they could take their great idea, write it into a book, and sell it for millions of dollars? Of course they do! But why should they do that, when all they have to do is give their idea to a writer-friend and have that person do all of the actual work? Then, the "idea man" can just sit back and collect the profits from his brilliance. That's what America's all about right?

And of course, us authors being the friendly, congenial, and tactful people we are, rarely have the backbone (or discourtesy, depending on the situation) to tell these helpful people that we already have lots and lots of ideas that we'd love to write, if only we had the time. Nor do we mention that the spaceship discovered by archeologists under 100 feet of ice in Antarctica premise has already been done,or that the half-elven prince in search of a magical sword to save the kingdom really isn't that great of an idea anymore.

One of the things writers learn through thousands of hours of experience is that the story's premise usually has very little to do with its success. A premise is a gimmick. It's a spaceship in the ice or a magical sword (or ring) and that's all it is. A bad writer can take these ideas and kill them. A great writer can turn them into bestsellers. In either version, the premise remains the same. It's the execution that matters. One of the things I love to read in reviews is "I loved this character so much!" When I hear that, I know I've connected with someone. I've taken an empty page and turned it into a story, and more importantly, into characters that my readers can actually feel for. That's not to say I'm a great writer, though I would certainly like to be at least good on some level, but it does tell me that I have succeeded somewhere, with some readers, at doing what I'm supposed to.

Now here's the crux of the matter: Your idea won't work for me.

What does that mean? Well, it's like this. In order for me to develop a world and characters that seem real and organic, I have to be interested. And the ideas that interest me most are the ones that I create, because those come from the places that my mind goes when I'm being creative. And being a writer, I have lots and lots of ideas like that. I have notebooks full of them, waiting for me to explore and create and refine them into stories. I have a lifetime's worth of notes sitting under my desk right now, and I'll probably never get to half of them. And with that being the case, why would I invest hundreds of hours in someone else's idea, doing months of labor all by myself, and then happily hand over a percentage of the profits? That doesn't make sense at any level. Imagine going up to an architect and saying, "Hey, I've got this idea for a house! It's got a steep roof and gables, and a really long covered porch. Why don't you build it and then give me half the profits?" I can't think of any trade where someone would expect that, except with a writer.That's not to say that the spaceship under the ice doesn't have potential. It does. But it's not for me to write, it's for the person who had the idea.

Now, if a person should feel like they really want to help a writer out, here's a good way to do that: Buy his or her book. Review it. Tell some friends about it. Spread the word. Building that kind of relationship with a writer is likely to be far more rewarding than offering him or her that great idea and creating an awkward, uncomfortable situation for everyone involved.

Melanie Nilles guest post

2011-09-27T22:49:00.000-07:00

This week's guest is Melanie Nilles, another Indie fantasy author from the Kindleboards. She has a new fantasy book out (her 12th title!): Tiger Born

The Writing Journey of Melanie Nilles:

I've been writing for a long time. It started in grade school, but I didn't get serious about it until I was a freshman in college. I always loved making up stories, but I had always loved reading. The problem was that I have always been picky about what I'll read. I started writing as a fun escape from the difficulties of my life and to create stories that I would want to read.

Going back into grade school, I remember the first time we were asked to write our own stories. It was in third grade, and I won't forget how that story took Thumbelina and turned it, but my ending was a letdown. You know, I have a terrible memory, but I can still envision that classroom and that story. It sticks in my mind quite clearly.

We also had a program in our schools back then called the Young Authors program. One student from each class at all the local schools was chosen to attend this conference. We created our own stories and submitted them to be accepted. I had always wanted to go and you could only ever attend once between first and sixth grade; and in sixth grade, I was finally chosen. I remember listening to a children's book author talk, although I can't remember what it was about. I asked my mom to buy one of his books for me and he signed it. While a mouse chewed a corner of that book, it still meant something to me. It was the first time I had an autographed book and got to meet an author in person.

While at the conference, we were put into groups and asked to write a short story. I had trouble making something up on the spot but I managed. It was pretty lame, even by my standards back then, but that was our task, so I did it.

I didn't do much with writing after that, except for letters (actual handwritten, snail-mailed stamped letters because we didn't have internet back then). I had half a dozen pen pals I wrote back and forth to at one point and I enjoyed it. It was a way to express myself, especially in high school.

But it was in college that I really focused on creating characters and a plot and actions that built to a climax. I put down my first novel then and was hooked ever since on that writer's high of immersing oneself in another world and letting the characters talk through the author in the act of putting words on paper. I used a spiral-bound notebook and typed it out late at night in the computer lab in those first three years of college.

In my fourth year of college, I bought my own computer. I had trouble creating at the keyboard and found it easier to write in a notebook that I could easily stuff into my backpack during classes and come out when I had time between. In the evenings, I'd type out anything I wrote. I later started creating at the keyboard. I was lucky to finish one novel a year to that point and thought that was pretty good, although my writing was terrible back then. Workshops and critique groups over the years have helped me improve greatly.

It took sixteen years and about six or seven trunked novels since my college freshman year to write a story that a small publisher contracted. I was never a short story writer, but I loved novels and this one was part of a series. That's when things started happening for me, and that was only three years ago. Since then, the publishing landscape has already changed.

Two years ago, I decided to start self-publishing with Amazon's Kindle program and Smashwords. I haven't looked back since, although if a big publisher offered the right contract, I wouldn't turn it down.

It's been a long journey and, while the road behind and the road ahead are full of many bumps, I wouldn't quit for anything. I have always been a writer and always will be.

Melanie Nilles also writes as M. A. Nilles with her twelfth published work, TIGER BORN, under that pen name. You can read more about her at www.melanienilles.com.

Tiger Born links:
Amazon.com
Barnes and Noble
smashwords.com

5 Winners!

2011-09-20T09:00:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to congratulate the 5 winners of the Shadow Born contest at Goodreads. The books will be going out ASAP! This is my third Goodreads giveaway, and each has netted over 1,000 entrants and hundreds of to-be-read additions. I can't thank the team at Goodreads enough, nor the fans who are kind enough to star and review my work, and help it get into the hands of others.

Paying it Forward

2011-09-18T14:23:00.000-07:00

The Liebster Award is a bit like a chain letter, but in a good way. The idea is that bloggers who receive this honor can pass it on to other bloggers, particularly those we feel contribute something useful to the community but have less than 200 followers, and therefore could use some exposure. Karen Woodward recently honored me with this award, and I've spent a few days (okay a week!) putting together a list of my own. This was difficult because I have to choose only five bloggers and there are so many people out there doing wonderful and interesting things.

Well, I've finally completed my list. I would encourage you to take a look at these blogs, you might find them as enjoyable as I have!

Young Readers At Home
Owl Tell You About It -Laura Ashlee
Lexi Revellian
Scribbles N Jots -Barbara Kloss
Writing Loving It

Thanks for stopping by!

September Blues

2011-09-13T15:56:00.000-07:00

September is turning out to be a challenging month for me. I know I'm behind on blog posting... I really need to thank Karen Woodward for the award she sent me. I'm going to pay it forward as soon as I can, honest!

Anyway, I have been busy with a lot of things, not the least of which is an inconvenient issue with my bank account. It started when I pulled my last music CD from distribution. I've been so busy writing (books) lately that I haven't had any time to write, produce, or publicize my music. Because of that, my last CD had been sitting there on the digital shelves, selling just a few tunes every month. That would be okay I suppose, but unlike e-book distribution, it costs me money to keep my CD available. And without me realizing it, my distributor automatically renewed my distribution contract for another year. This resulted in a good chunk of cash disappearing from my bank account about two weeks ago. Since then, I've been trying to get the issue sorted out. Customer service at the distributor lost track of my emails, and in the meanwhile -because my account was overdrawn and I had complained to the bank about the unapproved renewal- they canceled my check card thinking I had been defrauded or something. So now I think I've finally got my money back, but I have no ATM access.

In the midst of all that, I've been trying to batten down the hatches for winter, which usually starts up in about a month with a rainstorm that lasts until, oh, June. I have a project vehicle I'm restoring (a 1966 Chevy Impala SuperSport) that has a lot of exposed and rusting metal. I've swapped the old blown 327 for a throttle-body injected Chevy 350 and replaced the 1966 factory brakes with power disc brakes. The car's running and more or less roadworthy now, but I'm running out of time to get it sealed up before the rain starts. I'm also finishing (or fixing) several projects around my house, including a bottle rack I just finished building in my garage. That one's for my wine hobby. I have about 350 empty bottles (kindly donated by a local winemaking club) that I'd like to fill with some Cabernet and Chardonnay as soon as the grapes are ready... another event that's also barreling down on me like a freight train. I'm supposed to be getting 250 pounds of one, 150 of the other, and I'm expecting the Chardonnay grapes to be ready ANY DAY. That means I've been cleaning up the garage and making room for my fermentation tanks and bottles in the midst of all this. And I haven't even mentioned my real job. I won't bore you with the details.

Also, I'm now writing the last chapter of my new book, which is the second new title I've written over the summer, for a total of probably about 140,000 words. I know, I know. For some people that's just ONE book, but forgive me if I'm a little ADD. I'll be revising over the next week or two and then I'll let it sit for a short while before I release it this fall. (The other title is the sequel to Shadow Wars, which I may not release until I have the third installation finished.)

So, Karen thank you once again. I'll be getting that list ASAP. I'd also like to post some new pics of the Cabernet vines I planted in the backyard this year, if time permits. In the meanwhile, I hope you are all enjoying the last weeks of summer and stocking up on lots of good books to read when the cold weather hits!

Guest interview: John Blackport

2011-09-07T09:34:00.000-07:00

Rick Rivoire is flush with money, women, and prospects. He protects his country as one of the Rainguns, an elite regiment of spellcasting cavalry. But national policy drifts ominously into slavery and religious persecution, sparking rebellion. Joining the rebels could land Rick on a prison ship, in slave-irons --- or atop the same gallows where he watched his father hang. The alternative looks no brighter. He must either defend a government whose actions disgust him --- or risk everything he has.
Warning: This book contains graphic violence and some explicit sex. It is intended for adults only.

Q: John, your story sounds quite unique. What influenced you?

A: Stories by Bernard Cornwell; George Macdonald Fraser; and to a lesser extent, C.S. Forester and Patrick O’Brian. My hero is a cavalry mage. He conjures his own magical mount whenever he can, because he doesn’t get along with horses very well. He also thinks of magical theory only when he must --- the way the men of Sharpe’s Rifles rarely think of ballistics theory, even when they must conserve their ammunition.

Q: This is historical fantasy, which is certainly a unique genre. From where did you draw inspiration?

A: In a way, I was inspired by the real-world wars that America has been involved with over this last decade. I wanted to show how politics, money and religion can all interact to drive fundamentally good people to seek the ruin of other fundamentally good people. These forces are not cancers that can somehow be surgically removed from society, they are part of being human.

Q: You've certainly put a lot of thought into this book. Tell us how and why it's different than everything else out there.

A: I always knew I liked fantasy, but I also knew I didn't want to write about another Dark Lord who wants to destroy everything for no apparent reason. The appeal of this trope is similar to real-world conspiracy theories: there's some comfort in the fantasy that all evil ultimately comes from the same place.

I believe the real truth is both more depressing, more uplifting, and more fascinating. The real truth is that there are no simple answers: our lives, both public and private, truly are as complex and confusing as they appear. But that's also what makes them wondeful.

Raingun is now available at Amazon and Smashwords.

A sample chapter and more available at the author's website.

And the Winner is:

2011-09-03T09:56:00.000-07:00

Julie! Congrats. Your new Kindle is in the mail and should be there in a couple days.

Unfortunately, not everyone could win. However, those of you who are signed up for the newsletter, keep your eye out for something special this weekend. You are all signed up for the newsletter, right?

Also, there will be more giveaways coming, so you may get another chance! Hang in there.

The Moment You've Been Waiting For...

2011-08-30T15:42:00.000-07:00

is almost here! This is just a quick reminder that today is the LAST day to enter to win a new Kindle wi-fi! Those of you who follow my blog and/or newsletter are already entered. All you have to do is wait. To make it official, I'll pull down the entry link tonight and then choose a winner! I will post the results after I've contacted the winner, in the next day or two.

In the meanwhile, I have a new contest running on Goodreads. I'm giving away 5 signed copies of Shadow Born. I hadn't planned to do this just now, but then I remembered Goodreads has a policy that giveaways should be planned within six months of publication and, well it's getting to be that time. So while you're waiting, head on over there and sign up!

Guest post by Z.D. Robinson

2011-08-28T18:32:00.000-07:00

There are a lot of great new ideas out there in Kindleland, and there's no better place to find them than on Kindleboards. Over the next few months, I hope to introduce you to a number of these new Indie fantasy authors I've met on the forums.

Z.D. Robinson, proud father (again) and author of The Great Altruist joins us today to talk about his book and the journey that led to it:

I used to write a lot of stories when I was younger. In middle-school, my stories consisted of just a long paragraph devoid of good sentence structure and even a basic comprehension of grammar. And most of them were about lone Ninjas assaulting island fortresses. That's what I get for watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles all the time. And that's what also happens when you come close to failing sixth-grade English.

In high-school, my grammar never improved and my stories were no less deep. Now they were about loner high-school kids saving their dream girls from government takeovers of the school. Really shoddy stuff.

Orwellian themes aside, it was at this time that I created my first solid characters. James and Genesis were born in my mind, but I had no idea how much these two people would influence my writing for the next eighteen years. Or how Genesis would even appear on occasion in depression-induced hallucinations. (More on that later.)

James was loosely based on myself, even though he displayed a lot more cool and poise than I did. He wasn't even like me; he was just a version of myself I wish I could be. No more was this evident than after my parents divorced and I came up with a story that would go on to figure prominently in my debut novel over a decade later. It was about a young man, again called James (mainly because I'm bereft of original ideas), and his quest to save his parent's marriage. How he was supposed to travel through time was a complete mystery. But the story - although about time-travel - was less about the method and more about the character interaction and the lessons learned. Think of a more dramatic version of Back to the Future.

I eventually came up with a vehicle for time-travel. I wanted the person to be tiny (think Tinkerbell) so that he or she could travel by James's side to provide guidance along the journey. When I decided the character should be a woman, I used the name Genesis. I didn't know how or why she should be tiny, although I was quick to decide she would NOT be a fairy. And I chose to follow time-travel convention by making her perpetually naked (the idea being that only organic matter could travel through the time-field displacement - think The Terminator). [Note: There's also a philosophical reason for her nakedness - something to do about her confidence superseding petty body-image conventions. That's the "deep" reason for it; the other is Freudian and probably self-explanatory.]

By this point in my life, I was married. I was diagnosed (inaccurately, I would learn years later) with bipolar disorder. The depression was so severe that creatively I was dead. But I had developed this kind, beautiful woman in my head that I would talk to like an imaginary friend while driving around for the cable company. That might sound really strange; and it was. But those "hallucinations" were quite mild and actually quite useful in getting to know her character. I don't recommend this to other writers, as hallucinating your feature character can lead dangerously close to John Nash-style schizophrenia. If you've seen A Beautiful Mind, you'll understand what an unproductive time that can be.

Eventually, a story came together. James was central to my book, but Genesis had a lot going on. I soon came up with an interesting backstory and additional adventures for her. And I compiled those stories into a novel about a selfless woman who uses her unique powers to help people fix mistakes from their past. It's not that original, and I'm sure the constant nudity of the protagonist may come off sophomoric and juvenile to some, but early reviews have shown it to be entertaining at least. And isn't "entertaining" the reason a lot of people read books?

While I write mainly for funsies, I take the story very seriously. Having grown up on Back to the Future and Peggy Sue Got Married, time-travel is a staple of my story-telling. Some people hate it because it's been handled so poorly in the past. I'd never say that my plots are hole-less, but if you like stories about naked people traveling through time (and shoot, who doesn't?) then The Great Altruist won't be a total waste of time.

Having completed a novel (and working on two presently), I can say I've come a long way since those early ninja and high-school peril stories. I also no longer hallucinate tiny, naked women. Writing about my parent's divorce was very cathartic (although I should add that the details in my novel are NOT based on any actual events.) I'm also the proud father of three young boys.

If you want to know who I really write for nowadays, I'd have to mention my wife. She reads all first drafts long before anyone else is allowed near it. If she doesn't like something, it goes. If she loves it - or cries while reading it - I leave well-enough alone and don't touch it again. She has a good BS detector and is very good at catching plot holes, so while not everyone may like my work, at least I know the most important person in my life does. And most importantly, she has a way of telling me something stinks without saying those words exactly. There is an exciting moment I look forward to when I ask her what she thinks of something she just read, and she pauses to frame her words. Those seconds hang in the air for what feel like forever. Little does she know it, but the next words out of her mouth will probably change the course of my career. When I consider that without her I might still be writing about ninjas, I can't think of better hands to be in.

Links:
Z.D. Robinson.com
The Great Altruist at Amazon.com

Aqua-what?

2011-08-20T00:09:00.000-07:00

I'm posting about this subject because I find it fascinating and important... and because I'm going to try to build an aquaponics system myself. First of all, what is aquaponics?

From Wikipedia: Aquaponics (pronounced: /ˈækwəˈpɒnɨks/) is a sustainable food production system that combines a traditional aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as fish, crayfish or prawns in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) in a symbiotic environment. In the aquaculture, effluents accumulate in the water, increasing toxicity for the fish. This water is led to a hydroponic system where the by-products from the aquaculture are filtered out by the plants as vital nutrients, after which the cleansed water is recirculated back to the animals. The term aquaponics is a portmanteau of the terms aquaculture and hydroponic.

Ok, sounds good as long as you know what aquaculture and hydroponics are, but let's make it simple. I borrowed this picture from the website of a middle school that did an aquaponics experiment. The photo clearly illustrates how aquaponics works, and indeed, how effectively.

Simply put, the water from the fish tanks is used to feed the plants. The wastes created by the fish are consumed by the plants as fertilizer. Then, the clean water flows back to the fish and makes them happy. This retailer has a very basic video detailing one of the systems they sell, and will help give you an idea of what to expect.

So why is this so important? Well, first of all, it's a highly sustainable process. You can grow huge quantities of food this way in a very small space, using very little energy. You can do this with a small aquarium near a sunny window in your living room. Some people have built small systems for the balcony in their apartments. In fact, one group in Wisconsin is growing one million pounds of food on three acres. They're growing veggies and leafy greens and edible fish, almost a complete diet!And quite a bit healthier than a lot of the stuff we tend to grab at the grocery store.

So what does a system like this require? You can see from the photos that all you really need is a small fish tank, a small grow-bed, a pump, and some creativity. It's possible to use decorative fish like goldfish or koi, but it's also possible to use tiliapia, trout, and any number of other popular food-fish.Because the water is recycled, you use only a fraction of the water it takes to farm traditionally. You do have to feed the fish of course, and you will need to pump and aerate the water. You may also need to heat the water. In a small system, this can be done very inexpensively. In fact, even a larger backyard system might only cost you a few dollars a month if it's planned correctly. But don't take my word for it. Do some research. A small investment in a system like this just might be able to save you a lot of money down the road, and this food is healthy!

Backyardaquaponics.com has some great articles and basic info, and they sell pre-fab systems of all sizes, similar to this:

DIYaquaponics.com is also a great resource, with a fantastic forum dedicated to this subject. The forum link is at the top of the page. Here's another great example of what you can do with a little creativity:

Obviously, some of these giant prefab systems cost a LOT of money. If you've got it, more power to you. I'm sure it's worth the investment just to know what you and your family are eating is real, healthy, un-messed-with food. But the beauty of this system is that you don't need a lot of money to get started. You can pick up the basic materials second-hand and even build your own growbeds. Do you see a use for a system like this in your life? Do you know someone else, a friend or family member perhaps who might benefit from aquaponics? If so then please let them know and forward these links.

Guest post by S. Arthur Martin

2011-08-16T22:37:00.000-07:00

I talked to some of the Indie fantasy authors over at Kindleboards. I asked them to tell me a bit about themselves; about their process and what makes them different. My first guest is S. Arthur Martin, and this is his story:

Writing is exactly as hard as making the time to do it. Life doesn't slow down so that we can accomplish all of our little pet projects, and you can't just figure out a way to slow everything down and find the time for yourself. Something will always come up. Your car will need an oil change and the crack in your windshield will keep getting longer. You'll need to pick up more hours next week. That new show will be starting tonight and you just won't let yourself miss it.

I'm the last person you'd expect to find the time for commitment to any sort of creative project. My drawers are full of half-finished ideas, my hard drive spattered with 102kb files of partially-written story outlines. When I decided that I wanted to write a novel and finish it, the resolve in my voice wavered with the memory of every unrequited promise I'd ever made to myself. Still, I told everyone I knew. I called my grandma to tell her. I let people I hadn't seen or spoken to for months know what I planned to do. I built up as much accountability around myself as I could possibly find.

But even that wouldn't have been enough, so I joined NaNoWriMo (www.nanowrimo.com). I dragged people along with me and friended them so that they would see my progress bar and know when I was failing and when I was succeeding with my goals. For one month I didn't let myself have a single excuse not to write. Instead, I allowed my writing to be an excuse not to get to other things. Sure, I continued attending my college courses (it actually helped that I happened to be in a Grammar and Usage class at the time). I found time here and there to see friends and loved ones. But I made sure that I was planted in my seat every night for at least an hour, often two, occasionally three, four, or five.

I drew from every experience I've ever had. Names appeared that I'd written into the little name-your-character boxes in every video game I ever played. Places and cultures I'd interacted with influenced every aspect of my world. I didn't know who my characters were, where they were going, what they would face, who they would love and hate, but I just kept writing. If I got stuck, I did something to them to unstick them. At one point, just like I did years ago while I was skiing, they fell off a mountain. When I felt like their journey together was getting too predictable, I forcibly split them up. I created writing opportunities through obstacles for both myself and my characters, and as we traveled together I found that they began speaking to me in their own voices. They told me what they'd do, how they'd react, what words they'd say.

And there it was. My story was complete and NaNoWriMo achieved! I had beaten the odds. Shown my most insipid naysayer, myself, who was boss. I had a story. Complete, beautiful, somewhat fragmented and dreadfully in need of proper editing. But the cliff had been scaled and the summit reached. It was glorious.

So now I have a novel. It might never crack one hundred sales. It might be read by the right person at the right time and see the inside of a bookstore some day. The important thing is that I brought life to something that had been tucked away inside of me for far too long. I believe there is a story in all of us and that we want to share it. If we give ourselves the opportunity to do so, either through our own adventures or relationships with others, or with our music, dancing, or writing... In the end what matters is that the story will be experienced by someone else, and the world will be all the better for it.

To check out Hollenguard at Amazon, click here. It's available in paper and on Kindle.

Also, be sure to check out his website here.

And the loser is...

2011-08-14T13:35:00.000-07:00

This week, I got my first one-star review. It raised a few questions for me, and solidified a few things I've been thinking about all at once. I know that sometimes people assume one-star reviews come from a writer's competitors or people who have a grudge against that writer, but I can honestly say I don't think that happened here. I don't believe I've ever met this person, so I don't know how I could have offended her. I have to accept that the reviewer sincerely did not like my book. This is how much she didn't like it:

"It's very amateurish, both in style and in content. Don't waste your time."

The lack of constructive criticism aside, I still think a review like this can provide certain value. First of all, it proves that my work is real. Readers often assume that good reviews aren't genuine; that they're just friends and family of the author being kind. I can assure you, that's not me. I have exactly ONE friend/family member who has ever rated any of my books, much less reviewed them. Some writers may have this resource and I say good for them, but I come from one of the other families. You know, they're the ones who take delight in your failures, say unkind things behind your back, and encourage you to give up and fail. That's the environment I was raised in and I frequently visit on holidays and vacations. So a one-star review doesn't hurt me in any deep emotional way, it simply piques my curiosity. It also offers the added value that casual readers now know my reviews are real, not shill reviews posted by my family. Many authors say that a one-star review has helped their sales. It's early in my career, but so far I find this to be true .

Here's one of the things I've observed: Of all the reviews I've gotten, the absolute worst were from giveaways. Does that make sense? I can understand that a person who paid good money for my book and then hated it might want to warn others away, but why someone who won a free copy in a giveaway? What does that person have to gain? I can only guess as to the reasons, and my best guess is to ask why would someone enter a contest for something they don't even want? Of course, that's just a question. It's perfectly possible that the book's blurb, description, and other reviews were completely lacking in such a way that the contestant truly had no idea what they were in for when they entered the contest.

Here's another observation: Almost every popular movie, book, or TV show that I've looked at lately seems to have a rating of somewhere around 3 stars. Two and Four star averages are fewer but seem equally represented, and 1 or 5 star averages are extremely rare. This doesn't prove much except that fans and critics seem to be equally divided, regardless of the genre or even type of work. Any subjective art seems to suffer from this. Which ultimately seems to confirm something I've heard others say, which is that the stars don't count, the review does. Meaning a drive-by one-star rating is as meaningless as an unsubstantiated five-star rating. In order for the review to be of any benefit to other readers, it MUST provide some insight into what worked or didn't work for the story. Otherwise, it's just another anonymous star added to the average of thousands and thousands that came before.

Congrats to the contest winners!

2011-08-08T10:42:00.000-07:00

Just a quick note to say thanks to everyone who participated in my blog tour and congrats to the winners of the e-book giveaways. I believe the last of the winners have now been notified. Stayed tuned for more giveaways coming this fall!

Speaking of...

The Kindle wi-fi giveaway is still going on, so if you haven't signed up for my blog and newsletter what are you waiting for?

The Waning of the Season

2011-07-27T11:49:00.000-07:00

The Darkling Wind giveaway at Goodreads is over, and a resounding success in my opinion. Five winners were chosen this morning out of the more than 1100 entrants. Congrats to the winners and thanks to everyone who participated, and especially to Goodreads who makes these contests so effortless. The five signed paperbacks will be going into the mail tomorrow! I will definitely be doing more giveaways in the future, so keep an eye out.

School will be starting in just a few weeks here in northern California, and as the summer winds down, so do my seasonal promotions. My final summer giveaway is a Kindle wi-fi, which will run through the end of August. The rules and entry info can be found HERE.

I'd also like to take a moment to define my blog for new readers, if that makes any sense. It's been on my mind lately. I see a lot -A LOT- of writers blogging about their experiments with publishing, analyzing their sales figures, and sharing ideas of how to promote your latest work. That's great, but I really don't want to direct this blog towards other writers. I may provide some thoughts and insights into writing from time to time, but my primary focus is going to be on my readers.In other words, I'd like to use this blog as a means to share a bit of myself and my creative process with my fans. That is something I don't see a lot of, and it's something I would treasure from my favorite writers.

I regularly post info here regarding my titles, both existing and upcoming, and also contests and giveaway promotions that I have going on. I have a few more exciting ideas that will pop up as the year progresses, but I don't want to give it all away just yet. I'll just tease you with this:

So far in 2011 I have published 8 titles, including those published under my pseudonym. I have written two more books this year. They are both in the revision phase. One of those is a sequel to Shadow Born, and I am in the middle of another fantasy novel which I hope will launch a new series. I also have plans for a sequel to my best selling novel, The Tinkerer's Daughter. I hope to write that one this fall and publish it by Xmas. For each of these titles, I am planning giveaways and other exciting promotions. If the economy allows, I also hope to give away at least one more Kindle before the year is over.

To sum it up, it has been and will continue to be a very busy year for me. Hopefully, that adds up to something good for you. The future looks promising, so stay in touch!

How to win a Kindle: CONTEST OVER! Thanks to all who participated!

2011-07-17T16:17:00.000-07:00

The Rules:

The contest will run throughout the month of August. At the end, one winner will be drawn from the group of contestants. To enter:

1) Follow my blog, or:

2) Sign up for my newsletter.

Either of these methods are acceptable, both are better because then you’ll get two entries in the contest. The prize is a Kindle wi-fi, not the ad-supported spam version but the real deal. No purchase is necessary. You must be 12 or older (minors w/ parental permission) and live in the U.S. or Canada. Authors and employees of Timber Hill Press and their families are not qualified to enter. The winner agrees to have his or her first name and location published for verification purposes (ex: Sarah from Boston) The winner must provide a valid shipping address for delivery of the Kindle. Also, not all Kindle content is free and the buyer assumes responsibility for any purchases, subscriptions, etc. after they assume ownership of the Kindle.

It’s that simple. When the contest ends, the names will go in a hat and I will choose one lucky winner. By the end of summer, you could be reading on your own brand new Kindle and all you have to do sign up by clicking the follow link and/or signing up for my newsletter at the top of the page.Good luck!

Blog Tour Next Week!

2011-07-14T13:19:00.000-07:00

My first blog tour will begin next Monday, July 18, and proceed possibly into the weekend. I'll be visiting the blogs listed below. There are alternative sites listed as well in case something goes wrong at any of the primary sites. During the tour there will be giveaways, guest posts, reviews, and excerpts. I hope to make an exciting announcement during the tour as well, but I have a few things to get in place first. I'm working hard to make it all happen at once.

I'll try to do daily updates and links, but this list will serve as a general reference.

July 2011 Blog Tour Schedule for The Tinkerer's Daughter:

7/18 Must Read Faster
7/18 Young Readers at Home
7/18 That Bookish Girl
7/19 It's All About Books
7/20 EARphoria
7/20 Reviews By Molly
7/20 Comacalm's Corner
7/22 Lisa's World of Books
7/22 Aobibliosphere
7/23 Just Another Book Addict

Alternate stops: (only used if regularly scheduled stops fall through for some reason)
7/19 That Bookish Girl
7/17 Young Readers at Home
7/20 Lisa's World of Books
7/20 It's All About Books

I'd like to thank all the bloggers posted here, and the others who've taken time out of their busy lives to help us Indie authors break into the business. Your reviews, guest posts and author spotlights make a huge difference, and that does not go unnoticed.

New release!

2011-07-04T20:16:00.000-07:00

Update: The Raven King's Chair is now available at Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords! I will update the books page shortly...

The Raven King's Chair is not a fantasy. I'm not sure if you'd classify it as dramatic, tragic, romantic or literary. What I do know is that it's not genre fiction. It's a short story I wrote a couple years back that was, oddly enough, inspired by a chair sitting in the middle of the freeway. I was driving through Santa Rosa one day and someone had left an old chair sitting in the meridian between the highway and the off ramp. The object was so oddly out of place and yet serene... no one stopped to move it or pick it up, they just drove by. And the chair sat there. The strangeness of it stuck in my mind, and eventually led to the The Raven King's Chair.

This is the blurb:

On the day that failed author Ben Curtis plans to commit suicide, he instead commits a random act of kindness. He is rewarded with a gift, a chair that once belonged to Edgar Allan Poe. Ben's life immediately takes a turn for the better. His career takes off, his books start to sell, and Hollywood is making a movie. What Ben doesn't know is that tragedy lies just around the corner...

Also of note, The Tinkerer's Daughter was featured in the Indie Spotlight this weekend. It's very exciting to see it out there and getting a positive response. I have a few ideas for a sequel, but I won't say more on that yet. I have only so much time, and I don't want to get anyone's hopes up.

A midsummer night's blog...

2011-06-25T21:18:00.000-07:00

It's officially summer this week, and I celebrated by taking a vacation in the Avenue of the Giants. The redwoods are breathtaking. I actually have a few redwood groves accessible near my home, but there's something different about seeing them on the north coast. For one thing, the population density. I stopped at one of the many turnouts on the avenue and explored a nice cool, shady grove (it was a hot week, and that's my only real complaint about my June vacation... well, maybe that and the lightness of my wallet!).

My companions and I had the entire grove almost to ourselves. One other person was there, and he left shortly after we arrived. Another couple arrived just as we were leaving. For the 45 minutes or so that we wandered around, we had each other, the river, and hundreds of acres of giant trees as company. As beautiful as wine country is, it's nice to get away and experience some peace and quiet from time to time. There's nothing better than the serene beauty of the deep forest.

Upon my return, I opened my inbox and found an email notifying me that my blog tour for Tinkerer is set for mid-July. I'll post more on that later, when I'm sure the dates are solid and there won't be any adjustments. For now, I'm psyching myself up to start writing my new book! I finished a sequel to Shadow Born this spring, but I want to tweak it a bit more before release. I'm planning a third and final installment as well, and that's part of the reason I'm holding off. I don't know exactly where the third book is going, and I'd like to be able to make minor changes to part two before I publish it. But as for my new project, I'm trying something completely different.

I know. Everything I write is different. But this is really different. I'm not going to go into that too much either because I don't like to talk about my books before they're finished, but I can say this: It's a murder mystery! It's very exciting to me because I've never written a mystery before, and I don't think a mystery like this has ever been done before. We'll see. At any rate, I've been premeditating the crime for more than a month now. I've written so many notes that I almost have a complete outline, which is a first for me. Theoretically, that should make the writing process a little quicker, but I'm sure there will be a few surprises in store for me. My record for writing a first draft is six weeks. If I can pull that off again, I should be able to have a couple revisions done by September, which is when I'm hoping to publish.

In other news, JK Rowling is now a Indie author. Kind of. After years of saying the Harry Potter books will never be available as e-books, she's made an about-face. If that's not enough, she's self-publishing the digital versions and she'll be hiring her old publishers as marketing reps. How strange that must feel to them. I think I just heard the sound of another 1,000 indie bookstores closing shop. (I think fairies get their wings ripped off when that happens, but I'm not sure. I'll have to check with the people boycotting Joe Konrath.) Rowling will not be selling her books through the usual retailers, from what I understand. Instead, she's building them into her website, where she'll have direct access to the names and email addresses of everyone who downloads a copy. Is this piracy prevention or future marketing plans? A little of both, I'd guess.

The ADD Writer Part Three

2011-06-15T11:14:00.000-07:00

Previously I discussed how writers can use different techniques to limit their chair-time. This can be accomplished by taking notes, outlining the story before writing, and by taking some time between revisions so that flaws will be more apparent (thereby reducing the number of revisions necessary). All of these techniques have various pros and cons, but today I want to talk about something a little different. Instead of limiting chair-time, today I want to get rid of the chair.

The notebook technique is a good start for this, but I have a few more ideas. The first is obvious: get a laptop. There was a time when the price of notebook computers were cost prohibitive, but not anymore. In fact, you can get a used laptop with minimal processing power for less than $50 online. Ebay and Geeks.com are both great places to find closeout and refurb items that work just fine (always look for a warranty when buying used, regardless of the quality of retailer!). The prices are great. The computers may be outdated, but we don't need much beyond the ability to run a word processor. Wifi is a plus, and so is battery life. Some companies out there now offer batteries that will get you 4-5 hours of writing time. Bring along an extra battery and you're probably good for a weekend.Obviously, there's no better way to get out of the chair for your writing than to do it by the lake, the beach, on top of a mountain or even deep in the redwoods (one of my personal favorites).

Another type of laptop that's growing in popularity is the netbook. If you don't know the difference, I'll try to keep it simple. Netbooks are like laptops with less. They don't require a hard drive, which is a complicated and expensive part of the machine. Instead they use solid state memory. In many cases they use less processing power so the batteries are supposed to run longer. I haven't actually used one of these but I've heard great things about them, and they can be had on sale for less than $200 new. That's pretty impressive. And most average users wouldn't know the difference between a laptop and a netbook. They're that similar.

The last piece of equipment I want to suggest is a standing desk. I know, it sounds a little strange at first, but it's actually quite good for you. Even if you don't have concentration problems, spending some time standing at a desk is clearly better for you than sitting at one. Over the course of a year, you might even shed a few pounds just by using one of these for an hour or two each day. Plus, you'll be in great company. According to this article, a number of famous authors wrote while standing, including Ben Franklin. Nobody's cooler than Ben, right? Supposedly Hemingway wrote in this fashion as well, though this particular article doesn't mention him.

I've linked to some commercial variations here, but this is something you can do yourself for next to nothing. It can be as simple as box or stand that you set on a table or on top of a desk, and place your laptop on top. It could be a custom shelf attached to a wall, or it could be something you actually build out of scrap lumber if you're handy with that sort of thing. Keep ergonomics in mind while you're shopping or building. After all you don't want to do something healthy and end up with carpal tunnel. For some more ideas, check out these images on google.

Magick & Wine

2011-06-09T21:54:00.000-07:00

I’m a winemaker. I do it as a hobby. This year I planted my first backyard vineyard (which consists of 23 very young cabernet vines) so that in the future, I will be able to make wine from grapes I’ve grown right here in my own backyard. I’ve been watching the vines grow for a month and I can’t even tell you how pleased I am seeing the leaves peeking up past the grow-sleeves as they reach for the first trellis wire. It’s amazing to watch nature work. It’s a miracle. You might even call it magic.

I’ve made wine from grapes of course, but also from blackberries, strawberries, blueberries and apples. I’ve found each fruit possesses its own unique challenges. None have proven better suited to winemaking than the grape (surprise… I guess thousands of years of history have already proven this but I still had to try). Even grapes not traditionally used for wine like crimson seedless grapes do a decent job. (Yes, I did).

The reason I’m bringing this subject up right now is because I learned a few interesting things this week. The first is that Sting has his own label of wine made from grapes grown in his very own vineyard. Cool huh? Rock star wine seems to be big these days. I came across a video of Sting and his wife Trudie talking about it here. The reason I found this video is because I was researching something called biodynamic winemaking. Let me explain. Living where I do, I pay attention to what’s happening in the local vineyards. This year I saw signs go up at Quivira Vineyards proclaiming that the vineyards are now organic and biodynamic. I’ve heard talk about this elsewhere, too.

Hmmm. I wonder what Biodynamic means…

In case you’re in the dark like I was, here’s a snippet from Wikipedia:

Biodynamic agriculture is a method of organic farming that treats farms as unified and individual organisms,^[1] emphasizing balancing the holistic development and interrelationship of the soil, plants and animals as a self-nourishing system without external inputs^[2] insofar as this is possible given the loss of nutrients due to the export of food.^[3] As in other forms of organic agriculture, artificial fertilizers and toxic pesticides and herbicides are strictly avoided.

Okay. That sounds pretty good. But lower on the page I see:

Compost preparations, used for preparing compost, employ herbs which are frequently used in medicinal remedies:

502: Yarrow blossoms (Achillea millefolium) are stuffed into urinary bladders from Red Deer (Cervus elaphus), placed in the sun during summer, buried in earth during winter and retrieved in the spring.

503: Chamomile blossoms (Matricaria recutita) are stuffed into small intestines from cattle buried in humus-rich earth in the autumn and retrieved in the spring.

504: Stinging nettle (Urtica dioica) plants in full bloom are stuffed together underground surrounded on all sides by peat for a year.

505: Oak bark (Quercus robur) is chopped in small pieces, placed inside the skull of a domesticated animal, surrounded by peat and buried in earth in a place where lots of rain water runs past.

Yeah. Okay. Suddenly this environmentally friendly farming technique is sounding a little like hoodoo. Urinary bladders from red deer? Animal skulls? Really? It seems that biodynamic farming relies on mystical practices like burning the seeds of the weeds you don’t like to make them feel bad, and farming by the phases of the moon. Okay, I might buy the second part. After all, I’m a fantasy writer so yes, I do believe in magic. I believe it happens every day, right here in the real world. I’ve seen it. Miracles happen and I believe that’s a sort of magic. When a child is born, when a life is saved, when a room is filled with the sound of laughter, these are all signs that magic is happening. And I know that the phases of the moon have played a role in real-world magical practices as well as farming for about as long as humans have been here.

In Quivira’s defense, I didn’t stop and ask the winery’s employees if they’re using animal skulls and deer bladders. I suspect they’re probably using a more modern and politically correct method of biodynamic farming. And if they’re not… well it might be kind of interesting to hang out and watch their rituals, if they’d let me. At any rate I owe them a debt of gratitude for introducing me to this new idea. Cattle intestines and deer bladders aside, I think the idea of environmentally friendly farming is great. I’m a big fan of aquaponics, which is capable of producing more food in a small space than you’ve ever dreamed. I’d love to get a system running here at my home, but I’ve got a lot of research to do first, and it takes a lot of planning and some cash to invest to make it work. In the end though, I have no doubt it would be worth it. And these days, it doesn’t hurt to know exactly what you’re putting into your body, especially when corporations are lobbying to make sure you don’t. ‘Nuff said.

The Contest is Over!

2011-06-05T00:45:00.000-07:00

My Goodreads giveaway of The Tinkerer's Daughter ended Saturday at midnight. I thought I had scheduled it to run a few more days, but anyway I'm quite happy with the results. There were over 1200 contestants, five of which will soon be receiving shiny new hand-signed copies of Tinkerer. For those who didn't win, thank you for taking part and be on the lookout for new contests!

I have yet to see how this will affect sales, if at all, but based on the number of contestants and the short time period of the contest, I'm considering it a success. I'm thrilled to have the ability to do this, and I've got to give all the credit to Goodreads. They have built something that works for both authors and readers. It's easy, it's intuitive, and it even chooses the winners automatically. Now I just have to put the books in the mail. Goodreads has made this so easy that I might just do it again soon.

In related news, Tinkerer was reviewed over at Bibliophage. I have to admit the review wasn't quite what I had hoped for, with 3 out of 5 stars. The reviewer seemed at odds with the strange melding of steampunk and young adult fantasy, which is not a unique problem for me. I've already spoken here about my ADD tendencies, and I think they are part of the reason that I write such unclassifiable fiction. These stories come alive in my mind and I put them down on paper they way I receive them. When I'm done, they rarely fit easily into any standard genre. Two or three maybe (if not more) but never just one. Tinkerer is steampunk, fantasy, adventure, coming of age, and so on. The Darkling Wind is fairy tale, adventure, romance, coming of age, fantasy... my books are all like this. This is what keeps me interested in writing them.

I know, I know. We like to be able to classify things. We like to pick up a writer's next book and know it'll be a lot like the last one. Sometimes I wish I could be one of those writers. It'd be a lot easier for me to sell my own fiction if I knew how to describe it. Yet, in a way, maybe my strange undefinable storytelling is just my style. I do take a certain amount of pride from the fact that when people pick up one of my books, it'll be different from other things they've read. Will they remember it? Will Breeze and Tinker remain in the reader's heads long after the last page? I don't know, I can only hope.

At any rate, you can't please everyone and I certainly don't expect to. I'm selling books every single day. I'm getting paid to do what I love. Who can complain about that? I'm grateful to the people who take the time out of their busy lives to read and review my work, good or bad. Aside from my gratitude to the kind people at Goodreads, I also owe it to all the bloggers, readers, and reviewers out there who've given me a chance. Publishing today is a strange, beautiful machine and it wouldn't work without you!

The ADD Challenged Writer, part two

2011-05-31T14:19:00.000-07:00

Last week I discussed different ideas to help those of us writers who have trouble sitting still for long periods of time. This time I'd like to talk about revising.

I've found in my own work that it's helpful to do a quick revision as soon as I finish the first draft. The reason for this is that I have most of the details of the story fresh in mind, but I can easily find glaring offenses. Typos and such start to jump out and I begin to see consistency problems. Usually these are in the form of scenes that overlap time periods. For example, Character A in Chapter 12 just finished a hard day of fighting crime and is ready for the weekend because it's now Friday night. Chapter 13 brings us back to character B who's plotting his next crime. He decides he'll need to go shopping tomorrow so he'll be ready for the weekend... Oops. It's still Thursday night in Chapter 13. I've got to change something.

Errors of consistency don't jump off the page and announce themselves. Instead, I find myself halting at the end of a page, thinking something's wrong. What did I just read? What didn't fit? I go back and re-read, analyzing the problem. Then I can refer back to my notes, possibly write out a new timeline, and get things rolling again. In this manner I get through the book in a day or three and fix most of the major issues. That way, when I come back I should be able to focus more on the details.

The other thing about my writing method is that I write my first draft bare-bones. I set the scene with very little description. Sometimes I skip character description altogether. This allows me to plow through the draft and have the entire story on paper while it's all fresh and exciting. Many of my books have been written in a period of about six weeks. That's a comfortable time frame for me, but that doesn't mean the book is done. Far from it. It just means I finished quickly and should have a fairly consistent, well-flowing draft. I now have the foundation upon which my novel will be constructed.

It also means that I won't have to delete 30,000 words on my first revision because I had to replace a chapter or two and move stuff around. I know that many writers finish their first draft at over 100,000 words and have to pare that down by at least ten percent. I haven't ever had this experience, and I hope I never do. I've always loathed books with an excess of descriptive prose, so I certainly don't see myself ever writing one.

Now, when I come back and do my revisions, I have a much clearer identification of the characters and scenes, and a better feel for the story. Now is the time to begin fleshing things out. I expand on dialogue and description. I often replace exposition with dialogue. I flesh out the details of setting: the weather, the smell of the air, the sounds...

After the first revision I like to set my story aside for a month or two. The longer, the better. I give myself time to forget, so that when I come back to the story, the words won't be so familiar. It's not quite like being a first-time reader, but it's a lot closer, and this method allows you to find issues with sentence and paragraph structure that you would not have noticed before. I guarantee it. However, some writers argue that this much revision will rob your book of character; that it will steal your voice and bury it in highly refined and uninteresting prose. I admit that this can be a problem, but much less so if you're aware of it and you use your editorial cursor sparingly. In fact, sometimes I find certain characters developing in such a way as I revise that I end up adding to their unique voice. I realize that they wouldn't have said something, or that they would have said it differently. In my opinion, this process is definitely worth it. Your mileage may vary.

And finally, never take Beta readers for granted. Good Beta readers are RARE. Did I mention they're RARE? Yeah, and they're also HARD TO FIND. Don't give them a draft. Don't even think about it. Revise your book. Weed out all of the above mentioned problems. Get it to the point that you wouldn't be afraid to show it to a New York editor, and then let them read it. There are many reasons for this, but the biggest is this: They only read it for the first time once. After that, they might as well be you. Once a reader is familiar with the work, they can't offer unbiased help. They can only do that once (if that, and if they can, you'd better appreciate the heck out of what they've done for you!).

I've found a couple other links dealing with this theme that present some unique ideas on the topic. When you're done here, you might want to take a look at:

The ADD Writer: Making Distraction Work for You
Confessions of an ADD Writer

The ADD Challenged Writer

2011-05-22T15:37:00.000-07:00

This is going to be the first in a series of posts on the subject of fiction writing for the attention-challenged. I need to start by saying that I've never been officially diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, or any of the related diagnoses, but it does run in my family and I have observed some of the symptoms in myself. Obviously, the symptoms have not inhibited me from living a normal life and pursuing my dreams, so I'm not complaining or claiming some sort of disability . In fact, I've read that in our fast-paced digital world we're constantly bombarded by high frequency radiation, hazardous chemicals, and incessant stimuli, and we're all developing some of these symptoms. I wouldn't' be surprised at all to find out this is true. In any case, some of you may find these suggestions helpful even if you don't have ADD.

One of my personal challenges is sitting still. For a writer, that's a problem. If you can't sit in a chair for twenty minutes (much less eight hours), how are you supposed to type out a 90,000 word novel? Well, part of my strategy has been to minimize the actual chair-time necessary. This is the way I do it:

Whenever I'm brainstorming a new concept, I grab a notebook. (I stock up on notebooks every few months when they go on sale. I usually get a dozen or two at the price of about $.20 each.This way, I don't have to worry about wasting them if an idea ends up going nowhere.) I give my concept a working title and write this on the cover. Then I start taking notes. I keep the notebook with me everywhere I go for several weeks. During this time, I explore the premise of the story. I examine the main characters and their situation. I build the world. I take pages and pages of notes. They are sporadic and confusing at times, because I write my thoughts down when inspiration comes, but I can generally figure out what I was thinking after reading the first sentence of a paragraph. In this manner, I develop the characters and story to the point that I'm ready to start writing. Sometimes I go back and reorganize my notes to help me get the timeline and events straight in my head. Often, halfway through a novel I go back through my notes and do this again, because some things have invariably changed along the way.

I know some writers are very fastidious regarding their outlines. They like to outline the entire book, chapter by chapter before they start writing. I do not do this. The reason is this: If I already have every single page plotted out, then where's the adventure? If my characters and my story don't surprise me from time to time, then how can I expect to keep my butt in the chair? I'm writing this book as part of an adventure for myself. I'm writing about characters and places that interest me. Why would I kill that by knowing how it all is going to end? Some authors may find this works, especially if they're able to quickly write out a chapter by having it outlined ahead of time, so try it both ways. In my case, I definitely prefer watching things unfold.

The secondary benefit to this method is that by the time I've started writing, I'm committed. I've given myself time to fall out of love with a story. If you've written more than one book, you probably know what I mean. When inspiration first strikes, its easy to think: Yeah, this is it. I'm going to write an entire 90,000 word novel based on this one idea. But you get 35,000 words into it and you start to think maybe the idea wasn't that great. Maybe you should have done something else. Did you just spend several weeks writing a book that you don't even want to finish? I've had this happen, and it's no fun to be 1/3 of the way through a book when you realize you have to abandon it.

That's it for this first post, because I know none of us want to be sitting still much longer. I will be examining a few more ideas in some upcoming posts, and then I'll try to link them all on one page for future reference. In the meanwhile, I'd love to hear any thoughts or suggestions along these lines.

Tinkerer's Daughter Giveaway!

2011-05-15T10:04:00.000-07:00

I'm giving away five paperback copies of The Tinkerer's Daughter on Goodreads (You can find my profile here). I'm new to Goodreads and I'm still not quite sure how everything works, but the contest is scheduled to begin sometime today and proceed through June 5, at which time the Goodreads system will automatically choose five lucky winners. I'll sign the books and send them off, hopefully attracting a few new readers in the process.

I've been told that Goodreads is a great resource for writers. The site is something like a giant reading group, where you can find other readers with similar interests and discuss books you've read. They have millions of members, so the potential is obviously huge.

I still have a hard time getting around the site and I need to spend some time there, but I did notice a few interesting things. As I was researching this contest, I found that there are a few authors 'gaming' the system at Goodreads by putting up contests like this and running them for a solid year. Naturally, there are a lot of readers who join every contest they come across, because who doesn't love a free book? Well, eventually these books accumulate thousands of contestants. Due to this, the Goodreads system puts these books in a special place for 'popular' contests, with the assumption being that if a contest has thousands of entrants, it must be a very popular book. Hmm.

Well, while I suppose this is clever on the part of those authors at a certain level, it does seem to say something about them. In fact, I found a number of comments below these contests complaining about the authors and their manipulations. Ironically, the situation reminds me a lot of the law (which I studied briefly when I was considering law school). Big corporations, politicians, and lawyers make an art of discerning the difference between what's wrong and what's legal. For example, it's wrong to take the hard-earned money of thousands of investors and throw it down the toilet with lousy and risky investment strategies, thereby bankrupting them and devastating the economy. However, it's apparently not illegal.

Back to the subject. I chose a period of about two weeks for my contest. While it might be nice to have a picture of Tinkerer up there for a solid year as an advertisement, I don't see doing it like this. And while I may lose some sales by adhering to the archaic guidelines of ethics and morality, at least I won't be remembered like a Wall Street banker.

The Summer of Fantasy

2011-05-09T13:31:00.000-07:00

Fantasy movies were few and far between when I was young. Most of them never saw the inside of a theater and were limited in scope and budget to the quality of an average after school special. Superhero movies like Superman came along about once a decade. High Fantasy, with magic and swords and alternate worlds, was practically nonexistent.

My how times have changed.

Before LOTR and Harry Potter, Hollywood's annual budget for good fantasy movies was slightly less than my budget for a deli sandwich. Those films I just mentioned changed everything. (Okay, throw in Spider Man too, but you get the point.) After Hollywood learned there was blockbuster potential in fantasy, things changed fast. We were given as many fantasy and superhero movies as we could handle, and then some. They just keep coming. This summer alone we have Thor (which is getting surprisingly good reviews), the next sequel in the X-Men franchise (shouldn't that be X-People? Better get PC, Hollywood, this is the new millennium) and yet a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie. There will be a new Transformers film this summer, the final Harry Potter installment, plus Green Lantern, Conan the Barbarian, and The Immortals, which appears to be set in ancient Greece and involve a quest for magical weapons. I'm expecting something between 300 and Clash of the Titans (which was also recently remade.) Planet of the Apes is supposed to be coming this summer as well, and then there's a new Sherlock Holmes flick scheduled for release this December.

The list for next year looks just as big, especially if you're a fan of the The Hobbit or The Dark Knight (or Spider Man). As for me, I'm pretty excited. Another summer with Captain Jack Sparrow is just what any fantasy lover needs. I think it's safe to say these are good times if you're a fantasy fan.

The Darkling Wind

2011-05-01T10:37:00.000-07:00

Is featured on the Indie Books Blog today, along with a brief interview. If you have time, check it out! You can learn more about Darkling and my other books by checking out the "Books" tab above. You will also find links to purchase my books at your favorite retailer. Paperbacks are also available through Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Here's the blurb for The Darkling Wind:

Ben always thought his grandfather's bedtime stories about the darklings were make-believe, but now the darklings have invaded his hometown and only Ben can stop them. When a mysterious package arrives containing his grandfather's old journal and a crystal pendant, Ben knows he's found the way to stop the darklings. Unfortunately, the journal is encrypted and Ben is running out of time. With the help of his best friend Sara, Ben must unlock the journal's secrets and find a way to banish the evil darklings before they destroy the town and kill everyone he loves. But does Ben have the strength to face his greatest fears? If he succeeds, he'll have to sacrifice everything just to survive. If he fails, Ben will not only lose everything he loves, he will also become the thing he fears the most.

The Darkling Wind is a novella length (about 150 pages) young adult fantasy novel dealing with themes of loss, death, grief, courage, love, and of course good vs. evil. It's a fairy tale and so much more... give it a shot, I think you may be surprised.

April showers...

2011-04-28T10:25:00.000-07:00

The month is almost over, summer is growing near, and it seems that with each passing day I have less time to accomplish an ever-growing list of chores. I had a sudden project come up that's taken a lot out of me through the last couple of weeks. It has taken my energy, my money, and worst of all, my writing time. I don't know why this is, but for some reason it seems that the more dedicated I become to my profession, the more challenges seem to appear out of nowhere. Sometimes I look fondly back at the days when I used to spend my evenings and vacations writing, as if I had all the time in the world then...

The good news is that I have found some time to write, and I've been doing it as much as I can. I'm about halfway through my next book and several chapters into a couple more. Not only that, but for some reason I've been feeling inspired lately and taking down a lot of notes. I now have notes to write at least a dozen books that may never see the light of day just because I don't have the time to write them. I'm not complaining, though. Even though I can only write part time, I'm still pursuing the dream I've had all my life, and that's a good thing.

A Tale of Many Reviews is doing a series of guest-posts this week in regards to Indie writing. The posts have been excellent so far and are well worth a look. Also, in his blog A Newbie's Guide to Publishing, Joe Konrath put up his latest numbers, which are extremely impressive. Over 276,000 sales in four months...wow. I wonder how many legacy-published authors can tout numbers like that? The amazing thing, as Joe regularly points out himself, is that there are many Indies doing better than him. Even more impressive is the number of Indies selling less than Joe, but still doing quite well. After all, the first objective of a writer shouldn't be to get rich, it should be to write. If you're making enough money to replace a full-time salary, then you're already living the dream!

The Indie Spotlight...

2011-04-20T08:50:00.000-07:00

is featuring "Karma Crossed" on their website today (April 20, 2011). They have the old cover image because I did the interview and submission back in January and I've made a few minor tweaks since then. It was pretty cool to be able to do this and I must thank the Indie Spotlight for the awesome job they're doing. If it wasn't for the Indie Spotlight and other bloggers/reviewers like them, most of us writers who are riding this new age of e-publishing would remain in obscurity. Some might say that it's just as well, but I've seen some real talent in the Indie business and I wish all those writers and bloggers nothing but the best.

I do have a list of other reviews and interviews coming up, but I don't usually know when they'll go live until just a day or two before. I'm expecting a couple of major Indie reviews by the end of the year (I mean MAJOR make-or-break a career type of reviews), so I will update as soon as I know more. In the meanwhile, I'm writing and revising and sending out questionnaires and querying reviewers... anything I can to let people know my books are out there. It's worth saying that if you've read a book by an Indie author and enjoyed it, please please do a review and let your friends know about it. Small publishers don't have the unlimited resources to compete with the big guys. What we do hopefully have, is the word of mouth that comes from happy readers. That's something money can't buy.

There and back again (and again and again)

2011-04-16T19:12:00.000-07:00

As a lifelong Tolkien fan, I've got to mention the upcoming movie of The Hobbit, or There and back again. At the tender age of 9, this book served as my introduction to Middle Earth. I discovered it just before summer vacation and, when my mother sent me to spend the summer with my father, I went straight to the local library and checked it out so I could read it again. I read it several times that summer, but I didn't realize there was more until the following school year. That was when I discovered The Lord of the Rings.

Tolkien was my constant companion through middle school and for the first couple years of high school. I always had one of his books with me, most frequently The Fellowship of the Ring because that was my favorite. Later on, I lost touch with those books. My life fell apart in ways that I won't bore you with, and then real world responsibilities piled up so high that I barely had time to breathe, much less read or write.

I heard that Peter Jackson was making The Lord of the Rings back in 1999 (?) I think, and I was skeptical. I'd seen movie adaptations of Tolkien's work before. It wasn't until the first teasers came out that I started to get excited. I remember seeing the location shots and some of the concept art. Then I saw interviews with PJ and finally, the first official trailer. I went a little crazy. I started spending hours online, landing most often at TheOneRing.Net, which seems to be about the best LOTR related site out there. I bought collectibles (yes I still have the cheesy Burger King crystal mugs with light-up bottoms and yes, I also have Glamdring, Gandalf's sword.)

Eventually the epic commercialization of the films got to me, and I quit buying that crap just because of the principle. But I was still enthralled with Peter Jackson's work, and despite the minor changes he made to the story, I still applaud his reverence for Tolkien's work. This was the first time any Hollywood film treated the genre with even a modicum of dignity. And it worked. To the tune of about $300 Billion. With a "B". Not bad for an investment of less than $300 million.

After the box office success of LOTR I never doubted they'd make The Hobbit. Frankly, I'm surprised it has taken so long. With that much money on the table, you'd think these Hollywood types would be all over it. Strangely, the studio had difficulties finding and keeping a producer among a myriad other problems. Finally, it seems that Peter Jackson is back at the helm and filming is started, this time with a budget of $500 million and a script for TWO movies. Hmm. Andy Serkis will be back as Gollum (as it should be) and Ian McKellen as Gandalf. Rumors are that many of the other LOTR actors will have cameo appearances as well, and there's no telling what PJ has in mind since he's stretching this story out into two films. Things are starting to move, and I'm getting that familiar old feeling. Somebody hide my credit cards. And Burger King, please.... no more mugs.

At the risk of being redundant...

2011-04-13T11:13:00.000-07:00

I didn't blog this weekend because I really wasn't sure where to start. Plus, I didn't want to keep flogging this self-publishing e-book revolution thing that's going on. You already know about it. We all know about it. But...

In his newsletter, Piers Anthony recently announced that he was jumping into the Kindle with both feet. A bunch of his e-books are now available on Amazon here. He's also caught up to the new millenium by starting a blog, which is awesome. I enjoyed reading his newsletter, but the format wasn't very computer-friendly and I always forgot to go check for an updated newsletter. I can't wait to see what he's got to say in this new medium. I did notice that all of his e-books seem to be priced at $7.99 (the same as paperback), and I'm curious as to why he chose this price point. It's possible that he still has some sort of contractual obligation in this regard. Or, perhaps he just thought it was a good place to test the waters. I personally think this is a little high, and I suspect that he'd reap bigger rewards somewhere in the $2.99-4.99 range. Then again, he's Piers Anthony. It's not like he's got to drum up interest and build a solid platform with a lower price. He's the man, and everyone who reads fantasy knows about Piers. At any rate, I wish him luck. I suspect that -whatever his price point- he'll earn more than he expected.

I also wanted to relate my own personal Piers Anthony story. A few years back, when I was more naive about the publishing world, I had the audacity to email the man. Looking back, I suppose I'd committed every other rookie-move atrocity so why not that one too? I was feeling very frustrated with my lack of progress in the business. I'd completed a few books, which I thought were good, and most of my feedback seemed to support that opinion. I submitted these to publishers who responded positively, but it never went anywhere. Soon, I learned that I had done it all wrong. I was supposed to submit to agents, and not publishers. The agents would help me to refine my work so that publishers would be interested.

The problem? Agents were less interested than the publishers. So tell me, in what world does that make sense? The publishers liked my books but agents wouldn't even glance at them. From then on, it was a downward spiral. I started following the agents' blogs, buying their books, learning all I could. Here's what I learned: Every agent has a specific manner in which they want a submission. It must be submitted to that agent's specifications or it's instant recycle bin material. You must research each individual agent and learn everything possible, especially since agents tend to change their preferences from time to time and the instructions they left on a website last year may not match what they want this year. Expect to spend several hours researching each individual agent before you even think of sending a query. Don't send more than a query unless they ask for it. The agent also expects you to read and comment on his/her blog. You should mention this in your submission, so the agent knows you're a fan. If you're not a fan, become one.

Wait at least three months before asking why you never got a response (because their spam filtered it into the junk bin). Resubmit and wait another six months before you get a request for a full. Don't submit your full anywhere else, even though it will be at least six more months and probably a year before the agent gets back to you. I am not exaggerating. One agent responded to my partial two years after I submitted it. I got a form rejection. And I won't even talk about how many years I lost, waiting for responses that might never come.

I could go on, but I think you get my point. That's what the publishing world is like. That's why I emailed Piers and said something like, "Can you please help me? Would you take a look at a few chapters and give me a blurb to attach to my queries?"

Well, Piers was kind enough to look at my work and respond, via his assistant. His response was something like this (paraphrased): You write well enough, so that's not your problem. Unfortunately, the publishers have become a closed shop. I recommend you look into small publishers and e-publishers.

So I did. But I found e-publishers to be thoroughly overwhelmed. Their response times were about the same as the literary agents, and they simply didn't have room for work like mine. After all, how do you characterize a young adult fantasy coming-of-age story about a boy with a magic journal who has to watch his entire world destroyed in order to save it? Their response: Do you have anything with teenage vampire cheerleaders?

Okay, they didn't actually say that, I made it up. But there were times I felt that way. Of course, Piers was right, but even he didn't see the revolution coming in quite the manner it arrived.

Update

2011-03-30T14:23:00.000-07:00

I forgot to post the link to my recent interview at the Indie Books Blog, so here it is. I owe them a huge debt of gratitude, along with all the other bloggers out there who are making this Indie thing happen. The stuff going on in this business right now is history in the making. Recently, several big-name authors have walked away from major publishing contacts to join the Indie movement. One author most of you have probably heard of, Amanda Hocking (see links) has just signed a multi-million dollar contract with a major publisher. This is after going Indie because the publishing world refused to take her seriously. Best of all, she didn't do it for the money. Amanda's books have made her over two million dollars since she decided to self-publish about a year ago, most of that within the last four months. She didn't need that contract, and the only reason she took it was because she's tired of doing her own covers, editing, and publishing. She just wants to write. Don't we all?

I commented on this subject on the Kill Zone blog (see my links section) the other day. I'll try to summarize it here the way I did there:

Big publishing companies have enjoyed a monopoly in the business for decades because they control distribution. No one outside of the Big 6 gets their book in WalMart, or Safeway, or Borders. Up until recently, there was only one way to become a professional writer: Sell a book to a major publisher, and then settle for 15% royalties (and give 35% of that to a literary agent). That's all changed now, and what we're seeing is very similar to the heyday of pulp fiction in the early 1900's. The pulp area came about because the technology to produce books (printing and paper) became extremely cheap. For the first time, it was possible for anyone with a middle-class income to have their own library of paperbacks. Publishers found themselves scrambling to keep up with demand. They put out cattle-calls in magazines and newspapers, begging new authors to come work for them. They published just about everything they could get their hands on.

And a lot of it was crap. There was very little editorial oversight, the art was quickly and cheaply produced, and the writers were producing low-quality works as fast as they could type. But ironically, a lot of last century's biggest names owe their careers to that period. Many of them published hundreds of books between the 1920's and the 1960's, and went on to become some of America's most celebrated authors.

Jump forward to this century, and the digital revolution. With the advent of the Kindle, the Nook, and other similar technologies, it's easier and cheaper to produce a book than ever. In fact, the majority of books being published this year will never see print in any significant way. Print is now a way for an author to subsidize his brand... to make his books available to the stragglers who don't yet own an e-reader. The print market is drying up faster than anyone imagined it could. Brick and mortar bookstores are going out of business left and right.

Obviously the best thing publishers can do right now is to embrace this technology the way they did with pulp. They can snatch up aspiring authors by the thousands, give them a worthless contract for a share of the profits, and publish their books in about an hour. It's a win-win situation. Struggling authors get a break. They get a real honest-to-God contract. They might even make some money. In the meanwhile, they'll be building a career. AND Readers get thousands of new, cheap books.

Only that's not the way it went down. Publishers saw this coming a few years ago. They moved quickly... in the opposite direction. They shut their doors to new authors. They dropped their midlist authors like bad habits. They put all of their money into pushing crappy celebrity books, and fixed their prices on e-books to a minimum of $9.99. No kidding. In some cases e-books from the Big 6 cost $15 or more -more than their paperback counterparts.Meanwhile, thousands of writers are now without work. Thousands more are desperate to pursue their dreams of being published, and there's nowhere for any of them to go.

And along comes Amazon. And I think you know the rest of the story.

Indie Books Blog interview coming March 20, 2011

2011-03-18T23:55:00.000-07:00

My interview (re: The Tinkerer's Daughter) with the Indie Books Blog is scheduled to be featured this Sunday! If you have a chance, check it out. You can download a sample or buy the book from the scrolling ad to the side, or from any of the links below. Links to the rest of my books are also posted above, in the books tab.

As of this weekend, my titles are finally going live at Barnes and Noble as well, so I will be updating the links directly.

Amazon - Smashwords - Barnes and Noble

The Tinkerer's Daughter:

Breeze is an outcast, a half-breed orphan born into a world torn apart by one thousand years of war. Breeze never knew her elven mother. When her father -a human soldier- is called back to the war, he leaves Breeze in the safest place he knows: in the care of a reclusive tinker.

The Tinkerman's inventions are frightening at first; noisy, smelly, dangerous machines that have little practical use. But elves mature quickly, and Breeze is no exception. When the war comes home, Breeze sees an opportunity. If she succeeds, she will change the world forever. If she fails, Breeze will be considered a traitor to both countries and she'll be hunted to her death.

to the grindstone...

2011-03-14T22:50:00.000-07:00

I've been extremely busy the last few weeks, but I've made progress. My e-books averaged four sales per day for the month of February, and in total I've had about one thousand downloads since I started this process in January. I hope that number continues to grow, but in the meanwhile I'm not sitting still. I've got paperback versions (almost) ready to go. I'm waiting on the galleys right now. If they look good, I will give my final approval and the books will be available sometime in April.

I've also started two new manuscripts that I hope to have finished by the end of spring, and published sometime this summer. (Okay, it's actually three new manuscripts but I'm already waffling on one of them. I may have to rethink my approach. It's a a sequel to "The Darkling Wind. The truth is, I had never planned to do a sequel to Darkling, but I've had so many people ask for one that I think I might... but not if it's not right. I'm going to give it some time because I don't want to rush something out just to say I have a sequel. Be patient with me.)

I had hoped to spend more time doing promotion stuff the last few weeks, but I'm wiped out. Between work, family, and other real-life obligations, it's hard enough just to write. Never-mind posting regularly on my blog, updating my multiple profiles and book pages, visiting the forums and blogs, and keeping up with... well, it's not that interesting, but it's all time consuming. I did take the time to update my blog (as you can see) with some new links and minor tweaks.

It's shaping up to be a busy year, but hopefully the hard work will pay off. I have some goals listed out that include at least three new books this year. God willing I might even get more, but I'll be happy with three.

Contact

2011-03-14T22:13:00.000-07:00

Jamie welcomes your questions and comments at: JamieSedgwick@sbcglobal.net

The Books

2011-02-06T20:03:00.000-08:00

All of my novels are available in e-book format or paperback at: Barnes & Noble, Amazon, & Smashwords

SHADOW BORN: (young adult fantasy) When Gabriel appears on a dark and stormy night, he seems just like any other twelve year-old... except for the scars that cover his back and the fact that he has no memory of his past. The wealthy couple who rescue Gabriel promise to help him find his parents, but their mysterious behavior soon leads him to wonder if they are really what they appear to be.

Gabriel's new friends Jodi and Pete try to prepare him for the strange adventures that await, but they may already be too late. Gabriel suddenly finds himself in a world where no one can be trusted; a world filled with shadowy monsters, cruel villains, and dark conspiracies. As he pieces together his mysterious past, Gabriel has to wonder:

Is it truly his destiny to save the world from the Shadowlords, or is he actually one of them?

KARMA CROSSED: (adult urban fantasy) Jonah Cross has a knack for getting into trouble, but this time he's in over his head. When he comes face to face with a demon-worshiping assassin and fails to prevent the murder of a Berkeley professor, Jonah sets in motion a chain of events that may tip the balance in the battle between heaven and hell and set the stage for the final apocalypse.

Wanted by the FBI in connection with the murder, and pursued by vigilante maji, Jonah faces off against the powerful secret society known as the Majistry. In order to clear his name and expose the conspiracy, Jonah must join forces with a beautiful ancient sorceress. She may be able to save him, but will the price be more than he's willing to pay?

Mike Hammer meets Grimm's Fairy Tales in a world where nymphs walk darkened streets, imps are slave traders, and gnomes are elite hackers. In Jamie Sedgwick's new mystery, Murder in the Boughs, Hank Mossberg is a hard-boiled San Francisco detective who must race against time to rescue a kidnapped girl, expose a ring of "pixie dust" dealers, and find the killer of a high-elven San Francisco kingpin.

Hank’s troubles begin when he stumbles onto a briefcase full of the illicit drug known as pixie dust. He finally has the evidence he needs to bring down the notorious Kaiser gang. Then the gang's leader is murdered and the pixie dust disappears. Hank is hot on the trail of the killer when he gets an urgent call from a desperate woman whose daughter has been abducted, only the kidnapper is no ordinary criminal and even Hank's unique skills might not be enough to bring the girl home.

On the day that failed author Ben Curtis plans to commit suicide, he instead commits a random act of kindness. He is rewarded with a strange old chair that once belonged to famous American writer Edgar Allan Poe. From that day forward, Ben's life is changed. Everything falls into place, and his career takes off. Little does Ben know that tragedy is lurking just around the corner...

9300 words

THE TINKERER'S DAUGHTER: (young adult fantasy)Breeze is an outcast, a half-breed orphan born into a world torn apart by one thousand years of war. Breeze never knew her elven mother. When her father -a human soldier- is called back to the war, he leaves Breeze in the safest place he knows: in the care of a reclusive tinker.

The Tinkerman's inventions are frightening at first; noisy, smelly, dangerous machines that have little practical use. But elves mature quickly, and Breeze is no exception. When the war comes home, Breeze sees an opportunity. If she succeeds, she will change the world forever. If she fails, Breeze will be considered a traitor to both countries and she'll be hunted to her death.

All of my novels are available in e-book format or paperback at: Barnes & Noble, Amazon, & Smashwords

The Darkling Wind is LIVE!!!!

2011-01-28T14:42:00.000-08:00

And it got over 30 downloads in the first two hours! Coincidentally, that's how long it took me to fix the obvious formatting issues with the first upload and submit the corrections. (Actually most of that time was the very long conversion process over at Smashwords, which is completely out of my control.)

So I'm bummed that a few people downloaded a bad version. I think they can probably delete it and download again. Or, if necessary, they can contact me for a replacement version. Either way, I hope everyone is happy with the story. Yeah, I know it's free, but I still want it to be as good as it can be. And to be honest, Darkling Wind is one of my favorites. It's got that fairytale mood that I remember from books I read in my childhood, but the character undergoes a very deep and somewhat spiritual journey -and then there's even a little bit of romance.

It's novella length. It's a quick read. I go through it in about an hour and a half, many people will probably take half that time. It takes me longer to read my own work because I'm sweating every word. I never get to enjoy it with complete detachment. Yet, in that short amount of time, something happens. When I finish reading that story I feel like I've taken a journey into the belly of the beast (as it were) and I've come out of it changed. I can only hope it will have that effect for others as well.

On to other things:

I'm going to be putting together a newsletter soon. I'm not going to give it out just yet because I will be doing a special promotion to go along with it. When I'm ready, I'll post it here and at the various forums I frequent. But one thing I will NOT do is use my newsletter for anything other than the announcement of new books. Anything more than that would be distasteful and rude.

The Tinkerer's Daughter

2011-01-27T13:29:00.000-08:00

went live on Amazon last night and is going up on Smashwords today. The weird thing is that Shadow Born took almost two days to post while Tinkerer was up within a few hours. The fact that neither has a description right now only adds to the mystery of Amazon's process.

The Darkling Wind is also in there somewhere , working it's way through the mysterious digital machinations. I hope it will be live by tomorrow night, and then I'll be done publishing. For a while. Kind of.

Actually, I have another project that I'll be working on through February and then I'll be writing (finally!) for the rest of the year. It hasn't been bad so far. I've published four books in six weeks and I plan to have two more live very soon. I'll write at least two books this year and have them both published by December. To be honest, I'd like to be able to do more but external responsibilities simply make that impossible. I'll get there eventually.

The good news is that Shadow Born has been selling since the night it posted, and that's with zero promotion. The only thing I've done is announce it in a post on a forum I frequent. Which means that right now, it's already lining up to outsell Karma Crossed by the end of the month. If this keeps up, I will be quite pleased. Even if it doesn't, it's nice to have the validation that a few strangers were compelled to pick up my books and read them, and some actually liked them.

If everything goes according to plan, all of my fantasy will be live by this weekend. Then I will link to it, get a bit of promotion done, and move on with my life. I've got books to write!

Shadow Born...

2011-01-25T21:19:00.000-08:00

went live on Smashwords last night and will hopefully be live on Amazon tonight. It's hard to be sure because Amazon can take several days to go live. The other outlets follow. Barnes and Noble, Sony, Apple, Diesel and the rest will have it... eventually. Karma Crossed didn't appear on Barnes and Noble for almost a month, and they still have the unrevised version posted. As amazing as the whole system is, there are obviously still a few kinks to work out.

Shadow Born represents the second book I've published and the first young adult, but it was actually one of my earlier novels. It was the first I tried to sell to a publisher and I received some positive feedback, which obviously went nowhere.

I have two more young adult fantasy novels coming, and it remains my goal to have them published by the end of the month. Sometime in the next few days, this should appear:

The cover art is -as always- tentative, but I'm really liking it at the moment. It might stay. I think the blurb will go something like this:

Breeze is an outcast, a half-breed orphan born into a world torn apart by a thousand years of war. Breeze never knew her elven mother, and when her human father is recalled to the war, he leaves her in the safest place he knows: in the care of a reclusive tinker. The Tinkerman's inventions are frightening at first -noisy, smelly machines with no practical use- but when the war comes home, Breeze sees an opportunity. If she can pull it off, she'll change the world forever. If she fails, she'll be considered a traitor by both lands and will be hunted to her death.

Meanwhile,

2011-01-22T00:24:00.000-08:00

As a side note, I want to thank everyone who has downloaded Karma Crossed. I have had a fantastic number of downloads and I'm quite happy with the results, considering Karma has only been out for a month and I've done next to nothing in terms of real promotion. Sample downloads have gone gonzo, sales have been steadily picking up and reviews are starting to trickle in. I'm told that about 1 in 100 buyers actually come back to review. I'm hoping for more than that, especially since I gave out a dozen reviewer copies, and those reviews are particularly important to a new writer. We shall see.

Anyway the real reason for this post is to say "Thank You" to those who have read and especially those who have reviewed Karma Crossed. There's more to come!

One More Week.

2011-01-21T18:20:00.000-08:00

Semi-perfectionist: A lazy perfectionist.

Okay, I made that up. That's how I feel, though. I want everything to be perfect. I revise and revise until I hate my book -until I hate everything about it. Then I put it away for a few months and come back to hate... I mean revise it again. And then I change my mind. At some point I have to accept it for what it is and put it out there, and I eventually do, but I hate it.

This time I've changed my mind about the cover. Shadow Born's cover was cool, and definitely striking, but it didn't quite click for me. The image didn't convey a sense of what the story was about. You don't want to give away everything with a cover, but that image didn't give away anything. Plus the colors didn't work. Purple is okay. Green's okay. Not together. I don't know why, I just knew looking at it that it was wrong. I can only fault myself, because it was a new version of a very old image that I did years ago. I think the original was better in design even though it was sub-par in construction.

So now I've decided on something new. I'm excited about it because it does a better job of communicating a sense of the story, but still just titillates. It creates an expectation but gives very little in actual details. I hope it works.

As always, I reserve the right to change my mind.

A Darkling Wind is blowing this way...

2011-01-18T18:52:00.000-08:00

I'm very excited tonight. I've been working nonstop for weeks. I uploaded the first (unedited) version of Karma Crossed on December 16, just about one month ago. After numerous revisions, changes to the blurb and the cover, I finally landed something that satisfied me. In the meanwhile, I've had other projects going on. I have a number of older manucripts that have been gathering dust, waiting for a publisher to discover me. Now that I've discovered myself (so to speak) it's time to dust them off.

Tonight I finished the cover for The Darkling Wind. This is a story I wrote in 2008 about a boy named Ben Larbinger who -with the help of his best friend Sara- must save his hometown from an invasion of creepy monsters. He has to solve the mystery of his grandfather's journal first, which is complicated by the fact that the journal is encrypted and Ben's grandfather has died.

The story is one of my favorites. It's actually about 32,000 words, which makes it a novella, but in young adult the word count isn't nearly as significant as the story. Maybe that's why I love books for younger audiences. The priority lies in creating a cool story and memorable characters rather than sticking to an arbitrary word count or publisher-specified genre.

Like most of my books, The Darkling Wind is another that's genre-challenged. I don't know how to define it. I could try: It's a young-adult fantasy adventure coming-of-age supernatural love story. Did I miss anything? Heck, I don't know. I just know I like the story. I'm also quite happy with the way my cover came out:

Happy New Year! Coming soon to a Kindle near you...

2011-01-03T16:00:00.000-08:00

I published "Karma Crossed" a couple weeks ago and I'm happy to say I have made some sales. I'm still working on the promotion part because people need to know my book is out there. If they don't know it's there, then they can't possibly download it, and ultimately I want people to read it.

That's the toughest part about this adventure. I'm a writer, not a salesman. The good news is that the kindle version is working nicely and the others are acceptable as well. I've repriced Karma at $2.99 for most venues. The Kindle price will be going up in a couple weeks after I get the rest of my review copies sent out. The reason for this is simple: I have to pay for the review copies. This also provides an opportunity for people who haven't read my work before, because $0.99 isn't much of a gamble for a 93,000 word novel. By February I expect Karma to be priced solidly at $2.99.

Also by February:

I've decided to put aside my current work in progress so I can further pursue this publishing thing. I have several novels that I'm dusting off. By the end of this month I hope to publish: "Shadow Born," "The Heart of the Dragon," "Darkling Wind," and possibly "The Tinkerer's Daughter." These are all young adult fantasy novels. Darkling Wind is closer to novella length, but serviceable as a mid-grade/young adult publication. Due to its length, I will probably price Darkling at $0.99. Again, this provides an opportunity for new readers to look at my work with very little risk.

This list is subject to change because I have to review and possibly revise some of these works before publication. I also have to prepare covers, and go through the process I described in my previous post. Anyway, here's a little teaser. Hopefully this is the final version of the cover for Shadow Born:

Anything worth doing... is worth doing a thousand times?

2010-12-20T20:11:00.000-08:00

I think I'm in the home stretch now. I can't really say for sure, because unexpected hurdles keep popping up. It's like I'm in an Indiana Jones movie, trying to escape from a cave with a rolling boulder.

For two weeks I've been going through the process of creating cover art and then formatting it to different specifications for different outlets. Same with the manuscript. Aside from the initial editing, I've had to change the complete layout -page by page in some cases- at least four times. Fonts that work well in text don't look that great in .PDF, and neither will work for a print edition. Digital and print editions have completely different layouts, and they also get separate covers.

Plus, there's the promotion...

I'm working on a number of things towards that end, which all require a little more energy and time than I seem to actually have. Interviews, questionnaires, guest blogs, ad campaigns, banners... you get the idea?

The first unexpected and rather rude awakening came from Smashwords. I uploaded my manuscript there first because they have a vetting process that can take several weeks before my book becomes available. Some of the transposition is automated, so it's important to review the different versions and try to make sure there aren't any formatting errors and whatnot. To my surprise, the Smashwords version became available almost immediately. So, at least a week before my expected release, Karma Crossed became publicly available. And within an hour, it sold a copy. And by the next morning, sold another.

Yikes.I still had editing to do people. Crap.

Amazon played similar tricks on me. Oh, the tricks they play. It seems like you never know exactly what it'll cost or where it'll go. There's always another hurdle, some other step you have to complete. I've barely begun work on this blog, I've done nothing for my Amazon page or (gulp) Facebook. (Really? I have to have a Facebook page too? YES, the publishing gods command. IT'S THE RULE!)

Okay. So, yeah, it's out there. And not in the tidy, well-prepared manner that I had been planning. No, it's more a like a train wreck. In slow motion. The best kind, right?

Publish 'em all, let God sort 'em out...

2010-12-15T15:53:00.000-08:00

... or the readers, anyway. The burden has shifted again.

It began with the major publishers announcing that they would no longer handle unagented submissions. The workload shifted to the agents. It became their job to sort through the slush, dig out the gems in the rough, and polish them up. (Publishers used to do that. Some writers had several flops before they finally found success, but the publisher believed in them. Not so in today's world.) It was only a matter of time before this burden overwhelmed the poor agents and their employees. Some of these agents get thousands of submissions from new writers every single month, and it seems they're starting to ignore the slush pile too. And who can blame them? They didn't ask for this. They don't have the time or the resources to manage all these wannabe writers.

Enter e-books. And Kindle. And Nook. Now it seems that there's a whole industry blossoming, and e-publishers are frantic for new material. The only problem is, the works are gummed up. Nobody knows who they should submit to. Agents don't know who to sell to. Everybody's worried about rights. And none can be sure what will sell, because for the first time, it's the readers who are deciding what they want.

People used to enter a grocery store, an airport, a walmart, and find a neat little selection on the shelves. That selection was there because those were the books that major publishers had invested in. Those were the books that had to sell; books by major writers who had been paid large advances. But did those writers become the superstars of the business because everyone bought their books, or did everyone buy their books because the books were everywhere? Not just any writer had access to that kind of distribution.

Until now. Things have changed, and even writers are wondering why they should have three or four middlemen tugging at their wallets when they can go straight to the consumer. Agents appear to have seen some writing on the wall. Several big name agents have either disappeared in the last couple years, or moved on to new professions. A couple have netted big book deals of their own before moving on. Interesting times. I wonder if they'll end up repping themselves and e-pubbing somewhere down the road.

J.A. Konrath was something of a pioneer in this movement. He was a published author with a respectable career, but he decided to take his work straight to the people. And so far, it's paid off. He's been selling more than 10,000 e-books a months for a long time, and that number keeps climbing. Amanda Hocking has been receiving a lot of attention because she's an unknown in the publishing world, and yet she has somehow managed to sell 10,000 copies of her books in a single week. That's a lot of e-paper (so to speak.)

So where am I going with this? Well, I think it's obvious. I'm not entirely new to the writing game but I've never had a publisher buy one of my books and I've never had an agent, period. I have sold stories however, and I think my writing has reached a point that I'd like more than just my small circle of readers to take a look. But the industry won't let me. I can't blame them exactly, because none of them have actually read my books. The publishers don't have time, nor do the agents, and I don't have the time to wait for one of my hundreds of queries to actually grab an agent. I've been waiting too long -and I'm getting less interest now than when I started submitting three years ago, even though I know my writing has improved dramatically over the last few years.

It's time to take the plunge.

By the end of December I expect to have my first book available through all of the major e-tailers. Will I have the success of Joe Konrath or Amanda Hocking? I can't even guess. But I do know that I'm going to bust my ass trying. I'll finish editing the numerous electronic versions and then ship them off to the publishers. Then I'll be busy marketing, promoting, and doing anything I can to make sure people know that my book is out there, and hoping they'll give the poor thing a chance. I think Jonah deserves a chance... That'll make more sense if you actually read my book.