Writing and Pulling Teeth

It's personal topic week at the Wicked Writer's blog and it couldn't have come at a better time for me. Boy. Yeah. Okay. So I somehow convinced myself that Book 2 would be easier to write than Book 1. You know, I'm wiser now. Book 1 was hard because I was new to writing novels. I was still learning. But I know exactly what I'm doing now.

So why does writing the dang sequel feel like pulling teeth? And why am I still using cliches like "pulling teeth"?!?!

*Facepalm followed by headdesk*

When you're a writer looking up at all the published authors sitting on their pedestals, all shiny and important, you might think "man, life must be so easy for them, with their fancy royalty checks." Truth is, we're all just writers. We all make peanuts for a living. And when all is said and done, each new manuscript still begins with two words:  Chapter One.

....Followed by a good ripping of the hair, lots of caffeine, and a hefty dose of insanity....

What's a writer to do?

Remember the reasons why you started writing the first place. Yeah, remember those? The good ol' days when it was fun and magical and every word felt like a roller-coaster ride on a gold-tinted rainbow? When you were an artist and every scene came from the heart. You didn't care about grammar or point-of-view or if all your characters' names started with the same letter because to you it was perfect. Every flaw was somehow right. You did that, you made that, and it was awesome.

Remember that feeling. Hold it close. Bathe in it. Eat it for breakfast. Sit down at your computer and say to yourself "Today I am writing for me, and I don't care if no one likes what I write because I love it and that is all that matters!".

J.D. Brown
Website ~ Blog ~ Facebook ~ Twitter

Is Print Dead? Part 2

Just in time to back up my blog this past week comes this article from the Atlantic Wire. It deals with the booming ebook industry.

You can link to the article here.

Is Print Dead? I'm Afraid to Look Anymore

I’m scared.

I’m not afraid to admit it.

Why am I scared?

Because of the coming death of my industry, namely print publishing.

You all know me as a science fiction and horror writer, with a dose of fantasy and western thrown in. But, before I became known for fiction, I was first a print journalist.

I’ve seen a lot of things in the industry in my 30 years covering the news, including the looming death knell of newspapers. They've only begun to listen but it seems like it's too late for them to catch up with the 21st century. Too bad for so many of my former colleagues who stayed the course, while those who jumped ship and changed professions now look like Mensa whizzes.

The owners -- namely the big publishers and the syndicates like L.A. Times, Knight-Ridder, Tribune, McClatchey -- all felt that the Internet was a passing fad and they failed to embrace it. Sort of like when IBM dismissed the personal computer as a fad and then struggled (and failed) to play catch up when the PC took over the typewriter/processor industry.

When I was with the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, we belatedly took a flyer with the Internet, in the form of me posting high school football scores online, while the newsroom posted a few top stories online. Of course, those were only meant to tease readers into buying a newspaper.

In the past decade, newspapers have been bleeding red ink. Periodicals that were founded more than a century ago have faded away like the Clipper ship and Pan-Am. Others, like the Boston Globe and Philadelphia Enquirer, struggle to hang on. Most newspapers have drastically cut staff much like my old employer, the Star-Telegram, did back in 2008.

Cut to the present. The publishing industry is treading the same pathway that newspapers did, right toward the same cliff.

The North American Big Six -- Hachette, McMillan, Penguin, Random House,  HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster -- still cling to an old business model, missing the obvious signs. One big sign is that three of those Big Six aren’t really North American, though they used to be. Hachette is French, HarperCollins is under News Corp’s umbrella and German conglomerate Bertelsmann bought Random House in 1998.

You see, it’s common among big business to cling tighter to models that proved successful in the past, but are not quite so successful in the present. This leaves the companies open to takeovers. However, international ownership hasn’t made much improvement.

Despite all the ebooks being sold on Kindle and Nook, the Big Six seem to shun online publishing. If they sign an author, they go for ebook rights as well. Then, they’ll undercut the ebook price or shelve the ebook edition. Many times, they won't even consider signing an author whose work has mainly been online. 

You can’t blame them too much, though. They are profit-driven corporations and a 35 percent cut from each sale of a $20-25 book is more appealing than a similar percentage from a $2.99 ebook like Hunters.

It’s a shame because we know both mediums can co-exist. There will always be people who want to have a paperback in their hands at the beach or on the plane. There will be people who have libraries in their homes that need books to fill the shelves. But, there will also be many more, especially in the up-and-coming generations, who will fully embrace the online world (they're the ones who go straight to the computers in the library while we older adults browse the aisles).

You would think that profit-driven companies (and their stockholders) would see the money to be made. Sometimes, though, it’s hard to change. Admittedly, I didn’t get into Internet journalism seriously until October 2009. Even my fiction didn’t make it to the digital world until 2007 when I signed up for Writing.com. Hell, my PC is from 2005 and my cell phone begins with the letters T-R-A-C. 

But, even I have long recognized the future.  So have others. Until then, though, the little guys will scarf up all the profits and get first dibs on the hottest new writers.

I don’t know if the Big Six will ever change. As C.J. mentioned yesterday, Simon & Schuster signed that print-only deal with John Locke, so maybe someone finally installed a skylight in that thick glass ceiling. On the other hand, big corporations keep forward thinkers on notoriously short leashes, waiting for them to fail so they can say "I told you so."

Will they finally see the future and embrace like Amazon and Barnes & Noble or will they ignore it like Hollywood Video and Blockbuster did with NetFlix and Redbox?

I’m tired of being scared about my industry, so I’ll hope for the best and hope they don't continue to fail me.

Times Change - The Big Six Do, Too!

This week here on Wicked, we're talking about changes in the publishing industry. The biggest story I've heard in the last few days has been John Locke's print only deal with Simon & Schuster.

He got to keep his ebook rights and can price them however he sees fit. Good for him!!

Why is this such a big deal? Well, it proves the big six is finally willing to think outside the box. Previously, they have always grabbed all the rights they can on a book. It's lead to them pricing ebooks out of the market and even occasionally having their print books listed at under the price of the ebooks -- just a few short months after the titles release.

The old model of "three months to sell" and then your title is rotated by bookstores off of shelf space, still exists. But for small authors with a strong Internet presence, a low price on an ebook, and the dogged determination to sell their little hearts out, it has been proven they can reach more readers over the long term than the big guys can short term.

Take my own July sales figures posted a few weeks back as an example. Sales slowed down quite a bit in August, but they by no means suck. If I had been signed by a big name I'd have more book store presence, sure (compared to right now, which is nil). When considering the Industry's unwillingness to pour money into an untried author, I'd still be doing what I'm doing. My agent informed me I'd be selling just as hard with the big six as I have been without them.

No book tours for the little guy means we need to sell from our computer terminal. We blog, we tweet, we post on FB, some even do book trailers on youtube and live readings in podcasts -- the numerous ways to reach readers is more diverse now than it was just five years ago.

Would I accept a large print deal that allowed me to keep my ebook rights? You betcha. I'd sign that puppy in a heart beat. I don't think the publishing giants will ever fall, like so many others have predicted. Their reach in print distribution far outweighs the number of people who own ereaders -- especially in foreign markets.

Print won't ever die, but I do think the coming years will weed out the small and large publishers who don't think outside the box, like Simon and Schuster has. If I bust my hump building my readership and hand selling almost every ecopy of my book, why should I give that hard work up?

I may not be anywhere near selling what Mr. Locke is. But give me a few more titles under my belt and then we'll talk ;-)

~~ C.J. Ellisson ~~

Amazon * Facebook * Website * Blog

Valor is My Choice

Genre: Science Fiction / Subgenre: Space Opera

My favorite space opera series features Staff Sergeant Torin Kerr. Her goal is to keep both her superior officers and her troops alive as they face deadly missions throughout the galaxy. She more than proves her mettle when a diplomatic assignment and a scientific expedition both turn dangerous.

The Confederation Series is penned by Tanya Huff, better known for her Blood Books, featuring detective Victoria Nelson.

What I loved about the Confederation books is Torin Kerr is an unsung hero in some respects. She's put into these horrible situations and has to figure out how to get her troops and herself out of them. The plots are creative, original and kept me on my toes. I could not stop reading these books. It's the first series that pops into my mind whenever anyone asks about my favorite. Torin Kerr is a great, strong character and the action is fabulous.

My favorite stories are those where the main character overcomes terrible odds. They're the kind of stories I enjoy reading and writing most.

So check these out:

Valor's Choice
The Better Part of Valor
The Heart of Valor
Valor's Trial

There's a compendium of the first four novels in one book. And, I see there's a new one out, Truth of Valor. I'm off to get it.

What's your favorite series in your genre? What makes you love it?

Study Your Peers - The Southern Vampire Mysteries

Today I'm taking a critical look into the Southern Vampire Mystery series by Charlaine Harris, aka The Sookie Stackhouse novels, aka the books that started HBO's TV series, True Blood.

Why am I attempting to analysis the work of a highly successful vampire author who's craft is one-hundred times better than my own? Well... that IS why. She writes vampire urban fantasy... I write vampire urban fantasy... She's famous... I'm just getting started. I'm trying to learn something here by studying one of the masters.

What? Surprised I didn't chose The Vampire Lestat for this post? There is no argument from me that Anne Rice is certainly a vampire master, but the industry has come a long way since the days of Interview with a Vampire and Harris' books are bit more current. Plus I am currently obsessed with True Blood, so of course I jumped to talk about it. *wink*

So here we go:

Blurb for DEAD UNTIL DARK - Book 1

Sookie Stackhouse is a small-time cocktail waitress in small-town Louisiana. She's quiet, keeps to herself, and doesn't get out much. Not because she's not pretty. She is. It's just that, well, Sookie has this sort of "disability". She can read minds. And that doesn't make her too dateable. And then along comes Bill. He's tall, dark, handsome - and Sookie can't hear a word he's thinking. He's exactly the type of guy she's been waiting for all her life....

But Bill has a disability of his own: He's a vampire with a bad reputation. He hangs with a seriously creepy crowd, all suspected of - big surprise - murder. And when one of Sookie's coworkers is killed, she fears she's next.


What I love most about this series:  Right off the bat in chapter one, Harris makes it known that humans are well aware of the existence of vampires. But they didn't always know. The vampires had recently "come out of the coffin" before book one starts. Unlike hundreds of other vampire books, the focus is not to keep the vampire lover a secret. Instead of focusing on the secret world of vampires, Harris plays on what would happen if we found out vampires were real? How would politics handle it? Would they have the same civil rights as us? Should human-vampire marriages be legalized? How would the church react to this? Do vampires have souls? Etc. Even though this is all going on in the back ground, Harris does such an excellent job of making it real - as real as the battle for gay rights, for example.

Why it works:  Plan and simple - it's different. I can't think of anyone else who's taken this approach before. In fact, it's so different that no one cares about the fact that she uses the stereotypical type of vampires (the exploding in the sun, needing permission to enter your house type).

The Characters:  The characters are always the reason why I love or hate any book. So of course that means I love Harris' characters - vampire and human. She does an excellent job of making each character 100 percent unique and quirky. My favorite character is - without a doubt - Eric Northman, the viking vampire and true alpha male and hero of the series. *Spoiler Alert!* I have to admit I was disappointed when Bill and Sookie broke up. I kept waiting for them to get back together - the flirting with Alcide was okay, but I really didn't care for that bald tiger guy. But Eric and Sookie, on the other hand, Oh - My - God! It's not even the fact that Sookie and Eric are together, it's the way Harris put them together!!! She was extra sneaky about it and it worked.

However, there were a few things that didn't work for me. Harris has a ton of secondary characters that just didn't seem necessary at all. Have you seen the show? Only about a third of the secondary characters from the book made it into the show. I'm glad the books are written in first person without any head-hopping (with the exception of Sookie's mind reading ability) or it would have been worse.

Also, a lot of her characters have some funky names and/or names that are spelled weird. I'm not sure if that's because her characters are from Louisiana or what, but I had a hard time trying to guess the proper pronunciation. This always annoys me to no end. If I can't pronounce a character's name, I'm not going to use it and not going to remember it either.

The Setting:  I've only been to New Orleans once when I was a kid, but you can tell Harris is from the area. I have to assume that's the major reason why she used Louisiana. She writes it well and she writes about Southern values and traditions from Sookie's point of view like she's been doing it herself her whole life - which she has. I always think using a setting you know well gives the author a huge advantage. It's easy to make it real because you've been there. Plus the twist - southern vampire racism - is oh so fun in this story. Does 'till death do you part have any power with a vampire lover?

The Writing:  Ah, here is we run into some issues. Before we all start to judge, I'm just going to say my own personal opinions here. You are all free to disagree. Ever since I became a writer, reading for pleasure as oppose to critiquing has gotten difficult. I have to tell my inner editor to shut up and just enjoy the story - no matter what I'm reading - so it's really nothing personal to the author.

However, I had a hard time with the flow of this series. The beginning of each book is always long and drawn out with little to no action. There are a ton of little passive scenes about Sookie doing her grocery shopping or some other errand that has absolutely nothing to do with the plot. It's slow and boring and I sometimes skip over a lot of it. The only slight advantage I can see to this is that there is NO question as to what kind of person Sookie Stackhouse is because we're forced to follower her everywhere. It's a good thing Sookie is the type of heroine I like; strong, stubborn, and witty.

The middle is usually where we get the conflict - and the hot lovin' which is pretty much all I care about. LOL. Now as a new author who had the "rules" drilled into my head time and time again, presenting the conflict in the middle of the story is a huge no-no. It should be in the beginning! Harris likes to break this rule, especially in the later books.

It does lead to a fast and intense conclusion, though. And Harris likes to do the cliff-hanger ending which I both love and loath. Love because I just HAVE to get the next book! Loath because have to WAIT for the next book! :-(

Overall:  Guys, I really have no idea why The Southern Vampire Mysteries are a hit or why HBO decided to make it into a TV series. IMHO, the plot is week. The show is better - plot wise at least. But what it does have going for it is 1) The characters are awesome and dynamic. 2) Sookie is a strong leading lady that doesn't take vampire crap. 3) It's different. There is no other vampire book like it that I know of. And I think that's the most important element. And 4) Eric Northman would eat the Cullens for breakfast and make it look hot.

~ J.D. Brown ~
author of the Dark Heirloom series * March 2011

Website ~ Blog ~ Facebook ~ Twitter

As Real As You Can Fake It

As C.J. mentioned Monday, this week we are talking about how we create the fictional worlds of our books and short stories.

Most of us are, no doubt, jaded by the fantastic world we see in the movie versions of books like Lord of the Rings, Chronicles of Narnia and Harry Potter.

One must also remember that the creation of the worlds in those classics took years. In some cases, authors like J.R.R. Tolkien died while still fleshing out their new worlds.

My worlds are not quite that extensive.  Why? Because they don’t need to be. There was only one J.R.R. Tolkien, only one C.S. Lewis. I’m not going to reinvent the wheel.

Fortunately, I don’t have to and neither do you.

I form my fictional lands from what I have or see around me. A childhood visit to Martha’s Vineyard or Nantucket can be the inspiration for an island of a fantasy age for Damsels of Distress.

For Land of the Blind, the lead character, Devereaux Marshall Fox, operates in a futuristic world, but one not more than a century or two beyond this current age. Therefore, I need only to bone up with an issue or two of Popular Science to get the juices flowing and come up with potential new technology for the future.

And I also use what I view. I see Tom Cruise uses special gloves to physically move items around a three-dimensional computer screen. Then, I see a prototype of that computer where users use interactive technology to move things around a flat screen. The computer can be displayed on any surface with a holographic fully functioning keyboard beamed onto any hard surface. Amazing stuff that I need only advance a few years for my world – say, in the form of a cell phone that can do all that.

I see a spy magazine advertising glasses with miniature cameras attached so the wearer can have both hands free. With a little imagination, those glasses can become view screens for computer information like map directions.

And why stay on Earth. Pay attention to the news. They found ancient waterways on Mars. So, imagine what Mars might have looked like with canals and oceans. Transfer those thoughts to a completely new world.

We all took science in school. We all know or have heard about novas, supernovas, black holes, quasars, red giants, pulsars. We might not have paid attention but we heard of them. Use that stuff. Make that journey through space much more realistic, so that when you do introduce something totally made up, it will seem natural.

Think of the Wormhole from Star Trek. That theory is so out there, it literally only exists in the minds of sc ience fiction writers. Scientists can barely get past the theory of dark energy and cold fusion. But, by using the foundations of basic science, writers can create wormholes to travel across entire galaxies in mere hours instead of years and, voila, readers and viewers think wormholes really do exist.

And, most importantly, remember the two most important aspects of your fictional world.

One, it must be survivable.

Create something so inhospitable that your characters have no chance of survival and watch the readers chuck the book or erase it from the Kindle. Your characters must be able to adapt and survive

And two – the most important feature –YOU have to like it. Seems like a no-brainer, but if you create a world that repulses you, you’re not going to revisit it to create your stories. It will be like one of those houses you see on Hoarders. After one visit, the likelihood of you stepping across the threshold again is somewhere between slim and none.

But, if you create it and feel comfortable with it, you’ll visit it again and again.

And, so will your readers.