Tangled in Ideas

The brain is a wonderful and terrible thing.  It gives us all these ideas to write.  Then again, it gives us all these ideas to write.

LOL, I know.  That looks weird.  But it's true.  We have all these wonderful and glorious ideas that we can write, but also can have too many ideas of what to write and how to write it.  So many ideas that sometimes we can get tangled up in them all.  

Case in point:  I've written a fantasy novel.  I'm damn near done editing it.  In fact, I'd say I'm less than two months away from it being publishable.  And my brain comes along and says 'what if we expanded on certain things and in certain areas and instead of one book, we turn this into three books?'  Silly brain.

Shut up, silly brain.  I know what you're doing.  You're afraid of sending this out into the world and having it flop, so you're throwing landmines in the way of publication.  

If I listened to my silly brain, I would spend the next few months writing more words and editing more stuff, and still maybe not have a solid thing to show for it.  I have a solid thing NOW.  It's a good book.  The more I read it, the more convinced I am that it is a good book.  Sure, I could expand on stuff, but that's not what this book needs.  It is what it is without further futzing around.  

Sure, I could delve deeper into the whole 'school for mages' aspect, but that isn't what this is about.  This isn't Harry Potter, for pitysakes.  This is about a bunch of kids - teenagers, really - thrown into training to protect the Shroudlands because there is no one else to do it.  And they don't exactly have a lot of time because, like I said, they're it.  Evil stuff is coming out of the shrouds and they need to handle it, whether they're trained or not.  

So, no, I will not be expanding this one book into three.  The book is done.  I'm editing it.  I'm looking ahead to what will happen in the next book.  I have some ideas.  My silly brain needs to focus on that and drop the damn idea of reworking this book.  

Okay, now that I've smacked my silly brain a bit, maybe I can get down to getting it done.  Finish the damn book and let what comes come.

Do you ever have so many ideas you're getting tangled up in them?  

Ideas are Everywhere

 A question writers often get asked is "Where did you come up with your ideas?"

For me, the general answer is 'everywhere'.  If the question starts with a 'how', the answer changes to 'no clue, they're just there'.  Where?  Everywhere.

Orson Scott Card* is attributed with saying: "Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any."  I don't necessarily ascribe to that.  I think I'm a good writer, but I don't get five or six ideas EVERY DAY.  I think I'd go nuts if I did.  I'd be like a puppy with a dozen different toys all thrown at him at once... GAH!

I do get ideas a lot.  The really good ones... the ones that won't leave me alone... they go into a Word file.  Most of the ideas never make it there.  

News stories often make for good ideas.  Especially for crime fiction.  Natural Causes got its kernel from a crime story that made headlines.  Of course, the book totally diverges from the real story, but the kernel is there.  

Sometimes, the ideas just come from my brain noodling through things.  Like with Early Grave.  I started with the idea that I wanted to do another SCIU novel and then I got to thinking about how I could write a suspense novel with a serial killer that's premise hadn't been done to death.  (pardon the pun)  I came up with the idea that someone was killing old people in nursing homes and making it look like the deaths were natural.  But I didn't want to do an Angel of Death thing.  This killer actually hates old people and wants them dead.  Then I remembered I'd sent Ned Washington to Toledo at the beginning of Fertile Ground.  Voila!  Plot, MC, Setting and we're off to the races.

Sometimes something that happens to you will give you ideas.  Accidental Death was an assortment of experiences, people, and events over the course of my life that rolled themselves into a novel.  

Of course, AD actually started with the basic question 'What if...'  The 'What if' is often a valuable source for ideas.  In the case of AD, the question was 'What if a death that they ruled was accidental wasn't?'  And it sort of snowballed from there.  

Every rare once in a while, I'll get a story idea from a dream.  That's where Untitled Fantasy came from.  Of course, the end product isn't much like the dream.  Hell, I can't even really remember what the dream was about.  I know I got out of bed afterwards and wrote down the crux of it and then when I got up, I transferred it into my Ideas file.  And then I started writing the book.  (Which took me a huge amount of time to finish.)  Like I said, for me, the dream ideas are rare.  Mostly because my dreams are too weird to translate into a story people would want to read.

So, really, ideas are everywhere.  If you can't see that, you're probably going to have a hard time as a writer.  Oh, you could still write.  Some writers only ever have one good idea and one good book in them.  Look at Margaret Mitchell.  She only ever wrote one book (even if some of her other scribblings have now been published) and it was BIG.  If that's your course, if you find yourself NEEDING to write that one book, do it.

Me?  I'll be over here fending off new ideas so I can focus on writing and editing the ideas I already have in the works.  Which, right now, means getting off my dead ass and working on this crazy fantasy idea I dreamed up.  

What about you?  If you're not a writer (yet), what ideas do you have that could be made into a story?  If you're already a writer, where do your ideas come from?

*If you're not familiar with Card, he wrote ENDER'S GAME.  Yes, the one they made into a movie.  He wrote a bunch of other stuff, too.  Definitely not a dude who was short of ideas.

Anything Can be a Weapon

 On FB the other day, I saw people arguing about whether or not keys were an effective weapon against assault.  You know the idea, I hope... Hold your keys with the points sticking out between your fingers and if you're assaulted, go for their face.  One dude was totally against it, saying you'd be better off going barehanded than with your keys because the keys could mangle your hands.  P'shaw.  I'd rather chance hurting my hands to inflict maximum damage on my attacker than not.

But the thread got me thinking...  In fiction, and in real life, anything can be a weapon if you're sufficiently motivated.  In the movie Die Hard II, John McClain kills an attacker with an icicle.  In The Presidio, Sean McConnery's character beats a guy up using only his thumb.  In Grosse Pointe Blank, the MC killed a dude with a pen.  

There's a reason jails make people get rid of their keys, pens, belts, etc. before entering.  Hell, prison shanks are made from damn near everything.  Sharpen a toothbrush and there ya go.

My aunt once stabbed her husband with a fork.  Not to kill him, mind you, but to keep him from eating the last piece of pie.

When I'm out alone at the lake, I make note of the various things within reach I could use to defend myself if need be.  I have a nasty fillet knife in my tackle box.  I have another nasty knife in my go-bag that I sometimes transfer to my pocket.  And I trained myself to be able to pull it out and flip it open one-handed.  I also carry pepper-spray.  I might not always be able to reach those, though.  So I look elsewhere.  Any rock or stick will do.  Hell, at the end of the book Red Dragon, the MCs wife hits the killer with a fishing pole - complete with lures at the end.  If you've never accidentally stuck a fish hook in your hand, you don't know what exquisite pain that can be.  In that case, the pain was sufficient to distract the killer and allow time for someone else to kill him.  Yay.

If it's pointy, a person can be stabbed with it.  If it's heavy, a person can be pummeled with it.  If it's sharp, they can be cut.  In Red 2, the Asian assassin kills a guy with origami, for petesakes.  Who says paper can't be a weapon?  LOL

The idea isn't necessarily to kill the other person.  Especially in a self-defense situation.  The idea might be as simple as giving yourself or your characters a chance to get away.  Stab the villain in the face with your nail file and run like hell.  Scratch them with your car keys.  Poke them with your stiletto heel.  Hit them with your purse full of whatever.  (In 101 Dalmations (the live action one with Glen Close), the heroine's purse was filled with stones she was collecting to pave her garden walk.)

Expand your idea of what can be a weapon and use it to enrich your fiction.  Or save your own life.  Whatever works for you.

What are some other unusual weapons you seen or read about?

The Book... Err... Books

 Just so you know, I'm not dead.  And I really am working on the book.  Books.  Whatever.  

Okay, so it was a book.  As in singular.  Now, I think it might be several books.  A trilogy of books.  Each would complete an arc for the characters, with the overall main arc completed in the third book.  And subsequent books will follow the overall arc for these characters and this world.  

If I'm right, it'll go like this: 1) Training at the Academy 2) Hero Stuff 3) Epic Battle Stuff.  

Not sure if I can pull it off as three whole and complete novels, but I'm digging deeper into everyone and everything.  Fleshing it out.  Making it real.  And re-writing the beginning.  As I do this, I know it's going to be a behemoth if I leave it as just one book.  So, the idea now is to make this one book into three books.  We'll see how that goes as I keep making notes and writing new words into the beginning.  

Fantasy... it's a bear, but it's so much fun.

And hey, since I'm not sleeping, I have plenty of time to write.  Right?

Nothing New Under the Sun

There really is nothing new under the sun.  I was scrolling through my newsfeed this morning and saw a post by a cover artist I follow of a cover for a publisher.  On it was a beastie who looks a lot like the beastie I was just trying to draw.  (His was way better, of course, but then again, he's a pro and I'm a dabbler.)  

I assume his drawing was to the specifications of whatever author the cover was for.  Which means two authors who've never met each other pulled similar beasties out of their heads at nearly the same time.  

I've been thinking about this a bit.  I mean, look at the commercials - specifically the taglines.  Marketing people have to be running out of new things to say about their products, or they're becoming increasingly stupid.  (Here's one that's still new and fresh - with a cat - but most commercials aren't this smart.)  I wish I could remember the worst one I saw the other day.  It went something like 'Dog food  brand... because you have a dog'.  It wasn't dog food, but the gist was the same.  'Eye drops... because you have eyes.'  Maybe it was 'Skin cream... because you have skin.'  Yeah, that sound closer to right.

Anyway, with mankind having written stuff for centuries now, it's hard to come up with something totally new.  

I've talked about this before - a friend wrote a book, got it published, and then got crap about it on the internet because it's similar to another book that had been published a couple years prior.  I had read the previous book and I read my friend's book when it was still pre-published.  There were similarities in the plot and in some of the devices, but that's where the similarities ended.  One's book was lighthearted, the other's was more serious.  

So, my friend dropped her book.  Which was too bad because I thought it was the better book.  I had a major sad that the previous author did nothing to stop her fans from attacking my friend.  A 'hey guys, thanks for your support, but she didn't steal my work, so cut it out' would've been nice. And even sadder is that both books had a particular twist in them that was similar to one in a popular movie, so there really wasn't something NEW to 'steal' anyway.

How do we, as writers, keep this from happening?  How do we write something NEW when it seems like everything out there has been done already?  No clue.  I guess we write our books to the best of our abilities and hope that what we've created isn't too similar to someone else's work.  

You could, of course, read everything that's already been written, so you know for sure.  Heh.  You could research everything and change whatever seems similar, but you run the risk of 1) changing it so that it's now like something else and 2) ruining your own damn book.  

For my part, it's a matter of read what I can and research what I can and hope for the best.  Yes, I will probably change some basic things about the mistmorph.  (Have to research that name so I don't end up having named my critter something someone else has already used.)  Specifically, the quills running along its spine - which is what makes it exceptionally close to what that artist had drawn.  Other than that, I think I'm safe.  His had a wolf head - mine has a panther head with bat eyes and ears.  His was furry and mine is furless with slick gray skin.  Not really that big a deal.  

I really am trying to write this so that it comes off as fresh and original.  I already talked about having a similar name to another fantasy author which gives me a slight stumbler from the get go.  Nothing I can do about that.  People will think what they want to think whether there's a rational basis for it or not.  

And there's a slight plot device that similar to another popular book, but the actual thing and its mythology is, I hope, adequately unusual as to make that a non-issue.  

Is it any wonder fantasy novels take so damn long?  Maybe I'll talk about that next time.

The Floodgates Have Opened

After too long a time not being able to see the story... any story... the floodgates have opened.  My brain is being blitzed with idea bombs.  But do the bombs come when I'm doing nothing and have all the time to sit down at the keyboard?  Nope.  They come when I'm trying to fall asleep.

Last night was a particularly spectacular show.  The hamster-wheel in my head must've been hooked up to some kind of Van de Graaff generator and shit was sparking all over the place.  And I was all like "Doood... I'm trying to sleep here.  Come ON."

I did get up and write some of it down.  The rest?  Well, I can only hope that when it comes time to work on the story, my brain cooperates and shows me once more all the wonderful things it was trying to show me last night.

Unfortunately, when the floodgates opened, they opened wide and hosed me down with ideas for not only this book but the book after this book, wherein our intrepid hero and his merry band move onto the next part of their story.  

I seriously did not want another series like this.  But the story does what the story wants.  I wanted to finish this and then get back to Duke.  Unfortunately, the crime fiction writer hat has been thrown into the wind in favor of the fantasy writer hat... purple velvet with a pointy top gently crumpled over and replete with sparkly stars, comets, and crescent moons.

This probably isn't the best for maintaining a fan base, but... :shrug:  I can't do it any other way.  I can't force the story that my brain doesn't want to write.  Wish I could.  Can't.  

Right now, I'm just happy to be writing again.  Although I do wish I could get some sleep.  Thank goodness there's always coffee.  

My First Book

Last night, Hubs and I watched Armageddon again.  I love that movie so much.  And not just because it's action-packed and funny with characters I can root for who save the world.  It's part of the reason I wrote my first book.

January 2004.  I was sitting in my little apartment watching movies.  I don't remember exactly how it came about, but I'd watched both Armageddon and Deep Impact within a day or two of each other, and something hit me.  After whichever one I watched second was over, I sat down at my computer and wrote.  And wrote.  And wrote.  Into the night.  

That book took me nine months to complete, but it was the first book I ever finished.  (Lord knows, I'd started quite a few over the years.)  Eventually it would become Fear Itself.  And it's more about the fear of something than the actuality of it.  

Of course, not long after I started the book, I met and fell in love with Hubs.  2004 was a busy and eventful year for me.  After we got married, he encouraged me to finish the book and gave me the opportunity to do so. 

I still love that book.  I'd still like to see it polished and published.  Whether that ever actually happens?  :shrug:  It's a behemoth.  And I've learned so much since I first wrote it that turning it into something publishable may be a pipe dream.  But hey, pipe dreams can still come true.  Right?

If you're a writer, what spurred you to write your first book?  If you're a reader, what pipe dreams do you have? 

Just Get Up and Write The Damn Thing

Now I lay me down to sleep
When into my head the stories creep
If I don't get up and write them down
I'll wake up with a serious frown.
So, there I was Sunday night, trying to sleep, when this scene popped into my head.  The beginning scene for a new mystery laid itself out beautifully.  So I made myself get up and write some of it down.  That usually makes the scene stop playing so I can get some sleep, and it's also usually enough to get me going on writing the next day.

1)  It didn't stop playing in my head.
2)  I didn't write enough of it down to really get back in the groove with it.

I told myself I should just get up, turn the damn computer back on, and write the whole damn scene.  Did I?  Nope.  And the next day, as I was sitting at my keyboard looking at the few notes I had written, I cursed myself for a fool.  It's been so hard to write these past few months I should've recognized the story was more precious than the sleep.  But I didn't.

Still, I sat my ass down and wrote.  Oh my god, what came out was so lame.  Definitely not the glowing words I'd thought of the night before.  I wanted to chuck it all in the trash and go back to sitting on my ass.  But I couldn't just give up.  The story was shrieking to be written.  I tried again last night.  Whole new file, blank page, sit your ass down and write.

This try was not lame.  And it flowed pretty much the way it had when I thought of it the night before.  1300 words.  Woohoo.

I have only a slight clue where I'm going with this.  I don't know the MC in the slightest.  It doesn't dovetail with any of my current stories.  The MC is a whole new person.  It's kind of noir.  It's gritty.  More like Accidental Death than anything else I've written.  But more so.

We'll see if I can keep it going and not second guess myself (which has already begun by the way) and write the whole damn thing.  It's not the book I need to finish right now, but it's the book I need to finish.  Maybe writing this will jumpstart my lead ass so I can finish Cinder Ugly.  Fingers crossed.

Writer Brain

The writer brain is a strange, strange place.  I think, usually, the term 'writer brain' is used for times when writers can't necessarily connect with what's going on around them.  Stuff happens and we're all like 'huh, what?' 

But there's another thing writer brains do... at least mine does... and that's to come up with endless possibilities for any given thing all the time.  To see not just both sides of an issue, but every possible side to the issue.  To wonder 'what if' about everything.

For me, this comes in really handy watching true crime shows and reading mysteries.  I can usually figure out the whodunnit or if not the exact killer, then several possibilities of who did it. 

It also leads me to a wide array of conspiracy theories.  This came in pretty handy when writing Project Hermes.  (On sale now... see what I did there?)  I thought about microchips for animals and wondered 'what if a microchip carried more than just information?'  And then 'what if there was something in there that could kill?'  And then 'what if someone bad in the government got a hold of the ability to use that?'  Bingo bango bongo... a book. 

I also think about smaller conspiracies...  like 'what if she left her car running because she was actually trying to fill my house with CO2 and kill me?' (Accidental Death)  Or 'what if an elderly person's death wasn't because they were old?' (Early Grave)

My conspiracy theories also come in handy for a laugh around the house.  This morning, I posited a theory to Hubs and he suggested that perhaps he needed to look into buying me a tinfoil hat.  And we laughed. 

I don't really need a tinfoil hat. Just because I posit a theory doesn't mean I believe it's true.  I'm just putting it out there.  Because it was just in here (points to head.)   If it never comes to light that it's true, it's just one of my weird theories.  And if it does turn out to be true, I can say 'I told you so'.   If nothing else, it's good fodder for the writing.

Do you have any conspiracy theories?  Or is it just me?

Nothing New Under the Sun

Once upon a time, I took a theater class.  My professor said something I haven't forgotten.  There's nothing new under the sun.  Yeah, not exactly ground breaking, but it stuck with me.  He also said there are a limited number of plots out there and each writer has to adapt their story around one of them.  

Years ago, I had two writer friends.  One of them shared an idea with me that I thought was pretty cool.  It was in its infancy and she had a lot of other irons in the fire, so it wasn't on her front burners.  Meanwhile, the other published a book with a really similar premise.  Time passed and the first friend edited her book and got it published.  And there was a shitstorm.  The fan base of Writer #2 accused Writer #1 of stealing the idea.  They didn't even know each other and I can state with absolute certainty no one was stealing anything.  (As if one can 'steal' ideas anyway.)  Writer #1 had the idea before Writer #2's book was even published.  But the shitstorm was of such a virulent strain that Writer #1 unpublished her book.

Which was too bad because her delivery of the concept was way better than Writer #2's.  Sorry.  Just being honest there.  :shrug:  And since then, I have picked up at least two other books with eerily similar premises.  It might've been a new take on an old premise in 2000s, but it sure ain't new now.

Recently, I picked up a book to read.  I thought it was a straight cozy mystery, but it turned out to be  a paranormal mystery.  And I stopped dead in my tracks when I got to the part that was too similar to Ugly and the Beast (i.e. when the talking cat came on scene).  UatB is already written, so no worries about 'stealing ideas', but even the perception of it scares me.  I don't need a shitstorm visiting me.  Not that it isn't still possible some readers of that book will accuse me of 'stealing ideas' from her.  Not a damn thing I can do about that should it happen.  I know I won't be crawling into a hole if it does.  I can prove I didn't steal a damn thing.  (Then again, Writer #1 had proof, too.  She simply opted not to fight.)

In the past month, I've seen two different 'similar to Harry Potter' series hit the stores.  I read the first book in another one last year.

There's nothing new under the sun, folks.

But don't despair.  So what if you have an idea and it's kind of like another book?  Are you making it different?  Of course you are, because each of us brings our own experiences to the books we write.  Unless you're copying the book word for word, it's not stealing.  (Okay, if you copy it and only change a few things - like names and stuff - it's probably still stealing.)  If you learn about it before your book is published and you can make reasonable changes, do so if it makes you feel better.  Sorry - the talking cat is staying.  It doesn't make sense if Oliver is any other animal.  And I already paid for the cover with a cat on it.  I don't want to pay extra to have the cat removed, thank you very much.

What I do need to do is make sure Oliver's voice is unique to him.  A little extra editing should fix that.  (It was already in my notes to fix that, so no biggie.)

With all the books being written today, odds are you're going to be writing something that is similar to someone else's ideas.  Not much any of us can do about that.  How many different stories can be directly tied to something Shakespeare wrote - even if you discount the stories that actually SAY they're based on Romeo and Juliet or The Taming of the Shrew?

Do the best you can to make your stories unique to you.  And weather the storm as best you can.

Oh, and as a side note, the other day I saw a book being marketed that's premise is an awful lot like Writer #1's popular multi-book series.  Shit happens.  I just hope Writer #1's fan base isn't as vicious about it as Writer #2's was.

(To maintain the authors' anonymity, I've tried to make this as vague as possible in relation to them.) 

Stuffs

The reason I've been posting a lot about sales and marketing is that is all I'm doing right now.  No new words still.  No editing.  Just sales and marketing.  Which is better than nothing writerly, I guess.

The Sleeping Ugly sale ended last night.  It tanked.  The best thing to come out of it was that someone read the whole thing in KU and then started reading Wish in One Hand.  Sorta how that end-links thing is supposed to work.  Yay.  If that one person reads the entirely of the OUAD series, it will pay for the ad.  Also yay.

I've been spending some time thinking about writing.  Better than last month when I couldn't even do that.  Baby steps, I guess.  Although, it would probably help if my brain would stop skipping from one story to the next.  "I could do this with SCIU #4 and that with DH #3 and here's a page for that Arthurian UF and here's some lines for... and maybe if you did this with..." Stop it already.  Find a story and stick with it.

I saw on FB that my cover artist fell and crumpled herself.  Ack.  I have a spot with her next month for the third Ugly cover.  I don't need it next month (the book isn't even close to being written), but it was only spot she had available so I snapped it up.  She doesn't have any more open spots until sometime in 2020.  Anyway, I hope she gets better quick - and not just because I need her.  She's a super-cool person and really nice and she doesn't deserve to be laid up.

Is it just me or do other self-published authors have nightmares about stuff like that?  Artists and editors injuring themselves so they won't be there when we need them?  :shudder:

While I'm not writing or publishing, I'm hoarding fundage so that when the dam finally does break and I'm ready to put more books out into the universe, I'll be able to pay for them.  Or, you know, if my computer has a meltdown, I'll be able to get a new one.  That kind of stuffs.

Oh, and I'm putting the entire Once Upon a Djinn series on sale next month.  The 3rd through the 9th.  WIOH will be 99c/99p.  The rest will be $1.99.  I have an ad with Bargain Booksy going out on the 5th.  I might try doing some other advertising during that time.  Maybe I'll make the leap and try an Amazon ad. 

I think that's about all the stuff for right now.  Any questions?  Comments?  Stuffs of your own?

Paperbacks, Back Matter, and Making Sellthrough Easier

First off, I got the letter from Createspace finally and got my paperbacks ported over to Amazon.  It wasn't really all that hard, but there's a little glitch so that when you go to my Author Page and click Paperbacks, the prices are off.  None of my paperbacks should be over $15.99 (actually I think they're all less than that even, but I don't feel like looking).  If you want to buy a paperback and you're only seeing the higher price, contact me and I'll shoot you a good link.

Now, with that out of the way, I'd like to talk to you about another thing I was working on this weekend.  Back Matter.  Or rather, moving my back matter to the front of my books.

It all had to do with that link I posted on Friday.  Part of what he said in that article struck me.  When you're reading on the newer versions of Kindle, and you get to THE END, it automatically shunts you to a page where you can click through to review the book.  So readers aren't actually seeing the back matter of the book.

Well, not unless they're sufficiently motivated to click back and then go forward again.  It can be done, it's just a pain in the ass.  And, as we all know, people don't generally do things they perceive as being a pain in their asses. I know I usually don't go back and look at the back matter once Amazon has shunted me away from it.

The answer?  Put the back matter at the front.  Then leave a single lines with links right after THE END to the next book in the series or to your Author Page (if it's not a series titles) so they can go buy another book, if they're so inclined.

It kinda looks like this:

When a reader finishes one book and goes on to buy the next, it's called Sellthrough.  And thus far, I have sucked at it.  Oh, occasionally I'll get a reader who finds the links and then clicks through to buy another book.  Here and there, I've had KU readers start with one book and read them all.  And thank you to them for putting in the extra effort.  But I don't want it to be an effort.

So, I made it easier for them.

Now, I realize that since Kindle opens my books at the start of the first chapter, people would also have to be inclined to go forward a bit to read stuff like my bio and Copyright Page, etc.  But they don't have to jump back to the book from another site to get there.  And it's all in the Table of Contents, so it will be easy for anyone who wants to find it.

:shrug:  I'm not sure if it'll work, but it's worth a try.  The next time I do a sale, I'll try and chart the Sellthrough.

And hey, it can't hurt.  All it cost me was some time when I could've been watching golf.  ;o)

Short Stuffs and Mini Updates

I had an idea for Ugly and the Beast the other night.  I didn't get up and write it down and now it's gone.  All I'm left with is the memory of thinking it was really awesome.

Sleeping Ugly should be back to me tomorrow for final edits on my end.  As long as they aren't numerous or lengthy, I should be able to put this up for pre-order sometime before the 25th.  Or would you rather I just put the book up for sale when it's ready?

Part of me wants to put books up for pre-order.  Another part doesn't see the point. As a reader, I rarely pre-order books.  I don't like buying something and then waiting for the cost to come out of my bank account at some future date.  Cuz I might forget about it. 

Obviously, I am not going to have Ugly and the Beast ready to send to AWE any time soon.  So, I'm going to send her Unequal next, in order to have a fourth book come out this year.  From a sales standpoint, I probably should've buckled down and busted my ass to get UatB out next, but apparently that's not how I roll, baby. 

If you're keeping track, Sleeping Ugly will be my 12th published novel.

I had planned to do some marketing for the Once Upon a Djinn series this month, but since the stuff I had planned fell through, I scrapped the idea and went ahead and raised all the prices for those books to $3.99.  Now I have to wait 30 days to hold any kind of sales for those, so maybe next month I'll do something sparky. 

I still haven't done paperbacks for my last two books.  Do any of you care?  Cuz if I thought anyone cared, I'd be more motivated to get that stuff done. 

My cover artist is doing a paperback cover for Sleeping Ugly.  I'm still not sure if I'll go paperback with that book yet, but I'll have the option. 

Okay.  That's it.  Does anyone have any questions?  Comments?  Wisdoms?

Sleeping Ugly... The Story Behind the Story

Years ago, when I was a teen, my middle brother was home on leave from the Air Force.  I remember staggering out of my bedroom one morning and hearing the words "Stop plucking your eyebrows like that.  You look like a..."  Wait... that's not the right story...

Another time, when he was home on leave, I stumble out of my bedroom and hear the words "You're not Sleeping Beauty.  You're Sleepin' Ugly."

My brother is funny that way.  And just so you know, he's my favorite brother* - witty comic statements and all.  (Actually, his witty statements are probably part of the reason he's my favorite.)

Flash forward about thirty years and the phrase came to mind one day when I was trying to decide what to write next.  Along with the phrase came the idea of a super model who gets cursed so that when she falls asleep at night, she turns ugly. 

That's clever, but not enough to build a whole story around.  So I sat down and did some thinking.  She can't just turn ugly and be ugly.  It wasn't enough.  So I made the curse not stop there.  She gets better looking throughout the day until she's back to herself by the time she falls asleep (or midnight, whichever comes first) and then BAM!  Ugly again.  Every night. 

But it's not just her.  The one night stand she was with the night the curse hit her got it, too.  Except his curse is slightly different.  He's ugly from sundown to sunup.  Which sucks for him because he works nights as a bouncer at a trendy nightclub. 

And then the fun begins.  Who cursed them?  Was the curse aimed at her or at him? 

And then, of course, I couldn't stop there.  I mean, that's probably enough of a pain in both their asses, but I threw another wrench in the machine and had the cops show up for something totally unrelated.  Or is it? 

Bwa ha ha.

And all of this came about because sometime back in the '80s, my brother was being a wiseass.  So, yeah, I'm dedicating this book to him.  Because he gave me the title, and it's a wiseass kind of book. 

I hope you enjoy it.

*Okay, so maybe he wasn't my favorite at the time.  He was just a jerk older brother then.  And that's okay.  Every teenage girl should have a jerk older brother.  It toughens you up a bit.  In fact, there's a jerk older brother in this book.  WAY worse than mine and still a jerk as an adult.  At least mine stopped being a jerk once we became adults.  (Or I got over myself and stopped perceiving him as a jerk.)

The Story Behind the Story: Blink of an I

Years ago, I had this idea.  I wanted to write something similar to Fahrenheit 451, Anthem, Brave New World, 1984, etc.  So I got to thinking...

What would it take to get the world to a point where it becomes the world in Anthem or Fahrenheit 451? 

That's where Blink of an I started.  A pondering of what steps would lead to those dystopias.  Now, obviously, I couldn't write a book about all the steps.  Good lord, that would take forever and be thousands of pages long.  Whatever book I wrote would have to be way smaller than that. 

But where to begin...

I started with one character.  One simple, unassuming person.  So unassuming, in fact, she needed a totally bland and forgettable name - Mary Jones.  And she needed to be nothing.  Or rather, she needed to think of herself as nothing.  Because she'd been taught to think of herself as nothing. 

In Anthem, the main character doesn't even have a name because individuality has been wiped out.  The blink of the 'I', so to speak.  And there's where I got the title. 

And so it began.  As I said, I'm a sort of pantser.  More so when I started this book initially back in 2006.  I had no idea where I was going.  I just started walking and waited to see where it would lead me.  Thus, I had numerous starts - all of them wrong.  I trashed them and started over.  And over.  And over.  I can't even remember when I had a full, finished first draft of this.  And even then, I worked it over too many times to mention. 

I queried agents with this sucker.  Erm, yah.  Didn't go well.  Then I put it away. 

Last year, when I began a way to fund my publishing empire without having to wait on the book sales to do it, I dusted Blink off and sent it to my editor.  Well, perhaps 'dusted off' isn't quite correct.  I sent it to AWE dust intact.  (And, man, if was WAY dustier than I thought.) 

Anyway, it's in the process of being scrubbed and polished.  It'll finally be available next month sometime.  (Good lord willin' and the creek don't rise.)  This one took me roughly 11.5 years to get out there.  YEARS.  And I hope y'all will enjoy it.

Any questions?  Comments? 

Speaking of Blink, I did promise to announce a winner in the Cover Contest thing.  Since only two people commented, they can both win.  Deb wanted a copy of this, I believe.  (Email me whether you want a PDF ARC or a PDF of the finished version, Deb.)  Stacy didn't say what she wanted.  (Email me your preference, Stacy.  Do you want a copy of this when it's finished or one of my other books (e-copy or paperback)?)

NaNoWriMo: Still No, But...

If you're participating in NaNoWriMo this year you should be at 13350 or so by the end of tonight.  I am still not participating.  But...

Last night as I was trying to go to sleep, my brain started playing with the next Dennis Haggarty book.  I already had the general premise laid out, but not enough that it was blowing my skirt up enough to write it.  Last night?  My silly brain figured it out.  I dragged my butt out of bed and wandered over here to write it down. 

You see, I had this idea that Dennis goes off to a conference of rural police chiefs, and I was trying to think of exactly which little town in CO I would drop the conference into.  Then it occurred to me - drop the conference into Last Ditch. 

Okay, that was a good idea.  Not worth dragging my butt out of bed for, though.  I'd remember that one.  What got me out of bed was the acronym for the conference... CARPAC.  The Colorado Association of Rural Police Administrators & Chiefs*.

I never would've remembered that if I hadn't written it down.  And just like that, I'm excited about writing this.  Silly what lights the fire sometimes, eh?

So, I'm still not doing NaNo, but I may be writing this month after all.  In fact, if I start this now, I could have the first draft done by the end of the year.  Maybe.  We'll see.

What silly things have lit your fire?


*Yeah, it's lame, but sometimes the hoops people jump through to make an acronym are lame, so it works in its own weird way. 

Writing Ideas File

"Everybody walks past a thousand story ideas every day. The good writers are the ones who see five or six of them. Most people don't see any." - Orson Scott Card

I don't know if I'd agree with the idea that seeing five or six story ideas a day means you're a good writer.  Or if not seeing that many means you're ordinary.  But, yeah, there are a myriad of story ideas out there in the world and we walk by them every day.  Sometimes they're a passing fancy that comes to nothing.  Other times they light a fire in a writer's heart and the only thing to do is sit down and start typing.  Most times, they just stick long enough to put them into a file for later use.

My 'Writing Ideas' file is at 8 pages long - single spaced and set as bullet points, so I can separate one from another. 

Some of them are just a kernel of an idea, like: Medical examiner w/ pet cadaver dog.

Some of them are fully fleshed.  (No example because I don't want anyone to write my idea.  Silly, but that's how I roll, baby.)  A few of the fully-fleshed ones are now books - Fertile Ground, for one.  Others are totally written, but haven't made it to book yet.  Some are partially written stories that I really need to get back to.

Reading through the list the other day - when I stopped to put a new idea at the bottom - I realized I still want to write most of these ideas.  Of course, I'd have to live to be 150. 

And I get new ideas to add to the list, so I may never finish - even if I do live to be 150.

Of course, it would help if I was actually writing right now.  Maybe reading through the ideas file will light a fire under my ass.  We'll see.

Do you have an ideas file?

Ideas. Where do they come from?

A while back I had a reader ask via Goodreads where I get my ideas.  Well, it's a funny thing.  Part of me wants to give the old speech about 'the stork brings them' or 'they come from under cabbage leaves'... Oh wait, that's babies. 

I really don't have an answer for where ideas come from.  Not mine anyway.

Sometimes, I'll see something on the news and it'll spark an idea.  I have pages and pages of those in a file on my hard drive.

Sometimes, I'll see something on a fictional program or in a movie, and riff off that.  My first book was sparked by the movies Armageddon and Deep Impact.  I didn't like seeing Bruce Willis die and I sure as hell didn't like seeing the eastern seaboard destroyed.  So, I fixed it.  My second book came from something I saw about The Year Without a Summer (the year the supervolcano wiped out Tambora and threw so much ash into the atmosphere, they really didn't have a summer in places that ought to.)

A few times I asked myself a question and the story idea comes out of the answer.  For instance, Wish in One Hand is the result of my asking myself what kind of urban fantasy I could write that would be different from what's already out there.  Genies!  Of course, by the time I actually finished the book, Sonya Bateman was out there with her genie books.  And now there are others.  But I still think mine's pretty different. 

Then I asked myself what I could do with the genies to make the story more.  Genies are, by their nature, slaves.  What if my heroine is a freed genie who helps other genies get free, too?  And then I upped the stakes.  "What if there are people who don't like her running around freeing other genies?" "What if something is killing genies to prove a point?" 

I guess there's the real answer to the question - where do my ideas come from?  They come from 'What if?'  My brain is always running through possibilities and scenarios of how things could be different with a simple twist here and a zig there.  LOL, probably why I have a tough time sleeping.  My brain needs to shut the hell up long enough for rest.  But as they say, there's no rest for the wicked. 

I hope that helps answer the eternal question - at least about me.  Not sure what other authors would give as their source of ideas.  What do you think?

The 50-word Blurb

Hey all.  It's marketing time again.  Still.  Ad infinitum.  And I want to talk about an intriguing concept I read about yesterday that kind of made me rethink my back cover copy, or blurb, if you will.

I've been tossing this around for a while now, but I haven't really implemented it until I read this post over at The Mad Genius Club - Blurbs: Short and Sweet.

The idea I've been tossing around is this - take everything that was hammered into you about writing a query letter and chuck that shit out.  In a query letter, you have 250 words to capture the attention of an agent who may or may not think your idea is interesting enough to work with you on getting it published.  With a blurb, you have seconds for a reader to decide whether they want to shell out their hard-earned money on your book. 

It needs to be faster.  Zippier.  Attention grabbing.

Think about it.  A reader scrolls through wherever, sees your cover, and clicks the link to see two things - 1) How many stars do you have? and 2) what is your book about?

We'll set aside the star thing for now.  But that's the progression - See the cover, see how many stars a book has, read the blurb.  If any of those fall down, you're screwed. I assume you've already got a neat cover.  The review thing will come or it won't.  So, that leaves you with the next thing you have control over - that blurb.

Chances are if the first few sentences of your 'product description' don't attract their attention, they aren't going to click 'Read More' to see how awesome your blurby prose is.  They aren't going to scroll down and read what awesome things your readers had to say.  They're going to move on to one of the other millions of reading material available.

Now, admittedly, I totally suck at this.  But I'm trying.  I spent a good portion of yesterday morning attempting to write what the author of the Mad Genius article suggested - a 50 word blurb.  50 words.  a 100K word manuscript with all its twists and turns and character intricacies boiled into 50 freakin' words.  Ain't an easy thing.

Here's where to start.  Stop thinking of it as a 100,000 word manuscript.  Don't worry about the intricacies.  I know you worked REALLY hard on all that.  I know the urge is there to weave it all into a glittering block of text to entice readers.  You can't.  Sorry.  It's impossible.  Sure, all that will be necessary to hold your readers' interest, but they really aren't to a point where they give a rat's ass about any of it.  They're at the 'I wonder if I should spend money on THIS book rather than THAT book' point.

"Should I eat at Olive Garden or Red Lobster today?"  That point.  They've already made up their mind that they're going out to eat. Which do they choose?  Well, Olive Garden's got this commercial where everything is cheesy and gooey, and there are those unlimited breadsticks.  Red Lobster's got steaming hot shrimp on skewers and appetizers that make my brain water.  Or they could eat at Joe Nobody's Family Diner.  No one's ever heard of it, but the way they describe their homemade meatloaf is mindblowing.  And they might be a little less expensive.

And if they're doing a good job, their meatloaf lives up to the expectations.  If you love it, you'll be back for another helping.

That meatloaf is your book.  The point is, you have to get them in the door.  You have to encourage them to buy a meal and stick around for dessert.  They eat good, they'll be back, but they can never come back if they were never there in the first place.

Draw the customers in.

I don't have it all figure out yet.  I do feel like I'm on the right course, though.  And if I fall down on this short and sweet blurb thing, I can always go back to the long and descriptive blurb.  That's the great thing about self-publishing.  If something doesn't work, you can change it without having to jump through a building full of other people.

So, here's the test blurb for BloodFlow. 


Agent Randi Kruz knows Project Hermes is killing people. But the government won’t allow anything to hamper their plans for microchipping the populace. Despite numerous threats against her, she has to uncover the truth before anyone else dies. Locating the madmen responsible will be difficult. Stopping them might be impossible.

What do you think?  And look at it with a reader's eye, not a writer's.  Like you're just someone looking for something to read and not looking to snag an agent. Would a blurb like that entice you to buy or to investigate further?  Maybe check out the Preview pages?  Perhaps read the reviews?