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Posts Tagged ‘self-publishing’

Unexpected Interest

Posted in Books, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on 04 Aug 2014| Leave a Comment »

Bath Abbey Fan VaultingSometimes, the word “interesting” isn’t enough.

This weekend past, as well as being sad, stressful, productive, lazy, and maddening, was also interesting.

It was the 31st anniversary of my wedding. It was the yahrzeit of the death of my wife’s mother. It was a weekend of plans, and of disrupted plans. It was a weekend with three reservations to the same restaurant, each one made and canceled in daily succession. It was a weekend of editing, rereading and rewriting my latest short story (“The Book of Solomon”), proofing it, polishing it, and then sending it off to a paying market.

It was also the weekend when I got an email from the Senior Librarian in Sumner, WA, asking if I’d be interested in participating in a panel, this October.

Yeah, “interesting” doesn’t really cover it.

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Not Another Word

Posted in Books, Fallen Cloud Saga, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 17 Apr 2014| 2 Comments »

Over on Facebook, a reader mentioned a scene in FC:1 that she really liked. I like to investigate this sort of specific feedback–the good and the bad–to see what worked and what didn’t work for my readers.

I remembered the scene she mentioned in general, but not in detail. The main reason I wanted to investigate, though, was that her description of it as dialogue-free was not my recollection; I remembered it as being chatty to the extreme, as two swoony teenaged girls prattled on about how divine it was going to be to see Sarah Bernhardt on stage. (For those of you out of the 19th-century loop, Sarah Bernhardt was the Lady Gaga of her day.)

So, I pulled down my copy of The Year the Cloud Fell and tried to figure out what this reader had meant when she referred to the scene’s “shared communication and not a scrap of dialogue.”

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Babies and Bathwater

Posted in Books, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , on 14 Jan 2014| 1 Comment »

Writing with Pen and PaperIf you don’t have one, you need one. In fact, you need several.

I’m talking about beta readers, those folks you lure/ wheedle/ cajole/ beg/ entrap into reading your baby, promising them anything from sex to chocolate to whisky—for the record, that last one is the coin of my realm—in order to get their input, their take, their particular and specific impressions.

This weekend, I received the draft copy of a new memoir from the talented, wry, and always engaging Todd Baker, whose first book, Ten Year Run: A Marathoning Memoir, I was lucky enough to beta-read. His new work, about his lifelong love of heavy metal music, promises to be a hell of a lot of fun, not to mention a good dose of humor in a difficult time.

I’m lucky, also, in that Todd is one of my beta readers. (more…)

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It’s a Rule

Posted in Culture, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on 31 Dec 2013| Leave a Comment »

Salal RainIt’s Blogging 101: Thou shalt recap the year.

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Sorry About That

Posted in Books, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on 29 Oct 2013| 4 Comments »

In retrospect, yesterday’s post was a bad idea and very out of character. I had misgivings and hesitated before posting, but I ascribed those feelings to being “brave” and maybe even a bit “edgy” with my choice of topic.

Nope. Instead, it came across as a petulant, whinge-filled pity-fest served with a big side of “Buy my book and tell me it’s grand.”

Ew…and therefore…my apologies. That was not what I wanted to say, and that is not what I want this blog to be about.

Here’s what I want to say, instead. (more…)

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Let’s Be Honest

Posted in Books, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on 28 Oct 2013| 9 Comments »

I’m biased. There. I said it.

I’m biased, in that I like the books I’ve written. I can’t help it. Frankly, I wouldn’t be able to get through the writing part of being a novelist without liking the books I write. Writing a book I didn’t like? Not gonna happen.

So, I’m biased, and that’s unfortunate, because it makes it impossible for me to understand why Unraveling Time didn’t sell.

And I want to know.

Seriously. I want to have an honest, open conversation about why this book didn’t sell. (more…)

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Emily is GO for Launch

Posted in Books, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , on 17 Sep 2013| 7 Comments »

The Revitalization of EmilyWe are live. “The Revitalization of Emily” is live on Amazon, and available for Kindle readers and apps.

Formatting went well, but there’s one new lesson I learned. Fonts that work well on the printed page are often too big for the Kindles. I had a couple of iterations before the headers worked properly.

Overall, though, an easy process.

Some people wonder why I do this on Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) instead of iBooks or Smashwords or any of the several other venues open to short fiction works. They also wonder why I don’t put it up everywhere, simultaneously.

The main reason is one word: reach. (more…)

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