I don’t even know when the last time is I logged on here, let alone posted content, reviewed others’ content, or acted like a member of this community. I’m still alive, still writing. In fact, I’ve started taking a class from David Gerrold, which is exciting. In case anyone’s interested, I’ve launched a new website with a series of shorts I’ve been working on, called Tales of the West. Stop on by if you care.
Life has been complicated for months, but I'm not dead yet. I'm also not writing, but that's another story. Wait, what...? No, never mind. I stayed up WAY past my bedtime last night and finished "Never Leaving Laramie" by John W. Haines. If you like true-life adventures (think Rinker Buck, et al), written eloquently (Robert Traver, etc.), put this collection on your list. I say "collection" because it's a series of short stories about his adventures around the worlds over a couple decades, ending in tragedy (that he tells you about right up front, so no spoilers here). The entire collection hangs together because the stories are sequential, and have the common theme of him returning to places or people after a trip, and always referring back to Laramie.
Well, I've gone and done it. I created a special edition of my debut novel by inserting a graphic of an autograph and a map of the area the story takes place (created by our own @Night Herald no less). I "minted" ten copies of the book as NFTs and put them on Rarible for sale for 0.1 ETH each (about US$200 at today's exchange rate). I have no idea if they'll sell, and it cost me about US$75 to go through the process (prices for minting vary throughout the day, but I just went with the prices that were offered at the moment I did it). One neat thing about selling an NFT on the blockchain is that if someone buys it and sells it on (I presume after consuming whatever's inside), I get a 10% royalty on the sale, and every sale thereafter. So if, for instance, my novel got sold on for 0.25 ETH (about US$500), I'd get US$50 on that transaction. Every time. The NFT craze is almost inexplicable, and I have no idea if my book will sell. But at least I'm offering something that can be consumed, rather than just crappy "art" that's being offered right now (there's some good art being offered too). This will be interesting if it goes somewhere. https://rarible.com/token/0xd07dc4262bcdbf85190c01c996b4c06a461d2430:476116:0x5dbe716cd5fafc467c4b4d9425ea6d7d16622d89?fbclid=IwAR0jj8hRdzf53Tw7sFORJN6-4DiMTxOwj5sYQvmQoGFCXGiYydgKuqsymA0
I'm excited. I mean, I'm really excited. It's live. Presale only right now, and there's still time for me to agonize over this phrase or that and push an update (feedback is coming in from beta readers), but it's live! The release date is March 12 (Friday, my birthday). If any of you feel so generous as to want to spend US$5 (~GBP 3.5) to support my dream, click the link below. But beyond that, thank you to everyone who helped me get through this. This organization is mentioned in the dedication. Thank you all. https://www.amazon.com/Lives-Time-Part-One-J-D-ebook/dp/B08Y7F9BXV/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=lives+in+time+by+j.d.+ray&qid=1615130685&s=digital-text&sr=1-1
I'm creating the KDP listing for my novel, and am struggling a bit with the description copy. Here's what I have so far. Feedback appreciated (as always).
I'm a little bit scared. Maybe a lot. For the better part of three years, I've been working on a novel. I had an idea... well, my wife had an idea, and I had the determination to write a story around it (she's the smart one, you see; I get by with perseverance). I wrote, re-wrote, got feedback and encouragement from friends who are actual writers, polished, polished, and polished some more. Finally I contracted some artists to produce a cover and a couple of interior drawings. In short, I've done all the things. Last night, I worked on final formatting, and with the exception of one niggling little formatting issue that no one else will notice and I can live with, the final package is finished. It's ready to publish. Of course, there's more to do. I created a Facebook page, and started making some posts there, but I need to do more with that. And I need to figure out a roll-out campaign, find a handful of people to give free copies to so they can read and provide reviews, and maybe spend some money on advertising. There are checklists for all this and more, and I can follow directions. But I'm scared. I've put a lot into this, and frankly I'm afraid it's not good enough. Oh, I know it's not GOOD WRITING, but I believe it's passable; better than a lot of what's self-published on the Kindle platform. But what if I have a giant blind spot, and the rest of the world thinks differently? What if, in the final analysis, in the court of public opinion, my work has no value? Part of me says that I have to take the leap. I have to take the risk, take the hit, learn from my mistakes, and keep at it. That's what the pros would tell me. It's what they're going to tell me. It's probably what's going to happen. Because (and those of you who really know me will verify this), I'm stubborn. But I'm also scared.
A few more tweaks and here's the final (still with creator watermarks). I'm so excited. Yes, it's not perfect. But for the money, it's amazing (to me). View attachment 23067
I am once again feeling inspired. Over the winter, I steeled myself to make a few revisions to my WIP, and have polished it (Mythbusters proved this was possible) to the point that I'm confident that it's ready for production. I wouldn't mind one or two more beta readers, particularly if they were women, because I want to be sure that I have Celeste's perspective well-written. As I crested the hill that overlooked the valley of publication, I began to think once again about cover art. I've been following a couple of cover art groups on FB, and engaged one of the companies for an eBook cover and a social media banner to match. The company is MiblArt, and I was very impressed with the process and the results. In short, for a US$149* basic fee (plus $39 for the social media banner), they did a cover from an assembled collection of stock art (a fully illustrated cover is available for more money, but I didn't want to, nor it seems need to, spend that kind of dough). I filled out a form that gave a basic description of the novel, some significant visual elements, and provided a list of covers that I liked the look of and why (I referenced their gallery for their convenience, as it's an excellent gallery with a broad representation of cover styles). Two days later -- yes, only two days -- they replied with an email and a sample cover image. I was gobsmacked. It wasn't perfect, but very close. I replied with a few revision requests, the designer asked a few more clarifying questions, which I answered, and three days after that, I have a cover image that I'm very pleased with. Their basic agreement is that "unlimited revisions" are available, but I see no need to keep asking for tiny tweaks to an otherwise excellent cover. I could obsess over details until I was blind, but what they've provided is so much closer to the content of the story than many professionally-published novels I've read that it's immeasurable. So, without further ado, here's the art as it stands (scaled to fit in the file size limits). Mind you, to date, they haven't charged me a dime. There's a watermark on the image, which will come off after payment, but it's faint enough that it doesn't impede my ability to review the quality of the work, which again is high. Feedback is welcome. View attachment 23066 * MiblArt tells me that, as a customer, other customers referred who mention me get a 15% discount.
I'm so despondent right now, the idea of being creative in any fashion is beyond me. The state my country is in is... wow... I don't even have a word for it. Nothing seems to fit. We were supposed to be the nation that the rest of the world looked up to. Oh, I know, we haven't been that in decades, but it always felt like we could get back there with a little effort. Now I'm looking for an exit strategy.
More basement mining turned up a box of stuff, much of which I'm embarrassed that I ever wrote. Oh, what an angsty young man I was. Not all of it is bad, though; flakes of gold to pick out of the sand and mud. One of them I posted in the Workshop, a poem titled "Dear, dear John". Others I'll post as they pan out.
Some recent feedback on my WIP said that my descriptions of new places didn't sufficiently immerse the reader in that place, so the work seemed a little flat. I asked for examples of what the reader thought were good scene descriptions, and am waiting for a response. In the meantime, I looked to the work of Rosamunde Pilcher, a famously descriptive writer. I'd never read her work, and given the opening paragraph of her famous and popular novel "The Shell Seekers", I'm not sure I'll continue: My editor's eye sees several problems with this passage (SPAG, even), but frankly the worst part is that by the time I got to the end of page two of this work, I was worn out. Do people really like this stuff? Am I missing something by not pressing on?
I desperately want to write a witty, pithy, somewhat trite essay about all the nonsense happening in the U.S. with respect to the virus response. Or mourn for the elderly in Italy, a country with a declining population that skews unnaturally toward the aged. Or cheer for the sensibility of the governments of China and South Korea for their rapid and decent response to the situation. Instead, here I sit without a creative thought in my head. Writers block. Do you recommend coffee or whisky?
I'm a somewhat regular member of StackExchange's "WorldBuilding" site, a place for writers, game developers, and imaginers of all sorts to bounce ideas off of really smart people, and get answers to seemingly intractable questions. A couple days ago, I asked a question related to my WIP; whether famine death of a billion people in a world with ten billion was reasonable. Someone reading an early fragment of the work called me out about that, saying that it was a preposterously large number; that society would collapse. I doubted his statement, but thought I should take it to the aforementioned smart people (no offense to the WF community) and see what they had to say. Maybe he was right. So I asked, with the hookish title of "A billion dead?" I set up the situation (ten billion people), and asked if a global famine could kill off ten percent. What would the impacts be? Was I overreaching? I got good answers from a lot of people, but what I really learned was the value of a good hook. A heady, short question that leaves so much unexplained has, in two days' time, drawn ten thousand views of the question. For comparison, most questions asked in the same time period have garnered between one and two hundred views, with a couple that have pegged view counts in the low thousands (2-4K). There is little about this statistic, these ten thousand views, that has anything to do with the question I asked. Only a fraction of the setup and question are visible in the preview lines; just enough to lead the reader on. But other questions are presented similarly, and are just as interesting in the long form. I'm fully convinced that the hook is what has drawn people in. This is something to remember when writing a bit of ad copy for our self-published works. Sure, a blurb is what will sell the work, but the hook is what gets them to read the blurb. Write the hook, sell the book.
You know how you get so used to something that you only see it one way? I've been working on my WIP, Lives in Time for so long that it didn't strike me that "Lives" is either the plural of the noun "life" (the way I intended it) or the third-person present tense of the verb "live". I was showing my draft cover art to someone today and they asked, "How is that pronounced?" It was like I had cold water tossed in my face. The last thing I want to do is bring a shopper to a complete halt on the first word of the title. If they're confused by something that simple, they're not going to want to read the book. It was always kind of a working title anyway. Now I need to cogitate on a replacement. "Two people live through a series of adventures across centuries" is too damn long. Now what?