What's the Frequency (Kenneth)

My attempt to blog more has been foiled by the arrival of the busy time of year. I know that seems obvious, given I've been busy, but that's been busy with other people's projects. Now I'm busy with my projects and other people's projects at the same time. WOO HOO!

Wait, no, that's not woo hoo. That's D'OH! Similar to woo hoo, only different.

So a quick note about frequency inspired by Nate over at Sometimes the Wheel is on Fire. His new son, The Professor, is like many a baby/toddler. When put in a moving car, he falls right asleep. I have many friends with many babies along with a ridiculous number of nieces and nephews and this has proven true in most cases. Something about a car's vibration and/or the white noise of travel puts a baby to sleep.

I experience something similar. Not that I fall asleep. (My wife is the one that falls asleep, requiring me to always be the driver on family holidays.) My mind focuses. Just before she falls asleep, the missus asks "Are you writing?" because she sees the look on my face and knows I'm working out a story in my brain. I also do the majority of my writing on the commuter rail down into Boston. Something about the vibration and the noise (barring crying babies, crazy people, and obnoxious people) lets me focus on the story and nothing else.

That's awesome, except when the train stops. Today the train broke down (which happens more often than it should). And it occurred to me after we started moving again that I did not write the entire time we were stopped. I checked twitter and fiddled on my phone. I looked down the aisle and out the window. I did everything but write. As soon as we started moving again, boom, started writing again.

Not sure why that is. Someone become a scientist and figure that out. *cough* Livia Blackburne *cough*

No Really, I am thankful

I don't have a lot of regular readers, but those of you that stop in, I really enjoy talking with you (both here and on Twitter). It's been fun, and I look forward to more fun in the future. I hope you'll be there for the ride.

And for all you new people, hiya. Here's our corner. Stay awhile if you like.


Mmmm, sap. But it's too late in the year to make good New Hampshire syrup. What should we do with all this sweet? Balance it out, would be the Hindu custom. (I need to dig up the article, but there's some awesome stuff about how all four flavor types need to balance for a healthy life.)

I've been thinking, lately, I'm kind of scared. I never really got into drugs or heavy drinking, but I had my own vices and really went off the rails for a decade or so. It took a lot of discipline to get my shit together so that I could work a steady job, draw a steady salary, living with a roof over my head, and write a novel from start to finish. But sometimes I worry that the discipline chokes out my voice. Or at least the voice I'm accustomed too (veterans here have seen it when a post just builds up steam and then we just go balls to the wall like the train in Back to the Future 3 after the red log ignites and the whole thing goes over a cliff...which is typically what happens to me as well :). There was a beautiful fury in my writing once, and now it's sharp and precise. It's like a broadsword versus a razor. I always got better reader response from the broadsword, but never finished anything. Ever. I never finished anything more than a few thousand words.

And of course, it took a particular lifestyle to write like that, one I would never want to return to. For as many awesome stories as I have to tell from my twenties, there are a LOT of things I wish I had a second chance on.

So, add this to the new ways a writer can be neurotic about whether or not they have talent. Did I have more talent before? I have I lost my talent?

I don't know. But at least there's pie.

Throw Your Arms In the Air Because You Just Don't Care

I write because I'm a writer. I pursue professional publication because that's been a goal of mine for the past 22 years. It wasn't always my highest priority, but it was never abandoned. And for the past two+ years, it has been my highest priority. I focus on writing not as an eventual, but as a now. I may still be wading at the shallow end compared to long-established best sellers, but I'm not just wishing. I am being.

And you know what? I'm already sick and tired of it.

Publishing is mirroring our current politics so much that I want to hit my head against a wall. Two sides have entrenched themselves in their opinions. Neither can fully represent the nuances of 100%, but both act and speak as if theirs is the only recourse. They waste time and energy deriding the other group and drowning out the measured compromise of the middle ground.

I've had my fill of it in politics. I've had my fill of it in publishing. So here is my declaration to all of you: KNOCK IT THE FUCK OFF!

Premise 1: Writing is the art. Publishing is the business.

Premise 2: In business, all parties look out for their own interests first.

Premise 3: Our interest is to make money through our writing. If that is not our interest, we should not be in publishing.

Assertion: We are entitled to pursue whatever avenues will yield us the optimal yield, this taking into account measurable factors such as promotion, distribution, etc.

This means we can self-publish if we want to. This means we can publish with an independent or small press if we want to. This means we can publish with a major publishing house if we want to.

If anyone says differently, that person is full of shit. You do what you need to do to succeed at this business. Let other people do what they need to do to succeed in this business. Plain and fucking simple. The next person that tries to beat me over the head with "[X publishing model] is the debil!" gets kicked in the junk.


This all grew out of a post I originally wrote in September. It's taken me two months to revisit the post because I was just that upset. It's really interfered with other blog posting as well (as you can tell). I wanted to finish this one, but the topic just riles me up so that I needed more space.

So how did that old post begin? Well, with usual Me wit, I was being all snarky about Amazon. I have come around to self-publishing as a valid business model (as noted above), especially when articles like this embody what I believe is the write mindset for self-publishing. But some of the more popular self-publishing proponents out there beat the Amazon drum too often. All they see is 70% royalties and nothing else can compete. I believe this is short-sighted, and I think Amazon is starting to show its hand as to why.

You think that 70% gold mine is the way publishing will be forever? That's not how monopolies work. I agree with you that 15% or 25% royalties is crap (net? Seriously?), but you're fooling yourself if you think you'll get 70% royalties forever. It's a ploy to take over the market. What happens once you take over a market? This is what happens. And/or this happens.

It has nothing to do with the efficacy of trad v. self. It's what happens when one company owns complete marketshare. The difference between 15% and 70% is so large, though, that it drowns out any reasonable conversation. So here's the short of it. NEVER LIMIT YOURSELF TO ONE OPTION.

Now this doesn't seem like a discussion that would get derailed, but in September there was "the blow up." I'm not linking to it and I'm not expounding to it. It involves a company owned by a company owned by a company that also owns the company I work for. To talk about it requires my HR department and I make it a policy never to discuss things that require an HR department, because nothing good comes out of that.

Here's the short of that: SOME PEOPLE SUCK. In any endeavor, you will meet people who are phenomenal. You will meet people who are abysmal, and you will meet the avast amount of people that fall in the middle. They don't have curly mustaches that they twist around their fingers. They don't want to tie you to train tracks. But sometimes you meet someone who does, and fuck that guy. No one likes that guy. Be wary of that guy in all your dealings because you may or may not run into him.

Because that guy exists does not mean the entire industry is corrupt any more than it means you should not self-publish because it adds to Amazon's marketshare. These are factors in the grand spreadsheet of business. You need to tally it all up and make the decisions that are best for you.

So now that I've gotten my own licks in on that dead horse, let us discuss lighter matters, like cabbages and kings.

Also? I like pie.

Bringing KITT Back

First let me apologize for my absence. I've been fiddling with more personal, non-writing specific posts. That was fine and all, but there was one topic I've been trying to tackle for awhile that is difficult because it involves another company owned by the company that owns mine. In other words, there's a lot I'm not allowed to say, even if it was in support of the company. At least, a lot I'm not allowed to say without getting permission, and I don't want to go through that hassle. Job is over there. Joe the writer is over here. And I want to keep those two separate. I've been burned too many times in the past for not doing so.

And then there was the biggun. I was one of the three million people that lost power. Now I've lost power before, but I've always been fortunate in that it comes on a few hours later. I think the longest I've ever gone without power (as a result of a calamity and not the electric company turning it off or not having a home to power) was five hours. Not this time! Three and a half days. And that's still not as bad as some! But you learn a lot about how your house is heated when there is none. We eventually had to flee to a motel as the heat fell below 40 degrees in our house. We were lucky that we got a room in town, one of two that required we wait in the motel lobby for an hour waiting for reservations to be cancelled.



So then power came back and I had a lot of work to catch up on. Still, I had an idea today I'd like to share. While it's still not the post I've been brainstorming on for awhile, I think a lot of you might find it recognizable.

Those of you 30 or older, at least. The youngins might only remember the reboot from a couple years ago. And if you remember it, I apologize. It was quite awful. I would rate it worse than the reboot of Bionic Woman, which was sadly awful as well. What am I talking about? Knight Rider.

It's the show that made David Hasselhoff famous before Baywatch. It aired at a time when Saturday morning still showed cartoons (not Power Rangers or VR Troopers or any of that offal, I'm talking about real cartoons). Saturday afternoons were the pantheon of young boy television. A-Team, Incredible Hulk, Airwolf, Knight Rider, Battlestar Galactica (original). Dear lord, I weep just thinking about its greatness (I also weep when I watch the pilot of Airwolf and discover just how bad that show was).

I'm also old enough that I got the tail end of the greats from the previous decade. That means the Six Million Dollar Man and the original Bionic Woman. Plus all their made-for-TV movies! SO. GOOD!

I was excited to see the reboot of Bionic Woman and sad to see they missed the mark so badly. I gave Knight Rider a chance. I had given Knight Rider 2000 a chance, so why not this? I had less confidence that they could do it right because it's such a niche story that the original series covered a lot of bases. And as expected, it was a crapper. Even with Val Kilmer as KITT. Like so much TV, they tried to be what the other show wasn't, even though the other show worked for its time. Now you had a car that could do everything, a hot shot idiot driver, and an ex-flame with an axe to grind as the scientists daughter.

These things are expected. There are so many political decisions that go into TV casting now, that you can't have an all-guy cast except for the chicks in bikinis like you could in the '80s. That's a good thing. But it's approached with specific biases (e.g. your lead still needs to be a white male) that it makes casting pretty predictable.

Today, for some reason I cannot imagine, pieces for the show fell into place. The reboot had a few right ideas in that it needed a younger cast. Not the middle-aged guy talking to the old guy except when he was talking to his car. It needs some women who are competent. And it needs a talking car. It doesn't need an "on the run from the law" when in the first episode you introduce a car that can do everything. There is no cop in the country that's going to catch your car, so why are we watching?

So here's what we do. Make the lead Idris Elba or Taye Diggs. Let's break that "all leads must be white" mold right now. We know it's not true and these two are recognizable enough that it won't be a big stretch for the less liberal of America to sign onto the concept.

Knight Industries returns as a military research and design company, run by an old white guy. We'll name him Michael Knight. It never made sense that Knight Industries was run by Devon Miles and Michael Knight was just an employee. Let's fix that with a little throw-back to the old series. It's a pity Edward Mulhare couldn't fill that role because that would have been awesome. RIP, sir. This new character is the CEO and head of research, the guy that started it all. And while the company has grown well beyond that scope (we'll see later), Dr. Knight is all about military research that saves lives.

Specifically, he's working on an adaptive AI program to be installed in military Humveess to reduce the amount of casualties by IEDs and other impediments. They are in the final testing phase before the computer system goes operational. His team?

Captain Taye Diggs Idris Elba, United States Army, detached to Knight Industries to serve as military liaison, field expert, and the best damn driver in the military.

White chick engineer. Former military. She doesn't mind getting greasy and she's great with machines. Mix Zoe with Kaylee from Firefly and you're looking good here.

Indian nerd. Let's get rid of the typical gangly guy with the thick nerds or the FOB import. Have an Indian guy great in electronics without the accent that doesn't look like he was beat up all his life. He just likes to get his nerd on. (The first time you see KITT's red light going back and forth, I'd love to see the computer say "By your command." It makes me squee with glee.)

Chinese AI expert. He's your mole. Oh, that's right. We're throwing some Scarecrow and Mrs. King in to this thing. We're well ahead of China on adaptive AI, and they send in a ringer to take what we have and eliminate the team. Make it look like an accident. The Humvee explodes, but Taye Elba saves the primaries of the team (except for Michael Knight and the red shirt engineers who don't get names).

This is all part of a grander espionage that the team must foil because there's not time for anyone else to do so! But in so doing, they alert the Chinese spy they're still alive and still have the technology. They install the AI into Captain Taye Elba's own sports car and use it to save the day. Most of its systems are off-line because it was built to be in a custom-made Humvee. It can't go invisible or any of that stupid shit.

Now Michael Knight's daughter shows up. She runs Knight Industries clandestine unit, farming out equipment and computer resources to the CIA and such. The entire team has been declared dead and there's an espionage war that America can't openly fight. Do they want to wave the red, white, and blue while using awesome gadgets and kicking some ass? Why yes they do.

Oh but wait, their families have been told they're dead. Captain Taye Elba was privy to some super heavy top secret shit. If ever he disappeared or was killed, his family would be relocated with new identities. He has a wife! He has a son and a daughter! And now they're gone. He never got to tell them he was okay. He must find them. But Young Knight chick won't let him. It's for their own safety. And KITT is still an infant AI and follows its own protocols, doing what it must to keep Taye Elba away from his family. Oh the angst! Who can he trust? Who are his friends? And what other dangers are there out there aside from the Chinese! A resurgent Russia, a corrupt military industrial complex, and a boss who never seems on the level.

Dun. Dun. DUUUUUNNNNNNN!!!!

Okay, Hollywood. Get on that. That's a show I would watch as long as you don't make it suck.

(How not to make it suck. Have them working to get KITT operational through the climax, but they can't get it working in time and the humans carry the load on their own. At the end of the pilot, THEN have KITT finally go online. Having a car that can do anything basically means you're filming 41 minutes of car chases which is Nascar without the beer.)

Keith Mars on Flashpoint

Have you seen Veronica Mars? Let's assume you have. If you haven't, go watch it so my assumption will be correct. You can thank me later.

Okay, now that we're all up to speed, who is one of the best characters on the show? Keith, the dad, played by Enrico Colantoni. If I could rent a father, I would rent Keith Mars. He's that awesome.

Well, Veronica Mars ended, but Enrico Colantoni is an actor, so he went on to other things. (You also saw him as Mathesar, the head of the Thermians in Galaxy Quest--but that was before VM.) You may have seen him in Flashpoint.

You probably didn't though, not a lot of people saw it. It was a summer-released show to see if it would take in the regular CBS fall schedule. Premise? Toronto, Ontario, Quebec SWAT team is trained in negotiating tactics to attempt to settle volatile situations without unnecessary body count. Redubbed the SRU, they get to be all empathetic and polite while reserving the option to shoot you in the head.

I gave the show a try because it's Keith Mars and Keith Mars deserves a shot. Unfortunately, it wasn't that good a show. I stalled out by the third or fourth episode and that was that. It went for three seasons and got canned.

Well recently, we got our basement repaired and set the TV back up. I was looking for something to watch and was in the mood for some Enrico Colantoni. I decided to skip the first season and see if season 2 got any better. Sometimes shows do that.

Oh how I wish I hadn't stopped watching! About episode 7 or 8 of the first season, the show REALLY found its groove. My wife and I just watched the entire second season in the span of a couple weeks (and I watched half the first season as well).

Here's the standard breakdown of the show: start with out-of-context climax then flash back to a few hours before. Introduce situation, respond, try different methods, resolve the situation, make you cry.

That last part happens enough that it is part of the standard show outline. My wife says the show could feature a goat in a pudding factory and it would still make you cry. She is not wrong about this.

The thing is, it breaks a lot of stereotypes in the procedural drama realm. The big tough guy doesn't have to be closed off emotionally. The sniper doesn't have to want to kill everyone and everything. Shooting the bad guy isn't always the best solution (rarely is), and just become someone is a bad guy doesn't mean the cops will look the other way while a victimized citizen introduces him to Old West justice.

We like to say it's because they're Canadian, but really I think it's just snappy writing. I love taking an established genre and turning it on its ear without clubbing it over the head with a baseball bat. It's good to see characters portrayed as human and the hardships they endure having to be in a job where their decisions can cost people's lives. (Lewis! *tear*) I wish it had hit its stride sooner. I would have watched it while it was on rather than a few years later when it was too late to give it my support.

Anyway, if you have Netflix, it's available for streaming.

Real-Life Hobbit

When I was growing up, we didn't have a lot of money. "Attention K-Mart shoppers" was a frequent phrase uttered over the PA system, to give you a frame of reference. (Younger readers, K-Mart is like Wal-Mart before Wal-Mart was Wal-Mart.) Unfortunately, the quality of goods to be obtained there was not always the best. Do you know what foot stones are? Where some really shitty shoes sometime (like the kind you'd buy at K-Mart) and the sharp pains you feel beneath the soles of your feet are foot stones. That's what I got from a $10 pair of shoes from K-Mart.

My mother's response when I told her I couldn't walk any more and needed new shoes? Let's go back to K-Mart and get a new pair. Yeah, no. Let's go get some real shoes. Unfortunately real shoes back then cost pretty similar to what real shoes cost now. A pair of shoes for a ten year old would cost you $40 on the affordable side. And of course, this is the age of Air Jordans where everyone else was wearing $120 shoes. But we were poor and $40 usually got me yelled at plenty, thanks.

One year the search for shoes proved so difficult that I almost could not find any that we could afford. This meant that I spent a good portion of my time barefoot. That tradition continues today. The first thing I do when I get home is take off my shoes and socks. I don't like wearing them. They smother my feet and trap me in and really, what do I need shoes for? I'm not walking over hot coals or jagged rocks.

My wife likes to call me her hobbit, and there may be some truth to that. At work, me being in my own cube with high walls, if I'm really focused on an important project and I don't want any distractions, I'll take off my shoes. I leave my socks on because I'm at work and all, but if I could...oh, I would.

And in case you're curious, I'm at work on my lunch hour right now and I am not wearing my shoes. Wheeeeeeeeee!

Naming Characters

Suzanne Johnson posted today on Roni Loren's writing blog, Fiction Groupie¹.

Suzanne is discussing picking names for your characters. This is a topic relevant to EVERYONE and a particular challenge to fantasy authors who so often create cultures from the ground up and can't name their protagonist Joe despite how awesome people named Joe are.

*ahem*

Despite tradition, I am not writing this to disagree with Suzanne. I agree with most everything she says². No, I am writing this because I DO agree with (most of) her and there is a process I use for naming conventions that I thought I would share. I also have a warning, and we're going to start with that first.

We're in a current Live imitating Art imitating Life loop. We're moving away from the more classic Judeo-Christian names. Unfortunately the rediscovery of some Old World classics that were smothered by Biblical names has reintroduced some names that were lame even back then. So if you're naming your daughter Madison, KNOCK IT OFF! It means "Son of Maud" so think on that a little before you try to preemptively make your kid cool with an uncommon name.

Okay, now to the positivity. Names are a big deal. They can really draw a reader into your character, establish him/her in the same was as pages of prose, and add a degree of atmosphere to your setting. This last bit is what I find most important about names. They establish setting. I don't just pick names that sound cool. I pick names that communicate culture. You won't find a hodgepodge of names in my books, cherry picked from any resource that I find supder-kewl-dude-omg unless the country is a melting pot, a la the US. Instead, I will choose a regional theme and apply it to the entire setting. I find Behind the Name³ incredibly helpful in this regard.

So for example, I chose Scandinavia to be the cultural influence for the kingdom of Reliarach (in my novel, THE TRIAD SOCIETY and its sequels). Most names come from Sweden, but I'll look in Norway, Finland, and Denmark too. So lower class people and a number of places I took from Germany, and for the rural folks that migrated to the city looking for work, I used Polish and Russian names. Not casting aspersions on the Polish or Russian readers out there, just wanted something similar but clearly distinct to my originating Swedish names.

I also like using those names because they're foreign to US readers to make them sound fantastical, but still rooted in something recognizable so they don't struggled to identify them. Fantasy authors frequently violate this rule. They make names so complex and unpronounceable that the first thing the reader does is come up with a nickname. They read the first one or two syllables and skip the rest. You're wasting your time and theirs making the super big Bobomastidonaramanustra. They call him Bob from there on out.

So go! Be more consistent in your naming conventions. Remember, that you lay the first blocks of your setting with the name you pick.

And stop trying to make your kids cool with their names. You don't have to name them all Joe, but it works for boys and girls and peopled named Joe are awesome. Remember that.


¹ If you are blogging and include a ton of links like I just did, be sure to add a "target" to your html code. A target dictates where a link opens. In this case we want links to open in a new tab/page so that the user can continue to read our blog without having to navigate back and forth. To accomplish this, we do the following: [a href="URL address" target="_blank">URL name[/a]. Replace [ ] with < > and you're good to go.

² Despite its numerous Hs, Cthulhu is not hard to pronounce. It's also a dangerous point to make as taking such an iconic figure from fantasy/horror will bait the nerds to argue your nominal point rather than focusing on the larger point being made. And come on, Cthulhu? Really? Out of all the fantasy names out there, that's the one you pick as being hard to pronounce?

³ While I rarely use it, there's also a Behind the Name for surnames!

Targeting Your HTML

I thought I had blogged on this before but Blogger is being difficult, and I can't find the post. So I'm posting (reposting?) for reference, as there are some bloggers out there that still need to learn this lesson.

For all examples in this explanation, we are going to use [ and ] but when you write the actual code, you should replace them with < and >. Here is how you make a hyperlink in your blog post.

[a href="URL"]Site Name[/a]

Ta-da! Now users can link to a website from your site, and that's super nifty. There's only one problem. When they follow that link, they leave your site. You don't want readers to do that, especially if they're not done reading what you posted. The goal is to keep users at your site while providing them all the entertainment and information they need. You are an Oracle, a font of wisdom, but they'll never learn that if you're sending them elsewhere.

So what do we do? We target the hyperlink. There are various targets that have various applications, but in this situation, we only care about one of them. You want your hyperlinks to open in a new tab/window. (Whether it's a new tab or window is up to their browser settings so you don't worry about that.) How do you make the link open in a new tab/window? Like so:

[a href="URL" target="_blank"]Site Name[/a]

You don't need any punctuation to separate commands, so don't go adding a comma or anything. Write it just like I have it above and the next time someone follows one of your links, it'll open in a new tab, leaving your page still available to them so that when they're done reading what you linked to, they can easily return to your own content and continue to learn from your wisdom.

So let us practice:
[a href="http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/08/04" target="_blank"]Penny Arcade[/a] becomes Penny Arade once we replace the brackets with angle brackets.

Click on that link.

Welcome back! I assume that you read the comic and possibly a number of other archives but eventually you closed that tab and look, we're still here!

Wooo!

\m/(>.<)\m/

And there you go, kiddies. Now go forth and hyperlink correctly.

Shaking It Up

So my wife and I used the last of our groupons for the year. We're fortunate that she acquired so many earlier this year because with our current financial hardships, none of this would have been possible.

A year ago for my birthday, I drove up to the North Country. I had the day off and I wanted to go up to the mountains so that's what I did. I stopped at Canterbury, New Hampshire. There's a shaker village there. Don't know what the shakers are? They're like quakers but awesomer.

I didn't know they were awesomer at the time, but as our groupon (actually I think it was NH Daily Deals), we got a reduced admission and got to take the tour (which normally costs $17 per person). So that's what we did over the weekend. We headed up to Canterbury and took the guided tour, which is one of the better guided tours I've ever been on. And it was there that we learned about the shakers.

Dude! Dood! I've never experienced Christians like these. Truly, I was moved, and I'm not even Christian! Civil equality, feminism, hard work, scientific advancement, all in the 18th century! Don't think about all that being part of a religious sect back then, do you? They invented the clothes pin, the washing machine, the circular saw, the dorothy cloak, the rotating oven, and the flat broom. And most of those were invented by women! They boiled the sheets of the sick every day, changed clothes every day, and considered all labor equal and important in the eyes of god. So while they fell into typical gender roles in terms of work, that was more a matter of upper body strength and there was no difference between working in the laundry and plowing the fields. They were all fine work to be cherished.

The method invented for drying clothes in the winter was AWESOME! And really, the method for tracking everything in a proto-socialist society (you only owned your toothbrush and your comb) was super awesome. Everything (from a spoon to your short) had a demarcation. Each building had a letter and each room/drawer/cupboard had a number. So if someone found your missing shirt under a bench, you would return to your room and find your shirt laundered and pressed and in your shirt drawer because it had D.14.7 embroidered in it which means that shirt is stored in the 7th drawer of the 14th room in the Dwelling house.

DOOD!

It's actually pretty sad that there are only three shakers left in America (in Maine). The New Hampshire village has been turned into a museum, and I'm glad it was. I would have hated to miss out on learning about these people. I will absolutely use some of this stuff somewhere in a story.

(Also, Ken Burns did a documentary on them, if you want to learn more and can't make it out to one of the villages-turned-museum.)

An Excess of Riches

I'm learning something new about myself. When I have a full requested by an agent I like, I stop querying. It's not an intentional, "This is it. No need to send these things out any more!" It's more of a, "Damn, that's hard work. I'll get to it later." Later just happens to come after I hear back on my full request.

That's not entirely true. Later will come after a month or two before my common sense kicks me in the back of the head and says, "What are you waiting for? That's two months another agent might have been interested in your work!" My common sense wears cleats, so I don't like it when it kicks me in the back of the head.

But, here I've received a full request and here I'm not sending out queries even though I should be. Really, I should have been sending out queries for the past two months. I even had multiple rounds of feedback from Jennifer S. Wolf. So you'd think I'd be all over that.

Well, then I had a new idea for a novel, and I wrote that instead. Then I revised that novel. And the day before I finished revising that novel to send to beta readers, an agent asked me for a full of a third manuscript. So querying seems so out of place.

Oh woe is me! I sent a new novel to beta readers and received a full request for a separate novel so I don't feel up to querying a third novel. Gee, Joe, that must be a rough life you're leading there.

It's actually kind of awesome. It's also kind of confusing. My process has been: write a book, query a book, write a new book, get rejected, query new book, write a third book, get rejected, and so on. This whole revise a book, write a book, send off a full, query a book makes me all dizzy!

So all that self-aggrandizement is really meant to say, query. Don't sit back and wait. It is not in your best interest. At worse you garner multiple rejections (okay, at worse you garner someone telling you you have no talent and should stop breathing) and at best you garner multiple offers of representation and can declare a Thunderdome among agents to see who you will pick.

Either way, there isn't much reason for you to rest on your Laurels. Your Laurels are tired of you resting on them. They told me so. Get to work and give your Laurels a break. They work hard enough as it is without having to put up with your ass in their faces.

On Beta Reading

I have finished the second draft of my middle grade fantasy, PRINCE OF CATS. To make sure I'm reaching my target readership appropriately, I have enlisted many of my nieces and nephews (and a few friends who are of the appropriate age) to read the draft and give me feedback. Now, since most of them have never beta read for me (or anyone) before, I decided to write up some instructions and an explanation of what kind of feedback I really needed. While a few points are specific to what I tried to accomplish with the manuscript (specifically any words they might not have understood), I think this advice is good for beta readers of any genre, not just mg. So I thought I'd share it. I've seen some people on twitter going through their first beta and all they post about is "so and so liked it!" While yes, that's exciting, that's not what a beta is for. We always want people to like what we write. Beta review is to take what we've created and make it better. Focus less on what they like and focus more on what they don't like. You'l end up with a better novel in the end.

Begin letter


I want to thank you for being a beta reader for my latest novel, PRINCE OF CATS. This is my first middle grade story (middle grade meaning written specifically for someone of your age). The feedback you give me will go a long way in helping me make this the best story it can be.

So let’s start with, what is a beta reader? You are! :) A beta reader is someone who reads a novel manuscript before it is published. I have written the first draft then edited that into the second draft, the version you are reading now. With your (and others’) feedback, I will revise to a third draft. That is what I’ll use to send to agents and publishers and so on. You get to read this before everyone else! When it’s as famous as Harry Potter, you can say, “Hey, I read that before it was even published. It’s totally awesome because of me.” And you’d be right.

Now, what is not beta reading? Beta reading is reading this story and telling me it was good or that you liked it. Every author wants people to write what he/she writes, but from beta readers, the most important thing is good feedback. Good feedback points out specific things you like. Good feedback points out specific things you DON’T like. It’s okay not to like something. It’s okay not to like any of it. As long as you communicate that in a constructive way, I promise I won’t be upset with you. We’re working together on this now, and partners don’t get mad with each other.

So what makes good feedback? Point out any and all of the following:

• People/events you like
• People/events you don’t like
• Where the story feels like it’s dragging (Are you getting bored? Skipping ahead?)
• Where you stopped reading because you thought something else would be more fun to do
• Where something happens you don’t believe would/should happen
• Where something happens that you don’t understand

You can give me this feedback in one of two ways. You can write it up in a separate document, just like this one here (or even in a spreadsheet if you’re a child prodigy with Microsoft Excel) or you can write it into the document itself using Track Changes (if you don’t know how to turn Track Changes on, ping me on Facebook and I’ll show you how).

If you could do one other thing for me, I’m doing something special with this story. Some of the vocabulary is intentionally difficult in a few places. If you could write down any words you don’t understand, that would help me hyperlink them to the dictionary so if you read the story on an ereader, you can click to look up what the word means. (If you don’t want to do this, you don’t have to. But if you want to, it is very much appreciated.)

So with that, accompanying this Word file is a zip file with a few different formats of the story (Word, PDF, epub for your Nook, and mobi for your Kindle). Please keep in mind that this story is only meant for beta readers. This isn’t something to share with your friends. Hopefully they’ll be buying themselves a copy next year. :) While you, of course, will get a free and signed copy because you helped me and were awesome. ...assuming this is published. There’s a chance it may not be, but that’s the life of a writer.

If you have any questions, you are of course always welcome to email me or ping me on Facebook. If you need anything else, just let me know. Thank you again for helping me with my story.


Joe

Words to Delete

I used to be a podcaster. That's like public speaking except in private and with a record that people can reference years later. For that reason, there are certain words one needs to eliminate from one's vocabulary to improve at public speaking. The biggest culprit is "ummmm" and "uhhhh" which we tend to default to when we're thinking of the next thing to say. You can recognize who has public speaking experience (and was good at it) by the absence of these words even in their mundane conversations. Those are not the only words you should work to eliminate:



There is one more word I've eliminated from my vocabulary, though this has nothing to do with public speaking. It's one of those life lessons I came about the hard way and that, if I had a child of my own to pass it along to, would do so that he or she might escape that same hard lesson.

I do not use the word deserve. If I use it in my writing, it is a big red flare for the character of the person using it. I do not deserve a raise. I do not deserve a prize. I do not deserve your respect.

I earn those things. Or I do not. The only thing I am deserving of is an opportunity to earn.

It's the little details

I've said this before, and I'm sure I'll say it again: To help your reader believe the fantastic, make sure they recognize the mundane. It's an easy (lazy) hand-wave to excuse inconsistencies in fantasy by saying "this isn't the real world" when so much of the book mirrors the real world. Rarely do we create something newly whole. More often, we take what's familiar and twist and turn it until the picture looks different.

Why? Because if everything was new, the plot would get stuck in the mud of explanation. And in the end, you would resort to comparisons to the things we recognize and the reader simply associates the new thing as the old thing and all your creative effort is a waste. Don't reinvent the wheel. It's round and it works. Reinvent the people and their history and their religions and their culture.

For this reason, I love going to historical events/museums and the like, so I can pick up on the minor details I had assumed were X but proved to be Y¹. That is why I would go to a place like Old Sturbridge Village twice in ten days². For that same reason, while trying to find things Good Ken might find interesting on his vacation, I recommended the mansions in Newport, RI.

The mansions are were the captains of industry gathered near the end of the 19th century for "summer homes" so they could exult in no taxes and exploitative employment practices. (That's not always true, but when you see where the Vanderbilt's "cottage" the Breakers, you'll want to beat them with sticks.³) Having already listened to the main audio tours, I dove into the "aside" tour items, little things they include as extras in various rooms. How did the servants live. What were the obligations of the family's children to society, etc etc. And I took notes. So many notes! So many ideas that I want to incorporate. The way the houses were built, where the placed what rooms and the importance of those rooms and their placement. What servants wore. What the art was painted on⁴, and so on. They even had mini-bath tubs designed for masturbatory purposes. Ingenious!

Perhaps the thing I like most about including these little details is when someone responds, "That's awesome. Wouldn't it have been cool if we had had those in real life?" And then I can say, "We did!"


¹ The basic lesson I've learned is that people weren't stupid. They were quite innovative. They were simply innovative with the tools and technology available to them at the time. Eliminate stainless steel, electricity, and microprocessors and a lot of our ingenuity would start to look much the same.

² For free! Old Sturbridge Village gives you free entrance back to the site within ten days and any new guests get a 25% discount. That's hot!

³ All these places have a lot of gold leaf. There is one room that Vanderbilts...built that the preservation society thought was silver leaf. But that didn't explain why the silver wasn't tarnishing. So they brought in a portable x-ray machine and discovered the patterns were actually platinum leaf. Do you know how expensive platinum was in 1897?!?! And they used it to decocrate their walls!!!!

⁴ We all hear about oil on canvas. So a tour guide was stuttering while pointing out a painting. "Oil on...oil...oil..." and I'm thinking, Canvas, woman! Say canvas! This painting was particularly interesting because it looked like the artist had painted the entire canvas black before starting. While that is a practice, in this case it didn't seem to serve the subject matter. The black was showing through and inhibiting the portrait of the family member. "Oil on ebony." WHAT WHAT? On ebony? HOW AWESOME!!!!