Martin R. Soderstrom

The Neverending Queries

2010-08-05T20:36:00.000-04:00

Hey, guys. Afraid my discovery of Facebook and Twitter have made me pretty scarce in here. Going to try to correct that.

I'm still shopping STEALING GENIUS around for representation. I've got three fulls out right now and I'm still waiting to hear on a few queries. I'm still really optimistic and I still firmly believe that SG is a helluva book.

Life has been getting in the way pretty good on the new book, but I'm hoping to rectify that soon.

In other news, I've been installing a pool in my backyard for about a month now. (Hey, whaddya want? I'm a writer.) Hoping to finish soon so my daughter can have a pool party before school starts up again.

Speaking of which, is it just me or are all writers disturbingly excited when the back to school supplies show up in the stores? Loves me some papyrus!

Ciao.

Hard At Work

2010-04-03T23:24:00.000-04:00

The astute among us has no doubt noticed the removal of the SLAYBELLS project from the sidebar. There's a long story behind that project and it holds a special place in my heart. If there was any way to bring it to fruition, I'd work on it day and night. Unfortunately, it just isn't meant to be. Originally a novella I wrote years ago, I actually sold it to a magazine back then. Sadly, before it had a chance to appear, the magazine ran into trouble. They offered me 10% of the signed contract to publish it and I (foolishly) said no and pulled it. Hey, I was young and stupid. As opposed to now, where I'm old and stupid. Life goes on -- but not for SLAYBELLS.

You'll also notice, hopefully, that a NEW project has appeared in the sidebar. This is the next book I'll be working on, with a self-imposed deadline to start the actual writing of April 15th. It's in the planning stages now and great things seem to be happening. I've always wanted to find a character I could use through several books, and this time I think I've found him. I don't want to reveal TOO much at this point (for fear if I talk about it too much, I won't feel like writing it) but I suppose a little won't hurt. :)

The new book, as you can see, has a working title of AIN'T NO GRAVE DEEP ENOUGH. It's set (mostly) in Huntsville, Alabama. For now I'm keeping details about the story, itself, under wraps. The book's protagonist ("hero" may be going too far) is named Jackson Travis, though most people he knows just calls him JT. In a tweet: Alabama Private Detective Jackson "JT" Travis has a head full of shrapnel and a belly full of horse sense.

That's pretty much all I want to say about the series until I get some significant page counts going. I'll keep the sidebar status updated, of course. If it doesn't show, I'm VERY excited about this one!

Of course, I am continuing to shop STEALING GENIUS around. As a matter of fact, the phenomenal blog The Kill Zone, home of the crazy-good thriller writers Clare Langley-Hawthorne, Joe Moore, Kathryn Lilley, Michelle Gagnon, John Gilstrap, John Ramsey Miller and James Scott Bell recently offered to critique thriller first pages for the first 30 brave souls to send one in. Being a glutton for punishment, I immediately sent in the first page from STEALING GENIUS. (The title is on the blog, but they were kind enough to allow submitters to remain anonymous.) SG was the second submission critiqued and received a wonderful write-up from Michelle Gagnon. (They're taking turns doing the critques, but the others seem to chime in heartily in the comments.) Everyone had some suggestions, but the concensus was that I did a good job achieving what every novelist wants to achieve -- making readers want to turn to the next page. I am humbled by their kindness. These are truly great people, which I think says a lot about why their writing (and their blog!) is so good.

And now, I have some planning to do.

Misguided Aggression

2010-03-24T20:15:00.002-04:00

Apparently there's a big kerfuffle going on right now over at Amazon.com. Certain books are getting a raft of one star reviews, drastically lowering their overall ranking. Theoretically, this is leading to less sales of those lower-ranked titles. Less theoretically, the result of all the single star reviews is intentional. The reason for this boycott that isn't really a boycott? Those books aren't available in Kindle-form.

Now, this is far from the first issue to arise from Amazon's reader reviews (search on Amazon and Anne Rice for an example), but it is the latest to highlight one of the reasons I don't like ebooks: they give the appearance of a major layer between the author and the reader not existing. I have no doubt that most readers think authors are just uploading their books and pocketing the money from sales of their ebooks. So of course they're going to assume that the lack of a kindle version of a book when other forms are available is a deliberate move on the author's part, which couldn't be farther from the truth.

I don't believe ebooks, themselves, are the next evil to beseige publishing. In fact, there are cases (and a lot of them) where ebooks make complete sense. Specifically, referential texts and for people who travel and can't bring their paper books with them. No, it's not really ebooks I have a problem with, but the way they're being positioned. If you listen to anyone (or read any blogs) it would appear that "ebooks are paper book killers!". Which is stupid. Paper books aren't going anywhere.

Ebooks, in reality, are just another form for stories to take, just like paperbacks and audiobooks. Why every new thing has to be an [insert name of old thing] killer nowadays, I have no idea. Was television the death of movies? Is snowboarding the death of skiing? Of course not.

No, paper books will weather this storm just fine. The current generation of authors, on the other hand, may not.

And to those perpetrating this attack, that thing on your neck isn't just to fill hats. Do you really think a handful of authors complaining to their publishers will have the same effect as all of you doing something useful like writing letters to those same publishers?

Round Two

2010-03-13T12:17:00.000-05:00

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more.

I finished the rewrite of Stealing Genius a few weeks ago. It came in at a svelt 105,000 words. Shocking when you remember that the first draft came in at just over 165,000 words. I have to be honest, I think the more natural length for this book (and thrillers in general) is around 140k, but it would appear the market doesn't agree with me. Especially for first novels. In any case, it's done.

To go with this new version, of course, is a new round of queries. That's what I've been doing the past couple weeks: new query, new synopsis, new agents. And unlike last time, I didn't just focus on the agents who take email queries this time. And my wallet reflects this. Including the partials, it cost me almost $50 for this round of queries. A huge amount, considering the first round cost $0. The ironic thing is that I'm hoping it's going to cost me even more before I'm done. Hopefully I'll be posting more partials and fulls over the coming weeks.

At the moment, I've got 6 partials and 1 full out to agents. Along with a bunch of queries. I'll be updating the status here as it changes. But now I'm trying to focus on new work.

I've added a project on the right called Slaybells. It's a new novel I'm hoping will come in around 75-80K. It's another thriller, but a much different one from Stealing Genius. Slaybells is set entirely in Los Angeles and centers around a broken cop chasing a killer who makes things a little too personal. It's about half done, but is a really disorganized mess right now. After what I just went through writing the synopsis for Stealing Genius, I'm thinking about writing the synopsis for Slaybells now, rather than after the book's written. I think it would really help with my organization issue, too. We'll see.

By the way, if you can identify where the opening quote for this post is from, I'll give you extra cookies at snack time. No fair googling. And begin.

Like Father like Daughter...ah, crap

2009-11-18T20:00:00.003-05:00

Time for some progeny bragging. A large part of my daughter, Kiersten's, homework this year has been something called narratives. Sort of little stories not worried about beginnings or ends. She's been working hard on them and actually got an A+ on the last one, which involved vampire gummie bears.

She absolutely LOVES Capcom's Resident Evil franchise (so much so, that she asked for an early Christmas present of a Wii so she could play the new Resident Evil game that just came out, doing every chore she could find in the house and then some to make her point...but that's another story). In any case, for her most recent narrative she's writing about what happened to the R.E. characters between version #2 and #3 of the game. It always bugged her that the game developers just dropped a bunch of stuff during that time, so she decided to write about what the characters were doing in the time in between.

I'm getting asked questions like "how do you put gas in a motorcycle?" and "how many G's in lunge?". Gotta love it.

Of course, as a mostly frustrated writer I want to tell her to go do something else, but I won't. She's in for a world of hurt, but she needs to find that out on her own. For now, I'm just proud. Damn proud.

Castle Tightpants

2009-10-28T16:07:00.005-04:00

If you're a writer, a fan of Nathan Fillion or if you have any taste at all, you're no doubt a fan of the ABC show CASTLE. For me, it's right up there with Mad Men and FlashForward as the best show on television this year. And it just keeps getting better.

The CASTLE Halloween episode was on earlier this week, and while it was an awesome episode in its own right, the opening had a special touch for all the Browncoats out there. Watch the video below and you'll see why Firefly fans need to be Castle fans.

Where you at?

2009-10-16T14:34:00.003-04:00

I'm right here, something wrong with your eyes?

Okay, okay. I've been busy on a rewrite of Stealing Genius. After the, oh I don't know, 723rd request/comment on my novel's length, I decided it had to go on a serious diet. Really, it had been in the back of my mind for a while, but then I received a specific partial request if I could cut 20K from the book. So I gave in and figured I'd take a couple days to carve out the most egregiously boring parts before sending in the partial.

That was three weeks ago. And I'm half done. To date, I've cut about 25K. Granted, the first half had the most significant cuts, and subsequent requirements for scene mending and recreation. The way things are going, it will probably be another couple weeks. By then I should have cut a total of around 35K, putting the manuscript at just under 105K. Not only much more marketable, but right at the length books of this genre are expected to be at the moment.

Once I'm done, I'm going to send out another round of queries and try to forget about this book. I need to write something else. I mean NEED. I typed the first words of Stealing Genius on November 3rd, 2008. Under a year to being done--really done--is okay. Over a year and I'm afraid I'm going to become one of those writers you run into at conventions who wants to tell you about the book they've been writing for the past seventeen years. In them, it makes me want to cry. In me? Well, let's just say it rhymes with cry.

In the interim, thanks to Nathan Bransford's blog, I discovered wordle.net, and ran the last draft of Stealing Genius through it. Here it is for your visual enjoyment:

Killing Floor

2009-07-01T19:21:00.005-04:00

Finished reading Lee Child's first novel, Killing Floor. Just loved it. Great voice and a simple, unvarnished story. I'm not sure I'll like his subsequent books as much. Killing Floor was written in first person, and for some reason after this novel he switched to third person for his Reacher novels. I read the teaser for his next novel in the back of Killing Floor and was less than amazed by it, I'm sure mostly due to the change in proximity through the voice shift. Have to think about it.

But if you haven't read any of the Jack Reacher series, definitely read this one. Just excellent.

On a side note, titles always interest me. I kept waiting to see why this one was called Killing Floor. There's one tiny mention of a "killing floor" from a slaughter house in the book, but it has next to nothing to do with the plot. I'm pretty sure they picked it because it sounded cool and that was all. I also noticed the phrase "bad luck and trouble" in this book, which as it turns out is the title of one of the Reacher books down the line.

Still Kicking

2009-06-29T15:50:00.003-04:00

I was starting to think I'd imagined all those queries. I just got a partial request from a huge house in NY. Very cool. He says he takes about 8 weeks to respond. Which is about when I'll hear on the others. So it looks like I've got a quiet summer ahead. But of course I'll be too busy writing my next book to notice. :)

It's been quiet...too quiet

2009-06-08T20:11:00.002-04:00

Apparently my queries are being read around some sort of postal worker bonfire for kicks. Next to no activity for the past couple weeks. Not sure what -- if anything -- to make of it.

I did have some unusual activity on one of the partials I had out. It was rejected a few days ago with a few nice words. Okay, I was good with that (well, as good as you can be with a rejection). Then yesterday I got another email from the same agent (written from scratch, not a reply to my emails) titled "Your ms". It went on (and I mean ON) about how much she liked my story and how the writing was very good, but basically left off with "good luck with your writing". I wasn't sure what to make of it. After much humming and hawwing, I ended up sending her a thank you for the comments. Weird day.

I still haven't started the new book, yet. Lots of research and thinking, but little else so far. I also sort of want to write a couple of short stories first.

Beyond that, I've bitten the bullet and started exercising and limiting my calorie intake. About three years ago I went on the "Zone" with no exercise and lost 65 pounds in 9 months (yes, I was a pig). I fell off it after that and put about 50 back on slowly. I've decided to count calories this time (something I've never done before) and progress into a cardio/strength training routine at home. So far so good. I've lost six or seven pounds so far. Of course, I'm hungry all the time and every teeny weenie muscle in my body hates me now. :)

That's about it for now. I still haven't decided if Thrillerfest is doable or not. I'd really like to go, but that baby's expensive. We're still in a wait and see posture for now.

Step away from the computer

2009-05-24T14:44:00.005-04:00

Writing is a solitary endeavour, but even Batman leaves the Batcave now and then. With the discipline required to get your butt in the chair (BIC) every damn day, and the full attention (to say the least) that most projects require, especially near the end, it's easy to forget the rest of the world. Sometimes it even feels like you're supposed to forget it. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

The world, with all its interruptions and annoyances, is what fills the writer up and enables them to write full-bodied, believable fiction. How can you write about the relationships of your characters, if you don't have any? How can you deal with the conflict between what your protagonist wants and everything else pulling at them if your life is a one note song?

Of course, we all fall into the trap now and then. The trick is to recognize it before it requires medication. Make dates with your spouse/lover. Plan weekend outings with your family. Try new things you've never done before. Your writer bone will be nervous as hell, but you'll actually be strengthening it.

I also find that when I've hit a wall and can't find a solution, getting away from the problem and doing something ordinary and mundane tends to magically solve it. Mow the lawn, paint a room, wash the car...whatever. It may not feel like it, but your writer bone -- which is in the back of your brain between the desire to put melted cheese on fries and daydreams about Missy Peregrym -- will still be chugging away on the problem and thankful that you got your interfering conscious fingers out of the way.

And when those days/weeks do come up where you need to roll the stone over your cave's entrance to hit a deadline, your family is going to be a lot more understanding. And your fiction will be that much more relevant, layered and accessible.

Request number three

2009-05-21T13:22:00.002-04:00

Just got another request for the full manuscript. This was a pretty neat one, too, since it was based on the query, the first chapter and the synopsis, not just a letter. Luckily no one was home besides me so my screaming was unobtrusive. ;)

I know it was silly, but I was getting worried there. Just like I'll be worried again three days from now.

And just to make sure I don't get a big head from even manuscript requests, when I told my wife about it she said "This is a different agent than the last one who asked for it, right?"

Gotta love it.

Ode to the Right Brain

2009-05-18T17:11:00.002-04:00

By the light of dawn,

I twist the words.

No longer letters,

but merely obscureds.

The opus was done,

such a long time ago.

Or was it just yesterday?

I no longer know.

Like breadcrumbs for pidgeons,

I toss the letters out.

Then try to stay strong,

and elude the blackhole of doubt.

Though in the end,

there's nothing to do;

but wait for the clock

to stop its backward skew.

I so miss the days,

when my characters were me,

instead of just hooks,

in a blood-stained query.

Rough Day

2009-05-13T19:24:00.002-04:00

After a day of no email activity at all, I got 4 form rejections today. Well, three to start out, then one in minutes on the queries I sent out to replace the rejections (I try to keep a constant number out there.) Some days just go like that.

It occurs to me that the initial query submission stage is like tossing slightly damp paper towels against a window. Sometimes you have to keep tossing new projectiles to replace the ones that didn't stick at all. Sometimes they look like they're sticking, but then they'll fall off and take a couple others with it on the way down. So far, if you can get them to stay for a week, they seem to be sufficiently dried and glued to the window. Until the agent monster comes along and busts the whole damn window, of course. ;)

Novelist Nightmare

2009-05-12T16:51:00.002-04:00

Stole this off Alicia Walker's blog. Just SOOO good!

First Full Request

2009-05-12T02:02:00.002-04:00

After spending the weekend working up about five different versions of queries, finally settling on one and feeling confident "this was the one", I woke up this morning to my first request for the entire manuscript. Based on the first query I sent out. Hubba-wah?

Huge house in New York, too. Pretty cool.

Query Hell

2009-05-10T00:18:00.002-04:00

After those first couple of bright spots, things were not going so well for my little query. I was attributing it to agents who said they wanted "thrillers" when they meant "crime thrillers", which my book is not. Using three different variations on my query, I've had about 7 very fast rejections (some within minutes!), mostly forms. I do still have about 10 queries out there, but somehow I got it into my head that my query was bad (yes, it's wanted in 3 genres and doesn't give a damn). So I posted it on a writing forum for feedback....and changed it....and posted it....and changed it....(you get the idea). Oy.

So I took the advice, visited about 800 million blogs and websites, read sample queries and finally got my query in a shape that addressed all the advice. It was technically perfect. And about as lifeless as Al Bundy in the sack. I've succeeded in making my query un-unique, uninteresting and uncategorically rejectable. Essentially, I took all the "me" out of it.

Then I found a bunch of "real" sample queries on the 'net that were successful in getting representation, if not a book contract. And you know what? Not a ONE of them stuck to the "rules". Hell, most of them started with rhetorical questions! (And these queries were mostly posted on Agent blogs BY Agents as an example.) Pardon my french, but WTF!

Then I read a post by a guy on Miss Snark's blog. It basically said he went through the exact same thing. Then one night when he was loaded up on Bacardi and coke, he tapped out a new query and synopsis in a I-don't-give-a-youknowwhat style. In two weeks he had an agent and shortly after that he had a two-book contract. He went on to say he felt the reason was not that he was loaded, but that he was loaded enough to just use his natural VOICE, rules be damned.

And the scales fell from my eyes. THAT's what was missing from the technically perfect query I had Frankensteined up!

So at least now I know what I have to do, even if I don't know how to do it. And good thing, too. My wife has assured me that if I use the word "query" one more time and we're not in a gay bar, she's going to show me just how PERSONAL a rejection can be.

Here We Go

2009-04-28T08:49:00.002-04:00

Sent out my first query for my book yesterday. Wow, that was nerve-wracking. Hovered my finger over the send button for almost a minute.

Originally I was going to send out 10 queries and keep that amount out there, but I just sent one. I think I need to test the waters before I go diving in. Last thing I want to do is hit up my ten dream agents with a crappy query and burn them off my list. Actually, I hope I don't do that at all, but losing one opportunity is way better than losing ten. Though I will be really disappointed if that happens, since this one is right at the top of my list.

I should probably leave it alone at this point, but I'm going to continue polishing my manuscript.

Between working on the next book, of course.

Nathan's Results

2009-04-21T19:14:00.002-04:00

Okay, just a quick note on Nathan's results. Turns out only two people picked the three queries that were for real published works. I didn't get any of them. Not a real big surprise there.

What was a surprise is at my measly 10% request rate, I was 16th out of all 50 queries. Kind of boggles the mind. I'm pretty confident that in light of the genre miss/hit factor, with a little polishing, my little query-that-could can make it up to a nice 50% request rate in the real world, which is just fine, by my book. :)

Agent For A Day

2009-04-19T14:36:00.007-04:00

This week I was rejected 295 times. Humbling doesn't begin to describe what the experience was like. And as bizarre as it sounds, I'm thrilled. Let me explain:

As I mentioned in an earlier post, Nathan Bransford held an unusual contest on his blog -- Agent For A Day. He accepted queries for the contest and on Monday he posted 50 of them. Participants in the "contest" then spent the week playing Agent, either rejecting the queries or requesting pages based on the query. The caveat being, you could only request pages from 5 of the queries. And to make things really interesting, there were several queries posted for books that went on to be published.

I played the game and selected the 5 queries I'd like to see pages for if I were really an Agent. It was hard, but not near as hard as I thought it would be. The queries were posted on his blog throughout the day, and to my surprise when Nathan posted Query #12, he posted mine.

The contest ended last night and Nathan is going to post stats on Monday, but I kept a few of my own for my query:

My query (which was posted anonymously) received 331 responses. Six of those were neither requests nor rejections, but just conversation or double posts. So in all, there were 325 real responses. When my query was posted, the formatting was messed up (the only one of the 50 like that!) with weird line breaks. Five of the rejections cited this as the reason for their rejection. So let's just toss those away, meaning there were 320 real responses. (Note: Nathan did fix the formatting after the first few days, but by then about 80% of the responses were already in. A fact that makes the requests I did receive even MORE astounding.)

I received 36 requests for pages. Putting my request/reject percent at just over 11%! I was astounded. Mostly because when this started, I knew next to NOTHING about writing a query. I've written a lot of cover letters in my writing career, but writing a query is a whole other thing. It's a skill and almost an art all its own. The query I posted was more a book blurb than anything else and I wrote it in about 5 minutes. It was for a real work (my recently completed novel) but I had no idea it would be selected from the hundreds of queries Nathan was sent to be part of the special 50. And before I give you the wrong idea, Nathan said himself that he just "clicked around his inbox" to select the 50. As with most things in a writing career, luck was the biggest factor here.

As the responses came in, I tried to organize them into a few pertinent categories. First of all, the "Agents" in this contest were mostly fellow writers, so EXACTLY what value you take from this contest is subjective at best. For instance, there were a LOT of query rejections (not just for mine) because the query was for a book that just wasn't in a genre that the "Agent" was interested in. Obviously (or at least hopefully) this wouldn't happen in real life. I tagged about 85 of the rejections as this type. Which was probably lower than the actual number. That means I had 36 requests out of a possible 235, increasing my request percentage to just over 15%! Unbelieveable.

Other tags I used were DETAIL (not enough in the query - 58), LONG (manuscript too long to consider even if they liked the query - 21), and COMMON (nothing in the query to differentiate the work from others in the same genre - 10).

I can't wait to see the stats tomorrow and see how I did against the other 49 queries posted (and to see if the 5 queries I picked were the actual accepted works or not), but this has been a phenomenal experience. I've already rewritten my query based on the feedback and I'm sure any requests I get when I start sending queries out for real next month will owe a lot to this trial by fire.

Thank you, Nathan! :)

Stir Crazy

2009-04-12T22:31:00.005-04:00

After spending several hours every day, for over 5 months on a project, working on it starts to become second nature. But of course, you don't become a writer by working on the same project endlessly until you suck dirt.

So my novel is now in front of my beta readers, a small group of people I trust to get their feedback and impressions. In fact, they've had it for almost a week. Thing is, this "free time" on my hands is about to drive me CRAZY.

Sure, you can work on a new book (which I tried to do), but part of you knows there's at least one more draft of the book coming and doesn't want to allow you to let go of it. I AM champing at the bit to move onto another project, but I'm at that weird point where you just have to sit very still so the procrastination wolf doesn't see you. :)

Thankfully, this little phase should only last a week or two. And next week I'm participating in Nathan Bransford's "Be an Agent for a Day" contest, so that should be fun.

But tonight? I'm about to lose what's left of my itty-bitty mind.

(serenity now...serenity now...)

First Draft Done

2009-02-27T17:20:00.007-05:00

I finished the first draft of my new novel Stealing Genius a few days ago. There's still a lot of work to be done in the rewrite, of course, but overall I'm very happy with how it came out.

To date, this is the longest novel I've ever written. It came in just over 165,000 words. I've already cut over 8,000 words and will no doubt be cutting thousands more before I'm done. (Okay, I'll be adding a few, too.) But even at its now svelt 157,000 words, it cuts quite a daunting figure.

You know you've written a hefty book when it takes more than one ream of paper to print it out!

I'm hoping to have the rewrite ready for my beta readers by the end of March. The family is off to Florida for a week then, which I'm no doubt going to need.

For those keeping track, I started the book on November 3rd, 2008. So, with time over the holidays and such when I didn't write, it probably took me about 3 1/2 months to write it.

Oh, and while I was working on it, I talk about it in general terms with my daughter. One element she particularly liked were the good/bad sisters I told her about. In fact, she liked them so much she made some of her drawings for me. I have to say it was quite inspiring and helped me along, since at the time I was only about 2/3's of the way through.

Well, back to work.

Author Recordings and Share 'n' Scare

2008-10-11T23:47:00.002-04:00

Denver, CO—October 8, 2008—QWAND LLC’s publishing unit WRONG WORLD announced today that it is making available a collection of audios recorded by WRONG WORLD® writers who share some very special Halloween memories.

The authors’ recordings are about a minute long and are free to the public. Just click on the following link for the PDF directory. Writers’ Halloween Remembrances

Wrong World also announced today the launch of its SHARE ‘n’ SCARE™ promotion in which readers are rewarded with free stories for simply sharing selected WRONG WORLD® movies with friends and family. Complete details can be read here.

The 24-story 20-HALLOWEEN-08 collection is available in the U.S. for $.99 in EZ-Read PDF or $2.99 on DVD-Video for TV viewing.

International customers can get the collection for $.99USD in EZ-Read PDF or $3.99USD on DVD-Video for TV viewing

WRONG WORLD® products are available worldwide.Prices listed include shipping and handling to over 190 countries.

Why it pays to network

2008-10-09T22:52:00.004-04:00

I just found out through the grapevine my story Spark, which was published late last year in the Australian anthology Zombies, has recieved an Honorable Mention in The Year's Best Fantasy and Horror 2008. Authors who get an Honorable Mention are not notified by the editors, so without a proper network in place, you'll never know.

I was thrilled to find out that not only did Spark get an Honorable Mention, but it was listed as Ellen Datlow's (one of the editors) favorite story in the anthology! Or, at least it was the first story she mentioned of 4 or 5 she liked. Same diff in my book. :)

This is my second Honorable Mention in the Year's Best anthologies, my first being for my story Forever Young way back in 1996. Hopefully it won't be another 12 years until my next one. Or maybe next time my story will be published in full in the anthology. Hey, a guy can dream.

Halloween Anthology Now Available!

2008-10-02T15:01:00.006-04:00

Denver, CO—October 1, 2008—QWAND LLC’s publishing unit Wrong World announced today the release of 20-HALLOWEEN-08 —I’m Going to Tell You One More Time.

The collection contains 24 stories by these 24 excellent authors:

• Sara Joan Berniker • Mort Castle • Ralan Conley • O’Neil De Noux • JG Faherty • Bruce Golden • John Grover • Jane Gwaltney • Brian A. Hopkins • Michael Kelly • Michael Keyton • John Kuhn • Barton Paul Levenson • Norma Jean Lipert • William Meikle • Scott Nicholson • Maria E. Schneider • Kristi Petersen Schoonover • Jacqueline Seewald • Martin R. Soderstrom • J.J. Steinfeld • Bev Vincent • Kaaron Warren • Donald P. Willard

You can watch Dr. Lyle Merrick’s Halloween greeting and introduction to the collection here.

The collection may be purchased for just $.99 in EZ-Read PDF or $2.99 on DVD-Video for TV viewing.

A treat awaits readers at the end of most stories, where they will listen to the storyteller recall some very special Halloween memories.

http://www.wrongworld.com/shop/cart.php?target=product&sns_mode=featured_product&product_id=17880&category_id=258

r u a ritr?

2008-09-03T22:42:00.002-04:00

I have to admit, when a post shows up in forums or on blogs using text message-ese, I find it frustrating as hell. I've always thought of this type of thing as a lazy writer who can't be bothered to type out full words and would rather make the reader take extra time to figure out what is being said.

But lately I've been text messaging more and using IM apps like Twitter. And I'm thinking if you avoid the lure of the cryptic syntax, these types of venues could actually make you a BETTER writer.

Why? Simply, it forces you to be concise. You're limited to a mere 155 characters to get your thought across. Using full sentences, you need to get pretty creative and pick just the right words to say what you want in that limited amount of space. If this translated over into fiction writing, it would be nothing but good. Think of all that passive voice and exposition that would never fester up a novel's pages!

Of course, we learned this kind of thing in High School when I was a kid, but we called them précis and Haiku. But it's a lot more fun when you know there's a live source on the other end receiving your messages.

Just make sure you use full words. I have to expend enough effort in all the other areas of my life without trying to figure out what you're saying.

Halloween Anthology

2008-09-02T20:11:00.004-04:00

A little more news about the Wrong World anthology I'm Going to Tell You One More Time. Here's the author lineup for the anthology. This is some CONSIDERABLE company I'm in. Do yourself a favor and pick up some of the hundreds of short stories and novels crafted by the authors below. You'll be glad you did.

For myself, I'm practically star-struck. Mort Castle? I think I need to sit down!

---------------------------------------------------

Twenty-four writers from around the world, twenty-four stories, one for each Hallo-hour!

Sara Joan Berniker
Mort Castle
Ralan Conley
O’Neil De Noux
JG Faherty
Bruce Golden
John Grover
Jane Gwaltney
Brian A. Hopkins
Michael Kelly
Michael Keyton
John Kuhn
Barton Paul Levenson
Norma Jean Lipert
William Meikle
Scott Nicholson
Maria E. Schneider
Kristi Petersen Schoonover
Jacqueline Seewald
Martin R. Soderstrom
J.J. Steinfeld
Bev Vincent
Kaaron Warren
Donald P. Willard

20-HALLOWEEN-08 will be released for sale on DVD-Video and PDF on October 1, 2008.

Reprint Sale

2008-08-19T12:01:00.002-04:00

Just got news that Wrong World's Halloween "I'm Going to Tell You One More Time" anthology has accepted my story A Little Matter. This is one of my favorite stories, and was originally published in FIGMENT MAGAZINE.

Wrong World is a multimedia publisher, with a very cool approach. Stories are distributed on DVD to be read on computer and television screens. They also include voice-over introductions, a la The Twilight Zone. I'm excited to hear the introduction they put together for my story.

"I'm Going to Tell You One More Time" is scheduled for an October 1st release.

Anime, eh?

2008-07-28T09:02:00.012-04:00

My daughter is crazy for anything from Japan. It doesn't matter what -- food, art, people, style -- she loves them all. Her last two haircuts were inspired by Anime characters she likes and she dreams of the day she can go to Japan (though I'm pretty sure she thinks Anime characters walk the streets over there).

So how did this start? I think it may be my fault (not that liking Japan is a bad thing, of course). When she was just a baby, I wanted to paint some characters on her playroom walls. Being a good Dad, I of course painted Barney, in all his purple glory. I also painted a cute character I didn't even know the name of. Little did I know how this character would insinuate itself into our lives in the coming years.

This is Pikachu, of course, a key player in the Pokemon animation series. As my daughter matured, so did her likes. Soon to follow this little yellow sprite, was Sailormoon and Cardcaptors, a more mature girl-oriented type of anime. This was quickly followed up by Yugioh, a more boy-oriented, dark-edge series.

It was around this time that my daughter started to show an extraordinary interest in drawing and art. This lead her beyond the video versions of these series into the incredibly intricate trading cards and soon to the anime graphic novels. Being a writer, her interest in the novels was particularly satisfying to me. Of course, up until then I had only been exposed to English graphic novels (i.e. Neil Gaiman's Sandman series and the like) so the structure of the Japanese graphic novels was interesting to me. While in English, the structure was the same as the Japanese versions, each page's panels being read right-to-left. It's like second nature to her, since she's been doing it so long. Mostly, it gives me a headache. :)

Well, she's since moved on to the more mature anime series like Inuyasha, Deathnote, Full Metal Alchemist, etc., but all the while has kept up her drawing. She used to want to be a Vet when she grew up. Now she wants to be an Anime/Manga artist. I guess some parents would prefer the former. Nothing makes me happier than seeing her creatively express herself. And the kid is good. Here's a couple of her most recent drawings:

If she can do this at 11 years old, I can't wait to see what she'll be drawing once she gets some life on her. I just hope I can help with that. If you hear about a sale on plane tickets to Japan, be sure to let me know.

Milo's Graduation

2008-07-26T16:44:00.002-04:00

A few months ago, we added a new member to our family: Milo the Dog. Milo is really my daughter, Kiersten's, dog, but somehow I find myself standing outside and shouting "Make, milo!" more than I thought I would.

Well, in an attempt to have SOME control, Milo and Kiersten went to Puppy Kindergarten recently. I had no idea this existed, either. In any case, Milo, at four months old today, graduated last week. I guess if he didn't he'd have to go to some sort of Puppy Summer School, which would make no sense, since the school was in the summer. Anyways...

And now I would like to present, the dynamic duo:

Enterprise Surprise

2008-07-24T22:15:00.005-04:00

I've long been a Star Trek watcher, if not a fan, and have enjoyed most of the series in the franchise. (I never was a DS9 guy, not sure why.) I'm also a huge Quantum Leap fan. So back in 2001, when a new Star Trek series was announced starring Scott Bakula (of QL fame), I was very happy. But for some reason, though I watched most of the episodes, the show just didn't click for me. I thought T'Pol was an attempt at taking 7 of 9 and making her a 15, Bakula's acting was wooden (which baffled me, since he was remarkable on QL), Malcolm Reid was a cheap Scotty ripoff and the technology that was supposed to be from 150 years before the Captain Kirk era was vastly superior to what it should have been. On top of that, the theme song was terrible (a Rod Stewart song?!) and the uniforms made the crew look like they should be UNDER the Enterprise draining the oil out of the warp engines.

In short, I thought it sucked.

It was no surprise to me that it was cancelled after only 4 years. Every series in the franchise since Kirk's had ran a full seven years before going away of their own volition. I was still a Bakula fan, so losing a chance to see him (wooden or not) was sad; and I still liked the Star Trek universe, so moving into the first time in almost 20 years when there wasn't at least one ST series in production was strange. But it seemed inevitable.

And, as they say, time passed. Tick tock. Flash forward to Spring of this year.

I have a PVR (a DVR to some...basically a Canadian version of Tivo) and I've developed a habit of picking an older show that's on in reruns (usually once a day) and setting the box to record the show whenever it's on. It's my little "the days over, wash over me boobtube" treat. And it's kind of neat to watch a show's entire library in a couple of months.

Well, I'd just finished watching all 6 years worth of The Rockford Files and was looking for another show to record. I knew Enterprise was in reruns (and had been for a while) but my memory (I thought) was still a little sour on it. But I noticed they were about to start the Expanse arc, which I seemed to recall I thought was pretty neat with the Spheres and gravimetric anomolies and all, so I figured I'd watch a few for the hell of it. I set the box and pretty much forgot about it.

A few weeks later I had a whack of shows recorded and came down with the flu (I'm sure the two events weren't cause and effect). So I watched them. And they were good. Really good. From then on, it was rare if my PVR spooled more than a show or two before I watched it. All the way to the end of the fourth season. Except for the terrible last few episodes, this wasn't the show I remembered at all. The characters had flaws and depth, the writing was, for the most part, crisp and reverent, and I didn't even mind the theme song anymore. In fact, I was starting to really like it.

Well like I said, the final season wrapped up, and the network wrapped around and started showing the series from the beginning again. I hadn't picked another show, and the PVR was still set, so I figured I'd watch a few again. Well, damn, these were good too! I don't know if it was knowing how the characters were going to develop made them more fun to watch in their broadcast infancy or what, but I'm still watching. I'm just about to where I first started watching the reruns and I have to say, I'm really going to miss this experience.

It may be some sort of homage to the original series' popularity (it was never as popular as when it was in reruns) or maybe the idea that it was the last of a dynasty and there's no more to be had right now. In any case, I'd highly recommend giving it a second look if you felt the same way I did the first time around.

You might just be surprised.

Gone But Not Forgotten

2008-07-23T00:33:00.003-04:00

Roger Hall died on Sunday. Who was Roger Hall? I've known about him for over thirty years, and I have to admit if someone had asked me about him last week, I would have been stumped for an answer. But, if someone had said "Do you know Roger Hall, the author of You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger" I would have said yes immediately.

I remember digging through the upstairs walk-in hall closet, barely a teenager and already a bookhound. I'd read every mystery and science fiction book I had several times over, but I remembered seeing a box of books in the closet when I was in there looking for treasures when I was just a kid -- probably the season before. I found the box and it was filled with wonderous books, including Roger Hall's masterpiece.

These were my father's books. We didn't have bookshelves anywhere in the house (or at least, not with any books on them, unless you count the bound National Geographic my Aunt sent us periodically from Maryland). In fact, not counting me or my brother doing homework, no one was ever seen with a book in the house. This was baffling to me, since books were about all I could think about.

As it turned out, my father used to be a bookhound himself. But he was from a different generation. Reading books was spurious. A grown up didn't have time for that nonsense. (I would learn a few years later that my father was also a writer, and in fact had a poem published in his school yearbook, but that's another story for another time.)

I asked my Dad about one of the books in the box, and a strange smile came across his face. He soon was convincing me that this was the greatest book ever written. I clutched it to my chest and padded into my room to devour this new morsel. I read it several times over the next few years.

It was a wonderful book. A humorous tale about life in the OSS (the precursor to the CIA) in WWII. As it turned out, Mr. Hall's book was semi-autobiographical. He himself was in the OSS in WWII, and in fact had parachuted behind enemy lines during the war. He and his buddy, William Colby (who would become the first Director of the CIA after the war), actually accepted the surrender of over 10,000 German troops in Norway in 1945.

As great a book as it was and as great a war hero as Mr. Hall was, I read it repeatedly because it was my Dad's. It was the first book we had both read that we could talk about. I'm sure he enjoyed the discussions, but I have never seen him pick up a book again to this day. Not that that matters. This book would be just as important to me if my father owned a library. It would still have been the first.

I hadn't thought about this book (considered a classic, now) in years, until I heard that Roger Hall had passed away. After the life he'd lead, it wasn't a sniper's bullet or a ravenous fan that got him. He had knee surgery and contracted pneumonia in the hospital, ultimately dying of congestive heart failure at the age of 89. Sometimes life can be funny and sometimes it's just an asshole.

Interestingly enough, the manuscript for You're Stepping on My Cloak and Dagger was rejected 11 times before Hall sold it into Classic-dom. And he only wrote two other books after that.

Without his effort and the fates conspiring to get it into a musty box in my parents' closet, I would have missed out on a connection with my Dad and a little understanding into how I was (and am) who I am.

Thanks, Roger. I owe you one.

"I hope God has a sense of humor, because if he doesn't, I'm in a lot of trouble."

-- Roger Hall to his wife, Linda, a few days before he died.

Old Pics Gone

2008-07-22T00:58:00.001-04:00

Hmm. Looks like in my exuberance to change things, I killed all the images I had posted before the conversion. I'll see about replacing them in the coming days.

Revamped Website and Blog

2008-07-21T12:40:00.001-04:00

As is obvious if you're reading this, I recently changed the look of my blog. I MUCH prefer this design. I think it's easier on the eyes to read, as well.

On top of this, I've just finished a revamping of my website (both design and content), which again I believe is now much more concise and readable. As a bonus, there is now a free ebook available for download, my short story collection Orphans.

If you get a chance, please check out the website. Of course, any comments, good or bad, are always welcome.

Dr. Horrible Final Chapter

2008-07-21T01:53:00.002-04:00

Well, it wasn't horrible, excuse the pun. But the final chapter wasn't close to the calibre of the first two parts, unfortunately. (I'm actually rewatching the first two parts as I write this because they were SO good.)

I watched all three parts with my daughter and when the final credits came up she said "That's it? That makes it not even worth watching." I think that's a little harsh, but you get the sentiment.

I'm glad I watched, for several reasons, and I'd still recommend it, but just go in knowing the yummy-blog-goodness isn't quite as long-lasting as it should be.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

2008-07-19T11:54:00.003-04:00

This has to be the coolest thing I've ever seen on the Internet. I'd heard about it over the past few weeks and was mildly amused at the idea, being a Firefly, Nathan Fillion and Joss Whedon fan. Heck, I'm even a Neil Patrick Harris fan to a degree after watching Harold and Kumar Go to Whitecastle. But I didn't really think I'd watch the thing. I've now watched two of the three parts and this thing ROCKS!

All three parts are available for free until midnight Sunday, afterwhich you'll still be able to get them off itunes, but not for free. Eventually there's suppose to be a DVD, but I'm guessing they might charge for that.

Anyways, go see this. Now. I mean it.

Anthology Availability and Review

2008-04-14T09:11:00.004-04:00

Don't Turn the Lights On is now available from the publisher Stone Garden, as well as from Amazon, Books-A-Million, Barnes and Noble, Powell's and even Libreria Universitaria.

Reception for this book has been incredible. Here's what they're saying:

"...an entertaining read."
- Christopher Fulbright, author of WHEN IT RAINS and BLOOD COVEN

"...talented writers, and chilling tales..."
- Scott Nicholson, author of THEY HUNGER

"...look out for these authors...quite brilliant...originality and flair."
- Derek Gunn, author of VAMPIRE APOCALYPSE

We also received our first review for the book at Ghost Writer Reviews. Here's what they said about my story, THE POND:

“The Pond” by Martin Soderstrom; this is an old story about the Loch Ness monster. This amazing legend has been lingering since the 1930’s and more than 4,000 people have told this tale of tales. The Nessie has been reported as early as the 6th century. This story is filled with a great imaginative twist that will leave you wanting more. I have always loved this story and this author really takes this turn of events to a new height.

I'm wonderfully pleased, to say the least.

Do you Nano?

2007-12-02T18:04:00.002-05:00

Every year during November, the impossible happens. Thousands of writers, both professional and avocational, join in something called the National Novel Writing Month -- NaNoWriMo or Nano, for short. During this scant 30 days, everyone has the same goal -- write a novel. There's no delusion that these will be bestsellers (at least not during November) and the metric applied to this endeavour is a mere 50,000 words. There's no monetary reward being chased. "Winning" Nano simply means you get to download a certificate that you can print. Security is lax and it's rumored that more than a small percentage of "winners" upload "fake" novels to achieve their prizes. But no one seems to really mind.

There's a website where participants can register, host a profile (complete with a running wordcount and excerpts of their masterpieces) and participate in a forum where questions like "How do you kill someone with taffy?" or "If I jump out of a speeding car, how much skin would I really lose?" are asked in volume with little fear of the FBI or Homeland Security showing up at your door. It's really a heddy atmosphere to be in. After months of living the writer's life of solitude where no one understands what you mean when you say "I have to close my door because I'm going to kill someone with a circus tent and I might externalize, so I don't want to bother you." being thrust into the midst of literally thousands of like-minded people from all over the globe is something that has to be experienced. There are local write-ins, where participants get together in bars and coffee houses to write side-by-side in a show of maniacal solidarity. It's truly amazing.

But is it useful?

Or, I guess, the correct question is, does it need to be useful? Two basic facts bother most writers who are in the game for more than just one month a year:

50k ain't a novel

Now, before you go running to Amazon or some other online bookseller to look it up, you're right that there are a handful of books published every year that are 50k or less. But only a handful. The fact is, unless you're writing children's or Young Adult fiction, a "novel" is expected to be in the 100k range. And, more often than not, considerably more. (I believe James Rollins books come in somewhere around 160k. I don't have the energy to count up what those Fantasy and Romance tomes add up to.)

Typing ain't writing

Here's the one that tweaks my muse's nose out of joint. There's a prevalent attitude out there (there being writers' groups and forums) that putting your butt in a chair and writing with blinders on is better than editing as you go. While I do agree with this to a degree (I mean, if you never reach The End, what's the point? I know some writers who have been reworking the first few chapters of their books literally for YEARS.), there's simply more to writing than running full out every time. Especially at the start of a book.

Think of it like this. When you were a kid, you were playing with your toy car and you saw a board laying on the ground all innocent like. It didn't take too long before you had that board leaned up against something, your car poised at the top ready to be launched. (If you haven't done this, you've seen it done, I'm sure.) But what happened when you let go? Sure as shit, halfway down the ramp, the stupid car ran off the side and killed the driver. You looked at all that open pavement you had the board aimed at and wondered what went wrong. So you tried again, making a slight adjustment to your car this time before you let go. Hey! You still ran off the board, but this time you made it 3/4's of the way down. And so on. Eventually, you figured out where you had to aim with this particular board and car to make it all the way to the end. Same thing for a novel. Unless you're some sort of prodigy (and if you are, I hate you more than Junior Mints that stick to the bottom of the box), your first shot at a certain book was not exactly a dead-on bullseye. But given enough time and patience, you make adjustments until you get it right (or as right as you're going to get it).

But with these issues (and I'm sure there's more) can Nano be useful to the more than momentary novelist? I think it can. Many writers use Nano and similar competitions to work the dust out of their writing cogs. More than a few novels started during Nano -- with a lot of post Nano writing, revision and polishing -- actually make it into print. It's also a great way to make invaluable connections.

Nano is also more than just a competition. During November, donations are taken to not only support the competition, but to fight illiteracy around the world. Any group of people who tackle such a worthy cause, in my book, exemplify the word "useful" before a single person has typed a single word.

Now where's that board?

(If you're wondering, I used Nano to work the dust out of MY cogs this year. I'm just over 20,000 words into a new book and damn greatful for Nano.)

Zombies and Other Parts

2007-11-13T21:01:00.001-05:00

The day is almost here! The zombie anthology (now with a name! Zombies) is now available for pre-orders and is due out December 1st. Who wouldn't want to find something undead in their stocking Christmas morning?

On the same website, you can find Writer's Rooms. Ever wondered what an author's den of imagination looks like? Here's your chance. The ever growing list includes Douglas Preston, Joe Haldeman, David Brin, Ellen Datlow, Robert N. Stephenson and yours truly. See where the spark becomes ink and what the space means to the writer. This is an opportunity not to be missed.

I've also started a new novel. I don't want to say too much about it at this point, but I'm very excited. Moreso than I have been about any project in a while. Tentative title is Wyld Genius and you'll be able to see my progress on the novel progress bar over there --->

As always, I'm going to try to post more. Really. Stop laughing.

Finally, let me leave you with one of the better writing quotes I've come across lately:

Any writer who knows what he's doing isn't doing very much.

-- Nelson Algren

Don't Turn the Lights On

2007-08-15T18:01:00.002-04:00

I received the cover for the upcoming anthology publishing my story "The Pond" today. There may be some slight changes, I'm told, but this is basically it. And we finally have a title: Don't Turn the Lights On.

Blurbs are coming in now for the book. Our publication date of March 2008 still stands, but you'll be able to place preorders in January.

My story "Spark" in the upcoming (still unnamed) Zombie Antho now has a confirmed publication date of November 2007. I'll keep you posted on that one.

Hero Conception

2007-08-04T18:29:00.000-04:00

Been too long since my last post. WAY too long. Much has happened since then. I've taken a new day job, I went to Paris for a week and I've dumped my glasses after 15 years in favor of contact lenses. I'm going to get to all of that (and yes, even a little about my fiction) in the days to come, but I came across an art project today that really moved me and I just wanted to share.

Martin Firrell's Hero Project

Peace.

Urban Legends Anthology

2007-05-06T21:00:00.000-04:00

I've got a bit more information on the Room 636 anthology. We've got a publication date! The book is due to come out March 2008. I know it seems like a long way off, but there's a communication venue setup now, so just having an actual date is HUGE. It also seems that the title or subtitle of the anthology will be Urban Legends, but I'm just guessing there.

Looks like there are 21 authors in total for the book and the editor is looking at promotional material like calendars and bookmarks, so things are definitely looking up for this one.

In other news, I'm dragging my feet on a Zombie short story with a May 25 deadline. My reluctance is partly because I'm just getting kind of tired of zombies, but also I've got 2 or 3 really solid novel ideas I want to get going on. Makes it hard to concentrate. But I need to finish this story first. I should have the first draft done in the next day or two, but it's going to need some heavy revision.

I'll keep you posted.

Anthology a Reality

2007-04-11T12:29:00.000-04:00

Well, I received a belated Easter present in my email this morning. Room 636 is alive and well and now has a confirmed publisher. According to my editor: "Two of their books have won international prizes, and three of them placed in Amazon bestselling lists at different times. They are a small press but they are genuinely committed to their authors."

My story The Pond was accepted for this anthology about a year and a half ago, so it will be very nice to see it finally in print. A website is being setup for the anthology, and apparently a "best story" is going to be selected from all of the accepted works in the anthology, so wish me luck.

In any case, looks like I've got two stories coming out this year. And that ain't even a little bad.

Premature Submit-ulation

2007-03-27T01:14:00.000-04:00

Stick it in a drawer for two weeks when you're done.

How many times have you heard that advice? (If this is the first time, run-don't-walk to your local bookstore and get yourself a copy of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers or Stephen King's On Writing.) I think there's more than one reason that this is a great piece of advice.

The first reason is to give yourself some distance from the work. After living in a piece for days/weeks/months, it's just hard to see the commas for the uncrossed T's. Some time away (or even better, some time on another project) helps you reacquire that objective eye.

The other reason is to give yourself a chance to calm down. Whether this reason applies to you or not depends on the type of writer you are when it comes to submitting your work.
There seems to be two camps when it comes to submitting: those that have to force themselves to send their work out into the world (sometimes at great personal pain) and those that have to restrain themselves from sending work out the second they've typed the final D in The End.

Unlike other categorizing of writers (and of that, there's no short supply), I don't think you're destined to be in any one of these camps permanently. As you get more and more comfortable with submitting, any angst you feel about it will most likely fade. Eventually, the second you're "done" a piece, you'll want to fire it out into the world. This is a bad, bad thing to do. Writers who are in this camp mix up the exhilaration of the creation with the satisfaction of being done. This usually happens when a draft has just been completed. But complete doesn't necessarily mean done.

I absatively (apologies Mr. Gaiman) guaran-damn-ty that what you think is done today will change tomorrow. I know, because that's the camp I live in. Hell, I've got a couple streets and a wash basin named after me there. The point is, no matter how ready you think something is, a few weeks distance won't hurt anything. In fact, it will help.

Zombie Shuffling Forth

2007-03-15T21:56:00.000-04:00

One more step towards fruition for the Zombie anthology. Just received payment for my story from Australia. The editor also sent me a color version of the artwork being used for the cover (seen here). It's absolutely BEAUTIFUL! I am so jazzed about this book!

BTW, this is the original painting the cover will be based on by Connie Valentina. It's 1 1/2 feet square and valued at AUD$1500. If you'd be interested in buying it, send me an email and I'll put you in touch with the editor. (We'd both love to have it ourselves, but we foolishly do this for the love, not the money. And our bank accounts can attest to that! )

The Hardest Part

2007-03-11T19:51:00.000-04:00

Depending on which writer you ask (and when), there seems to be no end to the different types of answers you get to the question "What's the hardest part of the writing process?".

For some, coming up with ideas is like pulling proverbial teeth. For others, ideas are a dime a dozen and the execution of the ideas is actually the hardest part. Some writers find crafting an exciting and original opening chapter to be the hardest part (and this can be extended to cover opening scenes, paragraphs, sentences or even the first word, as well). Once they're rolling, it's all down hill (probably not the best of metaphors, there).

Some have trouble fleshing out their characters, or choosing a setting and won't even start until they have everything in place. Still others feel they need to know the entire structure of the book and have a detailed outline in place before the prose can start to flow.

Quite a few writers feel it's the swampy middle of their books that are the hardest to write and get past. I know I've personally left quite a few still-births at that point and I feel for my brother and sister writers who lose their way in the everglades of lost threads and overzealous plot devices. That middle can be a dangerous place.

In truth, there seems to be no end to the number of things writers find "the hardest part". I haven't even mentioned endings, rewrites, theme development or killing your darlings; all brutally difficult and painful stages in the writing process. And let's not forget that for some it's not even the writing part of the process that they find difficult. There are those who can get manuscripts in shape with little effort, but wake up with cold sweats when they think about submitting or even contemplate the idea of letting someone else read their work.

For me, though, the hands down, king of the hill, cock of the walk, queen of the prom killer is -- choice. Now, I'm not talking about those million choices every writer has to make between "It was a dark and stormy night..." and "...Bobby realized it was all a dream". Though those are tough, they don't particularly scare me. What scares the little malteasers out m'butt every time is choosing what to write. Or maybe a better way of putting it is choosing what not to write this time.

The biggest problem here is that I want to write everything: horror, mystery, sci-fi, fantasy, hardboiled, time-travel, thriller, romance, etc, etc. I love and want to write them all. For short work, it's not such a trial making a choice, because you know you'll be done soon and you can try something else. But longterm committment to a project, like a novel, is another matter. The conundrum is that I think I have a predilection for longer works.

So more often than not, I end up making no choice, or diddling around with shorter projects. It would help if I didn't have ideas for a wide variety of projects, but I'm one of those writers who feels ideas are a dime a dozen. And I've got about six bucks worth of stuff rattling around my noggin.

I've never really been a planner or outliner, but that's exactly what I'm currently doing in an attempt to focus and actually produce something. We'll see how it goes. I don't want to scheme the creativity out of my work, but I'm hoping a plan -- or path -- laid out for me to follow will keep the shiny objects on the side of the road from distracting me into being the king of partials and owner of the hard disk with the most pointless vignettes in the English speaking world.

We'll see how it goes.

Unless I start work on that eight-volume opera I've been thinking about...

Zombie Sale

2007-03-08T23:20:00.000-05:00

More good news, this time about my writing. :)

Just got word from Australia that my zombie story Spark has been bought for Altair's yet-to-be-named Zombie Antho, due out in October 2007. Guess I'll have something to talk about at the World Horror Convention at the end of the month, after all!

At just under 7,000 words, Spark is the longest story I've sold to date (previous champion was my story The Find, which appeared in Transversions). As of October, my fiction will have appeared on three continents and in four countries.

While the name is still being worked out, the editor (Robert N. Stephenson) sent me a rough sketch of what the cover will look like (shown here). The drawing is called Zombie Girl and is by Conny Valentina. It's based on Zombie Love by Mike Brown, one of the stories to be featured in the collection. Mike is a new writer from Adelaide, South Australia.

Robert can't make it to World Horror this year, so I guess I'll have to drink Fosters all night in his honor.

Cheers, Mate!

Brag

2007-02-22T14:54:00.000-05:00

Time for a little bragging.

My daughter, who turned 10 years old this week, is receiving a literacy award from school tomorrow for a story she wrote.

I can't even describe how excited and proud I am!

They could write about anything. She chose the backdrop of a video game she likes called Trace Memories. (Some of the games she plays on her Nintendo DS have incredibly intricate and inventive backstories.)

You can bet I'll be there tomorrow flashing my camera in the front row and embarrassing her to no end.

I'm a Dad.

It's my job.

Anthology Sale Redux

2006-12-23T21:29:00.000-05:00

Just after Christmas last year, I posted about an anthology sale I'd made just before Christmas. I called it my Christmas Present 2005. Well, it happened again. The funny thing is, it's the same anthology.

The anthology, of course, is the one I've been blogging about all year called Room 636. There were a lot of promises along the way which didn't seem to pan out. But I just found out from the editors that the anthology has now sold to a publisher and will appear in 2007 with "national interest". At the moment, that's all I know. More details are promised once the holiday season is over.

I'll keep you posted, but I'm definitely feeling more positive about this situation than I have in the past. Maybe it's just the Christmas spirit fogging my common sense, but I'm going with it.

Happy holidays!

The Anthology That Wouldn't Die

2006-11-03T09:40:00.000-05:00

Looks like Room 636 is still alive. For now, anyways. Received word that the editors again have interest from publishing houses (no idea which ones, of course) and the contributors should be hearing something by the end of November. Yes, this sounds very much like the story we were told back in May, but whaddya gonna do? I'm just crossing my fingers this time and turning my attention to writing other stories.

I've got 12 submissions I'm waiting to hear back on, now. I've also got two short stories I want to write between now and the end of the year for specific markets. Beyond that, I'm trying to decide which of several novel ideas should get my attention. Right now it's neck and neck between a space opera and a thriller. I think the thriller's winning, but that could change in a heartbeat.

Going, Going, Gone?

2006-08-21T22:35:00.000-04:00

I think we can count the 636 anthology as dead. I haven't withdrawn my story (yet), but the last communication I had, as indicated in a previous post, was that the contributors would hear something by "June at the latest". Well, seeing as it's almost September and I haven't heard anything, I don't hold out much hope for this one. I sent an email a few days ago, but haven't heard anything. The editor isn't exactly stellar for her communication or email responses, so I wouldn't be surprised if I never heard from her again.

Boy, ain't being a writer glamorous!? :(

In other news, I'm about to start a new novel. I've been plotting and writing backstory for almost a month and I think I'm ready to start the actual writing. My goal is to finish the first draft by Halloween. Part of my "planning" for books is to write a blurb, similar to what you'd see on the back of the book in the store. It helps me focus and keep the suspense at the right level. It's also interesting to see how much the finished product differs from the original vision. I'll try and post the blurb in the next day or two.

On a personal note, I started watching what I eat back in January, and to date I've lost 62 pounds. Yes, I'm amazed, too.

I also intend to post a lot more regularly in the coming weeks. Wish me luck.

Update On The Anthology Update

2006-05-04T16:58:00.000-04:00

After a very long time with no communication, word filtered out from the Room 636 camp a couple days ago.

There's good news and there's bad news (that's how they put it).

Bad: The original publisher has decided not to publish the anthology.

Good: Apparently two other publishers ("one major" they say) are still looking at it. Contributors have been promised a definitive answer on the life or death of this project by June "at the latest".

Color me somber.

Gardener or Sculptor?

2006-03-04T23:55:00.000-05:00

There are as many types of writers as there are...well, writers. But if we take a high-level view, two of the types that fascinate me the most are the Gardeners and the Sculptors. Each end up with a similar final product, but both take very different routes to get there.

The Gardener very carefully plants the seed of his novel in his imagination and allows it to grow naturally, at its own pace, before he ever puts pen to paper. Even then, the story is just a seedling, coming out as only a small part of what the final story will be. Then, he cultivates his newborn form of life, feeding it with subplots and research, pruning dead branches as it grows, until finally he ends up with what he feels is a fully grown and strong plant.

The Sculptor, on the other hand, very quickly builds a massive block of prose, looking more like a hunk of misshapen stone than a story. They are not picky about what they put down, simply cranking out word after raw word until they reach some sort of end. They know most of what this first approach produces will never make it into the final product, but is simply raw material. Then, they take hammer and chisel in hand and smash away everything that doesn't look like a story. Eventually, when the clouds clear, they have honed themselves a novel out of that raw mass of verbiage.

Which are you?

Now THAT'S a present

2005-12-29T21:21:00.000-05:00

A few days before Christmas, I received a wonderful surprise -- a contract for my short story "The Pond". The anthology Room 636 bought it. I'd like to pass on more information, but that's about all I know at the moment. I'll post an update as more details on the anthology are passed on to me.

But in the meantime, Yayyyyyyyy! :)

Seven Sevens

2005-12-17T23:17:00.000-05:00

There's a meme going around the Blogosphere called Seven Sevens. I thought it would be a cute little list to post here, but as it turns out, it was hard as hell to construct. In any case, here are my picks:

Seven Things to Do Before I Die:
1) Write full-time;
2) Publish a novel;
3) Write & Direct a screenplay (preferably the same one);
4) Write a thriller based in Canada that's actually thrilling;
5) Learn to play guitar/piano/bongos;
6) Finally lose "the weight";
7) Go into Outerspace (this may have more to do with becoming weightless than being an adventurer -- see #6).

Seven Things I Cannot Do:
1) Sing;
2) Fight;
3) Read all of the books I buy;
4) Go to bed early (no matter when I have to get up);
5) Be on time (#4 and #5 seem to be strangely connected);
6) Be a golf pro (even if I do buy new clubs and try really really hard);
7) Only eat part of a Ben & Jerry's pint.

Seven Things that Attract Me To My Wife (or significant other):
1) Her sense of humor and ability to be silly (silly is grossly underrated in today's world);
2) Her love for movies where things go boom (or come from space/out of the ground and then go boom);
3) Her ability to fight back (especially against me);
4) Her organizing/scheduling skills (of which, I have none);
5) Being the mother of the most incredible creation in Earth's history;
6) Her understanding of what's required to be married to a writer (especially when he's not writing);
7) Her love of books.

Seven Things I Say Most Often:
1) Whatever.
2) Dude.
3) Actually.
4) Watch what you're doing.
5) What did I just say?
6) Stop making your Mother crazy.
7) Right on.

Seven Books (or Series) I Love:
1) John D. MacDonald's Travis McGee series;
2) Ben Bova's Moonrise and Moonwar;
3) Robert R. McCammon's Stinger;
4) Martin Cruz Smith's Gorky Park;
5) Joseph R. Garber's Vertical Run;
6) Dan Brown's Deception Point;
7) Frederick Forsyth's The Day Of The Jackal.

Seven Movies I Would Watch Over and Over Again:
1) Die Hard;
2) Back To The Future;
3) Raiders of the Lost Ark;
4) Matrix (just the first one);
5) War Games;
6) Any Sean Connery James Bond flick;
7) Tremors.
This was the hardest list of all to limit to seven. I love movies and if allowed, this list would probably be 50 items long. I've tried to keep the list to not just the movies I love, but the ones that I actually do watch over and over.

So Much For That

2005-11-15T17:35:00.000-05:00

Well, I was going like gangbusters. Then I started thinking about what I'd been filling those pages with. Urk. Aside from my prologue, I pretty much hated everything there. So, out it went. Even the prologue on closer look had huge holes in it. I sat down and rewrote it, taking two hours to end up adding just a couple hundred words. But when I was done, it was something I was actually proud to have written. I haven't had anything like that for a while.

I proceeded to take several days to retool my story; throwing out the plot, retrieving the plot, mutating the plot (you get the idea). I even tried the old index card approach (one scene per card, spread them out on a table and rearrange until you have a masterpiece). Ate up a couple days and way too many trees with that one. Finally, when nothing seemed to be working, I read something on Absolute Write which got me thinking. By some fluke or kismet in the ether, there was a discussion going on there about whether to "plan or wing it". There were a lot of good opinions and ideas in there, but the one that resonated the most with me was that even when people are "winging it", there's more going on than just stream-of-consciousness typing. Either you're aware of structure or you're not, was the point being made. Regardless of how you assembled your book.

This got me thinking.

On reflection, I realized I had never written anything that was planned out. I just sort of sat down and wrote. There was obviously all kinds of nifty things going on below the surface there, but I didn't bother my conscious mind with that blather...I just wrote my story. Whenever I've tried to block out a story before writing it (as I did with the novel attempt I just tossed) I always felt like I'd already written the story, so why bother with it? The excitement or growing of my characters, situations and themes was gone. I'd get bored and wander downstairs to see what was on the tube.

And again, this got me thinking.

What this meant was something I suppose I've always known: I have an innate understanding of structure. I'd have to for any of those early stories to have a beginning, middle and end when I had no idea what I was doing. But something happened a half dozen years ago that torpedoed my confidence in this fact. I'm still not sure what "it" was. A fairly astute friend of mine pointed out that this loss of confidence coincided almost exactly with the birth of my daughter. There may be something to that. It certainly is true that before you have children, you think you know everything; and afterwards, you realize you know absolutely nothing. My friend also pointed out that until you have children, you really have no idea what real fear is. I'd have to agree with her there. Despite having written mostly horror for years, I recently found myself uneasy about watching horror movies or reading horror stories. How that plays into the fatherhood thing, I haven't figured out yet. But I'm pretty sure it does.

Anyways, it would appear that what I need to do is learn to trust myself again. Get my confidence back. This isn't something you can do overnight or even with a single project. But at least now I know where I want to go.

So, using the basic structure of my original novel, and the prologue that survived my unprejudiced editor's blade, I layed out what I think is a better backstory and a few high points I want to hit. And that's all the conscious planning I'm going to do. Now I'm just going to sit down and write. I have no idea where this is going to take me. All I know is I'm going there. If you'd like, you can come along with me. Please ignore the screaming and the tears. That's just me.

Cheers.

Wrong Turn Ate My Wordcount

2005-11-08T07:56:00.000-05:00

Day 8: Not a very good night. I actually wrote close to my target number of words, but I realized after 1,200 words that I'd taken a wrong turn. Wrote myself into a corner, as they say. I tried valiantly to retool my plot to accommodate the veer, but in the end I was trapped. So, reluctantly I archived Chapter 8 and started over. No doubts about it, that sucked. It also gave my confidence a pretty good whack, but I think I'm still okay. We'll have to see how tonight goes.

Someone on one of the writing boards was asking about dialog tags last night. They were worried about using "said" too much.

Said is one of those invisible words. You can use it for almost every dialog attribution and your reader won't notice it at all. (You will, of course, since you'll be looking for it.) If your conversation makes it obvious who is speaking, then by all means only use tags intermittently. Just be sure it's obvious. Nothing is more infuriating in a novel than to have to reread a section to see who was talking or what was meant. And NEVER write phonetic dialog. It's fine to use regional affectations (y'all, youse, I reckon, etc.), but if you write a bunch of dialog filled with apostrophes and colloquialisms which makes your reader, again, have to go over the line several times, your book is going to be airborne fast. Read some John D. MacDonald or Donald Westlake. These guys were/are geniuses with dialog.

Cheers!

Plugging Along

2005-11-07T14:35:00.000-05:00

Day 7 and things are going well. I'm only about 200 words behind where I should be by this time, which for me is amazing. One thing I did learn is, I can't skip a day. I was tired on Friday, so I figured I'd just kick back and zone in front of the tube. Bad idea. With what I was behind before and nothing written on Friday, I had to kill myself on the weekend just to get where I am.

The story is really coming together nicely. I've allowed it to go where it wants, and I'm in a place I hadn't foreseen. Pretty cool place, too. And strangely, a character that I had tagged for an early death got really uncooperative about stepping in front of a bullet. But I think it's for the best. Who knows, maybe I'll tire of him tonight and send an out of control hotdog cart after him.

If things continue going well, I'll post an excerpt here, soon.

Cheers!

Uh Oh

2005-11-04T20:48:00.000-05:00

Well, four days into Nano and I'm behind already. As a minimum, to make 50,000 in the 30 days November offers, you need to write 1,667 words per day. This will give you a bountiful 10 words extra to play with. (Actually, due to the quirks of various word counters, it's probably safer to assume you have to write about 52,000 words...which works out to 1,734 words per day...but lets not get crazy.)

I have been writing every day so far and I quite like most of it. But I'm about 800 words behind where I should be. Hopefully I can rectify that this weekend. I'm going to flesh out my characters a bit more and plot out the next 5 or 10 chapters I want to write. This should make the writing go faster. (I keep finding myself on Answers.com when I should be writing. And I do have a "high point" outline of what I want to do with the book, I just need to get a little more granular with my framework...I hope.)

I am a couple of hundred words ahead of some friends who are doing Nano with me, but they're closing fast and -- uh oh...footsteps. Oh no!

New Book Started

2005-11-03T07:58:00.000-05:00

Just a quick post to say I'm still here, writing and I'll try and post more. This year's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writer's Month) competition has started again. After a lot of promises through the year, I finally started a new novel yesterday with the working title: Deadly Sequence. To get things rolling, I'll be trying to get 50,000 words of it written by November 30th so I can "win" Nano. But my further goal is to finish the full first draft (which should come in well over 100,000 words) by the end of the year.

In any case, watch this space for more posts about my progress. The Nano bar meter on the right sidebar of this page will tell you instantly where I am. Once Nano's done (assuming I'm successful on that point) we'll think of some other way to track things here.

BTW, if you want more information on Nano, or you'd like to join in (it's not too late!), check out their site at http://www.nanowrimo.org. My username over there is MartyDaScribbler.

See ya!

The Business of Writing

2005-06-18T21:42:00.000-04:00

What does writing fiction have to do with business? Everything! Unless, of course, you don't care about being published. And there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. But there's a difference between writing for pleasure and being so arrogant that you think your self-determined talent puts you in an imaginary bracket of writers that don't have to be concerned about the business side of things.

A lot of newbie writers take rejection personally. This is understandable, but usually after collecting a nice binder full of NO slips, they tend to either give up or develop the necessary thick skin required to continue. What's worse, is a writer that takes the publishing industry machinations personally. "Why should I have to make sure my manuscript doesn't have any typos? Why should I bother finding out the name of the agent/editor I'm sending my work to? Why should I follow the format EVERY OTHER PUBLISHED WRITER ON THE PLANET follows? My talent is so immense that shouldn't matter. How dare they!" Joe Newbie then ironically follows this with a diatribe on the arrogance of them. (Them being anyone who would dare try to apply any type of metric to Joe's work, instead of just sending him a fat check and a box of hardcover editions of his book.)

The silly part of this is that unlike a lot of other areas of writing, everything is laid out perfectly for the writer. Every publisher and agent provides guidelines describing exactly what is required to submit to them. There are reams of material on how to write book proposals, query letters, synopsis' and outlines. And despite spending months (sometimes years!) writing their masterpiece, some writers won't take five minutes to look for any of this. The old Comedy adage "it's all in the delivery" would be well taken by newbie writers. Heck, I've been telling my daughter since she was five that it's not enough to be smart, you have to show it.

Like it or not, writing is a business. While publishers, agents and editors may indeed love books and writers, the bottom line is they need to make money. Just like any other business. As a writer, you have to wear two hats: an artist's beret and a businessman's fedora. If you can't be bothered, then write your masterpieces and stick them in a drawer. It will make the wait time for the rest of us shorter.

A Novel Experiment

2005-06-17T13:51:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to say I haven't forgotten about the novel experiment I mentioned a while back. I still intend on trying it, but it's going to be about a week or so to rewrite an old story, get it off to market, and then revise/polish the story I just finished before getting it off to market as well.

Once I've done that, we'll start the experiment. But, I have to say working on the story I wrote this week was quite enlightening. It helped to remind me how I write. Outlines seem to stifle me. Don't get me wrong, writing without one is scary as hell. But it's a cool scary.

First Draft Done

2005-06-17T00:19:00.000-04:00

Well, after a couple of false starts I finally found my way into the short story that wanted out. Just finished the first draft. It came in at 6,137 words. No title yet. Which is strange for me, since I usually have the title first.

I think it came out pretty well. There was more than a few times my muse tried to lead me down cliche lane, but I think I managed to wrestle it back each time. Needs polishing, of course. But first, I need some distance. So into the drawer it goes for a week or two.

I've got an older story I want to rewrite for the same market I just wrote this for, so I'll start on that tomorrow. Now that the cogs are catching again I don't want to give it a chance to bog down when I'm not looking.

Internal Editor Wanted -- to shutup!

2005-06-13T08:16:00.000-04:00

One of the hardest things for me -- and for a lot of other writers -- is turning off the internal editor. Maybe part of it is that we're afraid if we did finally succeed in shutting them up, they wouldn't be there for subsequent drafts when we really need them. In any case, a lot of stories and novels never happen because of second guessing, rewriting and endless reworking that keeps us messing around with page two or chapter one or that opening sentence that "just isn't right". While I can't tell you I've found the secret on/off button (I wish!), I have found something that helps.

First, a disclaimer: This trick involves Microsoft Word. Please do not take this as an enthusiastic endorsement of Word. Most of the time I use it partly because I use it in my day job, and partly because if I wander off to find something else to use, I'll end up spending weeks doing tests, comparisons, etc. The fact is Word is always sitting there on my machine, if you stay away from the bells and whistles it doesn't suck too badly, and almost every editor that takes electronic submissions asks for an attached file in Word format. So, we'll have that argument later, but if you can't stand the idea of Word, don't read on. On the otherhand, this "trick" can be extrapolated to any other package with very little thought.

If you're like me, you print out what you've written after the day's writing is done. This can be where the internal editor comes to life and sends you into rewrite hell. Typical manuscript format leaves lots of room for notes, tweaks and scratchouts (as it should). What I've found is if for the initial writing you use a proportional font with single line spacing, you won't stop the internal editor dead in its tracks, but you can throw some nails in front of its tires and slow it down. There's no space to do more than maybe a little spellcheck. (That's the part of the trick that can be extrapolated almost anywhere.)

One of the problems with this is that pages are massive and you can feel like you're not getting as much done. But if you reduce your page size to booklet form, not only will you feel like you're getting more done, but your printout will be easier on the eyes and each session will resemble a little chapbook. Now printer software has been able to do this for a while by shrinking down your full-sized pages and jamming them into half the size your layout intended, but I find this less than elegant. Since Word 2002, there's been a better solution at your fingertips. Here's what to do:

Open a new, blank Word document.

Choose File > Page Setup.

On the Margins tab, select Book Fold from the Multiple Pages drop-down.

Change your Top, Bottom, Inside and Outside margins to .5 inches.

Set your Gutter to .25 inches.

Click OK and you're now not only working in booklet form, but you're actually typing into a page the size of one booklet page! (Make sure your using Print Layout view, of course.)

Now just choose a good looking proportional font, and you're off. (I use 12pt Times New Roman because it resembles the font used in traditional paperbacks and it's freely available almost everywhere, but feel free to play around with it. Don't forget if the page or font seems too small, you can adjust your view zoom to help.)

For printing, you'll ideally want to duplex. If your printing doesn't provide automatic duplexing, most printers come with instructions on how to manually duplex. Check your manual.

To simplify things in the future, save the document as a template. For submissions, just copy the text out of your finished document and paste it into your normal manuscript template.

Good luck!

Bad Muse! Bad!

2005-06-08T10:51:00.000-04:00

And just when you've tired of waiting for your muse to get its shit together and you've decided to make him do something (jesus, anything!), he jumps up and does something on his own. Of course, not what you were going to make him do, but words are words.

Wrote 500 words on a new short story last night. We'll see where it goes.

Up to the lab to see what's on the slab

2005-06-06T20:33:00.000-04:00

I think it's time for a little experimenting.

I've been reading a lot lately (and discussing online) about the approach to getting a novel out of a writer's head and down on paper. The approach, mind you, not the development of the idea in the first place. (Some writers call the latter step composting, but I don't like the concept that my ideas are rotting, so I think I'm going to call it stewing or simmering.)

Now, there's a LOT of different views on what's best. Some like to outline laboriously before ever putting a single word under the Chapter One heading, whereas others prefer to strap in, grip the keyboard and see where the sucker takes them. I don't think any one approach is "right". There's an old saying that what works, works because it works. But the reason I'm looking into this now is that ever since writing my first novel, I've been actively filling a box (and hard drive) with partials. Even on my first novel, things were...um...uneven.

For the first one, I just started writing with no idea where I was going. This actually went pretty well for a while. Then, at about the 3/4 point, I stalled. It sat like that for over 6 months. Finally, at the urging of some good writer friends, I went at it again. I went back and outlined what I'd done, and then continued the outline to the end. Then I sat down and did my best to follow the outline. It got done, but I'd much prefer a less time-consuming and soul-wracking approach.

In a previous post, I spoke about The Snowflake Method of writing a novel. This is one of the many systems out there which provide steps to follow from idea to finished novel. In theory, all it does is break the task of writing a novel up into digestible chunks. But, there is a map to follow.

So, the experiment I'm launching myself on is this: I'm going to start writing two novels pretty much at the same time. One, I'm going to outline a little, do a little character sketching, figure out a few high points (all of this is actually done already) and then I'm just going to start writing.

For the other, I'm going to try and stick religiously to The Snowflake Method. We'll see how it goes. If nothing else, I think this will show me the way I function best. Worse case, I'll have some more partials for THE BOX. Best case, I'll have two novels written by the end of the summer and some insight into how my muse works. (Most likely I'm going to end up with one novel and a slightly heavier box, but what the hell.)

I'll keep you posted.

Already wishing it was Fall

2005-05-29T20:42:00.000-04:00

What the heck happened to tv this year? It was good. I mean REAL good. This has to be one of the first years in I don't know how long when I've actually had too much to watch (thank you, whoever invented the DVR) and not enough time to watch it. I've always had a roster of a few shows I liked to catch when I could, but nothing like this. And almost all of the shows that claimed such high ratings and critical acclaim this year (Lost, 24, House, etc.) owe their success to the same thing -- damn fine writing.

I actually started thinking about this about halfway through the season, wondering what the deal was. The conclusion I came to was that almost all the shows, aside from being tightly written, had an underlying mythology. A sort of "night time soap" feel to them, but without getting melodramatic about it. They also raised the stakes. No fewer than 5 shows knocked off regular cast members. And popular, well-liked cast members, at that. I think this speaks well of how serious television producers/writers are taking their projects right now. Risks and highly dramatic actions are becoming the norm. Finally!

Of course, what's a good season if it ends like a wet firecracker? I was really concerned we were all headed for a couple of weeks of groaning and remote-tossing, but I have to say I was pleasantly proved wrong. Almost every show I spent time with this year ended on a note that made me wish it was September next week. No mean feat! (The notable exception was, of course, ENTERPRISE. But I'm still too mad to even try talking about that yet.)

In the coming weeks, I'm going try assembling a few lists associated with the fine television I've been privy to this year. Things like "the 10 best characters now on tv" or "the top five lines of dialogue" or "the top 3 easy-outs that were never taken". You get the idea. In the meantime, feel free to tell me yours!

How to write a novel

2005-05-28T22:41:00.000-04:00

I came across what seems to be a pretty cool "How to" site today. The Snowflake Method is another approach to bashing out those tomes we all want to be known for. While the analogy to a snowflake is new, the underlying ideas really aren't. For instance (off the top of my head) I can think of two other sites which talk about the same thing in pretty similar terms. Holly Lisle's website has a similar approach as well as a ton of how to articles on the writing life. Another site, very similar to the snowflake, uses something called the Jungian Novel Writing approach. The Jungian approach, and even Holly's site to a certain degree, are much more long-winded about giving you the information available from the Snowflake Method's site. Based on that alone, I'd recommend you check it out.

If you're too tired to click any links, let me sum up what these sites talk about. There's no secret formula for writing a novel. Oh, you'll have lots of people try and sell you on a formula for novels, but that has nothing to do with the actual work of getting the sucker on paper. Those snake oil salespeople are talking about the structure you should use: "put hero A through these paces and then put Heroine B through these paces and make sure a baby is born at the end". Even if that did work, I would surmise that the writing would get pretty stale and damn boring after a while. What the sites I mention above are talking about is basically how to chop up the work of writing a novel into itty bitty, digestible pieces and then approaching each piece on its own. They put it into different contexts (i.e. snowflake, Jungian, etc.) but in the end, it's all the same in my eyes. Of course, that's never stopped me from fooling myself into thinking I've stumbled across the next sliced white bread and applying the principles to something I'm working on. After all, organizing things isn't really writing, but it can sure seem like it with enough beer and lack of sleep.

A colleague recently said that what these kinds of approaches are best for are stalled novels. You know, when you find yourself on page 300 and you still have no idea what your book is about. Getting your ducks in a row, no matter how you do it, seems a pretty logical way of figuring out what you're doing and whether or not you want to stop it or continue on. Whatever your reasons or current state, if you try these approaches I wish you the best of luck.

And if by some whim of fate, they actually help you, drop me a line and let me know. If I'm still on page 350 and on my way to the store to buy more index cards, I'll try to curse softly so I won't interrupt the signing of your movie deal.

Writer on the move? Don't forget this.

2005-05-25T21:00:00.000-04:00

I moved about three years ago and thought I'd taken care of all the little details. You know, the relatives, the bill collectors, junk mail producers...all the important stuff you want to reach you in your new digs. The one thing I didn't do, or even think of, was to let the publishers who had bought some of my stories over the years know where I was going. Who would? At that time, it had been a couple years since I'd sold anything, so you can't really blame me for not thinking of it.

Well, over the past few weeks I re-did my website (ain't it purty?) and in the process of doing up a new Publications page, I decided to nose around the online bookstores and such. Maybe I'd find a nice picture of the books I could use on my site, or maybe they had a nice write-up from the publisher I could use, putting off my carpal tunnel meltdown by a day or two. So, I hit the usual spots: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, etc. And I couldn't believe what I found!

Most of the publications my stuff were in not only had new editions out (which means new royalty checks that were going to my old address), but one of them actually had an audio cassette version! Somebody out there had read my story and people were listening to it. The mind boggles, I tell ya. Just boggles. There was also a new UK edition of one of the books with a supercool new cover. Kicks the US versions ass by a mile...er...kilometer.

Anyways, so I've gotten the publishers current address from one of my co-authors in a couple of the books and I'm in the process of straightening this all out. The part I try NOT to think about is how many anthology invites and such I missed out on. Let's not go there.

So the moral, I guess, is if you're a writer and you've ever had anything published, NEVER EVER MOVE! Or, if you want to be all rational and stuff, include your past publishers in your change of address card deluge. I know I will from now on!