I may not like re-writing, but I like having done it.

Re-writing has all the motivational problems of real work.

Believe me, I'm as tired of doing it as you are of hearing about it.

Thing is, it absolutely improves the book.  By leaps and bounds.  In fact, without re-writing, my books would be completely amateurish.

I have to force myself to do it.  I managed to do three chapters yesterday.  I do a chapter, then take a long break, do another chapter then take a long break, and so on.  Sometimes I can do only half a chapter before my eyes blur and my concentration wanders and I walk away.  Giving myself breaks makes it a tolerable process.

If I'm lucky, the plot is working and the focus is on the words -- that seems to be true with this book.  If I'm unlucky, there are problems with the plot.  That's what's going on with Faerylander, Sometimes a Dragon, and Spell Realm and why they are still waiting to be published.

But if it is just the writing that is a problem, I just need to work at making it better.  Make it "read" like a real book.  Make sure there aren't any words or sentences that pull the reader out of the story.

So I can do about half the necessary improvement on my own.  But I need help.  Thankfully I have Lara to point out some obvious things, and to improve the writing throughout the book.

I probably still need help.  Sometimes I get it -- as with Led to the Slaughter where Bren and Linda put in a lot of work.

Sometimes I don't need the help as much, such as the Vampire Evolution Trilogy.

We'll see what happens with The Dead Spend No Gold: Sasquatch and the Gold Rush.

What I'm doing is taking a complete story with lots of sloppy writing, and I'm fleshing it out and making the sentences flow better.  I'll be done with this process in a couple of weeks, then I'll give it Lara and forget it for a month or more.

When I get it back, I'll probably know by then if it requires another person.  Then I'll have to beg, or bribe, or con someone into doing a pass.

Hopefully not.  Hopefully I can make the recommended changes, do some more re-writing, then probably give it to Lara a second time, and then do one more pass when I get it back.

I've been pretty good about not releasing a book until I think it's ready.  So I want to continue that.

It reminds me of the old saying about writing;  that you don't like doing it as much as you like having done it.

I don't like re-writing, but I like having done it.  

Making it work in the real world.

The logistics of the story may not be as hard as I thought.

First of all, I have 26 members of a search party who get picked off one by one, either by the Ts'emekwes or the Indians.  My Lost Patrol plot.

(By the way, I never actually use the word Bigfoot, which is a modern invention, and instead use the Indian words Ts'emekwes and Skoocoom.)

To get it clear in my head, I decided to list all 26 members by name and origin and characteristics -- and how and when they get killed.

That took awhile, and some adjusting.

Then I had to figure out the distances between Sutter's Fort (basically present day Sacramento) and the Sierra Nevadas.

The setting of my of much of my story is in a town at the foot of the mountains, with a river in-between, and high tributary to the river up in the mountains.

So I had to work out the distances and travel times, and to orient the geographical locations to the time traveled. As it turns out, the gold fields were wide enough that I could orient the distance by picking a location that matched those described in my books.

Luckily there was a location where I can do all those things.  I picked a town (now a ghost town) called Bidwell's Bar, with the Feather River running by it (which I call by its Indian name, Plumas River) and the North Fork Tributary.  Thompson Peak is where a lot of the action takes place.  I have several scenes where the river is tough to cross and there are ferries, and sure enough, that's exactly what happened in that neck of the woods. 

So those locations all match the traveling distances and times mentioned in the book.  More or less.  I want it to be realistic, if not down to the inch.

The Indian tribes in the area were the Miwok and the Maidu.  I'm using the Miwok, though technically, the Maidu might be slightly more accurate.  But I've already been using the Miwok words all through the story (they are slightly southeast, near Donner Pass...)

Last thing I need to do is work out the timeline.  Where each character was on day 1, then day 2, all the way through to the end of the book, and make sure they match the travel distances and so on.

It's a big game of concentration.  I find that I'm pretty close, because I have a general idea of where everyone is when I'm writing the story, but sometimes I'm off by a half a day or so.

Frankly, you'd have to be pretty obsessed to catch me out -- but then again, there are some people who can do that.

I had to change Sacramento back to Sutter's Fort, because it wasn't founded until that year.

I'm going to do some research on how the towns looked, how gold mining was done, that kind of thing.  Try to lend as much verisimilitude as I can to the story.

I'm trying not to be anachronistic, without being crazy about it.

This story is more made up than the Donner Party, which makes it easier in some ways, and harder in some ways.

Easier because I don't have to conform to a specific historical event.

Harder because I don't have the crutch of conforming to a specific historical event.

Much more of a traditional genre story -- versus Led to the Slaughter which became a more serious story because of the subject matter.

Tricks of re-writing.

So because I dislike re-writing so much, I need to have a program to help me do it.

(Don't get me wrong, I love writing the first draft, discovering the story, feeling the characters...)

***A couple of tricks I try to get me going on the re-writing:

1.)  Go backwards.  Start with the last chapter and go backward to the front.  This focuses on the writing, instead of the story.

2.)  Do them in chunks.  Last book, I found that 10 pages was a good healthy chunk to focus on before I lose interest.  So do 10 pages, then take an hour off -- or even 2 hours off -- and then do it again.  I can fit in at least 3 sessions per work day, if I do that.  Of course, I use the 5 minute rule all the time for unpleasant tasks. 

5-minute rule:  (Sit and work on something for 5 minutes, and more often than not, you'll keep going.  If after 5 minutes you still aren't engaged, probably best to leave it alone.)



***The best trick of all is when I have a critical thinker helping me by critiquing.  I love bouncing off the suggestions and corrections.  Somehow that is so much easier than staring at my own writing raw.

Problem is, this is very time intensive for the reader.  I usually can only ask someone to do it once, maybe twice, before they start avoiding me...

Right now, I've done it so much, I've pretty much worn out all the people who have helped me in the past.



***The thing I'm going to do a little different this time, is a systematic tracking of time, space, and characters.

Make a flow chart of the events in the book.

Make a map of the events, and make sure the events match the map.

Make a list of characters with their descriptions, and where they appear in the book. 



 ***The other really helpful thing is to do the historical research.  Just making those telling details count makes me look at my writing with fresh eyes.  Like I said, I just need a trick to do something other than stare at the words.



 ***I am such a spare and sparse writer, that when re-writing, more is almost always better.  That is, I rarely go too far in using extra words -- in my case, extra words usually fleshes out the story, the characters, the descriptions, the events.

My pacing is fast, so these things can actually moderate my pacing a little, which I need.

So I have a cheap trick, which seems to work.  I found it because when I was self publishing, I sometimes wanted to add a word or two to a sentence to extend the writing another line so that the chapter would end in a place that didn't look too sparse.  Say, like one line into a new page, something like that.

I found that almost every time I did that, the writing improved.  So now I do it on purpose, not to make the pages look better (I have no idea how that will look when the publisher gets done) but because it always seems to improve the story. I just look for those spaces, which then usually leads to a cascade of changes.

In other words, it's my lever, my wedge, my entry point.



***Finally, thankfully, I have Lara, my editor, who I pay to do both copy-editing, but more and more, content editing as well. 

A couple of sessions with her, and the book usually dramatically improves.

This also allows me to take time off from the book while she's working on it, giving me some much needed perspective when it comes back to me.



***Finally, I just need patience.  Not settle for "good enough."  Take the time to do it right, make it good, and be proud of the effort. 

Make sure the book is done before I release it.  Go on to the next book, let the book sit for awhile.  Then check it again.

Then, when I'm sure, let it go.

Finished The Dead Spend No Gold!

Finished The Dead Spend No Gold:  Bigfoot and the California Gold Rush.

At least, the first draft.  Finished on schedule, yesterday.

It was pretty exciting.  I get a euphoria when I finish a book.

I especially liked the last chapter of this book, which came out really, really well.  Really brought the book together.

I must say, this is pretty amazing.  The book came easy.  I had all the elements and characters I wanted before I started, I realized pretty early on that I wanted it to be a Lost Patrol story, I added in the werewolves early so that there would be some "bad guy" action.  I have a chance to try to reach some depth by the tragedy of the genocide of the Indians and the environmental disaster of gold mining -- and how it affects the natural world, which in this case is represented by Grendel.

Oh, and the Grendel thing.  I really need to find a Beowulf translation that I can use.  A short quote at the beginning of each chapter.  I mean, if there is a 19th century translation, how can that not be in the public domain?

But I have to be sure.  I don't want a book removed from circulation.  So I have to be certain.

Anyway, now I want to make sure the book is good.  I'm kind of excited by the potential, actually.  Much like about 2/3rds of the way through Led to the Slaughter I realized there was some resonant depth in the story itself, I'm hoping to find that kind of depth in this story too.

My biggest problem is forcing myself to really put in the rewriting work.  Not to settle for "good enough."
I'm lazy.

Lazy?  I write books every other day, how can I be lazy?

Because I do the easy stuff.  I do a lot of the easy stuff.

But the payoff to doing the proper rewriting is that the increased quality will exist forever -- that no matter how painful it is now, it will be something I can look back on with pride.

So there it is.  I hate to treat it like work.  To think of it as work.  But I can't fool myself into thinking it is anything else.

I just have to do it.

Make it good.

Had a friend come in and tell me his 13 year old son -- "who reads everything" -- had come to him to tell  him how "good" Led to the Slaughter was.  And then to proceed to tell him all the reasons why he thought the book was good.

Thing is, I could tell from the way the parent described what his kid said, that the reaction was genuine and heartfelt.  Very gratifying.

What it brought home to me is that it is important not only to finish the books, and to get them published, and hopefully to have them sell.  It is important that they be as "good" as I can make them.

Which you are probably thinking, "Well, obviously."

Nevertheless, I think a reminder that that "Wow, I really like this book" response is the real goal of writing -- all the rest is just part of the process.

My short description of LED TO THE SLAUGHTER.

A description of Led to the Slaughter.

It's a historical novel.  I've tried my best to stick to the historical facts.  I've had to adjust a few timelines slightly, maybe move the geography just a little bit, but mostly it's how it really happened.

The werewolves aren't treated as a gimmicks. I treat them as natural creatures.  They manipulate the Donner Party into taking "short-cuts" which leads them to being trapped in the mountains.  But it's the worst winter ever and the werewolves end up being as trapped as the humans.

My protagonist is a 15 year old girl named Virginia Reed, who is an indomitable and resourceful character, as well other other heroes of the journey, and I tell it from the viewpoint of 'journals.'

(I found the "actual" journals and diaries.)

The Donner Party is an absolutely fascinating survival story in its own right.  I didn't want to take away from the human tragedy of it.  I tried to retain that, while adding the element of the werewolves as a further threat.

I want the reader to come away with the feeling that they've experienced the real events without ever feeling like it is unbelievable.  Even with werewolves.

It's supposed to be an entertaining and fast read, but I also wanted to dig deeper into the human spirit that emerged from the tragic events.

I can sell you something if you stand in front of me.

My local editor, Lara Milton, was in the store yesterday and we were chatting and I was bemoaning how bad I was at publicity.

Meanwhile, I sold like three copies of Led to the Slaughter in front of her within an hour.

"I don't know," she said.  "You look pretty good at it to me."

Well, that's 'selling' not promotion.  After 34 years at the store, I've learned how to do that.  Sometimes I can be very, very good at it.  One-on-one salesmanship is a skill.  All I need is something I'm enthused about, and then I find ways to describe the item, then I refine the terms that seem to get a response and eventually I come up with a patter than is soft but insistent, helping the buyer make up his or her own mind, with a little gentle nudging from me.

Or sometimes, I can be less than gentle, almost insistent.  Or I can beg.  Or I can make a huge deal.  Or....

Whatever works.

If I apply myself to it, I can sell. 

But it has to be natural.  It has to be something I believe in.  It can't be manufactured.  It has to be genuine and authentic.

Fortunately, at any one time, I always have product in the store that I believe in...

Anyway, if I could somehow say the same things online about Led to the Slaughter that I say to the person in front of me, maybe I could make it work.

But I'm missing the one-on-one connection.  The sincerity it my voice. The body language.  The likeability.  Most of the little techniques I can use on a customer are lost when they are expanded outward to a broader audience.  I don't always charm the person in front of me, but I often do.  When it's not working, I can adjust my behavior until it does work.

It is a skill I learned, and I suppose if I applied myself to the techniques of promotion, in 34 years I'd probably be pretty good at it.

Blood of Gold pre-release sale announcement.

Blood of Gold has been announced on the Books of the Dead Press site.  It's the third book of the Vampire Evolution Trilogy.  Like the first two, it will be available on May 1st, in both ebook and paperback, from Barnes and Noble and Smashwords (as well as other places.)

If you buy the first three books for only .99 cents each, I'll give you free ebook copy of Led to the Slaughter.  So four books for only 2.97!

It helps a lot if you buy it in advance (not to mention saving 3.00 per book) in that all the sales count on the same day, so it really helps make the books more prominent.

So I'm asking, if you please take a couple of minutes and click the link and make the orders.

Thanks, everyone.  This has been a fun ride so far -- I'd kind of like to continue doing it!

http://www.booksofthedeadpress.com/2014/04/new-pre-release-duncan-mcgeary-blood-of.html

Best time ever to be a writer.

I order selectively through a book liquidator.  It usually takes me a month, if not two, to get to the minimums they require.  So I just check the new books everyday and add the good ones to the list.

However this distributor has a nasty habit of raising the limits from one book to two books, without notice.  So suddenly my list has way more books than I intended.

So I  Zero out the list.

This smacks of bait and switch, and I'm not going to buy more books than I want.

*****

Speaking of lists, I've decided to stop looking at the sales lists on all the different venues my books are on.

They simply make no sense.  They change overnight.  They have algorithms that are inexplicable.

This isn't sour grapes.  Sometimes the weirdness is in my favor, and sometimes it isn't.

But none of it seems...solid.

I'll just wait until the publisher makes his quarterly report...

*****

I'm at 60K words on The Dead Spend No Gold, my sequel to Led to the Slaughter.  I'll be finished in the next two to three writing sessions.

Which is like -- wow.  How did that happen?

Then the real work begins.  I've got to make the timelines and the geography and the characters consistent.  I want to do some historical research to add some authentic details. 

And I want to work on the writing.  Make the story readable.

As for the story itself -- this one came easy, as if it was ready to go.  I've had a pretty good sense from the beginning of where I wanted to take it, and the subconscious obliged.  Each time I hit a roadblock the answer appeared, which is a sign this book wanted to exist.

After I've sent this off to the editor, I'm going to knuckle down and really get Faerylander ready.

I think this next round will be the keeper.  Then I'd like to work on the rewrite of the sequel, Wolflander, which came out well and only needs to be edited mostly.

Then I can finally get to writing my Pilot Butte ghost story, the third book in the Lander series, called Ghostlander. 

******

It just a matter of doing it.  I'm really enjoying this whole thing, especially the creative part, but also knowing that when I'm finished, I can put them out into the world. 

Best time ever to be a writer.

New thoughts about ebooks.

I'm feel like I'm getting a little distance from the excitement of getting published.

For one thing, I'm back to writing full time again.  I passed 50,000 words on The Dead Spend No Gold, and it was like I passed some barrier.  It's now just a matter of finishing.

Plus, I'm getting more of a sense of how this is all going to work.

What I've really not talked about is my feelings toward ebooks.

I make the joke in my store that as a retailer and reader, I hate ebooks.  As a writer, I love ebooks.

Which isn't strictly true.  For one thing, I've never been one who thought ebooks would be the end of traditional books.

Now that I'm an ebook writer (as well as traditional, more about that later) I'm not one of those who think that ebooks are the only answer for writers.

A little bit of both, I suppose.

My feeling is that traditional publishing -- instead of constricting in a panic, firing editors and reps and everyone else they could -- should have opened up.  Done even MORE books, both ebooks and traditional books, hired MORE editors and reps and promotional people and such, taken on MORE authors, and paid MORE.

In other words, they did the worse thing they could do.   They panicked.  They were so afraid of doing the same thing that the music business did, that they constricted and shifted, thereby in effect doing the same thing the music industry did -- just in a different way.

They should have embraced ebooks -- not grudgingly, out of fear, as they did -- but by bringing them fully into the fold.  It would have required investment, it would have required that they change the terms to give the writers more of the new money. 

I'm not sure I would have understood that either.  I was kind of old guard, even more old guard than the publishers, in that I would have ignored ebooks altogether.

I was wrong.

But what the publishers actually did was take the worst elements of both facets of publishing, instead of keeping what they had and then really opening the door to ebooks.  (Like I said, they should have hired more help, bought more books, and most importantly, given a bigger chunk to the authors.)

Now Amazon and Smashwords have more or less cornered the ebook market by giving a bigger share to the authors.  Believe me, if a traditional publisher offered most ebook writers a bigger share as well as distribution of physical books in bookstores, a lot of authors would jump at the opportunity.

I know in my store that the answer to falling sales is not to cut orders, but to buy more -- or more importantly -- find something that WILL sell, even if it requires more investment at a time when you can least afford it.  You have to think long-term, and have faith in your judgement.  You don't pull the rug out from under the stuff you already sell, you add new elements.  Let the store shift over time, in response to supply and demand.

But...well, the publishing industry is defensive and hypocritical and worst of all, greedy and elitist.

And they are going to pay the price.

Rule of Vampire, pre-release.

Rule of Vampire announcement, the 2nd book of the Vampire Evolution Trilogy.

Apparently, the publisher is rolling these out, one per day.

I think I especially like the cover to this book.

They are all going to be released on May 1, 2014, including the paperback versions of all three books! 

If you buy all three in advance, they are only .99 cents each, instead of the 3.99 they will be on release.  (Plus they all count as sales on May 1.)  I have the ability to give you a free ebook copy of Led to the Slaughter if you buy all three books.

http://www.booksofthedeadpress.com/2014/03/new-pre-release-duncan-mcgeary-rule-of.html

Pre-release sale for the Vampire Evolution Trilogy.

Here's the scoop on my Vampire Trilogy.

All three books are going to be released on May 1, costing 3.99 each.

But!  

You can buy them in advance for only .99 each. Plus, with proof of purchase, you can get a free ebook of Led to the Slaughter.

The thing about pre-release sales is that the stats are all entered on the same day, so it can have a real big impact on best-seller lists.

Plus they only cost .99 cent each in advance!

Plus you can get an ebook copy of Led to the Slaughter for free, if you can show that you bought the three .99 books Vampire Trilogy books. I think this is great because everyone who bought the first two books of the trilogy when I did them myself, can now buy all three for a price that is less than they'd have to buy the third one for.

So this can be a real launching pad, folks. To a career at writing, if we can just get some momentum on these books.

As the notice says -- you can buy them on Barnes and Noble, on Smashwords, on Apple, and on Kobo. This sale isn't on Amazon.

I'm thinking the most effective place would be to buy from Barnes and Noble. But anyplace would be good.

I was reliably informed by Jared that what I'm doing isn't promotion, it's "begging." So I'm not going to do that. This time, I'm not begging for reviews (though those would be great when the books come out) but to click the links below and order the three books so that on May 1 they might actually be high on the lists.  And only have to spend 2.97 in total.

Being high on the lists, makes you higher on the lists.

Whatever happens, this is kind of fun and exciting.

http://www.booksofthedeadpress.com/2014/03/new-pre-release-duncan-mcgeary-death-of.html

Cloistered.

Linda is visiting Todd for 3 days, so I decided I would do a heavy writing session.  I'm 75% through the first draft of the Dead Spend No Gold, and I'm hoping to push on through to the conclusion by the end of the week.  I've had a clear focus on the plot almost from the beginning.  This book is probably the closest to the original conception as anything I've ever done.

What this means is -- sitting in my room for six days straight.  Never turning on the television.  Never turning on the music.  Getting stir-crazy.  The one thing I allow myself to do is play solitaire on my old desktop computer (which pretty much solely exists for that purpose.)  I do this because my sub-conscious seems to be able to generate ideas while I'm doing it, but reading, or watching, or listening, not so much.

Out of 12 to 16  hour days, I may spend only 10 or 20% of it on actual writing.  The rest of the time I'm letting things percolate.  It does get boring, frankly.  But I have to stick with it, I have to be available for when I tease out that little bit of creativity, and then hope that I get on a roll.

So if I was following a compass, I'm wandering off the path about 90% of the time, but when I get back on the path I make progress.

But if anyone wants to know how I write so fast, the answer really is that I don't.  I just give all my time over to it.  I have to be willing to stay cloistered for days on end.  I'm so thankful that the store is doing well enough to let me do it.

I can never quite get over this sense that I'm wasting time.  Yet...there are all these words I've written by the end of the day.  Certainly, no one could accuse me of not producing.  This first draft, this raw material, has to be created so that it can turn into a book.  And this is the fun part.

It's work.

It's just that the 'working' entails so much time not working.

Craft versus Art.

Trying to learn to be a writer is a long journey that only ends where it ends.

While I'm rather later in my life to be a beginner, that is nevertheless how I feel.  I am a slow learner, so it takes me twice as long to learn how to do something as everyone else.  Then again, if it's something I want to do, I keep trying long after everyone else would have probably given up.

Anyway, I do feel like I've learned something about how to become a writer.  At least, how I've learned to become my kind of writer.

FIrst of all, I think everyone starts out with the "story."

I remember when my 7th grade an art teacher asked the class to go home and write a story about a picture that she had clipped out of a magazine.  This picture happened to be a rock column, a natural bridge, in one of the national parks.

I was up all night imagining this incredibly elaborate emotional story.

I woke up the next morning realizing I had no idea how to get that story down on paper and wrote something quick that got a passing grade, and moved on.

But I never forgot the emotional experience.

So later on, I had  a similar experience with my first book, Star Axe.  Again, I had all the emotions and story, but had no idea how to do it.

I think everyone starts with the idea of "art."  So they try to tell it as "art."  Most of the time, it comes out as hopelessly stilted and formal.

You know --- "ART!"

If they actually just tried to tell the story in a straightforward way, it would be better.

But then again, that isn't good enough either.

Essentially, to tell a good story you have to learn tricks to make it feel real.  To give the illusion that it is real.

This is what I call the "craft" of writing, and it is a never-ending process.  As I say, I'm a slow learner and it take me forever to learn what some people learn how to do early.

So then the learning process becomes learning the "craft" to tell the "story" effectively.  As I say, a never ending process.  That's where I'm at now.

But in the process of writing The Dead Spend No Gold, I'm learning something new.   I'm learning that craft is not enough either.  That -- in the end -- you have to bring the "art" back into it.  When I wrote Led to the Slaughter, the story was intrinsically so powerful that I could tell it in a fairly straightforward manner and it would be effective.  The story was so good that all I needed to do was "craft" the story and it would work.

Nothing wrong with that.  It's a very good way to learn.

But with The Dead Spend No Gold, the entire story is completely imaginative -- besides the basic background.  Simply crafting the story isn't supplying the emotional payoff that I want.

So I need to add the poetic atmospherics.  I need to do some "art" to really make it work.

Which is fine.

When I say "art", I'm talking about the impulse.  I'm not saying I am necessarily succeeding.  But the adding the poetic way of saying things, of trying to find a phrase that goes directly to the point, the trying to raise subtle emotional responses in the way you describe things -- these are all things I'm attempting to accomplish.

I'm 2/3rds of the way through, and this is the crucial part of the book.  I have to evoke an atmosphere of dread and horror to make the book succeed in supplying an emotional catharsis.   And the only way to do this is through words -- through art.

So I'm letting myself go crazy on the poetic side.  Trusting that I'll be able to pick which parts to use to be effective.

And learning again, that this is a never-ending learning process. 

I'm not dabbling.

I don't know what other writers do, and this will probably sound weird, but sometimes I psyche myself up for a writing session.  Especially if I have a general idea of what I want, but have reached a kind of plateau.  That is, where I stopped was a good place, and I know what I want to accomplish next, but there is like a 10 foot span between one roof and the other and I have to wind myself up in order to jump across it.

So I get everything prepared, ready, sharpen the pencils (bring up the program) and then walk around talking to myself, basically, or whatever it takes to really get a good strong headstart so I can leap across that gap.


Meanwhile, to go back to that first sentence -- what other writers do.

You know, I have to believe that every writer is completely different.  I know that I've arrived at my process by trial and error.  Some things work for me that I'm positive would work for no one else, and some things that I've read work for everyone else, don't work for me.

One rule I do have.  Finish the story.  Don't get sidetracked.  Finish it.

Then, if it isn't good enough, do something else and come back to it later.

I was talking to someone who asked how I managed to find the time and energy to finish so many drafts.  I told him it was because I've been very "diligent."  I've set myself goals and I've stuck to them.  I've spend a lot of time doing this.  I'm not dabbling.  I suspect, too, that I had a lot of pent up creative energy from my long break.

I want to finish these stories, which are starting to pile up, and that is another motivation to keep on working.  It would be a shame not to get these into readable shape.

Meanwhile, I just enjoy writing the original stories.  That part is fun.

So the first part, the creation of the story, gets done because I find it fun.

The second part, getting it into readable shape gets done because I don't want to waste the effort. 

My Name in Lights.

There's a certain style in Horror covers.  You begin to recognize it after you've looked at enough lists.

My publisher has that style nailed down.  I mean, I can't explain it.  It's just the style.  The thing I noticed right away with Books of the Dead is that they are very much on top of what is happening in both the Horror genre, and with the intersection between ebooks and traditional publishing.  A hybrid, if you will, with a tilt toward the ebook side.

Which is probably exactly where they should be, and where I'm happy to find myself.  I just can't imagine doing it the old-fashioned way anymore -- writing a book a year, waiting a year for it to come out.  And that only after spending months if not years negotiating the obstacle course -- and with a pretty high chance that nothing ever happens at all.



Anyway I like the covers.  I probably wouldn't have come up with them myself.  I probably wouldn't have put my name in Stephen King sized letters above the title.  ("You're a star!" says Bruce).  It's out of my hands, in any case.  The publisher is in charge of how the book looks, when it is released, and how it is marketed.

Which again, is all right by me. 

Looks like all three books of the Vampire Trilogy are going to be on "pre-release" sale at Apple and Barnes and Noble and Kobo in the next few days.  There is going to be a way to get them all cheaper, with a bonus book added in. 

Details as soon as I get them.

I don't know if it is unusual to offer an entire trilogy straight away.  But again, I figure my publisher knows what he's doing.

The Covers to my Vampire Evolution Trilogy!

Plot parallels.

I took the first two chapters of The Dead Spend No Gold to writers group and it seemed to pass muster.

I added a prologue that I think starts the book off in a much more intriguing way.  It was written pretty choppy, so I worked on it yesterday and smoothed it out.

It is very parallel to the first chapter of Led to the Slaughter, which is interesting.

Also parallel to the first book, I've gotten to a point in the book where I'm struggling for a method to show a series of events.  Basically, I'm in the "Lost Patrol" segment of the book where I always intended to be, but now that I'm here, it seems like it is going to be tough to keep it interesting.

Just like in Led to the Slaughter, once I got them to the mountains and they started to freeze and starve, this book has them being picked off one by one.  It is more of a horizontal plot, rather than a vertical plot, and I'm not sure how to pull it off.

With the first book, I resorted to a series of journal entries, and that worked very well.

I'm thinking about doing the same thing here -- but it is 2/3rds of the way through a 3rd person book with multiple viewpoints, so I'm not sure how suddenly transitioning to 1st person journals would work. 

I'm going to try it,  because it does seem like the perfect solution.  Just hope the reader goes along with it.

Lost Blue Bucket Mine.

I was looking for the next Virginia Reed adventure.  What was cool about the California Gold Rush was that it took place only one year after the Donner Party, so I could go from Virginia being 14 to her being 15.

With the whole expanse of time and space of the West ahead of her.

I was thinking the Lost Blue Bucket Mine would be cool.  It would bring her up to our neck of the woods here in Central Oregon.

But, the incident took place in 1845, four years before the 49's!

Still...I suppose I could have her somehow involved in a search for the mine.  That would make some sense.

Just one year after Grendel's Cave. 

I kind of like the idea.  I think that's where I'm going.

Why horror?

No one was more surprised than me when I wrote a Vampire trilogy.  I was aware that vampires as a trend were probably dying off.  (But then again, they never die, do they?) 

My first efforts when coming back to writing were also horror -- Cthuhlu versus Faery.  Followed up by Werewolves versus Faery. 

And of course, Led to the Slaughter, my historical western horror (to which I'm writing a sequel.)

I never thought of myself as a horror writer, and yet most of what I've written lately would be categorized as horror.  How did that happen?

I think the main thing is that horror is a very open field, unconstrained by convention.  Horror can be anywhere, anytime, anyhow.  It seems to me to be a relatively fresh field of creativity.

It's so old-fashioned, it's new again.  (And westerns, it seems to me, are fresh to most readers.  I just don't think most readers know how much they miss it..)

Fantasy, no matter how fresh you might try to make it, is constrained.  Unless you change it so much it isn't really fantasy.  Unless you make it "dark" or "urban" or...well...might as well say it, "horror."

I love science fiction, but never feel like my science is accurate enough.  I used to love fantasy, and still do when someone manages to write something fresh.  I love detective novels, but know nothing about procedures or guns or any other number of practical things.

But horror.  We all live our lives with a tinge of horror around the edges, even if it is only in our dreams. 

Maybe I should say I write Dark Fantasy, but to me that is just another name for horror. 

Horror, in other words, can escape the tropes.  Horror can be anything that deals with the dark, the battle between good and evil, and human frailties.

Horror can be just about anything you want it to be.