Publishing frequency.

It's interesting to me that Tuskers

http://www.amazon.com/Tuskers-Duncan-McGeary-ebook/dp/B00S4FGFK2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1421039260&sr=1-1&keywords=Tuskers+duncan+mcgeary

Is slightly outselling Tuskers II.  

http://www.amazon.com/Tuskers-II-Day-Long-Pig-ebook/dp/B00Y710PMG%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAJBDF5XQBATGDX4VQ%26tag%3Dspea06-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB00Y710PMG

I think that's a good thing, assuming that people like Tuskers enough to read the sequel.  Which I think will happen if the sequel is readily available.

It kind of affirms my thought that having steady releases helps sell books.  I researched the whole momentum thing when I started and saw that most books have a rather dramatic dropoff after about 5 or 6 months.

So having Tuskers II come out 4.5 months after Tuskers probably was good timing.  Having Tuskers III come out at the same frequency would probably also be a good idea.

I think it's a lot like my store.  (I find lots of similarities to my business in writing.)

The one thing you have to have is a steady flow of new product.  This is almost more important than anything else you can do.  I'll delay paying myself, put off other bills, in order to get a steady supply.  If you don't do this, you're dead.

Sadly, many stores cut back on buying product when they have cashflow problems, which would seem to make sense on the surface, but in the end sends out the wrong message to your customers.  Never cut off the steady flow of material.

New product brings them in and reminds them of old product.  It's crucial.

It doesn't mean you have to go crazy -- but it almost always means you're in uncomfortable territory if you're trying to get ahead of the market.

I see some publishers doing similar things, either because of finances or because they are feeling overwhelmed.  I think it's a bad idea to delay publication for too long.  A really bad idea.  But they are the boss of me in these things, as long as I want to have a publisher. 

Unfinished books.

At 41K words I'm more than 2/3rds of the way through Gargoyle Dreams.  I've always finished a book I've gotten this far into.  (I've stalled at 30K words a few times.)

The plot is completely worked out, including the ending, so it's just a matter of sitting down everyday and doing my 1000 words or so and I'll be done another couple of weeks.

Which kind of brings me to another subject.

I have about 8 books I've finished that I wasn't satisfied with.  I always figured I would go back and redo them.

The thing is, it would take about the same amount of time to "fix" these books as it would to write a new book.  And the new books are probably going to be better.  These older books have problems, some of which can't really be solved adequately.

As new ideas come to me, these older books are receding into the past, and I'm now beginning to wonder if I'll ever go back and try to make them better.

Thing is, in spite of myself I do believe I'm getting better.  Just because of having written so much.  I'm much more comfortable with the whole process, the words seem to come easier, I tend to make less mistakes.  The process has become routine, the results are better.

It kind of blows my mind that I would let 500K words just go to waste.  I mean, it wasn't wasted experience.  It's how I did learn to get better.  But wow.  That's a lot of unused material.

Maybe I'll hit a creative wall, and no new ideas will come to me.  So I'll have these books as backup to work on, if that happens.

I still want to try to save Faerylander, but it needs the most work of all.  I'll just keep making stabs at it and hope a miracle happens.

I have 3 new books finished that I think are ready to be published.  (The Last Fedora: The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Murders; Tuskers III). Gargoyle Dreams is almost finished, and I hope to get Tuskers IV written very soon.  I have the new Virginia Reed adventure I want to write.  That's not even counting any new ideas I might get along the way. (I'm always going to try to write what I think is a good strong idea -- squeeze it in somehow.)

Only then can I really think about getting back to one of those older books.

Street Closure Rant #2

My friend Paul complained that I've done insufficient ranting about street closures this year.

Well, hell.  I've given up.  If it isn't obvious by now that street closures are counter productive, what will make it obvious?

Pegasus Books is well into it's 36th year of business downtown.  I long ago decided to let everyone else make their own choices, and I'd go my own way.  That appears to have been the right choice.  Most everyone that told me I was wrong over the years is gone, long gone.

The best example is the business owner who told me the street closures "are the best thing we've ever done" and who was gone two days later.  Literally.  Glad it helped.

But you know what?  Just go downtown on a non-event weekend in the summer and tell me we haven't succeeded already.  The streets are packed with shoppers and diners.

Sometimes it's best to let downtown be downtown.

But...we've decided that isn't good enough.  Better to distract them with other things.  Music and outside venders and just about anything else that isn't pointed at our stores.  Let them spend money with outside vendors, and drive away the regulars.

Actually, "decided" isn't the right word.  This stuff is on autopilot now.  Events continue to grow in numbers and sizes and no one says "Enough!"

We're like a guy in a hole who was dying from lack of water, and we get a pail of water thrown on us.  We say, Thank You, Sir, do it again.  And when the hole is so full of water we've drowned, the water just keeps on sloshing. Because the guy sloshing the water needs his job, and the guy who sells the water makes money, and it is fun to watch. Or taxes collected to build something and it gets built and we keep on building until the structure falls over. Or...I don't know what.  When is enough enough?

It doesn't hurt my store as much as it used to, because I've learned to mainstream my store.  If they're going to drive away my regulars, then I'd better have something for the non-regulars, right?  It was a natural evolution to my store, and one could even say, "See, we've helped you adapt."

I've never trusted that reasoning, though.  It's a bit like a bully saying, "See? Beating you up all the time made you stronger?"  Uh, thanks?  Besides, this evolution happened because of the changes downtown, not the street closures.

The truth is, events aren't really for the downtown stores.  We're just the enablers.  We've been told that it's good for us and no one can prove otherwise. I've been told to shut up, it's for the public, but you know there are plenty of public spaces.  We pay rent throughout the year, only to have our space taken over during the busiest months.  Even the Old Mill doesn't close their streets for events, nor do any of the other private shopping malls.  Why do you suppose that is?

Yesterday we did probably about half of what I would have expected on a Saturday in July.  Sure, it was cloudy and rainy, but you know what?  That is usually a good formula for business in the summer, as tourists look for something else to do.  But not this time.

So there's my rant.  Not that it's going to change anything. 


 

Theme music.

I've always wanted to write a book accompanied by theme music.  An album or an artist that I would listen to exclusively while writing.

When I was a kid, my older brother Michael got the lead role in a summer production of The Fantasticks. 

It happened to be the same summer than I was reading Lord of the Rings. Mike played the album incessantly to learn the lyrics.   So I heard those songs over and over and over again, all summer.

To this day, I can't hear "Try to remember the kind of September" without waves of Hobbit nostalgia washing over me.

Now LOTR's had a huge impact on me.  Obviously.  I realize I'm not the only one, but at the time it seemed like it.  It was mid-sixties, and while LOTR's wasn't unknown, it wasn't yet the force it would be.  At least, at the time, it seemed like I was the only one to have read it.  (Not counting my sisters, Betsy and Susie who fought over control of the paperbacks all summer.)

Anyway, I've always wondered if I couldn't use a similar musical theme as motivation while writing a book.

Recently, I started listening to Born to Run every morning, all the way through.  The album really doesn't fit what I'm writing, but somehow the music charges me up.  Makes me want to write.  (And really, how many albums could be listened to everyday, really?)

When Born to Run came out, (1975?) I'd probably not purchased an album in five or six years.  In fact, I probably hadn't listened to music much during that time.  I was in the deepest throes of my depression, and wasn't really paying much attention to anything.

So buying Born to Run to me is one of those signs that I was coming out of my depression, if only a little.  The medication was working.  (I hated it, but at least it got me out of the blackest moments.)

Born to Run was like an elixir to me.  It charged me up. There was something so hopeful and energizing about it.  I found The Clash and Elvis Costello not long after that and I reengaged with music and...you know, life.

So Born to Run is still a huge pleasure for me. I don't think about it, I just let it wash over me.  And when the album is done, I get up and start writing Gargoyle Dreams.

It isn't quite what I had in mind, but it's wonderful anyway.

Maybe I need a brand new album to use -- some classic just coming out -- and then apply that to the next book.

But this is the next best thing.

Slacking off.

Well, relatively.

I think it wouldn't hurt to slow down.  But I don't want to slow down so much I stall. 

There is so much rewriting I want to do, and need to do.  Want to do as in "Having Rewritten."

I just don't like rewriting; there is no way around that.  It is something I need to do and I usually get the job done.  But it is a "job."

In my younger days I'd sit down with a beer or two and that was my reward and my motivation and hours would go by and I'd have done the task.  But I can't seem to drink a couple of beers and not pay the price anymore.  So that doesn't really work.

Anyway, as long as I make sure each book I release is as finished as I can make it -- including the rewrites -- then I'm doing what I should be doing.

So far so good.

Too many books?

How many is too many?

Too many are any books after mine.  Heh.  I mean, I want in.

That's the thing that is most noticeable to me.  Just how many books there are in the world.

I asked Cameron if any of my books had sold in the store.  "Yeah, I've sold a bunch of Led to the Slaughter."

"Did tell them the owner wrote it?"

"No...they just liked the idea of it.  They read the description on the back and they find it interesting."

Which is pleasing to me.  That the idea itself can sell the book.

Got my second only 1 star review, after mostly 4 and  5 star reviews.   I checked out the guys other reviews and he gave a 1 star to everyone.  Every single novel.  He gave a 4 star review to a non-fiction book about firearms.  Methinks he needs a new way of discovering books, or else quit reading fiction altogether. Meh.

Went to the doctor yesterday for my yearly checkup and it discombobulated me enough that I didn't write.  (Didn't sleep the night before.)  For someone who writes so much, it doesn't take much to throw me off track. Which is why I'm so ruthless about making time.

Working today at the store, so don't need to worry about the book for now.

Just taking care of business.

Linda -- an audience of one.

Sometimes an audience of one is enough. 

Linda.

I'm lucky to have her.  I spent all day yesterday struggling over a consequential chapter of Gargoyle Dreams.  One that wasn't easy to do, one that I had my doubts about.

"It's great," Linda says when I read it to her.

Look, writing is isolating enough already.  I have a hard time imagining how I could continue to do it without Linda's wholehearted support. 

"I like your writing.  There is something....sweet about it."

"Sweet?"

"Yeah, it feels good."

Hey, I'll take it.  I mean I write horror.  She should be terrified, right? "ugh, it's terribly scary!" might be a better comment.

I think it's because we are so compatible, so simpatico.  She gets what I'm trying to do.  She relates.  If anything, I might want her to be more critical.  I tell her that.

"But I like your writing.  I think you're doing it just right."

Arrrghh.  A very mild, pleased arrrghh.

Settling in.

I'm 35K words into Gargoyle Dreams.  A slow pace for me, about 1000 words a day.

But that fits the schedule just fine.  I can finish the first draft by the end of this month.

Meanwhile, I'm going to make that extra effort on The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Murders.  I'm having Bren go over it, I'm also asking for some Beta Readers, and I'll be making a hard copy to work on myself. 

I've been doing something a little different over the last week. Changing the process.

I've been writing the original first draft on Gargoyle Dreams in the morning, and the editing on TMPDGM's in the afternoon.  I've never done that before, but it seems more than doable.  In fact, that may be the way to do things going forward.  Instead of one or the other, just separate them by sessions. 

The original stuff has to come first, that I know, but the editing can come after.

Tuskers III should come back to me from Lara around the first week of August, so I think I can completely finish it by around the middle of September, which will help keep that nice 4.5 months between releases.

So sort of settling into a regular schedule, which is nice.  The newness of this whole experience has worn off, but I'm encouraged enough by my progress to keep on going.

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Murders extra step..

The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Murders is finished, and I like it a lot.

I like the title and the subject matter and I think the writing came out smooth and clean and the structure of the novel works.  (Usually, I feel that one of these things is lacking a little.)

I like it so much, that even though I think it is good -- as good as anything I've done -- the way it is, I'm going to take the extra step to try to make it even better, if possible.  My friend Bren has agreed to read it, and she usually holds my feet to the fire when it comes to making a book work well, so I'm going to take the extra month or so it takes to do that.

She isn't always available.

While I'm at it, I'm going to see if I can't find a couple of beta readers. 

And print up a hard copy myself and give it one more going over. 

This book will be as strong as I can make it.  I'm looking for a little extra depth, if possible, and a WOW! factor if at all possible.

Heh.  Not that I'm not always trying for that...
 

C-Span is interesting to Dweebs like me.

It's interesting to watch C-Span panels on the publishing industry.  (Yes, C-Span can be interesting if you're a dweeb like me.)

You have the brash techno types who think traditional publishing is doomed.  "You've got 5 years, maybe."

You have the old line publishers who think they're just fine, and books and bookstores are making a comeback.  (They don't sound very confident about it, though.)  "New bookstores are opening up!  Books are selling!  Really!"

You have the flaky pseudo tech people who have some strange notions of hybrids that will take off.  ("Kids want interactive elements in their books"?  No they want them in their games, dude.)

Really no one knows and they all seem scared and uncertain.

So here I am at the perfect nexus.  I own a bookstore and I'm a writer who sells mostly on Amazon's tech platform. 

I haven't a clue.  I do think books are going to last, but here's the thing. Books have never sold all that well, as far as I can tell.  Thousands of people downtown and few are looking for a book, even the vast majority of people who come in the door of my store. So it's a matter of degree.

And the digital is not the answer for the vast majority of writers, who will never be discovered no matter how good they are.

So, just saying, there aren't any answers here.  It's possible that nothing will really work, but books will still get written anyway.

Oh, boy.

Automatic Edit Mode.

I often talk about how I don't much like editing.  I wish I was one of those authors who loves going over their manuscripts again and again.

I believe in a light touch.  I'm leery of messing too much with what I've written.  On the other hand, I'm open to any improvements.

Anyway, an interesting thing has happened as I've gotten back the edits from Lara and Bren and others over the last couple of years.  I find myself incorporating their suggestions into my new writing.  And I find that I automatically change the wording of things upon the second reading, almost without thinking. 

It's tempting to just "accept changes" when there are a lot of them.  After all, I think 99% of them are correct, so what am I gaining by checking them all?

But I find that if I understand what the editors did, that I can avoid the same mistakes the next time.  A steady learning process.  I do believe I'm making fewer mistakes, and that my writing is becoming more "active" with every attempt. 

This may be what they mean by "craft."  Maybe I'm just learning the craft. 

My attitude all along has been to write the stories as they come to me, and of course rewrite them until the story comes across.  But there is another step which I'm often tempted to take -- to really bear down and "Work" at it with a capital W.

I purposely decided not to do this -- because it has always been a recipe to me for writer's block.  And I'm not sure it helps.  That is, I feel like these really "Worked" out answers are often 2 steps forward and 3 steps back.  I've always sort of held the idea of really you know "Working" it in reserve, but until now, I've tried to keep the stories fresh and unhindered.

But it seems to be happening anyway -- not so much the "Work" as the necessary changes.  That is, by writing so much and being diligent and trying (without bearing down) to make it better, I'm improving despite myself.

Good to go.

Got The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Murders back from Lara, my editor.

She was fine with it.  "A Duncan McGeary story, but with much more sex? What's not to like? :)"

She didn't have a problem with the sexual politics of it.

"And I didn't think the sex was gratuitous or overly explicit. It seemed just right to me in a book about succubae. (You might warn your fan base, though, in case some of them have more delicate sensibilities than I do. lol)"

 

I'm trying to figure out how to do that.  I thought of having a tagline of something like, "A Sexual Thriller," but I don't want to imply that it is porn, either. I've been getting comments about how my violence isn't over the top and that I don't use the "F" work too much, so this might be a bit of a changeup.

 

But it is what it is.  I went through her editing yesterday, and I think the book is more of less ready.  I want to go through Linda's beta-reading of the book, as well as what the writer's group suggested, but there are no big changes I think need be made.

 

It's ready to go. 

 

I'll polish it up over the next few days and offer it to Ragnarok and hope they can fit it in sometime before the end of the year.  

 

Good to go.

Annual checkup.

So I'm having my annual checkup next week.  It's all about renewing my cholesterol medication, basically.  The whole annual thing seems like such a waste.  Nothing has changed.  No need.

Anyway, they insist, right?

So I go in early this morning to have my blood drawn.  Bad enough I have to wait an hour but I have to wait an hour with no coffee!!!  It's a full 20 minute drive away, as well.

I don't know why it takes so long.  The actual blood drawing takes less than 5 minutes, but I don't think more than abut 5 or 6 people were getting done per hour.

I'm not looking forward to this getting older thing and this sitting in doctors' offices thing.  I'm going to have to develop some Zen attitude.

Or finally get a game app on my phone.  Or maybe just take my laptop and write.  Heh.

Talk about talking to yourself!

It's almost like my subconscious creative mind is in charge now.

When I started writing again, I was consciously wooing this part of my mind, trying to activate it, looking for ways to cultivate it, to get it going.

Now, I almost wouldn't mind taking a break, but my subconscious is saying, "No, no.  You wanted this..."

And I'll be damned if I'm going to refuse it.  It might run away and hide again.  I wouldn't want that.

Crazy. 

Brain exploded all over my pillow.

Gargoyle Dreams has been going slower than I expected, though probably not slowly by most people's standards.

However, I'm finding the delays seem to be giving my subconscious time to come up with more intricate plots.

Last night, my brain exploded all over my pillow.

I was just trying to think of the next chapter, instead the whole rest of the book came to me.  Much bigger story than I started out with.  What I thought was going to be the climax is just a lead up to the real climax. 

What completely amazes me about this is that I planted the seeds for this bigger ending all the way through the story without really realizing it.  And yet, there they are.  Absolutely what I need to make the plot work.  Don't really have to do much rewriting either, just go back and jigger a few things, maybe put in a few hints and portents, but mostly it's all there.  How does that happen?

Spooky action at a distance, I tell you.

Well, damn. It's a book.

Well, damn.

Gargoyle Dreams has turned into a book.  I'm at 30K words, and I haven't even crossed the continental divide yet.

I had a great time writing a chapter yesterday.   To see a scene come alive, fully formed, characters and setting and dialogue, is an amazing thing.  A miracle of life.  A fictional life, maybe, but it feels alive to me.

It's this that I'm most grateful about.  That periodically my stories come alive, as real to me as anything.  I don't know whether my talent is small or large or somewhere in-between, but just having this happen is a blessing.

I mean, I struggle more often than not.  But then I'll have one of those moments, and everything else drops away and nothing else matters.

I have no doubt whatsoever that this is what I should be doing.

This is the true success of my writing.  This is the true reward.

Okay, enough of the sappy.

I'm supposed to get The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Murders back from Lara, my editor, tomorrow.  I'll be interested in what she thinks of it.  Especially what she thinks of the subject matter.

Lara is turning her attention to Tuskers III after that.  I figure that will need another rewrite when I get it back, and I want to clear the decks for that.

Anyway, I figure I'll finish Gargoyle Dreams through July, then turn my attention to edits of The Last Fedora and The Manic Pixie Dream Girl Murders. 

At some point in the next month of so, I'll have 4 books finished: two first drafts, and two first drafts plus edits.  I would kind of like to give the first drafts plus edits one more fleshing out.  That's the work part.  The part I have to force myself to do, but which makes the books better.  I need to grow up and do that.

I've gotten to a certain level of competence, and I need to knuckle down and work on making them just a little bit better, if possible.

It's fine line between making them better and fucking them up, though.  So I'm going to be trying to thread that.

Meanwhile, the changes that Bren has suggested to Faerylander are so extensive (and rightfully so -- she is holding my feet to the fire) that I've pretty much concluded that I should try to cut the book in half.  Basically start all over.

Faerylander will become Faerylander and Zombielander, two different books.

An ambitious project that I'm putting off for now, because I need to write Tuskers IV as well as the The Darkness You Fear, which is my new Virginia Reed novel.

Just need to be diligent and get these things done.  (And still allow myself to write new books as new ideas come along...such as The Last Fedora and TMPDGM and Gargoyle Dreams.)

When did this turn into a job?  Remember the above Joy.

I make the rules.

I started Gargoyle Dreams with two POV characters.  A simple love story.  I figured it would be somewhere between 20 and 30K words.

I'm now at 30K words and I'm nowhere near the end.

I've added ghosts, good and bad, an evil cabal of monks, evil gargoyles as well as good gargoyles, a greedy priest, and so on and so forth.

Makes it a more interesting book.  I mean, the experiment of writing a simple love story was great.  I've kept all that, I've just given it all some clothing.

Anyway, I decided to have a confrontation between a 'good' ghost and a 'bad' ghost.  I decided at the end of the chapter that the good ghost realizes he can drag the bad ghost into the afterlife.  That he is finally willing to give up on this earth and release his soul.

Why would that work?  I mean, how can he do that?

Why not?  I make the rules.  Heh.

Literary? A Big Nope.

So I was looking for something good to read on my shelves and came across a book called, The Prop, by Pete Hautman.  Looks interesting.  A mystery set in an Indian casino.

Then I read that it is a "National Book Award Winner."  I immediately start to put it back, and then hesitate.

Wait, has it come to this?  That a recommendation of "literary" quality is a turnoff?

Yep.

It has come to this.

I have to say I've been annoyed and unsatisfied with most of the so-called "literary" novels I've read lately, not to mention most of them are terrible downers, most of them about the same damn subjects. 

Oh, the occasional good books become "literary."  Authors like Neal Stephenson and Neal Gaiman come to mind.  But it's as if the entertaining aspect is an accidental byproduct.  That is, they aren't deemed "literary" because of their entertainment value but because of other more unspecified reasons that shall forever remain a mystery to me.

Anyway, it turns out that the author not the book is a "National Book Award Winner" for a young adult novel he wrote, and that The Prop is an immensely fun read.

Phew... dodged another one.

Top 1%,

Interesting take on Comic Reporter  what it takes to make a living in Indy comics.  Answer is: very few people do.

"My hunch for a long time has been that the talent of the people making the comics has outstripped the talent of the non-creatives who are the primary folks responsible for fashioning an industry that can reward that talent. What you have left is an assemblage of people doing okay to great: superior talents and/or talents that had good timing in terms of finding something that works; those who were present for a moment in history that matches up with a market opportunity; those inclined towards a genre effort that speaks to a specific cultural need, a few with something undefinable that resonates with people in a way that can't be denied. Everyone else is in survival mode. Because some of the traditional structure is exploitative, a good deal of the best talent out there serves that system rather than another, more equitable one."

That's a bit wordy.  You can winnow it down to: Success by superior talent; good timing; smart marketing; and luck.  (I'd add, who you know.)

I would extend this to books -- and probably just about every other form of art.  It's just a matter of scale.  It has probably always been thus, and in every field of endeavor. 

I especially like this phrase: "...the talent of people making comics has outstripped the talent of the non-creatives who are the primary folks responsible for fashioning an industry that can reward that talent."

In other words, the big publishers are bungling it.  In books as well as comics, self-published and smaller Indy publishers are more creative and and open and interesting than the Big Five. 

It's one thing to know this in theory.  It's another to run up against it.

Right now, Tuskers II is in the top 1% of sellers on Amazon in horror.  There are 70,000 horror novels, so you can do the math.  Tuskers is in the top 1.5%.

I'm pleased with that, but you'd probably be surprised by the numbers.  Not all that high.  Certainly not something that I can quit my job over.

As I've mentioned before -- where else but the arts can you be in the top 1% of your field and it not mean much?

Keeping the mystery.

Wrote a new first chapter for Gargoyle Dreams and it works.  Much more action oriented.

The fourth chapter will be new too, more action oriented.

An unexpected bonus.  I can write these chapters hinting at darker doings and place them in the midst of chapters where the main characters are clueless.

I've always had trouble trying to keep information secret in my books, or to let out the information in pieces.  Usually I just come out with it and hope the story is strong enough to withstand it.  Quick moving books where the next thing happens can probably get away with not withholding info, but I've always wanted to try that.

So this is an unexpected opportunity.  I've got a couple of surprises up my sleeve and I think I can keep from the reveal until the last third of the book.