Blogger Book Fair: Interview with Aoife Marie Sheridan

Blogger Book Fair continues today with an interview with Irish fantasy author Aoife Marie Sheridan.

Question: How, and when, did you decide to become a writer?
Answer: I have always written but mostly poetry, it’s always been my way to deal with my emotions, no matter how big or small. Two years ago I lost two people I was close too. I had never lost anyone before, so I didn’t deal very well with it. One night I had a dream of a man and women on a horse, passing through a wall of fire. The dream lingered with me, as did my grief. So instead of writing poetry I started my story. My starting point was my dream and I worked my way from there. Eden Forest helped me once again deal with death, and all that comes with it. So in a way I am very grateful for this story.
I always wondered why God created us and what was our purpose, but those questions are unanswered. So in my story I give you the answers for this world called Saskia. In the story God creates a world parallel to ours, for four fallen angels.
Death is something that I also question now, like why do we die, is 60 to 90yrs of life enough, imagine having immortality what would one do to gain it? And that’s where a lot of my plot lies. The greed for immortality, for power’s that only God should wield, drives Saskia into war.
God decides to give one person all the powers that anyone could possess to banish evil, before it destroys Saskia and Earth. This one person happens to be a young lady called Sarajane Anderson who lives in the mortal world (Earth) but is actually from Saskia.

Question: Where can we find your published writing?
Answer: I have my own website http://www.aoifemariesheridan.com
It displays my work, any links to where you can purchase my books, listen to my interviews, watch my book trailers and more.
Question: What is a typical day like for you as a writer?
Answer: I work full time so, I write when I can, but always with pen and paper, never typing at first. I carry a pen and paper where ever I go and when an Idea comes to mind I jot it down. Also If I had any weird dreams (the ones that linger) I will keep them maybe for a different story. At present there are seven books I want to write. Since I started I just can’t stop.

Question: What types of writing do you do?
Answer: My writing I would consider fantasy. I write about the impossible, of different worlds that have magic in them. I always feel this can’t be it. All us on this little planet, floating in the galaxy, there has to be so much more. We just haven’t discovered it yet. Maybe in a couple of hundred years people will look back and say “They know all along that there was more”. Well that’s what I like to think.

Question: What are your favorite characters that you have created? Tell us about them
Answer: My favourite characters in Eden Forest would have to be, Queen Bellona, she was the most interesting to write about. Bellona is all that is bad in the world she is a combination of people that I have crossed paths with in my life. But she does not represent one person alone. Through her I could vent the injustice of people’s ways, and display it.
Secondly would have to be Sarajane she plays the main Character. She is relatable as in she isn’t perfect. I created Sarajane with flaw, as we all have them. Mine can be that I am selfish so that’s the flaw I gave Sarajane.
I am surrounded by very strong women in my life, and I am grateful for this. I take a lot of their personalities and place them in my characters, or something they might do, or even a facial expression. I love to watch people’s reactions as they talk to me, if they stumble on a line, they may chew their lip, in an endearing way. I note it and file it way for later.

Question: do you find you “mentally edit” other writers’ works as you read them? Does doing this help you or bother you?
Answer: Yes which I absolutely hate. I am so much more aware now. It drives me spare. But in another way it makes me feel better that I am not the only one who makes mistakes. LOL.

Question: What music do you listen to, while writing?
Answer: My Music: My favourite Musician would have to be David Guetta; Titanium and She wolf. I wrote nearly the whole two books too these songs, I find the words empowering and a story is told even in the beats.

Question: What do you eat while writing?
Answer: O God I am really bad, have a serious sweet tooth. I do try and control it, sometimes I do but other times I fail. So I love sour cream pringles. Yum. Cadbury’s cream egg. Love the centre.  After that I love sprite. These are my 3 enemies yet my favourite things ever. (apart from writing and reading, of course).

Five for Fun:
What is your favourite non-alcoholic drink?  Sprite I can’t get enough of it.
What is your favourite cartoon character? I would have to say Dora the explorer. My niece is a huge fan, and I think she is so cute.
What is your favourite movie of all time? Troy, I would watch it at least once a week. Brad Pitt is easy on the eyes.
What TV shows do you like to watch? I am not a fan of TV. I love movies or reading.
What do you like to do for fun or just to relax? Reading is my way of relaxing. Give me a book a glass of wine and I am a very content person.

Question: Where can we find you on the web?
Answer: Here are some places:
My website www.aoifemariesheridan.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/Aoifemariesheri
Goodreads: Aoife Marie Sheridan
Twitter: aoifesheri

Ready to find out more about Aoife’s books?

Eden Forest

Book One of the Saskia Trilogy
Aoife Marie Sheridan

Four banished Angels,
A world created by the hands of God,
A Kingdom on its knees,
A secret protected for centuries,
And one mortal can save them all.

Step into Saskia.

Available in paperback at Amazon.co.uk, Easons and Synergebooks and at Amazon.com in paperback and e-book formats.

…AND COMING SOON

City of Secrets

Book Two of the Saskia Trilogy
Aoife Marie Sheridan

A war awaits her arrival,
A warrant for her arrest.
She must rise as a princess,
And Darkness shall fall.
But will their love survive this battle?
For Tristan and Sarajane?

Step back into Saskia.

About the Author:

Aoife Marie Sheridan is twenty eight years of age. She lives in Kells, Co. Meath, a small town just outside Navan. Aoife was raised in Navan but left with her family at the age of sixteen. Aoife has always had a passion for writing but mostly poetry. This is her first time to write a novel.

Aoife Marie Sheridan studied Accountancy and qualified as an accountant technician. She worked in this profession for several years but with the economic downturn she was made redundant.

Aoife Marie Sheridan now spends endless hours reading and writing.

Aoife Marie Sheridan’s first novel Eden Forest placed first in writers got talent.

Website:  www.aoifemariesheridan.com

Facebook: www.facebook.com/Aoifemariesheri

Goodreads: Aoife Marie Sheridan

Twitter: aoifesheri

Bargain Book Day! Strictly Analog at 99 cents!

Looking for a good read? I’ve reduced the price of my dystopian science fiction novel, Strictly Analog, from $4.99 to just 99 cents for Monday and Tuesday June 10th and 11th. If you’re a fan of William Gibson, Jonathan Letham, or Richard K. Morgan, or if you like a bit of hard-boiled mystery blended in with your science fiction, then I’m sure you will enjoy Strictly Analog. And, at just a buck for the next two days, how could you go wrong?

What’s a private detective to do in a future where nothing is private any more?

For Ted Lomax, the answer is to find clients who need their info kept off the grid, and that’s what Ted has done for years, skirting the high tech that runs the new California and living on the fringes of society. But when his daughter is accused of murdering her boyfriend–an agent in the Secret Police–Ted has to dig himself out of the hole he’s been in for years in order to save her.

Before long, he’s pulled into a shadow world of underground hackers, high-end programmers, and renegade gear-heads, all of whom seem to have a stake in California’s future. The further he digs into the case, the clearer it becomes that it’s about more than one dead agent. Solving it might save his daughter. And it might get him killed. And it just might open the door to secrets that reach back to the attack that almost killed him eighteen years before. At any rate, Ted Lomax will never be the same.

“…fast-paced futuristic thriller…”—Publishers Weekly*

“…a well-crafted story with realistic characters we can root for in a hard-boiled landscape…It’s a story that should appeal to fans of early Gibson or Sterling. And now that our world is much closer to the cyberpunk vision of tomorrow that was forecast decades ago, the story should appeal to contemporary detective fiction fans too. Strictly Analog is highly recommended.”–The New Poddler Review of Books

“The main character, Ted Lomax, is strong and believable while the writing style, brisk and no-nonsense fits perfectly with the premise.”–Amazon Expert Reviewer

Still not convinced? Check out the rest of the Amazon reviews here.

The Unagented Life

Every so often, I get this kind of comment from people: “I’m really enjoying your work. It’s better than I would have expected from an indie writer. Have you ever tried getting an agent?”

It’s quite flattering to hear, and I’m very happy to be getting this kind of feedback from readers.

But on the other hand, there’s just a bit of frustration that I feel as well. The implication is that it would be better to have an agent, better to be traditionally published. And the corollary to those thoughts is that, without an agent and a traditional publisher, my writing isn’t reaching its full potential.

Public Domain Photo by Chaplin62

To which I have to respond, well, yes. That’s true. In a good month, I can sell around 30 books. If I had an agent and a publisher–with a budget and a website and the pull to get my books into libraries and brick-and-mortar bookstores, to set up book tours and signings, to get reviews in Kirkus or Publishers Weekly…my guess is that I’d be selling more than 30 a month.

But maybe I wouldn’t. One does hear stories of writers who get fat little advances from publishers and their books then proceed to sell very few copies. One hears about writers being told they need to develop their own websites, book their own tours and signings, etc. One hears about publishers that budget very little for publicity and only for a very short time…the less well-known a writer is, the littler and the shorter the money and time.

I can’t help but feel that in many ways I’m better off going it alone.

Here’s the thing, though: once upon a time, I did have an agent.

I’ve been at this a while. Before diving into my teaching career 20+ years ago, I tried getting a novel published without an agent. That got me nowhere. And then, about six years ago I decided I needed to get back into writing and got really serious about it, ending up with a pretty solid manuscript for the book that eventually became Take Back Tomorrow. This time around, though, I wasn’t going to mess with the listings for publishers in Writers’ Market. I was going to query agents.

And I did. And I did. And I did.

After a year of trying, I did get one request for the full manuscript and was thrilled. After three months of not hearing back, I started sending follow-ups. These were met with “need more time” replies. I won’t name names, but this guy was a pretty well known agent at the time. Knowing that, I didn’t pull the plug on the submission. And eventually I got the rejection, based on the agent’s overall dislike of time travel stories. Why he’d requested the ms in the first place is still beyond me.

However, still being serious about writing, I’d been at work on a second book, about shape shifting aliens invading 1940s Hollywood. When I was done with that, I started querying agents on both books. After lots of outright rejections and even more “passive” rejections (the kind where the agent just doesn’t bother responding to a query), I found an agent who wanted to read the new ms. She ended up liking the book but “not falling in love with it.” I was tenacious and wrote back saying, “You know, if you kind of liked this one, I do have another.”

She took a look at Take Back Tomorrow, had some reservations about it, but overall felt it “deserved publication.” She ended her email saying that if I was willing to engage in some radical revision, she’d be happy to represent me.

I jumped at the chance. After a few months, the revision was ready and the book went out. It got what I still think of as “positive rejection.” One editor, I think at Random House, called it a “page turner” and another praised my “nimble prose.” But all the major and minor houses that looked at the book found some reason to pass on it.

It was both disappointing and exciting. On the one hand, I’d thought having an agent was like getting my foot in the door; finally, someone in the publishing industry believed in me, someone who knew people in one of those it’s-who-you-know industries. Plus, just about everyone who knew about my finally landing an agent acted as though it was a foregone conclusion: with an agent, I’d get published. So, when it didn’t happen, it was kind of a drag. But on the other hand, I’d had my  book looked at (and rejected) by Random House and several other major publishers. Just knowing that was pretty damned thrilling.

At any rate, I continued on, doing a more radical revision on the alien invasion story (converting the aliens to demons), and then that book went out…with the same kind of results.

When I was ready to start the next book, I ran several ideas by the agent to see what she thought would be the most saleable. Aliens? No, aliens were definitely out. A literary SF drug addiction story? No, sounds too dark and depressing. A murder mystery set in a high tech dystopia? Okay.

So it was on to Strictly Analog. I must admit I didn’t like being told which book I should write next, but then again I did ask for advice. Still I had to wonder how many published writers had to get their agents to green light their next project.

I pinned a lot of hope on Strictly Analog, thought it might be the straw that broke the camel’s back if the agent couldn’t sell it. After all, she was in the business of selling books, representing authors whose work she could make some commission off of. It turned out that the book didn’t really have a chance. The agent released me, citing her increased interest in representing non-fiction and dwindling contacts among SF publishers and editors.

She did refer me to several other agents with more experience in SF…but they all failed to “fall in love” with the  book, so I was on my own again.

And within a few months I had self-published Take Back Tomorrow and started down the path that’s gotten me here…an indie writer with not a lot of sales, 2 novels and 2 novellas to his credit, and a small but slowly developing fan base.

Am I better off without an agent? Right now, probably. I have control over what I write and how I market it. Am I as successful as I would have been if the agent had been able to make it work? Probably not, but given things I hear about traditional publishing, I might very well be in just about the same position as I am now even if one or all of my books had been picked up by a publisher.

Am I better off for having had an agent? Absolutely. The experience taught me an awful lot about writing…about pacing and development and sub-plots and misdirection, about editing out the passive constructions and adverbs and strings of prepositional phrases.

If nothing else, it gave me just a glimpse into the industry I’d been dying to get into since the early 1990s and showed me that maybe it wasn’t everything I’d hoped for.

Who knows? Maybe with the next book, I’ll query a few agents before self-publishing just to see what happens. At least now I’ve got a fallback position, and those rejections won’t hurt as much. I don’t need an agent to fall in love with my writing for it to be a success…just a few readers, and that’s already happening.

What about other indie writers? Do you wish you had an agent? Have you had one and parted ways? Or are you sticking to your indie guns and going it alone?

Going Free on KDP? Here’s How My Recent Giveaway Worked Out

For new, indie, and self-published writers, the question of whether or not to take advantage of Amazon’s free days as part of your enrollment in KDP is one to take seriously. I’ve posted about this before after being doubtful regarding the benefits of giving my books away, but I’m definitely a convert. The rules of the game have shifted some in the last few months, but generally it’s still a good deal.

The cons of going free? Well, you don’t get any royalties for the books you give away. Also, there are a lot of people who download and never read, as well as people who download for free outside of their interests and then post negative reviews when they “didn’t get it” after reading a few pages. The biggest downside is that you have to have your book available through Amazon exclusively to take advantage of this program.

The benefits? Exposure to lots of (potential) readers who wouldn’t have heard of your book otherwise or wouldn’t have been willing to risk their 3 or 4 dollars on an unknown author. With that exposure comes the possibility for more reviews, which will drive future sales. Your book also starts showing up in the lists of “also bought” on other books’ Amazon pages, so that’s more exposure down the line. Also, the bump your book gets in the “free” rankings on its free days can translate into higher positions on the search algorithms once it’s no longer free, but this doesn’t seem to be as big a benefit as it used to be.

Of course, the other benefit to going free, the one in the backs of many writers’ minds, is that if enough copies get out there, a chain reaction will begin. Word of mouth will spread. And maybe, just maybe, the all-important RIGHT PERSON will read the book–you know the one: the famous actor or director looking for a new project. It’s the literary equivalent of the old story about Lana Turner being discovered in Schwab’s drugstore; someone stumbles across your book and then shouts gleefully in your direction, “You, kid! You’re the one I’ve been looking for! Kid, I’m gonna make you a star!” As far as I know the whole Lana Turner story is a myth, making it sort of a fantasy squared. At any rate, having one’s book optioned by Brad Pitt just isn’t likely to happen as a result of going free, but we can keep dreaming.

I’ve done several free days for my books over the last 6 months with mostly good results and just completed a 4-day giveaway of my time travel novel, Take Back Tomorrow. With some of those free days I’ve done a lot of set-up and for some I’ve done none. This time out, I did a lot of preparation with very good results.

So if you’re thinking of going free, here are the steps I followed and where they got me.

Two weeks before going free, I contacted several free Kindle promotion sites and notified them of the upcoming giveaway. You can find a good listing of such free sites here. Some require at least 2 weeks, others 48 hours, and some only want to be notified on the actual first free day. The thing about these sites is they don’t promise to list your book on its free days; they get loads of requests every day and can only list so many. They do, however, offer guaranteed listings for a small fee. In the past I opted to take my chances, hoping at least one site would pick up my listing to help spread the word. Sometimes it worked, and sometimes it didn’t. When my books were promoted only by myself and my social networking, the number of downloads stayed below 500. On the days when at least one promo site picked up my listing, I gave away more than 1000 in a single day.

This time out, I opted to spend $60 on guaranteed listings, treating it as an investment and hoping I’d at least break even. To do this, I’d have to sell 22 copies of my books after the free promotion ended–let’s say within 2 weeks. Any sales after that wouldn’t necessarily be a result of the giveaway.

Additionally, I re-wrote my book’s description. I spent a lot of time on this, relying on the expert advice I’ve gotten as a member of the Writer’s Discussion community on Google+. I also revamped my web pages, cleaning them up and doing what I could to make the book pages more attractive. I’m not a copywriter or a web designer, so all of this has been strictly on-the-job training for me, and I’m still learning. You can see the resulting page and book description here.

Some advice sites suggested raising the book’s price before going free to make it seem like a bigger bargain. I did, bumping the price from $3.99 to $6.99 a couple days before going free. Interestingly, I did sell one copy at $6.99 in the interval.

On the days that the book was free, I spread the word on Facebook and Google+, encouraging others to share the links. Several people did. One thing I haven’t done yet is use Twitter. I know, I know–it’s got a lot of potential. But I’m finding right now that keeping up on Facebook and Google+ takes up enough of my time; I’m not sure I’ve got the time for Twitter, too.

I also checked to make sure the sites I’d paid for promotion had actually followed through: they had.

Then it was time to watch the numbers. The first day was slower than I thought it would be given the number of sites promoting the freebie: about 700 downloads by the end of the day. I hit #16 on the list of free science fiction and #1 on the free time travel list (only about 30 books on that list, but hey! #1 is still pretty good). The second day was slower. The book crept up to #6 in the free SF list but then dropped back to #17, and there were around 300 downloads that day.

I assumed that the third day would go slower, that the people who were interested in the book already had it and that the numbers would dwindle. But then they started picking up again. Another promo site, one I hadn’t paid for a guaranteed listing, picked the book up, and everyone who follows that site saw the book. The numbers shot up again. At one point, Take Back Tomorrow was being downloaded 4 times a minute. By the end of the third day, I’d given away more than a thousand more books, so I added a fourth day and the book had pushed its way back up to #6 on the list.

That was Sunday, typically a slow day for free books (don’t ask me why; I don’t know). The book spent almost all day at #3 in free science fiction.

Altogether, I gave away 3059 copies to US readers and 106 international, mostly UK.

Was it worth the $60 I spent in promotion? Given that two-thirds of my downloads came as a result of a listing I didn’t pay for, I’d say this would have been a successful promotion without my having spent any money. Still, this has shown me that spending some money to guarantee listings is useful. I just wouldn’t spend that much again next time.

Of course, if Brad Pitt’s reading, maybe I won’t need to.

Word of Mouth–The Elusive Key to Success

Public Domain Photo Credit: Infrogmation of New Orleans

Several years ago, I was lurking in the shelves of a used bookstore looking at the science fiction section–all the way at the back of the store. It was one of those stores that functioned largely as a paperback exchange: if you brought in 3 books, they’d give you credit for one of theirs. It seems that the romance section is the bread and butter for just about any store that runs this way, and this one was no exception: thousands of books on the romance shelves, with mysteries coming up a close second. The science fiction/fantasy section was tiny in comparison and accessible only by threading one’s way through the maze of bodice rippers.

I was the only customer in the whole store and was getting ready to leave. I mean, how many copies of Dune can you contemplate? Then I heard another customer come in. She must have been a regular, as she and the store owner (also female) struck up a quick conversation about the books she was exchanging and whether they’d been any good. I could tell that the customer was older; she sounded grandmotherly.

“Did you like this one?” the owner said.

“It was okay. Not as good as the last one of hers I read. Oh, and this one was good. Do you have any more by her?”

“I might. What about (insert romance author here)?”

“No, I don’t like hers. Not steamy enough. I like ’em really hot. I want to feel the smoke coming out of my butt when I read.”

They laughed.

I was dying inside trying not to laugh, too. Of course, the old lady had no idea I was in the store. The owner knew, but had no reason to broadcast such information to the romance fan. Now I felt almost trapped in the back shelves, as though I couldn’t leave without embarrassing anyone. But I was going to start feeling weird if I eavesdropped any longer, so I worked my way to the front of the store, nodding to the owner and getting a quick look at the customer–definitely the grandmotherly type–and heading out the door as the customer said, “Oh my! I didn’t think anyone else was in here.”

The poor thing. I hope the embarrassment didn’t kill her.

I thought of this story the other day while reading an exchange on a Google+ writers’ community where people were discussing the questionable merits of marketing indie books. Some argued that marketing was a worthwhile and necessary endeavor, albeit one with very little return for the time invested. Others argued that it was a waste of time, that only extraordinary books become successful and that most indie fiction is far from extraordinary.

A few commented that reaching a broad audience has more to do with word of mouth than marketing, and that a book doesn’t have to be wonderfully written to generate such word of mouth; it has to be entertaining. And I really think this gets to the heart of things. Whenever I encounter this type of discussion, people are often quick to bash wildly popular but poorly written books–think 50 Shades of Twilight. The thing is, readers aren’t going to those books in search of great writing, clever turns of phrase, beautiful descriptions, or perfect pacing.

No, those books are popular because they make smoke come out their readers’ butts.

And when that happens, you can bet those readers tell their friends. And they tell them with great enthusiasm. That sort of word of mouth–with enough volume behind it–is what leads to massive sales. And movie deals.

Granted, we’re not all writing romance or erotica or mommy porn (or granny porn). That’s not the point. If a reader gets super excited–let’s say stimulated–by what he/she has read, then that’s the smoke-out-the-butt moment. If it’s a mystery with a gripping villain or heroic cop caught in a maze of plot twists, if it’s a science fiction epic with mind-blowing aliens and a time travel paradox that keeps the reader from sleeping while trying to figure it out, if it’s a historical drama with compelling characters that triggers the reader’s need for fantasy and escape, if it’s a YA post-apocalypse that taps into the reader’s wish that everyone would just go away…whatever it is, it makes it damned difficult for the reader to set down the Kindle.

Junot Diaz: Public Domain Photo by Slowking4

And of course it’s not just genre fiction that gets these responses out of readers. While reading The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, I was struck by Junot Diaz’s ability to render a compelling sense of voice for his characters. I was also impressed at the way he wove so many science fiction references into a non-SF narrative. In fact, that was the reason I bought the book: a friend who knows about my pulp-era SF fixation told me how much I’d enjoy it because of all the references, and she was right.

There you go: word of mouth.

The book didn’t exactly make smoke come out my butt, but it did impress me enough to tell other people about it. And to reference it here in this blog post. So the chain continues.

How to tip a reader into that zone, though…that’s the thing. To get a reader to move from buying to reading to enjoying to feeling compelled to shout it to the world…I’ve had some readers feel that strongly about my books, calling me a genius, saying I’m science fiction’s Lee Child. This was great, validating. But it’s a small number of people who feel that way about my writing; it’s a small audience I’ve reached so far. Most indie writers probably have had their share of compliments. The trick is to get lots of people to feel the same way. That’s where the magic happens. That’s where hard work and creativity and marketing and skill have to intersect with good luck to cause a spark.

And the smoke that results…well, you know where it comes out.

Arturo Bandini: Patron Saint of Struggling Writers

A couple of weeks ago, in the middle of a Free Kindle promotion for Take Back Tomorrow, my book made up into the Top 5 on Amazon’s “Free Science Fiction” list. For about a day, I was hobnobbing with the likes of David Drake and Jules Verne in terms of downloads. And, absurdly, I heard a little voice in my head saying, “Hiya, David. How are things around here, Jules?”

The first edition of Ask the Dust (1939)

It took only a second for me to realize who that voice belonged to: not me at all, but Arturo Bandini, the main character in several John Fante novels, most notably Ask the Dust (1939).

No, I’m not schizophrenic or in the habit of having conversations with fictional characters, not even those of my own creation.

It was just an odd, humorous thing that popped into my head, but it got me thinking about Arturo Bandini and why so many writers are drawn to his character and Fante’s books about him.

If you haven’t read Ask the Dust, I highly recommend it, even if you’re not a writer. And because you may not have read it, I won’t include any spoilers here. In a nutshell, it’s got two main plot lines: Arturo’s romantic struggles with volatile waitress Camilla Lopez, and his artistic struggles to get himself published and become a famous author. When the book opens, he’s had one story published in a national magazine and is riding a fame-wave of his own creation, imagining that this success has made him a Big Name and that everyone he mentions this to will be duly impressed.

In an early scene, Arturo visits the Los Angeles public library and imagines a conversation with the authors whose books his own will be rubbing covers with if it’s ever published. He says hello to H.L. Mencken (Fante’s real-life mentor) and others, confident that he belongs among their ranks.

The 1954 paperback re-issue

And it’s that confidence that I think of as a defining trait of Arturo’s. He has a lot of others: arrogance, narcissism, self-doubt, racism, cruelty. Not a very admirable list. And let’s not even go into his sexual hang-ups.

But it’s his confidence that really stands out to me. He is determined, convinced, certain that he’ll be as famous a writer as those other authors in the library. Even as he counts his pennies and considers begging his mother for a loan, he’s still fantasizing about the day he will get out of the back of a limo with a fur-wearing blonde on his arm, surrounded by reporters falling over themselves to ask about his new book and what inspired it. And his answer always has to do with the thing he’s involved in at the moment he’s fantasizing.

If he’s trying to build up the courage to go with a prostitute, he imagines the moment as the kernel of his great novel. At one point, while swimming in Santa Monica Bay, he fears he may be drowning and even then manages to turn his fear into a literary fantasy that has him coming out on top.

In Charles Bukowski’s introduction to Ask the Dust, he writes about how he was so drawn to the book when he was young and struggling as a writer and found a copy in the same LA library that Arturo wanders around in. The book struck a chord for Bukowski, and he notes that he even thought of himself as Bandini in moments of strife, the identification giving him strength.

Bukowski’s not the only writer I’ve heard say he identifies with Arturo. But why? In many ways, he’s an extremely annoying character, so full of himself and his fantasies that he makes horrible choices in his day-to-day life. As I said before, he’s arrogant and kind of pathetic and in many scenes not very likeable.

I think writers are drawn to his character because he has a tenacity that many of us lack, that we know we should possess but don’t have the courage to pull off–maybe because we know we’d alienate the people around us the way Arturo manages to do.

And I think there is a certain arrogance one must possess if one wants to write and publish: to say I’m going to make up these characters and these situations and it’s going to be so good that people will want to pay me for it. That’s what you have to believe, after all. If you don’t, those rejections from agents and editors are going to squash you, and those weak or poor reviews at Amazon are going to weigh you down and keep your fingers from moving on that keyboard as you work on the next story or poem or book.

Arturo doesn’t give up. When he’s broke, he writes about being broke. When he’s heart-broken and lonely and desperate for love or sex or success, he writes about those things. And he writes, and he writes, and he writes. And he sends it out.

Does he succeed? I don’t want to give anything away. In the end, though, I don’t think Arturo’s successes or failures are what draw other writers to this book. Rather, it’s the way Arturo pushes himself to keep going despite his struggles. That’s the inspiration.

The takeaway for writers isn’t to turn themselves into arrogant jerks. Rather, it’s to work at being more tenacious, to build up a wall that the critics can’t breach. You have to believe in yourself and the things you’ve written, to believe in those things against all odds and in spite of all the evidence to the contrary that tells you to give up, that tells you you’ll never make it onto those shelves next Mencken and others–or that Amazon list in the company of Jules Verne.

Long live Arturo Bandini!

Strictly Analog Free on Amazon Today

Strictly Analog, a dystopian science fiction novel, is available as a free download today at Amazon.

Ted Lomax does his best to get by as a private detective in a society where almost nothing is private any more. He lives in a near-future California that has gained independence from the economically collapsed United States and where everyone is constantly linked into the web. Almost everyone.

Because of injuries sustained during California’s border war, Ted is locked out of the technological culture that surrounds him. But that’s his edge: his business card reads “Strictly Analog,” and he markets himself as a man able to skirt the technological landscape without leaving a trail. It works nicely for him until he gets the most important case of his life.

When his daughter Amy is accused of killing her boyfriend, Ted knows he has to do whatever he can to help her. It won’t be easy. The bullet in the boyfriend’s head matches Amy’s gun. To make matters worse, the dead boyfriend was an agent with California’s secret police.

Now Ted has to dig himself out of the hole he’s been buried in since the war. Before long, he’s pulled into a shadow world of underground hackers, high-end programmers, and renegade gear-heads, all of whom seem to have a stake in California’s future.

The further he digs into the case, the clearer it becomes that it’s about more than one dead agent. Solving it might save his daughter. And it might get him killed. And it just might open the door to secrets that reach back to the attack that almost killed him eighteen years before. At any rate, Ted Lomax will never be the same.

To Free or Not to Free?

A Different Sort of Free Book (photo by Todd Bol)

So you’re finished writing your book. It’s revised and edited and ready to go. You’ve formatted it for Kindle, but you have a choice to make. To enroll or not to enroll–that’s one more question you have to ask yourself.

When I first launched Take Back Tomorrow a little more than a year ago, I formatted it for Kindle and, like any other self-publishing author going through Amazon, had to consider whether I’d enroll the book in Amazon’s KDP Select program. Since conditions of enrolling require a book to be exclusive to Amazon, I thought that was a bad idea. Why limit myself?

So I then jumped through the hoops to reformat the book for Smashwords and again for Lulu. Sort of a pain, but I thought it was worth the trouble as all of that work would get the book available for the Nook at Barnes and Noble, make it available on iBooks at the Apple site, not to mention all the exposure it would get at Smashwords and Lulu.

The book sold slowly at Amazon, but I think I only got one sale at Smashwords and none at Lulu. So after about six months, I re-thought my original choice and pulled the book from Smashwords and Lulu and went with Amazon exclusively. Sorry, Nook owners.

It took me a while to start taking advantage of KDP Select’s free days. I was leery of giving books away, as I think is true of a lot of people new to self-publishing. I’m trying to make sales here, after all. Not gestures of good will.

Still, after a lot of reading other bloggers and writers on a variety of sites, I decided to give it a shot. The logic behind giving books away is this: as a new, self-published writer, readers don’t know me from any other writer. And unless there’s much word of mouth, they’re not likely to stumble across my book. And if people do stumble onto it, they’re not likely to buy unless there are some trustworthy reviews.

But if a book is free…people are more willing to give it a try. And if it’s free for a limited time only, then people are getting a bargain. Who doesn’t like a bargain?

So I decided to give it a shot. My first free day was used on my novella, Dead Man’s Hand. I did nothing to promote it as free except to put up a post on Facebook. I gave away 110 copies. Not bad, I thought.

After a few weeks went by and no new reviews came in, I started feeling soured on the whole Free thing.

But I did some more reading, and found out (1) that novellas tend not to do well on Free days (I still haven’t heard a good explanation as to why). And (2) if you really want to make the most of KDP free days, you have to do some work ahead of time to promote.

So I tried again, still skeptical that KDP free days were right for me, but definitely open to the idea that getting my book into people’s hands (or into their Kindles) for free could lead to some reviews and some positive word of mouth.

There are a lot of sites that will promote free books without charging the author, and a lot more that will do so for a small fee, and some that will do it for a large fee. Several are listed here and here.

I went with the free sites at the end of November with Take Back Tomorrow. Sometime around noon, I’d given away around 250 copies and thought that was pretty cool. Then I checked again and the number had jumped to 600 in the space of about an hour. I still don’t know what happened, but after that it took off. People were downloading the book at a rate of 5 per minute for the rest of the day.

I added another day and then a third. By the end of the third day, downloads were slowing, so I ended the giveaway.

I had given away more than 5000 copies in three days, cracked the Top 100 of free books on Amazon and reached #2 on the free science fiction list. I was astounded.

Now the question was whether those 5000 copies would actually get read. And if the readers would post reviews of the book on Amazon.

In the days that followed, I got a small but steady stream of sales. That stream slowed and slowed as December rolled into January, but I did get some reviews. I had 5 before the 5000 downloads and 14 a month later, mostly 4-stars.

I decided to go for it again this past week, and this time I went through the same steps of contacting free book promotion sites. 2 days free and just over 2000 copies. Not bad at all. Again, I’m hoping those 2000 copies actually get read and that a solid number of those readers post reviews.

Whether that happens or not, though, I’m now a firm believer in KDP Select. More free days to follow.

A bit of advice for people new to KDP Select:

• Work at getting some reviews before you go free. The free promo sites will be more likely to list your book if it’s got some reviews behind it. Try contacting book bloggers here to see if they’ll review your work for free.
• Definitely use the promo sites. Again, you can find some good lists of them here and here. It’s a bit time consuming to input all your information, but if you can get a few of these sites to list your books on your free days, it’s worth the trouble.
• If your free promo is going well, extend it another day to keep the momentum going.

I’m curious to hear how successful others have been in offering free books on KDP Select and whether they feel it’s been worthwhile in the long term. Does giving away free copies eventually lead to steady sales and plenty of word of mouth? Or is it forever a case of ebbing and flowing downloads–free and paid?

A Few Tips for DIY Editors

When Jon Stewart interviewed Christopher Walken on The Daily Show recently, he asked Walken if he’d ever had to give one of those fake 555 phone numbers while acting in a film. Stewart’s point was that every time a character uses one of those numbers, it pulls viewers out of the movie. These aren’t real people, those fake phone numbers seem to shout, and this is just a movie.

There are lots of things a director or actor can do to undermine a viewer’s willing suspension of disbelief. The same is true of writers. And there’s probably no faster way to break a reader’s bond with a story or character than for a careless error to show up in the middle of a page.

I had to cringe recently when looking at an indie writer’s excerpt and saw that the author had described a woman’s bare “midrift” rather than “midriff.” I’m an English professor by day, so I cringe a lot at things like that.

Mistakes happen–even in expensive hardcovers put out by the Big 6–books where there are people whose job it is to edit and proofread. If that’s what happens when a writer has a professional editor assigned to him or her, the chances of those kinds of mistakes occurring when the writer is working as an independent seem much higher. And that’s why there are so many people out there offering their services as editors for indie authors. I don’t know the percentage of people who use these services, but I do know there are a lot of writers who opt not to–either because they’re not willing or able to take on the expense, or because they don’t think they need such a service.

The other thing to consider, though, is that editing is also about more than correcting errors. It’s not just proofreading. A well-edited book is one that flows smoothly so that the clunkiness of one’s phrases doesn’t get in the way of the story and cause the reader to stop suspending his or her disbelief.

Given that, here are a few things to consider for those of you who are self-editing or planning on putting out a book without hiring an editor first. I’m hopeful that some of these things will help you punch up your writing and enable you to keep your readers turning the page without letting problems with grammar or style distract them.

1. Know the rules. Okay, so maybe this is a no brainer, but if you only think you know the rules of grammar and usage, you’re going to have a problem. If you don’t know the difference between farther and further or effect and affect, then you need to find out. This isn’t always easy to do, but spending some time with a good grammar handbook isn’t a bad place to start.

2. Break the rules. I know, it seems counter-intuitive, but if you know the rules, you can break them. Occasionally.  Okay, so right there I just used a sentence fragment–on purpose–for emphasis. If I did it again right away, it might start seeming like I don’t know a sentence from a fragment, so break the rules sparingly and with purpose. Do it because you want or need to. Do it because there’s a particular effect you’re going for, and only rule breaking will get the job done. I just finished reading Junot Diaz’s The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, and Diaz breaks the rules constantly, but with purpose. And it works brilliantly.

3. Make conscious choices. When you’re in the writing zone, and it’s flowing, you get a little rush out of how nicely everything is coming together. But don’t be seduced by your own greatness. Writing is fun. Editing is work. Go back and look at those amazing sentences; look at them word by word. Forget how brilliant you were when you wrote those sentences. Instead, ask yourself if everything in those sentences serves a purpose. If it doesn’t, cut it or change it.

4. Avoid passive verb constructions (or use them sparingly). In terms of meaning, there’s no difference between “The dog bit me” and “I was bitten by the dog.” But the second version sounds clunky, and the reader has to read extra words to get the same meaning. Most readers don’t like having to do extra work, so don’t make them unless it serves a specific purpose (see #3 above). Also, you can drop the “by” phrase in a passive sentence, and it will still be grammatically correct, so we can get a sentence like “I was bitten” without knowing who or what did the biting. There goes your vampire novel. My point is, sentences like this are vague. Don’t use them unless you need to.

Shakespeare Probably Would Have Skipped #5

5. Avoid forms of “to be.” This is along the same lines as #4. Your sentences are going to be stronger if they are action packed, and that means action verbs, not linking verbs. Force yourself to write your way around is, are, was and were. Don’t use them as the main verbs in your sentences unless you need to. There’s almost certainly a way to rephrase to make things more active. Consider the difference between “The knife was in her hand” and “She gripped the knife.” The first isn’t wrong, but too many sentences like that will leave the writing flat.

6. Emphasize. Think about what you want the reader to focus on, and make sure those ideas are in the spotlight. You could write a sentence like “She began to cry” and it would be okay, but the crying comes at the end of the sentence and the fact that she began crying is what’s emphasized. Does it really matter that she began crying? Isn’t it more interesting that she cried? Or how she cried? Or why?

7. Don’t rely on adverbs to do your work for you. You could write “Slowly I walked toward the door, my heart pounding rapidly.” Or you could write “With each step I took toward the door, my feet felt heavier and my heart pounded faster.” In the second version, we’ve dropped slowly and rapidly. Just having those two opposing adverbs in the sentence might make it seem odd to a reader. But dropping them and letting actual description do the work helps bring the image to life.

8. Vary your sentence type and length. None of us is Hemingway, so that succession of short sentences you’ve been writing–with one subject/verb pair in each–may not be something you can get away with for long. The same goes for long sentences. And as to sentence type, readers appreciate variety there, too. An astute reader once pointed out to me that in sentence after sentence I tended to have a dependent clause followed by an independent clause, a conjunction, and another independent clause. When I re-read the manuscript, I was surprised to see that pattern repeating throughout. Would the average reader pick up on the pattern? Maybe not. But might the pattern still make the writing sound weird, annoying, or repetitive? Maybe. Not worth the risk. I made the changes and worked at breaking that pattern in successive  books.

Is that too much to think about? I hope not. It’s by no means an exhaustive list. Exhausting maybe.  And if any of this was confusing–if you feel shaky on the passive/active thing or can’t tell one clause from another without a program, then you owe it to yourself and your readers to go back to #1 and brush up on your grammar. Know your craft. It will only help in the end.

Creating an Active Table of Contents for Kindle

If you’re thinking about turning that manuscript into a Kindle file and starting on your own path to indie authorship, you’re likely to find it a pretty easy process–but maybe with one exception. Your Kindle file is going to need an active Table of Contents so users can go to the different chapters in your book with ease simply by clicking on an entry in your Table of Contents. Having a poorly structured Table of Contents may affect your book’s availability, and it can also lessen your reader’s enjoyment of the book. Poor formatting or other marks of unprofessionalism are among the biggest complaints about indie e-books.

Setting up your Table of Contents (TOC) shouldn’t be an issue, but if you’ve never done it before and look to the Help page on Amazon for guidance, you’re probably in for a frustrating time. The instructions are vague and assume a lot of prior knowledge. Amazon and other companies offer conversion services, but getting your files ready is something most people should be able to do on their own.  Creating the active TOC is really not that difficult, but there are a few steps involved that I’ll lay out for you below.

I’m using Word for Mac for these screenshots. Using Word for a PC is basically the same process; it just looks like a little different. If you’re not using Word…well, use Word, okay?

First of all, don’t bother with Word’s Table of Contents generator. It involves following several more steps using Styles. If you’re going to format for Smashwords, that’s something you’re going to need to do, but let’s leave that for another time. Instead of letting Word generate a TOC for you, just insert a page break where you want the TOC to go and type “Table of Contents” at the top of the page. Follow that by typing out the names of your chapters. Let’s say you have nine chapters, numbered only with no chapter names. Your TOC will start off looking like this:

If you have chapter names instead of numbers, type them out the same way. However you’re identifying chapters, just type up a list.

Next, go to the actual first page of the first chapter and highlight the chapter title

To create the active TOC, you’ll need to bookmark the destination that you want the TOC entry to take the reader to. So, with the chapter name highlighted, go into your Insert menu and select “Bookmark”:

You’ll now be taken to a new screen that will ask you to name the bookmark. Technically, you can name it anything you want, but for ease of use I’d recommend naming it the same as your chapter title. Remember that you can’t use spaces in bookmark names, though, so if you want a space, use the underscore as I’ve done here:

Once you’ve given the bookmark a name, click “Add” and you’re ready for the next step. Go back to the Table of Contents you typed up earlier and highlight Chapter One, or whatever other name you’ve given to the chapter you just bookmarked. With that entry highlighted, go back to the “Insert” menu and select “Hyperlink.”

You’re now going to create a hyperlink between the item you just highlighted and the one you bookmarked earlier. When you click “Hyperlink” you’ll get this screen:

Select the option for “Document” in the center of the screen. You’re doing this because you’re linking things within the document itself as opposed to linking to something outside the document, on the web, or elsewhere. You’re going to “Anchor” the hyperlink to something in the document, so click on “Locate” to get this screen:

You’ll need to click on the “Bookmarks” arrow to get a list of bookmarks in this document, and there should be one for the first chapter that you created earlier. Select and click “Okay.” The bookmark you selected should now appear in the “Anchor” window:

Again, hit “Okay” and you’re done. Now the “Chapter One” entry in the TOC appears as a hyperlink. If you click it, you should be sent to the bookmarked location, which should be the beginning of the chapter.

You don’t have to follow this next step, but I think it’s a nice touch. Here, you’ll create a bookmark for the Table of Contents itself and hyperlink it to the beginnings of each chapter. This way, readers can click on a chapter title in the middle of your book and be taken directly back to the TOC to be able to go to a different chapter easily. Start on the TOC page itself and highlight the words “Table of Contents.” Then repeat the earlier step to bookmark the TOC. In the field where you name the bookmark, just enter “TOC.”

Click “Add” and then go to the beginning of Chapter One. Select the name of that chapter and Insert a hyperlink as you did before. Now, though, you’re going to link to the “TOC” bookmark.

Click “Okay” and then “Okay” again on the Insert Hyperlink page, and your chapter heading is now a hyperlink that takes readers back to the TOC page.

Repeat the above processes for all of your chapters and be sure to add hyperlinks and bookmarks for your Acknowledgments and About the Author pages and anything else you want in the TOC.

It’s a bit tedious if you have a lot of chapters, but once you get going it won’t take long. When you’re finished all the entries in your TOC now appear as hyperlinks and you should be able to click on all of them to be taken to the different parts of your book. You can then click on chapter names and be taken back to the TOC.

I hope you’ve found this helpful.