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Posts from the ‘WRITING’ Category

Oct 14

10 Comments

It’s complicated

It’s not so much the thing itself, as the complications you have to worry about.

I might be talking about anything from Auto-immune diseases, to moving houses… But, because I happen to write novels…

It is novels I was referring to. You’d never have guessed, would you? And that is partly because I am all over the place. Sorry. That’s me, and I suspect most successful novelists. We get there in the end… but the complications that develop… well, they can make it hard, and of course, they can make the story.
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Oct 13

10 Comments

Copyright Links Post

As promised, this is a link-post. I can guarantee that the links all worked, as of yesterday. However, not all of them go to equally usable sites. Some are more general IP, others are specific. I tried to avoid any that are so specific that you might not need them (i.e. things along the lines of, “How does copyright on reproductions of public-domain images differ between Poland and Lithuania?”)

www.thepassivevoice.com     If you are not reading this blog, you probably ought to at least poke around it once every-other-week or so. PG is a copyright lawyer, and posts links to original sources as well as to legal dictionaries and related sources. And quotes, and book-plugs for Mrs. P.G’s historical novels. Read more

Oct 8

13 Comments

Questions and Answers

Last week, I asked if there were any questions you had about “getting a book ready to head out the door.” You folks were awesome with the number of suggestions and questions you raised. I’m not going to try to answer all of them today. There were enough to make several posts. But I will deal with at least a few of them. Here goes. . . . Read more

Oct 7

12 Comments

The Spanish Inquisition

‘I didn’t expect the Spanish Inquisition’
“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!” (Monty Python)

As an example to writers of how to use surprise… and fear, and ruthless efficiency and an almost fanatical devotion to the pope. And spiffy red uniforms…

Okay, so unless you’re doing an erotic novel called the handmaiden’s tail… maybe not the spiffy red uniforms. Read more

Oct 6

25 Comments

Consistency

I’m working on a story… wait, no. I’m working on three stories. Okay, maybe I’ve started and stopped on about seven, but I keep coming back to two stories?

I’d say my muse has ADOS (Attention Deficit… Ooh! Shiny!), but I’m terribly afraid it’s just me. Other people talk about writing to market and checking off the lists of tropes they’re going to use, and I’m over here going “this isn’t working because… I need a second POV? Do I have to go back and rewrite half the scenes? Or am I adding a second plotline in? No, no, bad brain. Just keep going forwa… okay, fine. Wait! I agreed! Why are you trying to throw a different story at me instead of the one I want to work on?”

Not that any of you know anything about that, eh?
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Oct 3

26 Comments

Steak as well as cookies

Sarah has mentioned the importance of “reader cookies” – those genre allusions and tropes, or better, tropes turned upside down, that keep the reader happy as he goes through the book.

But what happens when you get a book that’s nothing but cookies? How long does that keep you happy? In my case – not very long.

I recently came across a case in point, a comic novel written around the Norman invasion of England in 1066. You might think that’s not a great subject for comedy, but the writer pulled it off… sort of… tongue firmly planted in cheek, in the style of 1066 and All That, but applied to fiction. For the first few chapters I kept chuckling at the irreverent views and up-ending of conventional wisdom, reading specially good bits aloud to the First Reader. Read more

Oct 1

21 Comments

New Developments at Amazon

Let’s get a couple of things out of the way first. Every indie author out there owes Amazon a thank you. The company took a risk on us when no other major platform would. It wasn’t altruism that motivated them. It was profit. The corporate gurus knew there were readers out there who would pay good money to read books that did not fit in with what the traditional gatekeepers were letting out into the wild. Those same gurus knew there were any number of writers who wanted an option to traditional publishing and who would pay a very small percentage of their earnings (much smaller than the take trad publishers demanded) to have a sales platform available to them. For all that, Amazon hasn’t always made the right move. Because of that, I’m interested in hearing your thoughts–as readers and as writers–to two of the latest announcements to come from the KDP side of the company. Read more

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