Guest Post – Claire Buss (Part 2)

A little later than planned due to internet problems (thankfully all now resolved), my blog is back. So, Happy New Year to you—let’s hope it’s an improvement on 2020, despite the initial signs not being good.

A slight departure today—I have a guest post (her second) from Claire Buss, who is soon releasing the second book in her humorous fantasy Roshaven series. Details of how to preorder, the cover and links to other works in the series follow, together with links to Claire’s social media.

I’ll be back a week Friday, the 22^nd—see you then!

The Silk Thief (The Roshaven Series Book 2)

Releasing 4^th June 2021

A Humorous Urban Fantasy Novel

The Blurb:

Fourteen, heir to the Empire of Roshaven, must find a new name before Theo, Lord of neighbouring Fidelia, brings his schemes to fruition.

Not only has he stolen Roshaven’s trade, but he plans to make Fourteen his own and take her empire in the bargain.

Her protector, Ned Spinks, is plagued with supernatural nightmares whilst his assistant, Jenni the sprite, has lost her magick.

Can they figure out how to thwart Theo’s dastardly plan before it’s too late for his city and her empire?

To preorder, click here

More about the Roshaven books.

The Rose Thief, The Roshaven Series book 1

Someone is stealing the Emperor’s roses and if they take the magical red rose then love will be lost, to everyone, forever.

It’s up to Ned Spinks, Chief Thief Catcher, and his band of motley catchers to apprehend the thief and save the day.

But the thief isn’t exactly who they seem to be. Neither is the Emperor.

Ned and his team will have to go on a quest, defeating vampire mermaids, illusionists, estranged family members and an evil sorcerer in order to win the day. What could possibly go wrong?

Available in paperback and ebook here

The Interspecies Poker Tournament, Prequel Novella to The Rose Thief

Ned Spinks, Chief Thief-Catcher, has a new case. A murderous moustache-wearing cult is killing off members of Roshaven’s fae community. At least that’s what he’s been led to believe by his not-so-trusty sidekick, Jenni the sprite. She has information she’s not sharing but plans to get her boss into the Interspecies Poker Tournament so he can catch the bad guy and save the day. If only Ned knew how to play!

Available in paperback and ebook here

Ye Olde Magick Shoppe, a Roshaven short story

Join Ned Spinks, Chief Thief-Catcher, and his sidekick Jenni the sprite in this short story about an unwanted magick shoppe.

This free short story is available in ebook here

Claire Buss is a multi-genre author and poet based in the UK. She wanted to be Lois Lane when she grew up but work experience at her local paper was eye-opening. Instead, Claire went on to work in a variety of admin roles for over a decade but never felt quite at home. An avid reader, baker and Pinterest addict, Claire won second place in the Barking and Dagenham Pen to Print writing competition in 2015 with her debut novel, The Gaia Effect, setting her writing career in motion. She continues to write passionately and is hopelessly addicted to cake.

To connect with Claire:

Facebook
Facebook group
Twitter
Instagram
Website

July 24, 2020

Guest Post – Cindy Tomamichel

Today I’m delighted to host Cindy Tomamichel, who is going to say a little about organising ourselves for best effect. For more, much more, pick up Cindy’s recent release The Organized Author. It contains a great deal of useful information, especially for the newer writer who might be finding the sheer volume of stuff they need to do to organise themselves daunting, if not overwhelming. Over to Cindy…

Organised Authors Have More Time

New authors often struggle with the expectation of having an author platform. Stories of publishers demanding thousands of followers, countless blogs giving advice on how to build and grow it, and a never-ending avalanche of marketing tasks. Is it possible to do all the things and continue to write?

The short answer is no. No one can be on every social media channel, market, blog, send out fascinating newsletters and hobnob with influencers. Not if you are actually doing any writing!

However, while being an anti-social hermit may have its attractions, there is no denying some sort of effort is needed to attract readers. There are ways to make it less of a timesuck – and that is to be organized. Today I’ll provide my two most helpful tips for authors overwhelmed by the demands of being a modern internet author.

1. One file to rule them all.

Make a file for all your most-used links, book blurbs, book-buy links, author bio, social media profiles, hashtags, blog URL’s etc. If you tidy it with headings and/or tables, this will be a document that will save endless bookmark hunting, and save a great deal of time in the long run. Make it easy to access with a shortcut on your desktop or pinning it in Word.

2. Review once, share everywhere.

Creating new content can be a nightmare of coming up with new ideas, crafting graphics, writing it, then posting and sharing it around. Make it easy on yourself by using the reviewing platform tools. For instance, most people have a slightly different audience for Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and BookBub. So write a review of a book you enjoyed – don’t do this for books you hated as no one is going to thank you for it, least of all the author.

So with one review copy, put it up on Amazon as a courtesy to the author. Then put it up on Goodreads, which is then shared to all your friends on the feed. Take advantage of the tweet and post buttons on Goodreads, adding hashtags and tagging the author. If you then go to BookBub, this recommendation is emailed to all your followers, reminding them you exist, and that you read the same interesting stuff they do, and maybe they might like your books. After this, if you have a blog, you can use it, and when published, use the book image to add it as a pin in Pinterest. As a last effort, the book image can be added to an Instagram story. It can go in your newsletter as well.

So from one bit of written content you have refreshed audiences and your platforms on potentially eight places. By tagging the author, you increase your influence and they may share your books. If it is a book in your genre, you may garner fresh readers who are fans of that book. Best of all, because most of it is copy-paste, it takes up little time.

Get The Organized Author

Cindy Tomamichel is a multi-genre writer. Escape the everyday with the time travel action adventure series Druid’s Portal, science fiction and fantasy stories or tranquil scenes for relaxation. Discover worlds where the heroines don’t wait to be rescued, and the heroes earn that title the hard way.

Cindy Tomamichel is also the fiendish mind behind the empire of The Organized Author. She is bent on world domination … hmm, sorry, did I say that out loud? … making life easier for authors by sharing tips that can streamline their author platform.

Contact Links:

Guest Post – Desiree Villena

Today I’m delighted to host Desiree Villena, who’s going to talk about self-editing, a topic I have discussed myself on occasion. Over to Desiree…

5 Common Self-Editing Mistakes to Avoid

Editing your own manuscript is one of those capricious endeavours that’s high-risk, high-reward. On one hand, if you’re able to perform an effective self-edit , you can maintain complete creative control over your work and save money on editing services down the line. Even if you intend to hire an editor regardless, an initial round of self-editing can make their job a lot easier (and their final invoice a lot lower) than you might think.

On the other hand, without the right information and expectations going into this process, you could end up spending hours on a self-edit that barely improves — or even degrades — your manuscript. To prevent this from happening, you can’t just rely on what you should do; you also have to know what not to do! That’s where this post comes in. Here are five all-too-common self-editing mistakes to avoid, both for your sake and your future readers’.

1. Diving in immediately

Sam touches on this in the post linked above, but it’s such an unequivocal blunder that it bears repeating: do not, under any circumstances, start editing your manuscript the day you finish it (or even the day after that!). For one thing, you deserve a break after all your hard work; for another, you need some space in order to evaluate your book as objectively as possible. This space allows you to detach emotionally from both your prose and your story, giving you the capacity to see where your sentences might be overwrought, or your plot a little bit patchy.

Writers have varying opinions on the ideal amount of time to wait before editing. I’d recommend a six-week minimum, though I agree with the above post that two to three months is better still. Zadie Smith, one of my writing role models, has said that this couple-month period “will do” — she prefers to wait a year or more, though acknowledges this isn’t always possible. However, her reasoning is airtight: “You need to become [your work’s] reader instead of its writer.” I think this can be achieved in six weeks, but the longer the better, if you have the time to spare.

2. Copy editing first

Upon commencing your self-edit, you may feel like you should start by going through your manuscript and correcting spelling, grammar and other mechanical mistakes: in other words, copy editing. Resist the urge to pick this low-hanging fruit! While it may feel like a good way to ease yourself into the editing process, it will almost certainly end up being a waste of time.

Unless you’re some kind of perfect-first-draft deity, you’ll need to rewrite significant chunks of your book in the course of editing — rendering any previous copy editing of those sections useless and forcing you to copy edit similar passages all over again. Indeed, copy editing before developmental editing can genuinely hinder later rounds of polishing! You’ll feel as though you’ve already caught everything major (even if you’ve technically rewritten a good portion of your manuscript) and give yourself permission to skim, or you’ll grow so impatient with rereading that you eventually just give up.

That’s not to say you can’t do any early-stage copy editing, especially if it helps you loosen up your editing muscles… but try and keep it to a minimum before you’ve worked through the big-picture stuff. If you know you wouldn’t change a word of your first chapter or your current book description, for example, you have my permission to copy edit as a (brief) warm-up to developmental editing.

3. Prioritising style over substance

Jumping off that last tip, another frequent pitfall of the editing process is caring more about the style than the substance of your work. Again, I know it’s usually more fun to tweak your prose than to address problems with your plot and characters, but even the most eloquent writing in the world won’t make those problems go away! On the contrary, it will aggravate readers, who’ll wonder why you put so much effort into decorating a mediocre-tasting cake when you could have been refining the recipe (if you’ll excuse the slightly mixed metaphor).

If the problem persists, you’ll end up with a book that’s eloquently written but ultimately shallow, or too long and meandering, or even completely nonsensical. I’m sure we can all think of books like this; don’t let yours become one of them! Even if you’re determined to cultivate a signature style, you must focus on the fundamentals first: a beginning, middle, and end, round characters who interact in interesting ways, and a central conflict that rings true and gets readers invested.

If you feel your work is lacking in any of these areas, try some writing exercises to develop them, particularly in terms of plot and character development. Once you have these elements nailed down, you can return to experimenting with your prose.

4. Comparing your work to other authors’

Here’s another issue that often befalls writers who believe shimmering prose is the end-all, be-all of literature: comparing their writing to that of other authors. For those attempting to pay homage to literary favourites, this can certainly exacerbate the style-over-substance conundrum, but there are other negative outcomes as well.

One of these, as you can probably guess, is editing your own writing to sound precisely like your favourite author’s — effectively erasing what makes you unique as a writer, and often forcing you into a style that doesn’t come naturally. In fact, in my experience, comparing my work to that of others typically results in the worst of both worlds: my own voice gets lost, and the one that replaces it sounds utterly contrived. (I still remember a painful summer of writing and editing when I was trying to imitate Gillian Flynn, memorising snippets of Gone Girl that had been posted on her author website in a desperate attempt to absorb her style.)

On top of all this, remember that your book is still a work-in-progress at this stage! Comparing it to a perfectly polished, published title is unfair on every level. To that end, if you feel especially impressionable or fragile while editing, I’d suggest steering clear of well-written books altogether — or reading exclusively outside your genre to avoid potential comparisons. Just as you need mental space from your own book at the start of this process, you also need it from other books once it’s time to get to work.

5. Not getting a third-party proofreader

I know this post is about self-editing, but hear me out: even once you’ve gone through your book multiple times with a fine-tooth comb, you can’t guarantee error-free copy without a professional proofread. The harsh reality is that your own biases will keep you from fixing phrases that sound awkward to everyone else, and your brain will skip right over typos because you’ve seen them a million times. So once you’ve powered through the developmental and copy editing stages, don’t kid yourself — hire a proofreader for this final, crucial part.

Naturally, there are many other ways that the self-editing process can go awry, but these five are perhaps the most prevalent and harmful. They’re also all mistakes that I’ve made myself, about which I wish someone else had warned me! So do as I say, not as I’ve done, and embark on your own self-editing journey with the confidence and clarity to evade these terrible traps.

Desiree Villena is a writer with Reedsy, a marketplace that connects authors with the world’s best self-publishing resources. In her spare time, Desiree enjoys reading contemporary fiction, writing short stories, and giving (mostly) solicited advice to her fellow writers.

May 29, 2020

Guest Post – Maggie Plummer (Part 2)

American author Maggie Plummer becomes the first person to guest twice on my blog. It’s been more than a year since she first appeared, here ; what a different world we lived in then. Today she’s going to talk about something highly topical so it’s over to Maggie.

Writing Fiction During a Pandemic

When the coronavirus began to hit the United States a few months ago, it just so happened that I was finishing up my latest novel, Webs in the Mist: The Jessie Morgan Series, Book 2. As the television and internet news got more and more alarming, working on the new novel gave me desperately needed, long breaks from real life.

What an advantage, submerging my overactive mind in my 1970s Jessie Morgan fiction world! What a blessing! Each day, when I finished working on the book, I felt refreshed by having thoroughly escaped our new reality. It reminds me of how, during our too-long, too-gray western Montana winters, I sometimes find relief by writing about hot, sunny settings. It’s a mental vacation.

As the coronavirus crisis progressed, I watched friends and family being consumed by the news, obsessed with the pandemic’s frightening impacts on our country. Many of them were and are paralyzed by it.

I’m lucky, because somehow I’m able to keep working on my writing during this crisis. I’m lucky in other ways, too:

I live alone with my sweet dog and work in my house, so staying home in self-quarantine is not that different from what I normally do;
I don’t have children at home, taking away from my writing schedule; and
My new novel is set in the 1970s and offers a cheerful escape for my readers; I’m not adding to their fear with pessimistic, dystopian novels, and that helps me go for it, even now.

One writer friend is journaling about her day-to-day pandemic experience. That can help us work it out in our minds, and keep our spirits up. Keeping a gratitude journal is a great way to stay focused on our many blessings.

COVID-19 is a huge distraction that’s difficult to avoid, with the media in our faces. Our imaginations take off: What a story! How will it end? Compared to what’s actually going on in the world, perhaps our novel’s conflict seems trivial. How do you keep going as a writer?

I think we can give ourselves a break now, whether we’re being productive in our writing or not. As novelists we can bury our heads in the sand and feel good about it. But: If we can’t write during this pandemic, that’s OK too. Life is too short for beating ourselves up.

Here’s the bottom line: Writing fiction is good for our mental health. It’s a great way to channel our creative energy, so that we don’t go haywire and start bouncing off the walls. Writers need to write. That means spending plenty of time in our fiction worlds, even if all we do is play around with character studies or do internet research about our books’ settings. The main thing, I think, is to immerse ourselves in that fictional realm, letting our writer minds take a massive, deep breath of fresh air.

Don’t forget, our writing might just help others take refreshing, deep breaths, too.

Maggie Plummer is a multi-genre author whose latest novel, Webs in the Mist, is Book Two of her semi-autobiographical Jessie Morgan series. Like Jessie, she lived in San Francisco during the freewheeling 1970s, riding the cable cars in raggedy bell-bottom jeans. These days the author works from her Montana home near the shores of Flathead Lake, where she loves camping with her sweet black lab, Peaches. Webs in the Mist is Maggie’s fourth published novel.

Links:

Guest Post – Claire Buss

I’m kicking off this year’s blog schedule with a guest post from the cake-loving Claire Buss. She’s going to talk about the meaning of success, a topic that most writers will have pondered at some time (me included; I talked about this very thing here). Over to Claire.

The Big Debate – The Enigma of Success

This is how the conversation goes:

“So, what do you do, Claire?”

“Oh, I’m a writer.”

“Really? Anything I’d have seen?”

“Well… all my books are on Amazon so…”

“Who’s your publisher?”

“Actually, I’m self-published.”

“Oh, right. So when are you going back to work?”

Because, of course, having a publishing deal with a well-known publisher like Penguin Random House or Harper Collins is the definition of success for a writer – isn’t it?

What if it’s not? What if I am successful for typing ‘The End’ at the close of a 60,000-word manuscript? Google tells me that 97% of writers fail to finish their book; therefore if I fall into that top 3% of finishers, surely I am now a success.

The traditional publishing route dictates that first you must secure yourself an agent as many publishing houses will not touch unsolicited manuscripts. And so, us happy individuals in the elite 3% must begin touting our stories to agents who receive thousands of submissions a year and are only really interested in current market trends. If you are a BAME author writing about diversity, disability or LGBTQ issues, then congratulations, you’re a hot bet. You are the lucky 1 in 1000 who will land an agent.

However, these things are never quite that straightforward. I know of two superb Pen to Print authors who have successfully landed an agent, congratulations again, but have yet to receive a publishing deal. So maybe snagging a literary agent is not full measure of writer success. In an article about the odds of getting a publishing deal that I read recently on Jericho Writers, an editor at one of the big-5 publishing houses in the UK buys less than 1% of the work offered to him. 1%. That’s not great odds.

As an independent or indie author, I have now published 14 titles, 2 audiobooks and had short stories published in 4 anthologies. Am I successful simply because of the number of books I published in the last three years? Am I successful because my work was deemed worthy of inclusion in other people’s anthologies? Perhaps that is not enough. I am also multi-award winning and can list accolades on my website of which I am very proud, but are they a stamp of success? I didn’t win the Booker Prize. Yet.

I have not so far managed to earn a significant wage as an author in order to contribute significantly financially to my family, yet am I successful simply because I do earn money from my writing – no matter the amount? According to research carried out by CREATe, the average author take-home wage in 2018 was in the region of £10,000 per annum so even if I were financially successful, we are not talking multi-million-pound deals.

The Oxford English Dictionary states that success is the accomplishment of an aim or purpose.

For a writer who views their authorship as a business and is committed to achieving goals and self-imposed deadlines with the help of quarterly plans and a vast array of spreadsheets, it seems that I have met my success. For me, it is always about what’s next. I am constantly aiming to grow and develop as a writer, improve my craft and continue to write and release books that readers want to read.

I firmly believe that if I can just get my novels in front of as many people as possible, I will start to see growth in sales and readers. How can I achieve that goal? Well, that is indeed the magic question and once I figure it out, I’ll be sure to let you know.

It’s not enough to be successful as a writer, you also need to be successful as a human being. And a parent. And a representative of your ethnic tick box. Perhaps if we just focus on our best in all that we do, success will decode itself. For that in itself is another measure of success. Passing on what you’ve learnt along your journey and sharing your pitfalls with others, so they don’t make the same mistakes. Join online writing groups and share your experiences, ask questions so you can learn from others and pass on the tips you have picked up. If something works for you, tell your writing community and make sure others know they can come to you for help and support. It’s a lonely job being a writer, but it’s a wonderful community being an author.

(first published in Write On! Magazine, Dec 2019)

You can read Write On! Magazine online at https://pentoprint.org/product-category/magazine/ and if you’d like to submit a piece of creative work or a writing article, please send it to pentoprint@lbbd.gov.uk

Claire Buss is an award-winning multi-genre author and poet based in the UK. She wanted to be Lois Lane when she grew up but work experience at her local paper was eye-opening. Instead, Claire went on to work in a variety of admin roles for over a decade but never felt quite at home. An avid reader, baker and Pinterest addict, Claire won second place in the Barking and Dagenham Pen to Print writing competition in 2015 with her debut novel, The Gaia Effect, setting her writing career in motion. She continues to write passionately and is hopelessly addicted to cake.

To find out more about Claire and her work:

Facebook Facebook Group Twitter Website Books

July 12, 2019July 12, 2019

Guest Post – A. R. Kavli

Today I’m pleased to host American author, A. R. Kavli, who is going to talk about narrating his own audiobooks. Around a year ago, I was dipping my toes into the audiobook market for the first time and faced the same considerations he’s going to discuss, so it’s a topic I find particularly interesting. Over to A. R.

DIY Audio

Let me start by saying that I’m at the beginning of my audiobook production journey. An audio amateur, if you will. But I can explain what seems to work for me, and sometimes it can be helpful to hear what others have experienced.

I was recently convinced by various articles and podcasts to try my hand (mouth?) at narrating. Audio is a growth market worthy of investigation for indies. Initially, royalty share options sounded like a dream: get an audio book made with no down payment and no work. Royalty share comes with two big drawbacks, as it turns out. One being that your book is locked in a seven-year, ACX exclusivity contract. The other is that narrators will have to believe your book will make money.

Both were issues for me, so I looked into DIY audio. Any endeavor requires money or time. I’m short on both, but I can wrangle more time than money at this point. So I bought an entry-level set up with mic, mic stand and preamp, and proceeded to learn what I could about the craft. I purchased a couple of online courses and have spent many hours on YouTube learning all about mouth clicks, mic position, and using Audacity to record, edit and master my audio.

There are some steep learning curves. And it is hard work. But I kept my goal in mind and when I gained some competence, I found recording enjoyable—despite my profanity-strewn outtakes. At this point I’ve only recorded my own work, but I think in the future, and with a bit more experience, I might put my toe in the market as a narrator.

Recording a full-length novel is a marathon. That makes it harder to maintain a constant sound day-by-day or month-by-month. I have two main, non-American accents in my novel, one Slavic, one French. On those days where I was struggling, my characters sounded like Count Chocula and Pepé Le Pew.

Less is definitely more when it comes to accents.

Editing the audio files is relatively easy. You have to listen and watch the track to each file, though. I’ve found noises I could hear but not see, and noises that showed up in the waveform that I couldn’t hear. It can be laborious to listen to the same track again and again, but think about how the listener will feel. When you have to later record over something to fix a mistake, it can be difficult to match the original voice qualities.

I still struggle with mouth clicks, both while reading and while mastering. You can’t get rid of them all, but I’ve learned how to adjust my speaking in a way to reduce the problem. Thank you, YouTube.

My cozy recording booth consists of a laptop set on my dresser surrounded by a PVC frame draped with a thick comforter.

I work in my bedroom corner, with roads nearby outside. It doesn’t keep out the noise, so I have to pause whenever someone wants to show off how loud their truck gets. Nor does my booth keep out the stomping kids, barking dog, or my own gastrointestinal misadventures. But it treats my recording space enough for a good, clean background noise level.

I enjoy the process, despite the extra work and frustrations of my DIY set-up. I think you have to enjoy it to keep at it for the long run. It is time-consuming and surprisingly exhausting. Oh, and my air conditioner has to be turned off, too. Very noisy.

I made the rookie mistake of deciding I didn’t need a final edit, then recorded my audio. In the course of that read, I came across many mistakes. I hired a final proofread and it turned up more word changes than I expected. My work was riddled with overused and improperly used words. Or, more accurately, it was a handful of words misused throughout. I knew there were comma issues, but dang. I’ve decided it would produce a better product—and probably be the same amount of work—to record the book over. And, I could apply the things I learned along the way to the beginning chapters.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. I love the work, and I think you really must love it to be able to stay in it for the long term. Just like writing.

I’m hoping to finish the audio production in time to match the ebook and paperback release of my novel, With Our Dying Breath. It is already up for pre-order (reduced price for pre-order) in ebook format, with a release date of Aug 31, 2019.

A.R. Kavli is a U.S. Navy veteran, author, gamer, and long-time fan of all things science fiction and fantasy. His first paid writing projects were for role-playing game companies and his first book was published in 2011. He lives in Middle Tennessee with his wife of 24 years and four children.

Please visit arkavli.com/my-books to purchase and for more information on his work.

May 31, 2019July 26, 2019

Guest Post – Zachry Wheeler

Today I’m hosting the author of a novel I read a few weeks ago and greatly enjoyed. And it’s in development to be made into a feature film—seriously, how cool is that? (he says, without a trace of envy.) The novel is Transient and the author is Zachry Wheeler. He recently hosted me on his blog (that was fun) and it’s good to return the favour. He’s going to talk about a subject on which I’ve written a couple of posts myself: self-editing. Beneath Zachry’s piece you’ll find plenty of links to his website, social media and books so you can find out more about him. Enough from me—over to Zachry.

How Many Edits Does It Take?

Ah, the age old question. How many edits does it take to get to the center of a good manuscript? As with everything else in writing, the answer is crisp, clear, and concise: it depends. I hope you enjoyed reading this useless post and I look forward to your frustrated hate mail.

But seriously, it’s a difficult question to answer because it depends on a ton of factors. I lost count of the editing rounds with my debut novel Transient. When it came time to edit my second novel, Max and the Multiverse, I had graduated from complete hack to competent author and knocked it out in a dozen passes. Today, I edit down my manuscripts with a tried and true strategy. For me, and I cannot stress the me part enough, I have learned that it takes four major editing passes: Content, Format, Verbal, and Polish.

Content editing should be self-explanatory. You edit for content. This includes fleshing out detail, adjusting pace, fixing structural issues, deleting anything that doesn’t make sense or push the story forward, anything that gives your narrative a clear direction. Usually, my first draft is about 3/4 the word count of the finished product. I add the other 1/4 during content editing. In fact, I sometimes add notes in the first draft like [need more detail about the pickle] and come back to it after completion.

Content editing takes about as much time as writing the first draft. After this round, my story is complete.

Format editing is when I take the results of content editing and dump them into a formatted file that I will use for publication, usually a tricked-out Word document. I set margins, select fonts, add titles, credits, dedications, headers, page numbers, all that tedious stuff. Once I have everything in place (and technically ready to print), I start a fresh round of editing and adjust anything that is not pleasing to the eye. Sometimes it’s a simple word choice. Other times it’s a complete rearrangement of a paragraph or scene.

Format editing takes about half the time of content editing. After this round, my narrative is complete.

Verbal editing is when I read the entire novel out loud and adjust anything that is not pleasing to the ear. You would be amazed at how many errors you uncover by simply vocalizing the words you have written. Your ears have a way of uncovering linguistic quirks that don’t sound right. It might look good on paper, but your ears will tell you things like “no human talks that way” or “this phrase makes you sound like a pirate.”

Verbal editing takes about half the time of format editing. After this round, my manuscript is complete.

Polish editing is quick and easy. This is when you and your find/replace become best friends. You start at the top of your manuscript and search for all those dumb little mistakes that manage to slip through committee. Things like double spaces or inverted quotes or there/their/they’re. I keep a running list of common typos that I search for and destroy in every final manuscript. One of my common failings is using “sunk” when I mean “sank.” At least one of those bastards will make it through to the end.

Polish editing should only take a day or two. After this round, my novel is complete.

Once I complete my polishing round, it’s off to the races. I hand it over to my copy editor for one final nit-pick while I concentrate on cover design, back blurb, and all the other fun stuff that goes into getting a completed book into the hands of readers. It’s quite a daunting process, but I enjoy every second of it. Hopefully this post helped to answer that annoying question, or at the very least, give you an expectation of things to come. Best of luck and happy editing.

Links:

Amazon US
Amazon UK

Zachry’s website (where the above article first appeared): http://www.zachrywheeler.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zachrywheeler

Twitter: https://twitter.com/zachrywheeler

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/zachrywheeler/

May 3, 2019July 26, 2019

Guest Post – Kath Middleton

Today I’m hosting the lovely Kath Middleton. Though we’ve never met in real life, I’ve ‘known’ Kath online from the days when she was a reviewer and great supporter of indie authors. She’s since crossed the divide and joined the writing ranks with a great deal of success. Without further ado, it’s over to Kath.

Genre

What’s a genre? People used to ask what kind of books do we like. That’s the genre. Some genres are more popular than others. Look along the shelves in your local library. Some genres cover many shelves, some one small section.

How do you become a bestselling author? Obviously you need to write a great book. It has to be literate—sounds obvious but there are books on sale that don’t follow the rules of grammar. Above all, you have to write in a popular genre.

Crime, thriller and police procedural are linked genres and are very popular with readers. Romance is another genre that sells well. I’ve read some stunning books in the Literary Fiction category, although I know that title can put people off. They expect it to be worthy or stuffy. People know what they like and steer in that direction. They don’t want to read something they are not expecting, in general. If they love science fiction they don’t really want it to end up as a bodice (or space suit) ripper. If they love horror they don’t want it ‘tainted’ with humour. If you want to write a best seller and make money, look at the top 100 books on Amazon and choose one of the most popular genres.

That said, many authors write because they need to scratch the itch. It doesn’t matter what the genre—in fact, I often don’t know what genre I’m writing till the book is finished. Even then, it may cross boundaries. Many of us, particularly independently published, write what we’re interested in. Lots of people are interested in more than one thing. I would find it tedious to have to restrict myself to one genre. I start with ‘what if?’ and move on from there.

In the days when everyone had to interest a publisher to get a book in front of an audience of readers, genre was particularly important. If a publisher accepted your thriller and it sold reasonably well, they would want another thriller. If you had an urge to write comedy, you had to suppress it. They wanted more of what would make them money—not whatever you felt the urge to witter on about this time.

Today, with indie publishing, people can follow their own interests. I know several authors who have written in more than one genre and some have written a kind of genre-mashup. A humorous thriller, a historical crime novel, a supernatural story that doesn’t dive straight into horror. Indie publishing has freed people to write what interests them, not what will guarantee big sales for a publisher.

These days I largely read indie fiction. It’s so refreshing to read what the author is driven to write, to scratch that itch. Most indies know they will never get rich. They could increase their chances by following the trends in fiction and by sticking to best-selling genres. I believe that if a writer isn’t producing books they feel strongly about, you can tell. If someone churns out books in a certain style just to make sales, there’s a deadness to the stories. I wouldn’t want to read that. I love something different and a bit edgy. Something the author is excited about. If the person who writes the book isn’t fired up with love and enthusiasm, you can hardly blame the reader for being unenthusiastic.

Let’s hear it for the genre mashups, the cross-genre books, the books you couldn’t fit into any single genre with a shoe-horn.

Oh, and the real way to make money with your writing? Ransom notes.

Links

Kath’s website: www.kathmiddletonbooks.com

To purchase Kath’s latest release: The Angel Monument

Bio
Kath Middleton began her writing with drabbles (100-word stories) and contributed a number to Jonathan Hill’s second drabble collection. It wasn’t long before she moved up a size to contribute short stories to anthologies. Shortly afterwards, she progressed to writing longer pieces and her first solo work, Ravenfold, was published to some acclaim. This was followed by the novella, Message in a Bottle. There are now several more books, from short stories to novels. Kath likes to put her characters in difficult situations and watch them work their way out. She believes in the indomitable nature of the human spirit (and chickens).
Kath is retired. She graduated in geology and has a certificate in archaeology. When she’s in a hole, she doesn’t stop digging.

April 5, 2019July 26, 2019

Guest Post – Maggie Plummer

Today I’m hosting another guest, the free-spirited Maggie Plummer. I’ve known Maggie (in an online sense) for a number of years and always found her bubbly and delightful. She’s going to talk about how writers can use their real-life experiences in their fiction. Over to Maggie.

Turning Life into Fiction

When You Can’t Trust Your Memory…

Authors hear this again and again: Write what you know.

For years I thought about that, wanting to write my travel stories from the 1970s. I imagined a collection of short stories that would be called Tales of a Volkswagen Gypsy or something similar. For some reason, I just couldn’t get going on the project. Then I considered writing a memoir about those years, but quickly realized that my memory is too befuddled to attempt a non-fiction book about my life.

Gradually I developed the idea of a novel loosely (and I mean LOOSELY!) based on my ‘70s wanderings. After working on it for several years, Bell-Bottom Gypsy: A Jessie Morgan Novel is finally published and available on Amazon.

The process of turning my stories into a novel has been a revelation. It’s true what they say: truth is stranger than fiction. The thing is, fiction has to be believable.

In other words, it’s not as easy as it sounds.

There are pitfalls to avoid when writing autobiographical fiction. I think the biggest problem is a tendency to be too attached to memories. A fiction writer has to let go of the reality, and let the drama fly. The needs of the fiction must come first, no matter how fond a writer is of his/her real stories. That means:

Bending and stretching real people into credible fictional characters. This is especially important when the writer is the main character. Don’t forget, the novel’s protagonist has to be believable.
Making events fit together in a way that’s satisfying for a reader. Things must happen for a reason in a novel, moving the story forward. Always look for the conflict. A string of cool but disconnected anecdotes does not a novel make. Plan fiction with the narrative structure in mind.

The process of writing my new novel has been strikingly different from that of my two previous novels, Spirited Away and Daring Passage—both of which are historical novels set in the 1650s. As I wrote the two earlier novels, historical research played a major role in developing the novels’ plots. Bell-Bottom Gypsy, however, required that I look deeper into my story to create a plot with tension and conflict.

I not only had to embellish, I had to lie.

When it comes to writing fiction, the more dramatic the lie, the better. The thing to do is deliberately change a major element in the story. Take Twisty, my “bad guy” in Bell-Bottom Gypsy. In real life, my boyfriend was nothing like crazy old Twisty. Some of the details were similar: like Twisty, my boyfriend played guitar, sang, loved black and white photography, and was tall and dark. But his core character was totally different. My boyfriend was gentle, quiet, and mellow (in fact, sometimes he was too mellow for me! But I digress…). In order to write a decent novel, I turned him into someone edgy and potentially dangerous. It made all the difference.

Here are more tips for turning life into fiction:

Describe everything in detail. Too much detail can be edited out later. When writing what you know, it’s easy to forget that the reader knows nothing about you or your story.
Point of view can be tricky. In Bell-Bottom Gypsy, I used third person point of view, because it flowed well and I wanted Jessie, the main character, to be included in the scenes. Some writers use first person point of view in their autobiographical fiction. It might be good to experiment with both.
Define an enduring theme. What is the central message you want to get across? Find the story within your stories, making sure the narrative has enough depth to keep readers going.
Create composites. Feel free to throw the best tidbits of real life into the novel’s scenes, regardless of when they really happened.
Try to create a sense of distance from your experiences. I had an advantage as I wrote my new novel: the distance of time. My travel stories are from the early 1970s – almost fifty years ago! (That’s hard to believe, isn’t it?)

The main thing is, don’t be afraid to use real life in your fiction. Mine it like gold, but craft it carefully.

Then sit back and enjoy. To those who are horrified by the things that happen in your autobiographical fiction (like some might be by scenes in Bell-Bottom Gypsy), repeat after me, loudly and proudly: “It’s fiction! It’s fiction!”

Maggie Plummer is a multi-genre author based in northwest Montana. Along the winding trail, she has worked as a journalist, school bus driver, Good Humor ice cream girl, fishing boat mate, and race horse hot walker, among other things. Bell-Bottom Gypsy is her third published novel.

Links:

Bell-Bottom Gypsy: A Jessie Morgan Novel (Kindle edition)

Bell-Bottom Gypsy: A Jessie Morgan Novel (paperback)

Spirited Away: A Novel of the Stolen Irish

Daring Passage: Book Two of the Spirited Away Saga

To connect with Maggie:

Website

Twitter

Facebook

March 22, 2019July 26, 2019

Guest Post – Mike Van Horn

Today I’m hosting American writer Mike Van Horn, author of the science fiction trilogy Agate and Breadbox. Here he is hard at work in Hawaii—looks tough, but I guess someone has to do it.

Over to Mike, who’s going to talk about the importance of songs in his work and how one thing can quickly lead to another.

When Life Gives You Lyrics, Make Music

I can’t sing anything more demanding than Happy Birthday. So imagine my surprise when I became a lyricist.

In my just-published book Aliens Crashed in My Back Yard, my main character and narrator—Selena M—is a singer who nurses a surviving alien back to health so she can send it home. The alien is also a singer, and that’s how they learn to communicate. They help each other recapture the passion of their singing.

I had to write snippets of lyrics for the songs that Selena sings, and come up with song titles. I used these as epigraphs at the top of chapters. Like this:

I’ve been a sweet stuff singer

All my girlie years

Airy, frothy little ditties

Full of love and tears

That’s from Cotton Candy Lovin’. Here’s another:

I’m playing with you

the game of love

and I’m losing every match.

Some of these snippets grew into verses, and then entire song lyrics. The thought came to me: if I have lyrics, I need music. But this was way beyond my skills!

I found a guy who could compose music for my lyrics, and he found a local blues singer who became the vocalist and the voice of Selena. They produced my songs and I put them up on Soundcloud. Now I have ‘sci fi with a sound track!’ I’ve written about twenty lyrics so far.

How do these get written? Two ways. Sometimes lines or couplets pop into my head. I write them down, then look for ideas that can expand them. I spend a lot of time looking for rhymes. For example:

We all want to fly to the stars

not just staying here sittin’ on our arse.

You serious scientists, let me lead you astray.

Get up! Get out there! Fly into the void.

Or should we just sit here whiling away

waiting to get whacked by some asteroid?

“That’s the first time I’ve ever seen stars rhymed with arse,” several have remarked.

Sometimes, after I’ve written a prose paragraph, I look at it and think, this could be turned into a song. For example, when Selena was by herself on the Moon, looking at the emptiness of space, she got the shivers:

I was beginning to feel unmoored. Not unmoored internally, exactly. Just feeling strange. More like a boat drifting out to sea. The farther it drifts, the harder it will be for it to find its way back. Perhaps it will discover new continents, but maybe it will just drift. A strange feeling came over me, and I found myself turning this chain of thought into a song.

Here’s what it turned into (first two verses):

I am unmoored.

I am adrift on the vastness of space.

Like a boat, lines cast free from the shore,

freed of land’s embrace.

Slowly drifting out to sea,

no rudder, no compass, no map, no haste.

Across the vasty void.

Forever to infinity.

The farther I drift ‘cross the vasty void

the harder it will be for me

to find my way back from the endless sea

to safe harbor, to home, to thee.

I may discover new worlds out there.

Or I might just drift, ‘cross the vast nowhere.

Forever to infinity.

This is so much fun! I love creating songs like this.

I want to finish up with a story. I felt very tentative about this entire effort. Who was I to hire composers, producers, and professional singers? I sent them my lyrics and they produced music. But then they invited me to one of the recording sessions at the studio. I went as an observer.

When the vocalist was warming up in the soundproof room, she said, “Sorry guys, my voice isn’t right today. I’m a little nervous because the lyricist is here.”

The who? You mean the big lyricist smoking a cigar who arrived in a long limo? She was feeling nervous because of me, and I was suffering from imposter syndrome big-time.

Okay, so what’s the lesson here for you writers?

When creativity happens, go with it. Go with it! Go where it takes you. Don’t say, “I can’t do that.” That’s a killer. Maybe you can’t, but maybe you can.

What I found out was that I could not only spin a good tale, but I can write music.

I am a lyricist. And it’s a blast!

Let’s finish with two verses from the one that became my theme song, and the name of Book 2 of my trilogy:

My spaceship calls out to me

Come fly me home

I’m yours, you’re my skipper.

Just call and I’ll come.

Just call and I’ll come to you

The whole galaxy’s our home.

On any world anywhere

Just call and I’ll come.

This is what Selena’s spaceship says to her. Could you resist? That’s what Books 2 and 3 are about: My Spaceship Calls Out to Me and Space Girl Yearning.

To hear how Mike’s music came out, go to http://galaxytalltales.com and click on Sci Fi Music.

Book 1 available for Kindle on Amazon here. Paperback edition coming soon.

Book 2 due May

You can read excerpts from all three books on his site – link above