Month: August 2017

Rookie Fears: Little Computer Details (pt 2)

“. . . from the research I was doing, it takes a modicum of technical knowledge- the tiniest bit of coding savvy- which, as a writer in the 21st century, I felt almost required to have, and which, as a writer overall who just wants to pound out stories and not worry about computer details, I don’t really possess in the least. . .”

A couple of nights ago, I hammered out the first part of this post, about my worries and doubts concerning the details of just how to get a book onto the Amazon Kindle Store.  As I allowed Mr. Cubbon to illustrate in his video, my fears turned out to be completely unfounded. . . almost comically so.

But, as I was writing the first draft of Blue Daunia Issue #1 back in early June, other fears as a first-time indie author began to creep in to take the place of those that had been placated.  And, as it turns out, there was a collective name for those fears:  “ebook formatting.”

Yes, I had done a modicum of research in the past, and what I knew off-hand from those past browsings amounted to this:  Uploading a Word document to Kindle is possible (and possibly tricky); Amazon uses the “mobi” format, preferably with a hyperlinked table of contents; PDFs are doable but extremely tricky when it comes to Amazon auto-converting to its native mobi; and then there’s epub, which is the easiest format for Amazon to auto-convert.

But, when the time came, how would I get my final draft into one of the better two formats: mobi and epub (I just didn’t want to take chances with the possible conversion errors of Word or PDF)?  And, almost more importantly (to perfectionist me anyway), how would I go about hyperlinking my table of contents, so that, when I finally see my book-baby on the kindle screen, I could tap on a chapter name and be instantly transported to that chapter?

Other authors dabbling in the ebook format had hyperlinked their TOCs… heck, almost all of them!  The small handful of books I had seen on my kindle which weren’t hyperlinked, looked extremely cheap in other ways as well, from typos to poor cover designs to outright public domain rehashes done with very little care.  In other words, early on in my readership of ebooks, I almost instantly began to equate non-hyperlinked TOCs with lousy, time-wasting quality.  Therefore, if my then-“future” self were ever to write and publish an ebook, it had to have a hyperlinked TOC. . . it just had to.  I considered it an absolute necessity!

Ah, hyperlinked Tables of Contents and ebook formatting. . . from the research I was doing, it takes a modicum of technical knowledge- the tiniest bit of coding savvy- which, as a writer in the 21st century, I felt almost required to have, and which, as a writer overall who just wants to pound out stories and not worry about computer details, I don’t really possess in the least.  I had seen programs and apps which would take flat text and convert it to mobi or epub, but the details I craved, like hyperlinking, still required other measures.  But I have a limited attention span when it comes to such things. . . more like an impatience. . . so what was I to do?  I considered it a hurdle I would have to cross.  Where to turn?  Was there to be no “magic bullet”?

Enter the Scrivener program, from Literature and Latte.  I found out about it during that worried fit of research, and I’m here to tell you, it was like a godsend.  One of the best parts was, for a good bit of time, it is actually free!  Here’s the blurb from their own website:

“The trial runs for 30 days of actual use: if you use it every day it lasts 30 days; if you use it only two days a week, it lasts fifteen weeks. Before the trial expires, you can export all of your work or buy a licence to continue using Scrivener.”

And here’s another cool thing about it: although there is a rough tonnage of things you can learn about the features of the program, there isn’t really all that much you really need to know in order to churn out a mobi or epub ebook, complete with my coveted hyperlinked TOC!

When you first open the program, and select the “Fiction” category followed by the “Novel” template, there will be a tab in the upper lefthand corner titled “Novel Format.”  Take the ten or so minutes to read and digest that, and you have basically everything you need (except for text and talent) to get yourself well underway.

At $45 US to own outright, it’s not the world’s cheapest bit of software, nor is it the world’s most expensive.  But, for what it does for you as a hopeful indie author and publisher. . . for all that it can do, this program is to ebook formatting what Mr. Cubbon’s video is to Kindle uploading.  It makes things just that drop-dead simple, and the results are spot-on.  There are things I am still learning (it’s nearly as limitless as the game of chess), but all you need to get yourself up and running are right there on that one screenful of primary instruction.

With the guidance of video content such as Rob Cubbon, and the ease, convenience and near-perfection of tools such as Scrivener, there is, in my inexperience and my humbled opinion, no better era in which to enter into the world of self-published ebooks.

More Scrivener goodness to follow. . . .

 

Rookie Fears: Little Computer Details (pt 1)

“I’m afraid something vital to the process is going to be too complicated for me, and that one over-my-head step will derail the entire dream.”

I didn’t know what I was doing.  As of this post, I still don’t fully know.  As I said in my first post, as well as my home screen, I am admittedly new at this (hence the purpose of the site).  But I’m here to share with you the ins and outs and whys and wherefores of everything I’ve encountered on the short distance up the path I’ve already traveled. . . so here’s a little tale of fear and revelation.

I knew the story I was trying to tell.  And I may not be a Nobel Prize winner for literary fiction, but I’m arrogant enough to think that my writing isn’t all that bad, so it wasn’t the technique I was concerned about.  I was also fully aware that thousands of indie authors post their works on the Amazon Kindle Store each and every month, so it wasn’t a matter of an impossible task that had me worried, either.

To be honest, what scared me the most was the technology of it all.  You see, I’m not very gifted when it comes to things like computer code, HTML, formatting and the like.  It’s all like a foreign language to me.  And then there’s my laziness when it comes to having to learn something new, which is itself a form of fear:  I’m afraid something vital to the process is going to be too complicated for me, and that one over-my-head step will derail the entire dream.  So what would I do in that near future when I finally got ready to approach the front gates of the Big A?  How on earth does one traverse those gates?

If you’re a first-time ebook author, still in the early phases of the writing, and the preceding paragraph sounds all too familiar to you, then I want you to relax.  Take a deep breath.  If it was nearly as hard as I built it up in my mind to be, then I wouldn’t be hard at work on Blue Daunia Issue #2.  Heck, if you really want to get down to it, if this stuff was actually technically difficult, I certainly wouldn’t be maintaining a blog site all by myself!  Nope, breathe easy. . . the writing discipline and the marketing and the patience really are the hardest parts, and you are more than capable of tackling those (I believe in you. . . but more on these points in future posts).

So, what, then?  How is it done?  Assuming a writer masters his or her self-discipline and gets an ebook written and assembled, then how on earth does it become part of the Amazon Kindle Store?  Well, before I was even at that point, when I was just starting out on my first draft, these questions were plaguing my mind fairly heavily.  As I said earlier, if any one aspect of the process could creep up to cripple me, then a lifelong dream could very well be rendered pointless.  So, I did what I always do when I’m in doubt about something:  I turned to YouTube.  I sifted through a few dozen tons of videos, so that you don’t have to.  Okay, the second part of that sentence wasn’t really true at the time, but it might as well be for the purposes of this blog.

If you want to know the very best of the best of the YouTube videos on the subject. . . the clear-cut #1 that will guide you step-by-step and walk you by hand through the process, then here it is:  Rob Cubbon’s “How To Self Publish a Kindle E-book on Amazon’s KDP Select — Join the Self-Publishing Revolution.”  Nothing else I have seen before or since is as clear and concise.  Nothing else really even comes close.  I could go into detail, recounting step by step exactly what Mr. Cubbon has already displayed, but what would be the point?  If you want to know how to storm the gates of The Kindle Store, then that’s it. . . that’s click-by-click how it’s done, and although he may never see this, I’d just like to tell Mr. Cubbon “Thank you!”  So, yes. . . watch that video, and then, when you’re ready, click here.

“But wait,” you might be saying.  “That’s pretty cool that I can upload a file to Kindle far easier than I ever dreamed, but how do I get my work into a form that Amazon will play nice with?”

I’m glad you asked, because that gives me the perfect thing to talk about in Part 2 of this post.

Blue Daunia Issue #1

“Set sail with the crew of the Blue Daunia on their harrowing oceanic journeys”

Blue Daunia
Issue #1: Dark Tides of Illunstrahd

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A new ongoing monthly series begins!

Azaria
An exotic world not unlike our own, but entirely beholden to the mythology, legends, and pantheon forged by the almighty sea. With a myriad of cultures that run the gamut from backwater to highly advanced, Azaria is a world whose sole provider of technology is as secretive as it is powerful, at times competing with the oceanic pantheon itself for ideological supremacy. But there is something else beneath the shimmering surface, deep within the Hadopelagic Zone… waters so deep that all cultures unite in referring to them as “the Blue Hell”… something darkly intangible and unspoken. Could there be a third force, ancient beyond all recorded knowledge, vying for supremacy?

Daunia Bluehaven
On her ongoing quest to investigate the disappearance of the brother she barely knew, her adventures aboard her father’s final ship design would lead her crew all across the coastlands of the world of Azaria.

Set sail with the crew of the Blue Daunia on their harrowing oceanic journeys. The swashbuckling monthly serial begins here. Join Daunia and her crew as they traverse a world of towering cliffs and arctic tundras, dense tropical forests, sweeping mountainscapes, cavernous subterranean depths, marble palaces, gothic spires, dusty libraries and raucous drunken inns. In the life of a freelancer, you never know where your next job might take you, or what odds you might face to get it done.

In this inaugural issue, embark with Daunia and her crew of “freelancers” as they travel to put a recently-acquired treasure into the hands of a prospective buyer, and to spend some much-deserved time in the company of old friends. The crew soon learns, however, that the sleepy port town of Illunstrahd might hold darker intentions lurking beneath its surface, and a long-forgotten secret which could threaten the fate of all of Azaria.

Oh, That First Draft Magic! (pt 2): Don’t Fear Your Audience

“If your aim is for a handful of people you grew up with to pass around a PDF. . . if that’s your target audience. . . then, by all means, concern yourself with how they might react.”

So, you’ve developed your rhythm and habits, and you’ve finally fallen into a comfortable schedule.  You’re even partway through the pounding out of your first draft.  But then you come to it.  It’s time for a sex scene, perhaps a twisted act of violence, or some recreational drug use without consequences, maybe a tricky rape scene or the implying thereof.  But as you “clock in” and begin the session, suddenly you realize:  “wait… my mom might read this” or “this actually happened to a friend who was horribly embarrassed by it” or “what will my sister think of this?” or even “my pastor might get ahold of this.”

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Here’s the thing:  who are you writing this for?  Do you wish for your project to stay within a small, tight-knit group of people immediately around you, or do you want to put this out there for the masses?  If your aim is for a handful of people you grew up with to pass around a PDF. . . if that’s your target audience. . . then, by all means, concern yourself with how they might react.  If, on the other hand, you have bigger fish to fry, then I’m sorry, but your mother, sister, friend and pastor will just have to blush.  But please keep one thing in mind, if this is proving to be a hangup to you or if it seems to be hindering your pen in any way:  Your sister has seen Game of Thrones.  Your pastor was a RoboCop fan in his younger days.  Your friend has probably downloaded 4 to 7% of the porn he or she has searched for.  The modern world is not exactly a shelter of morality, and neither should your writing have to be.

And it doesn’t have to be a matter of drugs, sex, rape, etc.  Your hangup could be something as simple as language.  Should your characters cuss?  Well, it’s completely up to you to decide, but I urge you to take a listen to the world all around you before you make that decision.  If your characters find themselves in an environment conducive to a few choice four-letter words (a bar, a raging party, the dockyards, a drug bust), then something might seem a bit off if you attempt to scale things back for the sake of sparing your Aunt Edna’s ears.  The rest of your audience might notice that something is amiss too, as though your characters were written in a vacuum or a convent.  And, again, I would be remiss not to say that your Aunt Edna probably wasn’t always the saint you thought she was.

An important thing to remember is that your characters are not you, and your family and friends would be silly to think of them as being so.  Yes, they were born of your imagination, and yes, their words and deeds are controlled entirely by your dictation, but only to such an extent as they are avatars, symbols, representative of the demographics of an imagined society which also shapes their demeanor just as much as your own grasp does.  If you put them into a world of complete fantasy, then yes, you can mandate that said world tends toward a certain mode of behavior, as squeaky-clean as you want.  But if your characters’ surroundings are based on reality, then any effort to write contrary to that reality will come across as artificial, and can be a jarring experience to your readers, even pulling them out of the flow of the text at times.

This having been said, it should also be a matter of your target audience (your real target audience, not your neighborhood church cookout).  Are you writing a work of “young adult” fiction?  If so, maybe you do want to keep things closer to PG-13, but never lose sight of the environment your characters inhabit.  I’m not saying you should set out to get yourself banned from every school library from here to Hoboken, but, on the other hand, you don’t want to ignore the world the modern “tween” is emerging into, either.

My point is simply this:  while you are writing, put your immediate circle of social influence out of your mind. . . completely.  Write the prose you want to write, or better yet, the prose you would want to read!  This is your story, your baby.  Especially if it’s your first attempt at published writing:  do what you want to do.  I leave you, for now, with a couple of quotes from the legendary Bob Dylan.

“Everything passes, everything changes… just do what you think you should do.”

“. . . It is not he or she or it that you belong to.”

And one more quote. . . this one from Laura Dern as Diane in the current season of Twin Peaks:  “Fuck you, Gordon.”

And remember to go check out Issue #1 of the monthly oceanic adventure serial, Blue Daunia, if you haven’t already done so.  It’s only 99 cents, for Pete’s sake!

Oh, That First Draft Magic! (pt 1)

“You are, at this moment, not unlike a god to your fiction.”

Anywhere.

That’s where your text can go in its early phases.

You haven’t published it yet.  You haven’t submitted an idea to anyone or anything official.  Your work, at this one shining moment in its history, is completely un-obligated, beholden to no one but yourself.  You’ve told a couple of close friends and family members about your overall story idea and a few of your characters, but even to these rare few people, the how’s and why’s and wherefore’s of your future masterpiece are totally unknown.  The surprise twists, obscure references, and homage character names are yours for the making, or not.  You are, at this moment, not unlike a god to your fiction.

Have you put yourself on a timeline yet?  Don’t.  I urge you not to rush it.  Not yet, anyway.  If you have never published anything before, and you are plotting out your outline or pounding away on your very first first draft, you might be eager to reach that magical day when you hit the submit button on Amazon or your chosen platform.  Seeing that future thumbnail of your cover and that product link on the world wide web with your name next to it might be the ultimate vision in your mind as you lay down to sleep each night. . . but hold off on saddling yourself with a “release date” in the early going.  Allow yourself the time to get into a rhythm.  Find out, as the days go by and turn into weeks, how much free time you are finding to write, and how much time you are actually allowing yourself to write.  Once you ease into an inevitable flow and strike that work/family/friends/writing balance, you will begin to see more clearly how many words you are comfortably capable of producing per session, and how many sessions per week you can sanely manage.

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What you see in the picture here is a collection of gadgets known as the AlphaSmart Neo, which I will be dedicating an entire post to pretty soon, because it deserves it.  I mention it because it allowed me to drag a reliable method of writing with me everywhere I went while I was working on the first draft of the first issue of Blue Daunia.  I didn’t always want to take my MacBook to work, or carry it to a coffeehouse or café if I had other errands to run before or afterwards (it gets hella-hot in the summer in Montgomery, AL, and leaving a MacBook in the car while you’re grocery shopping reserves you a special place in hell).

With the AlphaSmart with me on the go, and my computer always at the ready while at home, what I discovered was that I could easily find the time to churn out about 1500 to 2000 words per day, roughly five days a week.  This level of output, I found, would allow me ample time for my day-job as well as spending time with friends and family.  However, I only found this out after feeling out my schedule and seeing what worked for me.  It will be different for you.  It will be different for each and every person who sits down to tackle a writing project.

For some, it will be a matter of quality versus quantity, whereby they find that they can do 3000 words in a day but that their quality begins to suffer after roughly 1800. . . and that’s completely fine!  There is an old adage that, during the first draft, you should just write and write and write, disregarding quality for the sake of just getting the project written (the idea being that you can always edit and polish later).  This is true, to an extent, but it is my personal belief that, after a certain point in one’s attention span has been reached (or a certain level of mental fatigue), you shouldn’t keep blazing through your outline points if you honestly stopped “feelin’ it” half an hour ago.  There is a distinct difference between “editable quality” and “I’m basically just adding adjectives and adverbs to my outline at this point.”

So, find your rhythm. . . find your pace and your comfort level, and then, although some may tell you otherwise (writing advice is, after all, a matter of opinion), by all means, set yourself a first-draft completion date!  The purpose here is two-fold.  First, after you’ve determined how much you are comfortably capable of, a concrete date staring back at you on your computer wallpaper or fridge door will keep you motivated to maintain that pace.  It instills discipline.  Once you’ve found out what you can do, sure, you could shirk it one day for a few extra hours of Netflix or a roiling comments debate on Facebook, but couldn’t you be doing that on your own time?  Is it really helping you achieve a lifelong dream right now?  Secondly, it gives you enough of a sense of purpose to let others know that you are “on the clock.”  Once your friends and family know what you are up to, and you’ve worked out your schedule enough to let them know that there will still be time for them, they will understand that your writing time is just that, your writing time.  Treat it like a job at this point, but without the stress of a jerk boss or overly-gossipy co-workers.  Treat it like the best job in the world (because it is!), but a job nonetheless, and one which has to be undertaken just like any other job out there.  Would your day-job boss allow you to watch Netflix or browse Facebook on the clock?  Believe me, once you’ve met your quota for the day, you’re going to feel proud about it and enthusiastic for your next session.  Drop the ball one day (which I have been guilty of, a couple of times) and you’ll be surprised just how bummed you can feel about it, the dread of having to play catch-up, and how pessimistic about the whole project you can become (the only cure being the next successful session).

To Be Continued. . . .

Germination of the Seeds of Thought

“Rule of thumb: never intentionally stifle your own imagination while it is attempting to soar.”

It could start with something as simple as a name.  For me, back around 2006 or 2007, it was the word “Azaria,” and the dreamlike vision of ships, tall sales flapping crisply in the breeze, sailing beneath a fiery sunset of oranges and purples, upon a sea reflecting that sunset with tinges of gold and flashes of silver.  But who did these ships belong to?  What were they doing?  “Aarrrrr,” I thought… but it was a doubt-ridden exclamation because Johnny Depp and his pirates were far too mainstream already, so it was more of an “Aarrrrr?” with a dog-like tilt of the head.  But beyond all that, what was I going to do with these ships, no matter who they belonged to?

Ironically, or perhaps not, I wasn’t dreaming of ships because I wanted to create some grand form of literary entertainment.  At that time I was actually trying to dream up my very own roleplaying game, along the lines of Dungeons & Dragons, with my own setting and my own set of rules… or, ya know, Savage Worlds rules.  I just wanted a fun, rip-roaring adventure game I could play with my wife and son on weekends and after school.

But, as previously stated, pirates were too “all the rage” at the moment, and so I sought to avoid that.  So what about Han Solo and Malcolm Reynolds?  What about just trying to make a living with your ship from job to job, but on my beloved ocean rather than out in deep space?  And what if I could take that premise and keep it confined primarily to the coastlines and oceans, never venturing too far away from the sea, and combine it all with various levels of technology and throw in some Greek mythology and D&D-style monsters every now and then and….?  Whoa, boy!  Slow down!  Or better yet, don’t!  Rule of thumb: never intentionally stifle your own imagination while it is attempting to soar.

At this point, ideas were beginning to develop and churn.  It was a frantic hodgepodge of thoughts, nearly assaulting me, popping into my mind all at one time.  In no particular order, it went something like this (and please, try to picture this as a circular jumble with no beginning or end):  “Male heroes are overly abundant… how about a girl… with blue hair!  Daunia, for no discernible reason… note to self: Google Daunia to see if it’s taken.  Maybe she has a pet miniature dragon that stays perched on her shoulder like a pirate’s parrot.  That would be cool.  Wait, is that cool or lame?  Azaria.  That’s the name of the world, and if it’s not the whole world then at least it’s a big, big ocean bordered by plenty of coastal regions.  She can’t handle a ship all by herself… she needs a crew.  How about that guy Hamish from Braveheart?  Yeah, that red-headed guy.  But I can’t call him that.  What about Red–… Redman… Redwake… Redwood!  And some other people… I can come up with them later.  So they sail around the sea and take on jobs, like Malcolm Reynolds.  Man, this could be a whole series!  Of roleplaying adventures though?  No… well, yes but no… man, I miss comic books.  But I can’t draw.  So I’ll just write it.  Because I can do that.  But I still want it to be episodic, like a comic book.  Not even a series of novels… actual issues like a comic book!”

And so the seeds of the Blue Daunia series were planted.  Rough ideas can later be sketched out in a notebook or computer text file.  I actually had a thin three-ring binder which I took to work and kept in my office while there (I was a grocery store manager at the time), and every time a name or an idea would come to me, I would jot it down and make a few notes beside it.  This was back before the time when you couldn’t sneeze without hitting a smartphone, and nowadays I recommend some sort of notepad app so that your notebook is always in your pocket.  Anyway… you will notice, if you haven’t already done so, that a name that pops into your head is usually accompanied by some sort of face or occupation or role within the story (or concept of a story).  Jot it all down, as much as you can!  And thus I began to chart out gods and goddesses, priests and priestesses, small villages and sprawling cities, ships, captains, allies, villains… and all of this without so much as a hint of a firm plot in place.  Oftentimes, a plot can stem from nothing more than a handful of characters and their motivations, coupled with some cool locations for them to do their things in.  Give that some thought, and possibly even a try.

But whatever you do, don’t shut it all down!  It might sound, from time to time, stupid to you.  You might wonder what the hell you were thinking.  Someone else you’ve ran it by might tell you it’s really not that good.  Don’t listen!  (Not yet, anyway… I’ll talk more about beta readers later).  First of all, they may be wrong.  It might be excellent and you’re just talking to the wrong person.  Secondly, even if it is a load of hogwash, it’s a start!  It’s highly malleable.  It can be pounded out and polished (that miniature parrot-dragon eventually became a crossbow with blade-edged dragon wings, for example, because Game of Thrones became a thing and I didn’t want Daunia to come across as just another heroine with a dragon).  The bottom line is this:  these are your seeds.  Nurture them.  Work on them.  Expound upon them.  You never know when they might sprout up and merge into something truly phenomenal.

Journey Into the Unknown

“To be quite honest, I am a bit nervous about the whole affair.  Not because I feel I have done anything wrong, but inasmuch as I am worried whether I really did anything right!”

On August 8th, 2017, just three days ago as of this writing, I uploaded the first issue of my new ongoing monthly oceanic adventure serial, Blue Daunia, to the Amazon Kindle store.  Here’s the scary part though:  it’s my first-ever anything in terms of published work.  To be quite honest, I am a bit nervous about the whole affair.  Not because I feel I have done anything wrong, but inasmuch as I am worried whether I really did anything right!  This website, brand-new as of today August 11th 2017, will serve two purposes.  First, it will chronicle my trials and tribulations as a brand-new indie author embarking upon a potentially life-changing journey.  Secondly, it will, in the future, serve as my website as an established author (this requiring optimism, forward thinking, hard work, luck and hope).

Oh, and, by the way. . .  here’s the link to my Amazon Author’s Page, which at this time is just a bit sparse in terms of shoppable content, but bear with me, and check back here frequently, as I seek to change that and keep you posted about the journey I’m on to get that goal  accomplished.

So, if you’re an aspiring indie author and you’re wondering what it’s like to go through this process, or if you’re well underway and just want to read some posts to see if your mind-set matches that of someone who has already been through it, then hop aboard.  I’ll be talking about everything from the steps I took to how I felt during them, to things like dialogue, action scenes, compelling characterization, self-doubt, discipline, and so very much more.  Oh, there will be personal ramblings as well. . . observations about movies and sandwiches and paperclips and whatnot, and as I get those typed up, I’ll stick everything under the tab “That BLOG Thing” and you can find a list of categories over to the right of any given post within it.