9/30/2011 Fantastic Friday!

Hello all and happy Friday! I hope you all had a good week. Mine may not have been as productive as I would have preferred, but that happens sometimes. I just keep thinking about how I'm going to make up for it in November and I don't feel so bad. Anyway, like I said yesterday today I was going to post up links and so forth for books I've already featured, as a reminder of some of the great stories that are out there. So let's get right to it!

First up: "Uncrossed Paths" and "The Light Rises" by myself. They are set in a world where steam, magic, and the unknown are frequent. "Uncrossed Paths" tells the stories of the main characters from "The Light Rises" before they even knew one another existed. "Uncrossed Paths" is free and was recently accepted into the Smashwords premium catalog, so it will be available through Barnes & Noble, the Apple iBookstore, Diesel, Scrollmotion and Sony soon. "The Light Rises" is $3.99 and currently available at all those outlets as well as the Smashwords main site.

Next we have "Strange Fruit: Prologue" and "Strange Fruit: Episode One, Feather", by Raegan Millhollin. These stories are set in a modern world where magic is everywhere and forces of the divine have a place in almost everyone's lives. "Strange Fruit: Prologue" introduces the characters and opens up the world to the reader, while "Strange Fruit: Episode One, Feather" begins with the story of Azriel and Ephriam and how not all meetings happen by chance. "Strange Fruit: Prologue" is free and available via the Smashwords main site as well as Apple iBookstore, Diesel, Barnes & Noble, Scrollmotion and Sony. "Strange Fruit: Episode One, Feather" is $.99 and is also available through those locations.

"Smite Me, Oh Dark One", by Steve Thomas is a delightful short story that tells the story of a God who hates his job, and those he works with, so he decides that rather than destroying the people they had all created like they want him to, he would become a dark lord to spite them. It is free, available through Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Apple, Diesel, Scrollmotion, and also Amazon.







"Smoke: A Ghost Story", but Aaron Polson is about a young man who was raised in a strange town full of ghost stories and other paranormal happenings. When he finds himself crushing on an art student, he finds that the strange things were even bigger than he first thought, and that he may be more involved than he would have hoped. It is $.99 and available through Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Apple iBookstore, Diesel, Scrollmotion, and Sony.






Thank you all so much for stopping by this Friday. I hope you find all the books that have been posted so far enjoyable. As self-published authors one of the best ways to help is to spread the word. Let your friends and family know how much you liked these books and where to find them. That's the best way you could possibly help all of the authors who are just trying to get their voices out there. Thanks again and I'll see you all on Monday!

9/29/2011 Terrific Thursday

Thanks again and I'm sorry for not posting last night. I got home from visiting with a friend and had a super bad migraine, and while I did take my medicine, I'm sure you would have all rather preferred a post you could all follow, and not the strange ramblings of a crazy person.

Anyway, let's get down to business, and now that I have a Disney song stuck in my head, I'll try to get through this posting. Something I wanted to talk about today was character development. This is something that is near and dear to my heart, and is something that can make or break a story. One thing that drives me absolutely crazy, and this is true or books, movies, anime, television shows, is when I could care less about the main character(s). For example, when I watched Full Metal Alchemist the first time around (not Brotherhood, that is magical) I could have cared less about what was happening to the Elric brothers by the end of it. I found the characters in the military far more interesting. This bothered me.

Now something that I believe being a table-top gamer has given me the advantage of is being able to actually make a character, and I don't just mean rolling dice followed by a round of screaming at them for obviously plotting against me. I mean being able to look at my options and putting together a person that has a life, people in their background/present/future, goals, skills, ambitions, and so forth. So one of the things I do when I go to start a story is I figure out my main character, give them a name, then actually put together who they are. Where/when they were born, the circumstances of their birth, how/where/when they grew up, and what influenced them into becoming the person they are in the story.

It's also important to remember the main character doesn't have to be the single most amazing person on the face of the entire planet. For my story, "Daughter of the Shackled King" I'm making it a point to show that the main character was just a normal person who just happened to be thrown into everything that's going on. Sure she gets super awesome powers, but that doesn't mean she's the most powerful, or the most skilled, or anything like that. What is important is to make your characters believable. Give them faults, make them fallible, make it so they learn from what's going on around them, not just instantly know how to solve every problem ever, that makes them boring.

Something that I find incredibly fun is working out what happens behind the scenes, or working out exactly how all the characters are connected to one another, and how the relationships will grow and/or change throughout the course of the story. Once you figure that out, visualize laying your plot over it and working out exactly how everything fits together. That way you'll know exactly at which point in the story the main character's view of someone else changes and they can finally start working together to stop the big-bad. Speaking of villains, those are super fun too. Treat them as another character (because they are) and develop them just as much as the good guys, make them into a person to. The villain should be as well thought out as the hero, they should be able to compliment one another so that their confrontations are entertaining and feel right.

I hope this was helpful for everyone. As for tomorrow, I'm not sure if I'll have a new book up since I had a profound lack of time this week. What I may do is re-post links to everything that's been put up already and where to find them (in case things have changed, i.e. more locations available and so forth). Hope that'll only happen this week. Thanks again! I'll post that up tomorrow!

9/26/2011 Magnificent Monday!

Hello! Second verse same as the first; thanks for your patience while I keep having to post late. This post is actually a bit earlier than I had been anticipating, but let's not dwell on how I should have known the plans I had for today weren't going to pan out weeks ago when I had to cancel my vacation for my current (wonderful!) training class. Let's focus on what makes today awesome!

This! This is a link to the blog "Pinky's Pub" who has a premise similar to mine. A friend of mine, Raegan Millhollin (who's name you likely recognize) asked her to post my books today as a birthday present. It even has a little 'happy birthday' midi sound file. She said such nice things about my stories, and even posted links, how-to's, and a special coupon offer for "The Light Rises" with it. Raegan did a really good job at keeping the big reveal a secret from me, and I do enjoy surprises, and this was a super nice one! Thanks again my dear!

As for my own writing progress, I wish there was more to report in that area. This training class is seriously wiping me out. I come home and fully intend to write something, and then well, that ends up not happening because I'm super tired. I know I need to get back on my game though, with September almost over, I need to make a lot of headway in October to I can properly prepare for National Novel Writing Month (NANOWRIMO). I'm already preparing the blog for that month, I'm super excited!

I had honestly planned on writing more this weekend, but between my Saturday gaming session, my cat apparently having a vendetta against my keyboard, and walking around the Puyallup Fair for 6 hours, that just didn't happen. Maybe tonight I'll do...something, if I'm lucky it'll even be that prequel too!

Thanks again for stopping by on my birthday, it means a super lot. Thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday via twitter, facebook, text, blog and the like, and for all the nice presents you gave me. It really meant a lot. I'll see everyone on Wednesday!

9/23/2011 Fantastic Friday!

Hello and thank you again for your patience. I very much appreciate it. I'm terribly sorry I wasn't able to get the book post up sooner, hopefully everything will be alright. Now then! Onto the story!
One thing I kind of hinted at on Wednesday was that advertising for yourself is alright, and so to prove that point, I give you all SHAMELESS SELF ADVERTISING!

As I mentioned on Monday, I finished my short story collection called "Uncrossed Paths" and it tells the story about the lives of the characters in "The Light Rises" several years before they even met (and their actual meeting will be in the prequel I'm currently working on.) All of the stories are chronological, starting with the "Unexpected Apprentice", "His Beautiful French Flower", "Lighting the Lantern" and lastly, "Personal Investment". The stories detail significant events in the characters lives that eventually made them who they became.

I had a lot of fun writing this for a few reasons, the first being as I've said before I'm a total sucker for back story, and also the challenge of writing something short. It was also nice to work on something while getting some of the idea-kinks out of my head for the prequel.

"Uncrossed Paths" is available on Smashwords and is awaiting approval into the Premium Catalog, at which point it will be distributed to Barnes & Noble, Apple, Sony, Kobo, Scrollmotion, and Diesel. I should also mention it's free, so check it out and if you like it enough, also check out "The Light Rises" which currently is available at those other locations I mentioned.

Thanks again for stopping by, and also putting up with me throwing my own book at you. Stop by Monday to see what current projects I have going on. I'll warn that post may be a bit later since if things go according to play I'll be seeing a movie for my birthday. Until then, feel free to comment, post, and/or contact me, and if you'd like your own book featured on Friday, feel free to let me know! Have a good weekend!

9/21/2011 Writing Wednesday

Hello and thanks again for your patience. I know it's late and I'm sorry, aside from still being 8-5, I also had a schedule conflict and brought me home later than normal. So then, let's get right to business shall we?

Today I'm going to attempt to give marketing advice. Please keep in mind that I am still learning this myself. It's something that is incredibly hard, stressful, time consuming, and can feel a bit silly at times. The reason for that is because you are literally putting yourself out there for everyone to see, they're going to watch you hold your work out on a silver-plated (let's be realistic here, if you're doing you're own marketing, chances are you aren't a millionaire) platter. Today there are a lot more options than there were even say 5 years ago, which does make it a bit easier, but only in the sense of access, it's still something the rather self conscious (i.e. me) are going to have to push through.

First let's talk about the easy parts: social networking. Chances are you're already a part of it, whether you have a Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or so forth, you've already seen the effects of social networking and the incredible amount of power it has. I had both a Twitter and Facebook account before I was published, so simply posting links saying "LOOK AT THIS!", the only issue that I had (and...still kind of have) is that it's mostly family and friends that follow me. Not like that isn't fantastic (I love you guys!) but the part that makes marketing...well...marketing is reaching people you don't even know. Now, Smashwords does help with this a bit because they give you links to places like Stumbled Upon, Linkedin, Digg, Google's...thing, and other such places right there on the book's page. The part that makes social networking work so well is that is runs on word of mouth, especially Twitter, someone likes something, so they retweet to their followers, and their followers do the same, and so-forth, it's like magic.

Now for the harder part: the real world. This is hard because it's more face-to-face interaction, and this can be really scary at times because people will ask you to explain your book to them, and when you explain it's going to sound absolutely crazy/stupid to you. This is normal, at least in my experience. Admittedly I've gotten better, but it still feels incredibly awkward, especially when I have to explain to someone what Steampunk is when they have absolutely no idea in the first place. The other part that I find awkward, and this may just be me, is when people ask me about my process. They ask me questions like "How do you go from writing on your break, to going back to work, then picking up right where you left off on your next break?" and I realized today I have no idea how to answer that question other than, "I don't know. I open the notebook, remember where I was at then get to it?" It's just weird.

Anyway, back to marketing in the real world, the point is to try and sell your book without coming off as needy, crazy, or arrogant. This is really hard, because you are going to run into people who just simply don't care. It's nothing personal, they just aren't interested, these people can be co-workers, friends, even family, that's fine. I asked people at my work if they had an e-reader, expecting to get a lot of positive responses, and I think I've found one or two people. These are people who ALL have smartphones. One of the things I plan on trying out is a business card, it's not advertising the book itself, but more this particular blog, that has as many links to my book as I can fit onto it without looking too desperate. My plan with them is to say, leave them when I pay for food somewhere, just with my tip, or on the wall at a Panera or library, just random places. That way people I don't know can see it, stop by and hopefully get to where the book is located.

The point about marketing is to not give up. It's hard, and sometimes feels incredibly strange or not normal, but it does help. Something else that works is to put links to your other works in new ones so that people can just click over to one of the other things right after their done. It's so convenient.

Again, I thank you all for your patience with my late posts lately. I very much appreciate it. Please stop by Friday where I'll have links for another book up. I'm sure you can all guess what it's going to be! (Marketing tip, shameless self-advertising is ok too.) Have a good next couple days!

9/19/2011 Magnificent Monday!

Hello everyone! I hope you all had a fun weekend, I know I did. I also hope everyone got a chance to check out Friday's book posting. The story is really fun and I hope people like it.

For today, I have exciting news! I met my deadline, which means my short story "Uncrossed Paths" is available on Smashwords! I'm still waiting for the approval regarding the premium catalog, and rest assured that once that happens I'll be posting links as soon as I get them.

Writing a short story was a lot of fun, and a delightful challenge for me. Normally when I work on projects they end up being full-length and rather long (see "The Light Rises" for an example). Things that are short and I just never seemed to get along. I got the idea to try out a short story that kind of introduces the characters from "The Light Rises" from a friend, and decided to try it out. Now I am an absolute sucker for back story, so I was all over this project. The biggest challenge I had was making sure it remained short, since all of the characters had at least two decades of life before meeting up, part of me wanted to include everything, but I managed to not let that happen. Some things are best left to be surprises later! (hint hint)

I really recommend trying to write something that challenges yourself, it helps expand what you're able to do, and gets you used to working with the vast options you have available. If you normally write short stories, try to go full-length. Always write fantasy? Go after maybe romance or horror. Something that you just aren't used to, you may find you actually had a lot of fun. For me, aside from short stories, it's action sequences. I'm always afraid they don't make any sense, but luckily playing table-top games has taught me the idea of initiative; it helps give some kind of order to the scene. For instance; Your main character brings his sword up to the arch-villain in a large swipe, the villain seeing an opening, brings his blade low, while the hero's companions try to react to try and defend him. Think of it as taking turns + common sense. If someone brought their weapon/arm/chair up to block the villain/giant bear/gang member's attack, they're likely leaving themselves open somewhere else, and it's possible the opponent may try to exploit that.

Also, soundtracks. I love having background music, especially something instrumental you can use to really help set the mood for yourself. For my big climatic fight scene in "The Light Rises" I probably listened to the version of This is Gallifrey/Vale Decem from the 2010 Doctor Who Proms about a dozen times, followed by their version of Amy's Theme for right after. Having a soundtrack also makes writing those scenes a lot more fun too, at least in my opinion.

That's it for today! Come back on Wednesday where I'll talk about another one of the subjects from a couple weeks ago. As always, feel free to comment/post/contact and such!

9/16/2011 Fantastic Friday

Surprise! I decided to try and get the post up early today, even though I'm stil on that training shift, and here you go! I especially wanted to do it today, since it's the day I put up someone's book, I didn't want to make everyone wait until closer to the end of the day. So here we go!

Today's feature is called "Smoke: A Ghost Story" by Aaron Polson, it's a young adult, supernatural thriller about a 17 year old named Tucker Ellison. The town he lives in isn't really considered 'normal' by any means, but he has learned to handle that. What he hasn't figured out is how to deal with the fact he's falling for an art student named Ellen, a girl who seems to be incredibly close to all the crazy in the town, and leads him to something much bigger.

Now, when it comes to YA, I'm usually a bit hesitant, since there is a lot that follows the 'fish out of water, boy meets girl, blah blah blah' sort of thing. I really like this because of just how important all the supernatural elements are. Not to mention the main character seems at least used to what's going on around him, he's just getting more involved. My thinking is, sure a lot of YA may follow similar tropes, but if it's entertaining, intelligent, and overall a good story, I seriously enjoy it.

I really like this story, I've looked through the sample that's available via smashwords.com enjoy everything I've seen so far. It's a short story that's available for purchase for .99 from smashwords, I'm not sure if it's in the premium catalog yet, I checked B&N and couldn't find it, but it is likely just a matter of time before it's there. This is a very entertaining read, so please go check it out!

Thanks again, and sorry for the quick post. I'll be back Monday and hopefully I'll be able to talk about me meeting my deadline! Have a good weekend!