S.L. Viehl's Blog, page 153

Off to Sharpen Pencils

I am unplugging today to do the last thousand things necessary to get my kid ready for school. So that your stop here was not entirely wasted, some other places to visit:

There's an interesting article here by Alan Finder at the NY Times that lightly touches on some of the available sites and services out there for indie authors; definitely worth a read if you'd like a (very general) overview of self-publishing options.

If you are working on querying agents, you might want to read this post by literary agent Suzie Townsend, which offers some very sage -- and hilarious -- pointers, such as One sentence about your book and two pages about you is not the best way to sell me your book.

Someone (you know who you are) asked me if I'd ever found a random generator online that produces quick character outlines; thanks to RanGen, here you go.

See For Yourself

The question is not what you look at, but what you see. -- Henry David Thoreau

Yesterday while I was at the grocery store I detoured from my quest for some decent ripe apricots to take a walk down the book/card/magazine aisle. I can't help it; I can't be somewhere they sell books and not check out the shelves. Also my market always seems to carry at least one or two new releases that I missed because I didn't get to the bookstore that week, or I didn't spot them on my last trip. I've been insanely busy with family and work stuff since coming back from Savannah, so my most recent bookstore trips have been mad grab-and-dash stops.

I scanned the racks but didn't see anything new, and was just about to head back to produce when I spotted two words that promised to wreck my plans to sew that night: Rob Thurman.

Yes, it seems that while I was out of town, Rob Thurman released a new novel, All Seeing Eye. This isn't the first time this has happened, either. I swear, if I were paranoid I'd believe she deliberately plans it when she talks to her editor about scheduling: Is Viehl is going to be out of town at the end of July? Okay, I want the release that week.

Naturally All Seeing Eye came home with me and the apricots. And since I can't have a new Rob Thurman release in the house and not read it, I put away the sewing and carried a kitchen timer around with me so I wouldn't burn dinner while I dove in.

In All Seeing Eye Rob introduces us to a new protagonist, Jackson Lee, a poor kid with a hardworking mom, two adorable little sisters and the Stepfather from Hell. Jack doesn't have much, but he wants more, and better, for his family, and he's willing to work for it. Fate steps in one day to give him one-half of what he wishes for when he discovers one of his sister's shoes in the grass, and his own tactile psychic power the moment he touches it. That day changes Jackson's life forever, and while he's given an tremendous gift, almost everything else he cares about is taken from him in the most horrific fashion imaginable . . . and that's just the beginning.

Despite the timer, All Seeing Eye nearly did make me burn dinner, because (like all of Rob's books) once I started reading it I couldn't put it down. As stories go this one is particularly nightmare dark, switchblade-edged, with characters and a storyline so compelling you should expect not to be able to set it aside until you reach the stunning conclusion -- and then it will probably haunt you until I go out of town again and Rob releases a new book.

As always, you don't have to take my word for it. In comments to this post, name the last book you read that impressed the hell out of you (or if you can't think of one, just toss your name in the hat) by midnight EST on Monday, August 20, 2012. I'll choose five names at random from everyone who participates, and send the winners an unsigned copy of All Seeing Eye by Rob Thurman. This giveaway is open to everyone on the planet, even if you've won something at PBW in the past.

As You've Never CV'd

This imaginative video made me grin, as one of my very first writing jobs was composing and typing up CVs and resumes for people looking for jobs. Oddly, none of mine ever did this (and a heads-up for those of you at work, this one has some background music):

Skoda - Curriculum Vitae from weareflink on Vimeo.

Book Drop Results #2

Last month I tried a book dropping experiment to test my ability to match people with books I think they'd enjoy. This required the test subjects to tell me what sort of story they most liked to read, and then me sending them a book without telling them in advance the title or author. The first to report back was DeeCee, and you can read about the results here. My second matchmaking attempt was for SF and Fantasy author Margaret McGaffey Fisk, and she reported in yesterday on her experience.

First, Margaret's original comment from the book drop post:

Margaret M. Fisk 2:28 PM

Ooh, interesting concept :). I'm in it for the story, so it's hard to limit. I generally prefer non-modern except where urban fantasy and all shades of romance are concerned. I prefer stories with strong characters, though whether complex narratives or candy reads depends on my mood. It's easier to say what I don't like than what I do, because it's the smaller category. I'm pissed off by self-righteous or arrogant main characters who use the people around them without either noticing or caring. And I love being transported to different places or times, to see a bit of our world, or one that only exists in fiction, that I might not have experienced in real life. That's why in non-fiction I tend to prefer anthropology or historical biography over straight information.

I sent Margaret Michelle Moran's historical novel Cleopatra's Daughter because I felt it was a good match for her, basing the choice entirely on the eloquent description she gave of her reading preferences. Dropping historical fiction on someone can be tricky, in that it's generally not something I consider casual/light reading, and too often even the best historical fiction strays over to the dry/scholarly side.

Not so with Cleopatra's Daughter. Michelle Moran pairs superb research and artfully re-imagined history with a smooth storyteller's voice, and I thought Margaret would appreciate the excellent story and the chance to visit an important historic era and culture which (unfortunately) doesn't often appear on the fiction shelves.

Judging by Margaret's wonderful review of the novel, which you can read on her blog here, I'd say I made the right choice.

That's two down and one to go, and once I have the final results in from our third book drop winner I'll post them and wrap up this experiment.

Nook Friendless

Now that I have the damn thing a Nook e-reader, I thought I'd check out the lending feature and share e-books I buy with friends. Only turns out that none of my friends in the real world has a Nook, or any e-reader at all. I know my sister has an ancient Kindle, but I'm not sure it will let her borrow anything from me (disclaimer: I've yet to find any official info on if inter-device lending is even possible. I had to comb through B&N.com's Nook forums for half an hour before I found out how the LendMe thing works.)

In the process of investigating how all this lending stuff works, I came across Rick Broida's cnet article Four Matchmaking Services for e-book Borrowing and Lending that lists four online sites that evidently help match you up with another reader who wants to swap e-books and/or allow you to lend and borrow e-books for free (I've yet to personally check out the terms and conditions on any of the sites so if you do want to give them a test-drive be cautious and read up on their small print first.)

I'm also not sure how many Nook friends I really want to have. I haven't bought a lot of books for the e-reader, so my library is still pretty tiny. I'd be okay with lending books, but for my part I'm more inclined to pay for a book than borrow one (that way I own it and I can read it whenever I want.) And the whole "friend" aspect really annoys me; why do they have to use that word? That's the reason I've avoided LiveJournal and Facebook; I have a very different definition of the word friend. I think your e-reader "friends" can ask you to lend them books, too; what if I'm reading it and say no? Will they decide we're not friends anymore?

It makes my head hurt just to think about it. I also suspect one can easily go overboard with this sort of thing and become a slave to your e-reader lend-me-borrow-me whatever list. It's not something I want to do or check every day or even every week. If anything I'd like to build a small, private circle of like-minded book lovers who like to swap books a couple times a year. More like a private e-book club, minus the meetings.

I'm still learning, and I know 99% of you out there are way more knowledgeable on these things than me, so if you have a moment I'd appreciate some advice. Have any of you come up with a workable system to handle lending out your e-books? Do you have a small circle of e-reader friends, do you just lend to family, or have you tried one of these e-book matchmaker services? Also, how is the whole lending thing working out for you? Let me know in comments.

Wordsmithing

According to Margaret Wolfson's article on branding in the current issue of Poets & Writers, brand name styles can be grouped (broadly) by one of the following categories, all of which I've used myself:

Metaphoric/Allusive (Darkyn ~ a metaphor for vampire)

Coined/Divergent Spelling (Kyndred ~ divergent spelling of the word kindred to link it to Darkyn)

Descriptive (Paperback Writer ~ a blog written by a novelist)

Eponymous/Origin (Lynn Viehl ~ a brand pseudonym)

Creative Compounds (StarDoc ~ a coined compound of star + doctor)

Phrases (Tales from the Lost Ledger ~ my only phrase brand, I think, comprised of the novella's subtitle, which is also a subversive element in the story)

Alphanumeric/Acronym (PBW, a coined acronym of Paperback Writer, aka shorthand for me, which is easier to remember and spell than any of my bylines.)

There are plenty of approaches to brand naming, including hiring a professional to do it for you. As writers we are forever forging words into stories, however, and I think the best brands are those we create ourselves and that have meaning for us (and some of the most successful brands started out as a personal mark by the brand's creator.)

Why are writers so suited to successful brand-making? We are wordsmiths who already forge immense things every day using only words. Writers dream in words, and use them to construct new people, places and even entire universes. We are exactly like the classic variety of smith, too, except that the page is our anvil, words are our metals, imagination our furnace and writing skills the tools we use to hammer out, hone and perfect our stories.

Smithing words into brands is also one of the most important exercises you can do as a writer, not only to group and define your work under a recognizable symbol, but to make your mark on the Publishing world as well. Stop and think about the word brand for a moment. One definition of it is as a permanent mark to record and display ownership. When you mark something with your brand, it should say to the world "This is mine."

Writer brands range from individual character names (Harry Potter ~ J.K. Rowling), setting names (Mitford ~ Jan Karon), novel titles (Twilight ~ Stephenie Meyer) to group names such as name-linked novel titles (One for the Money, Two for the Dough, Three to Get Deadly, etc. ~ Janet Evanovich) or series brands (StarDoc ~ Yours Truly). The writer's own name can become a brand as well (Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe) but unless they inspire a great many people during their lifetime (like Dr. Maya Angelou) that's usually a posthumous brand.

For me coining the words and using divergent spellings for my own brands has worked best, and inspiration can come from anywhere. StarDoc was born during a shower, when I was thinking about a newspaper article about a marine biologist. They ran a photo of the guy standing beside his Jeep, which sported the vanity license plate. I kept thinking how perfectly apt and utterly cool that plate was (SEA DOC), and then made the leap to my own brand (and don't ask me how, to this day I don't know what really prompted it) by mentally swapping out SEA with STAR. So there's one technique that might help you come up with your own brand; invent an imaginary vanity license plate for the work you want to mark.

Wordle, my favorite online word toy, can be extremely helpful with brandsmithing, too. On the create page, feed Wordle lists of keywords, synonyms and other descriptors, and let it form a word cloud for you like this one, which is compromised of a few title ideas plus synonym lists for the words fire, light and burn (and here's something I've recently discovered about editing your Wordle creations: if you want to remove any word from the cloud, right click on it and a little remove-word window will pop up; left click on the window and Wordle will regenerate the cloud again in the same format and layout minus the word you don't want.)

One more thought -- wordsmithing a brand takes time and often a lot of thought and work, so don't expect to come up with a brilliant concept overnight. Be diligent, keep tinkering at it but also remain open to any source of inspiration, and you'll have the best chance of creating the brand that leaves your mark on the industry.

Outlining Ten

Ten Things About Outlining Your Fiction

I haven't yet tested Using MS Word to Auto-Outline and Keep Track of Revelations by Martina Boone, but it sounds like it should work.

Keith Cronin abstains from Roman numerals in his hybrid pantser-plotter approach to outlining, The Big O .

Glen Ford's Book Proposals ~ Writing an Outline for a Nonfiction Book from the Book Itself and How to Reverse-Outline Your First Draft by Mark Nichol both tell you how to write up an outline after you've written the book.

If you want to know how Janet Evanovich outlines (aka the easy way), take a look at her storyboard method and how she plotted one of her novels here.

Janice Hardy discusses putting together your own outlining method in Are You In or Out? Crafting Outlines That Work for You .

The Outlining Dilemma - Plotting vs. Pantsing by Beth Hill discusses the pros and cons with both approaches, and has some useful tips on outlining that work for both.

Sarah A. Hoyt's Hunting the Wild Subplot is more about the process of refining an outline than subplots per se, but still worth the read.

Alicia Tasley's classic article Outline Your Novel in Thirty Minutes asks all the right questions; you provide the answers.

DIY MFA's Untraditional Outline Techniques article includes a link to a one-page worksheet to help with outlining the primary elements of your story.

Juliette Wade's Sequence Outlining offers an event-driven method of outlining.

All of the above links were found via the fabulous writing-specific search engine at Writer's Knowledge Base. And if you'd like to see what I've written on outlining here at PBW, click here.

Water + Light = Art

Did you know anyone can make art (or write a message) using only water and light? It's possible now, thanks to Antonin Fourneau and some very innovative use of LED technology:

Water Light Graffiti by Antonin Fourneau, created in the Digitalarti Artlab from Digitalarti on Vimeo.

By Any Other Author

According to the Times, Raymond Chandler's Phillip Marlowe, one of the most beloved PI protagonists in the mystery genre, has been appropriated yet again, this time by lit author John Banville. Banville, who has been authorized by Chandler's estate, is writing a Marlowe novel under his mystery pseudonym Benjamin Black, to be published in 2013.

In 1937 Chandler, an American raised in England who early on had literary ambitions, wrote this:

The best writing in English today is done by Americans, but not in any purist tradition. They have roughed the language around as Shakespeare did and done it the violence of melodrama and the press box. They have knocked over tombs and sneered at the dead. Which is as it should be. There are too many dead men and there is too much talk about them.

So how would Chandler feel about a Booker-prize winning Irishman appropriating his much-beloved detective? Well, we can't ask him. He died in 1959. But he did leave behind this quotation:

There is something about the literary life that repels me, all this desperate building of castles on cobwebs, the long-drawn acrimonious struggle to make something important which we all know will be gone forever in a few years, the miasma of failure which is to me almost as offensive as the cheap gaudiness of popular success.

Whatever Chandler's personal wishes were, after the end the deciding authority are always the author's heirs. More often than not money decides the issues for them; if there is some to be made, why would they walk away from it to protect the integrity of the work? Besides, however horrible the choices made are, the author can't do anything about it.

Fortunately most of us who publish will likely never have to worry about this; our books will probably not survive us for very long. At best the heirs of most traditionally-published writers can expect five to ten years of royalties before the next generation of writers takes our place. For the majority of us our titles will go out of print and in time will be completely forgotten.

But what if they aren't? What if right now you're writing the next Phillip Marlowe, and fifty years after your death some random writer decides s/he can pick up where you left off? How do you protect the work from inappropriate appropriation after your death?

Your first and best option is to consult an attorney who handles this sort of business, and learn what you can do legally to protect your work from predatory parties. Obviously this is the most expensive option, but if your work means that much to you then you won't mind spending the money.

You may also choose during your lifetime to write an irrevocable end to the works you don't want continued after your death. Killing off the characters is the most final version of this solution, but that still leaves room for prequels (and sorry, but you're just going to have to deal with that possibility.) There are other ways to handle it without exterminating your casts; one of the reasons I wrote Dream Called Time the way I did was to protect the StarDoc universe as best I could from future appropriation.

You can also have a long talk with your heirs, and make it clear what you want done with the work after your death. If you choose to do this, be reasonable, and be clear. You might even consider accepting that your work may be continued on by another, and put together for your heirs a list of writers (or the sort of writers) you'd like to see carry on the storytelling, should it ever come up for future appropriation. This allows your heirs the chance to profit from the work after your death -- which, let's face, is going to be their primary concern however much they love you -- while still respecting your wishes.

(Link to the Times article found over at J. Michael Poole's place.)

82 Days

I'm running a bit behind on checking my annual calendar reminders, but the one I did want to mention this week is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. Each year thousands of writers around the globe spend the month of November writing a 50,000 word novel in thirty days.

I've unofficially joined in a few times, but as I have a book due in October, a new release coming out in early December, and (possibly) a WFH job to add to the work schedule, I don't think I'll be NaNo'ing this year. As before I'll do what I can to support, nag, and cheer on the participants.

I'm hoping to do something completely new this year for NaNoWriMo as well; I'll have more on that once I iron out the details. I'll also have some spectacular NaNoWriMo-related news to share in the very near future, but since I don't want to jinx it before it's all settled I'm also going to keep that under my hat until it is. Don't worry, it'll be worth the wait.

Are any of you planning to write a novel in November? How are you getting ready for this marvelous marathon? Let us know in comments.