C. Litka's Blog, page 43

My Library -- The Sea Books (Part 2)

 

Back again to the shelves of my little library, and to my small nautical book collection. This time, featuring my tramp steamer books.

Tea clippers and tramp steamers have played their roles in my stories. My early, 1970’s unpublished novella featured starships with a story setting that paralleled tea clippers and their annual race from China to the London docks. Plus, those noses of many of my unfinished stories until I set out to write what became The Bright Black Sea, also featured sailing ships in space – though the sails were energy fields, not actual sails.

With The Bright Black Sea I challenged myself to write an old fashioned, Tom Corbett Space Cadet rocket ship story. And for it, I made it into a tramp steamer in space story. Not having served on a tramp steamer, or ever gone to sea, I relied on the books – my preferred method of travel. The books that I drew on for my stories are shown below.

First off are the three Glencannon Omnibus books (I have several duplicates) that contain all the short stories of the chief engineer of the tramp steamer SS Inchcliffe Castle by Guy Gilpatric. Gilpatric wrote these stories from 1929 thru 1941 for the Saturday Evening Post, and then collected them into books, which were later collected into the omnibus versions I have. There was even a TV series made from these books in 1959, which I haven’t been able to track down. The Glencannon stories are humorous short stories which served as a model for the serial that I had originally planned to release my Lost Star stories as. However, since I can not write a short story to save my soul, mine were novellas rather than short stories. And I didn’t even try to write humorous stories. However, a Glencannon like figure does appear in my story as the Lost Star’s former chief engineer, Glen Colin.

Going even further back in my reading history we find the Howard Pease YA books that feature Tod Morgan. I distinctly recall (for some odd reason) seeing these books on the shelf of the Greendale Public Library, back when I was looking for the Heinlein juvenile SF books, and others. I didn’t read them then, but picked them up years later, when I found them at rummage sales. I can’t say much about them – basically they are sea adventure books, featuring Tod Morgan climb up through the merchant officer ranks as the series progressed.

The third major influence on my writing is the works of C J Cutcliffe Hyne, and his flagship character, Captain Kettle. These were very popular back in the first decades of the 20th century, but are definitely not politically correct in this day of age. Captain Kettle is a rough and tumble seaman, who has nothing good to say about any race or nationality other than the English, and he uses all the derogatory words and typically derogatory stereotypes, be one black, Italian, German, Slavic… you name it. If there’s a derogatory term, he uses it. So you’ve been warned. However, if you can see this in the context of the time, and the character, he writes fast moving, entertaining adventure stories and sea stories with a lot authenticity and humor. Over the years I tracked down many, but not all of his Captain Kettle books, as well as his other characters, such as McTodd, his Scottish engineer, and Mr Horrocks, his purser character. Hyne was a Cambridge graduate and a world traveler who brought his travel experience to the stories he wrote. He wrote these stories for the English magazine Pearson’s. He also wrote detective stories under the name Weatherby Chesney, and is known in science fiction circles as the author of The Lost Continent: The Story of Atlantis.

In addition to these fiction books, I collected a number of non-fiction books describing the life of a tramp steamer and shipping in general, like The Deep Sea Tramp by Captain A G Course, ca 1960 and more recently, Steaming to Bamboola, by Christopher Buckley, 1982… Wait, that isn’t all that recent is it? Time flies. I also have a small collection of larger format books on ships and shipping, pictured below.

Thankfully, I’ve lived a quiet, uneventful life, living my adventures inside the pages of books. As a result, the adventure stories I write owe a lot to the books I’ve read in my quiet, uneventful life. The Bright Black Sea owes much to these tramp steamer stories and books.

Well, I have several more shelves of nautical books to talk about, but will save those for a later blog.

Other Approaches to Writing

 

source: https://www.seanpcarlin.com/the-write...

A few posts ago I began to discuss how I and other writers construct stories. However I got sidetracked and never got around to the “other writers'” approach to storytelling. Here’s that second part of the discussion.

Many writers take a systematic approach to writing stories, not only outlining their story before they begin to write it, but think of the story as a word-structure to build. And they use a blueprint to construct their stories. So let’s look at a few of those blueprints.

The first one is the classic “Hero’s Journey” as described by Joseph Campbell.

In the illustration above, we see a graphic representation of the story structure. In its most simplest form, the hero is called to some sort of adventure. This leads the hero into unexplored territory, where they encounter many tribulations, until they reach a point where it’s either do or die, and in doing, become better people, returning home transformed. The basic idea, which will be repeated in the following blueprints is that the hero leaves their old lives, faces a test of fire, and comes out better for it. (Or not, if one wishes to make a tragedy.)

The next most common blueprint is the three act structure, as pictured below.

source: https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Three-A...

The three-act structure dates back to the Greeks and is widely used in plays and screenplays as well as books

The Setup is the opening act. The main character and setting are introduced. This act includes the inciting incident that gets the hero to act on something that leads to the second act.

The second act, the Confrontation, involves a series of increasingly complex challenges that lead to the final, high stakes reckoning that drives the story it its third act, the Resolution, along with the events that follow from the climax, the falling action and denouement, as shown in the graphic above.

James Scott Bell describes this structure as beginning with a disturbance that upends the protagonist’s ordinary life. The protagonist then goes through the one-way doorway one, to the middle of the story with no way back. Ahead is doorway two, which leads to the final resolution of the disturbance, again, with no way back.

https://www.critiquecircle.com/blog.a...

And then there is the Seven Points structure. It begins with a Hook or Inciting Incident, the story’s starting point. Then Plot Turn 1 or Plot Point 1 , which introduces the conflict that moves the story. This is followed by Pinch Point 1, when the protagonist faces increasing resistance to achieving his or her goals. At the Midpoint, the protagonist responds to this resistance with action. However, then comes Pinch Point 2, where the protagonist faces increased resistance. This leads to Plot Turn 2 or Plot Point 2, which is like the break from act two to act three – the protagonist acts to achieve his or her goals at the climax, which leads to the Resolution– the conflict resolved, the characters changed as a result of their experiences.

There are several more approaches to story telling. The blueprints can get a lot more detailed. One of the most famous one is by Lester Dent, who wrote most of the Doc Savage stories. He had a master plot planned out for a 6,000 word story divided into four 1,500 word sections in which he details what the writer should consider and happen in each section. The complete outline can be found here: https://www.paper-dragon.com/1939/dent.html

A somewhat expanded version of this, originally conceived for screen plays is Blake Snyder’s “Save the Cat!” beat sheet, but is used by novelist as well. It outlines a three act structure down to word count.

In this structure, the first act, represents 25% of the total word count, the second act, 50%, and the third, 25% of the total word count. You then divide these acts into scenes that run between 1,000 and 2,000 words each.

After that, he breaks the story down into 15 story beats, and goes into detail about the relative number of scenes each of these story beats should contain. Act one includes the Opening Image and Theme Stated, Catalyst and Debate and the Break into (Act) Two, where the protagonist decides to accept the call to adventure. Act two starts with the introduction of new characters, the B Story, and then Fun and Games, where the protagonist finds themselves in the new world, either loving it or hating it. At the Midpoint, the protagonist experiences either a false victory or defeat – a game changing plot twist, and the ante is upped significantly. This is followed at the midpoint of the story by the Bad Guys Close In, things get hotter. At about the ¾ mark of the story we get to All is Lost, which in one scene the protagonist is at their lowest point. This is followed by Dark Night of the Soul, where the protagonist reviews what has happened, and learns from it. The Break into (Act) Three is the single scene where the protagonist realizes what he or she must do to save the situation, and change as well. Act three is the Finale, where the protagonist acts on the plan he or she has come up with, Gathers the Team, Executes the Plan, only to face a new twist in the High Tower Surprise that presents an unexpected challenge, and Digs Deep Down to overcome it by Execution of New Plan that either succeeds or fails, depending on what outcome you want. This is followed by a Final Image, the “And they lived…. Or not” scene.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with  any of these approaches. I don't use them, in part because I'm not very detail orientated. I simply don't think stories as needing to be "constructed." Apparently, I didn’t inherit my engineer father’s mindset. Instead, I live with the story in my head, and when I know the story, as if I had lived it, I sit down and tell it. That, at least, is the ideal. The reality is I often start a story these days before I’ve completely daydreamed the story up, and then have to pause my writing until I’ve dreamed up the rest of the story.

Mystery Solved

 

It is very satisfying to find an answer to what I had supposed was a forever mystery. But, thanks to a nice email from a reader – which I very much appreciated – I can offer an explanation for my hitherto unexplained jump in my March 2021 sales.

It wasn’t the mysterious working of the gods of Amazon that caused the jump after all. It was a blog post by Nathan Lowell, which can be found here:https://nathanlowell.com/forward-march/

Nathan Lowell is a full time, self-published author of over 20 novels, plus short stories and a novella including the popular Golden Age of the Solar Clipper series -- the Trader's Tales, Smuggler's Tales, and Seeker's Tales, as well as several other series and books. If you’ve ever browsed Amazon’s science fiction collection, you'll at least seen his books, and more than likely have bought and enjoyed them as well. His Amazon author page can be found here: https://www.amazon.com/Nathan-Lowell/e/B003D54RY4/ref=dp_byline_cont_pop_ebooks_1

I really appreciate his mention and kind words about The Bright Black Sea. I must say that is is very cool that an established pro enjoyed my book. And I’m glad that one of my readers took the time to tell me about this blog post, so that I could thank him for it -- and clear up a mystery. It made my day.

The Gods of Amazon...

...Are fickle beings. They’re as unpredictable as they are mysterious. While I'll be reporting my sales for my sixth year in self publishing next month, I thought I might share my results for March 2021. It was a weird month.

My base line is that I write the story, paint the cover, format the paperback book. And after my wife and my generous beta readers proofread the story, I publish it via Smashwords, Google Play, and Amazon. It then sinks or swims on its merits and word of mouth.

Each month I move between 300 and 1,000 copies. The highest numbers are for the month of and just after the release of a new book. The numbers then fall into the 500 to 300 copies per month range. Of all those copies, I actually sell at retail price between 5 to 10 copies on Amazon around the world, with maybe 20 during the month of a new release. I made $70 in royalties in 2020.

March 2021, as I mentioned, has proven to be a very strange month. First off, I moved 1,041 books, which puts it as my second highest sales month in my six years of self-publishing. The Secrets of Valsummer House was released on the 18th, which explains some of those sales. I moved 195 copies on the Google Play store, a venue that I’ve only been using for the last two years or so, and has proven to rival Smashwords (including Apple , though B & N and Kobo don’t report free sales to Smashwords, so I don’t know the full total of my sales via Smashwords.) But there’s more to this strange month than a new release and increased sales on Google.

Every once in a while The Bright Black Sea will rise into the Top 100 Free Space Opera Best Seller List. For no discernible reason. I can only guess that somewhere on Amazon they 're promoting it in some way. In any event, it rose to at least #29 on that chart this month, and I moved 223 free copies, plus, and this is strange, 21 paid copies mostly from British and Australian sales.

What is even more weird is that this month I sold at $.99 a total of 112 copies of my various books, including 35 copies of The Lost Star's Sea (when it wasn’t free) and 41 copies of The Secrets of Valsummer House. I think I earned $49.50 in royalties this month. In all of 2020 I made around $70. I can’t explain this jump in sales. I don’t expect it to last. I believe it to be a result of some sort of quantum fluctuation of Amazon’s algorithms. Still, it makes life interesting.

I’ll have my full six-year report in self-publishing next month. It looks to be a typical year again, with sales somewhat north of 6,000 copies, which is pretty much what it is every year. The only difference is that it now takes 10 books to deliver that level of sales, compared to three when I began in 2015. But more of that next month.

..

Essays for Writers

 

Just a note to mention that I have written two essays for the blog site Writers Supporting Writers. The first  essay is about mixing and matching the conventions of the various versions of English in one's writing. It can be found here Using the World of Englishes
The second essay asks this question of writers; could you recognize your characters if you ran into them on the street? In short, how clear of a picture do you have of the characters you create, or for that matter, you read, as well as my approach to characters. It can be found here: Would You Recognize your Characters

Just a note to mention that I have written two essays fo...

 

Just a note to mention that I have written two essays for the blog site Writers Supporting Writers. The first  essay is about mixing and matching the conventions of the various versions of English in one's writing. It can be found here Using the World of Englishes
The second essay asks this question of writers; could you recognize your characters if you ran into them on the street? In short, how clear of a picture do you have of the characters you create, or for that matter, you read, as well as my approach to characters. It can be found here: Would You Recognize your Characters

The Secrets of Valsummer House

My latest novel, The Secrets of Valsummer House is now available on Smashwords (for free) and Amazon (for $.99, their minimum price). It will be coming to Google, Apple, Kobo and B & N in the coming days. Lt Di Ai and d'Mere return in this Nine Star Nebula Mystery Adventure that is the direct sequel to The Secret of the Tzarista Moon. 
This is my mystery story. I'm not a mystery story fan these days, in large part because I grew weary of every mystery involving a murder, or two, or three. Now it may be exactly what mystery fans expect, and perhaps demand in their mysteries. But I think it's just laziness on the part of mystery writers. I would think that you could come up with a compelling mystery without it involving a murder. And, well, I set out to prove that theory in my mystery, The Secrets of Valsummer House. Did I succeed or not? That's up to you, dear readers. Let me know. 
And, if all goes well, there's one more mystery story coming this summer with Vaun Di Ai and Rafe d'Mere. I'm going to try to give it some Gothic vibes. Werewolves, vampires... we'll see...
 

My latest novel, The Secrets of Valsummer House is now av...

My latest novel, The Secrets of Valsummer House is now available on Smashwords (for free) and Amazon (for $.99, their minimum price). It will be coming to Google, Apple, Kobo and B & N in the coming days. Lt Di Ai and d'Mere return in this Nine Star Nebula Mystery Adventure that is the direct sequel to The Secret of the Tzarista Moon. 
This is my mystery story. I'm not a mystery story fan these days, in large part because I grew weary of every mystery involving a murder, or two, or three. Now it may be exactly what mystery fans expect, and perhaps demand in their mysteries. But I think it's just laziness on the part of mystery writers. I would think that you could come up with a compelling mystery without it involving a murder. And, well, I set out to prove that theory in my mystery, The Secrets of Valsummer House. Did I succeed or not? That's up to you, dear readers. Let me know. 
And, if all goes well, there's one more mystery story coming this summer with Vaun Di Ai and Rafe d'Mere. I'm going to try to give it some Gothic vibes. Werewolves, vampires... we'll see...
 

Keiree is FREE on Amazon

 

Oh those wacky algorithms over at Amazon! I noticed that Keiree, which, for some unfathomable  reason, they did not price match to free along with all my other books, is now FREE. However, the balance of the universe must be maintained, so  The Lost Star's Sea is now at my low list price of $.99, taking its place as my one non-FREE book.

Tomorrow, 18 March 2021, that will change again with the ebook release of my newest Nine Star Nebula Mystery Adventure, The Secrets of Valsummer House at $.99  We'll see if they reduce it to FREE once it is out in all the other stores. The paperback book of The Secrets of Valsummer House is now available for $10.00 on Amazon.

One Approach to Writing

 

My intention was to write an essay contrasting my approach to constructing a story – using familiarity and intuition – vs constructing a story from a blueprint of acts, pinch points, reversals, and such. However, that idea rather jumped the tracks when I began to talk about talent as an ingredient in writing, well before I really got to the original subject of the essay.

So, here’s a sort of preamble to that discussion.

I really dislike the term “self-taught,” as in “a self-taught artist.” As a so-called self-taught artist, which is to say, someone who has never taken a course in art, I can tell you that I didn’t teach myself anything. I just learned. I learned by doing. And by doing it over and over again. I learned by looking at the painting of other painters in books. I learned, when I took up oil painting, by looking over books on oil painting techniques, and how to stretch canvas, and such matters. But again, mostly I learned by painting.

And yet, would all that doing and doing have amounted to anything if I didn’t have something else? Something else that can’t be learned. If I didn’t have a “talent” for art? If I didn’t have an aptitude that attracted me to creating pictures with paint and kept me doing it, year after year, decade after decade? I must admit that I think talent is something that can’t be learned. But I could be wrong.

(I will grant you that whether or not I have a talent for art is open to debate. But you can never please everyone, and I don’t try. And my work certainly doesn’t please everyone. But I’m quite comfortable with that.)

Which brings me around to writing.

I enrolled in college as a journalism major because I dreamed about being a writer. But I soon realized that I was far too shy to ever be a journalist, so I changed my major to international relations. I decided that if I had the talent to write, I could become a writer without going to school to learn how. Rightly or wrongly – and even if I couldn’t spell English. (This was long before word processors and personal computers.) I still believe that today.

Since those far gone days, I have approached writing in the same spirit as I approached art. I did it again and again over the years. I have a small collection of rejection slips for the SF magazines of the ‘70’s for a novella, and one for the fantasy novel I wrote. I wrote many “noses” of stories, never getting beyond a few pages. I recently tossed a box full of notes, drawings, and file cards for a SF novel from the 80’s that I never got very far on writing. And I still have a manuscript for a YA adventure novel from the 90’s, the revised version lost when the computer it was on lost power.

So, like in art, I’m a “self-taught” writer. But in the case of writing, it was not just writing, but reading that shaped me into the writer I am today. I have a wall of books, and with all the library books I read, I must have read nearly 2,000 books over these last 60 plus years. I believe that in reading all those books I absorbed on an intuitive level, the art of storytelling. And when I write, I am intuitively recreating the structure and experiences that I encountered, remembered, and enjoyed in all those books that carried me off and away into their worlds of words.

So not only am I a self-taught writer, but an intuitive one as well. I think of a story to tell, piece it together scene by scene as it seems to me it should be told, without thinking much, if at all, of that process. Which brings me around to the subject I set out to talk about – engineering stories. Which is to say, breaking stories down in to discrete pieces – into blueprints like three act plays or hero’s journeys, and components and techniques that build tension, conflict, with turning points, pinch points, reversals, and all the other terms and techniques you can find set out in books, articles, and blog posts on how to write stories. Concepts, which, I must confess, are much like English grammar to me – a mystery.

But I find that I have rambled on too long already to do the subject justice. Plus I really need to do some research into how to write a story this way. So I’ll save my thoughts on constructing stories vs my more intuitive approach for a future blog.

The Secrets of Valsummer House release date: 18 March 2021! Be there, or be square.