Charlie Foxtrot's Blog, page 2

Another Past: Book One

If you are interested in reading a less explicit version of A New Past, you can now find the first book in the series, re-edited and toned down, on Amazon.

Book One is available for Kindle and Kindle Unlimited. It will be out in paperback and hardback later this moth. Books Two and Three will be published in the next 4-6 weeks as well.

Revising Romance: Enhancing Character Arcs in A New Past

Funny how focus shifts. I began re-working A New Past to make a non-explicit versions of the story as a means to find some creativity for my other work. It has quickly become my primary focus for writing. I’m happy to say Book One is complete, and will be published under a different author name via Amazon on April first — No fooling

I’m half-way through books two and three, and no, that does not mean I’ve completed either of them yet. I’ve been working them in parallel, revisiting all of the explicit scenes to edit them down while fixing other minor errors in the original manuscript. 

One issue I’ve faced is the emotional connections between characters that has been strongly demonstrated through their physical love. Without giving too much away, let’s look at one example.

In Book Two, Paul and Jeryl begin a polygamous relationship with another character. If I remove that romance it has big implications later in Book Two as well as in Book Three. Cutting the relationship — which begins as a physical exploration of their own relationship reaching all the way back to Book One — changes significant story arcs.

That’s why it’s taking some time to re-write.

I have to soften the physical expressions of their new relationship, but keep the emotional attachments they both form, so the character arc can continue across multiple books. It’s a challenge, but one I accept. 

Look for updates soon on when all three books will be up on Amazon.

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Help Me Choose a New Cover

I plan on removing Technomancer from my Charlie Foxtrot pen name. As part of this effort, I’m updating the cover for the ebook and paperback as well.

If you’re interested in lending a hand, help me choose a new cover. No registration, tracking, or shady stuff happening, just a simple poll. You’ll also be “in the know” on who is behind my Charlie Foxtrot pseudonym.

Oxford Comma vs. No Oxford Comma: What Writers Should Know

Which is the best for comma usage in fiction?

To be, or not to be? 

As I’ve been revising and editing “A New Past: Book One” to make a non-explicit version, I’ve run into an inconsistency in my editing tools. In the review tools built into Ulysses, where my definitive content lives, Oxford commas are used. This suggests a comma before the “and” in a list of items or phrases. 

In MS Word, which I use for final formatting before uploading to Amazon, the syntax tool says the comma before the and is not needed. 

For this edit, I’ve decided to use the Oxford comma, since it makes the intent of the dialogue and narrative more clear. What do you think?

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Secrets, Surveillance, and Survival in Technomancer

An excerpt from Technomancer.

“Elara!” Finn called out sharply as he watched one of the feeds from the neighborhood spy-cams he had set up. The three-person team in cheap business suits were too well organized to be random pollsters. He watched as they stopped people on the streets, showed them a paper, and then asked a couple of questions before moving on.

“What is it, Finn?” Elara asked as she sauntered into the living room with a towel around her shoulders. She was wearing the loose t-shirt and silken lounge pants he had purchased for her, looking much too attractive to be a fugitive from the government.

“I think people are looking for us,” he said as he watched the video. “This group is two blocks over, but they are looking for someone.”

Elara leaned in, looking at his phone with him.

Finn breathed in her scent. It was pure and clean, not some fragrance of soap he had stocked, but her own intoxicating smell. Finn shook his head. Now was not the time for distractions.

“We should get going,” Finn said.

Elara looked at him. They were almost ready anyhow. “I’ll get changed.”

If you want to learn more about Elara and Finn’s struggles to evade Big Brother, check out Technomancer, available now on Amazon.

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How to Edit Explicit Content out of Your Novel

Last week I shared a little about hitting a wall in my writing and some strategies to overcome partial blocks. One of the things I mentioned was performing a re-write on “A New Past”. I did a little analysis to see what would be involved in stripping out the explicit content and came up with about 15% of the book needing adjustment.

I’m happy to say it was not as drastic as I thought. At 186,000 words, 15% would be roughly 27,000 words to be edited or cleaned out. I’m happy to say the first re-edit is done, with the revised story sitting at approximately 174,000 words, which is about a 6.5% reduction.

How did I do this in such a short time?

I went through the novel, flagging each scene that had explicit content. I must say, some if it was relevant to the character arc I wanted to portray, so I could not just cut quickly. However, some of it was purely to put sexy-time in the book. I found those scenes were easiest to deal with. They were either cut, with a single transitional sentence covering that something romantic happened, or deleted entirely.

The problems were the scenes that are mentioned later in the books, or have some significant impact on the various character arcs. These were a little trickier to deal with. 

For example, there is a pretty graphic scene of the first time the two main characters, Paul and Jeryl, make love. Obviously, this is a turning point in their relationship, so cutting it entirely is not possible. Additionally, because there is much of their relationship up to this point building the tension for them to take the final step as a couple, I could not easily gloss over it. 

It was these types of scenes that required a lot of focus, editing, and re-writing. I’m not sure I’m done with all that yet, but I am pleased to have the first book done, and sitting for a cooling off period before I re-read and make a final editorial decision on it. 

If you’re interested in reading the “PG-13” version of the story, I’ll have some news for you in a month or so. Until then, subscribe here, or follow me on Amazon, GoodReads, or Facebook to get information about upcoming book releases.

Promote Your Book: Strategies for Amazon Success

As I shared last week, I have a review on Reedsy for Technomancer. It’s a good review (I think), but alone it has not ignited a flurry of sales.

So now what?

My next step is to promote the book through the Amazon ecosystem. This will take a couple of approaches. One is to run a Kindle Countdown Deal or Free Book Promotion. However, to run a KDP Countdown Deal promotion, books are required to be enrolled in KDP Select and to have had no price changes for 30 days. Since I uploaded a new copy of the text on March 7th, that is the data my pricing was “last changed”, meaning the countdown deal can’t start until April 7th.

The other option is to launch a Sponsored Products campaign. This seems to be a bit more involved. A mentor has suggested I use roughly 40% of my expected sales to advertise, but I’m not ready to pull the trigger on that quite yet. My other books are selling, so I’ll investigate setting up some ads, and then report back here in a regular Marketing Monday posting. 

Until then,I’ve gone ahead and set the countdown deal to start on April 7th, so if you want to get Technomancer at a discount, buy a copy then. 

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Discover Technomancer: A Comprehensive Book Review

A review of Technomancer has gone live on Reedsy today. If you are interested in learning more about the story than I have written here, check it out. Read the review here.

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Overcoming Writing Blocks: Tips to Reignite Your Muse

I’ve hit a little block on my two works-in-progress. Neither is fully blocked, in so far that I know where I want the story to go, but both are feeling more like work to write at the moment. Since the first 25k words in each came almost effortlessly, it gives a pause when it starts to feel like a slog.

How do I battle this stall in my writing?

First, as mentioned in a prior post, I’ve been listening to some podcasts and letting the skills and tools of writing inspire me. I’d give this about a 25%-50% chance of re-energizing my muse.

The other thing I’ve been considering is a re-write of “A New Past” to make it more mainstream by editing out or modifying the erotic elements of the story. I spend several hours migrating the content of Book One into my current writing tool (Ulysses) which allows me to break up the chapters into individual scenes. I’ve then gone through each scene and flagged if it contains explicit content or not.

Book One of A New Past weighs in at 186,492 words, not counting the timeline in the appendix. This breaks down into 19 chapters, and 165 scenes or sections across the book. Of those, 24 (14.5%) of the scenes have some level of explicit content. 

Re-writing 24 scenes to remove the explicit descriptions or acts does not seem too daunting. However, I’m trying to decide if it is worth it. It likely is, from a sales and revenue perspective, since it would enable me to advertise the book more effectively. 

The challenge of rewriting these chunks of the story will be making certain the rest of the tale isn’t affected. I try to make the explicit scenes part of the characters, and some aspects actually drive significant story arcs, so they can’t just be cut. 

What’s interesting, to me at least, is that performing the mundane tasks of importing the novel and breaking it into scenes and reviewing the content has given me some ideas on my works-in-progress as well.

Drop me a comment here, and let me know if you think creating a “PG-13” version of “A New Past” is a worthwhile effort. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Technomancer Review: A Unique Sci-Fi Fantasy Adventure

Excerpt from a reviewer:

Loved it!

This genre-bending novel is firmly at the intersection of technology and magic, with a solid foot in each world.

Technomancer provides a unique and fascinating story line as the author weaves our technologically advanced world with the magically enhanced yet industrially deficient world of Elysia in such a way that readers may pause to consider the profound implications here. The protagonists learn to look beyond their single-focused perspectives as Finn seeks to mingle the 1s and 0s of his world with the sigils and spells of Elara’s. What would a marriage of these two worlds look like, and what would result from such an action?

Themes of revenge, loyalty, courage, and good vs evil are interwoven with action and suspense playing out in both realms. The stakes are high, and will require significant devotion, faithfulness, and cunning. No two people are better suited for this than the unlikely pair of Elara, the priestess’ young acolyte and Finn, the world class quantum computing engineer. Chaos and order hang in the balance.

Fans of science fiction, fantasy, action/adventure, and even romantic suspense will enjoy this tight-knit novel of power, chaos, and justice.

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