Aaron Polson's Blog, page 12

A Good Swift Kick

Goals.

They've been missing from my writing life. Good, targeted goals. Goals with dates, word counts, submissions deadlines...

I need some goals. I need them to be public so I can't slack.

Here goes:

Finish edits on Good Deeds (a short thriller) and publish by Monday (2/20/12).Finish writing a second short thriller (Switch) and publish by the end of March.Submit one short story (or flash fiction) each month. I have several started which need finished. Finish writing the irreverent vampire novella I started last fall. It's fun. And bloody. I will be done with the first draft by the end of the school year.Write the third and "final" installment of The Sons of Chaos. It's going to be a cold one. I'd like to finish this by the end of the school year as well.There. Now I have to do these things. 

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Speaking of things one has to do, how about reading the latest Penny Dreadnought? It's only a buck for Kindle:



The Abominable Gentlemen build four worlds only to destroy them in this apocalypse-themed issue of Penny Dreadnought. Witness four unique visions of the end in:

"Precious Metal" by Aaron Polson
"Only the Lonely" by Iain Rowan
"The New Words" by Alan Ryker
"He" by James Everington

Delicious.

On Inspiration

I've killed more muses than I care to count, but somehow, in the midst of chaos, I still find inspiration.

In fact, I can almost turn it on at will. Three sure-fire methods:

1. Read quality fiction.
2. Watch an awards show.
3. Watch the Rush documentary, Beyond the Lighted Stage.

Number 1 always makes me want to work harder. I don't do number 2 because I hope to "be there someday". It's more of a, "wow--look at all of these people chasing their dreams" (and a little bit of "Really? That won an award?"). Number 3 is the textbook example of doing it your way. Rush is awesome, but polarizing. People I know either love/hate them. I'm firmly in the "love" camp.

The problem isn't with inspiration. The problem is energy. Time is at a premium as is my ability to focus for more than five minutes at a time.

But I'm not going to quit.

Ideas, you see, can haunt a person if let to fester. They can crust over, split open, and bleed into other parts of one's life. Those ideas just won't go away--not once the seeds are planted and watered. The inspiration is there.

What I need is an energy transfusion.

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Speaking of good fiction, Shimmer 14 is available for Kindle at the muse-proof price of 99 cents.

Radio Silence

In the event of an apocalypse, the silence would frighten me the most. Think about all the noise in our lives from television, the internet, text messages, Twitter, Facebook, advertisements, our families and friends...

If I was fortunate to survive the cataclysmic event, the silence would be maddening.

I've been relatively silent lately. I'd love to say it was because of all the writing I'm doing. Not so. I'm struggling to stay afloat with baby Elliot, Max's health concerns, making sure Owen knows we still love him even though the other brothers are sapping 95% of our energy. My wife goes back to work tomorrow, and that's added a little stress, too.

I need to write now more than ever. It's my therapy and my drug and my salvation.

I need to write, but just when I need it, the time doesn't exist. I've scratched out maybe 20K words this year so far. Maybe. I've only edited an submitted one short story. I have novel ideas which threaten to die in their infancy if I can't find a release valve.

And the silence is killing me. (And by "killing" I mean figuratively.)

Reviews, Publication, Strange Happenings

More children at home = less writing time and less time to blog about the nonsense I like to blog about.

Here is today's smorgasbord. (Mmmmm... smorgasbord...)

Both SF Revu and Locus have reviewed Shimmer #14, saying things like "unsettling little tale" (Sam Tomaino, SF Revu) and "I am not entirely convinced that there is anyone actually alive in this world. Except the bugs and worms." (Lois Tilton, Locus) about my story, "This House was Never a Castle". I'm not sure the bugs and worms are even alive--at least for long (the children eat them, you see).

Morpheus Tales has collected a "best of" issue and included my story about fungus gone wild, "A Most Unfortunate Gaffe". You can check out the always disturbing cover art and buy a copy here. 

And finally, Echoes of the Dead hit some sort of milestone yesterday--I've never had a sales burst like this for one of my books before, even after going free. Maybe it's a little instant karma for the pirate/plagiarism bullshite? It's sales rank was around 7K when I woke this morning. I'm no "J.K. Patterson" (all sarcasm intended), but I'll take it. 

Have a great weekend, folks

I am a (Red) Star (with bonus WIP News)

I've been an eBay jockey longer than I've been a writer--although not as consistantly.  It's not a "business" model that I can sustain because I tend to buy as much (or more) than I sell. My favorite? Star Wars Legos (highly collectable and damn cute).

I received a nice note in my email inbox stating I've received my red star, denoting a positive feedback score over 1,000 (and 100% positive, too).  Pretty cool, actually. Those of you who might have read my flash story, "Enough", from Necrotic Tissue #13 will understand the obsession we eBayers have with our feedback scores.

What else am I working on?

Editing "No Good Deed" for publication (a novella of sorts) and putting some finishing touches on a story without a title. It involves obsession, too, as in the protagonist's father digs in the backyard for hours every night.

But in the morning everything seems fine.

Seems.

Ha.

Too Many Buckets, Not Enough Water

I've been thinking about this pirating thing...

Especially in light of the 2011 Book Buying Survey presented at Digital Book World. Check it out. 

Some highlights:
64% of "avid" book buyers are female33% of book purchases are for entertainment/leisureThese are only numbers from a single survey, of course, but they are in step with my anecdotal experience as a bookseller (I managed a bookstore back in '98).  Fiction was the single largest space in the store, but we sold less fiction titles (proportionately) than other books combined.  

Why is this important?

I don't have survey results or any scientific data to back this up, but plenty of anecdotal experience and reports from other authors: the vast majority of wannabe writers pen fiction. All of these books--now readily available because of digital publishing--are the too many buckets in my title metaphor. The water? Book buyers.

If only 33% of the purchases made by "avid" readers are for leisure/entertainment (and not all of that 33% must be fiction) and the majority (by far) of authors write fiction... Yesh.

No wonder it's so damn hard to break through.

What does this have to do with pirates?

Well, if most wannabe writers write fiction and it's damn hard to make it, maybe some pirate/resellers are just feeding the urge to put their name on something.

Hell, I don't know.

What I do know is I don't mind giving away my stories if I'm doing it. I'm not going to crawl under a rock and hide from the basement-dwelling morlocks who'd do such things. I'm not going to stop writing because of this crap. I'm not going to change a single bit of my behavior just because other people don't want to play nice.

For the next two days, Echoes of the Dead (the thieved book) is free at Amazon. Take that, J.K. "Fake-Name-If-I've-Ever-Seen-One" Patterson.

Violations...

Remember last week's post about plagiarism and pirating in the modern "wild west" internet/digital publishing world?

Well...this happened. I'll let Robert Swartwood explain it all. I'm too tired. Too frustrated. I've been sorting this mess out since the mid-afternoon.

The thing which boggles me the most? The pirate can't be making (much) on his/her/its knock off of Echoes of the Dead. It's not exactly flying off the virtual shelves for me, either. Robert might not have noticed it if said pirate hadn't listed the book as a free promo.

It's not like it was erotica or something. I hear that stuff sells. 

Sheesh.

I have some history with plagiarists and pirates.

One of my classmates at K-State plagiarized a term paper in Psych 350: Experimental Methods. Not a pretty sight. A few of my stories were nabbed and rebooted a few years ago (
eBookr has quite a selection of my stuff for "free".  (All you can read, folks!)

But this Amazon trick? This sh*t is just out of hand.

Welcome to the digital future.

We're just getting started...

The Skull in Uncle Rego's Closet - A #FridayFlash

The skull smells like cleaning fluid, the pine oil kind that Mama uses on the kitchen floor. It weighs a little more than the soccer ball Uncle Rego gave me last year for my eleventh birthday. The yellow-white color almost matches the ivory of the old piano in the shed, the one Papa promises to fix up for Mama one day. One day when he works a single job instead of three.

Uncle Rego says the skull belongs to our great-grandmother. He says he brought it back from Sonora on one of his trips. The rest of the bones, he says, had to wait. Too hard to get them across the border, he says. And then the broken leg. And then he stopped going back to Mexico because things were bad in Sonora.
I've stolen Uncle Rego's skull three times now.

The first time I left it on the back porch, assuming it would be gone in the morning. Uncle Rego found it when he came home, stumbling more than usual with the heavy reek of cigarettes and tequila clinging to his clothing. He merely wrapped the skull in the folds of his shirt and staggered to his room in the basement, muttering in Spanish.

The second time, I tried harder. I took the skull into the yard and placed it near the small rock garden Mama loves. She's the one who found the skull the second time, but a day or to passed before she noticed, possibly because it blended in so well with the stones.

"Mateo," she said. "This isn't something to play with."

This time, I did better. I buried the skull in the soft garden dirt next to Mama's peppers and tomatoes. I buried it deep—as deep as I could before my arms began to burn and sag like rubber bands. Not that it is hidden, exactly, just deep. Deep enough, I hope.

When Mama comes into my room, I tell from the sour frown and lines on her face she wants to know where it is. Uncle Rego cries out every few minutes from his room.

"Where is it this time, Mateo?" she asks. Her arms cross her chest.

What scares me, more than anything, is how white Mama's face gets when I tell her about the headless woman who throws pebbles at my bedroom window most nights. I tell her the skull is hers, and she just wants it back. I tell her I don't think the skull belonged to Great-Grandma, and ask if Rego knows who the headless woman is. Mama just cries, folds me toward her chest, and rocks back and forth, saying, "hush, hush."

WIP Wednesday: Slowing to a Trickle

Between Max's autoimmune issues, baby Elliot, and trying to wrangle Owen/my job/maintain a relationship with my wife... and other things, I haven't been writing as much as I'd like.

I have given a character a gun. Said character has decided to use the gun rather than call the police. See, he doesn't think the police will believe what he has to tell them (his wife might be held captive in a farmhouse/organized crime compound/possible religious cult). It doesn't help his case that it is three in the morning, he's covered in mud, blood, and cow shit, and a little high.



This could get interesting...

And it's all part of No Good Deed, a crime/thriller novella.

More soon.

"Why Write a Series? Don't You Have Enough on Your Plate?"

A guest post from Barry Napier...
I asked myself this question roughly one hundred times as Iwas about halfway through the first draft of Everything Theory: Cold Compass. Honestly, the first answer that came to mind was the fact that Isimply wanted to put myself into an overly ambitious project and see itthrough.  The second (and honestly mostimportant) answer was this: because the characters of the story were demandingit.
At first, I had never intended Everything Theory to become a series.  It was going to be a nice little one-offstory with the potential for other books that tied into the same universe withthe same characters. I certainly had no intentions of the books taking up about90% of my writing time.  But as I made myway through the first book of the series, ColdCompass, I realized that these characters—primarily Gabe, the centralcharacter—had a lot more going on than could be covered in one book.
I assumed I could probably get three books out of Gabe, hisback story, his father's sordid history, and the shadow organization thatconnects it all: CSAR.  I made a few plotmaps and was ready to tackle a trilogy. Then I ended up introducing the villain of Cold Compass, a mysterious figure named Garrison Sleet.  And as I delved more into who/what he mightbe, it started to appear as if a trilogy might not cover the entire story,either.
So as it stands, I have a 5-book series on my hands.  It is all mapped out and fits rather well(although it appears that Book 4 might be pretty lengthy).  Book 1 has been released, and Book 2 is a fewediting sessions away from being wrapped up. I am currently taking a slight break from the Everything Theory books to give myself a break (or maybe it's thecharacters that needed a break) from the twists, turns, and conspiracies.
So…why write a series? Because sometimes the writer is just the conduit; it's the characterswithin the story that are really producing the words.

To learn more aboutBarry, his Everything Theory booksand other works, visit him at his online home:www.barrynapierwriting.wordpress.com.