Michael Hiebert's Blog, page 14

Good News / Bad News Kind of Day

It’s been one of those days.

First, I managed so far to hammer out 5,000 words on my new children’s book which I have disclosed very little about and will probably continue to do so until it is closer to being done. The main reason for this is because the plot is so bizarre I don’t want to be laughed at. On the surface it simply seems like it shouldn’t work, but it is working. I think I’m hitting around an eight grade reading level, which is perfect for the content. And it’s nice and serializable with a sort of built-in audience, so I am a little excited about it, providing it doesn’t end up being a colossal waste of time because nobody takes it seriously. I’ve also got a very decent artist making me a cover that is going to be absolutely knock-your-socks-off gorgeous.

That’s good news, but not the best news.

The best news is that my agent got back to me about the first of the two novel proposals I sent her for my next project with Kensington. This one is a sequel to my first book, Dream With Little Angels and is called Cry and the Blessed Shall Sing. She absolutely loved it. It’s nice when someone likes your stuff, especially when they’re familiar with the characters. It makes you feel like you’re actually doing something worthwhile.

On that note, comes the bad news. My good friend kc dyer had been nice enough to offer to give me a blurb on my upcoming trade paperback book There are No Golden Apples Anymore. Well, she told me today she won’t be doing that, as she feels it is not ready for publication yet. I have got no more information from her than that, as she is in England at the moment, but it’s a bit disappointing. The nice part is that it’s not a huge deal. The book isn’t that long, so any changes shouldn’t take forever, and it’s not like I’m under strict deadline with it or anything.

I’m disappointed because I spent a lot of time editing that book and thought I had done a fairly decent job. Because it was so short (30k words), it wasn’t worth the cost of hiring a professional copy editor for. Or maybe, in retrospect, it was.

There’s a question for those of you out there: do you use professional copy editors on your self-published work, or not? What about the short stuff? I would like to find a copy editor who will work at a decent rate who I can build up a bit of a rapport with and who understands my cash flow situation and is able to work around it a bit. I have finally found a (tremendously) good graphic artist who can do this.

And again, on that note, would anyone out there like to be a first reader for the proof of the trade paperback of DOLLS? This book IS clean. I would love to get some feedback on it. Please let me know. I’m quite excited about this book, as it is one of my favorite things I ever wrote.

Michael out.

Two New YA Books in the Chute

So I’ve had There are No Golden Apples Anymore advertised up here for some time, even though I am still waiting to finalize the proof for the trade paperback. I finally received it in the mail and, of course, it had some problems. I’m also waiting for my good friend kc dyer to get back to me with a blurb for either the front or back cover before I do another pass on it.

I’ve got a second book ready to go as well. My novel Dolls is almost at the proof stage and I’m really excited about it. It looks great from what I can tell without actually holding it in my grubby little hands.

Both of these books have been released as eBooks, and they are a tremendous deal in that format if you don’t mind not having paper. Unfortunately, due to the high cost of POD and the fact that I can’t afford to do offset printing (yet), my per-copy cost on the actual trade paperbacks are going to be a little high. I’m hoping I can offset this a bit by purchasing in bulk and doing my own sales off my website. The only downside to this is that I won’t get proper royalties, but I am not really concerned with that–these are more to get my name out and as many people familiar with my writing as possible.

That’s why I created DangerBoy Books. To publish children’s books and short story anthologies–the sort of stuff that Kensington won’t be touching. This way I’m not stomping on anybody’s toes.

If you do purchase any of my eBooks, please leave me a review on Amazon or Smashwords (or even here, in the comments section). Or tell somebody. Just pass the word around. Especially if you liked what you read. If you didn’t like what you read, then I want to hear about that too, but I’m really looking to get some sort of homegrown viral marketing happening. I have a few ideas of what I can do to help in this area–it’s just going to take time.

Anyway, if you check out the DangerBoy Books section, you’ll get a chance to see what Dolls is all about. It’s a great book (in my humble opinion), especially for girls with a bit of a temper who, maybe, can hold a grudge. I’m sure we all know some tweens and teens that fall into that category…

Burst Writing

I am a burst writer. What I mean by that is I will go a couple weeks where all I do is write. Like, five thousand words a day… even up to ten thousand sometimes. For a week or two on end. And then I will stop. And I won’t write for a week, maybe three. I never know how much time will pass until the urge hits me again.

I’ve always written this way. All the books on writing say, if you want to be a writer you have to adhere to a schedule; write 1,000 words a day, or, write 2,000 words a day, or, write for 2 hours a day.

For two years in a row, I wrote a million + words.  I don’t want to say how many novels I’ve written. But what I am saying is that maybe all these books aren’t right. At least for me, they certainly don’t seem to be. And I have finally sold a book to a traditional publisher (Kensington Books–my book, Dream With Little Angels comes out July 2013), along with all the books I have lined up to come out through my own publish company (DangerBoy Books–check out the section on my website for more details. I have two books not listed about to come out in the next month as well).

I am currently in burst mode. I have been writing. ALOT. I started a new novel because I ran out of things to write and I’m past the halfway point already. This is all in the past five days.

This has been one of the longest burst modes I’ve ever had, and I’ve started wondering what life would be like if it never stopped.

I don’t think it would necessarily be that good, because, when I’m like this, my writing takes precedent over everything else, much to the DETRIMENT of everything else. There is a reason as to why this sudden change may have happened, though. I have had sleep apnea the past however many years and finally got a CPAP machine. Now, I am suddenly sleeping all night and not snoring and going to bed at eleven and getting up at 7:00 and writing as soon as I wake up. Before, even in burst mode, I couldn’t start writing without a pot of coffee. I just feel more awake.

So, is this the new normal? If so, it’s going to take a lot of adjustment. Especially for my girlfriend. And I’m probably going to have to struggle with a way to shut it off when I don’t want to interfere with other things. Because it does.

You simply can’t always be writing. Trust me, I’ve tried.

Finalized Cover for my New YA Title

Just finalized the cover for my upcoming YA book DOLLS, a title that will be released as both an eBook and a trade paperback.

It’s about a girl who finds out she has the power to make voodoo dolls of people she knows and cause them to come to harm. Then she accidentally runs over one of them with a Tonka truck and puts them in a coma. Don’t worry, the girl in the coma kind of deserved it.

The tag line for the book is, “Absolute power corrupts–especially twelve year old girls.”

It’s a fun little book, I think.

New Novel Proposals

With the revisions accepted for Dream with Little Angels, I have been diligently working away at some novel proposals to give to my editor for my next projects.

Currently, I have two in the works. Both are really solid books, judging by the outlines. I have the proposal finished for one and just handed it off to my agent. I am hoping to get the second proposal done in the coming weeks. It’s a bit more tricky, as the plot isn’t as straight ahead as the first.

It’s interesting working on all these multiple projects at once. Definitely keeps me on my toes!

DangerBoy Books Releasing My First Trade Paperback

DangerBoy Books will soon be releasing by first trade paperback. It will be the first of two released in the upcoming months.

This one is a short little children’s legend called There Are No Golden Apples Anymore. It should be available on Amazon and at Barnes and Noble and wherever books are sold in the coming weeks. The ebook edition is already available on Smashwords. I will put links to it off the DangerBoy page once everything is finalized.

It’s a fun little story featuring knights, dragons, princesses and everything else that makes a story cool. I’m pretty proud of it.

The second book that will be released in trade paperback (probably early October) will be called Fallen and it will be a compilation of the all four books in the quadrilogy of short story anthologies I published as ebooks a couple months ago. I not only has the content of those books, but also additional content as well. It is currently being copy edited.

Dream With Little Angels: Revisions Accepted!

The revisions I did for my novel were accepted today! I’m a happy camper. I also found out our publishing date is July 2013.

Final Book in Quadrilogy Released

Well, my last short story collection is done.

There turns out to be some tidying up I have to go do on the previous ones, so those of you who have bought copies, may want to update in a few weeks. Nothing major. Mainly just the commercial telling you the name of the fourth book that was “Coming Soon” because, well, I couldn’t really decide on it and, at the last minute, I changed it.

It’s now called The Hyperbole Engine, which I think is a pretty good name for an adventure book and it matches the cover well. All in all, after giving it a final edit, I was surprised to find myself thinking that it might be the strongest of the four.

Here’s a bit from the introduction:

“At first, I was going to publish this book as a science fiction anthology, but I didn’t think my pure science fiction shorts were always as strong as other work that I would rather see go into print. Then the adventure angle hit me and, well, now you’re holding it in your hands. Well, you’re holding an ereader in your hands. It’s holding the book.

“I know the cover makes this look like a science fiction book. That was intentional. Don’t get me wrong, there is a lot of science fiction here. My story Nashville Beaumont is one of the best science fiction novellas I’ve ever written, in my opinion. I don’t think Reclaiming the Moon is all too shabby either. In fact, I would have to classify three out of the four stories in this volume as science fiction, even if they aren’t what I would call “hard” science fiction.

The Reality of Time is a fun adventure story that takes place in a Carrollian world. I suppose any tale featuring Nikolai Tesla has to be considered in one way or another science fiction, too, but I would really call this one pure adventure. It’s the untold story of the battle of the Jabberwocky. Oh, and before you ask? Yes, the weird contractions that appear twice in the text were done on purpose. It was the way Lewis Carroll did them in the original Alice books, so I was trying to add a bit of seasoning.

“This book marks the end of the quadrilogy of short story anthologies I set out to publish as ebooks. Four books, totaling over 120,000 words (I think they are quite a bit over that, actually). I hope you enjoyed them. If you did, please let me know. I am available at www.michaelhiebert.com or you can post a review on Smashwords or Amazon.”

So that’s it for a bit, other than waiting for Smashwords to approve everything and making any changes they deem necessary.

My next step, other than to continue working with my editor at Kensington on my novel, Dream With Little Angels due to be released early 2013, is to combine these four collections into one 130,000 word trade paperback. That’s actually 10,000 words more than these collections combined, because the trade paperback will contain a bunch of bonus material. I’m hoping to have that ready for release by fall of this year.

In the meantime, please send me your comments, death threats, error corrections, omissions, ransom notes, whatevers. You can leave me something here or just post a review on Smashwords or Amazon.

Thank you very much for continuing to support me and my writing, and taking interest in my work. I look forward to hearing from you.

Cry and the Blessed Shall Sing

I’ve been doing some work on the sequel to Dream With Little Angels. It has the tentative title of Cry and the Blessed Shall Sing. Like the first book, the title comes into play somewhere withing the story, so I’ll probably keep it if at all possible.

SO far, I’ve written a twenty-one page outline and the first thirty pages or so. Most of the story has been worked out. I’m kind of digging it. I just don’t know if I want to launch headlong into another Dream With Little Angels book right away. I think it would definitely be in my best interest to start a second series first and have two running simultaneously.

I guess it’s all going to come down to what my publisher wants. He’s shown interest in the sequel. I have two other books on the go–one of which is a hardcore mystery / CSI type thing; not really what I am used to writing, the other is a fantastic story that I think would do really well, but it’s not a mystery. So I think there would be concern that it might not hit the same fan base.

Oh well, such are the trials and tribulations of a published author, I guess…

Third Book in Quadrilogy Released

I’ve managed to get the third book of my four ebooks done. It’s called Dust: Collected Stories of Wonder and features four fantasy stories.

Surprisingly, I write a lot of fantasy (well, it was a surprise to me, anyway, when I realized what fantasy actually was. I always thought it had something to do with Elves), and I’ve always enjoyed doing so.

One of the stories in this book mixes genres and is really a pure mystery with a fantasy wrapped around it (or do I have that backwards? I dunno). Another, the title track, is one of my favorite things I’ve ever done. Yet another–one of the two novellas included–is the most recent short story I’ve written. I completed it just a handful of weeks ago and I’m quite proud of it.

I think you’ll enjoy it, so go ahead, give it a shot. What do you have to lose? Well, $2.99, I suppose…