Eric Adolph's Blog

Wisdom and Discernment

There’s a joke that goes like this: How do I know if someone exhibits wisdom and discernment? When they agree with me.

With that in mind, I would like to highlight a book blogger with exceptional wisdom and discernment. Shawn, whose book blog She’s Reading Now dates back to 2018, recently wrote a very positive review of my first two novels, Beautiful and Beautifully Made. I don’t know Shawn, except for exchanging a handful of brief emails. I don’t even agree with absolutely every word she wrote about my books, but on reflection, I like that. To me, it makes her review more real than if she had waxed too poetic about my writing prowess.

A while back, I spent a couple of hours reading many of her blog posts. She’s honest and not hesitant to call out poorly executed works. As best I can tell, Shawn is not a professional critic; she’s just an intelligent person who enjoys reading.

Anyway, it’s a darned good feeling when someone with such a clear love of books says nice things about my work.

Why the School Bus Hijacking in Beautiful?

[image error]Elijah Ekdahl on Unsplash" data-medium-file="https://ericadolph.com/wp-content/upl..." data-large-file="https://ericadolph.com/wp-content/upl..." src="https://ericadolph.com/wp-content/upl..." alt="" class="wp-image-4718" />Photo by Elijah Ekdahl on Unsplash

People have asked me questions about my first two novels, Beautiful and its sequel Beautifully Made. One that comes up often is: What the heck was I thinking when I added a violent school bus hijacking to a Young Adult story?

We have to blame Frank Zappa for the school bus incident.

Why? How is it Zappa’s fault? First off, he’s dead. And second, he was a non-violent musician.

Ah, that’s the thing, you see. Zappa was a masterful guitarist and songwriter, and a gifted entertainer. So, back in the mid-1980’s, my college roommate Greg and I went to a Zappa concert at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles. The opening band was The Bobs. I had never heard an entirely a cappella singing group mimic instruments using only their voice (and occasionally, other body parts). Truly a life-changing moment for me.

One song in their set was called Bus Plunge. It describes a bus driver on speed who is driving his bus too fast, in the rain, on a winding road. He loses control, and the bus falls off the cliff. Great song! Anyway, in their patter introducing Bus Plunge, they explained that people have written songs describing pretty much every aspect of human experience, but never about a bus going over a cliff. They felt this oversight needed to be corrected.

If you know me, you know Adam is pretty much me, except he’s taller. Unfortunately, I share part of Cara’s backstory as well, but this isn’t the time to discuss that topic. Even though the main characters are based, in part, on me, the plots of my first two novels are entirely fictional. Writing Beautiful, I needed to raise the stakes beyond the home invasion. I needed a reason for Cara and Adam to go to the local airport because I’d already written the plane crash. And The Bobs inspired me: I’m unaware of another YA novel that involves hijacking a school bus. It was clearly up to me to fill this void in Western literature.

Now you understand why, through this circuitous reasoning, it was Frank Zappa’s fault that Beautiful includes a school bus hijacking.

You’re welcome.

My First Experience With Facebook Ads

Photo by H. Armstrong Roberts/Retrofile/Getty Images

This is a description of my first—and perhaps last—experience with Facebook Ads. Had it worked well for me, that would have been great for getting the word out about my books, but I wouldn’t have had this tale to share with you. Epic failures always make the best stories.

Here’s the scene: my latest novel, just out. Relatively new Facebook author site. I made an ad announcing my new book. Facebook suggested an “investment” of $70 for one week of them “spreading the word.” According to my Facebook author page Professional Dashboard, I got for my money:

1,334 views (number of times my content was displayed)921 “reach” (I don’t understand how this differs from views)and 8 interactions (likes, shares, comments, etc.)

Let’s look at the eight interactions:

One was a content creator who offered to make a book trailer for me, which actually isn’t a bad idea. I’m seriously considering it. However, this person wanted me to pay them several hundred dollars per month for their book marketing services. They told me they highly value honesty and integrity (Run for the hills!) so I should understand it will probably take several months of my paying them several hundred dollars per month before I see any significant return on my “investment.” Considering that I earn ~$5 per paperback copy sold for $15.99 (yes, even self-published authors keep only a fraction of the book’s purchase price), I would need to sell hundreds of books per month just to break even. I don’t begrudge this person asking, but if I’m going to waste money, I should buy a boat and at least have some fun with it.Three wanted to “chat” with me, wink, wink. And perhaps more … Teresa didn’t think this was a good idea to pursue, for some reason.The rest were scammers who pretended to be from Facebook. They all claimed my Facebook author site violated some (unspecified) Facebook rules and that they would shut it down unless I clicked on a link to explain to them my “misdeeds.” Each one was subtly different, with a variety of names, Facebook departments, and threats. One that went to my email was from a Vietnamese email address. These were obvious phishing attempts, and I ignored them. And my author page is still up.

Number of people who asked anything about my books or expressed interest in buying one: ZERO!

Number of times Facebook has recommended I run another ad: MULTIPLE!

My Second Novel is Live Today!

You can order the sequel to Beautiful on Amazon or on Bookshop.org. It would be a blessing if you leave a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads.

New Novel: Beautifully Made is coming April 30, 2025!

Beautifully Made is the exciting sequel to Beautiful, and you can order it beginning April 30, 2025. The novel has been a few years in the making, but it’s worth it. I’m proud of how it turned out, and I believe you’ll enjoy it.

Here’s the cover:

Nice, huh? The color scheme matches that of Beautiful, but the model is clearly not the same. Why? What’s up with all the “sciencey” stuff on this girl’s glasses? Is Cara no longer the main character?

Cara is still the focus of this novel as she was in Beautiful. But here is part of the back cover blurb to explain this new face:

A secret government agency wants Cara as a weapon, with or without her consent. Meanwhile, an implacable assassin with a personal vendetta hunts Cara and her new family.

Other than Adam, Cara doesn’t know who to trust. Her best hope may lie with an eccentric elderly woman, a girl genius with nothing left to lose, and … a unique creation developed in their lab.

Yep, the cover of Beautifully Made represents the ‘girl genius with nothing left to lose’ who plays such a huge role in Cara’s story.

If, after reading the novel, you write a review on Amazon and/or Goodreads, that would be a huge help to me. Thanks in advance.

First Few Chapters of Beautiful

There is an opportunity for me to have a table at an author fair near where I live. As a part of the application, I’m to provide a link to the first bit of my most recently published novel. I don’t know how to do that other than by posting it here on my blog. So here, again, is the cover and the first few chapters.

Enjoy!

Beautiful-Print 1st few chapters

Querying vs. Colonoscopy

Not to be graphic, but the two activities share more than their first sound.

They are equally unenjoyable.You’re expected to jump through all kinds of hoops for the “privilege” of feeling powerlessBoth cause significant anxiety and procrastination. Nobody wants to do it, but they get convinced it’s necessary.The preparation is uncomfortable.The process leaved you feeling exposed and vulnerable.You wait anxiously for the results.You feel relief when it’s over … until you remember you will need to go through the whole damned thing again.Everyone has advice for you, though their experiences rarely match yours.

Sooo … why did I go through this with you? Because to me, querying makes me feel like someone is sucking out my soul. I did that with Beautiful, 170 different personalized queries. Now I’m looking at repeating all this with Beautifully Made (the sequel to Beautiful), and I’m feeling sadness and despair. Writing is supposed to be fun, or why do it? I’m retired, for goodness’ sake. I don’t need more grief. I would much rather focus on my third novel, tentatively named Out of Sight, which is unrelated to the first two and, as such, may warrant another try at traditional publishing. We’ll see how I feel when the writing and editing is done.

Since Beautifully Made is fully written, professionally edited, and formatted (I use Vellum on my MacBook Pro), all I need is a professional cover designer and I can put my novel out in the world for people to buy and read. So that’s my plan. I figure the book should be available by May or June. Obviously, I will let you know.

A More Professional Product

One of the great things about regularly engaging in any activity is that you improve with practice. Writing is certainly like that. Over the past few years, I couldn’t help but grow as a writer as I completed two novels and several shorter pieces. The downside of this phenomenon is that work which was “really pretty good” for my skill level at one time is no longer a good example of what I can do now.

Last fall, I began working with a new editor. Before I make it sound like there was something wrong with Julia, my original editor, I wish to say she is a talented and professional developmental editor. I would not hesitate to work with her again, and I would recommend her wholeheartedly. Julia added a lot to my first two novels, Beautiful and Beautifully Made. I followed almost all of her advice, even when I found it difficult. It turned out she was right!

So I polished Beautiful as best I could, and I self-published it in the spring of 2023 after not landing a literary agent. You know the story if you’ve been following my blog. Last fall, my new editor, LeeAnna, who is more of a copyeditor than a developmental editor, began work on Beautifully Made. LeeAnna had two advantages besides her natural talent:

Julia had already worked her developmental editing magic, andmy writing had improved.

I can’t tell you how excited I am for you to read Beautifully Made. However, you’re going to have to wait a bit because I’m making another attempt to find a literary agent. LeeAnna read Beautiful and said she could improve that novel as well. The advantage of doing this would be that if a literary agent was researching me and found Beautiful, they would see a more professional product. This made sense to me, so we did it. I confess the number of changes LeeAnna and I made disheartened me, though most were minor. But that’s why writers who take their craft seriously hire editors.

The second edition of Beautiful is now available as a paperback or e-book on Amazon or through IngramSpark if you wish to support your local bookstore.

Plot Twist!

I’ll be blunt. Many thousands of people use Wattpad and enjoy it, but for me the reader experience was not what I’d hoped. A few readers told me they had trouble finding my novel or were upset that they had to “sign up,” even though they can read much of the content on Wattpad for free. They asked if they could just buy my book like “normal” readers do. Unfortunately — and this is just human nature — most people don’t give feedback when they have trouble. They just quit trying and I never hear from them. So I know that if a few people had a challenge with Wattpad, many more people who might have enjoyed my book are now lost to me.

Hence the plot twist. I decided I was wrong to refuse to self-publish. As of April 1 (which seemed an auspicious day to publish a novel), Beautiful is available on Amazon as a paperback and e-book. I published Beautiful on IngramSpark as well, so you can also order the novel through your local bookstore or through bookshop.org.

The sequel to Beautiful, entitled Beautifully Made, will come out later this year.

Order Beautiful on Amazon

Order Beautiful on Bookshop.org

After you’ve read my novel, it would mean a lot to me if you would post a review on Amazon or Goodreads. Thank you!

This Wasn’t What I Thought Would Happen

Like many new authors, I had dreams of seeing my novels in bookstores and libraries. How cool would that be? I sent out close to 200 queries for Beautiful, but none of the literary agents shared my vision. Maybe the timing was wrong. Maybe the pandemic messed everything up. Hell, maybe I’m just not as good of a writer as I think I am. And maybe the title of my author website, “How’s Your Book Coming?” has turned out to be more ironic than I’d hoped.

Bottom line: I couldn’t find a literary agent to represent my first novel. I suppose I could put my manuscript on Kindle or iBooks or wherever and “self-publish” it. But… to what end? The average self-published novel sells less than 200 copies. Total! Which, from my perspective, is the same as selling zero copies. And marketing a self-published book requires money, time, networking, and salesmanship. I’m a writer, not a marketer. I believe in working to my strengths.

If traditional publishing didn’t work for my first novel, if I don’t care to self-publish, and if I want people to read my novel, my only other option is to make my novel available online for free. So I’m putting it on Wattpad.

There are additional things to like about Wattpad. In no particular order:

Each chapter is a separate “part,” so I can see which parts of the story resonate the most with readersI can build my audience and then if they like what I’m writing, they’re more likely to buy a future novel because I’ll be a known quantityif I develop a large readership on Wattpad, I’ll mention it in future query lettersthere are traditional publishing opportunities for writers on Wattpad. Just the thought that there’s still a possibility, even if it’s not likely, is enough. There’s nothing more valuable than hope (well, hope and a solid plan, but you know what I mean).

A book needs a cover, whether it’s a physical printed book or an e-book. I am artistically challenged; my drawing ability is limited to smiley faces and stick figures. However, I know how to find people who are talented in areas where I’m not. Do you want to see the cover for Beautiful?

You do? Really? Then check it out!

This is exactly how I imagined Cara would look. We don’t see her scar. It’s hidden, like so much else about her. I’m extremely pleased with how the cover turned out!