Cameron Chapman's Blog, page 13

Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris Available on Smashwords!

I'm still waiting for Amazon and Barnes & Noble to finish adding Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris to their catalogs, but in the meantime, you can buy it in a variety of formats (including EPub, which can be read on the iPad and Nook, and .mobi, which can be read on Kindle) on Smashwords!

If you go looking for it on Amazon, you'll see that it's there, but the version up there now has some minor formatting issues (mainly that the "Go to" menu isn't working properly). I have the corrected version all set to upload, but the way that Amazon's KDP system works, it's still in the "Publishing" stage in the dashboard, and so I can't make any changes. Once it goes out of the "Publishing" stage, I'll upload the new copy. As far as I know, if you want to buy it for your Kindle right away, you'll be able to re-download the new version once it goes live, but I'm not positive about that (if anyone knows for sure, please comment). So if you don't mind the "Go to" menu not working properly, go ahead and buy it. The rest of the formatting is fine.

I'll post once it's live other places.

The Book Cover is Finally Here!

So, after three drafts, we finally got the cover squared away today! It's beautiful, exactly what I wanted and what I think of when I think of steampunk! My husband, Mike Moffit, did most of the background digital painting (from scratch). I added some of my own flourishes, plus did some basic art direction, and did the typography. It was a collaborative effort, and I'm really pleased with the way it came out (and the fact that Mike and I didn't kill each other during the process).

Click "keep reading" to see the final result!

Like I said, I absolutely love the way it came out. It looks great in grayscale, too, which is important for ebook readers like the Kindle. I'm still on track to have it out on Kindle by this weekend, though of course we're also in the midst of a huge blizzard here, so that's only if we don't lose power today or tomorrow. Stay tuned for the release!

The Steam and Steel Chronicles Facebook Page!

The Steam and Steel Chronicles finally has a Facebook page! I've actually been working on it for a few days now, and had hoped to wait until the cover was ready, but got impatient and decided to make it live last night. So feel free to "Like" the page here. I'll be making announcements related to the series there, and may use it to announce things prior to announcing them elsewhere. I've also posted an excerpt from the first book (the same one that's available on this site).

The book cover should be finished today or tomorrow, and then once that happens, I'll get everything posted to Kindle and elsewhere. I'll also be relaunching the Untime Press website this week, so stay tuned for that, too.

An Excerpt from Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris

This is just a quick post to let  everyone know that I've added an excerpt from the first chapter of Aboard the Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris under the "Fiction Excerpts" page in the main navigation (under "Steampunk Novella", cause the full title doesn't fit on one line). Or you can just click here to get to it. It's the first scene, which makes up half of the first chapter.

The novella is now completely formatted, and I'm just waiting on the artwork for the cover. My husband is doing a digital painting of part of one of the scenes (I'm not so good at digital painting, so I'm leaving that part of the design up to him). We collaborated on what the image would include, and I'll likely be doing the text layout and such for the cover (though he keeps trying to convince me to let him do it; this is what happens when designers are married to each other).

I spent a bit of time today formatting the ebook for Kindle. I've still got to do the formatting for epub and Smashwords, which I'll do over the next few days. If all goes well, the book will be out on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords by the end of this week. Stay tuned!

Music as Inspiration (and Some News)

Music has always been an integral part of my creative process. I've gotten more than a few story ideas from song lyrics. And whenever I start on a new project, I come up with a playlist of sorts that I use to get me in the mood to write. Usually, these are the songs I listen to while I'm in the shower ('cause that's also where I get my best ideas). I'll listen to the same eight to ten songs for the entire writing and revising process.

The project I'm working on now, The Steam and Steel Chronicles (which is the official name of the series; a big thanks to TL Tyson for her help in brainstorming a name), has a playlist that's largely made up of Jack White's various bands, with a bit of Johnny Cash thrown in. I have no idea why these are the songs that stood out for me (other than Hurt, which ties very closely to the second book in the series). But when I hear The White Stripes, or The Raconteurs, I think of Steam and Steel.

Here's the playlist, in all of its YouTube-y glory:

Jack White is also the inspiration for one of the characters that will first make an appearance in Book Three of Steam and Steel. He's going to be an awesome character, and will play prominently into the rest of the series. I think he might just turn into one of my favorite characters ever (have I mentioned I tend to form crushes on my male characters? I know that sounds weird to some, but when you spend hours and hours a day for months on end with certain characters, you're bound to form some strong attachments).

This playlist may have some additions as I move through the series. Book Three starts out in a new setting, adds a new character, and starts to play a bit more into some of the supernatural elements presented in the first two books. The first two books take place mostly in Europe, ending in North America in the second book. The third book starts out in North America (sorry, not getting any more specific than that!). At some point we'll probably go back to Europe, and maybe elsewhere in the world, too.

How does music play into your own creative process? Do you listen to music while you're writing, or just to get inspired? Any particular favorites, or do you just listen to whatever happens to be on?

Note: I'm going to be blogging more about The Steam and Steel Chronicles in the coming weeks as I get ready to launch the first book. Book One, Aboard The Unstoppable Aerostat Fenris, will hopefully be released in February, and Book Two, The Great Healion Race, will likely be released in March. I haven't written Book Three yet, but plan to have that released sometime in the summer. Stay tuned for updates!

Is Short the Future of Publishing?

Every day we hear new stories about the future of publishing. It's pretty common knowledge at this point that the big corporate publishers (often referred to as the "big 6″) are having a hard time. Small, independent publishers are folding. And everyone's wondering what the future will bring, and whether publishing as it is currently known will survive.

I honestly couldn't tell you. I think that publishers who are well established in specific niches have a better chance than generalists, but that's all just speculation. I'd rather discuss something that's a bit more specific.

Mainly, I'd like to discuss the length of popular fiction, particularly ebooks. I'm seeing a growing trend in shorter works of fiction being published as ebooks on a variety of platforms, and doing well. A lot of the bestsellers in genre fiction on Amazon are novellas or shorter novels (under 60,000 words or so), and almost all of them are indie published. Most traditional publishers have little to no interest in publishing these shorter works, as the profit margins are smaller and they don't see much of a market. But ebooks are changing that.

I've got my own theories on why shorter fiction, like novelettes and novellas, is going to lead the publishing industry in the coming years. First of all, people don't notice length with ebooks the way they do with print books. You don't look at an ebook sitting on your shelf (or the shelf of a bookstore) and wonder if you're paying too much for that size book.

Shorter books can be priced more competitively, because there aren't the fixed costs associated with printing. Design and layout costs are also reduced, and there are plenty of tools on the market for helping DIY'ers set up their own books.

Indies can make a better career out of shorter books than longer ones sometimes. As a general rule of thumb, writing, editing, and proofreading a shorter book is faster than a longer one. Of course, that's not always the case, but it can be. And the key to indie success seems to rely at least in part on publishing a large volume of work. So if you can write and polish three novellas in the time it takes you to write and polish one longer novel, you can publish more frequently. If someone buys one of your books and likes it, they're more likely to buy your other books.

I've been working on a series of steampunk novellas since November. I'm at the final polishing stage for two of the novellas (one is coming in at 18k, but I have some descriptions to add which should bump it up over 20k, and the other is 26k), and I have plans for at least five more books. All of these are likely to be novellas, probably in the 20-40k word range. So I've been doing a lot of research on novellas, their success rates, and appropriate pricing (and by "appropriate" I mean the amount of money people will happily pay for a novella from a new author). That research included an informal poll of what people would pay for a steampunk novella from a new author. I was a bit surprised by the results.

Now, there weren't a huge number of votes (9). And other than the one vote for $.99, the votes were evenly split between $2.99 and $4.99. I had assumed that the votes would be more evenly split between $.99 and $2.99, maybe even with a preference for $.99. Based on the data I've collected, I'm going to go with $2.99 for the novellas. At some point, once more than a couple are out, I may lower the price of the first one so that people can try with lower risk.

My advice to authors, especially indie authors, is to stop worrying so much about length. There's a growing market for shorter novellas, and we're no longer reliant on finding a publisher to get readers or make money with our work. If you have a story that's only 25k words and you can't find a market for it among traditional publishers, why not put it out as an ebook? If you've been putting off writing a certain story because you felt like it was going to fall into an "unsellable" length, why not write it anyway and put it out on Kindle?

Book Cover Giveaway Winners!

UPDATE: Please see the update at the end of this post!

The book cover giveaway announced on January 3rd is now officially over, and we have our winners! The winners were chosen randomly, using the Random.org random number generator.

So, drumroll please…the winners are:

Mike Gerrard (@mike_gerrard) is the Twitter winner. (See the update below)

And Laura Vosika is the winner here on the blog.

Congratulations to both of them!

I may run another of these contests in the summer, once my schedule clears out a bit. So stay tuned for that!

UPDATE: After talking with Mike about the current projects he has, I've decided I'm not well-suited to do a cover for him at the moment. He graciously offered to give back his prize and have me draw a new winner. So that's what I've done. The new winner for the Twitter portion of the contest is LK Gardner-Griffie (@lkgg)!

The Dangers of Beta Readers

I've written before about using beta readers to find holes or inconsistencies in your manuscript. Good beta readers, including good online critique sites, can be an invaluable part of polishing your novel or other writing, especially if you're fairly new to writing and your betas are more experienced (or more widely read).

But there are downsides to beta readers, too. 

When I finished Two In Winter a few weeks ago, I put it up on Zoetrope.com to get some feedback from other screenwriters. I've been a member of Zoetrope since 2002, and have found the feedback I've received on the site to be mostly helpful. Unfortunately, not everyone is going to get what you're trying to do, and you have to be able to sort through the feedback you get to make decisions that are right for your manuscript. The goal with beta readers is to improve your manuscript, not to write a novel by committee.

I received one review so far where it was obvious the reader just didn't get what I was going for. Now, I'm grateful for every review and critique I get. I'm grateful that someone took the time to read the story and offer constructive criticism. I would never bad-mouth a reviewer, and that's not what I'm doing here.

This person, though, didn't get what I was trying to do. Two In Winter is not supposed to be a heartwarming story. It's about making tough decisions, where you're pretty much screwed either way. It's honest, and it aims to show that life sucks sometimes, and love sucks sometimes, especially when the people in love have different aspirations in life, and sometimes you'd rather take the easy way out, even if it's wrong. Or at least that's what I want it to do.

The review I got, on the other hand, wanted it to be a heartwarming Christmas story. They wanted it to have a nice, happy ending where everyone wins. I want it to be true to life, where that kind of thing rarely happens. And at the same time, a lot of the suggestions made would turn my characters into stereotypes. It would add a lot more external drama, and take the focus away from the interior drama. 

Basically, it would completely change my intentions for this screenplay if I were to follow the advice offered.

Now, that doesn't mean that the critique is useless. What this critique is telling me is that I'm not getting my story across the way I intend. It means I need to go back through the script and refine it in areas. I need to make sure that motivations and characterization are clearer than they are currently, so there's no confusion.

If I weren't as confident in the story I'm trying to tell, I might follow the advice I've been offered and I might change the basic structure and idea of the story. This is why writers need to carefully consider what their beta readers tell them, and follow their own instincts when it comes to which advice to take and which to ignore.

Online Resources for Fiction Writers

I was talking to a friend on Facebook the other day and he mentioned something about how I knew all these great resources online for writers. I have a tendency to forget that not every writer out there knows a lot about the resources the internet has to offer them. I work online on a daily basis, constantly looking up new resources for one project or another, and come across new tools all the time.

So I'm going to attempt to put together all the best resources I've found useful into a single reference guide for fiction writers. I've scoured my Google Bookmarks to come up with this list. If you have other tools you've found useful that aren't included here, please share them in the comments!

Online Writing Communities and Forums

Authonomy.com: This was one of the first novel-writing forums I joined, and where I met the vast majority of my writer friends. I also learned more about how to write well from the people here than I can even remember. The quality of critiques has gone downhill overall in the past year or two, but there are still some very helpful people there.

Absolute Write Water Cooler: A huge forum with a ton of very helpful writers. A number of professional authors frequent the boards, though you won't always know who they are. There are categories and boards for virtually all types of writing, and a password-protected forum for getting feedback on your work. Especially helpful is the query forum for getting feedback on your query letters.

Zoetrope.com Virtual Studio: This is the workshop offered by Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope studio. If you write screenplays, short stories, novellas, flash fiction or poetry, there are departments here for you to get feedback. They require submitters to review a set number of other entries before submitting their own (after the first submission, that is), and critiques are generally of very high quality.

WeBook: WeBook is a fairly new community, and offers both paid and free services for writers. You can use it to write collaboratively, or to get feedback from other writers. I'm an active participant in their PageToFame contest.

Scribophile: Scribophile has active forums and provisions for sharing your work and getting feedback.

YouWriteOn: YouWriteOn is another site that's set up for getting feedback. The highest-rated manuscripts each month get reviewed by publishers and/or agents. I was a member briefly, but am not a fan of the format.

Contests

WeBook's PageToFame Contest: P2F is a fun contest that I've been participating in for a few months. You start out submitting a single page, which others on the site then rate. If your first page rates high enough, you move on to round 2, where you submit the first five pages. Those go through another round of ratings, and then if you rank high enough again, you move on to round 3, where you submit the first fifty pages. If you pass through the third round, you then go on to the final round, where publishers and agents review your manuscript. The winners are supposed to get help with finding representation and/or a publisher, though the contest is still young and no winners have yet been declared.

NaNoWriMo: National Novel Writing Month is another fun contest for writers. The goal is to write an entire novel (50k words or more) during the month of November. They have hundreds of thousands of participants each year, and an active forum for the months of October through December or January.

Agent and Publisher Resources

AgentQuery: AgentQuery is a great source for finding agents based on genre, and for getting feedback on your query letter and synopsis. They also have a lot of great information about finding an agent.

QueryTracker.net: QueryTracker is a great way to find agents and their submission policies. You can also track the status of your queries, and view stats about how each agent generally responds to queries sent by those using the system.

Duotrope: Duotrope has a searchable database of publishers, including literary journals and ebook publishers. You can search based on payment levels, genre, type of publisher, length of the work, and more.

Generators

Seventh Sanctum: Seventh Sanctum has one of the biggest collections of story generators out there. They cover mostly sci-fi and fantasy, though there are other generators, too.

Genre-Fiction Generator: This generator provides mostly steampunk-based storylines.

Serendipity: Another collection of fun generators.

The Evil Overlord's Plot Generator: Another stupid/fun plot generator.

Random Title Generator: I used this to come up with the title for one of my novels. Most of what it puts out is crap, though.

Tools

Writeboard: This is a great tool for collaborating with other writers.

Google Docs: Another tool that lets you collaborate with others or work on your own. The advantage to this is that you can access your files from anywhere, view previous versions, and have automatic backups.

Word Frequency Counter: While this isn't particularly useful, it can be interesting to look at the frequency of "problem" words (like "that" or "just") before and after editing.

Articles and Guides

I have literally hundreds of articles bookmarked, but here are three of the most useful and interesting.

How to Plot a Novel for Beginners in Writing: A very basic introduction to the three-act structure.

How to Write a Book in Three Days: A practical guide to writing very, very quickly.

How to Title Your Book: This is probably the most helpful advice I've ever found on how to come up with a title for your novel.

These are just some of the resources I use or have used. There are thousands of resources out there, so please feel free to share whatever you've found useful in the comments!

What's in a Name?

I'm rather well-known in the world of design blogs by the name I use on this site (which is my real, given name). Search for "Cameron Chapman" on nearly any search engine and I'm the primary result. And that's good. I've done a lot to get this name out there, in the design world, and am glad that I'm recognized (by Google at least) as "the" Cameron Chapman. The one non-fiction book I self-published (Internet Famous) is published under that name, further reinforcing me as an author of internet and design-related books and articles. I've been included in a handful of design and internet marketing ebooks under that name, too. Any subsequent books I publish (either myself or with a traditional publisher) in the world of design or the internet will be published under that name, too.

But now I'm starting to run into some problems.

See, I don't just write non-fiction, and I don't just write about design and the internet. I'm trying to branch out a bit, because I feel like it's important as a writer who wants some longevity, career-wise, to have at least a little variation in what they can and do write about. What would happen if tomorrow someone invented an "easy button" (to borrow Staples' terminology) for web design? If all you had to do to get a beautiful, professional-looking website was push a button, I'd be out of business. I don't see that happening any time soon, but a girl's gotta have options. Just in case.

And I write fiction, though none of it is published yet (self or otherwise). I have a handful of novellas I plan to self-publish (as ebooks) this year, and maybe a novel or two, as well. It's a conscious decision I've made, based on my own goals and aspirations in this business, and based on my own interests. Unlike a lot of writers, I like the marketing and business side of writing, almost as much as I like the writing itself sometimes. That doesn't mean I'd turn down a mainstream publishing contract for one of my novels (I probably wouldn't), but it does mean I'm not hung up on it. And I'd honestly rather spend my time marketing my fiction writing to readers rather than agents or publishers.

That brings me to my primary question: what name do I use for my non-design, non-internet work? And what name do I use for my fiction work? Should I continue to use Cameron Chapman for these things? Is that going to muddy up the "brand" I've created for myself in the design and internet worlds?

This would be so much easier if I wrote sci-fi or techno-thrillers, or even mainstream commercial fiction. In any of those cases, I'd definitely keep using Cameron Chapman, because there'd likely be some cross-over readership from the design and tech worlds to my fiction writing. Name recognition might help sell some books.

But I write fantasy, women's fiction, love stories, and a bit of soft sci-fi. All of my books are primarily aimed at women. And while there are female designers out there, it's an overwhelmingly male-dominated field, and I'm afraid there isn't going to be a huge cross-over readership (though I've had a few of my male "fans" and colleagues say they'd buy my books for their girlfriend/sister/wife/mother/etc.).

The issue I see, too, is that if someone isn't interested in my design writing, and they Google my name looking for my novels or novellas, they're not going to be able to find them. They might wonder if I'm the same person. They might think they've gotten the name wrong and give up looking. My name shows up on some very highly-ranked sites (Mashable, Smashing Magazine, etc.) and it's unlikely my fiction work will be able to compete in the search engines any time soon. Sure, this website generally shows up at the top of the search results when someone searches, but there's still a lot of room for confusion.

Except I want to be recognized under my real name for all of my accomplishments. I don't really like the idea of using a pen name. I just don't want to have it work against me if I don't. A lot of famous authors use pen names when they write in more than one genre (Stephen King/Richard Bachman, Nora Roberts/J.D. Robb, etc.). So there's obviously some advantage to doing so, or they wouldn't bother.

The way I see it, I have a couple of options:

I can keep writing everything under Cameron Chapman, and just hope that people can figure out that yes, I'm the same person doing a bunch of different stuff, and find what they're looking for regardless. If I go this route, I'll probably redesign this site and add more of a landing page with information about my various projects to help clarify things.

I can use my initials for my fiction writing: C.J. Chapman. I'm not wholly opposed to this. Except then it presents the problem of whether or not to keep using this domain as my primary website for everything, or if I should create a clear divide between Cameron Chapman and C.J. Chapman. Which would mean an extra website to keep updated and maintained. I'd probably have to do the same thing for Twitter and Facebook, too.

I can make something up entirely for my fictional works. If I went this route, I'd probably take it one step further and use a different pen name for each genre that I write in. I really don't like this idea, though. I have enough different (character) voices and personalities in my head as it is, and this would just add to the confusion. And then I'd have to set up Twitter and Facebook accounts for each of these personalities, and I see the whole thing turning into one giant logistical nightmare.

I can see pros and cons to each of these options. I'm going to have to make a decision soon, as I plan to start putting novellas out this spring, and the last thing I want to do is change my name after I've done that.

If you're an author who's gone through or is considering the same thing, I'd love your take on this. I'd love the opinion of any agents or publishers out there, too. Leave a comment if you have any input for me!