Sarah Scheele's Blog, page 22

The Maid of Everheft

I suppose I could call this a heroine spotlight, but I want to talk about more than just Everwynne. The Great Prince—who I realized I didn’t give an actual name to when I wrote Everwood—has a big part to play in the story too. So they really should be talked about together, partly because the Great Prince’s conversations with her are what make the story so funny. I’d started this story as a bit of an imitation of “Bride-of-Christ” allegories in Christian fantasy. So it was really surprising to me, and not what I’d planned, when the Prince turned out to be more like Ewan McGregor. Ewan McGregor in Attack of the Clones, no less, with a beard and hair like a wig. I hadn’t been aware that Ewan McGregor was considered to be, or ever played, a Christ-figure. True, by the time General Kenobi in Clone Wars rolls around, he did start to look a bit like inferior stained-glass art of Jesus. But that’s just a coincidence.

Still (lol, lol, just being silly) my point is, like with many stories I write, the original idea turned into something else along the way. The Bride-of-Christ thing faded into Everwynne being the Bride-of-Someone-Else—someone who is rather funny and sees through her quite well, and agrees with the fact that she needs to get real. Everywnne is hiding from real life. Her tower is a fire hazard at this point—largely because she lives near a HUGE FOREST and her hair is in danger of catching on fire if she doesn’t comb it.

In the end he’s there to rescue her, so I’d call it a real love story. He cares about her completely and wants to help her get out of her locked mindset before something happens to her.
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And there will be more updates. 

Victoria: A Tale of Spain Has Arrived

In addition to a number of other changes on the website (always a work in progress, always) the new-and-improved Victoria is now available. For those of you who’ve downloaded the first half of Victoria in Facets of Fantasy, just skip to Chapter 7 to read the rest of the story and beyond to “Two Days in Celesta,” the amusing little add-on.

Victoria joins the long list of products I’ve put out quickly to reinvent my look. With the fairy-tale feel of the defunct “Alyce,” some action and drama from the old Victoria, and a ruggedness from the Spanish setting, it’s a fun book. The time period bounced around quite a bit, since it’s only lightly historical rather than truly a researched novel, but I settled on the early 1600s, during the reign of Phillip II’s son—a somewhat forgotten man who can easily double as the hilarious, vindictive and shady Lord Timson.

If you’d like to review this book, by all means hit the contact form. Copies are available in mobi and PDF.
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And there will be more updates. 

This Thing Called Formatting

Early this year, I decided to go with a signature font for all of my books—not to create a cheesy brand look (“Oh look, it’s the Sarah-Scheele-Way!”)—but because it’s really, really practical. I can make every book by a formula, formatting-wise, which takes some of the work out of putting books into the world, especially if I have many of them at once. I use French Script MS at 20 pt for chapter headings, and at about 28 or 30 points for title pages. I often use Montype Corsiva for the chapter page in paperbacks because it looks curly, but is smoother. French Script can start to look illegible if you have a lot of it lined up in rows. Book interior fonts are Calibri 11 if the book has enough pages and Verdana 10 if I want to puff out a smaller book like a short story. And Courier New (that’s typewriter font!) for the copyright page.

For interior margins, I use .8” for top margin; .75 for bottom and left; .65 for right; plus a .13 gutter. (The gutter is that place where the paperback book opens in the middle. Adding a gutter helps keep the text from sliding into that crease. Page numbers are Roman numerals for the front matter, per tradition, and ordinary for the rest of the book, and I use a great little free PDF maker called PDF ReDirect to merge the two together and make good PDFs overall. It can also be used to make covers for KDP paperbacks, which require uploading a ready-made cover as a PDF.

Except for Bellevere House (which also had its own fonts, etc) and its wraparound cover, I have a front cover and use the design in CreateSpace to make a wraparound by merging a ready-made back onto the front and adding colors and text. The end results look fine and I don’t have to fuss with wraparounds. I don’t expect the back cover of a book to be much except tell me the description and since paperbacks sell less than ebooks it’s not necessary to slave over them. CreateSpace is very specific about image quality compared to Kindle, so doing a paperback gives me a great, high-quality image ready to be downloaded for Kindle.

​And there will be more updates. 
 

Free and Not So Free

Let’s face it. Kindle free ebook promotions are questionable. Yes, they can be great—really great—for luring unknown people in to at least considering your book. But the temptation to view them as review copies should be ignored. Reviews are often spammy and negative when they do occur, and usually they don’t because a lot of people download free books and never get around to reading them. I’ve done it plenty of times myself. I want to know if the book might be for me and free gives the feeling I can take a chance on it. But at least ¾ of the time I realize it’s not for me and I don’t’ finish it. AKA, don’t review it.

When other readers have the same approach—and when hordes and hordes and hordes of authors take the route of offering free books—free becomes oversaturated and useless. Putting down money for a possibility of getting downloads won’t bring back anything unless it generates READERS. And free promos don’t actually do that for most books. Plus, the exclusivity requirement for using Amazon’s free programs means being locked down away from other potential markets. For this reason, I don’t rely on free downloads as much as I used to, even as a gauge of reader interest. (More downloads = more interest, right?) But there’s one problem. Most of the freebies even from big publishers are from authors who are secondary or soon disappear. If people aren’t willing to pay for your book, maybe you should rethink the book instead of caving and offering it for free.

So now I only use freebies on Amazon limitedly and only for one KDP Select enrollment cycle, if I do them at all. I don’t want to make readers lazy and think they can just get anything for free if they hold out long enough. 

And there will be more updates. 

Victoria: Extended Edition

The rewrite of Victoria took off after I worked with the old Alyce manuscript. When transferring Alyce to Spain, it slowly merged into Victoria until the two became one. I changed Alyce’s name to Victoria, changed other character names to blend in, and voila! A perfect answer to all the endless riddles of “what to do with Alyce.”

As the second half of Victoria’s story, “Alyce” takes Victoria on a lighter-hearted tone that balances the opening and expands the world. More than that, giving her Alyce’s adventures and a quick tie-in to the Hirado for continuity developed Victoria’s character hugely. She actually seemed to learn from her earlier adventures and the second half shows her applying the skills she learned in the first. This gave the story of Victoria what I’d always been worried it lacked—a point.

The only differences are: some areas in which Alyce was a Cinderella figure—which was hard to work in once I blended her with Victoria, a duke’s daughter. (But the “Mrs. Codge” character was preserved in a few moments as a greedy, funny woman named Duchess Almezia.); and some of the “fake-history” politics of the end of Alyce. Moving it to a real country made many of these null. And I’m adding a little story I wrote years ago called “Two Days in Celesta.” It’s a little Cinderella variation that will go in the back of Victoria to keep some of that Cinderella flavor that might have been lost in translation-to-Spain. And I found a really pretty discarded cover I'd briefly used for "Alyce," before changing it. Using it makes the merge complete. 

The longer, extended Victoria should be available soon, I hope. 

​And there will be more updates. 

Ryan Johnston

Ryan, the second half of the pair that forms the main plot of Ryan and Essie, is different from Essie in every possible way.
He has far more brains than Essie, but surprisingly he’s also more of an idealist. More of a thinking person altogether, for an 11-year-old. He often acts like a jerk. He is extremely rude and standoffish to Essie from the beginning and her resentment over this is what eventually mushrooms into their hostility to each other. Ryan is a bit of a loner and easily makes that known. More than that, he thinks he’s smarter than other people and looks down on them, especially if they have knee-jerk reactions or instinctive feelings about things. Ryan believes in thinking first, foremost, and forever, not in self-confidence or assertive behavior to others. Not that he’s a pushover—he just doesn’t believe people are interesting enough to show off to them.

However, Ryan has much more of a moral conscience than Essie. Even when he does very selfish things, like to Tarvelas, he does so consciously as a decision, showing mental superiority to someone thoughtless. Tarvelas respects this about him and explains that he is being given a life choice similar to her own—a great compliment from one chosen by God as The Voice. When Essie hurts people, it’s because she truly doesn’t see their needs or limits. Ryan always sees other people because he is trying to get them to leave him alone. He’s not without vanity and easily falls into the bad side of Caricanus. But he keeps a perceptiveness about others that makes him more likable than you’d expect from a kid who turns down friendship and would rather read about space than go there. 

And there will be more updates. 

The Whole Point of The Harrisons

To be honest, when I created A Year with the Harrisons it didn’t have much of a point. I just thought it would be so fun to create a serial novel. As the story progressed, I grew to think of it as a little satirical—satire on modern life being literally one of the oldest genres out there. We’re talking ancient Romans old, and probably older. I remember reading a Chinese poem ages ago in which man sarcastically wished his little heir would be a great, wise, and noble man who helped people and was a philosopher—“oh, who am I kidding?” He interrupted himself. “If I really want him to be happy, I will hope he writes enough junky required poetry to get in doing paperwork at court.”

Probably paraphrased since I didn’t memorize this poem. But you get the idea. In the end The Harrisons grew to have that sort of point—corruption and a mild sort of bullying, expectations with no real moral foundation except a social group that created them, pressure to do things that don’t even matter because people interested in them have leverage, and all the folly of that sort—well, that can pop up in the most unexpected settings. And wherever it appears, it is categorically funny. No one would ever accuse the people who appear in my story of being exactly corrupt. Silly, boring, or out of touch perhaps. But corruption sounds far too near Washington. Far too . . . well, too political. With high stakes and high dollar amounts on the table. Small town families in small town churches, talk of homeschooling and college, even musicians and sports—sure some of those might be ingrown or competitive. But corrupt? Not so much.

Possibly people think this type of person is not important enough. Corruption is for someone vaguely near Chancellor Palpatine in Star Wars. The people in the Harrisons aren’t important enough to be really corrupt—they’re just good ordinary people. Well, they are ordinary people perhaps. But I’m not so sure about good and I’m glad they aren’t. Good ordinary people are nice, but they aren’t very funny.

And there will be more updates.

Genres and Their Ways ~ Fake-History

Genre reading I’ve always felt injures books by forcing them into canned patterns that inhibits creative writing. By now genres and subgenres are a monstrous alligator that’s eaten up a large part of reader’s minds. And I’ve learned to be mindful of that and try to find ways to sidestep all that coded quicksand—what do the words “thriller,” “romance,” “dystopian,” and “coming of age” really mean, after all? Maybe not what you’d think—without letting the story be stifled. It’s quite possible. There are literally hundreds of subcategories within categories and it’s necessary to be very detailed about it because readers are getting that completely exact with their ideas of what each little category means.

Along the way I’ve learned to be as careful with "fake-history" as I would with a pan picked up out of the oven. “Fake-history” can include alternate history, reimagined events (such as what if England and Scotland had become separated during the Jacobite times and then you write a love story), or kingdoms that are clearly based on real countries but don’t use actual names or any actual history. True, it’s awfully tempting. You can just let your imagination fly and not be hampered by some boring twerp emailing you about a date or a use of slang. But fake history can easily obscure the story the most of any genre out there. In those cases, it's not a liberation at all. It’s a truly imaginary place where readers can pretend they’re reading a book they’re not and hide what they’re really getting out of it. A faintly historical-feel setting can be a delight, but it has to be done just right. Otherwise it just becomes a launching pad for dishonesty.

More about other genres in a later installment.

And there will be more updates.

The (Not So) Lazy Days of Summer

As the summer goes on I’ll be moving back into writing mode and have less time for blogging. Victoria & Alyce need to have something finally done to them, as well as a new cover for Bellevere (I didn’t see the completed wraparound covers of the other authors until much after publication), a 3rd Palladia book needs to be written, and then there’s always The Prince’s Ball.

So I’ll be reducing posts to 3 a week and only one a day. I’ve normally been doing 2 posts each on Tuesday and Thursday, but that leaves a big chunk of four days with no new content over the weekend. I’ll put a post on Saturday and then one each on Tuesday and Thursday, at least as long as I have content to put up.

After getting out so many new books in a short space of time, it’s the right moment to switch gears. I’ve still got a lot of work to do because I want to have all my books in place before I begin to start really marketing outwards from this blog. Writing is taking priority now, so blogging will be gentle trickle, just some little light posts here and there, until I’m ready to show a new batch of books.

And there will be more updates.
 

Ryan, Essie, and The Future

Although I love Ryan and Essie in a special way—and I think it is a special story, with very unique characters, regardless of how I feel about it—I’m going to retire it from the website. It will still be available for sale, but after examining my website, it doesn’t fit with the look that’s developing. I don’t have any other children’s books and children’s is a pretty specific market. It’s hard to overlap it with YA or adult books. I love to read children’s books, but I don’t write them enough to move the marketing slant in that direction, and Ryan and Essie appears obtrusive.

However, it would still be a great story for people to read. I’ll even keep the ebook around on Amazon for a while (I usually get rid of ebooks and go paperback-only for retired books.) It will also be on the Specialty page, replacing The Test of Devotion, which will give people a chance to pick it up for longer than the couple of days of a KDP free promotion.

Regarding free promotions and what I think about them (and how I use them) I’ll post on that later. The Test of Devotion also has some plans in the future, which I’ll get to as well.
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And there will be more updates.