Neale Sourna's Blog, page 10

Neale Sourna's Eclectic and Covers at Radionomy.com

Jon Snow is dead. Yay!

So, is the show completely to mostly off book now--and, technically, yeah, since book six not out yet--or what...?

My opinion. Jon Snow is dead. Yay! He can be temporarily dead then breathe again, knowing he has served his full watch on the Wall and can now move on to higher, greater things to protect us all.

Like discovering that his dad was his uncle and that he is more closely related to the Dragon Queen....

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 Game of Thrones, Season 6: Hall of Faces Tease (HBO) at YouTube

Short Stories by Neale Sourna

http://stories.neale-sourna.com/

SHORT  STORY  /  SHORT  STORIES  /  SHORT  NOVELLA

        "Although some say otherwise; there is NOTHING WRONG with SEEKING PLEASURE and ENTERTAINMENTS that bring true satisfaction and joys which hurt no one.
        "In fact, they PUT YOU IN A GREAT AND LOVELY MOOD, which is great for everyone! "


SHORT STORY COMPILATION
with AUTHOR NOTESLIBIDINOUS 1A - Writing Lessons: Author Notes, Short Stories, Poems, and Novel Excerpts
SHORT STORY COMPILATION
(only stories, no notes)LIBIDINOUS 1 - Short Stories, Poems, and Novel Excerpts
SHORT STORY COMPILATIONNCA JOURNAL 1 is Adult Erotic Fiction, the compiled short stories from Volumes 1-3 of North Coast Academies' Diary.

PRINT BOOK (POD) and EBOOK[much of single story editions BANNED by Amazon Kindle!]
SHORT STORY COMPILATION / NOVELLA3 SEX VIEWS: ROSS, LAILA, SASCHA - 3 interlocked tales of our naughty valedictorian, her nerdy friend, and her dad, uh, handsome and packin' stepdad.
SHORT STORIES, NOVEL EXCERPTS, and MORE...!        "And, really, SEEKING SADNESS instead of SEEKING JOY is truly a sad business to be about, and a more suspicious activity than pleasure and joy seeking.
        "Joy is a SMILE, a GREAT FEELING, and ECSTASY without limits.
        "It's as seamless as an egg.

short story / novel excerpt        A post Second World War (WWII) love story / novel excerpt.
        World War II's been over two years; but, days ago Temple and her little dog Wuffer found Tommy, drinking the morning's milk outside the door of his own family home, like a stray tomcat, finally returned, after seven long years, from God only knows what covert war ventures.
        Temple is now a young widow, who's kept her adopted home safe, its hearth warm and loving; Tommy's a restless, wandering warrior with a perilous past.
        No longer the elder teen boy, teasing her while she hurries to blossom from child to adolescent; he's now a man grown, teasing her, and still making her desire flame out of control.

_2679 words, Soft Romantic Erotica / Sensual Romance

_full novel is work in progress
long short story / novella        Gorgeous, biracial rich kid, Tad, gets whoever he wants, male or female, and he has a relentless hard on for his English professor, Dr. Hupper, whose magnificent black cock Tad's stuffed down his eager, tan-white throat and given hand jobs; but, youngster Tad wants serious, naked alone time with his favorite teacher's ebony body.        While fellow student, Quen "the queen," a blonde twink, whose smooth and hairless, boy toy ass virginity is reserved for Top Tad. Bottom boy Quen's in love and dying to be his doormat and cum catcher.
        So, do you think delicious Tad will get BOTH of his conquests in one room, in one bed, all completely naked, with himself sandwiched between his Quen's sweet bottom and that masterful black assbuster?
        Oh, I know my greedy Switch boy Tad will.

A Lust Novella (M/M/M)
[22 horny chapters, 25,139 words] 
long short story / novella / novel excerpt        A lawyer makes a pilgrimage to a corporate titan in order to get his help with freeing her client from a death sentence; knowing he's ... “interested” in her.         But, her appeal to this billionaire's sense of justice won’t be enough; she’ll have to curry and satisfy his lust for her, first, in order to save her client’s life. But can they both just walk away afterward?

_10,540 words

_full novel is work in progress
short story / novella / novel excerpt        In ancient times, a legendary half Egyptian general's rage and jealousy may be his downfall, when he seeks to break a sacred sexual alliance between his Amazon shaman / sorceress mate and her royal allies.

_erotica novel excerpt,
over 10,000 wds! 

_full novel is work in progress




SHORT  STORY  /  SHORT  STORIES  /  SHORT  NOVELLA

        "Although some say otherwise; there is NOTHING WRONG with SEEKING PLEASURE and ENTERTAINMENTS that bring true satisfaction and joys which hurt no one.
        "In fact, they PUT YOU IN A GREAT AND LOVELY MOOD, which is great for everyone! "

short story / novella / novel excerpt        In ancient times, a legendary half Egyptian general's rage and jealousy may be his downfall, when he seeks to break a sacred sexual alliance between his Amazon shaman / sorceress mate and her royal allies.

_erotica novel excerpt,
over 10,000 wds! 

_full novel is work in progress

DIA'S COACH (1)        Young Dia is a naughty cheerleader, a Lolita, who prefers older men, well, one particular older man. She wants everyone’s favorite team coach and teacher, Mr. Dean.        He’s been good and strong, resisting her; but, he’s weakening.... 
        And lovely Dia always gets what she wants.
        So, when she enters Mr. Dean’s home, in nothing but lace and desire, he’ll break and switch gears, teaching teenager Dia what a man, not a boy, really wants when fucking his very willing student whore.

_10,746 words!

DIA'S WEEKEND with COACH (2)        Unreleased; work in progress.
        Dia's still on her virgin lovemaking weekend with teacher Mr. Dean, her school's favorite and winningest team coach.
        "He builds men," administration says. Now, he's building a young woman to satisfy his needs and appetites, molding youngster Dia into the kind of lover he wants.
        He's teaching the willing teenager all sorts of naughty things she eagerly wants to learn and accomplish, like having him assfuck her virgin ass.
        Anything to please Mr. D.

DIA'S TEAM BANG (3)        Dia’s the only cheerleader on the team bus filled with excited, champion ball players, managers, a middle-aged co-coach, and Mr. Dean, the one teacher / coach Dia’d open her lovely thighs wide for, anytime and anywhere, and secretly already has.        Dia would do ANYTHING for her man’s pleasure. So, Mr. D will test his girl’s trust and love for him, because the man has a banging hot surprise for her AND his teenaged athletes, on the long ride home after their championship win.
        There will be slippery hot fun for all, as sweet Dia opens wide for her first willing gangbang. “Gentlemen, get in line.”

_16,006 words!!

DIA'S GROWN UP (4)        More... The aftermath.... 
        Unreleashed; work in progress.
        Dia has done anything and everyone to please Mr. D; but now she’s recuperating and there are consequences for both of them.

short story        A sexy woman, a nameless man; she picks him up, as her husband watches, then she invites the new man to enjoy sex with them in their wealthy suburban home.
        Swingers, threeway sex, and more.

_9078 words
extended short story from Playgirl Magazine version]
AND bonus poem        A businesswoman's emotional conflict between overthinking versus her erotic needs is tested when she's caught in the rain with the man who keeps her mind and emotions distracted.
        But, will she overthink a playful shower together, too?

_3218 words Erotic Romance short story

[shorter version published in PLAYGIRL MAGAZINE]

Plus a BONUS Love Poem:
A Lesson in Passion
short story        Dez is a willful, stubborn hottie, the bisexual top stripper and erotic dancer [exotic dancer] at Max’s club; independent to the bone, she won’t be controlled.
        But, enter Mr. Dark, a powerful, dangerous, wealthy player, a corporate gangsta with an eye only for sexy Ms. Dez.
        He’s certain he can teach this free girl a few things.
        In lust and love, what is “control,” what is “danger,” when two headstrong people are in conflict over their mutual desires, at the foot of a stripper’s silver pole.

_9587 words Erotic Romance
short story        Annie’s new temp, Ryan, with the fascinating ass, is great at his job, on his first day, but he’s driving her to distraction. She can’t get anything done.        When Annie works late and alone, to catch up on work, gorgeous Ryan returns in order to show her what he’s really freelancing in. 

_1558 words!

short story INCLUDES:
F-R-E-E
PROF TEACHES TE - MFM        A bisexual, MALE Professor, newly tenured and bored at his college’s Student / Faculty mixer, discovers two young Freshmen openly hav­ing sex — a gorgeous, brown-skinned classic Greek “godling” (MALE) and a beautiful, gold-skinned mixed race coed FEMALE.
        Professor’s enormous “Clydesdale - Shire” of a “horse cock” and his superior use of it lures the two to pursue and invite him for intimate, private sex fun, during a student dorm kegger night.
        Prof may have academic tenure — a protected and permanent job — but, he might still lose it all over these two.
        Do you think they’ll be worth it? Oh, yeah, Professor knows they will.

_13,760 words approx.

FREE BONUS INCLUDED: Professor privately tutors a certain Tight End footballer. The boy will definitely get more than his grades up, to save his place on the team, while Prof rams knowledge into him.

_5930 words approx.

Total words: 19,690
PROFESSOR TEACHES TIGHT END - MFM
short story ONLY
as individual purchase        Professor privately tutors a certain Tight End footballer.

The boy will definitely get more than his grades up, to save his place on the team, while Prof rams knowledge into him.

_5930 words approx.

Comes included as BONUS with TENURE - MFM
short story INCLUDES:F-R-E-E
PROF TEACHES TE - MMM        A bisexual, tenured, MALE college professor, bored at a Freshmen mixer, discovers two young freshmen boldly having sex openly — a gorgeous, brown-skinned classic Greek godling (MALE) and a beautiful, gold-skinned mixed race MALE.
        Prof’s enormous “Clydesdale - Shire” of a horse cock and his superior use of it makes the two pursue him and invite him for some very intimate, private fun during a dorm kegger night.
        Prof may have academic tenure — a protected and permanent job — but, he might still just lose his career over these two.
        But, do you think they’ll be worth it? Oh, yeah, Professor knows they will.

_13,761 words approx.

FREE BONUS INCLUDED: Professor privately tutors a certain Tight End footballer. The boy will definitely get more than his grades up, to save his place on the team, while Prof rams knowledge into him.

_5934 words approx.

Total words: 19,695
PROFESSOR TEACHES TE-MMM
short story ONLY
as individual purchase        Professor privately tutors a certain Tight End footballer.
        The boy will definitely get more than his grades up, to save his place on the team, while Prof rams knowledge into him.

_5934 words approx.

Comes included as BONUS with TENURE - MMM

short story        A wedding, a reception brawl, and the bride and groom’s wedding night will be in jail. Or will it?

_866 words Romance
short story        Dot com queen, Lara, runs an internet site for rough sex. Her own boring romantic life has her observing the online site communications of a client, named Wil. She makes contact with him, as Dennie, one of her aliases, who "works for her."
        When he decides he wants to meet "Dennie" in person, Lara puts herself in the perilous position, because rough stud Wil make break her company, break her, and bust her cunt to pieces. 

_3750 words!
Tango with Me        Unreleased; novella is work in progress.
        Elaine left Cleveland, Ohio, USAfor Buenos Aires, Argentina the home of sultry Argentine Tango to learn from the best-a man, named "K," she's only seen in shadow and smoke in a documentary.
        He's not the man on the screen, a fiction; this is a living, dangerous man of sensuality, and a bit of cruelty.
        So is the Tango he teaches her, until she's ready and had enough of fiction and the push and shove of dance, to find herself exposed before all and doing the "Horizontal Mambo" upright.

Free_998 wds Complete original story
Growing into a novella / novel
story with novel excerpts        STEVE is a horrid bad boy, envious of friend ALEX's turn-around attitude with his soon-to-be new love, KARA, but grandma's monkey's paw, gives Steve complete control over anyone he wants; even Alex's sweet new lady, a virgin; against her will ... sort of.
        But, "complete control over a strong-minded" woman isn't absolute and may get him DAMAGED, permanently.
        Plus MORE stories and fascinating excerpts.

_104 pages
   "There is language, both SENSUAL AND SPIRITUAL, language constructed of words and gestures and tones and more layers of WHAT YOU FEEL AND ARE, which can lead us in and out and into so many PLEASURES and JOYS.
        "That's what I write, for print and digital content.
        "PERPETUAL, AROUSING JOY!"
--Neale Sourna


short storyVol 1, Issue 1 -
Laila: Cozy With Daddy
_7857 words
        Brainy private school virgin, Laila Mariah Deever, seduces her handsome, middle-aged stepfather, Ross, for her first incestuous cherry-picking fuck.
short storyVol 1, Issue 2 --
Yune: Suck My Kiss
_3677 words

        Basketball jock Yune gets his stone hard, young Korean American cock sucked by a first time knob munching, K.A. church virgin, while his favorite, bespectacled, brown-skinned teen goddess secretly watches, and then later he's sucked off by a classmate's red-haired, society MILF mom.
        What a great birthday week he's having!
short storyVol 2, Issue 1 --
Ross: Daddy's Little Whore, uh, Seductress
_8401 words 
        Sexy middle-aged stepdad, Ross Deever, wakes naked beside his newly deflowered, multi-racial stepdaughter, Laila; then vainly tries abstaining from hitting it again. And again. With a vengeance.


short story collection / novellaVol 3, Issue 1--
3 Sex Views: Ross, Laila, and Sascha
_16,337 words

3 HUGE, hardcore stories for the price of just 1!!! A short story complete trilogy.

INCLUDES:

Vol 3, Issue 1.1 --
Sascha: Laila's Classmate-Public Parking, Sex Squared [8289 words]
Vol 3, Issue 1.2 --
Laila: Smarty Schoolgirl-Daddy's Willing Little Slut
[3711 words]
Vol 3, Issue 1.3 --
Ross: Laila's Stepdad - My Daughter's Anal [Asshole] Cherry
[4337 words] 
short story 1Vol 3, Issue 1.1 --
Sascha: Laila's Classmate - Public Parking, Sex Squared
_8289 words
short story 2Vol 3, Issue 1.2 --
Laila: Smarty Schoolgirl - Daddy's Willing Little Slut
_3711 words
short story 3Vol 3, Issue 1.3 --
Ross: Laila's Stepdad - My Daughter's Anal [Asshole] Cherry
_4337 words

LOVE'S BITTER END
at Neale Sourna        Do you know the flavors of your lover?
_807 words
LOVE'S BITTER END
at Kink-EMagazine        Do you know the flavors of your lover?
_807 words
short story        A sexy woman, a nameless man; she picks him up, as her husband watches, then she invites the new man to enjoy sex with them in their wealthy suburban home.
        Swingers, threeway sex, and more.
contest short story       Locked in a coffin for an Initiation practice, trans Kar is terrified; but androgynous Dev is the only one to offer help.         And Dev, who all Kar's friends dislike, is the one Kar truly wants. It's gonna be a long three day weekend.


 MORE.....

Cinema Law: What Does “Work For Hire” Mean for Moviemakers? By Gregory R. Kanaan on March 2, 2016

http://www.moviemaker.com/archives/blogs/cinema_law/work-for-hire-moviemakers/

Writers this applies to the page of any sort: short story, novel, stage play, film script, game....

Most clients I've interacted with THINK AND BELIEVE, incorrectly, that these three words together means they own your work, without giving you an outline without giving you a substantial payment, and without your name attached and hostilely shutting you down about using it as a work sample.

At least Hollywood normally attaches your name to the work for your portfolio.

Me. Always insert in your contract or notes exchanged between you and the client those hand car dealer words: As Is. Meaning this story in this exact form only, in case that short story grows into a novel or three or a screenplay, etc.
=========================================


Q: I was hired to work on a film as a DP and the contract stated that it was a “work for hire.” I’ve seen that in a bunch of employment contracts, but I never really understood what it meant. Can you shed some light on it?
The work for hire (WFH) doctrine deals with your ownership rights over the copyright to any work you produce for someone else. Unfortunately, it’s so often misunderstood by both employees and employers that I think people get it wrong more often than they get it right. And since most filmmakers make their living by creating their work on someone else’s dime, they rely heavily on the WFH doctrine, even if the terms “work for hire” or “work made for hire” are never uttered. So to clarify things, here’s a brief primer on WFH. Buckle up, it’s about to get informative!
 What Is Work For Hire?
The WFH doctrine is a very specific legal principle that arises under U.S. copyright law. The basic premise is that in certain situations, an employer will automatically own the copyright to work you do for them as a matter of right. But the manner in which an employer can assert that right depends heavily on whether you’re hired as an employee or an independent contractor.
 The Employee Work For Hire
If you’re hired as an employee, the work you create for your employer doesn’t belong to you, it automatically belongs to the employer. End of story. In employment situations, the ownership of copyright is not determined by the artist’s handiwork; it’s determined by the motive and desire of the employer. How will you know if you’re in an employment situation?

Look for the traditional trappings of employment: salary, benefits, co-workers, office, boss, limited control over your work, etc. If you find yourself in this situation, the only way you can retain the copyright to work you’ve created is if the employer gives it to you in writing.

For example, if you’re hired as a full-time editor at a production company, any work you do within the scope of your employment (i.e. editing, color correction, mixing) will automatically be owned by the production company. This, by the way, may also extend to work you create outside your employment too, especially if that outside work falls within the scope of work you would have created for the employer.

But you and I both know that most filmmakers don’t work as employees; more often than not they work as freelancers. And when you’re hired as a freelancer, the rules change dramatically.
 The Independent Contractor/Freelancer Work For Hire
If you’re hired as an independent contractor or freelancer, the employer will own the copyright to your work only if all of these requirements are met:

1. The work is custom-ordered or commissioned;

2. Both parties agree in writing that it’s a work for hire;

3. The work falls into one of these nine categories: a contribution to a collective work, a part of a motion picture or other audiovisual work, a translation, a supplementary work, a compilation, an instructional text, a test, answer material for a test, or an atlas.

If you’re a freelancer and just one of these requirements isn’t met, it isn’t a WFH and you keep the copyright. One of the biggest misconceptions I see with freelancers is that they usually assume once the work is complete, they no longer have ownership rights and walk away, not realizing that they still own the copyright.

So for example, if you’re hired as a cinematographer on a film, as long as you and the employer agreed in writing that it’s a WFH, the copyright will be owned by the employer, since film is always a custom job and is one of the nine categories specified under copyright law.

How will you know if you’re an independent contractor? Look for factors like like greater control over the work, using your own equipment, working out of your own home or office, working on your own time, employment end dates, words like “freelance” or “independent contractor,” etc.
 Moving Forward
Believe it or not, it’s not always easy to tell whether you’re an employee or an independent contractor, and you and the employer may have different views on it. In many cases, you might find that the employer refers to you as an “employee” even though from the outside it looks like you’re a freelancer. Maybe you work in the employer’s office and you receive a salary, but you’re using your own gear and set your own hours. How do you deal with an employment situation where it’s unclear what your status is?

Clarity is the antidote to that kind of ambiguity. Every employment contract should state whether, a) you’re being hired as an employee or a contractor, and b) whether you or the employer retains the copyright. In fact, WFH can get so muddled that I’ve stopped using the term in any contract I draft. I simply state which party retains the copyright because the actual words “work for hire” can cause more confusion than they resolve.

Film producers, take note: Be clear and concise when hiring. It’ll help avoid any copyright ownership conflict down the road. If you’re a filmmaker looking to get hired on your next job, make sure you discuss what to do with that copyright in every contract you sign with an employer. You will probably have to give it up in the end, but that’s the price for continuing to work in a field you love. And if you’re an employee in the film industry where job security is scant, you may not own the copyright to your work, but you can take solace in the fact that you have a steady job. MM


Have a legal question you want our advisers to answer in a future installment of Cinema Law? Send it into staff@moviemaker.com with the subject line “Cinema Law Question.”

Gregory R. Kanaan, Esq. is a Boston-based attorney representing artists, filmmakers and designers in Massachusetts and New York. His practice focuses on entertainment and art law, as well as intellectual property issues. He has resolved disputes involving copyrights, publicity rights, trademarks, and contractual disputes for a wide range of independent filmmakers and design professionals. 

Prior to becoming an attorney, Mr. Kanaan was a television producer, creating documentaries and series for The Discovery Channel, Court TV, TLC, and A&E, among others. When not practicing law, Mr. Kanaan writes for his blog, The [Legal] Artist , which aims to educate creative professionals on the legal issues that affect them most. 

The answers to legal questions provided here are for general education and information purposes only, and are not legal advice or legal opinions. The information provided in this article is not intended to create a lawyer-client relationship between Mr. Kanaan and a reader.
Image photographed by Mark Simakovsky, posted on MovieMaker‘s Instagram.

Hot, Passionate, SEXY READING for Adults...!

Hot, Passionate, SEXY READING for Adults...! WARNING! If you are under 18 years of age, or are offended by sexually explicit material, or if it is illegal in your community to view such material, exit now. EXIT SITE. Viewing material or clicking on any links within this site means you understand and accept responsibility for your own actions, releasing the owners, partners, creators and affiliates of this site of all liability.
==============
        Did you know that even with  HIGH  QUALITY,  AWARD-WINNING  STORIES, you can still have a few selected out and BANNED by Amazon Kindle? Yes, I have products for you actually BANNED by Kindle (download the .pdf), some after Amazon had contractually accepted and SOLD for years.
        Anyway, there are OTHER STORES ... to help  YOU  READ  WHAT  YOU  LIKE.
-------------------
        REMINDER, LOVERS: Your Anniversary! Your Lover's Birthday! St. Valentine's Day! Sweetest Day! Christmas Love Gifts! And Love and Repeat. Because EVERYDAY is A DAY FOR LOVERS.
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        COME  BACK  OFTEN  and read what  NEW  STORIES  I have in store  FOR  SEXY  LOVERS,  like you. 'Cause  YOUR  SPECIAL  HOLIDAY  and  YOUR  SPECIAL  CELEBRATION  is coming, soon, and you want something that is  ALWAYS  SEXY,  LOVING,  and  SPECIAL.
        Stay right here. Slow down. Breathe. Relax. Look round my site for excitement that  TURNS  YOU  ON, or excitement BANNED by Amazon Kindle and GOOGLE PLAY (yeah, I am just THAT damn naughty on the page, people), and then  SHARE  with  YOUR  LOVER.

HARDCORE Our hardcore main line
[sensuality is R, NC17, X, XXX]

medium and hard erotica / sensual romance / romantic erotica
SOFTCORE Our softcore line
[sensuality is PG13, Soft R]

soft erotica / sensual romance / romantic erotica and general fiction
NONFICTION Our nonfiction line
[PG13, R, NC17, X, XXX]

nonfiction
MORE... Other projects Neale Sourna has written and have been published beyond PIE.

The Shatzkin Files / There is very profitable revenue that the organizational structure of big publishers makes it hard for them to get / Posted by Mike Shatzkin on January 14, 2016

In our Logical Marketing work with partner Peter McCarthy over the past couple of years, helping publishers with the next-phase challenges of digital marketing, we have identified three specific cross-functional opportunities that exist in every publishing house that are especially difficult for the biggest ones to address internally. 

All three of these can unlock substantial revenue and save the house from going down costly rabbit holes trying to address pain points that are clearly felt but not so clearly understood.

All of them are obvious to one degree or another (and have previously been talked about in some fashion on this blog), so they are being addressed in ad hoc ways. But structural barriers, most importantly organizational silos, make it hard for companies to evaluate them fully and come up with solutions that maximize the opportunities. The effort to take a systematic approach would have a big payoff for any of these. For that to happen, they’d have to be elevated to strategic issues being examined by the highest levels of the company.

1. AUTHORS. Author activity is becoming an increasingly important component of any book’s marketing impetus. Publishers not only don’t control the author efforts the way they do the marketing the house executes itself, often what the authors do isn’t even evident to them. That means the work by the authors is not included in the overall picture house marketers have of what is being done for the book. (And that can lead to some misleading analysis of effort and reward.) 

In most houses, editors serve as the point people for interacting with authors. They are neither trained nor supported for the increasingly critical and multi-dimensional role of advising on marketing and assuring that house and author efforts are, if not integrated, at least aware of each other. This effort depends almost entirely on the skill and initiative of the individual editors. There are few, if any, repeatable mechanisms in place to coordinate the author-based marketing efforts with the house’s other efforts.

2. GLOBAL. Both online accounts, most importantly Amazon but others as well, and Ingram have global reach that grows every day. The publisher’s metadata, telling accounts where they can offer the book and at what price, and the publisher’s marketing efforts combine to influence how effectively sales opportunities outside the home market are exploited. The reps who call on Amazon or Ingram are not adequately supported to address this the way they should be. They neither have enough understanding about where U.S. Amazon or Ingram can sell effectively nor about the house’s marketing efforts now being directed to offshore markets where real sales could result. 

The marketing piece is definitely non-trivial and how well it is done varies both across houses and, within houses, across markets. Developing and applying audience understanding, market-specific pricing, and scaled global marketing and publicity to many disparate markets worldwide is a huge challenge.

3. BACKLIST. Allocating incremental efforts to marketing backlist titles, which is a clear opportunity in the no-shelf-space digital age, defies the basic organization of any large publishing house. Publishers have time-honored processes and rules to allocate marketing spend and effort to books in their initial push, but not after it. Unlike the other two challenges, this one has no “natural” in-house owners. But no matter who ultimately owns the decisions, information needs to be developed to support them that isn’t aggregated and delivered now. 

Some books have a big built-in “margin advantage” because their advances will never earn out — the house gets to keep the part of the sales dollar that would go to royalties — and anybody managing these decisions would want to know that. They would also want to know which books have living authors and for which books the author is dead. They’d want to know which books have authors still active with the house or were signed by editors still active. And they’d certainly want to know which books had active marketing still taking place by an author or any other interested party. In other words, there needs to be the right combination of marketing information, technology, and staff for backlist organized into a workflow that does not yet exist anywhere.

All three of these opportunities are very difficult for anybody in-house to analyze and referee, even if there is high-level recognition of the opportunity, good systems-development capability (because the existing systems will not be adequate), and the will on everybody’s part to cooperate. The fact that they are cross-functional means there is no natural “home” for ownership of the solution in any house (even though the author and global opportunities would appear to have nominal owners — the editors and the account managers — in the current configuration).

All of them require marshaling data that is not routinely assembled in any house now. They require some funding. And they require placing authority — or at least some very powerful levers for persuasion — in somebody’s hands to do things that will still want substantial support from their colleagues and, perhaps, take some decisions away from them.

These three challenges are all being addressed in some fashion at the big houses. But the need to respect existing structures means they are addressed in a haphazard — situational rather than comprehensive — fashion. Every big house has coordination with authors on marketing taking place. Every big house has export sales through Amazon and other online retailers and Ingram in places the U.S.-based sales team never thought about in the past. And every big house tries to get digital marketing and sales benefits for its backlist.

What no house we’ve seen has managed for any of these three cases is the development of policies and workflows to maximize the potential opportunities across the entire output of the company. The opportunities here are, one book at a time, almost unavoidably obvious, so they are addressed in some fashion. But we know of no house where there is specific ownership of any of these challenges with somebody having the power to assemble the information and, as needed, implement cross-functional processes to address them. What inevitably results is ever-more-widespread recognition of the missed opportunities without a commensurate capability to fix the problem.

Oddly enough, smaller houses have some advantages here because they don’t suffer the handicaps of scale. Far fewer books means that ad hoc solutions are proportionately more effective. They have less bureaucracy keeping the author tethered to the editor relationship, so it is easier for marketers and editors to collaborate around promoting synergistic marketing between the house and the author.

Fewer titles and the greater sharing of information inherent to a smaller house also make both the global and backlist opportunities easier to grasp. Of course, they also have less in the way of resources to help authors with tech, or to do marketing work that will pay off in far-away places.

And the challenge of maximizing the backlist is orders of magnitude easier with a total title output that everybody can keep in their heads. Big publishers with literally tens of thousands of backlist titles need systems and rigorous monitoring of data and metadata to identify where to put additional effort.

Within each of the big houses, the first requirement to move on any of these is an overall situation assessment and some quantification of the size of the opportunity they present. That requires both data-gathering and collecting insights from key operators.

No matter what is found through that discovery effort, there will be choices for a house to make among possible solutions. There is no single universal answer — no “magic bullet” — for any of these. 

What’s best for each house will depend on existing procedures, personnel, culture, and capabilities. For some houses, the biggest challenges will be around developing and implementing the tech they need. 

For others, the bigger hurdle might be imprint silos. In other cases, a lack of transparency in international markets might be the largest obstacle.

The questions that need to be addressed are pretty clear and those are the same across houses. Should editors continue to handle all marketing conversations with authors, or should there be designees from the marketing department to take that role for some things? (We’ve seen that solution implemented in some places, but not systematically.) 

Do the Amazon or Ingram rep teams need to have global or export specialists (perhaps some already do), or should books just be allocated among the existing teams with foreign market opportunities being one of the considerations when they are divvied up? 

Does somebody in each publishing group take responsibility for marketing backlist, or is that role assigned to the sales department? And, in all cases, what systems are they using to do what they do?

Since no house we know has started with an assessment to bring organizational consensus to the reality of the opportunity and its size, these questions are addressed from the subjective perspective each imprint or function brings to the conversation.

Only by starting with an agreed understanding of each of these opportunities can there possibly be any consensus formed about how to address them. And as long as that it isn’t done, revenue is being left on the table and marketing money is being spent in something less than the most effective possible ways.

10 Habits of Highly Effective Writers by Robert Blake Whitehill

10 Habits of Highly Effective Writers By: Guest Column | January 1, 2016         All writers dream of knocking out thousands of words a day, publishing multiple books a year and seeing them all skyrocket to the top of the bestseller lists across the country. We dream because it’s a difficult task and not everyone has the drive to take the right steps. But of the people who do, they generally have instituted these 10 habits into their writing life to make sure that they are giving themselves the best chance to write something great. Here are the good habits you should develop and add in your writing life if you want to find success.
 
This guest post is by Robert Blake Whitehill. Whitehill is a classically trained actor, a critically acclaimed novelist, and an award-winning screenwriter. He has earned film festival wins at the Hudson Valley Film Festival and the Hamptons International Film Festival, and has written many highly rated episodes of the Discovery-Times Channel’s “The New Detectives,” “Daring Capers” and “The Bureau.”  

He lives in Montclair, N.J., with his wife and son, and when not cruising on the Chesapeake, or knocking around the sky over Tangier Island in a Cessna 152, Whitehill blogs and posts on Twitter about his home waters, and has crafted a number of articles for Chesapeake Bay Magazine. 

For more information, please visit robertblake whitehill.com.

1. READYes, this really is about writing. So, I mean it. Read everything. Authors can get so swept up in our core writing, feeding the ravenous social media beastie, and schlepping hither and yon for signings, that the window for reading narrows into a gunslit blocking all but a ray or two of literary sunlight. Focus on your subject area, but also broaden your tastes. 

You’ll have a deeper reservoir of tropes and details in which to dip your quill. Refreshing your inner author with invigorating reading will help prevent your style from becoming stale. The evocative power of reading is what inspired you to write in the first place, isn’t it? Stay connected to that wellspring of fresh ideas.
2. MANAGE TIMEWhen will you write? Before work, or after? On the weekends, or during the week? One hour-long session each week? Longer? More often? Be very specific with yourself, especially starting out, about the time you will commit to writing. 

Log and track your hours if you need to. Act like your own unreasonable boss. A few weeks of practicing mindful diligence will teach you how many pages you can produce in a given time period, and help you understand how to set and meet your goals. 

One thing effective, productive writers do not do is wait for inspiration. They go looking for it on a schedule, usually finding it very close by their computers or tablets.

[Here are 7 reasons writing a novel makes you a badass] 3. SET GOALSYou somehow knew that was coming, didn’t you? Set goals you can easily achieve. Set the bar low, then lower it even more, so you always step away from your writing session with a success, with a win, with progress. Whether you commit to two pages a week, or to twenty-five, as I do, make sure you get your pages done. 

If work, family, or any other facet of life glints you into distraction, stay up a little later that night, or get up a little earlier next day, so your goal is achieved. Fast or slow, stay on track like a freight train.
4. MANAGE SPACEWhat kind of writing space do you need to be productive? In the past, I sometimes wrote in busy cafes. For a time, I wrote between calls in the map room of the Montclair Ambulance Unit where I served as an EMT. Later I rented an office at C3 Workplace, where the only sick people were the characters in my head. Now I happily work in my home. Find or create the right space, the feng shui, the décor, and the soundscape that helps you do the work before you.
5. SET BOUNDARIESFamily and friends must get used to the idea that your writing is important to you. [Like this quote? Click here to Tweet and share it!] It requires time apart from the folks you love best, and who love you dearly. Repeat as kindly, and as firmly as you can that whatever else your roles in life might be, you are also a writer. Writing is not your hobby. It is not something to do to pass the time while waiting for folks to be available to distract you. Honor your calling. Honor your loved ones. 

Demonstrate a passionate devotion required by this consuming commitment to your people, and to yourself. They might grumble now and then, but they will get used to it. They will also share in your pride of accomplishment down the road.
Need an idea for a short story or novel? Look no further than The Writer’s Idea Thesaurus. Organized by subject, theme and situation categories, it’s the perfect writing reference to break out out of any writing funk. Order now from our shop and get a discount! 6. FINISHComplete your drafts! Don’t be the writer with that over-edited first chapter that’s been spun into absolute gold, but has nothing readable following it. [Like this quote? Click here to Tweet and share it!] I had a chance to hear Professor Charles Stegeman tell his Haverford College painting students over and over again to cover the whole canvas right away, then go back to polish the details. Was I painting then? No, I was modeling for the class, naked as a jaybird, and still as a stone, so I heard this exhortation plenty. By the end of every class, I also saw the wonderful results. 

Some days, yes, I warm up for writing by rereading the last couple of pages from the day before. Sure, I might toss in an easy edit or two. Then my daily goal beckons me forward into mysterious new territory, ever onward to completion of the draft. Now please stop thinking about me naked. That was many cheeseburgers ago.
7. NO SHOPPINGI learned this from my father, short-story author, and novelist, Joseph Whitehill. Do not shop your story ideas. Tell not a soul. Keep your thoughts secret. Say nothing until that first draft is complete. Don’t fear your idea will be lifted and plagiarized. That is possible, but unlikely. 

There is another kind of thief much closer to home. If you try to beguile and fascinate your family, friends, or lovers with the precious coin of your creativity too soon, it’s possible you will vitiate and squander that soul-twisting impetus to get it all down on paper. Ignoring my father’s advice, I regaled this friend, or that object of my desire, with some very juicy plots. Didn’t I have to justify calling myself a writer somehow? These cool plots were ample proof I was the genuine article, right? Wrong. 

It had the opposite effect on my output, and on my self-esteem. On more than one occasion I awoke the next day to discover that I could not even remember what my grand idea was. It was gone, leaving only a smoky, taunting wisp of a notion behind, like a half-forgotten dream receding into oblivion. 

To make matters worse, no one to whom I blabbed ever asked how that idea I confided had turned out, or when it would be published. Sit with that agonizing hot clinker of story burning in your gut until you’ve written it all down. Then, tell your friends. Hell, tell the world, because now you’ve earned the right.
8. CULTIVATE YOUR TEAMIn addition to helping your loved ones understand how important writing is to you, you will need a few folks in your corner with specific roles beyond missing your face while you are holed up at your work. Your committed listener will field your emails or calls about how you are sticking to your page count goals every week, or even every day. 

Your editor, as Richard Marek (Robert Ludlum’s editor on the Bourne series) did for me, will tell you the truth about your work, and offer suggestions on how to make it better. 

Your proofreader will give your manuscript that polished, professional look, as Suzanne Dorf Hall does for my stuff. 

You will need a cover artist to make your book leap off the shelf into a reader’s hands, as Studio042 does for my work. 

Perhaps you need an agent, or a manager, like my indispensable friend and confidant, Liza Moore Ledford. 

Whether you opt for independent publishing, or a legacy publishing deal, you will need a brash, dazzling PR team to help the world find you. For that, I go with Shelton Interactive every time. Find the people, the companies, who understand your work, and who are committed to your success not only as a writer, but as an author.

[The 12 Dos and Don’ts of How to Write a Blog] 9. LOVE YOUR READERSI don’t mean that you necessarily should have warm feelings for your readers. Real love is not just a feeling. It’s a job description. For the sake of argument, let us imagine a reader can comfortably tackle one page of a book every two minutes. 

This imaginary reader has an average heart rate of 70 beats per minute (except during the riveting parts of the story where that rate better shoot up. A lot.) So, that 400-page book will take about 800 minutes to read, or around fourteen hours for those of you playing the home version of our game. 

More to the point, that means your reader expends at least 56,000 irretrievable heartbeats on your work, out of a finite allotment of 2.25 billion lub-dubs. Put that way, you can see this is a truly enormous commitment. Honor and appreciate your readers’ investment by doing your very best work. It cannot be about the money for you. Be sure that your readers’ time feels well-spent, and not a pointless sacrifice.
10. COMMUNICATEBe available to your readers. Give them an email address where they can reach you, confident of your eventual reply. In addition to doing your best work, this is how you build a community of devoted readers. It may sound tedious, but after writing my first book alone for so long, I found that meeting and hearing from readers—my very own readers—made it all worthwhile, far outweighing a considerable financial return. 

Some writers might believe that good work is all that’s due and owing to one’s public. 

Now you know I disagree. In addition to hearing from readers, you might find yourself fielding questions from other writers in need of advice. This is a great compliment. Offer what thoughts you can. Be the author you wished you could talk to when you were starting out. 

As evidence of my sincerity, I can be reached at rbw@robertblakewhitehill.com. It would be a pleasure to hear what you think of my Ben Blackshaw Series, or to answer any questions that come to mind.

Sunless Sea, 80 Days and the rise of modular storytelling

The last few years have seen the rise of modular storytelling, which offers players something akin to a collection of short stories tied together with character or theme. They offer a wealth of self-contained vignettes for players to interact with, and new ones can be continually added, increasing the breadth and richness of the narrative.

Inkle's 80 Days is the most prominent example of this, casting players as Phileas Fogg’s personal valet, Passepartout, as the two make their way around a steampunk Victorian globe. Each city on the trip offers its own self-contained story, occasionally spilling out into other locations, but by and large limited by geography to something that you discover and leave behind as you circumnavigate.

Failbetter Games’ Sunless Sea adopts a similar approach, casting you as the captain of a vessel in the game’s ‘Unterzee’, ranging out of a mostly submerged London to discover the islands of its unlit ocean, each with its own history and events.


This story-telling approach fundamentally alters the structure of the development process, both before and after release. “The main reason to build the game this way was because we didn’t know how big it was going to be” Jon Ingold of Inkle tells me. “To be frank, we didn’t know if Meg [Jayanth, 80 Days’ writer] would give up halfway! We needed to make sure that, whatever happened, we could pull the game together and deliver it. But it also meant that we could be very flexible about adding diversions, side-content and additional routes.”

"This story-telling approach fundamentally alters the structure of the development process, both before and after release."

Alexis Kennedy, the Creative Director on Sunless Sea, has similarly positive things to say about how modular storytelling impacted scope-management. 

“It gave us a natural pattern for production. We developed the game through Early Access, we pushed out monthly-ish updates, and each update had 3-5 islands on it, until the whole sea was populated. That’s much easier for players to understand than story-line based announcements.”

What this also means is that players are less likely to see the ‘seams’, so to speak. Often in a standard linear narrative there are difficulties including everything that was initially planned, leading to scenes, plot points and sometimes whole characters being cut from the final game. 

With a modular approach, those ‘missing’ pieces are almost completely isolated from the other pieces of the story, leading to their absence being very hard to feel, as a player moves through the game.

Talking about the iteration process with both developers, it’s clear that modular storytelling helped immensely when it came to playtesting and iteration, too. For 80 Days, all Inkle had to do was get one trip around the world complete and they essentially had a working prototype. From there, it was just about adding cities that branched out from that already established route, and the game grew from there. A complete experience that just became broader and richer as content accumulated. 

Similarly, Sunless Sea’s islands ‘worked’ as soon as there was one of them thrusting out of its Unterzee. “We had much more informed ideas on how island stories should work by the end of the process than we did at the beginning,” Kennedy tells me “We didn’t have to commit to one form from day one.”

This was an important point, especially for Failbetter, but also for Inkle; both companies brought in freelancers to help write their games, and while Jayanth for 80 Days played a very central role, Sunless Sea had fully 30% of its islands written by freelancers. But when those freelancers don’t have to worry about maintaining absolute consistency with an already established story, they can produce much more interesting work.



“The Fallen London universe is big, sprawling and complex in the way that only worlds built by thoroughgoing nerds are complex.” Kennedy continues. “By isolating stories on different islands, we allowed our freelancers much more liberty to experiment, to add new odd lore, and above all to use a voice that was very different from our well-established house voice. The polyphony of different voices - I think – really added to the sense of exploring foreign spaces in Sunless Sea, and gave us a range and breadth of perspectives that would have been impossible if we’d had to squeeze everyone into the same approach.

"The benefits of the approach extend past release, too, as both games have proven. Taken today, 80 Days and Sunless Sea are far more expansive than they were when they originally launched. In the case of the former, each new platform (Android and PC), gave the team at Inkle a good excuse to add a big chunk of new locations and stories, each more outlandish and unique than the last.

“The post-release updates were an unexpected benefit, and not something we had planned for in earnest.” Ingold tells me. “But when we came to do it, it was just like continuing our development process from where we left off. It’s been particularly satisfying to weave extended new storylines into the existing framework, such as the jewel thief plot that, once activated, follows you around the world wherever you go.”

Similarly, Sunless Sea has been receiving regular new geography to its eponymous body of water, but despite the already well-established lore that they created with their browser based Fallen London, writing a new island didn’t require an absurd amount of research; instead they just had to reacquaint themselves with one element, and then the isolation of the sea did the rest.

None of this is to say that modular storytelling is a cure-all for games’ narrative woes. It’s difficult to argue that having isolated vignettes is more emotionally rewarding than wholly bespoke cinematic experiences, but that is also not to say that they can’t deliver a satisfying narrative arc. Both 80 Days and Sunless Sea have created their own ways of delivering that arc, and they’ve both managed it, with varying degrees of success.



“The level of drama [is] proportional to longitude.” Ingold tells me. “So the soup is too hot in Europe, the soup is on fire in India, and the soup is talking to you about your death in South America.” This, combined with the natural drama that comes out of dwindling resources and health states, means that on the average trip in 80 Days, you’re running out of money and time by the time you’ve crossed the Pacific. 

That the stories themselves then escalate in drama and stakes means that the final leg of your journey should feel like a third act, so to speak.

Sunless Sea is less rigorously structured, so it can’t rely on the same tricks. “One of the things we got right was the strength of the core loops.” Kennedy explains. 

“You leave port; you cross the darkness; you find the lights on the far side, which you’ve been anticipating during your time in the darkness. You do that again and again. And then, in aggregate, you complete a much larger loop, where you leave London for the unknown; explore a series of ports, and then return home. That outgoing-homecoming loop, with the relevant music and visuals to signal your departure and return, is the heart of the game.”

This structure also has a knock-on effect that I hadn’t considered until Kennedy pointed it out to me; player choice, when framed as a choice of where to go rather than explicitly what to do, becomes something that’s both very interesting and exceedingly manageable on the part of the developer. 

Instead of having to limit choices to the world of morality, and all the design headaches that that naturally leads to, you instead need only to provide a fork in the road, and the player will feel the weight of that choice bereft of the trappings of ethics that often present a choice that’s barely a choice at all.


“For the player to feel that the journey has meaning,” Kennedy says. “They have to be free to decide where they’re going; for them to be free to decide where they’re going, the ports have to be untethered and modular. Players long for the opportunity for self-expression. Anything that validates and extends that self-expression is welcomed, and plays to the medium’s strengths. 

"At Failbetter, we talk about ‘fires in the desert’ as a model for our variety of storytelling. Imagine a desert, seen from above. Paths lead between the villages in the desert. When travelers cross the desert, you can clearly see the route they take, where they stop off, and so on. But what if night has fallen? Then, all you can see are the little fires in the village. Occasionally, travelers emerge from the darkness and sit by the fires for a while, and then move on. But the routes they take between those fires belong to them alone.”

In other words, the player provides the context, and the game provides the stories. While the developer can provide certain elements that influence the order with which the stories are experienced, ultimately the final call is with the player. Especially in Sunless Sea, there’s no guaranteeing that a player will go to this island or this island first. In 80 Days, the only constant is Paris; everything else is up for grabs.

“Just as in a film the story is told through the edit, [here] the story is told through the darkened paths between the fires.” Kennedy finishes his conversation with me by saying. “In cinematic terms, it’s a montage; we provide the shots, the player does the arrangement. In comic terms, Scott McCloud calls it ‘the blood in the gutters’ – the creative space that exists for the audience to instantiate the potential between specific events. There’s not much space in a traditional told story for that."

LinkedIn Group: Game Writer Exchange 1,025 members

https://www.linkedin.com/groups/2578390

Writers are often THE LAST TO BE CALLED into the game planning and development process, but are expected to pull a gigantic elephant out of the tiny hat.

Just like art graphics and programming code good writing and especially GREAT WRITING needs time to build its understructure and then layer on muscle and flesh.

The more WE WRITERS share and give one another a hand up to get each and every one of us into projects earlier, the better our writing will be and THE BETTER THE GAMES WE WRITE WILL BE, and the sooner we’ll be asked to the party.

No more last minute literary rescues and trying to piecing together plots that makes all the already chosen graphics work. Which can be great—if it works—and disastrous and a blame on the writer when it doesn’t.

Let’s all move ahead, together.

[game writer group, game writers group, writer, games, game, narrative]

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