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Phil Giunta's Blog, page 64
April 19, 2016
Amazicon & A Day at Rehoboth Beach
Just spent a fantastic weekend with friends Steve and Renee Wilson at Amazicon in Wilmington, DE. We stayed at the convention on Friday evening through Saturday.
Since the con was slow and we weren’t moving books, we decided to pack it in Saturday evening and take off for a day in Rehoboth Beach on Sunday morning. All told, it was a fun weekend!
April 10, 2016
Write Here, Write Now is Available!
The second annual anthology from the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group (GLVWG) is now available from Amazon!
WRITE HERE, WRITE NOW contains an eclectic and engaging selection of short stories, poems, and essays from members of the group. In these pages, you’ll find humor, inspiration, thrills, and chills from new and veteran writers alike.
It is currently available in trade paperback with the Kindle version forthcoming.
GLVWG is a non-profit organization that seeks to encourage writers at all levels and to connect readers in the community with great books. We appreciate your support!
April 9, 2016
Book Review: Rise of the Machines by Kristen Lamb
There was once a time when an author’s only true concern was producing the best quality manuscript.
Over the last decade, that has changed drastically with the advent of social media and blogging. Now, writers are expected to have a platform—including a strong online presence—well before their first book is published.
What’s more, unless you’re of the stature of Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, no longer can published authors simply sit back and let others do the work of promotion and marketing. These days, the onus is ON US.
Enter Kristen Lamb, social media Jedi and author of Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World. I had the pleasure of hosting Kristen as the keynote at the 2015 Write Stuff writers conference in Allentown, PA where I purchased her book. I was curious to learn more about how to properly leverage social media and my blog to bolster my platform.
In her book, Kristen divides her lessons into five sections, providing a brief history of the publishing industry, the changes that have occurred (and are still occurring), and fascinating insights into human psychology and communication. She also explains why the traditional marketing methods are no longer effective today.
Before delving into specifics about social media sites, Kristen leads the reader through very focused chapters and sections about identifying your short term and long term goals, creating your writers platform, creating your brand, the types of friends and followers who will help writers with these efforts, and what it means to “go viral.”
With those concepts understood, we then delve into specifics about a few of the hottest social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. In addition to providing advice on how to manage your time and content, Kristen also offers tips on social media etiquette, how to avoid conflict and potentially sensitive topics, and handling internet “trolls” who insult and harass rather than politely disagreeing with something you post.
Along the way Kristen’s humor and anecdotes provide entertainment along with education that held my attention and prevented the material from becoming “dry”.
Although I have worked in the IT industry for over 20 years and have a solid grasp of technology, and although I am a published author who is active on social media, I came away from Kristen’s book with insights on how and where I need to improve my approach, especially to blogging.
I only wish I had known about Kristen before I published my first novel in 2009!
April 6, 2016
Sacrifice Play – A New Tale from Arbiter Chronicles!
Ladies and gents, if you enjoy science fiction and space opera, and you have not read or listened to Steven H. Wilson’s Arbiter Chronicles series, you are missing some of the best characters and stories in the genre. Here is your chance to get caught up.
Steven is releasing SACRIFICE PLAY, his third novel in a series of tales that spans 15 years and began as full cast audio dramas that have won both the Parsec and Mark Time Awards.
I had the honor of proofreading the manuscript for Sacrifice Play and it is a suspenseful adventure with outstanding characters. If you can spare three minutes, click here to let Steve Wilson tell you all about this latest installment of the Arbiter Chronicles in his Kickstarter.
April 5, 2016
Upcoming Appearances in April
I shall be sharing a table with Firebringer Press publisher and writer, Steven H. Wilson, at Amazicon: The Pop Culture Convention in Wilmington, DE, April 15-17. Artist pal Laura Inglis, who created the cover art for my novels, Testing the Prisoner and By Your Side, will be a guest as well. Actors, writers, comic book artists, and cosplayers will all be on hand for a fun, escapist weekend of genre entertainment. Hope to see you there!
The following weekend, I will be a guest at The Great Philadelphia Comic Con, April 22-24 in Oaks, PA. Celebrity guests include Bruce Boxleitner, Denise Crosby, Julian Glover, Ray Park, Robert Duncan McNeill, Garrett Wang, Roger Cross, and more! I will be sharing a table with fellow writer and pop-culture maven Joseph F. Berenato on Friday and Saturday. I will not be there on Sunday.
Hope to see you there!
March 27, 2016
Amazon Blocking Certain Reader Reviews?
This is a topic that came to my attention early in 2015. Although I kept it in the back of my mind, I did not pay it much heed at first, primarily because it had not yet happened to me or any of my fellow published writers. It still has not, to my knowledge, but two articles from July 2015 resurfaced on Facebook today and brought the matter back into focus. Since I have some free time on my hands today, let’s discuss…
In summary, Amazon will allegedly block a reader’s review of a writer’s book if Amazon can find proof of a relationship between the two on social media. To better understand the situation, click the links below to read the articles, then come on back.
Amazon Accused of Spying on Reviewer’s Social Media Profiles
Amazon Blocking Reviews from Authors’ Friends, Family, & Acquaintances
Amazon’s Review Policy is Creepy and Bad for Authors
All done? Great. As stated in both articles, Amazon has an obligation to protect the integrity of its reader reviews by keeping them objective. I completely understand this, of course.
However, let me offer this scenario: A reader, Wendy, leaves an effusive review for a book on Amazon or Goodreads (owned by Amazon for the past three years). The reader then sends a friend request to the writer, Lance, on Goodreads, and Lance accepts the request. Let me be clear—Lance and Wendy have NEVER met in person.
Later, Lance releases his second novel. Wendy reads it, loves it, and tries to leave another five-star review on Amazon…but now she can’t because Amazon has blocked it with the explanation that Wendy has a relationship with Lance on social media and as a result, they cannot allow her review.
Among the many purposes of social media, is not connecting people with similar interests one of those purposes? Is not connecting fans with their favorite artists and writers another such purpose?
I would answer yes to the above questions because how the hell else are artists and writers supposed to build their platforms in the digital age?
Does that mean then that due to Amazon’s policy, I as a published author must decline friendship requests from readers, else run the risk of Amazon blocking any future reviews from them? Does Amazon block negative reviews in this case as well as positive ones?
Has anyone experienced this? If so, I’d like to hear about it considering that so far, the only stories I’ve heard have been from articles such as those above.
Reviews are CRITICAL to a writer’s career, especially small press and indie writers as well as burgeoning writers at the beginning of their careers. By developing and enforcing this policy, how is Amazon–the champion of the indie writer–helping that writer flourish?
I am currently reading Kristen Lamb’s brilliant book, Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World. Kristen has made it her mission in life to connect writers and readers by providing guidance to writers on how to best use social media to build community and foster friendships–one of the very purposes of social media!
Yet, how can a writer adapt these practices when Amazon might be actively blocking reviews from readers who are connected to their favorite writers online?
Again, to my knowledge, this has not yet happened with any of my books. No reader has contacted me to report it. Yet, one or two of my more savvy readers, who are connected with me on Facebook, have stated that they are hesitant to leave reviews for my books because they heard about Amazon’s policy.
I urge them to at least try.
If the articles are accurate, then Amazon’s policy seems to contradict the very nature of social media.
Writers, has this policy made you think twice about accepting friend requests from readers? It has not stopped me, but time will tell if I’m going to lose reviews because of it.
To thank you for your time in commenting, one random responder will receive a free copy of my latest speculative fiction 
anthology, Somewhere in the Middle of Eternity!
Of course, if you read it and enjoy it, I hope you’ll consider leaving a review. Thank you for your support!
March 26, 2016
The Write Stuff is almost Write Here, Write Now!
Calling all writers! The 23rd annual Write Stuff writers conference, sponsored by the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group, is just two weeks away!
When: April 7-9, 2016
Where: Best Western in Bethlehem, PA
Our Keynote speaker is best-selling thriller writer, Robert Liparulo. Other presenters include Ramona DeFelice Long, Amy Deardon Kelly Simmons, Jon Gibbs, Catherine E. McLean, Suzy Kuhn, Shawn Smucker, and more! Click here to see our entire faculty.
Additionally, the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group (GLVWG) will launch our new anthology titled Write Here, Write Now. This is our second collection of short stories, poems, and essays written by our talented members!
I shall be at the conference on Friday night for the Meet and Greet and again on Saturday to attend sessions, help where needed, and enjoy a day with fellow wordslingers. Hard to believe it’s been a year since I was the conference chair!
Hope to see you there!
March 14, 2016
Send the Elevator Back Down
The exercise provided an opportunity to polish the speech, improving the focus and making it less frenetic as improv routines can sometime be. Truly, it’s a touch of personal history about my journey as a writer and to honor those who have mentored me, guided me, and eventually invited me to publish with them.
Send the Elevator Back Down
Phil Giunta
Comedian Steven Wright once told this joke: “When I was little, my grandfather used to make me stand in a closet for 5 minutes without moving. He said it was elevator practice.”
Today, I’d like to talk to you about elevators.
There’s a wonderful quote making its way around the internet from actor Kevin Spacey. “If you’re lucky enough to do well, it’s your responsibility to send the elevator back down.”
I began writing in the realm of fan fiction back in the late 1980s. For the uninitiated, fan fiction is generally a story based on your favorite characters from television or movies such as Captain Kirk, Luke Skywalker, Indiana Jones, the list goes on. I know people who wrote fan fiction based on everything from Bonanza to Quantum Leap.
I found fan fiction to be a marvelous training ground for storytelling. Of course, I couldn’t sell these stories because they were based on copyrighted characters, but I did pass them around and the general feedback was overwhelmingly positive.
It was at about this same time, when I began attending an increasing number of science fiction conventions such as Farpoint, Shore Leave, and Balticon in Maryland and I-CON in Long Island, New York. In addition to meeting so many actors I’d grown up with, I also met many of my favorite writers such as Harlan Ellison, Peter David, Michael Jan Friedman, Howard Weinstein, Bob Greenberger, Steven H. Wilson, and others.
There I was, holding my stack of novels and comic books eagerly waiting to get them signed and to chat with bestselling authors I never thought I would meet. Little did I know that when I was waiting in autograph lines, I was actually waiting for the elevator.
Over the years, I continued to write and to glean advice from many of the aforementioned writers who would return as regulars to Farpoint and Shore Leave. I appreciated their patience and guidance, hoping I was not making a nuisance of myself.
Of particular note was Steven H. Wilson. By the time I met him, Steve had just written a few issues of Star Trek and Warlord for DC Comics and was beginning to craft what would become his science fiction audio drama series, The Arbiter Chronicles. Like me, Steve had also started in fan fiction, but was further along the road than I was. Yet not so far that getting there seemed daunting. I wanted to be that guy.
Steven also founded Farpoint in 1993, and it was at that convention where I came in second place in a writing contest. Steven personally encouraged me to keep writing. Little did I know that the friendship we were forming was also the elevator door opening.
Flash forward to 2007 and Steve had already won both the Parsec and Mark Time audio awards for his podcasts of The Arbiter Chronicles. He had also self-published his first novel based on that series and had received an excellent review from the Library Journal.
By this time, I had moved on from fan fiction and had outlined an original paranormal mystery novel. I asked Steve for the particulars of self-publishing, as the option certainly interested me. However, the business aspects of it seemed a bit overwhelming at the time (not so much today) so I asked him if he was accepting submissions. He agreed and two years later, Testing the Prisoner was published by Firebringer Press, followed in 2013 by my second paranormal mystery, By Your Side.
By 2010, I was attending Farpoint and Shore Leave as an author guest, which I still do today. The reviews for Testing the Prisoner were outstanding and I was beginning to blog.
I was now in the elevator and let me tell you, it was nice and shiny in there.
In June of 2012, I received an email from the aforementioned Bob Greenberger, who is a fantastic SF writer in addition to his long tenure as an editor at DC Comics. Along with another comics veteran Paul Kupperberg and fellow award-winning writer Aaron Rosenberg, Bob had co-created a new fantasy series called ReDeus. Deus is, of course, Latin for God. Slap the “Re” in front of it and it becomes a bit of a pun as in “Again God”. The series ponders what would happen if all of the ancient mythological gods returned to Earth in the 21st century. It was to be published by Crazy 8 Press, a small press formed by Bob, Aaron, Michael Jan Friedman, Peter David, Glenn Hauman, and Howard Weinstein.
Bob was reaching out to other Shore Leave writer guests to see if they would be interested in contributing a story to their first anthology. What an honor! I eagerly accepted, knowing very little about mythology. Bob then sent the series bible with a story deadline of about two weeks. Yikes! They wanted to debut the book at the upcoming Shore Leave convention in August.
The elevator was going up…and fast! I remember researching and writing furiously until 2AM and even writing while on a Saturday conference call for my day job. I work full time in IT. Another technician and I had to migrate a physical server to a virtual machine. If you’re not a tech geek, don’t worry about it. The point is that it became a 12-hour ordeal. When it was the other tech’s turn to take over for a few hours, I wrote like a maniac. I finally finished and submitted the piece on my birthday, July 1.
Two days later, it was accepted with minor revisions. Not only was I published in the first volume, Divine Tales, I returned for the second, Beyond Borders—where all stories take place outside of the USA. I was invited back for the third volume, Native Lands (stories of Native American gods), but was overwhelmed with recording the audio for By Your Side and planning my upcoming wedding. I politely declined, avoiding the risk of promising a story, then failing to deliver.
It was during this time when I decided to pitch an idea to Steve Wilson. I know several wonderful writers who came up in fan fiction and had moved onto crafting original fiction. Some were submitting to magazines but getting nowhere. I knew their work was outstanding and I wanted to find a way to showcase them. I asked Steve if I could submit a collection of their original genre stories with an eye toward publication. Steve agreed, as long as I edited. He and I also tossed in a few of our own tales.
At Shore Leave in 2014, we launched Somewhere in the Middle of Eternity, an anthology of SF, fantasy, and paranormal fiction. Through this book, we brought about five new authors to the public eye and showcased the wonderful work of an Allentown artist.
What a joy it was for me to see these writers at their first launch, signing books and engaging with readers. I had just barely started my own elevator ride when I was holding the door open for others to take the journey with me (thank you, Steve!). In three months, we’re launching a second volume, Elsewhere in the Middle of Eternity, and possibly a third in 2018.
If you’re lucky enough to find success and you know talented, burgeoning artists, give them a chance to blossom by sending the elevator back down. If you’re just beginning your career, as I am, attend conferences and library events. Network with those further along the road, and learn as much as you can about your craft.
You never know what can happen simply by waiting for the elevator.
March 10, 2016
Three Quick Ways to Support Your Favorite Writers – Without Spending a Dime
In an age where the gates to publishing have been thrown open, or possibly ripped from their hinges, discoverability for new writers is extremely challenging. According to statistics I’ve quickly researched online, there are approximately 300,000 new books published per year in the United States alone.¹
That’s a daunting number to new writers, especially those publishing through small presses or taking the DIY route. I envision writers standing shoulder-to-shoulder, pressed against one another, all holding their latest book over their heads hoping to be recognized by the reading community. A cacophony of voices, each one drowned by the other 299,999. Even the best writers can become discouraged and quit after a time. It has happened.
How do we stand out? Recommendations from readers are one significant way. We appreciate the fact that you spend your hard-earned money on our books. The best of us want to provide you with the highest quality reading experience, and if we succeed, we hope that you’ll spread the word through one or more methods, such as…
Leaving a review and rating on book sites such as Amazon, Goodreads, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, etc. Ratings and reviews are important to any writer’s career, but they are critical to burgeoning writers. A high number of reviews–especially positive ones–typically generate increased sales and lead to new opportunities.
I’ve had readers tell me that they are not good at writing and thus, are reticent about leaving reviews. Even one line would be adequate. On Goodreads, a reader recently left a four-star rating for my first novel, Testing the Prisoner. His review: “That was one hell of a read. Very intense.” That’s all you need! If you’re investing a day or a week to read a book, why not go the extra two minutes to voice your opinion, even if briefly?
Sharing the love on social media. For example, if you are friends with some or all of your favorite writers on Facebook, or you follow their author pages, you probably click LIKE to many of their updates and announcements about new releases. Why not take the extra few seconds to also SHARE their posts? Perhaps add a comment such as, “Enjoy this writer’s books. Highly recommend!” Ditto for Twitter, Google+, and other social media sites.
Spreading the word. Word of mouth still remains the best of all recommendations. If there are avid readers among your friends or family, mention your favorite writers’ books. If you happen to notice that the writer is holding a book signing or a library talk, boost the signal even if you can’t attend.
Speaking for myself, I deeply appreciate your support of small press and independent writers.
As a new writer myself, I occasionally give away free books to other writers, book reviewers, Goodreads giveaways, charity auctions, etc. I will be thrilled to send a free copy of my latest
release, Somewhere in the Middle of Eternity, to a random commenter here on my blog. This is an anthology of SF, fantasy, and paranormal stories written mostly by emerging fiction writers and edited by yours truly. Click here to read more about it.
The second volume, Elsewhere in the Middle of Eternity, will be released in July 2016.
Thank you!
References:
¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year and http://www.worldometers.info/books/
March 3, 2016
Write Here, Write Now!
The book will premiere at the Write Stuff writers conference , April 7-9, 2016 in Bethlehem, PA. It will be available initially in paperback, then Kindle a few weeks after.
