Keith Robinson's Blog, page 24

Island of Fog Book IV: Lake of Spirits

I've started work on the fourth book in the Island of Fog trilogy (?) and, as usual, have given it a title and cover well before it's anywhere near finished.

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Lake of Spirits deals with "one of the lost," as Simone calls them -- shapeshifters who transformed at a very early age and were unable to shift back. Poor Jolie was just a one-year-old baby, part of an experimental shapeshifter program in Simone's world, when she turned into a jengu water spirit and stuck in that form.

This is why shapeshifters have to be born and raised in our world, to delay that first transformation; something in the air, perhaps the lower oxygen content, delays the process. Heck, it's hard enough for older children to will themselves back to normality, never mind those still in diapers! Faced with raising a creature they knew little about, the scientists had no choice but to hand Jolie over to others of her kind, the mysterious people of the lake. They never saw her again.

Simone was just a teenager when all this happened. Now Jolie herself is a teenager, and Simone is busy introducing Hal and his friends to their new home. It occurs to Simone that with the help of Abigail's little glass faerie ball, which unlocks deep-seated memories and abilities, she might be able to bring Jolie back into the human world.

This is a tale of paranoia, betrayal, and impending doom. Think of sirens luring ships onto rocks; Jolie may seem sweet-natured, but she's incredibly dangerous, as Hal and his friends slowly discover. Can they figure her out before the proverbial ship smashes itself to bits?

Woven into this story is a minor subplot, barely a mention here and there, of something that will become the focus of Book 5. Oh, I get excited thinking about it! But that's a way off yet. :-)

Some have asked how you can have four books in a trilogy. Well, you can't, but you can have a trilogy within a series. Books 1-3 are a trilogy, a three-part story that ends with loose threads tied up (for the most part). But for those who want to continue reading, Book 4 continues on directly and forms what might be considered the first part of a second trilogy. For some reason, multiples of three works for me. Look at the Star Wars saga -- you have the original three movies, which were parts 4, 5 and 6, and then you have the more recent prequel movies, which were parts 1, 2 and 3. They work as trilogies within a series. Will George Lucas do parts 7, 8 and 9? Well, in any case, I can easily see the Island of Fog series spreading over 6-9 novels, in groups of three. Or maybe I'll abandon the trilogy idea and just do one-off stories... I don't know. Hey, as the author, I reserve the right to change my mind as I go. Let's see where the story takes me.

The Impossible World

Back in August 2010, I sent a copy of Mountain of Whispers to a lady named Helen in Australia. Weeks later, the book still hadn't arrived and I started to fear it was lost. I sent her a PDF version so she could at least get on and read it, but she still wanted a printed copy. We waited and waited, and finally I sent her another copy. With the overseas shipping cost, this meant I was out of pocket for this particular order -- but that was okay, as long as the second copy got to her okay.

The second copy arrived in good time... and the first copy arrived as well. That's always the way of it -- like buses, you wait around for ages and then three come along at once.

Before Christmas, I ordered a couple of reader copies of The Impossible World (which is the current name of my Bubbleworld novel, written during November's NaNoWriMo). I ordered them from Lulu, just for speed and convenience. At the same time, writer buddy Brian Clopper ordered copies of his own NaNoWriMo book, The Classic Destruction of Stomper Rex. He received his copies just before Christmas, but mine never arrived. It was well into January before I contacted Lulu and told them of my missing order and, a couple of days ago, they informed me that a new order had just been dispatched.

That very afternoon, my original order arrived in the mail.

So after weeks of waiting, I now have my first two copies, and two new copies will arrive by Fedex this afternoon. Just like buses...

You see, gremlins love to hold up deliveries and delight in watching you get impatient. They crouch in the back of the postal worker's Jeep and cast a temporary cloak of invisibility over the package, giggling at their handiwork and watching with glee as the mailman pulls up outside the recipient's home... and fails to deliver said package. This goes on for days, sometimes weeks, with these gremlins camping out in the back of the Jeep. But then they receive word from Gremlin HQ that the recipient has given up; he no longer wants the package because he has another one on the way. The gremlins sigh and move on. Thus, in their absence, the mailman inexplicably finds the package under his seat and wonders how on earth he missed it before.

The same gremlins are present as you stare out the window at the thunderclouds forming in the distance. Should you take an umbrella out with you, or not? If you do, the gremlins bribe the thunderclouds to go away and come back another day. But if you decide not to bother with an umbrella, you can be sure of a drenching.

And for some reason, these gremlins are always around when you drop a piece of buttered toast. Yes, it always lands face down, making a horrible mess on the floor. I always wondered what would happen if I strapped a piece of buttered toast (face-up) onto a cat's back, and then dropped the cat out of a window. Which way up would it land? How would the gremlins deal with that quandary?

Anyway -- now that I have copies of The Impossible World in my hands, I'm pretty pleased with it in general. I'm not completely happy with the cover, or the title for that matter, but it doesn't matter. What's important is the story, and the purpose of these printed copies is for willing guinea pig readers to run through it without worrying about typos and just form an opinion on the story. Does it work? Does it need huge sections cut or new scenes added? This is, remember, a first-draft novel written in thirty days. So, based on feedback, I'll work on it as necessary and then polish it up.

That is, if those blasted gremlins don't mess with me. I just realized that I don't have an electronic backup copy anywhere...

Preparing for the storm

There's a huge snow storm descending on Georgia (along with the rest of the United States) this evening and everybody is going crazy preparing for it, in case we all get snowed in with no electricity or water, cut off from civilization for weeks on end. My wife keeps mentioning the great storm of '93 in which she was stuck at college all weekend with no power. Well, being English, I suppose I'm woefully under-prepared for what might be coming. We've had snow this Christmas and I know the roads were bad, and I know that we lose power once in a while because all the power lines are exposed to the elements... but I still find it hard to imagine being without power for more than 12 hours (which is how long it was out a few months ago). Worse, imagine being without the internet for a day or two! *Shudder*

Anyway, if the power goes out, the pop-in-law has a spare generator next door that will keep our heating going (it's propane heat, and the electricity is just to run the fans and thermostat). But what we really need are geo-rocks from the Labyrinth of Fire. I happened to pick one up when I visited the labyrinth last October for research, and it now sits on the bookshelf at home, glowing happily.

Meanwhile, I've made a start on Island of Fog Book 4. More on that in my next post. Sales for the published trilogy have picked up again thanks to the electronic Kindle and Nook versions. I don't know why, but suddenly I'm selling quite a few of those. It might be because both Amazon's Kindle and Barnes & Noble's Nook have free downloadable apps for computers and mobile phones, so more and more people are buying books at cheaper prices than the printed versions. I wouldn't buy electronic versions myself, but plenty of people are constantly on the move, commuting and so on, and I can imagine it's pretty handy having a library of books contained on a mobile phone!

I had a nice comment from Chuck, a local reader of my books, who said:

Sorry this has taken so long but I finally got around to reading Mountain of Whispers and... dude... you out did yourself! It was a fantastic read! I loved having the 2 storylines in 1 book. From the adventure on the Mountain of Whispers to the attack of the soldiers, the action never stopped. The lightness of the budding romance between Hal & Abigail balanced nicely with the seriousness of everything else. Great job!! I hope the adventures of Hal and his friends are far from over. Would also love to see these stories on the big screen!

Here's to more awesome writing in 2011!!

Thanks, Chuck! And in December, out of the blue, Island of Fog received a mention on Piers Anthony's website newsletter (first paragraph here):

About reading: I am a slow reader, so a novel that another person might read in a day will take me three days full time, and longer if I read it in stages. Usually the latter; I do have other things to do, such as making meals and writing my own fiction. If it is by an aspiring writer, chances are it won't be great, but an honest comment will cost me a fan. Since I refuse to do dishonest comments, it can be an expensive business for me in more than one sense. Any ignoramus can dash off an uninformed opinion, but an informed opinion requires thought. That's why I'm cautious about committing to read books. Yet I remember the problem I had getting any competent feedback on my own early work. Had I had it, I might not have taken eight years to make my first sale. So I do read and comment some amateur novels. Even so, they threaten to monopolize my time. At the turn of July/August I had entirely caught up with my science, news and opinion magazines. Now four months later I have a 20+ magazine backlog. I am so busy reading for other people that I'm not reading what I want to for myself. I shall have to become less accommodating, which will annoy some folk. Yes, sometimes I discover novels that are real fun, as was the case with Island of Fog, but usually the reads are somewhat plodding. So this is a sort of vague announcement of whatever. I just seem not to be able to keep up with everything.

It's great to be picked out as a shining example of a book that's not rubbish. :-) Seriously, I wonder what it was that made him think of mine when he wrote this? Very happy to be mentioned in this way, in any case.

Right. Onward with writing... at least until the storm knocks out the power...

A new year and a new novel

It's the last day of the year! I wonder if I have time to work in another novel before midnight...? No, I'd better not try, because it'll be eleven-thirty by the time I get to the closing chapters and then, in the spirit of New Year celebrations, I'll end up writing under the influence of something alcoholic and the ending of the book will be very silly.

But, as 2011 begins, I'll be working on Island of Fog Book 4. Yes, it'll no longer be a trilogy but a series! Most of the story has already taken shape in my brain, and I'm looking forward to getting started, but what I'm going to find most interesting is the challenge of making the book a standalone novel as well as part of a series. For those who have read the trilogy, Book 4 will continue the story without breaking a step. But for those who haven't read the trilogy, Book 4 will be one you can pick up and read without any confusion.

Well, in theory anyway.

There will be a small amount of back-history in places, but I'm going to try and keep it to a minimum. Anyone who hasn't read the previous books and is diving straight into Book 4 probably won't care much about the adventures the characters have already had, and if they do care, well, then they can go buy the other books and catch up. And those who have read the previous books... well, they already know everything there is to know. So exposition will be minimal.

As for the story... It's going to be dark and sinister, with long underwater scenes, lots of paranoia, anger, and betrayal... Yes, all very cheerful. It starts out in a lake, and ends in a lake, and the book has the word "Lake" in the title. So far we've had an island, a labyrinth, and a mountain, and now it's a lake. That much I know for sure. But the full title is not yet decided, so you'll have to wait on that.

Watch out for Lake of ???? coming in Summer 2011 (more information soon).

Have a HAPPY NEW YEAR, y'all. Cheers!

Question Time: Part 2

This weekend I'm going to print my NaNoWriMo book, just as a first draft and for the purposes of swapping reads with a fellow author. More on that in another post in a day or two, but for now...

Back in September (that long ago already!) I answered a few commonly-asked questions about Island of Fog and its sequels, in a post aptly named Question Time: Part 1. Quite often I'm asked about the process of self-publishing, too, and another such email this morning reminded me that I'm due for Question Time: Part 2.

Q. Do you use Createspace to print your novels?

I did originally. Their prices are impossible to beat and the service is fast. I printed Island of Fog "just to see what it was like," and ended up self-publishing with them for the next year and a half, during which time the second book came along. But before I published the third, I started to have second thoughts. CreateSpace's printing quality seemed to be going down the pan. I rejected 50% of the books I was receiving, and also rejected 50% of the replacement books, and so on... and to be honest, I wasn't completely happy with ANY of them. They all suffered from the same scratch marks on the back, the same coating of dust, the same ugly orange glue and random off-square binding. In the end I made the move to Lightning Source. I could have chosen Lulu, but they're too expensive. Lightning Source (or LSi) is about the same cost-per-book, and I heard that their quality is superb. The sign-up process is long, and the setup costs are $70 per book, and revisions to either the cover or text are $40... but once you get your books up and running, it's a good price and the quality, so far, has been excellent.

My advice for those starting out would be to try CreateSpace or Lulu, but to avoid using their supplied ISBNs. Instead, buy your own block of ten from Bowker. That way, if you move to another printing service, then you can take the ISBN with you and replace your book on Amazon rather than add another edition alongside. Even though I retired Island of Fog and Labyrinth of Fire from CreateSpace, they still show on Amazon because of Amazon's "we always like to show out-of-print books as well" policy. This wouldn't have been a problem if I had used author-owned ISBNs from the start.

By the way, even though CreateSpace is owned by Amazon, my books never appeared "properly" as ready-to-buy products on Amazon UK. Yet when I moved to Lightning Source they showed immediately. LSi have a MUCH better distribution program.

Q. What have you done to market your book?

Probably not half as much as I should have. I keep hoping that one day I'll find a traditional publisher (via my agent). In the meantime I do most of my promoting on this blog/website, and locally via schools and libraries. I've probably sold more through schools and libraries than online. I have my books available as electronic Kindle editions as well.

Another author I know is a genius with marketing. Somehow she's got her Kindle editions to the top of the lists on Amazon, competing alongside bestsellers like The Time Traveler's Wife. The author said she spends "an inordinate amount of time on Kindle store forums and other such websites," meaning she works really, really hard at plugging her work.

Q. How can you offer $5.95 shipping for international?

It's a number-crunching exercise. I tend to buy in quantities of 50 books, and Island of Fog costs me $4.34 to produce (including shipping). I sell it for $11.95, leaving $7.61 profit. It costs me $10.76 to ship a single book via first class international mail, but I only charge customers $5.95, so the difference eats into my profit, leaving me with about $2.80. Not much, but still more than I'd get with a royalty when selling on Amazon.

Now look at what happens when I sell two books abroad: Sale price is $23.90, plus the $5.95 shipping, totaling $29.85. Taking away the manufacture cost ($8.68) and the combined flat-rate shipping cost via priority mail ($13.45) leaves me with $7.72 -- quite a bit more than I would get from two sales on Amazon.

With three books, the sale is $35.85, shipping is $5.95, so the total is $41.80 -- take away $13.02 manufacture cost and the flat-rate $13.45 shipping and I'm left with $15.33.

If I sell more than than three books abroad, I can no longer use the flat-rate international envelope, so I would have to use a box or a custom package... but by this time my profit has risen enough that I can afford a little extra on shipping.

So I don't get rich off these books, no sirree! You could even say, "Ah, but what about the cost of packaging materials?" but the only time I use packaging materials when sending abroad is when someone buys ONE book; it's cheaper to send it first class than to send it priority flat-rate mail. With two books and more, I use the post office-supplied flat-rate envelopes.

I used to charge $9.95 shipping, but it was almost the cost of the book itself and customers naturally balked. Since lowering the shipping, sales picked up... so I've probably made more in profit than I would have otherwise. In the meantime, I charge $3.95 for domestic shipping and this is typically slightly more than I actually pay using media mail, even when sending three books. So, domestically, my profit is much better. Of course, nothing beats selling books locally and hand-delivering them!

But all this boils down to one thing: If you're in the business of making a ton of money from your books, then don't bother. I make enough that everything I do pays for the next step (buying more books, etc), but I certainly don't make a second income from it.

NaNoWriMo 2010 Winner

Yay, I won something! But don't get too excited -- anyone participating in NaNoWriMo who manages to write 50,000 words before the deadline is a winner. Still, it's a good feeling to get there. Bubbleworld is not quite finished, but I plan to keep writing until it is. I expect it will be around 65,000 words in the end, and I'd like to wrap it up by around mid-December.

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It's all turned out pretty well. I didn't encounter any major setbacks, or take any wrong turns. I'm into the final scenes (the showdown, if you like) and have a few details to work out before plunging in, but overall it's come along very nicely. When I get down to editing, there are a lot of details I want to fill in, not to mention generally tidying up my writing. All that stuff will likely take another few months.

After that? I asked my agent if he'd be interested in this one, but he said he already had his hands full with Island of Fog and all the other stuff he's representing. This leaves me clear to seek out another agent before going the self-publishing route.

I'm wondering, now, how quickly I'll be able to finish Island of Fog Book 4. There's something to be said for psyching myself up for a month or two, getting the plot straightened up (in my head and on paper), and then diving in and banging it out. At this rate, I could write Book 4 in two months, and then spend a further two or three months editing.

Some writers swear that you shouldn't write "fast," that each page must be thoroughly checked, edited, and polished before moving on to the next. They look down their noses at writers who speed through the text and then come back later to tidy up. I'm the complete opposite. How can your writing stay fresh and spontaneous if you're fretting over the perfect word to use in every other paragraph? To me, story-writing and editing are two different things and shouldn't be mixed. Write the story first, edit later. Otherwise you'll never get the thing finished.

That's not to say that I rush headlong into a novel without thinking. As I said, I plan it first. And I often come to a complete standstill while I research something. It's just that I try not to get bogged down by details when the rest of the novel is waiting to be written. I edit and polish and check facts later, hence why editing has previously taken almost as long as the first draft writing. This NaNo method of writing might change things, though. In this case, it will probably take twice as long to edit Bubbleworld than it took to write it.

By the way -- Bubbleworld is just a working title, as I've said. It's what the small boy calls his world under the ground. But, just out of interest, what does the title make you think of? I'd be interested in knowing what kind of story this title conjures up. Is it a good title, bad title, average title, or what? A possible alternative is Sinkhole, which is extremely apt.

Now, back to writing. Oh, and maybe some work...

Publisher says no

I'm not getting much blogging done with all this November novel writing! (Hmm, that means I probably have my priorities in the right order.) Anyway, a few random things to mention...

I finally heard back from a big publisher, HarperCollins Children's Books, that was reviewing Island of Fog. The short version is that they said no thanks. But the slightly longer version is more interesting. My agent sent part of the manuscript to the publisher back on August 9th, along with part of another manuscript by Brian Clopper (a teacher/author who you might remember from a previous post):

Per our conversation last week, WBMT submits the following properties to you:

*IRVING WISHBUTTON* written by Brian Clopper
*ISLAND OF FOG* written by Keith Robinson

Both properties are for the young adult audience and have received favorable reviews; notably, from Piers Anthony. Irving Wishbutton is the first of four projected books; Island of Fog is the first of an already completed trilogy. Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.

The editor seemed interested in the first few chapters of both manuscripts, and requested the full novels, saying that it would be a six-week review process. So, six weeks later, my agent contacted the editor and asked for an answer. The editor's answer was extremely annoying:

I can't seem to find these manuscripts anywhere. Would you mind terribly resending them? Thank you and sorry for the inconvenience!

My agent was furious, but resent the manuscripts a day or so later, on October 12th. After another six-week wait, the editor got back to the agent with this answer:

Thank you so much for sending ISLAND OF FOG and IRVING WISHBUTTON our way, and for your patience as we read and considered them. While there was much to be admired about both manuscripts, my supervisor and I ultimately came to the conclusion that they just aren't right for our list at this time.

Thank you again -- we wish you the best of luck in finding the perfect homes for these projects.

So that's that. My agent has already moved on to the next publisher. It's a shame he can't send to many publishers at once, but that's not very polite. Of course, nor is making us wait six weeks TWICE, but there you go.

I'm not discouraged. If anything, I find it encouraging that a major publisher requested the full manuscripts instead of just saying "no" to the initial query. Both Brian and I are hopeful that our books will find a home one day. We just have to be patient.

Meanwhile, I'm now around the 35,000-word mark for my November novel, Bubbleworld (working title). Getting to 50,000 won't be a problem; the only question is how long the novel will actually be when finished, and whether I will finish it by the end of November. To me, writing 50,000 words isn't the challenge. Finishing the novel is the challenge. So if the novel ends up at 60,000 words or more, then I have a bigger challenge ahead of me! At the moment, though, I have a feeling that this novel will be pretty close to the 50-60K mark.

And finally, Piers Anthony read and reviewed Mountain of Whispers in his October 2010 newsletter. He said this:

I read MOUNTAIN OF WHISPERS by Keith Robinson. The first novel in this series was ISLAND OF FOG, a good solid children's novel that adults should also like, featuring eight twelve year old children who were developing the ability to change into other creatures. The sequel was LABYRINTH OF FIRE, where the children completed their abilities in hard-hitting action. This is the third, and it too is compelling. There are serious problem on the world to which they have been taken, and they must seek answers on the dread Mountain of Whispers. It turns out that the whispers are because there is a constant wind blowing into the mountain. How can this be? They explore, though warned that there is a terrible demon therein. That turns out to be just the beginning, and the framework expands. Mysteries are finally resolved. There is also the hint of the beginning of a romance; Abigail likes protagonist Hal, and starts doing flirtatious things like holding his hand, and he is embarrassed but nothing loath. That's as far as it goes; this is a children's novel, remember. I recommend this as I did the other two: read them with your children.

Still haven't bought a copy? WHY NOT?? ;-) Signed copies are available worldwide through this website. If you're in the USA you can also get a copy at Amazon.com (including a Kindle version), or at Barnes & Noble, or (for locals) at Books Neverending. If you're in the UK, you can also get a copy from Amazon.co.uk.

NaNoWriMo update

It's a week into November and I've had a pretty good start with National Novel Writing Month 2010. The goal, as you will know by now, is to write 50,000 words in 30 days. Well, in six days I've done 15,357 words, which is about 31%, so I'm steaming ahead.

It hasn't been a struggle so far. I've spent maybe 2-3 hours a day on it, which is not a huge stretch for someone who sits at home doing website design all day. I know that some people have to go to work and get back late and probably have limited time, so maybe I have a slight advantage there. But it's interesting reading comments from others and looking at word counts. I have a small list of buddies here who are all doing well. If you click on one of those buddies, Gioclair, you can see a longer list of 25 buddies, of which 16 have 0 word count so far... which makes me wonder why they even bothered to sign up! On the flip side, Kaiberie is steaming ahead with 34,456 words. Way to go!

Opinions vary about whether NaNoWriMo is a worthwhile exercise. Some snooty types say that it's a waste of time, that the output will be terrible and unpublishable. Well, of course it will! There's no way on earth a novel can be publishable in just 30 days. The first draft can be banged out in that time, but there's a lot of editing to do afterward, and that can take months. And even then snooty types announce, in their most knowledgeable and expert voice, that a NaNo novel "will take at least a year to knock into shape."

I've read that agents start moaning on 1st December when they receive a slew of hopeless manuscripts in the mail. I can understand that. I'm sure many thousands of NaNo writers who finish their novel in time actually think it's ready to be sent out to publishers and agents without further ado. But of course the novel has to be worked on first. Banging out the first draft is just the start. However, it's a good start. It seems that some writers finish a chapter very slowly, painstakingly getting every word just right and running it through twenty edits before moving on to the next chapter. So when they get to the end, the novel is very close to really being finished. But many other writers take the opposite approach -- write it fast, get it done, don't worry about perfect wording, just keep the pace going until the end. Then go back and edit. That's my approach, and I find it more satisfying. I don't want to be endlessly fiddling with details and word choices in chapter four when I'm already thinking ahead to exciting events in chapter eighteen!

Some writers never finish their novel because of the endless fiddling. That's the point of NaNoWriMo -- to get words on paper. It's not to produce a perfect novel, it's just to get writers over the hump, make them feel good about themselves and allow them to move on to the next step: the editing.

There are other types of WriMos though. Many writers have no problem finishing a novel, are self-motivated enough to finish what they started. The purpose of NaNoWriMo, then, is slightly different. Personally, I'm participating because it's been a while since I wrote anything and I plan to start on my fourth Island of Fog book in the New Year... but in the meantime I thought I'd bang out a novel that might otherwise have to wait until late 2011, by which time I might have forgotten half of it. It's turning out to be quite useful, getting this novel out of my system in a short but concentrated effort. It might not be much good right now, and may never be any good... or it might be really great and worth putting extra effort into. Those snooty types who say NaNoWriMo is a waste of time and energy? I'd disagree and say that it's a great way to save time and energy -- by getting the first draft written in a short amount of time instead of wasting half a year or more doing bits here and there.

Okay, so having said all that, here's a largely unedited snippet from my first draft, about 20 pages in. Travis Knott (12) and his family and neighbors are having a weenie roast in the back yard. Travis is sent indoors to fetch a sweater for his younger sister, Ellie. While inside, the house sinks into the ground. It's the deepest sinkhole in history, but the house has somehow remained intact. Badly damaged, but intact. Some strange forces must be at work here, Travis thinks, as he awaits rescue in the darkness thousands of feet below ground. Then he discovers that he may not be alone...

Excerpt from BUBBLEWORLD (working title)...

      He roused himself enough to creep around and blow out the candles in the bathroom, hallway, kitchen and living room, then returned to the sofa, grateful for the wan illumination of the glow sticks. He patted his pocket to check for the flashlight, then allowed himself to fall sound asleep.
      Sometime later, he heard a shuffling noise. It woke him with a start. He listened, tense, holding his breath.
      He heard nothing and after a while let out a soft sigh. Did the glow sticks seem fainter now? He pulled out the flashlight and shone it on the clock. 3:15 AM.
      He heard shuffling again, and sucked in a breath. He whipped the flashlight around, seeking the source of the noise. Was it in the room with him? No, it was in the hallway. Rescue workers? Doubtful. If they were rescue workers, they would be making more noise, shining bright lights around, yelling his name. And surely they'd be entering the house from the top end, through the small living room window that Travis had used. After all, that was the first point of entry a rescue crew would come across if they had descended the shaft and headed down the tunnel. They wouldn't climb over the roof and somehow enter at the lower end.
      So... what then?
      He listened hard, and when the sound came again, Travis decided that it wasn't the noise of a small rodent. It was bigger than that. It sounded like the shuffling of feet on a floor strewn with debris.
      Someone had fallen in with him.
      The idea struck Travis like a thunderbolt. Someone around the weenie roast had slipped into the sinkhole with the house, had fallen, somehow survived, had lain unconscious for hours, and was now shambling around in the darkness, probably severely injured.
      Travis was on his feet in moments, skidding toward the hallway, calling out. He flashed his beam around. Nothing. Perhaps in a bedroom then. "Hello?" he called again. "Where are you?"
      No answer.
      Travis peered into each room as he went, shining his flashlight into every corner. First the bathroom, then the creepy laundry room. Then his parents' room. Still nothing. Then Ellie's room.
      This was where he saw something that froze him to the spot. In the bright flashlight beam, he saw a large, upright figure that his brain couldn't make sense of. It was man-sized, but it wasn't a man. He only glimpsed it for a second, and then it was tumbling out of Ellie's bedroom window into the narrow gap under the eaves where the tunnel wall pressed against it. The figure was gone in moments, and Travis was left shaking violently, his beam jerking across the room.
      It was a while before he was able to force himself into action. He scrambled for the living room and cowered in the corner behind the sofa, quivering with fright, trying to decide if it would be better to switch off the flashlight and hide in the dark corner, or switch it on so he could easily see what was coming for him. In the end he switched it off and hunched into a ball, aware that his heart was thumping about ten times faster than normal.
      In his mind, the one-second image of the creature played over and over. It was shapeless and gray – a lumpy figure with only a vague suggestions of limbs, and a mass of growths all over, like tumors on top of tumors, and... and what looked like intestines wrapped around its midsection, and a brain spilling over its head –
      Travis shuddered, trying to shut it out.
      Somewhere in its face, or rather the featureless area on its head where the face should be, two tiny black eyes had stared back at him. Just for that one frozen second, the creature had seen him.

NaNoWriMo 2010

As eagle-eyed readers might have noticed, over on the right hand side of this website I have a little message about NaNoWriMo, which starts on November 1st. Every time I mention NaNoWriMo in conversation, I get a quizzical look -- the same quizzical look I gave years ago when I first found out about it.

So what the heck is it anyway? Well, obviously it's the National Novel Writing Month, a project initiated by Chris Baty back in July 1999, when Chris and 20 friends decided it would be a right rollicking lark to bash out a complete novel in one month just to see if it could be done. It was hard work, and their first draft novels were (apparently) really bad, but they ended up having so much fun that the following year they built a website and started getting the word out. The second NaNoWriMo event took place in 2000 (moved to November to take advantage of miserable weather), and that year they had 140 participants. Word spread like wildfire around the internet, and the third year's participation took them by surprise, with 5000 crazy writers getting involved. The website servers crashed and Chris and his team of volunteers thought they were going to die from exhaustion, but they got through and realized they needed to think bigger. Every year since has seen massive increases, and last year, 2009, there were 167,150 writers feverishly banging away at computers, writing novels. The Washington Post said, "If this growth rate is constant and participation is cumulative, then every American will be writing a novel in November 2027. We'll be a country made entirely of boozing, tortured authors."

Each year there are "winners" -- that is, those who succeed in meeting the goal of 50,000 words. (In case you're wondering, that's about half the length of Island of Fog.) There are just a few simple rules, but rules hardly matter because the point is not to win a big prize. There is no big prize, and nobody is going to catch you cheating. Nobody at NaNoWriMo.org is going to read your novel, and you don't win some kind of publishing deal. Instead, you get to congratulate yourself for finally writing that novel you've been meaning to write for years. But of course it helps having masses of other writers surging forward trying to meet the same goal. NaNoWriMo's website allows you to manually update your word count as the month progresses, and keep an eye on the word counts of fellow writers. At the end of the month you can (optionally) upload your novel for a final official word count; it's deleted immediately once the count is done.

There's a list of writers that have been published thanks to this literary marathon, and some are pretty well known. Ever heard of a forthcoming movie called Water for Elephants? It's about a traveling circus in the 1930s, and part of the movie was filmed close to where I live in Chickamauga, Georgia. Anyway, it's due out in April 2011 and is based on a novel written during NaNoWriMo. So while there may be thousands of terrible, awful novels written in November, there will be some that turn into bestsellers too.

It's not cheating to have your novel planned before you start. I have a chapter summary mostly finished, so I'll know where I'm going by the time I start writing on November 1st. This novel has nothing to do with Island of Fog, but is something I've been mulling over for quite some time now. Will it be any good? I don't know. The idea of it is preposterous, but why should that stop me? We'll see. Of course, in November I'll be writing a first draft only -- all the editing comes afterward, and will likely take months, assuming I decide it's worth messing with at all. And then I'll have to decide whether to self-publish it or shop it around to agents/editors as an unpublished manuscript.

So what's it about? Well, I'm not going to say much here except that a boy is ferreting around in a closet trying to find something when the entire house sinks into the ground. At the bottom of the sinkhole he finds something amazing. I've read and heard about massive sinkholes before, and it's no laughing matter; people have lost their lives in similar situations. Sinkholes are pretty scary; some of the biggest in the world are a thousand feet deep. But there's always a fantasy element in my novels and this particular sinkhole is deeper still. There's also a girl whose younger brother is extremely powerful and dangerous and pretty much the cause of everything that happens in the story. Look, I told you it was preposterous!

If you're the sort of person who has always thought about writing a novel (preposterous or otherwise) and never has the time, or if you don't think you have it in you to finish it -- then maybe give NaNaWriMo a go. If you do sign up, make sure to become my buddy so we can urge each other on!

By the way, none of this will get in the way of Island of Fog Book 4, which I plan to start on in the New Year.

Books Never-Ending

Hmm. Mountain of Whispers has been available since the beginning of August -- so about two months now -- and yet somehow I neglected to supply a few copies to my favorite book store, Books Never-Ending in Rossville. I realized this on Saturday when I popped in and the store owner, Danielle, raised an eyebrow at me and asked where my third book was. She had people waiting, she said.

I was mortified. How could I have forgotten? I went from thinking "I really must take some books to Books Never-Ending," to "Did I ever take some books to Books Never-Ending? ...yes, it's been a month or so, I must have by now," and finally to "I wonder how many they've sold?"

Well, I corrected the situation yesterday. Danielle ordered copies of Mountain of Whispers, along with more copies of Island of Fog, which she had run out of. I took the books in and was pleasantly surprised to find that a space had been cleared for them -- and I mean a BIG space. With the new books arranged neatly, the display is the first you see as you walk in the door...

This beats my display at Barnes & Noble! Also, the copies you see in this picture are signed. Notice how I'm right there with the hottest books on the market at the moment, The Hunger Games and its sequels? Oh yes.

If you're local and wanting a copy of one of these books, pop in to Books Never-Ending. If you're heading along Cloud Springs Road toward the I-75, it's on the left just past Mack Smith Road. The store is worth a visit anyway; there's a huge selection of books, new and secondhand, and the staff are very friendly. I also like the cozy little wicker armchairs and mini-sofas dotted around the place, so you can sit down and relax.

The store is bigger than you think. Although it has one small shopfront, Danielle has actually taken over the whole building... and all the neighboring houses, garages, and basements, and connected them all with an underground labyrinth of tunnels. (Well, maybe not, but wouldn't that be cool?)