John R. Phythyon Jr.'s Blog, page 13

How I Write a Book — First Draft

Over the course of the next several weeks, I’ll outline my process for bringing a book from idea to final draft. Every writer has his or her own way of doing this, and we usually spend awhile perfecting it, stealing ideas from others that we think will work.

So if you’ve ever wondered how I take that original thought and make it into something you want to read, here’s your big chance!

Plotters vs. Pantsers

Recently, a discussion has arisen in the writing community, suggesting there are basically two different types of authors — Plotters (who plan out everything before they begin writing) and Pantsers (people who prefer to write “by the seat of their pants,” not making a plan but just writing whatever comes into their heads).

I very definitely fall into the former category. When I was younger, I was a Pantser. If I tried to outline, I would feel that I had written the story and was ready to move on to something else. I wanted the raw creation of just plucking it out of my head as it came to me.

The problem with that approach, for me, was that I would get stuck. I have a lot of unfinished novels from college and graduate school days. I’d hit a block and not be able to figure out what to do next. My momentum would fade, and it would be very difficult for me to complete the project.

Since then, I’ve become a Plotter, and it suits my personality much better. I like to think about things and make plans. I don’t think on my feet that well. Several of my friends are Pantsers, and they write excellent books. But I can’t do it that way. I have to know where I’m going before I start.

Initial Plans

I keep a sewn notebook in the hutch of my writing desk. When I first conceive of a story, I get it out and start making notes in it. I always write in pencil for two reasons. One, I like to be able to erase if I make a mistake or decide I want to make a change. Two, it reminds me of my days as an elementary school student, making all sorts of drawings and stories in my notebooks. I got bored in class a lot, and I would amuse myself by making up stories and drawing superheroes. I used a pencil then, so that’s what I use today.

I almost always start with a list of the major characters. I give them names and a one- or two-line description noting whom they are and what their functions are in the story.

Next, I jot down the big ideas — plots, themes, who is trying to accomplish what, etc. The notes I make here depend on the nature of the book. For a Wolf Dasher novel, I almost make note of what the villain is trying to accomplish and how he or she means to pull it off. For Beauty & the Beast: A Modern Fairy Tale, I made notes of what Rory (my main character) wanted to happen, how she wanted the school to change, and how she uses the three wishes she gets.

If there are going to be special objects in a book, I make notes on them separately. Because they are homages to James Bond, the Wolf Dasher books usually feature gadgets. I take the time to note what they are, how they work, and how they will specifically function in the story. Likewise, I knew Calibot was getting a magical sword in The Sword and the Sorcerer. I detailed what it could do and what its special powers would be.

All this helps me focus on my mind on how the story will develop. I almost always know how it begins and how it ends. It’s connecting the two I generally have to discover in the writing process.

Outline

Once I’ve got all my preliminary work done, I start outlining the plot. I do this on a chapter-by-chapter basis. I try not to get too detailed. If I do that, I won’t want to write it. I basically compose story beats that allow me to write the chapter whole cloth while still having a guide for where I want to go.

The purpose of this exercise is to give me a map. I want the chapter to develop organically (i.e., evolve as I’m writing it). I don’t want to feel like I’m forced to write a certain thing. So my outline consists of one to three sentences briefly describing what happens in the chapter.

I used to outline the entire book before I started writing. That was useful, because I never got stuck then. I knew exactly what was supposed to happen next.

But outlining a whole book in advance is tiring and time-consuming, and it threatens to blunt my enthusiasm for getting it done. Starting with Roses Are White, I changed my process to outline five chapters at a time.

This lets me do a couple of things. First, I leave more opportunity for the book to take an unexpected turn. One of the interesting things about writing is the story going places of its own. You start writing, and the next thing you know, you’re not really in control anymore. It takes on its own life, and smart writers allow that to happen and follow it. By only plotting five chapters at a time, I give myself more opportunity to let the novel change from its original idea. When a twist I hadn’t previously thought of jumps into my head, it’s easier for my to accommodate that and weave it into the book.

Second, it sets manageable goals. When I’m in first-draft mode, I try to write a chapter a day. I prefer to write each weekday and take the weekends off. That gives me some mental rest, so I can recharge while still keeping a good, steady pace. I write between 1500 and 4000 words a day, so by writing five days a week, I get pretty solid output.

So I plot five chapters. I write one of those a day until I’ve hit my goal for the week. Over the weekend, I spend some time thinking about where the book is going, and I plot the next five chapters, so that, on Monday, I’m ready to start writing again.

No Worries

Perhaps the most important thing I do during the writing of the first draft is the one thing I don’t do — edit. When I’m working on getting that first draft down, I don’t edit what I’ve written. I only reread it if I need to remember what happened in a specific place.

I don’t want to get caught up in evaluating my work before its finished. It’s easy to get distracted, and it’s easy to get overwhelmed and quit.

So I don’t do anything that could cause that to happen. I just focus on getting the words down. After I’ve finished the first draft is the time to edit and evaluate.

And that’s what I’ll discuss next week, when I examine my process for the second draft of a novel.

Filed under: Writing Tagged: notes, outlining, plotters vs pantsers, writing

Peterson and Rice Cases Make Clear that Abuse Fosters Abuse

The NFL has had a rough start to the 2014 season. First, it was accused of bungling the disciplinary action towards Ray Rice for beating his then-fiancee. Then video of the actual beating surfaced, not only confirming that Commissioner Roger Goodell indeed had levied too light a penalty but also raising the question of what the league knew and when. And before the dust could even think of settling on that issue, Vikings running back Adrian Peterson was indicted for child abuse, with prosecutors alleging he beat his four-year-old son so severely with a switch, he broke the skin and left welts on the child.

The league has more than a black eye on domestic violence issues at the moment. Its reputation is figuratively in the hospital after having had the hell beaten out of it.

Which is a metaphor that seems both appropos and wholly offensive given the nature of the issues.

I’ve been a fan of NFL football for 36 years. I write a blog on my favorite team. I own jerseys and caps. I subscribe to NFL Sunday Ticket. I am part of the culture of America’s most popular sports league.

And like many people who instead want nothing to do with the National Football League, I’m offended by the way these issues are being and have been handled.

I’m not here today, though, to heap criticism on the NFL or even on the players who committed the crimes in question. To be sure, the league needs to reform its policy on players charged with serious offenses. At the moment, responsibility falls to the teams to handle the matter until the legal system has run its course.

But that system is fraught with conflicts of interest. Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson are two of the most important players on their respective teams. Peterson in particular is the engine that makes the Vikings offense go. While one applauds Minnesota for deactivating him this past Sunday in the wake of the indictment, it’s not hard to understand why they reactivated him in the name of giving him his Constitutional right to due process. The Vikings got drubbed by New England 30-7 without Peterson.

You can complain all you want about teams needing to do the right thing, but the business of any professional sports team is winning games. Head coaches’ jobs, merchandising, stadium deals and a lot of other important monetary issues are bound up in how many games a club wins.

So the league needs to take the decision away from teams. Remove the conflict of interest. If a guy is accused of something as serious as what Peterson and Rice were, he should be suspended with pay by the league pending the outcome of the legal process. The players’ union can’t complain because the guy is getting paid, and no one’s civil rights are being infringed, because his employment isn’t threatened until and unless there’s a conviction. And the team doesn’t have to worry about deliberately affecting its chances to win games.

But that’s not addressing the real issue.

What’s really behind all this a cultural prevalence towards and accepting of violence. Not violence towards women. Not violence towards children. Violence period.

As I mentioned above, I’m a football fan. Football — particularly NFL football, which features the fastest, most powerful athletes in the sport — is a violent game.

Moreover, I’m an author of action-adventure fiction. Violence is a big part of my books, and the heroes ultimately use it to solve problems.

I also have a black belt in Kenpo. I’m trained in practical self-defense, and I enjoyed sparring and competing in tournaments.

So to an extent, that makes me a hypocrite.

But bear with me. The issue here is that, in everyday life, we don’t seem to understand that violence is a measure of last resort. Peterson told the grand jury he was only disciplining his child the way his own father had punished him. Indeed, a story surfaced last night that Peterson’s father whipped him with a belt in front of 20 other kids at school.

Sunday, on CBS’s The NFL Today, Charles Barkley said of the Peterson story, “I’m from the South. Whipping — we do that all the time.”

Here’s the thing that the Peterson case makes clear — abuse turns people into abusers.

I’m not going to debate whether corporal punishment is good or bad. All I’m going to say is that, if you leave welts or break open the skin on a child, you’ve crossed the line from discipline into child abuse.

Adrian Peterson doesn’t think he did anything wrong. He claims he was just raising his son the way he was raised.

It didn’t occur to him that a guy fast and strong enough to rush for 2000 yards in a single season in the toughest football league on the planet shouldn’t need a tree branch to discipline a child. Surely, if he thought his four-year-old needed a spanking, his hand was sufficient to cause enough pain that the child would fear getting out of line again (which is the point of corporal punishment).

But Peterson was whipped, not just spanked, so he thought that was the right way to handle the situation with his kid.

Likewise, I don’t know what caused Ray Rice to punch his fiancee hard enough to knock her out or why he thought punching anyone, let alone a woman, was acceptable behavior. But the idea couldn’t have been a new one to him. He learned it somewhere. He learned it from someone. Some time in his development as a human being, he was taught that violence was an acceptable way to solve problems.

And it’s tough, because on the football field, it is. Rice and Peterson are ball carriers. The others guys are trying to take them physically to the ground so they can’t advance the ball. Rice and Peterson are allowed, within the limits of the rules, to hit their opponents to prevent them from doing that.

But there has to be a line. Violence has to stay on the field. It needs to stay within the pages of the books and on the screens of the movie theaters.

It can’t get out into the real world unless it’s absolutely necessary. If you have to hit someone, it should be in self-defense, not to impose your will on them. If you think corporal punishment is an acceptable parenting tactic, it should be used only for the most serious offenses, not for any crime. And it should have limits.

Because abused children grow up to be abusers. It doesn’t matter if they are dirt-poor, barely scraping by in a dead-end job, or if they are multi-millionaires, who are among the best at their chosen profession like Peterson and Rice.

As a people and a species, we’ll never rid ourselves completely of violence. It will always be necessary to an extent. But we can learn to be better in our use of it. We can evolve to see it only as something we employ as a last resort, a nuclear option.

Because no matter how noble the intent behind it, violence is destructive. Once things come to blows, everyone loses.

If Peterson and Rice have anything to teach us, it is that abuse begets abuse and that we need to rethink our approach to physical conflict.

Filed under: Current Events Tagged: Adrian Peterson, Charles Barkley, Ray Rice

Napping an Important Part of the Writing Process

I have a confession to make: I take naps.

I know that doesn’t sound like that big a revelation, but when you maintain you are working hard, people tend to take a dim view of you lying down on the job. It looks lazy.

Here’s the thing, though. I’m actually working.

I know. This sounds like some sort of Orwellian doublethink to make it sound like I’m not a total slacker. (As though a guy publishing and marketing three books a year is slacking.)

But the truth is, when I lay down for that mid-afternoon snooze, I’m writing.

“Wait,” you say. “I’ve seen writing. It involves sitting at the keyboard typing out stories. Or maybe you could even claim plotting out beats in a notebook as writing. But not napping. Napping is sleeping. I’m not buying it.”

I understand that. Napping certainly doesn’t look like writing. It looks like the total opposite of writing (or any other kind of work).

But a lot of writing doesn’t look like writing.

As you noted, I spend some of my writing time with a notebook outlining chapters. I also make plot notes, character notes, define terms, and things like that — things that are important to the telling of a story.

I also edit the manuscript after its been written. That’s part of writing too, even though technically it’s something else.

And I spend time on the internet researching. I look up Latin translations, Norse mythology, and technical information on gadgets or world history that appears in my books. For Beauty & the Beast: A Modern Fairy Tale, I spent a lot of time researching Lawrence High School, so the setting would be authentic.

“Yeah, yeah, John,” you say. “I get that. That’s all important stuff that goes into your process, so you can count that as writing. Napping doesn’t fit that bill.”

Well, again, a lot of writing doesn’t look like writing.

You see, writing requires careful thought. The ideas have to come from somewhere, and they have to be executed well. I write adventure stories, so my heroes have to face obstacles, and they have to find interesting and exciting ways to overcome them. This stuff doesn’t just spring into my head. I have to think about it.

That’s where napping comes in. When I lay down for a nap, I put whatever story I’m working on in the front of my mind. I puzzle over plot complications. I try to decide what’s going to happen next. I look for solutions.

As I start to drift away — when I’m in that No Man’s Land between sleep and wakefulness — a different part of my brain unlocks. Halfway to La-la Land lies the path to my imagination.

If I’m focused on a story element, I can access the creative part of part my mind — the part where the solutions to problems, where the next plot twist, and where the thrilling climax reside. My writer brain is most alive when it is in that altered state that precedes sleep.

Somehow, I remember these visions when I awake. After the nap I’m ready to type again. I’m ready to add them to the story.

There are probably ten different studies on how the brain works before it falls asleep and what dreams mean and how good sleep benefits creatives. I haven’t read them. Like so much of the magic I draw on to craft my stories, I only know that it works and how to manipulate it.

For me at least, napping is an essential part of the creative process. It is a way to actively tap the wellsprings of my creativity. Napping is work. Napping is writing.

So I nap. I nap without shame. After all, when I’m flat on my back on the couch in a sunbeam, I’m working hard.

Sometimes, this job is really great!

Filed under: Writing Tagged: creativity, John Phythyon, napping, writing

This Old House

This past weekend, I ventured north to Ann Arbor, Michigan. As a dyed-in-the-wool Ohio Stater, this would normally have been roughly akin to traveling to the Ninth Circle of Dante’s Hell.

But Jill spent her early years in Ann Arbor, when her dad taught journalism at Michigan. They moved to Kansas in 1976, when she was eight, and she hadn’t been back since ’77.

So since The Ninth Circle of Hell is only a three-hour drive from Columbus (yes, the “three-hour tour” line from “The Ballad of Gilligan’s Island” was going through my head), she thought it would be the perfect opportunity to take her husband and children to see her roots.

We had a good time on the way up. I put some musicals into the CD player, and we sang along loudly, while the kids jacked their headphones into their phones and tried to pretend they didn’t have The Most Embarrassing Parents Ever. Despite it only being a three-hour trip, we had to stop so someone could pee. I won’t say who it was, but it was the same person it always is.

When we got to Ann Arbor, Jill’s old street was under construction. So we parked at her brother’s old middle school and walked.

The house that used to be hers is tall and grey, and kind of majestic-looking. It’s an old house, and it isn’t in the wealthy part of town (her dad was an untenured college prof, after all). It was surrounded by enormous trees. They were big when Jill lived there 38 years ago, and now they were scraping the heavens.

We stood across the street, and Jill pointed out her bedroom window. She stared at the lot and was stunned it wasn’t as big as she remembered it. The legs of a young child took many more steps to get across it than an adult’s. It looked almost exactly the same to her, except she could see its true size now.

Then we walked up the street and around the corner, so she could show us her best friend’s old house. I couldn’t stop smiling. It was neat to see this quaint old neighborhood that reminded me a lot of my own childhood visits to Maine and to see the adult woman I’d married transform back into the girl who didn’t know she lived on a small lot.

On our way back to the car, we went down the side of the street Jill’s old house stood on, so we could get a closer look. Then something extraordinary happened.

A six-month-old chocolate lab came bounding out of the backyard to greet us on the sidewalk. Naturally, we stopped to pet him, and a man in his sixties approached apologizing to us for his dog’s enthusiasm. Jill introduced herself.

“Hi, I’m Jill,” she said. “I think you bought this house from my parents in 1976.”

“Yes,” he said, his face lighting up. “I did!”

They spent a few minutes catching up. He took us into the backyard so she could see the rest of the grounds. He told her how they’d expanded the garage a few years ago (which partially accounted for the yard being smaller than she remembered), and how they were going to have to severely trim back the gargantuan maple tree, because several branches were rotting, and it was threatening the house.

His daughter, whom Jill remembered as a baby, was an adult with a toddler of her own and lived only two doors down. They both reflected how time flies and things change.

He didn’t invite us in, and Jill didn’t want to press. So after a few minutes, we said our goodbyes and went on our way to explore the park at which she used to play and her old elementary school (which still had a stone statue of a seal from her childhood days, even though the rest of the playground equipment was all new).

We had lunch at the pub her father used to frequent, and the kids found a really good comics and games store we spent almost an hour in.

It was really very cool.

Jill beamed with light that had nothing to do with the sunny afternoon. She showed us where she came from. She saw things she hadn’t thought of or had forgotten about. She was eight years old again.

And it was all made possible by a puppy named “Java.” We’d have been happy to just walk by the house, but “Java” came out and (re)introduced us to the owner. It made everything more special.

We were on our way back to Ohio the following morning. The children returned to their headphones to hide from our music, and I was clad in my Bengals gear to get ready for NFL Opening Day. The Usual Suspect forced us to make another pit stop. It was a short trip.

But it was a nice little visit into the History of Jill. You can go home again, however briefly. I’m very glad we did.

Even if it was in Michigan.

Filed under: Uncategorized

Announcing Fourth Quarter Publication Plans

Fourth quarter is usually a  busy time of year in retail. Starting with Halloween in October and then Christmas shopping season from November to December 24th, it’s a good time of year to be selling.

Since I began my self-publishing adventure in November of 2011 with the release of State of Grace, I’ve put out at least one book in fourth quarter every year. In 2014, I’m upping the ante to one release a month!

I’ll kick things off with the fourth Wolf Dasher novel, Ghost of a Chance. If you’ve been following my blog, you know that this chapter in the series offers a lot of big revelations. GOAC finally reveals who Mustique Starfellow’s mysterious Master is, what the sons of Frey have been up to all this time, and what is the source of the corruption that is causing Alfar and Jifan to decay before their citizens’ eyes.

And that’s just the big, story-arc stuff. The book also features intimate looks at May’s parents August Sunstrider and Melina Eveningsong and surprising turns from other minor characters including Cyrus Eagleflight and Ahmed Lumendrake. Plus, I also answer the questions I left hanging at the end of Roses Are White.

This is a huge book. (Literally! It’s over 126,000 words at the moment — the longest novel I’ve written.) If you’re a fan of the Wolf Dasher series, you wont want to miss it.

Ghost of a Chance releases October 13, 2014 on Kindle. I’ll announce a print date soon.

Need to catch up on the previous Wolf Dasher books? State of Grace is only 99 cents for Kindle. Red Dragon Five and Roses Are White are a mere $2.99. Click the links to get your copy.

In a completely different vein, I’m also announcing (officially) a memoir. The “True-Life Adventure” series will focus on my childhood in the 1970’s. As a young boy growing up in suburban Wisconsin, I had an imagination most people, especially my parents and teachers, struggled to keep up with. My ability to dream of adventure and ignore reality got me into all sorts of ridiculous trouble. Almost 40 years later, I feel sorry for my parents.

I’ll be writing and releasing the memoir in serial fashion. Each installment will focus on one stupid thing I got obsessed with as a kid, and tell the story via humorous essay. And I swear none of it is made up. All these stories are true. If you like the work of Jean Shepherd, this will be right up your alley.

The first book, “Secret Identity: My True-Life Adventure as a Superhero”, details the night, when, at the tender age of eight, I dressed up as a superhero, complete with mask and cape, and snuck out of the house to go fight crime. After reading it, not only will you laugh at my stupidity, you’ll understand how I grew up to write fantasy novels. “Secret Identity” releases November 3, 2014.

The next installment, “Naughty & Nice: My True-Life Adventure with Santa Claus”, arrives on December 1, 2014 — just in time for Christmas. For a kid with an overactive imagination, not only was it easy to believe in Kris Kringle, it became an obsession to see this magical man in action. I was desperate to catch Santa Claus leaving the presents under the tree, and one year I got the perfect gift to pull it off. This entry in the series chronicles my obsession with Christmas and my quest to meet Santa face to face.

That’s the plan for the rest of the year. I’ve got a busy schedule laid out for First Quarter 2015 too, but I’ll discuss that in a future blog.

Filed under: e-Publishing, Ghost of a Chance, Memoir, Writing Tagged: Ghost of a Chance, John Phythyon, memoirs, Santa Claus, Wolf Dasher

Authorial Voice Critical in a Memoir

Every book you’ll ever read on writing will discuss the importance of developing your authorial “voice.” This is the tone by which you tell your stories — be they novels, magazine features, or news journalism. It is expressive of one’s personality and authorial style, and it’s a what makes one writer distinct from another.

I’m finding this to be truer than usual as I write a memoir.

I developed my authorial voice long ago. Read two of my novels, and you can tell they’re written by the same guy, even if they aren’t in the same series. I use particular turns of phrase and certain sentence structures to make my narratives read in my peculiar way.

The same is true for my blog entries on “Pleading the Phyth” and “The Who Dey Herald.” You read these pieces, and you hear John.

But the memoir is proving more challenging. I’m struggling to get the voice for it I want.

There are a couple of reasons for this. First and foremost is the fact that it is comedy. My fiction is largely action-adventure fare, and there is a certain seriousness to the narrative that the fantasy books I write require.

But in “Secret Identity: My True-Life Adventure as a Superhero,” I’m recounting a humorous anecdote from my childhood, wherein I dressed up as a superhero and snuck out of the house after bedtime to right wrongs. Not only is such an act ludicrous, telling it correctly requires the right touch of absurdity.

I first began writing this piece back in 2011. I conceived it as the first chapter in a larger memoir about what an idiot I was as a kid in the 70’s and as a teenager in the 80’s. My original opening went like this:

When I was in third grade I read this book called Alvin Fernald, Superweasel. It was about a boy who dresses up as a superhero, the titular Superweasel, and goes around trying to stop a chemical company from polluting his town. Everyone was very concerned about pollution in the Seventies. I guess they still are, only now they call it Global Warming.

A couple of things jump out from this passage. First, the lede is really weak. It doesn’t grab the reader, and it doesn’t seem to relate in any interesting way to the story I’m planning to tell. In my defense, I had planned for the book to have a preface, wherein I explained that the stories the reader was about to consume were, despite being insane, completely true. I had planned to establish my absurdist voice there. Still, this wasn’t a good way to open the book.

Second, you can see the foundation of what I wanted to do in the paragraph’s final sentence. My sense of absurd humor starts to peek through when I make the Global Warming joke. But I wait too long to establish that this is going to be a tale of high comedy.

When I began to rework the project, planning to release each chapter as a longer piece that would be sustainable as a series, I knew I was going to have to have a stronger lede. After all, I wouldn’t have the preface to introduce the concept.

I therefore opened the new draft as follows:

A lot of people don’t believe me when I tell them I was a superhero. Okay, that’s not exactly true. Up until now, I’ve hardly confessed to anyone that I was once a superhero, so I can’t say for sure how they’d react.

But I bet they wouldn’t believe me. Why would they? Superheroes aren’t real, right? No one dresses up in a costume, wears a mask, and fights crime.

This is a much stronger lede. It raises questions, introduces my basic authorial voice, and sets the stage for a story about a person who once attempted to be a superhero. This gets closer to what I wanted.

But I discovered after getting the manuscript back from my editor that something else was wrong. She noticed it first, and her bringing it up alerted me to the fact that I had another serious rewrite ahead of me.

The problem we discovered is that, despite the absurd approach to a tale about a kid dressing up as a superhero and trying to fight crime, there was way too much adult perspective. For example, consider this passage, only six paragraphs into the narrative:

My obsession with superheroes began at an early age. “Obsession” is an ugly word, implying a certain level of mental illness. Let’s face it, though, we’re talking about an eight-year-old putting on a costume and sneaking out of his parents’ house at night on days other than October 31. Maybe the pejorative fits.

The first two sentences are funny enough. It forwards the whole absurd tone. But after that, what we have, while also funny, is too adult.

I’m riffing on Jean Shepard a bit here. In A Christmas Story and in In God We Trust; All Others Pay Cash — the book on which the beloved Christmas movie is based — Shepard narrates the story from the perspective of his nine-year-old self. There is a certain adult sensibility to it, but what makes it work is hearing the child’s perspective. That’s why it’s funny.

My eight-year-old self didn’t realize sneaking out of the house in a superhero costume was insane or stupid. He wouldn’t have done it if he had. Moreover, I had never heard the word, “pejorative,” when I was eight. My adult perspective kept intruding on the story, spoiling the verisimilitude.

The rewrite reads like this:

My obsession with superheroes began at an early age. “Obsession” is an ugly word, implying a certain level of mental illness. I prefer to think of myself as recognizing a certain hole in society and attempting to fill it. After all, we all need heroes.

This version keeps the joke (and the implication) about obsession, but it removes the adult perspective. Now it’s more childlike. Now it keeps up the fun and the humor without blowing the atmosphere.

Authorial voice is critically important in a memoir, I’ve discovered. If you don’t get the right tone, don’t have the proper perspective, the book doesn’t work. Memoirs are very personal stories that reveal the mind of the author. Without the right voice, they fall apart.

Who knew telling your own story would be more difficult than making one up?

Filed under: Memoir, Writing Tagged: John Phythyon, memoirs, writing

GHOST OF A CHANCE Nearing Completion after Long, Stressful Summer

What has easily been one of the most interesting years of my life rolls on at a good clip. (I’m suddenly reminded of the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”)

I’ve just completed the third draft of the fourth Wolf Dasher novel, Ghost of a Chance. Begun in Kansas and carrying through the move this summer to Ohio, the first draft alone has been a huge part of my 2014 experience. I think the writing of this one is going to be one of the definitive parts of the year for me.

Ironically, it’s helped keep me sane. I say, “ironic,” because writing a novel is a hard, exhausting process. Trying to do something that monumental while simultaneously moving cross-country is, well, we’ll call it brave to make me feel better.

However, as my life (and my family’s) was turned both upside down and inside out trying to get all of our stuff and ourselves from Kansas to Ohio, while simultaneously ensuring the children got to spend time with their other parents, I found a little time every day to get out my computer and write. I could forget about the madness happening around me and focus on Wolf’s world. It was comforting.

I was worried about all the discombobulation of my life leading to an unfocused, meandering tale that wouldn’t be very exciting to read. It was a lot more difficult than usual to keep track of the development of the story this time. Ghost of a Chance is the longest book I’ve written (it’s over 126,000 words and has 51 chapters), and I was afraid I’d drifted off-topic. This was further complicated by the fact that I ended Roses Are White with three cliff-hangers, and I spend the first 14 chapters of Ghost of a Chance wrapping those up.

But I’m pleased with how it’s turned out so far, (my editor will be taking another crack at it starting today). As you might imagine of a novel that has to tie up events left hanging from the previous book as well as tell its own story, Ghost of a Chance has a complex plot. Much more so than previous Wolf Dasher books, it is told from multiple viewpoints. A lot of things are happening at once, and they don’t all appear to be related at first.

As the novel progresses, the various plot threads merge into a cohesive story that is about the very survival of elves and Alfar itself. There are a lot of big reveals in it. I finally unveil who Mustique Starfellow’s mysterious master is, what the Sons of Frey and the Freedom Patrol have been up to all along, and the nature of the strange corruption that is causing the land to die.

On a micro level, many of the characters are profoundly changed by the events of both Roses Are White and Ghost of a Chance. In particular, May’s father, August Sunstrider wrestles with grief — both his and his wife’s — and attempts to try to put his horrific losses into some sort of context that doesn’t destroy his faith. Aqib Dragonblade — who has the broadest arc of change from his first appearance in Red Dragon Five to his role in Ghost of a Chance — also is profoundly altered by his faith and the events of the novel. Cyrus Eagleflight, a very minor character in State of Grace, has an increasingly larger part in the saga and must come to grips with his own prejudices if he’s going to succeed in his new position as Captain of the Elite Guard.

Ghost of a Chance is a big novel in a lot of ways — both in the tale it tells, its placement in the overall progression of the story arc, and the personal issues with which its characters grapple. I’m pretty pleased with how it’s turned out thus far. I’m floored I was able to pen something this enormous while trying to move.

The book will be out in October. I can’t wait until readers get a chance to dig into it too.

Filed under: e-Publishing, Ghost of a Chance, Writing Tagged: Ghost of a Chance, John Phythyon, Roses Are White, Wolf Dasher, writing

Accepting Bad Reviews Part of Being an Author

Yesterday, my friend Kriss Morton wrote a blog in which she wonders whether it is worth it to continue reviewing books by indie authors. You can read it here.

Indie authors are flipping out over reviews less than five stars.

Summarizing briefly, she and other book bloggers are finding it increasingly frustrating and difficult to review indies, because the authors contact them and complain about the reviews they get. Evidently, there are even authors who complain when they get a four-star review, upset it wasn’t five stars. And of course, if a four-star isn’t good enough, you can imagine what happens on reviews of three stars or less.

All this got me thinking about the nature of the review process. Saying Amazon.com has changed the way books are published and sold is about the biggest understatement of the decade. Not only has eBook publishing through KDP made it possible for thousands — tens of thousands? — of people to get their books into the hands of readers, Amazon’s system of reviews has turned ordinary readers into book critics. Not only can anyone publish a book now, anyone can review one too.

In fact, Amazon encourages buyers (not just readers) to review all the products it sells. Whether you’re getting books, clothes, or kitchen appliances, Amazon wants you to leave your opinion. When you buy something from them, they’ll prompt you via email to review it a few days later.

In a very real way, Amazon.com has created a populist movement that has taken publishing and reviewing out of the hands of gatekeepers and experts and put it squarely in the hands of everyday people. You don’t need to have a contract with a major publishing house to get your book out there. You don’t need to have a master’s degree in literature to become one of the top reviewers at the largest online retailer on the planet.

So what does this mean for indie publishing?

To answer that requires understanding two other key components of publishing in the Brave New World. First, discoverability is critical to getting a sale. This was always true, but the business of it has changed. When most books were coming from big houses, they were shipped to bookstores, who stocked them and displayed them according to whatever deal the stores and the publishers had.

Amazon’s deal is this — no matter who you are, from the biggest house to the tiniest indie, they will feature your book in accordance with its sales. The more copies it sells, the more Amazon’s algorithms will push it out in front of shoppers. Thus, getting those sales are critical to getting discovered. You’ve got to make sure people are seeing your book, so they can buy it. To do that, you need to have other people buy it.

Second, thousands of books are published every day on Amazon. Unlike a brick-and-mortar store, Amazon has millions of choices available. Competition is stiff. Getting seen is really hard. So the surest way to get people to notice you is to advertise. There are a number of third-party web services that do this, catering to readers hungry for discount books.

And that’s where reviews come in. The best sites want to make sure they are only offering the best books to their subscribers. That’s their competitive advantage.

So they’ve chosen review scores as the measuring stick for whom they’ll accept. The best sites have high standards. Many of them require a minimum of 10 reviews with at least a four-star average.

This is not how it is done in other industries. You pay your money and you run your ad. If the material sucks that’s not the host’s problem.

But BookBub, E-Reader News Today, Kindle Books & Tips, Books Sends, and the other top sites recruit subscribers by promising the best of the best. So reviews are critical.

And so authors, desperate to get noticed and needing good reviews to be able to even place an ad, start stalking book bloggers, begging for reviews and demanding they be four and five stars. Even a three-star review can be devastating. Just like your GPA, a C takes a lot of A’s to overcome. It’s easy to drag that average down and difficult as hell to push it up.

You begin to understand why some authors go crazy over bad reviews. They hurt their chances for breakout success.

But that doesn’t excuse the behavior.

I know from experience how frustrating it can be get to a three-star review or worse. It’s doubly irritating when the review seems to be without merit. I’ve gotten a few one- and two-star reviews where I am not convinced the person read the book I wrote.

But I’ve yet to complain publicly. I don’t bitch about a review here on my blog, on my Facebook page, or in the comments of a book blogger’s site. I don’t even vote them down on Amazon or ask to have them removed.

The reason is pretty simple — I don’t want to look bad. I consider myself a professional. I write books for a living. It’s my vocation. I don’t want to be considered an amateur, a prima donna, or a pain in the ass. I want to be seen as a thoughtful adult.

Railing against bad reviews of my books does the opposite. It makes me appear like a child throwing a tantrum. It makes me seem like someone who should not be taken seriously.

Moreover, it makes it look like the reviewer was right.

No matter how I want to, I can’t change the opinion of someone who didn’t like one of my books. They didn’t like it; they said so. If I’m lucky, they might even have given fair criticism (many bad reviews do). There’s nothing to be done about it.

But if I act like an idiot, I can convince other people they shouldn’t buy the book. I can convince others the reviewer had the right take.

I’ve yet to publish a book that hasn’t gotten good reviews. I get four- and five-star reviews in addition to worse ones. And I want people who discover my books to be convinced that those reviewers are the ones they should heed. I want them thinking the reviewers who wrote good things are the people to whom they should listen.

So, yes, it sucks when someone makes the effort to trash my book with a one- or two-star review. But if their complaints are well reasoned, I shouldn’t be arguing. And if they are trollish, I trust readers to pick that out for themselves.

Yes, it hurts my review average and makes it harder for me to get advertising. But I can’t imagine attacking someone for rendering an opinion on my book. I certainly can’t envision accosting them for “only” giving me a three- or four-star review. (And some of the things Kriss reports as having been done to her and colleagues are appalling.)

I’ve cursed reviewers, but only in the privacy of my own home. (Hey, I’m only human too!) That’s where it should stay, folks. It doesn’t go public.

So how about we all remember that the world doesn’t owe us a living? As authors our job is to write the best book we can and put it out there for people to read and consider. After that, we have to accept what people think of it. Sometimes, that’s not very fun. Sometimes, that negatively impacts our livelihood.

But if we want to be taken seriously, if we want to write for a living and have indie publishing be considered legitimate, we have to behave professionally.

And that includes accepting the public’s judgment with as much grace as possible.

Filed under: e-Publishing Tagged: e-publishing, indie publishing, reviews

THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER Cover a Finalist!

Here’s a little bit of fun news. The Sword and the Sorcerer has been named as a finalist in the Book Goodies best cover contest in the fantasy category!

THE SWORD AND THE SORCERER is a finalist for Best Fantasy Book Cover!

Naturally, I’ve very flattered. there are a number of very good covers in this category, so to be chosen as a finalist is a real compliment.

I’m also pleased for three other reasons. First, my lovely wife designs my covers, and I think she does an amazing job. She’s very talented. The Sword and the Sorcerer is dedicated to her, so it’s very gratifying to see her get some recognition for this special work.

Second, my good friend Knute Pittenger posed for the cover. He takes on the role of the formidable sorcerer, Gothemus Draco. I’m indebted to him as well.

Finally, as you may be aware, I donate a portion of the sales of the novel to Freedom to Marry, the campaign to win marriage equality nationwide. Hopefully, this will help raise the book’s profile a bit, so it can generate more capital for Freedom to Marry.

Now, here’s the really cool part. The winners are determined by public vote. That means you can help me get some recognition for my talented cover designer and a close friend as well as help me raise money for a worthy cause.

To vote, click on this link. Then you can either leave a comment, share the page on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social media, or you can do both! The winner is the cover with the most shares and comments.

So if you wouldn’t mind, I’d really appreciate your assistance in getting a little recognition for my cover designer, a thank you to a friend, and raising a little money for Freedom to Marry.

Thanks!

Click here to vote for The Sword and the Sorcerer.

Filed under: e-Publishing, The Sword and the Sorcerer Tagged: Book Goodies, Book Goodies Cover Contest, John Phythyon, The Sword and the Sorcerer

Robin Williams a Reminder that Comedy is Born of Pain

I am late to this discussion. I know that.

But I had something more urgent to say about the Ferguson disaster, and I’ve needed some time to compose my thoughts on this.

Like practically everyone else, I was saddened by the death of Robin Williams. The man was a great entertainer. He made me laugh more times than I can count. I own several films in which he starred, and there are a couple more I would like to have. My favorite is his little-known collaboration with late, greats Walter Matthau and Jerry Reed, The Survivors.

But unlike so many opinions I’ve read in columns and friends’ Facebooks, I was not surprised to learn Robin Williams was mentally ill and suffered from depression. Even if stories of his past substance abuse had not been widely published, it was obvious to me that the man struggled terribly.

Williams was frenetic. If you’ve watched his standup, you can see his brain moving at a million miles an hour. He struck me as bipolar from the moment I really understood how the disease worked. I have several bipolar people in my life, and Williams was a lot like them. The brain works so much faster than the average person’s. Talking with a bipolar individual in a manic phase can be exhausting.

And speaking with them during a depressive episode can be crushing. Williams’s standup and some of his more erratic characters were familiar to me. I’d seen it before.

A number of years ago, I worked briefly for a comedian. He made his living writing things everyone found funny. Everything was a joke to him. In public, he was the life of the party.

But as I got to know him, I discovered something I think is universal of comedians — they are sad. The world they perceive isn’t very nice. It hurts. It makes them unhappy. And they react to it by making a joke. They laugh it off.

And they learn to do it with everyone. Fearful that people won’t like them or that people will think it is strange they are sad, they pretend to be happy instead. They make jokes. They hurl funny insults to disguise the seriousness of what they really think.

Robin Williams was hurting. No one who endures substance abuse isn’t hurting. It’s a desperate attempt to feel good. No one who attempts suicide isn’t hurting. And given what we know about Williams’s death, he was especially determined to succeed.

That kind of despair isn’t just debilitating, it’s frightening. One can only imagine the emotional pain he felt that drove him to such a desperate act.

Robin Williams was very good at making jokes. He made people laugh. He might have even made himself laugh. But he was doing it to hide the mental anguish.

Williams was 63 years old. That means he had enough willpower to live with his afflictions and his depression for over six decades. When you think about it, that’s extraordinary.

My point in discussing all this is not to rehash old ground or to smugly claim to have known he was ill all along. Rather, I think we need to change the way we look at people who entertain us.

One of the themes of the post-Williams suicide articles has been a mourning for the passing of a great talent mixed with shock at how he died. It’s time for us to pay better attention, to have greater understanding.

Certainly, there is nothing wrong with allowing comedians to make us laugh. Robin Williams made me every bit as happy as the millions of others he touched with his comedy.

But we need to remember that the class clown isn’t just funny. He or she is also sad. I’ve yet to meet one that wasn’t. And while we should embrace their talent, we also need to recognize pain, and reach out to soothe it. Give something back to those that make us laugh — comfort.

Because no one should be hurting so badly they want to die just to make it end. People in pain should receive love, medication, treatment, and understanding, so they can cope. Some mental illness is environmental — depression brought on by suffering. Some of it is genetic. All of it is worthy of acceptance and treatment.

I salute Robin Williams for battling his demons for so long and for using the power they gave him to make others happy. I hope his death encourages us all to recognize others’ pain and help them cope — both with love and understanding and, where necessary treatment and medication.

Filed under: Current Events Tagged: bipolar disorder, depression, Robin Williams, suicide