Renée Harrell's Blog, page 12

Technology is not our friend...

...and it's not your friend, either. Oh, no, it is not.
 
 If you've found these words on Facebook via a mobile source -- cell phone or tablet -- you've probably noticed that we duplicated last week's post. We didn't do this on purpose. We did this because modern technology hates us.
 
After we wrote our blog last week, we saw that Facebook wasn't linking-up with our RSS Feed. We still don't know why. Researching, we found a link that said Facebook no longer supported RSS Feeds. Why, Facebook, why? But the link said all is not lost, our blog would still appear if we did...all of these irritating steps,a really complicated bit of pain-in-the-assery. Since complicated pain-in-the-assery type of stuff is tiring and frequently over our heads, we took the easy route. We asked the people hosting this website to share our words with our Facebook friends.
 
Weebly stepped up and did this for us. Problem solved!
 
-- or it would have been, if our RSS Feed didn't somehow start working again. Why, RSS Feed, why? The next thing we knew, mobile readers found two links to the Plague House blog. And this wasn't a blog worth reading twice.
 
Technology deplores us.
 
Meanwhile, and not off-subject, a couple of days ago, we get an email from an Aly's Luck reader. The reader wants to know (a) if we've written a sequel; and (b) if there's some mysterious reason why many of the paragraphs in Chapter 14 are missing their indentations. Like, was squishing all of the paragraphs together an intentional act, a clever play on the backward practices of the Bugworld itself?
 
So we reach into our files, find the original manuscript, and discover that all of its paragraphs are indented properly. Things look good. When we bring the novel up on our Kindle, a big chunk of Chapter 14 is kind of wonky and not in a good way. Paragraph after paragraph just run together.
 
We're forced to tell our reader that we haven't written a sequel (yet, if ever) and that we'll fix the paragraph thing soon. One of us wanted to tell him that the wonky paragraphs were intentional but, since we only have about seven readers in the world, we felt we should be honest, instead. We tell him that technology wants to lure us into a back alley, mug us, stab us, and leave us for dead.
 
While we were trying to figure out why things had gone weird, we heard from another writer friend we know. She'd heard about our Aly's Luck problems and knew we were playing with the page layout. She's warned us that we may need to redo every manuscript we have on Amazon. The new-ish Kindle Paperwhite has a glitch in it that doesn't like Word documents and things! must! be! changed!
 
If you're a writer, here's a link that says much of the same.
 
Technology, you're a real rat bastard, you know that?

Welcome to Plague House...

...Population: Two.
 
Eleven days ago, we visited with some family members and their adorable 18-month old baby. Baby was bright and beautiful, toddling about...and his little baby nose was dripping. The wee one was coughing.
 
The wee one was sick.
 
This particular writing team knew enough to avoid the precious virus-carrier but we mistakenly believed that good hand washing and our mutant healing abilities would be enough to ward off any possible illness. Two days later, we both learned this was wrong.
 
Feeling neither bright nor beautiful, we've been toddling about for the last nine days, our uncute non-baby noses dripping. We've been coughing. We've been sick.
 
Not that you care but it's currently 22 degrees Fahrenheit outside (-5.5556 Celsius to the rest of the world) and that doesn't count the wind chill factor. And, baby, the wind is blowing. 
 
We know, we know: We finally get back to our website and all we do is whine. After all, we're pretty certain this isn't the flu -- neither of us has had high fevers or a general body ache -- but it's been a fairly intense cold. We're happy to report that Baby has shaken the bug completely.
 
A casual friend heard about our misery and knew exactly what we could do to get over our sickness. (Sicknesses? Sicknessi?) In a loving and generous spirit, she sent us some info. Read this, her email commanded. It may save your life.
 
Intrigued, and currently in favor of saving our lives, we read on. Per the e-message, we discovered that a frozen lemon peel is a marvelous thing. Grated into fine slivers of peel-ness, it can be sprinkled over any food product: All foods will unexpectedly have a wonderful taste, something you may never have experienced before...an experiment one of us wanted to try immediately and preferably over a Little Debbie Cream Cheese Streusel Cake. (There are NINE grams of fat in one of those Little Debbie cakes and no person alive sits down to eat a single Little Debbie cake. Mutant healing ability doesn't prevent a bulging belly. Just sharing.) But there was still more to learn about the marvelous lemon and its peel.
 
The email revealed lemon peels contain 5 to 10 times more vitamins than lemon juice itself and these peels are health rejuvenators in eradicating toxic elements in the body. That's the lemon secret! Better late than never, right? The surprising benefits of lemon!...all of which we could probably accept because, c'mon, we just don't care enough to do the research. Also, the California Lemon Industry probably doesn't count on the fruit's rind to send their profits soaring. While we weren't going to throw some lemon zest into our oatmeal, we were considering adding a container of  Newman's Own Old Fashioned Lemonade onto the shopping list.
 
Our friend sent us this information to help us battle a little respiratory inconvenience. The original composer of this letter wanted to make an even bigger claim: Lemon is a miraculous product to kill cancer cells, the email continued. It is 10,000 times stronger than chemotherapy. Why do we not know about that? Because there are laboratories interested in making a synthetic version that will bring them huge profits -- and, The source of this information is fascinating: it comes from one of the largest drug manufacturers in the world, says that after more than 20 laboratory tests since 1970, the extracts revealed that it destroys the malignant cells in 12 cancers, including colon, breast, prostate, lung and pancreas...

Because we've both lost loved ones to the disease, we're a little sensitive about bogus cancer cures. This time, we did do our research and shame on whoever started this silly horsepap. (Horsepap is a really cool new word and it's being used by all the celebrities. You should use it, too.) We discovered that the drug manufacturers aren't hiding a series of lemony fresh lab tests to profit on human agony. We learned that the lemon tree is not yet more effective than chemotherapy in treating cancers. As it turns out, this bit of quasi-nonsense has been floating around in the electronic sphere for awhile now and it came to the attention of  Snopes.com. Bottom line on the email we received? All of those claims are hyperbole and exaggeration and not supported by facts.
 
For now, we'll leave the Newman's on the shelf while we continue to wash our hands and blow our noses. Next week, we'll talk about what's been happening, writing-wise. Also, next Harrell promises to reveal how Little Debbie Cream Cheese Streusel Cake improves sexual performance, strengthens the spine, and eradicates toe fungus...but only if I let him go out and buy a box of the goodies tonight.
 
Guess we'll never find out.

For our New Year's resolution...

…we’re planning to eat a few more donuts. (This image came courtesy of Shutterstock, which has been offering weekly free images as a promo ploy. If you have a need for occasional free images of random subjects, you might consider signing up.)
 
Hey, after the year we’ve just had, we’ve earned a little doughy goodness. Life is short. No longer feeling quite as invincible as we used to, we’re planning to celebrate each day as it comes. Except the crappy days. Because, let’s be honest, lousy days don’t deserve celebration; however, it’s still easier to enjoy a bad day if you’ve recently had a donut in your mouth.

 We’ve been away for a bit but hope to do better in 2013. Thanks so much to everyone who wrote or called or came by, asking how things were going. We want to give a special shout-out to the good people at bestessays.org, who were kind enough to write in and say, "In actual fact amazing exertion with the blog. I do akin to your unbreakable job and will kill time for more post from you as post gave me contentment and gives some help to do the same work. Thanks a lot...." (Yes, we're quoting them exactly. And, yes, they're clearly spamming our site. Still, I think their post says more about their company and their abilities to write essays than even they knew.)
 
For us, times were a bit bumpy but are going much better now.

Our other New Year’s resolution is to keep the MarsNeedsWriters website active on a regular basis. You might think this is a no-brainer: every writing team needs a website to promote their work. From our experience, you’d be wrong.

The first month we were away from our electronic home, e-sales rumbled along about as they had before. The second month? Sales went up and in a very good way.

We have no idea why. New reviews weren’t appearing on the web, we hadn’t done interviews; we’d gone into deep cover from the world. Apparently, the less people know about us, the more likely they are to buy our books.

Despite this, we came back, anyway. Even if it cost us money, we’re here for you. (Just don’t tell anybody.) We just hope that our blogging doesn't come easily; in actual fact, it requires amazing exertion. It's all worth it, though, if this post gives you contentment....

Exit Stage Left...

...although, truly, we're not making an exit. More of a detour.
 
Before we get to that bit o' business, we'd like to bring you up on the Something Wicked cover art controversy. And, by "controversy", we mean, the mildly interesting design question we posed a couple of weeks ago.
 
As July wrapped, we mentioned that the good people at ACX needed an image to promote the upcoming audiobook of SW so Renée decided to create a new cover for the book (the old cover/new cover blog post is here). Before we changed the book's face, though, we wandered to a pair of our favorite websites and asked what other people thought of the two covers. Happily, several people chimed in.
 
Because of the forums we'd chosen, we heard from a variety of writers and graphic designers. It turns out, their opinions were all over the place. Some people liked the original version, more people liked the new version -- and one guy liked it "a million times better", which is seriously better, we're telling you -- and a few gentle souls liked both versions. Once we posted the new cover version of Wicked, though, electronic sales soared (soaring being a relative term: SW has never climbed the sales charts but e-sales did take a definite bounce). The paper version remains "out of print" until we can get a good color balance on the physical copy. We're on Proof #4 and still trying to find the perfect look.
 
Meanwhile, we gave the Audiobook Creation Exchange the new cover just as our narrator finished the project. The verbal edition clocked in at a healthy 10 hours-plus and we think it's more dramatic, more exciting, than the source material. Our actress, however, gave the files another listen and soon decided that she needed to rework the entire book. Her sound editor wanted to improve the overall listening experience and K. wanted to improve her performance. They're still working and we're happy to wait. For now, it remains a work in progress.
 
Although we may not have mentioned it, we also went looking for a narrator to do the audiobook version of Aly's Luck. This was not an easy task by any means. Our perfect narrator has to be able to do female, male, Bug and monster voices, often in the same scene...and we struggled to find anyone with that set of pipes. Finally, we got lucky. The fellow we found is an actor by trade but does voice work on the side. He was halfway through the project when he was offered the lead in a movie -- and, silly thespian, he was somehow willing to put our project aside while he went and made some real money. (Actually, he asked nicely if we'd mind if he completed the audiobook after the production ended filming.) Fingers crossed, the AL audio will wrap in September.
 
Returning to the 'detour' thing: For the nice people who have asked if they'll soon be seeing a sequel to The Atheist's Daughter, please know we're so glad you're asking. The Preacher's Son has been delayed due to life issues. (Don't blame us. Blame the doctors.) Half of our team is having surgery soon and the other half expects to spend day and night, hovering at bedside, pretending to be a nurse. That doesn't mean we won't be doing any writing, it just means that we won't be doing much writing...or any.
 
Because of this, Mars Needs Writers probably won't see an update for the next few weeks. Just know that we're not gone, we will be back, and we'll see you then.
 
Thanks!

Popular ain't always good...

...and good ain't always popular. Because, this lovely summer day, we just don't feel like using proper English.
 
We cling to the theory that good things (quality work, talented artists, great writers) are often ignored because, otherwise, our sales figures would really sting.  We have three novels, a novella, a script and a short story collection available for the general public and, generally, the public isn't too interested. We average about 50 downloads a month. Or, roughly, 0.0006% of what Darcie Chan did with one novel last August.
 
Not that we're complaining. Much. Okay, we're complaining, but friends let friends whine. And, yes, we understand that sometimes popular = good but that's not the subject of today's post. Or next week's post, either. Still, we're always pleased when we stumble across something that's been largely ignored but is, somehow, worthy of broad attention. Which brings us to The Devil's Rock.
We found the movie at the local rental store -- not at the local Red Box kiosk 'cause they've never heard of the movie, either -- and the image above caught Harrell's attention. Because a hot chick with her mouth open, streaked in blood and staring kind of mindlessly is just the kind of embarrassing imagery that would catch his attention.
 
Strangely enough, the hot-chick-with-no-bra design didn't do anything for Renée. Nor did the official movie poster, to the left. Just look at the guy in the Purple Demon suit: Would you want to see that movie? Don't bother answering, we know you, you'd laugh and walk away. The IMDB comments weren't stellar -- rated 5.2 out of 10, not any kind of wonderful -- so, even though Harrell had checked out the DVD, she figured she was safe.
 
Until Harrell found a couple of reviewers who loved the movie. One of them said it was Lovecraftian in concept. As much as one of us is attracted to attractive women in military uniforms...please, Doctor, explain what this particular kink means before someone gets hurt...Renée is fascinated by most things Lovecraftian. (Enough so that, as this post is being typed, A Very Scary Solstice is playing in the background.) So we popped a bowl of popcorn, sat down and wondered if we'd like this odd independent picture on any level.
 
The Devil's Rock turned out to be a small New Zealand horror picture, set during WWII, and starring no one we'd ever heard of. It was shot in about two weeks time, has a cast of ten...two of which are referred to as "Dead German"...and released almost nowhere. Video-on-demand, maybe. But, Purple Demon to the contrary, it's fun, scary and interesting. Well-written and tightly plotted, the direction is excellent, the acting is strong, the set design is so good that we forgot there were sets, and the tale is Lovecraftian, indeed.
 
We liked it so much we wanted to tell someone. So we told you.

We received a rejection the other day...

…the other day, which was a bit of a shock .  Not because someone had dared reject our work, not at all. We don’t have any idea of how often we’ve received a rejection slip but we do know that we stopped counting at 100; once you’ve reached triple digits, you can pretty well assume your work is not universally beloved.

Early on in our career, we’d been rejected so often Harrell had a belt made with the words “Dear Contributor” stamped into the back. Yep, the lettering was pretty small but it fit.  “The editors don’t seem to know our names,” he complained. “So I’m thinking about making a change.”

As time went on, we still found plenty of Dear Contributor slips in the mail but we also started to receive nicer comments, more personalized almost-but-not-quite-right’s, and the occasional paycheck. When we focused on independent publishers and e-publishing, our acceptance rate soared. Once we embraced self-publishing as a viable option, why, the rejection slips fell to almost zero.

We created Hunting Monsters Press and, frankly, Hunting Monsters Press loves our work.  So you can imagine our surprise when we checked through our e-mail’s spam filter and found a legitimate communication from a Big Name Publisher. It was our first rejection slip in well over a year.

(The spam filter had also collected a large number of discount offers on Viagra…sometimes spelled ‘Vigra’ and ‘Vaigra’…and this most amazing offer from an African prince. He has hundreds of thousands of dollars waiting for us and all we have to do is help him out a little. So if you don’t hear from us for a bit, you’ll know why.)

All in all, the rejection was a pretty gentle this-is-not-for-us as things go. The editor thanked us for our patience. Said his company receives boodles of submissions but only a tiny number of those submissions warranted significant attention – and that kind of attention takes time. Then editor provided us with a full page of thoughts and suggestions.

The thing is, we didn’t remember submitting anything to the publisher (who shall remain unnamed; after all, they still accept over the transom, unagented submissions and we love them for that). At least, one of us didn’t remember making a submission. Harrell scratched and his chin and said, “I think…maybe…let me check….”

He pulled records and there it was: He really had submitted Aly's Luck to this publisher. When time passed and there wasn’t a response, he sent a query to see if they were still interested in our work but we never heard back. (Their reply might have fallen into the spam trap, too. Who knows?)  So he went ahead and found us another publisher; actually, he found us two. A small print publisher who wanted to wait two years for publication due to financial issues and an outfit in the UK with a lovely editor. We didn’t want to wait two years (good thing, too; the publisher is now out of business) so we signed with the UK place.

Ye Olde Ed did a good job, raising many of the same issues found in this recent rejection letter.  We fixed everything needing to be fixed, ended up carving thousands of words from the story to make ourselves happy, and went on with our lives.  By the time we realized the UK publisher wasn’t going to work out, we’d already learned how to do the job ourselves. So we did.

When we publish our next manuscript, right around Christmas, we’ll put our own logo on it, too. Here’s one reason: We submitted our novel to the Big Name Publisher in 2010. We received their response in 2012. It was twenty-three months almost to the day before they told us they weren’t interested in our story.

The kicker? At the end of our rejection, the editor closed with, “We of course wish you the best of luck with the version you recently published.”  

So we got that goin’ for us, which is nice.

This is the old cover...

...and it's exactly what we wanted for Something Wicked, our YA mystery novel.
 
About a year ago, we approached Matthew Turner, beloved family member and gifted graphic designer, to do the cover. Before he started work, he wanted a few details:
 
Who was our audience? (21st century young adults who might once have read Nancy Drew.)
 
What was the storyline? (Ann Lippens, struggling high school student, not as clever or blessed as Nancy Drew, has to solve the mystery behind a series of terrible, suspicious murders before her friend becomes a victim, too.)
 
Was there anything specific we wanted as an image? (Yep. The cover had to feature an antique locket with a girl's face at the center. The locket is a vital part of our story. There had to be discrete sprinkles of blood on or near the locket. Mostly because, once upon a time, a YA publisher offered us a contract but told us we'd never be allowed to put the smallest drop of blood on any of THEIR covers.)
 
Did we pay by-the-hour or per job? (We offered Taco Bell wages. We really did. One meal before the job, one meal after the job, Cinnamon Twists for dessert if we love the finished product.)
 
As you can see from above, Mr. T. earned his Cinnamon Twists. Not only did he nail what we asked for, he went above and beyond. Using ancient computer magicks, he created the wood grain face of the cover.  Then he put more hours into the production, creating a "wood burn" effect for the title itself. We were delighted.
This is the new cover...
...and offered today for your consideration. When the ACX people said we needed to provide a cover image for the upcoming audio edition of Something Wicked -- and that the cover would require different specs than our novel -- we were stuck. Matthew is currently living overseas and he's extremely busy; even if he had time to do the job, we wouldn't feel right asking him to re-size and revamp the cover. Besides, there are only two Taco Bells in South Korea and neither one is in his current city.
 
Plus, y'know, those Cinnamon Twists haven't gotten any cheaper over time.
 
So, Renée rolled up her sleeves and went to work. We've already heard the audio edition and (like all proud parents) we love our new baby. One thing we discovered was, when a manuscript is read out loud, the drama gets ramped up. So Renée wanted a more dramatic cover: a little less Nancy Drew, a little more action-packed. "Let's play up some of the stronger elements of the story," she told her partner. "The graveyard scene. The huge fire. The dead girl, talking to Ann."
 
"Sounds good," Harrell said. "But it also sounds like a lot of work."
 
"Probably."
 
"Will I have to do any of it?"
 
"No."
 
"I think we should go with a new cover," he said.
 
And so we have. Hope you like it.

There are some terrific websites out there...

…and then there’s Mars Needs Writers.  We can't begin to pretend our site is slick and upper class and chockfull o’ info-tainonal goodness (like some sites we know) but the truth is, we’re not in that league.  Early on, we abandoned all hope of being, say, the DOWNTON ABBEY of the internet. Some sweet and distant day, we hope MNW is quirky and fun enough to be considered the PSYCH of the internet.

We like PSYCH and we say so proudly. It’s quirky, it’s silly, and it’s fun. We like how the producers film the show in British Columbia but pretend it’s Santa Barbara, California because, they assume no one has ever actually been to Santa Barbara. Or California. We like how Shawn’s powers of observation are almost like a super power: if he one day can see objects from a mile away or on a subatomic level, we won’t be surprised. We like how, for the first few seasons, they played Gus as if he was gay but tried to pretend he wasn’t but he so totally was.  He's kind of hyper-hetero now and we still like him, so good job, the guy who plays Gus. We like how the USA Network is going to open their next season with a two hour musical episode, as if their show was like GLEE but involved a psychic con man and a pharmaceutical salesman as two of the leads.

And we like the show’s theme song.  Most times, it’s the usual -- I know, you know, that I'm not telling the truth -- and we get it in English. On occasion, however, it’s been in Spanish. Also, Hindi. It can be offered as a capella (if a boy band is available) or adapted for a theme (the Christmas version) or a style (a la Tears for Fears). Sooner or later, we'll buy the entire PSYCH theme song MP3 catalog…if it is ever offered in its entirety...because we’re those kind of people.

We’re also the kind of people who appreciate their own theme song so we wrote one for one of our novellas. (Almost no one has ever bought the novella so, as a sales device, it stinks but we suspected as much.) Since a theme song requires music, we found a lovely man with a basic grasp of English and he supplied the tune to our words, giving us the official FRANKENSTEIN, P.I. theme song. But, following in the footsteps of the PSYCH-meisters, we didn’t stop there. We wanted new editions of the same old song.

We found the wonderful Jebediah Buzzard and he did his take on the thing and we really enjoyed his spin. A bit later, we discovered a bluesy country-and-western singer who provided a new approach to the lyrics (which we also enjoyed but the song itself is surprisingly long and slow so we're keeping it under wraps. For now).
 
Most recently, we stumbled across Joseph Bennett (hiding out in New Zealand...we think) and he provided a new version of the song which is absolutely kick-ass. If we didn't already have an official theme song, THIS would be the theme song:
The point of all this? There is no point.
 
Which is actually kind of the running theme behind PSYCH, too.

The most awesome post EVER...

...at least, that's what one of the people wrote when commenting on one of our posts. One of our old posts, written almost a year ago.
 
Which made this little birdie suspicious.
 
If you've spent any time here at all, you know that almost no one anywhere comments on our posts. Even on the days when hundreds of people have stopped by, no one feels compelled to offer their opinion. That's actually pretty okay with us. So when our August, 2011 piece called "If you write electronic books" (here) appeared, we weren't surprised when it passed without comment.
 
Or so we thought.
 
Months later, an Australian fan going by the unusual name of led lighting stopped by to say we were a brilliant writer (unusual phraseology, we thought; you think he'd have said we am a brilliant writer) and we thanked him.  A couple of days later, cheap bags joined in, congratulating us on a "Great Job, Keep it up"...which is exactly what l.l. had said in closing.
 
We grew wary.
 
A few days later, another "fan" with a business name jumped in, praising the post. We deleted the post...and, a few days later, another one...a few days later, another one...and on and on but then we got lazy. We'd delete some messages but on occasion we'd simply delete the e-mail telling us about the message. As a result, the August 2011 blog has 13 comments, our most ever, and we know we've deleted dozens more than that. Here's a few of the thoughts we let slip through:
 
From Sweden, reklamproduktion thanks us for providing a "Fantastic walk-through", even though we provided no walk-through of anything, while, just yesterday, Acting Classes Melbourne and Katy Mattress were delighted to be educated on the subject we'd addressed. Directorio says we've done a marvelous job, even if s/he can't spell 'marvelous' correctly, while best fat burner pills says, " I have known very important things over here", to which we can only nod and say: You betcha.
 
And, from the UK, taiko pumps says, "This is awesome post I ever seen on internet. This is rare to find that’s why difficult to understand" -- and who can argue with that?
 
The thing is, the (now distant and almost forgotten) August 2011 post is all about Harrell being clumsy. Dropping his Kindle and getting a replacement. For free, so thank you, Amazon, but it's not close to educational. Or very informative. And far, far from awesome.
 
Here's the question that comes to mind: What exactly is going on here?

Cyn V.? We think maybe she's got some crazy...

...in her.

Not that this is such a bad thing for a writer.

We met Cynthia Vespia at Absolute Write. She was looking for an interview swap. In these kinds of swaps, as you’ve probably figured, each writer interviews the other, offers a book blurb related to the interview, flashes a cover image to entice the crowds, and hopes that someone, somewhere, is intrigued. The hint of intrigue becomes a burning curiosity, the novel is purchased, raves follow – and the best-seller list beckons.

That’s the plan, anyway.

We started with asking her one of the standard interview questions: Why do you write, anyway? There’s a big guy standing behind me with an axe, threatening to cut my head off if I don’t write. In all seriousness, I love to write. I have stories that need to be told. Besides, there really isn’t anything I’d rather be doing.

So, right off the bat, we’re a little concerned about this woman. There isn’t anything she’d rather be doing? Vacationing in Hawaii, diving into her own personal money pit, getting a full body massage by Jason Statham or Johnny Depp or both, in tandem?
 
Really?

 Still, we forged together, pulling out Standard Question #2: When did you decide to become a writer? (It turns out, she was waaaay ahead of the game.) and the teacher asked everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up. Everyone parroted each others answers. The boys said ‘football player’, the girls said ‘veterinarian’. I said, ‘I want to be an author.’ The teacher stopped, saying to the entire class, ‘Did everyone hear that? That’s a good job.’ It still makes me smile when I think about that time.

It made us smile to think about a time when a school teacher thought “author” was a good job.  Maintaining interviewer mode, we went to S.Q. #3: Why do you write what you write? Cyn said, The side we choose to nurture defines who we are.