DeAnna Knippling's Blog, page 70

Zombie Love

I don’t want to lecture you about your boyfriend.  You already know what I think.  Instead, let me tell you how we met.  It’s either that or you’re grounded.

–Okay, Dad.

So I’d gone to the zoo a week ago when the zombie apocalypse started.  Your mom was wearing a leopard-skin wrap with the claws still on and she was climbing through the penguin exhibit to get to a couple of zookeepers who’d locked themselves in off-exhibit cages.  She was enchanting.  Her legs were covered to the knee with dried blood and she had brains in her hair.  I couldn’t help following her.

You were stalking me, you mean.

Oh, I admit it.  I was stalking her.  By then we’d mostly run out of humans and were starting to eat the fresher zombies.

Your father.  He was one of the first to turn.  Tell her, Rich.  Tell her how you became a zombie.

Who’s telling this story, you or me?  I was one of the original volunteers.  They warned me at the clinic.  ”Look, this will cure your cancer, but there are going to be side effects.  Extremely negative side effects.”  ”Like what,” I asked, ready for about anything.  ”Hair loss?  Erectile dysfunction?”  ”Zombieism,” they said.  ”Sign me up,” I said.   I was always a big fan of zombies.

So I was stalking your mother in the penguin exhibit when a horde of humans burst into the building and sharted shooting.  I mean, it was inevitable.  The survivors were bound to get their act together eventually.  Your mom, of course, didn’t have the least bit of cover whatsoever.  There was no fading into the background for her.  Gorgeous, curvy, red dress, leopard skin…there was no missing her.  The humans went straight for her.

I was terrified.

Were you?  I’ve always wondered.

Distracted by the humans, she fell into the penguin pool and had to duck down under a cement outcropping to keep them from shooting her.

I had to decide, right then and there, what I wanted more.  To eat that delicious zombie woman…or to go after the humans.

People pretty much always taste like people, but I’d acquired a taste for zombie meat.  It’s aged, you know.  It’s an acquired taste, but that’s where the gourmets always gravitate, to the rare, the unwanted, the unappreciated.

Are you saying I’m unappreciated?

Oh, you know I appreciate you, babe.  [Growls.] And as soon as Amber’s out of the house…Imma appreciate you all over the place.

Mmmm.

Instead of trying to eat one of those humans–look, I know how most people your age think.  Eat the fat ones, nibble the cute ones, and injure the kids and leave them out for bait.  But the thing is, sometimes you have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be with your soul mate.  That’s what you should go for.  Not some scumbag in a tattooed human-skin jacket.

–Oh, Dad.  Andy isn’t a scumbag.  He’s a poet.

Yeah, yeah, so you say now.  Someday you’re going to see that he only love you for your brains.

–Oh, Dad.

But this isn’t really about you and scumbag, I mean, Andy.  This is about me and your mom.  Being one of the original zombies, I’ve always had a better nervous system than most zombies.  I can shoot guns, drive cars…open doors.  Can Andy open doors?

–Just leave it alone, Dad.

All right, all right.  I mowed down those humans with a pair of .45s.  I didn’t even stop to lick ’em.  Except the last one.

Him, I just shot out a knee.  Then I did the first, best act of self-sacrifice that I’ve ever done.  I smashed my skull open, infected Mr. Kneecap with my brains by shoving about half of them down his throat, and with my last, feeble motions, stumbled over to where your mom had fallen into the penguin pool.  It was empty, of course, and full of stripped penguin carcasses.  And she just wasn’t agile enough to climb up the disguised ladder, which was really just a set of grooves cut into the cement of the pool.  I jumped right in with her.

And then she ate me.

–What?

That’s right, missy, you heard me.  Your mother ate me.  And in eating me, she acquired the nervous system that I’ve always had.  Which is why she–and now you–are one of the top predators in the world.  You’re at the top of the foodchain because of your parents.

I won’t say it wasn’t painful.  It was.  As my consciousness infected Mr. Kneecap, I saw myself scream, and suffer, and die.  I did that for your mom, and, later, I did that for you.  When you were a baby, I let you eat my brains on a regular basis.  I’m on my, what?

That’s your twelfth body now, dear.

My twelfth body.  So when you look at Mr. Poetry, Mr. Scumbag the Poet Master, I want you to ask yourself two questions.

One, would you want to eat his brains?

And two, would he die for you?  Could he watch himself get eaten by you, see you at your worst, and still love you?

I got no problem with you toying with him.  Gettin’ a little nookie.  I’d have to be a hypocrite to say otherwise.  I mean, me and your mom get it on all the time, am I right?

[Lisa giggles.]

–Oh, Dad.

But when it comes to true love…you gotta think in terms of sharing your brain, and him sharing his brain.  You’re bright.  I’m not worried about you supporting yourself or even supporting that loser for the rest of your lives.  But–hear me out, I’m almost done–I am worried about you spending the rest of your life with someone you wouldn’t really want inside your head.  Really deep inside your head.  Love isn’t about the sex.  It isn’t even about chewing off each others’ limbs.  It’s about brains.  It all comes down to brains.  And who you want to share them with.

Someday you’ll understand.

–Okay, Dad.

Now go out and have fun on your date with scumbag.

[She kisses him, laughing.]  –I love you too, Dad.  I love you too.

 

 

Write Your Heart Out

This is for the folks from the Pike’s Peak Writers’ “Write Your Heart Out” event, but you can play along anyway.

IF YOU KNOW THESE BOOKS OR HAVE PLAYED THIS GAME BEFORE, DO NOT BLOW IT FOR THE REST OF THE PLAYERS IN THE COMMENTS.  Email me personally if you like and I’ll confirm how smart and/or cool you are  Also, if you do know these books, you can still play–just don’t cheat and look up the passage before you take a shot at it.

The exercise:  I provide three samples from bestselling writers’ work.  You punctuate, capitalize, italicize, and paragraph them.  Then you send me an email at publisher@wonderlandpress.com, and I send you back the “correct” answers along with the author/book titles.  (Or you can wait a week and come back here and I’ll post them.)  When you get the answers back…try to work out why the bestselling author chose differently than you did.

What’s the point of this?  There are a ton of benefits to doing this exercise that I won’t get into here–but for my purposes at the workshop, it’s to reinforce that a) not all professional authors do things the same way, and b) professional writers break rules when it’s to the readers’ benefit.

Thanks for stopping by, and I have a coupon for you, for the first episode of Alice’s Adventures in Underland:  The Queen of Stilled Hearts.  Click here for the Smashwords link.  Your free coupon code is KX26N.

Thanks and have fun!

—

1

pam tibbs was hackberrys chief deputy her mahogany colored hair was sunburned white at the tips and it hung on her cheeks in the indifferent way it might have on a teenage girl she wore wide ass jeans and half topped boots and a polished gun belt and a khaki shirt with an american flag sewn on one sleeve her moods were mercurial her words often confrontational her potential for violence seldom registered on her adversaries until things happened that should not have happened when she was angry she sucked in her cheeks accentuating a mole by her mouth turning her lips into a button men often thought she was trying to be cute they were mistaken at noon she was drinking a cup of coffee at her office window when she saw dany boy lorca stumbling down the street toward the department bent at the torso as though waging war against invisible forces a piece of newspaper matting against his chest before it flapped loose and scudded across the intersection when danny boy tripped on the curb and fell hard on one knee then fell again when he tried ot pick himself up pam tibbs set down her coffee cup and went outside the wind blowing lines in her hair she bent down her breasts hanging heavy against her shirt and lifted him to his feet and walked him inside i messed myself i got to get in the shower he said you know where it is she said they killed a man she didnt seem to hear what he said she glanced at the cast iron spiral of steps that led upstairs to the jail can you make it by yourself i aint drunk i was this morning but i aint now the guy in charge i remember his name danny boy closed his eyes and opened them again i think i do ill be upstairs in a minute and open the cell i hid all the time they was doing it say again i hid behind a big rock maybe for fifteen minutes he was screaming all the while she nodded her expression neutral danny boys eyes were scorched with hangover his mouth white at the corners with dried mucus his breath dense and sedimentary like a load of fruit that had been dumped down a stone well he waited although she didnt know for what was it absolution dont slip on the steps she said

 —

 2

 there were about thirty six men sitting around when warwick came inwearing a pair of old jeans tucked into high rubber boots hall had been listening to harry wisconsky who was enormously fat enormously lazy and enormously gloomy its gonna be a miss wisconsky was saying when mr foreman came in you wait and see were all gonna go home blackern midnight in persia okay warwick said we strung sixty lightbulbs down there so it should be bright enough for you to see what youre doing you guys he pointed to a bunch of men that had been leaning against the drying spools i want you to hook up the hoses over there to the main water conduit by the stairwell you can unroll them down the stairs we got about eighty yards for each man and that should be plenty dont get cute and spray one of your buddies or youll send him to the hospital they pack a wallop somebodyll get hurt wisconsky prophesied sourly wait and see you other guys warwick said pointing to the group that hall and wisconsky were a part of youre the crap crew tonight you go in paiirs with an electric wagon for each team theres old office furniture bags of cloth hunks of busted machinery you name it were gonna pile it by the airshaft at the west end anyone who doesnt know how to run a wagon no one raised a hand the electric wagons were battery driven contraptions like miniature dump trucks they developed a nauseating stink after continual use that reminded hall of burning power lines okay warwick said we got the basement divided up into section and well be done by thursday friday well chain hoist the crap out questions there were none hall studied the foremans face closely and he had a sudden premonition of a strange thingcoming the idea pleased him he did not like warwick very much fine warwick said lets get at it

 —

 3

 no fainting in the middle of the road said a voice close to my ear as a heavy arm landed across my shoulders and gave me a squeeze i looked up to see mals familir face a smile in his bright blue eyes as he fell into step beside me cmon he said one foot in front of the other you know how its done youre interfering with my plan oh really yes faint get trampled grievous injuries all around that sounds like a brilliant plan ah but if im horribly maimed i wont be able to cross the fold mal nodded slowly i see i can shove you under a cart if that would help ill think about it i grumbled but i felt my mood lifting all the same despite my best efforts mal still had that effect on me and i wasnt the only one a pretty blond girl strolled by and waved throwing mal a flirtatious glance over her shoulder hey ruby he called see you later ruby giggled and scampered off into the crowd mal grinned broadly until he caught my eye roll what i thought you liked ruby as it happens we dont have much to talk about i said drily i actually had liked ruby at first when mal and i left the orphanage at keramzin to train for our military service in poliznaya id been nervous about meeting new people but lots of of girls had been excited to befriend me and ruby had been the most eager those friendships lasted as long as it took me to figure out that their only interest in me lay in my proximity to mal now i watched him stretch his arms expansively and turn his face up to the autumn sky looking perfectly content there was even i noted with some disgust a little bounce in his step what is wrong with you i whispered furiously nothing he said surprised i feel great but how can you be soso jaunty jaunty ive never been jaunty i hope never to be jaunty well then whats all this i asked waving a hand at him you look like youre on your way to a really good dinner instead of possible death and dismemberment mal laughed you worry too much the kings sent a whole group of grisha pyros to cover the skiffs and even a few of those creepy heartrenders we have our rifles he said patting the one on his back well be fine a rifle wont make much difference if theres a bad attack mal gave me a bemused glance whats with you lately youre even grumpier than usual and you look terrible thanks i groused i havent been sleeping well what else is new

 

 

 

 

Tentative Outline: Indie Publishing

Right, this weekend (after talking about flaws in front of PPW) I have to meet up with Becky Clark and talk about indie publishing, soup to nuts.  She’s funnier than I am, so I want to make sure she doesn’t distract me too much with her jokes, and so therefore I’m writing a possible outline for our talk at PPWC before she can, because I won’t get two words in once I see her…

I mean, that is not the case and I’m just getting my thoughts organized.  I expect to learn a TON from her, and from putting this all together.  Plus, if it goes well, maybe we’ll turn our notes into a book and voila! Brilliant.

IF YOU HAVE FEEDBACK:  Marvin K. Mooney, I don’t care where and I don’t care how, but share your feedback with me now!  Items to add, books you want to recommend, people who disagree with me, techniques and websites to check out:  cough them up.  

 

Indie Publishing:  Who, What, Where, Why, and WTF?

1.  Intro

Is indie publishing for me?  What if I want to do it differently?
Note on Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced tracks.
Should I DIY?  What should I DIY?  And what should I pay if I don’t?
Gaming the system (tactics) vs. long-term strategies.
In general, how not to get screwed.

2.  Before you write.

But I hate all this stuff! I just want to write!
Establishing a promise to readers (and picking readers who give a crap).
How to start thinking in terms of selling books instead of being a precious snowflake (I probably won’t call it this, but…oh man is it true for most of us).
Time management.

3.  Writing.

Should I start with backlist or new work?
Should I change what I write?
Increasing writing speed.
Taking advantage of indie publishing opportunities (series, serials, tie-ins, collections vs. short story singles, pseudonyms)
Writing with other people
What can I legally get away with? (Product references, fan fiction, using other authors’ worlds, non-compete clauses, when do I get rights back on previously published material)
Should I indie publish or go with an outside publisher on this particular project (hybrid authorship).
What writing software should I use?
Should I publish on my website first or not?

4.  Ongoing tasks to do while experiencing writers’ block.

Setting up as a business.
Networking (web presence, social media, newsletters, writers’ groups/sites)
Deciding where to publish and how (paypal, publishers, pseudonyms, porn, and more)
How knowing copyright can save your butt.
Freelancing (quitting your job, supplementing your income, increasing web presence and networking) vs. working for free.
Continuing education (writers’ groups, classes, books, advanced study)
Crowdfunding (kickstarter, patreon, donations)

5.  Editing.

When is it done?/Is it good enough?
How to find beta readers/writers’ groups.
Hiring an editor.
How to work with an editor.
A note on series:  start a series file!

6.  Design and layout.

Ebook, print, or both?
Picking comps for fun and profit
Hiring artists/designers
How to work with artists and designers
The importance of staying legal
Marketing materials:  cover taglines (book tags, author tags, series tags), back cover blurbs, keywords

7.  Planning for release day.

Cross-marketing.
Getting reviews.
Blog tours.
Paid advertising
DRM or not?
 Prereleases and soft release days (is that the term?  I can’t remember now)
Should I copyright/register with the Library of Congress/get an ISBN?
Doing a prerelease check

8.  Release day.

Gaming the system.
Minimizing the work you need to do on release day (preventing as many ulcers as possible)

9.  Post-release day.

Customer Reviews:  Good, Bad, and Ugly (Author responses).
What to do about flagging sales (free, giveaways, price dropping)
Why am I not getting the sales I want?  A checklist.
How to handle corrections.
What if someone contacts me? (Agents, publishers, foreign rights, movie deals, merchandise)
What if someone’s stealing my ebook?
How to deal with growth (looking back at old work that sucks)
Should I do an audiobook?

10.  Appendices (& handouts?).

What genre is my book?  The flowchart.
Where to find indie book reviewers.
Editing checklist.
Cover/Interior checklist for design and layout.
Prerelease checklist
Release day troubleshooting checklist
How to contact independent bookstores to discuss stocking your book

New Release: Alice’s Adventures in Underland: The Queen of Stilled Hearts #2

Now available at Amazon, B&N, Smashwords, Gumroad, and more.

Episode 1 can be found at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Smashwords, Gumroad, Apple, and more.

 

“Cro-quet. Croooooquet,” Alice responded. “An invitation to play croooooo-quet to His Highness from Miss Liddell.”

 

“I invited you first,” he said. “An invitation to play croooo-quet to Miss Liddell from Prince Leopold.”

 

“Here’s your invitation to play croooooquet.” Alice held out an imaginary invitation.

 

Leopold took it and handed her one back. “And here is yoooours. Cro-quet, cro-quet.”

With the invention of a serum that prevents most people infected with the zombie sickness from becoming raving cannibals, Victorian society finds itself in need of more standards:  to separate the infected from the whole, to  control when and how the infected can come into contact with the pure, to establish legal contracts, precedence, employment, and more, with regards to the walking dead.

The very backbone of the British Empire is its standards.

The middle daughter of the Dean of Christ Church in Oxford, Alice Liddell, finds a certain lack of charm in the standards she must follow, with increasing strictness, day after day.  Wild and rebellious, she battles her father’s cold discipline, her mother’s striving to hide her middle-class origins, and the hollow madness of the world around her, in which the teetering Empire desperately pretends that nothing is, in fact, the matter.

Enter Mr. Charles Dodgson:  one of the chaste Dons of Oxford, married to his mathematics.  He charms Alice and her sisters, often taking them on walks and boat rides (chaperoned, of course), and telling them jokes and stories.  He is twenty-four when he first meets them.

And he is dead.

Turned in a tragic accident at Rugby, Charles uses the serum to keep him from the ordinary sort of madness that affects zombies.

But it doesn’t affect the elegant madness of his brain.

And one day, as he sees Alice struggle against the chains that constrict her, chains so similar to his own…

…one of his playful stories becomes something more.

Episode 2: In which Alice meets the Queen and her son, Prince Leopold; a game of croquet is played; and an arbitrary judgment is meted out.

—

An sample may be obtained (fingers crossed) at any of the links given above.  If you happen to be interested in a free review copy, please do let me know.

 

 

Previously…

Episode 1 of The Queen of Stilled Hearts showed the first time that Alice met Charles Dodgson, upon his arrival at the Christchurch Deanery to take the pictures of the Dean’s three daughters: Ina, Alice, and Edith.

Alice found Mr. Dodgson, a zombie, quite fascinating, as was his story of being turned into a zombie…by no less than a rabbit!

Now, Alice is older, age eight, and awaits the arrival of Queen Victoria for a visit.*

A word of caution: sometimes the greatest of friendships are occasioned by the direst of cruelties.

—

*Which she actually did do, in 1856. I couldn’t find out whether Leopold had accompanied her, but he might have, I suppose.

Girls & Farts

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that girls fart.

What surprises me, though, is that my daughter farts like a boy.  What I would consider a boy.  At home, she’ll be doing something, and just fart.  She won’t hold it in, sneak off to the bathroom, and discreetly wander back into the conversation.

Nope.

It’s vrrrrp.  Right out loud.  As if…as if there were no shame in it.  If I glare at her, she’ll say, “Excuse me.”  Or giggle.  But it certainly isn’t something for her to be embarrassed about.  I’m the weird one, to her.  I have this strange hangup about gas.

At first I tried to fight it.

I tried making fun of her.  I tried insisting that she apologize each and every time she farted.  Or burped.  Now I’m picking my battles:  it’s that gollum noise that she makes in the back of her throat when she has a cold, unswallowing her phlegm.  I can’t stand that noise.  It’s pukey.  It has come down to a choice between fighting the farts and fighting the gollum noise, it really has.

She’s not going to grow up to be a lady.

She probably won’t even know how to fake it.

I have to ask, though:  how bad of a thing is that?

Instead of teaching her to cross her legs, I’m teaching her that it’s important that she follow her obsessions, that if she doesn’t want to work in an office environment every day, she needs to find something crazy to do.

Instead of teaching her to keep her gas to herself (not that I didn’t try), I’m ending up teaching her that even if she doesn’t get boobs or her period before she’s sixteen, she will probably still turn out to be fully female.  I’m teaching her it’s okay to talk about these things….to blather on about them, as a matter of fact.

Instead of teaching her about being nice to people above all else (it would be a wasted effort; she’s already naturally sweet), I’m teaching her about how to blow off insults.  Acutally, this is a lie.  She’s teaching me about blowing off insults.  Sometimes I look over her shoulder at her chat window for some video game and my eyes just about bug out.  My generation…we fight this kind of thing.  We’re on a real crusade against it.  My daughter?  She goes, “Oh, Mom.   It’s just a griefer.   Just ignore them.”

In my world, I have to fight bullies.  In her world, they just aren’t worth the time.

I think I like her world better.

I don’t know if I can change that much that I can fit in.  But I have high hopes for her world, nonetheless.

—

If you appreciated this post, I could use some help.  I’m trying to get book #1 in the Exotics Series (which is a kids’ book under my kids’ pseudonym, De Kenyon) to go free on Amazon.  Amazon gets cranky about this when you don’t do it their way (which involves signing up for Amazon exclusivity). I don’t particularly care for doing it the Amazon way, so I’m going to bat my eyelashes and request your help in making Amazon price-match other websites where I’m already giving the book away for free.

So if you’d like to help, follow these steps:

Click on this link, which will take you to the Exotics #1 Amazon page.
Scroll down a bit to the Product Details section.
At the bottom of that section, right before the reviews, is a link that says “tell us about a lower price.”  Click that link.
A popup window for “Tell Us About A Lower Price” will appear.
There are two radio buttons under “Where did you see a lower price?”  Click the button for Website (online).
A bunch of fields will appear.
Copy one of these two website links and paste it in the URL: field:   http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/exoti...

OR

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/exot...
Type 0 in the Price ($): field.
Type 0 in the Shipping ($): field.
Click the Submit Feedback button.


The window should say, “Thank you for your feedback.”  Click the Close Window button.
Done!

Thank you!!!  Incidentally, if you want the first book, you can get it from B&N or Apple or Smashwords for free.  And soon, I hope, on Amazon…

 

 

Process vs. Judgment

I’m reading The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work, and for some reason it’s helped me put into words something that I’d been having trouble expressing, about indie publishing.

All over the place, what I’m seeing is that everyone, indies and traditionally published authors and hybrids, are almost universally extremely anxious to express the need for self-publishers to behave in a professional manner.  They then proceed to lay out exactly what constitutes “a professional manner,” and what it comes down to is that everyone–indie, hybrid, or trad–needs to make their products in line with big publisher standards.

I am tempted to name names, but I won’t.  I think that would just be an attention-grabbing device at this point.

But if you’re in the indie world, you’ve heard it (or said it):  the argument that indies should make sure their products are up to professional standards before they release.  The shock and dismay that anyone would release something that was less than perfect (“I’m not like those indie writers!  They’re not even professional!”).  Then the finger-wagging at indies and how sloppy they are, and the counter-wagging at the big publishers and the typos, oh the typos, that have been made in big publisher books*.)  The hysteria that people might be putting substandard books up for sale.

That word gets repeated.  Standard standard standard.  Until it’s no longer comprehensible.

Look.

What disturbs me about all this is that there are process people and there are cut-and-dried people, and the cut-and-dried people are acting like their opinions are the only ones that count.**

The cut-and-dried people take the given wisdom and insist that everyone stick to it.  Either you meet standards, or you don’t.  And if you had been able to meet standards in the first place, you would be a traditionally published writer by now.  [Sniff.]  The only people who should self-publish are previously midlist authors who can no longer get decent contracts (such a shame).  When those acceptably indie people publish in the right way, then they have a TEAM.  OF.  PROFESSIONALS.  And they do not experiment, aside from the already questionable experiment of indie publishing in the first place.  They do it THE RIGHT WAY.  The first time.  Because if it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right.

Okay, group of cut-and-dried people, that’s your way.  But it’s hardly the only way.

The rest of us have been surviving typos and bad covers and screwing around on social media and blogging and playing around with YouTube and fan fiction and gaming and a ton of other things that don’t involve professional standards, and we’ve been enjoying ourselves, as creators and as consumers.

And we’ve been seeing businesses–real ones, that play with real money–put their entire business plans together with the idea that maybe everything isn’t cut-and-dried, that maybe in order to make fundamentally new things, you need to approach the situation in fundamentally new ways.

You know what we got with cut-and-dried?  A monopolistic chain bookstore that was perfectly happy stacking the shelves with the equivalent of Top-40 radio, taking money to put books at the front of the store, instead of reader feedback.  We got angry when they started carrying toys, we were so invested in the idea of what a bookstore could and could not be.

Maybe it isn’t the idea of self-publishing that’s the problem.

Maybe it’s just the cut-and-dried attitude.

And maybe we process-based weirdos get to play with the process and don’t need to be shamed about it.  Maybe what the trad publishers ought to be doing is building smaller units in which the entire line is put together by a group of authors, and there are no editors, designers, marketers, salespeople, etc.  Maybe a small press needs to hold a weekly online symposium of their authors to teach each other how to write by working on a joint project.  Maybe an indie author needs to hire writers to develop their worldbuilding via an anthology of short stories.  Maybe a lot of things, maybe a lot of quick-turnaround projects to explore what’s working and what isn’t, and maybe not a lot of drama about how it might inconvenience the accountants.

Maybe what the problem with indie publishing is, is that it is messy and it is best when it is messy and it’s even better when it’s run by fundamentally messy people whose goal is to make messes.

Maybe writing gets to have a little R&D.

 

*I do this too. I rarely make it through a big publisher book in which all the quotation marks are correct for three chapters running.  It may be that I read a lot of Brit fiction in U.S. editions–which means changing all the quotation marks–but still, you expect a certain level of professionalism.  From the professionals.

**Yes, I know this is oversimplifying.  For example, I’m all about the process when it comes to covers, but when I see U.S. books where “air quotes” are made with single quotes, I lose it.  ”What, did you just feel like single quotes today?” But this, too is fair.  Why not?

Interview @ Independent Bookworm

Debbie Mumford interviewed me at Independent Bookworm:

What makes the world of your novel different from ours?

 

I was going to say “zombies,” but that’s not really it.  I live in the U.S. in modern times, and that world is Victorian England, which I think is more of a difference than zombies themselves would be.  Today, a zombie plague, we’d all freak out be all over the phones and the Internet about it; Pat Robertson would no doubt tell us that the plague was because of sinners, and a bunch of people would put up a meme making fun of it.  Whereas the Victorians, I’m convinced, would be all, “The worst sort of chaps are returning from the dead.  Quite an issue for the current administration, don’t you think?  These crumpets are quite nice, Hartley, do let Cook know.”  We’re much more expressive and responsive now, for better or worse.

Black and White

Right, this has nothing to do with writing or promotion, except it does.

There are some people who split the world up into twos, and some who don’t.  Optimist/pessimist.  Atheist/believer.  Yes/no.  Democrat/Republican.  Things like that.

Me, I’ve come to look at those situations and go, “To what purpose?”

To what purpose do we split the world into optimists and pessimists?  In one sense, we do it in order to say one of those two values is better than the other–optimists are more healthy, pessimists are more honest with themselves–whatever values you like, really.

But in another sense, when we say, “The world is split up into optimists and pessimists,” we’re saying many other things, like, “Your attitude is generally the same on a daily basis,” and “Mood swings are for crazy people.”  It encapsulates our unease with dealing with unpredictable people.  It tells us that you have to pick one or the other–one might be better than the other, but clearly either one is better than not choosing sides.

Well, I’m a moody agnostic maybe independent, and I always will be.  I’m starting to think that it’s just a way of life.  Some people are going to be “yes” people, some people are going to be “no” people, and some people are permanent “maybe” people.

Nevertheless I find myself over and over coming across odd little constructions in my head.  For example:  I can see that binaries are a problem, but I have trouble actually thinking around them (as you can see in the yes/no/maybe paragraph above).

For example, eating well.  How do you eat well?  It turns out the real answer will probably be something like, “eat moderately in all things.”  But that’s not something we can wrap our heads around without being experts at it.  ”But is bacon healthful?!?”  That’s really what we want to know:  give me a yes or no answer, damn it!

I know just enough about food to go, “Sometimes it is, although not usually the way Americans stereotypically eat it.”  Although a lot of paleo people would argue with me, paleo isn’t the way Americans stereotypically eat bacon.  I’m still on the fence about eating paleo to the extent that some people take it, but my body likes it–but then again, my body likes eating mostly vegetarian, too, as long as I don’t overdo the starch.  Really, for me, it’s not about the bacon.  It’s about the starch.  But on a daily basis, I say, “Is this handful of jellybeans healthful for me?  No?  That means I must EAT THEM ALL!!!”

“Tell me what to do, so I can either do it or feel like a failure!”  ”Tell me what not to do, so I can not do it, or feel like a rebel!”  That binary thing, it’s a problem.  Because really what we need to do is get into the habit of observing.  ”When I eat too much starch…”

Is it better to be an optimist or a pessimist?  Better to listen to your emotions and learn what needs they signal.  Atheist or believer?  Better to examine your own flaws and stop looking down at people.  Democrat or Republican?  Better to ask, “Who benefits?” on a case-by-case basis.

But I am who I am, and I distrust groups, even the ones I identify with.  So of course I would say those things.  Because once you “belong” to something, that things sets up shop in your head and takes up territory that would otherwise be you.  And that’s what bothers me.

I find it easier to think about if you add the phrase “strongly identified as a” in front of all the terms I’m going to use here. And it’s easier to see when you look across the other side of the fence. Examples.

When you are strongly identified as an atheist, that takes up territory.  When you have a conversation with that kind of atheist, stupid Christians and smart atheists is where the conversation tends to go.  Strongly-identified Christians flit around the Bible like moths, burning bridges with everyone who isn’t like them, because with them, it’s all about the Good Book (or at least the particular interpretation they put on it), and if you don’t know the Good Book, then you don’t count (unless you can be won over).

To put it even more bluntly, people who are crazy about a rival sports team/gender/politics/brand/religion/diet/country are always nutty, aren’t they?  Gosh!

But it’s not the sports team/gender/politics/brand/religion/diet/country–it’s the person, and their investment in the idea, and the extent to which they’ve let that idea take over their lives.  The Mickey Mouse-themed bathroom.  Rioting over a sports victory/loss.  Being unable to form a coherent argument because it’s perfectly obvious who’s right and it’s unthinkable that there could be another reasonable perspective.

Here’s my stand:  Ugh.  Get those things out of your head.  People are more important than ideas.  Stories are more important than polemics.  Flaws are more important than perfection.

Black and white is for people who are easily led by the nose–or for people who are interested in leading you around by same.  If you can switch white for black or vice versa and end up with something that sounds nuts–then it’s probably nuts either way ’round, and you’re acting like a machine thinking someone else’s thoughts.

—

Okay, here’s the thing.  I really do think those things.  I really do have days when I get on Facebook and go, “You realize you’re not thinking your own thoughts, don’t you?  That you’ve been crowdsourced, brainwashed, infected, etc.?”  Here’s what I’m looking at now:

People who like pot are better than other people.
People who read books are better than other people.
People who preserve heritage seeds are better than other people (this is a whole foodie/environmentalist thing).
Dogs are better than other people.
Cats are better than other people (different poster).
People who can trick other people are better than those stupid idiots who can be fooled!  If you can be fooled you deserve it!
MLK is better than other people.
People who like pot are better than other people.
A picture of a sunrise.
Judgmental people suck, said the judgmental person.
A picture of two friends.
A picture of giant chickens.  (This is still marketing, by the way–from Weird Tales.)
Women are better than other people.
I am better than other people because of my musical tastes, and LOL when programs try to tell me otherwise (note to Spotify–please add “likelihood of snobbery” to your algos, thanks).
A medical pun.
A combination of two geek/retro items makes a SUPER GEEK RETRO ITEM!  Because geeks are better than other people.
Read my book because it will make you better than other people.
My climate is better than your climate.
Another nice picture.
Breakfast.
Pictures of hot guys.  (This might be in the “women are better than other people” sense, but I’m not sure.)
Geeks are better than other people (but with a nice picture).
Update on someone’s health.
Read my book because it will make you better than other people.
Geeks are better than other people.
Picure of family.
White people are not better than other people–love, a white person.
I have fan mail!
This brand is better than other brands.

The ones in italics are the ones that didn’t strike me at first glance as thinking someone else’s thoughts.  Ironically, it’s the stuff that people make fun of:  family fotos, what you had for breakfast…maybe I’m blind, and what those things are really saying is that “here is what you should think of as normal/attractive/beautiful,” or some such.  We so very rarely think our own thoughts.

Scrolling back through my own posts on FB, I have a better record than average for (I think!?!) thinking my own thoughts, but I still think that reading books makes you better than other people, and that geeks are better than other people.  Also I’m a food snob.  Siiiigh.  All kinds of other people’s thoughts in my head.

—

Like I said, I do think these things, and try to live them by dismantling other people’s thoughts in my head when I find them–but now that I’m thinking about marketing as an aspect of writing–

Are other people’s thoughts part of my marketing?

That is, am I selling a point of view, instead of actual stories?

So these are things that I think about.  Guh.

 

The Classy POD Checklist

Here’s my (ahem, draft) checklist for things that I look for when an indie publisher hands me a POD.  Please let me know if you can think of anything else; I’m putting this together for a class.  I think I may need to break things down into subcategories at some point…

Cover

Does the front cover look professional (a kind of gestalt assessment).  Yes?  Then stop looking at the cover to critique and start looking at it to learn.
What’s the genre of the book
Does the general design match the genre?  Are the images (content and media) appropriate for the genre?  And is the design current for the industry?
Does the cover design lead me to turn the page or at least does it not fight me to keep me from turning the page?  (Does the overall design lead me from the upper left to the lower right?  A centered design does this just because of the direction we read in.)
Are the images on the cover of professional quality, good resolution?
Does the cover strain the eyes?  (If so and it fits the genre, okay, but it’s risky.)
Does the text stand out from the images?
Is the text font cheesy or is it appropriate for the genre?
Is the text aligned well, and kerned/tracked well?
Are the appropriate elements included–title, author, series, title tag (one liner), author tag (#1 NYT author, etc.), publisher info?
Are the tags well written and catchy?  Or are they wooden and dull and full of “be” and “have” verbs?
Does the cover show a sense of heirarchy–is it clear that some elements are more important than others, and that the correct elements are grouped together (title with title tag, etc.)?
Is the spine legible and designed in accordance with the front cover?  If the book is laid with the front cover facing up, does the spine read from left to right?
Are the elements on the spine present and organized heirarchically?
The picture of an amateur back cover:  huge, poorly-written back cover text centered in a cheesy or illegible font, no alignment done, no additional elements.
Is back cover text legible and in an appropriate font?  Is all matter kerned/tracked appropriately?
Are the back cover elements all present (blurb, bar code, price, publisher, and genre)?
Are the back cover elements organized heirarchically, so that it’s clear which elements are most important?
If there is an author photo on the back, is it appealing, professional, and clear?  Is the photo credit provided?
Is the opportunity to sell additional material taken on the back cover where possible–publisher website, previous books in the series, etc.?
Is the back cover blurb catchy or does it contain a lot of useless setup information?  Have all “be” and “have” verb forms been removed?
Is the print job appropriate–cover on straight, no blank areas, colors within reason (flesh isn’t green on a romance cover, etc.)?

Interior

Do the pages look like book pages (another gestalt assessment).   If so, study rather than critique
Does the layout, fonts, or formatting call excessive attention to itself (e.g., bold text, six different fonts, chapter headers that are like fine works of modernist art, etc.)?
Does the overall interior design coordinate with the cover design?
Does the cover page use the publisher name and location where able?
Does the cover page help set reader expectations for genre?
Are all required elements of the copyright page present (author, artist/image, and cover and interior copyrights given)?
Are any blocks of text on the copyright page justified appropriately?
Do major sections start on right-hand pages (all title pages, dedication/acknoledgment/forward/prolog/about the author/first chapter, etc.)?  (Subsequent chapters can start on either right- or left-hand pages, depending on what length you want on the book and whether you want the readers to pause more after a chapter, as in a non-fiction book.)
Does the main body text layout look in line with the genre (e.g., a kids’ book has larger type with fewer lines on the page; a literary novel looks dense with paragraphson the page)?
Are indents about an em-character wide (wide indents indicate that the ms was ripped out of a typical ms-format document and not reformatted properly).
Are widows and oprhans prevented where possible?  If not possible, are the lines adjusted so the single line falls at the bottom of the page rather than the top?
Does the chapter header page start on a new page?
Is the tracking between letters/words of a moderate size, with neither huge gaps nor overpacking of words?
Is hyphenation limited so that it never breaks up names, spans pages, or occurs more than twice in a row?  So that it never splits up words to be technically permissable but illegible (e.g., ra-dio or read-y), and so that there are always at least three letters on both sides of the hyphen?
Are lines tracked and/or hyphenated so that there are no stubby mini-lines at the ends of paragraphs where possible (e.g., ending a paragraph so the last line reads in–that stuff should be scooted up unless it causes major tracking issues).
Are lines tracked and/or hyphenated so there are no weird little patterns in the paragraphs, like six thes starting each row of a paragraph?
Are the headers and footers non-distracting and out of the way of a reader’s flow (i.e., not in the upper left or lower right corners of the pages)?
Are the headers and footers visually separated from the main body (e.g., with white space)?
Are the headers removed from chapter pages?
Are scene breaks presented in a clear but non-distracting fashion?
Are scene breaks presented in a classy fashion (i.e., not using pound signs, asterisks, or distracting dingbats–this last one is a particular sin of mine)?  A nice way to do this is to just leave a blank row unless the break falls at the top/bottom of the page, in which case add something subtle, like an em-dash, to indicate the break (in ebooks, where you can’t control this, always use your chosen break character).
Are the first paragraphs of scene breaks non-indented?  A little sign of class.
Are the last pages of chapters more than 2-3 lines long?
Are the last lines of scenes on a page more than 2-3 lines long?
Does the chapter end short of the last line of a page (giving the reader a visual heads’ up that a chapter break is coming)?
Are the em-dashes actual em-dashes or two hyphens stuck together?
Are spaces around em-dashes appropriate for the genre and look non-distracting?
Are quotation marks generally pointed the right way (scan for things like “I got ‘em,” which should have a right single quote, and em-dashes followed by double quotes, which tend to point the wrong way if you use MSWord).
If using drop caps, is the text appropriately spaced around the cap, or is it overlapping/showing huge gaps?
Are the initial quotation marks from a drop cap removed?
Is the drop cap used

When in doubt, err on the side of the genre.  For example, take up more space rather than less in paragraphs in a kids’ book, and ignore widows in favor of rescuing orphans (and reduce the hyphenation for younger kids, so they have fewer issues trying to sound out broken words).  Thrillers should end up with more white space on the page, so the little orphans at the ends of paragraphs are more acceptable there–but literary novels should end up with thicker paragraphs, so adjust the tracking for denser text.  The chapter headers of romance novels should be a bit swirly and attention-grabbing.  (Just a bit.)

If you’re not sure what a cover or interior should look like for that genre, go pull some comps!

Ill Edited In Lankhmar

Right, I’m trying to study “Ill Met in Lankhmar,” one of Fritz Leiber’s stories.  (Lie-burr…I’ve been saying it wrong.)

I started with the collection Fritz Leiber: Collected Stories, edited by Jonathan Strahan and Charles N. Brown, intro by Neil Gaiman (2010).  This edition is a hardcopy library property, and as I realized I wanted to study the Lankhmar story, I decided to get an ebook version, which are easier to type in as I work.

I did not get the same edition; I got Swords and Deviltry:  Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser Book 1, by Fritz Leiber, copyright renewed 1995 by Fritz Leiber.

Now, I’m sure the issue I’m about to describe is old hat for longtime Leiber fans and purists, but I was goggle-eyed.

Here’s the opening of the story in the Collected copy:

Silent as specters, the tall and the fat thief edged past the dead, noose-strangled watch-leopard, out the thick, lock-picked door of Jengao the Gem Merchant, and strolled east on Cash Street through the thin black night-smog of Lankhmar.

 

East on Cash it had to be, for west at Cash and Silver was a police post with unbribed guardsmen restlessly grounding and rattling their pikes.

 

But tall, tight-lipped Slevyas, master thief candidate, and fat, darting-eyed Fissif, thief second class, with a rating of talented in double-dealing, were not in the least worried.  Everything was proceeding according to plan.  Each carried thonged in his pouch a smaller pouch of jewels of the first water only, for Jengao, now breathing stentoriously inside and senseless from the slugging he’d suffered, must be allowed, nay, nursed and encouraged to build up his business agains and so ripen it for another plucking.  Almost the first law of the Thieves’ Guild was never to kill the hen that laid eggs with a ruby in the yolk.

 

The two thieves also had the relief of knowing that they were going straight home now, not to a wife, Arath forbid!–or to parents and children, all gods forfend!–but to Thieves’ House, headquarters and barracks of the almighty Guild, which was father to them both and mother too, though no woman was allowed inside its ever-open portal on Cheap Street.

 

In addition there was the comforting knowledge that although each was armed only with his regulation silver-hilted thief’s knife, they were nevertheless most strongly convoyed by three reliable and lethal bravoes hired for the evening from the Slayers’ Brotherhood, one moving well ahead of them as point, the other two well behind as rear guard and chief striking force.

While, on the other hand, here’s the opening from the ebook edition:

Silent as specters, the tall and the fat thief edged past the dead, noose-strangled watch-leopard, out the thick, lock-picked door of Jengao the Gem Merchant, and strolled east on Cash Street through the thin black night-smog of Lankhmar, City of Sevenscore Thousand Smokes.

 

East on Cash it had to be, for west at the intersection of Cash and Silver was a police post with unbribed guardsmen in browned-iron cuirasses and helms, restlessly grounding and rattling their pikes, while Jangao’s place had no alley entrance or even window in its stone walls three spans thick and the roof and floor almost as strong and without trap doors.

 

But tall, tight-lipped Slevyas, master thief candidate, and fat, darting-eyes Fissif, thief second class, brevetted first class for this operation, with a rating of talented in double-dealing, were not the least worried.  Everything was proceeding according to plan. Each carried thonged in his pouch a much smaller pouch of jewels of the first water only, for Jengao, now breathing stentoriously inside and senseless from the slugging he’d suffered, must be allowed, nay, nursed and encouraged, to build up his business again and so ripen it for another plucking.  Almost the first law of the Thieves’ Guild was never kill the hen that laid brown eggs with a ruby in the yolk, or white eggs with a diamond in the white.

 

The two thieves also had the relief of knowing that, with the satisfaction of a job well done, they were going straight home now, not to a wife, Aarth forbid!–or to parents and children, all gods forfend!–but to Thieves’ House, headquarters and barracks of the all-mighty Guild which was father to them both and mother too, though no woman was allowed inside its ever-open portal on Cheap Street.

 

In addition there was the comforting knowledge that although each was armed only with his regulation silver-hilted thief’s knife, a weapon seldom used except in rare intramuural duels and brawls, in fact more a membership token than a weapon, they were nevertheless most strongly convoyed by three reliable and lethal bravos hired for the evenin from the Slayers’ Brotherhood, one moving well ahead of them as point, the other two well behind as rear guard and chief striking force, in fact almost out of sight–for it is never wise that such conveying be obvious, or so believed Krovas, Grandmaster of the Thieves’ Guild.

The first passage is 290 words; the second is 400 words.  This pattern runs through both versions of the stories.  I didn’t get terribly far into the ebook version–it was all bloat, bloat, bloat.

Ugh.

Okay, granted.  This is a fantasy story; a bit of, let us say, non-leanness is expected, even demanded.   However, this stuff slows down the pace unreasonably and even derails the story from time to time:  who gives a flying @#$% about whether the egg with a jewel in the center is brown or white?!?

Let it be shown that if one detail is good, then two details are not necessarily better.  Because get to the point!  And also let it be shown that truly over-editing is for the birds.