Patrick Rutigliano's Blog, page 10

When Publishers Implode

Recently, I learned that a publisher that once offered me a contract (which I passed on) is in a state of massive turmoil. Several authors (many of whom I know) are furious at how they’re being treated. Looking back on the situation, I believe I dodged a massive bullet.

And here’s how I did it.

The publisher in question had an excellent reputation and was doing well enough to have physical copies in bookstores. There was even a film adapted from one of their books. On a more personal level, they were also the first ones to publish my work when I started writing professionally several years ago. I had known the owner and many of the authors through the message board for a number of years, and I had good experiences with all parties involved. When I finished my first novel, it was the first place I wanted to hit up.

Then, shortly after I subbed, I learned the publisher had changed hands.

I remained cautiously optimistic while my book was under review, but my guts were already coiling a little. All the personal interaction I’d had up to that point no longer meant jack. I didn’t know the people in charge whatsoever, let alone how they would run the business. Still, I couldn’t help but be delighted when I received a glowing acceptance letter on my book. I had wanted to sign with them since I started my career, and here was the contract, just waiting for my signature.

Fortunately, this is where my cynical nature saved my ass. It’s also where I’ll tell you the first major point of this article in plain English: Always scrutinize your contracts. And if there’s something you’re uncertain about, ask someone with the experience to clarify it for you.

A number of the clauses immediately struck me as dubious, the legalese running thick even for a guy with a criminal justice degree. But even with the meaning somewhat muddled, I understood enough to become suspicious. So, I did the smart thing and decided to seek some outside help. Talking to some of the authors already signed was a great place to start. A number of them weighed in, some saying they had only signed because they had negotiated better deals through agents, etc. and pointing out problem areas. After a suggestion, I took the next logical step and consulted someone with a reputation for scrutinizing contracts. She took a look at mine and returned a list of complaints that was easily a page long.

Hoping some of this may have been some unfortunate oversight due to an outmoded/boilerplate contract, I requested a number of changes from the publisher … and was flatly told most of them would be impossible.

I walked then and there. The contractual issues would have been enough on their own, but I’d been keeping my eye on the press ever since I found out it changed hands (point number two, kids: always keep your eyes open for new developments if things look off), and I didn’t like what I saw.

Through social media, I found out that the publisher was buying up work at an absurd rate. So much so, they probably could have filled three or four years’ worth of releases. I knew firsthand how tough it could be to get proper marketing support from a publisher. How the hell could I trust them to do right by my book when they had dozens of others already piled up, presumably to be released right on top of each other?

None of it looked right, and it only made me more confident that I was making the right decision. And here we are now. Looking at a train wreck in progress.

Authors who had been expecting both physical and electronic releases are now only receiving the latter. And despite all the gnashing of teeth, it’s all legal. All covered in the contracts that were signed. That little right for the publisher to pull the rug out at any time obscured just beyond a smokescreen. And here I am, still on my feet.

Take nothing, and I do mean nothing for granted when it comes to the business side of writing. Because if you can’t make out all the small print when you sign, it’s a good bet it’ll loom large just when you least expect it.

The Return

I’m back from my little vacation to New England. A good time was had with family while traveling around a bit (incidentally, I recommend checking out Provincetown, MA should you have the opportunity–lovely place).

Now that I’m back, I’ll be getting to work on a few projects, including a query letter for a publisher, getting one of my books enrolled in Kindle Select (if all goes well, by some point next week), and preparing another article for you guys for Sunday.

On a related note, it’s been very gratifying to know that some of the articles I’ve been posting have been helping my fellow writers. Shine on, you crazy diamonds.

Take it with a Grain of Salt

Opinions are funny things. Everyone has one to offer on any number of topics, and books are no exception. In fact, writers rely on these voices to help spread the word about their work, going so far as to offer giveaways and hit up slews of publications and websites for reviews. But that doesn’t mean getting a review is always a comfortable experience.

There will be people who won’t like your work. This is a fact of life spanning the entire creative spectrum. Some will actively hate it. Others will feel indifference or just plain not get it. As a writer–a professional writer–you need to expect this to happen on occasion. And that’s okay! Because someone expressing a personal opinion is doing precisely that; it doesn’t make it gospel or mean you have to share the same perspective.

I’ll give you an example to help prove my point:

Recently, I received two reviews on one of my books. The first reviewer loved the first section of the book but found the next two slightly weaker. However, the second reviewer felt the exact opposite of the first. While I certainly read both critiques with interest and appreciated them, at no point did I let them color my opinion of my own work, nor did I feel any resentment for the criticisms offered. And there’s a very simple for reason for that: I made sure I wrote that book every damn bit as well as I could before I let anyone read it. I made sure I was pleased with what I produced.

While neither of those reviews was negative overall (both actually gave the book a good rating), they illustrate just how different tastes can run. The important thing is to know what you’re working to set down on the page and to be confident it works for you before it goes to the reader. Only if a writer notices a common thread of complaints running through multiple reviews is there any real cause for concern as something may be objectively wrong. And even then, it’s better to ponder the validity of the point yourself and/or put the issue to some respected peers than to just take such criticism as a fact.

And needless to say, at no point lash out at the reviewer. Because as confident as you are in your opinion, he probably is in his. And there will never be any accounting for taste.

A Brief Hiatus

This is about the time of year when I go visit my family sans computer for a bit, so there will be a gap in updates over the next couple weeks. However, I’ll try to get at least one article done ahead of time for you guys to check out while I’m gone.

Also, Wind Chill is now in its third draft form. I’m going to give it one more read and send it off to my beta-readers after that. Then, I’ll see what I can about getting one of my ebooks on sale …

How I Came to Horror (and Why I Stayed)

I love horror.

It’s my genre of choice for books, movies, and television (not that I don’t consume others, mind you). There’s something about the subject matter that resonates with me more than any other form of entertainment.

And I found it early, too.

The Universal monsters. Alfred Hitchcock anthologies, and reruns of The Twilight Zone all informed my youth. By the time The X-Files came out when I was in sixth grade, I watched it every week–an instant fan. I latched onto Lovecraft in college and slowly worked my way up from the work he and his peers created to modern literature. Since then, I’ve consumed hundreds of books and films revolving involving the bizarre and/or supernatural. And even after all that, I still have a hunger for it. I even write the stuff. But why?

Looking at the titles of the books and DVDs littering my bookshelves, I think I get it.

I like science fiction and fantasy just fine. There are plenty of gripping, thought-provoking stories in those genres (and amazing cross-genre overlap with horror certainly does happen–just look at some of the examples above!). But there’s also a distance between them and the reader when it comes to the “hard” stuff. No matter how well-realized the worlds they represent, they’re not our world. It makes for great escapism, and I can truly see why people get into that, but it’s just not my personal preference. I like when strangeness shows up on a doorstep that could be right down the street, or even when someone I can imagine on that street stumbles upon a nightmare somewhere unfamiliar. Because no matter how tenuous and twisted up, I crave that common thread of the real to ground the story. To give it that slightest hint of … possibility that allows me to suspend my disbelief and lose myself in the plot.

I think that’s what always held me–even as a kid. I wanted to believe, just for a little while, that something that outlandish could happen in real life. Because if it could, that opened up the door for so many other possibilities undreamt of in a world that too often feels mundane. Every time I write, I’m still trying to rip reality open to see what things–dark and light–come crawling out, how things might change because of them, and what other marvels might follow in their wake.

Weighing Some Options

So, here’s my dilemma du jour:

As some of you may remember, I’ve been saving up a small nest egg to fund the cover art for my next book, Bestiary. However, I recently learned that I have an impending vet bill for one of my cats that will probably wipe out a large chunk or all of this money. This is obviously not even taking into account any additional marketing/promotional expenses an indie release would entail.

Meanwhile, I just learned a very reputable small press publisher is opening up to submissions. The compensation they offer is extremely competitive, and I have a few “ins” that might help my odds of acceptance a little. On the other hand, getting in would basically nullify the editing I’ve already paid for and take the release details out of my hands.

Needless to say, I’m a little torn, but I am leaning slightly more toward the latter option at the moment. I think I’ll mull it over and sleep on it before coming to a concrete decision.

Underappreciated Monsters

There probably isn’t a person alive who hasn’t heard of a zombie, werewolf, or vampire. These creatures have been part of our media/cultural consciousness for decades. Now, they’re even more mainstream. Shows like The Walking Dead can become phenomenons, and the tween set has a glut of supernatural romances littering store bookshelves.

While I think there’s a strong argument to be made that a creative individual can always do something innovative with an old concept, I do wish people would go a little further outside their comfort zones to explore the stranger beings of legend. Because not only might they find something to spin a story around that’s new to them, it might well be a unique experience for the audience as well. So, let’s take a look at a few of the weirder and less appreciated creatures out there:

-Ghouls: Think of ghouls as zombies-plus. Technically demons or a form of djinn in Arabic folklore, they inhabit cemeteries and wastelands, feeding on corpses or any unwary souls they manage to lure away from prying eyes. Oh yeah, and they can shapeshift. And not just into animals (usually hyenas), but into normal-looking people (especially ones they’ve eaten). Just in case you thought the other stuff wasn’t bad enough.

-The Golem: An interesting bit of Jewish folklore linked to the creation myth. Golems are formed out of mud or clay and animated by either inserting a slip of paper holding a shem (one of the names of God) into its body or inscribing a Hebrew word such as emet (alive) on its forehead. Essentially brainless (because humans are unable to make a proper human being the same way God can), golems are traditionally capable of doing little else than what the person who creates them orders them to do. Incredibly strong and largely impervious, removing the shem or altering the inscription animating the golem to met (dead) are the only ways to deactivate it.

-Homunculi: While people often equate the pursuit of alchemy with transforming base metals into gold, some legends imply its highest goal was creating artificial life. Homunculi are tiny human beings born from a weird combination of semen and rot and raised on the Arcanum of human blood (although there are other equally strange methods: http://karlshuker.blogspot.com/2012/01/grow-your-own-homunculus.html). While often depicted as fully formed, albeit miniature, human beings, some stories attribute unusual powers to them (i.e. psychic abilities) which leaves lots of room to make them even creepier.

-Rusalka: The spirit of a woman who died an untimely death, usually in a river or lake (and while not always evil, I’ll focus on that version for the purposes of this post). Waiting in bodies of water during the day, they emerge at night to walk dry land. Gifted singers and dancers, these same same abilities are used to hypnotize men and lure them into the water to drown (possibly in retaliation for the pain of the broken heart causing the suicide).

-Fairies/Fae. Yeah, you read that right. Forget the Disney stuff. While there are huge differences regarding their origins and appearance from tale to tale (the latter covering the entire range from radiant beauty to stunted goblin) the nasty reputation remains pretty constant. They have a tendency to steal human babies and replace them with their own (changelings), cause illness at a touch, and abduct those who violate their rings into the fairy realm where they dance until they go mad or die. Or are just returned in old age to slowly pine away for what they’ve lost.

-Waheela. A very large white wolf said to prowl some of the colder regions of North America. Bearing some unusual physical characteristics (short ears and shorter back legs than front), one was supposedly spotted and shot twice without effect … in an area that was apparently notorious for the number of prospectors found with their heads bitten off.

These are just a few of the nightmare creatures that too often stay in the shadows. I assure you, there are many, many more to find than mentioned here, so look through the legends and folklore of as many cultures as you can. This not only provides an expanded cast of interesting beings to depict, but a reserve of individual qualities one can weave into something altogether new.

(Stupid) Author Meltdowns

Recently, a rather unpleasant post by an author on her Facebook page came to my attention. It pretty much amounted to a kvetch about how her latest book didn’t do as well as she wanted and that her readers asked a lot of questions that they should just put through Google.

On the one hand, I can see some of her side of it. Yes, I’m sure being asked some of the same questions over and over again can get tiresome. Does that give someone the right to be a dismissive jerk to  people who have probably paid good money for at least one of his or her books and want to buy more? In a word, no.

And why? Because it’s not only snooty and ill-tempered, it’s self-destructive to an incredible degree of stupid.

The author in question made an additional point in her post that she would have done well to consider: being a successful writer today is about a lot more than just writing. The relationship between author and reader can sell books every bit as much as the quality of the writing itself, and putting that connection through the shredder amounts to career suicide.

And a nasty sentiment with the longevity of the written word is just the way to do it.

What should have amounted to nothing more than a passing thought is now a matter of public record. Even with the post gone, it’s been archived on different sites and blogs, just waiting to come up when her name is typed into–yup, you guessed it–Google.

That’s a lot of brand damage that could have been avoided with a prepared e-mail to answer those repetitive questions. Or direction to a site FAQ. Or, y’know, a couple deep, cleansing breaths and a polite response.

Because as much as she complained about her latest book’s debut, I have a feeling the next one may do a whole lot worse.

Some Minor Revamping

In lieu of an article this week, I decided to give the blog a minor facelift. The length of the drop-down menus has been unwieldy for far too long, so I got rid of them altogether. You can now click on “Articles” to find the whole list of them conveniently displayed to scroll through without worrying about it disappearing on you. I’ve also organized the “Free Fiction” section in the same way. That said, you might want to give The Untimely Deaths of Daryl Handy a read while you can. It will probably be removed to allow for its enrollment in Kindle Select in the very near future. Meanwhile, you can check out the whole book for free right here (just look for the chapter links at the bottom of the page): http://patrickrutigliano.wordpress.co...

And Another One Bites the Dust

My newest novella, Wind Chill, is now roughed out at about 20k. It was one of the toughest books I’ve written and contains what may well be my grimmest ending (winter wastelands seem to do that). I’ve had a few days away from the manuscript, so I’m going to give it a read over the next few days to see what I think of it. I leave on vacation in a couple weeks, but I’m hoping I’ll have a solid third draft finished before that.

Also, I still have a few free ebook copies of Surviving the Crash to give away. If you’re interested, just drop me a line in the comments and shoot me an email at prutigli@gmail.com with “Free Copy” in the header and your choice of mobi or epub in the message body.

Oh yeah, and I can’t help but notice over a hundred people out there are following these ramblings of mine. Thanks for keeping up with my shenanigans!