Lee Thompson's Blog, page 15

Giveaway: Before Leonora Wakes

The very cool Gef Fox recently reviewed Before Leonora Wakes (the first Division Mytho’s book) comparing it to Clive Barker’s The Thief of Always and Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. Thanks Gef!

We’re giving away five digital copies on Gef’s website now! You need to enter by next Wednesday (Sept. 12th) at midnight. If you’ve already read and enjoyed Before Leonora Wakes please spread the word about the giveaway! Thanks!

Tuesday’s Training: Contracts

 

Contracts are super important since they serve to protect both parties (writer and publisher). Make sure you understand yours before you sign it, even if you have to hire an attorney! And if anybody tells you that you can’t take a legal document to an attorney to have him explain something to you in layman’s terms then tell that person to go screw themselves.

I’ve put a lot of thought into this but can’t explain it as well as this quick article on Writer’s digest. Read it here. Read it a few times.

Last chapter:The Collected Songs of Sonnelion

Ah, time has gone by so quickly. Today the last chapter (chapter 28) of my FREE serial novel goes live on Darkfuse and Issuu. You’ll have a couple weeks to catch up before my publisher takes it down. If you enjoyed it the novel, try some of my other work and some other Darkfuse titles. Thanks for everybody’s support! Have a great weekend!

To find out more about Red and the Division mythos simply visit the official website.

Sold another novella…

All right! Excited to have sold the second Red Piccirilli book WITHIN THIS GARDEN WEEPING. Can’t really share too much about it until after a contract is signed. With this one sold we’ll have a ton of the Division Mytho’s books out there next year! Thanks to those who have helped with crits, encouragement, book reviews, editing, publishing, covers, word of mouth, buys, and all other types of support. I have the best crew around.

This is also the week the final chapter goes live for The Collected Songs of Sonnelion. It’s been a dark, trippy novel but I think I achieved what I set out to do in demonstrating why Red is the way he is as an old man in the later Division novels Nursery Rhymes 4 Dead Children, The Dampness of Mourning, etc.

I’ll finish a new novel in the next two weeks. It’s not Horror/Dark Fantasy/Magical Realism like the Division Mythos. It’s more of a Crime/Historical novel that tackles racism, family/social conditioning, etc., and I’ll be writing it under a pen name.

Then I have a standalone novella to write for Darkfuse called Endless Shades of Red.

After that I think  I’ll tackle this new novel (Shine Your Light on Me) that I brainstormed yesterday.

After those three books are finished I think my chops will be good enough to tackle the rest of the Division stories, plus a couple of standalone novels and novellas I have ideas for. We’ll see. No matter what I’m going to pour my heart out and do my best.

Tuesday’s Training: Money

The green stuff. We all love it. It’s hard to eat without it. As an aspiring writer you may have dreams of building houses made of money based on nothing but your sheer talent and your staggering genius, and although it’s okay to dream big, it’s also good to be realistic because it is a fact that the farther our expectations are off from reality, the more upsetting the results will be.

A lesson I learned a few years ago from my hero Tom Piccirilli was “Don’t just publish, publish well.”

In other words, sell your work to professionally paying markets, and sell to publications that have a solid reputation. Sell to markets you love to read, that has a readership, etc. You can give your work away if you want to and count it as a sale, but how is that really any different from putting your story up on your blog for free? It’s not any different. But most everybody has done the for-the-love thing starting out, I’m sure. It gives us that little bit of validation we need to keep going (so we tell ourselves) but that validation is also pretty fleeting. Hell, validation is pretty fleeting even when you sell for actual money (though the money is nice because then you can go buy books! Or take a vacation! Or  pay your bills!)

So, publish well, grasshopper. Be grateful and proud of yourself, but realize the journey is never-ending when you have the chops to sell to magazines and book publishers you respect.

Money comes to the writer. Who said that? James D. MacDonald. Money flows towards the writer. You don’t pay a publisher. You don’t pay an agent to represent you. You don’t pay some magazine to publish your short story.  You don’t pay a production studio to make a movie adapted from your novel. You get paid for your creation. Basically leasing the rights to the work in some form (Hardcover, paperback, audio, digital, film) for a specific amount of time. And you get paid.

The indie author’s journey makes this a bit different. Because you do have money going out before you ever make a dime. As an indie author you have to pay for editing, covers, formatting, and all that. But that is an investment in your work so it’s different. Not much different than paying for good advertising on Goodreads or in a very popular magazine. And the money is still coming to you, its just you have to soak up the bills that a traditional publisher takes care of first.

As you approach writing full time you also have to learn how to manage your money better. This can be a big shocker.  Have you ever worked one of those jobs where you get paid every two weeks and sometimes it’s difficult to make the money stretch until your next paycheck? Okay, now imagine getting a paycheck every three months. Think about that for a minute. Sure, you’ll get some short story sales that pop in here and there for 250 bucks a pop, but it’s not like you’re selling a story every week, week after week, at pro rates. And the payments for those short stories will also be a long time off. It’s not typical to be paid ‘upon acceptance’ but ‘upon publication’.  And sometimes you have to wait six months or a year before the story you sold comes out and you collect on that piece of work, so think long term now. Learn to manage your money now, in your everyday life, before the illusion of rolling in wealth is shattered. Learning to budget will save you stress. Again, it’s a hard truth that the further our expectations are from reality the more upsetting it is when our expectations aren’t met. Don’t worry about getting rich, worry about writing the best story you can and improving your craft and being a professional and everything else will fall into place.

In traditional publishing you get paid an advance against royalties to help you live as you write the next book. But you’re not making a dime until your book earns back that advance, which sometimes never happens. And sometimes, if sales are abysmal, your publisher might not give you a contract on another book. Though it’s partly art, it’s also partly business. That’s why it’s important to keep writing, to manage your cash flow and not get all crazy like you’re going to be the next Stephen King or Stephanie Meyer or J.K. Rowling. You’re probably not. I’m probably not either and that’s okay since we know how few people get ‘rich’ in any profession.

Sometimes, especially starting out, there just isn’t much money coming in from our first book. We can augment that income by gaining experience and branching off into other areas.

You learn to save receipts (for internet bills, living space, research trips, conventions, paper, ink, etc.) to help come tax time.

You learn to make extra cash from other skills as well as from non-fiction.

You line up editing gigs to make extra dough so you can do what you love most and write fiction.

You can make extra money from ghostwriting.

You can make extra cash from writing under a pen name in another genre.

You learn that it can be fun, enlightening and profitable, to span mediums: Novels, Novellas, Short stories, Screenplays, Audio books, Hardcovers, Paperbacks, Graphic novels, Games, Songs, Non-fiction, etc.

We’ll never make enough money just like we’ll never have enough readers or kickass reviews. It’s human nature to always want more. But we can find balance, create it like we do stories, if we’re aware of what it’s like to write for a living. Not the dream, but the reality. Stay disciplined. Study your craft. Listen to your mentors and heroes. Be humble. Be honest with your readers.

Since we’ve talked about money here we’ll follow up next week with what you want and don’t want in a book contract.

Note: This Friday (August 31st) marks the final chapter of my FREE serial novel The Collected Songs of Sonnelion! It’s an important puzzle piece in my Division Mythos and the last book in the first trilogy. It’ll be up for a few weeks after that and then my publisher will be taking it down. Catch up while you can!  Find out more on my Division Mytho’s website.

Chapter 27 “The Collected Songs of Sonnelion”

 

Only one more chapter to go after this on my FREE serial novel! Thanks to everybody who has been following along and those who have given feedback! After next Friday (August 31st) it will only be online for a few weeks before my publisher takes it down. So read it while you can! It will come out in book form at some point, I just don’t know when. Catch up on Darkfuse or Issuu.

I’m deep into writing another book already and think it’s going to be something really special in how it deals with racism, family/social conditioning, love, and violence.

Getting pumped for an upcoming road trip as well!

Hope everybody is living the life they want to live.

Interview: Sandy DeLuca

A talented author and artist, Sandy DeLuca, first hit my radar last year. Robert Dunbar and Shane Staley had both mentioned her several times and since I trust their tastes in fiction I grabbed her novel Descent. It  was a fun ride that started a great friendship.

Me: What led you into writing?

Sandy: From an early age teachers indicated to my parents that I might grow up to be a writer. They said I was a highly imaginative child and quite curious. I remember an incident from grade school (third or fourth grade) where the class was herded together on a bus trip. We had to sit in a waiting room upon arriving at our destination. I began to thumb through magazines in the waiting area and an article relating to time, space and the dimensions of the universe caught my eye. I was enthralled with the article when my teacher came along and asked, “Sandra, what are you reading?” Upon seeing the article she quickly scooped up the magazine as though I were reading a copy of Playgirl. 

Me: Neat. What led you into painting?

Sandy: Again, magazines and books filled with paintings of the Masters caught my eye at a young age. My parents exposed me to books and took me to museums in New York and Boston. I began to draw–sometimes on my grandmother’s antique table–faces, cats and my family.

Me: What are some common themes that run through your works? How personal are those themes?

Sandy: Love, relationships and family. I’ve written several novels about love at its darkest. Families are normally dysfunctional as well. My main characters are usually Italian/American girls.

My real life is rather boring, but I love exploring dark themes in fiction and in film. I was raised by Italian/American parents and that part of me emerges in my work.

I also write about magic and superstition.My Mom, grandmother and aunt filled my head with it and I went on to obtain a vast collection of occult books as an adult.

 

Me: What do you think of the digital books?

Sandy: They are a great format for fiction, inexpensive and do not require storage space. However, I still love books and my house is filled with them.

Me: Same here! Which of your books would you recommend to a new reader?

Sandy: All of them, but that new reader might want to start with either DESCENT or REIGN OF BLOOD.

 

Me: How has your art impacted your writing and vice versa?

Sandy: I have a few examples, but basically composition, texture and  color are subjects I’ve studied for many years; different shades of black, the way the sky changes color at sunset, skin tones.  Descriptions of those things often find their way into my dialogue and descriptive narrative.

Julia in DESCENT is a painter and often images emerge on her canvases without warning, similar to experiences I’ve had while painting abstracts.

I wrote a short novel called MESSAGES FROM THE DEAD last year and it was somewhat inspired by the time I spent as an art student.

People I meet at gallery openings and other artists often inspire scenes and characters.

I often paint scenes and characters from my fiction and sometimes a painting inspires a new idea for a poem or story.

Me: What do you find most rewarding about creating in prose or visual mediums? Are there differences?

Sandy: I obtain great personal satisfaction from creating both. I don’t think there’s a difference in my case. It’s the same muse speaking to me. Sometimes she’s melancholy or morbid and she forces me to look deep inside myself. Other times she puts on her dancing shoes, drinks too much wine and tells me jokes.

It’s rewarding to know how my work affects people. An artist  who’d read INTO THE RED quoted a paragraph from the novella and indicated that it was profound–that it made him think. Someone else who’d read DESCENT told me she got several meanings from it and when she came to the end she wanted to know if she’d interpreted it correctly. She did and I was honored in both cases because they are artists whom I admire. Marge Simon, whom I’ve collaborated with several times, tells me my paintings make her think as well, and then she conjures extraordinary poetry from that process. It’s one of the highest compliments anyone could give me–and it’s from someone who is quite amazing.

Some people also tell me that my whimsical paintings make them smile. That’s also quite rewarding.

Me: No doubt. What do we have to look forward to over the coming year? Or is everything still in the hush-hush phase?

Sandy: Marge Simon and I have another collection coming out; a poetry collaboration. Other than that there are many secrets yet to be revealed.

Me: Excellent! Thanks so much for taking some time with us, Sandy! Wishing you tons of success!

 Visit Sandy’s website Sandydeluca.com to check out her work!

You can also get Sandy’s short story Death Moon for FREE for a limited time right here.

/strong/strong

Tuesday’s Training: Researching Your Novel

 

 

Writers are paid to think. And they’re paid to portray clearly their ideas and make sure the facts in their work are facts. Some writers may think there’s no point in research, hell it’s only fiction and they can make it all up, but glaring inaccuracy after glaring inaccuracy will only cause your readers (if you keep them) frustration. Why shoot yourself in the foot? Find out what facts you need, make a note of them, schedule a little time to find them and where to put them in your manuscript.

It’s a given that some novels take more research than others. But there will usually be something that needs researched.  Some examples of research to do before and during creation:

A location.
Weather patterns at a certain time of year for a certain place.
Some type of firearm.
Knife fighting.
Some type of psychosis.
The recovery time for a certain type of wound.
Basic survival training.
Racism/Civil rights.
The Occult.
The Demonic Hierarchy.
Legal implications.
The meaning/origin of a name.
Brain function.
Historical facts that took place during your novel’s time line.
The stages of grief and how they would impact your characters.
The epidemic of loneliness.
How our habits affect us.

Some examples of things to research after you’ve finished and polished your manuscript:

The agents in your genre.
The agents who represent your favorite writers.
The agents to avoid.
How each agent wants your submission.
How to write a cover letter.
How to write a synopsis.
How to format your manuscript.
What conventions would be the most fun.
How to promote your novel.

You can save time by making a small list of things to investigate and gather facts on before beginning your search. Get the focus in your head before your start searching for the specifics you need.

You can research through interviews, maps, online. You can research by going to the actual setting your writing about and soaking it in and talking to the people in the area. You can talk to clubs or organizations that focus  and love what it is your researching. You can take classes on the subject matter you’re interested in researching to get hands-on experience, which will also help you zone in on what challenges the subject presents and use that in your characters back story.

Research can also be a lot of fun. Seriously.

If you enjoy dark fiction make sure to check out my free serial novel, The Collected Songs of Sonnelion, while it’s still free online! There are only two more chapters to go! Catch up on Darkfuse or Issuu.

 

 

Chapter 26: The Collected Songs of Sonnelion

Two more weeks to go after today! Read chapter 26 on Darkfuse or Issuu while you can! Thanks!

When We Join Jesus in Hell (Book Trailer)

I can’t sleep so I made a book trailer for my upcoming (September 25th) release of When We Join Jesus in Hell. Check it out! This is the one my hero Tom Piccirilli read pre-publication and another hero is going to read as well!

You can join the party once it starts on Goodreads next month, too. Hop over here.