Roland Yeomans's Blog, page 142

DOES TV HATE LGBT CHARACTERS?

Television might be getting more inclusive, 

but when it comes to lesbian and bisexual characters, the small screen remains a graveyard.


 Bad as that last looked, it ended up worse for poor Shaw, who was tortured and survived brainwashing this recent and last season of the series.

Autostraddle, the LGBT-centric website ran the numbers over the past four decades and found that lesbians were the most likely characters to die on TV.

Which recent episodes of THE 100 and PERSON OF INTEREST tend to bear out.

It's even gotten a trope: THE DEAD LESBIAN SYNDROME! 

Which is why I have my lesbian couple, Ada Byron and Margaret Fuller, survive from 1853 to 2005, though many of their cohorts die along the way:

http://www.amazon.com/End-of-Days/dp/B00E5IBML4/
But to do justice to the last season of PERSON OF INTEREST, 
an excellent show detailing a group of bruised souls finding purpose in fighting on the behalf of an Artificial Intelligence with a conscience against an A.I. without one,
it would seem all the characters will die, perhaps even losing the war against a ruthless A.I.
A daring act indeed to show that sometimes the good guys lose in real life.



But it still hurt the lesbian fans of the show when last week, Root was killed.  
There are so few characters for the LGBT community to cheer on and identify with that it hurts when they see another beloved character die.
As with Rin here:

Shouldn't they be given characters to get a happy ending or at least a way to end together?
WHAT DO YOU THINK?

WHEN YOUR WORDS GO VIRAL

We all dream of our words going viral ...

We think it will lead to recognition beyond the ghetto of author blogs and then to higher sales for our books.

But would it?

This past Saturday, Jake Flores writes of his words going viral in the The New York Times.

Whoa.  The New York Times?  Yeah .. they don't pay for opinion pieces.  Oops.

Who's Jake Flores you ask.  So do a lot of others ... many of them who quoted his viral words even.

Earlier in the year, February 13th, Jake tweeted:

"I'm starting to think that this is the last season of America and the writers are just going nuts."

Funny and all too true, right?

On the first night after the tweet took off, his name was trending in different cities around the globe. 

Celebrities were batting his joke at one another.

 People like John Hodgman, Bette Midler, Minnie Driver. People he watches in movies and doesn’t even consider real. 

Friends from all over the country got in touch to tell him they heard someone quote him. 

 Someone in Britain immortalized it in needlepoint. The tweet reached easily more people than any album or podcast he’d ever produced.

Jake is a joke writer and would-be comedian.  He thought his career would take off.  

 Ah, not so much.

Though his joke was quoted in FUNNY OR DIE and PLAYBOY 

(fairly big accomplishments for an unknown comic.)

He woke up to find his words were on CNN!

And how much work did it get him?  None.  None at all. 

In his words:

"I think the Internet is like a broken slot machine.

 I didn’t put any money into it, I received all of its flashing, shrieking, beeping cacophony when I hit its jackpot, and no money came out.

 I wonder why I believed in this system at all."

WHAT DO YOU THINK?

WHAT GOD LEFT UNTOLD_IWSG post

Yesterday THE VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS went on sale:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062262262/


 It occurred to me then that I will never be the writer Neil is.

I brooded on that a moment and it came to me:

If God wanted me to be another Neil, he would have made him twins, right?  :-)

So I guess we all will have to strive to be the best writer we can be in our own right.

 Yesterday, I also wrote on the importance of fiction and its heroes.

Neil ... I can call you Neil can't I?  You've shared some of my best times with me after all.

Neil in his non-fiction book asked its readers: 

"Why do we need the things in books?  

Stories are lies after all, tales of people who never existed and the things that never actually happened to them. 

Why should we read them? Why should we care?

Fiction gives us empathy:

It puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gift of seeing the world through their eyes. 

Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over."


Samuel McCord in my DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE speaks of the same thing:



We live in an ocean and hours are the islands, linked in ways we cannot imagine while we are traveling one from the other.  It is only in looking back that we can see the path we took … and whether it was a wise one or not.
The Lakota call God the Great Mystery.  I do, too. I am a man or I once was.  What I am now is a mystery to me.  And maybe to the Great Mystery as well.
But men are creatures who tell stories. This is a gift from the Great Mystery, who spoke our species into being, but left the end of our story untold. Perhaps that is why the Lakota call Him The Great Mystery.  Anyway, that mystery troubles us. How could it not? Without the final part, how are we supposed to make sense of all that went before: which is to say, our lives?
So we make stories of our own, in stumbling imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And in finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.  Maybe it will work.  Maybe not.  Only the Great Mystery knows, and He comes by His name naturally.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
(http://bit.ly/VfCheapSeats)(http://bi...)

WHAT GOD LEFT UNTOLD

Yesterday THE VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS went on sale:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0062262262/


 Yesterday, I also wrote on the importance of fiction and its heroes.

Neil ... I can call you Neil can't I?  You've shared some of my best times with me after all.

Neil in his non-fiction book asked its readers: 

"Why do we need the things in books?  

Stories are lies after all, tales of people who never existed and the things that never actually happened to them. 

Why should we read them? Why should we care?

Fiction gives us empathy:

It puts us inside the minds of other people, gives us the gift of seeing the world through their eyes. 

Fiction is a lie that tells us true things, over and over."


Samuel McCord in my DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE speaks of the same thing:



We live in an ocean and hours are the islands, linked in ways we cannot imagine while we are traveling one from the other.  It is only in looking back that we can see the path we took … and whether it was a wise one or not. The Lakota call God the Great Mystery.  I do, too. I am a man or I once was.  What I am now is a mystery to me.  And maybe to the Great Mystery as well. But men are creatures who tell stories. This is a gift from the Great Mystery, who spoke our species into being, but left the end of our story untold. Perhaps that is why the Lakota call Him The Great Mystery.  Anyway, that mystery troubles us. How could it not? Without the final part, how are we supposed to make sense of all that went before: which is to say, our lives? So we make stories of our own, in stumbling imitation of our Maker, hoping that we'll tell, by chance, what God left untold. And in finishing our tale, come to understand why we were born.  Maybe it will work.  Maybe not.  Only the Great Mystery knows, and He comes by His name naturally.
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
(http://bit.ly/VfCheapSeats)(http://bi...)

WHEN THEY TARNISH A HERO

Harper Lee, when questioned on the reason why she never wrote another book, told a friend:

 
"I wouldn't go through the pressure and publicity I went through with  

To Kill a Mockingbird for any amount of money.

I have said what I wanted to say and I will not say it again." 

Harper Lee was 89, a frail, hearing- and sight-impaired stroke victim 

living in a nursing home when this "sequel" was discovered. 

It was actually the first draft of TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD written in 1957.  
Lee's editor, Tay Hohoff, thought it only lived in the flashbacks 

and asked Lee to write a whole novel of that era.

Perhaps just as important, her sister Alice, Lee’s longtime protector, passed away the prior November. 

Her new protector, Tonja Carter, who had worked in Alice Lee’s law office, held power of attorney.

So a classic and its hero was tarnished for a money-grab.  

How American.

And speaking of America ... let's talk CAPTAIN AMERICA:


The new CAPTAIN AMERICA#1 has revealed Cap has been a Hydra agent all along.  

It negated decades of his fighting for the ideals of America and had him being a supporter of the Nazi death camps.


{Shakes his head}


The event even made CNN. 

 Oh, and it just happened to coincide with DC's trying to recover 

from its highly criticized 52 reboot of its universe with the title sweeping REBIRTH.



Just another corporate diversion.


Many speak of how Atticus Finch became a symbol of compassion and courage for them, inspiring them to become attorneys.


Chris Evans has created a character believable in his compassion, his honor, and his willingness to sacrifice for others.


But Atticus and Steve Rogers are just fictional characters, right?  



These fictional worlds and people inspired hundreds of thousands of people 

to live in the ways they want, to go out and do the things they love. 

Better yet, fiction continues to do this 

as it keeps providing strong and unique role models for every kind of person out there. 

 The world is generally a troubled place rife with warfare, poverty, famine, and unrest.

Heroes are beacons of light amidst this vast darkness. 

Heroes prove to us that no matter how much suffering there is in the world, 

there are supremely good people around whom we can count on to do the right thing, 

even when most other people are not.

Heroes bring light to a dark world.  I just hate it when greed douses their candles.

What do you think?   

HAS MEMORIAL DAY BEEN MISPLACED?

We enjoy stirring videos of Memorial Day with graves draped in colorful American flags

as lovely music plays in the background.

We watch and listen to stirring Memorial Day parades, 

flags snapping in the breeze and bands playing stirringly as they march in unison.

People in our country's neighborhoods will be having the biggest and best barbecues, 

but the forgotten spirits of those slain upon a thousand distant foreign fields 

might take us to the cemeteries on Memorial Day.

Would they tell us that we could eat all the barbecue we want on the Fourth of July 

if we just murmured a small thanks over their graves today?

No one sets out to be a hero, and certainly no one wants to die a bloody, violent death.

But thousands upon thousands found themselves in terrible situations where they needed a hero, 

so that is what they became.

They died so that we would have a chance to live as best we could.

 We couldn’t enjoy sun-drenched summer days like today without their sacrifice.


Living in the world today is a challenge unlike one that has ever been seen in the past. 

But as thousands rose to the occasion when all seemed dark, we, too, can rise to tackle the obstacles facing us.

Yes, today is a day where we mourn the loss of precious lives and innocence.  

But today is also a day where we celebrate the victory of the human spirit over darkness ...

and this gives us hope.

For MEMORIAL DAY_THE DOG WHO COULD FLY

http://www.amazon.com/Dog-Who-Could-Fly-Four-Legged-ebook/dp/B00GEEB7QM/
Czech airman Robert Bozdech found himself shot down with his wounded pilot in a grim no-man's land, 

between German and French forces at the beginning of World War II. 

It is January 1940 and the German army is shortly to begin its surge across the rest of continental Europe.

 In an abandoned farmhouse where Robert and his French pilot take shelter, 

he finds a starving puppy amid the rubble. 

Not weaned yet, the emaciated dog is able to suckle warmed-up chocolate from Robert's finger.

But a puppy left behind would make noise that would alert their Nazi hunters. 

Robert takes out his knife and lowers it to the puppy's throat. 

He looks into trusting brown eyes.  

He puts the knife away and the puppy inside his bomber jacket.


Along with the pilot, he and the puppy make the terrifying and arduous journey to safety.  

But that is just it: 

there is no safety with the Nazis butchering their way across all of France.

So Robert & the puppy, along with six other Czech airmen, 

eventually escape to Britain to serve in the Royal Air Force, 

along the way facing not only a saga of obstacles and dangers 

but the added challenge of smuggling along a dog Robert names Ant ... 

later changing it to Antis for a reason I leave for you to find out.

 Long before Robert and his mates are welcomed into the RAF, Antis wins Robert's heart. 

His loyalty, courage, and intelligence, even as a puppy, 

create a bond of love, one that survives some of the most challenging circumstances.


 Antis was awarded the Dickin Medal, the animal equivalent to the Victoria Cross
Before France capitulates, Robert returns to fly with the French Air Force 

in a last-ditch effort to slow the advance of the Germans, joined by Antis. 

(Later Antis would fly with Robert in the RAF.)

"It seemed almost the most natural thing ... for Ant to leap onto the wing of the aircraft and climb in beside him ... 

The perils of the mission didn't seem to worry him ... His ears pricked up a little as the punching percussions of machine-gun fire filled the gun turret,

his nose twitched at the thick cordite fumes that drifted all around him, 

but other than that he didn't ... stir from his laid-back position prone on the metal floor."


 During the course of the war, Antis saves lives by hearing, and warning his master of, 

the approach of German bombers long before they could be detected by air defense. 

And after one horrific attack, 

he becomes a rescuer, sniffing out survivors in the rubble of a building.  

Even being buried by a falling wall could not stop the bleeding, crawling Antis 

from digging out his last rescue: 

a young girl who would have died but for Antis.

You will laugh, sigh, cry, and ultimately cheer this warm loving story torn from the bloody history of WWII.


You will be cheered by the ingenuity and never-say-die spirit of both man and dog.  
I am currently listening to the audio version of this wonderful book.

To give equal time to kittens:

SO YOU WANT TO MAKE AN AUDIOBOOK? NOW WHAT?

http://www.amazon.com/The-Stars-Bleed-at-Midnight/dp/B01B20VE1A
C. Lee McKenzie emailed me:
I’d love to know more about how you did the audible. It’s something I hadn’t considered until hearing your book.
I thought if Lee had questions, many of you might have as well.  So here goes:

It can be expensive --


There is a price per finished hour of audio – which can vary from $200-$400.

So for a 90,000 word book, this would come out at around 10 hours of finished audio – costing between $2000 and $4000.

This may sound steep –





{Only $1.99 if buy the Kindle book}  http://www.amazon.com/End-of-Days/dp/B00E5IBML4/

but a 10 hour finished book will have at least 75 hours of solid work behind it – 

recording, editing and final quality check (it takes 10 hours just to listen to it!).

If you divide it out, this is paying the actor about $27 per hour on the lower rate – 

which is not not excessive for a professional running a business.  

You shake your head, "How hard could this editing be?"

Editing an audio book is a painstaking job –

removing the errors from the recording 

and maybe adding in pauses for effect or cutting long gaps to smooth out dialogue.

In addition you have to be listening out for and then remove, 

all the strange wheezes and pops, coughs and clunks and stomach gurgles that somehow get onto the track.

Add to this the removal of odd external street noises (police sirens, dogs barking etc) 

which are inevitable if you do not record in a sound-proofed room or have a directional mic.

There is some art involved in this –



deciding to leave a noisy breath in the middle of a sentence or

 removing one from the beginning of a phrase will depend on the flow and context of the passage.

Many authors have not planned in advance for a paragraph to be read aloud 

and this makes the job of the recording artist quite a challenge.

 Frequently there are gaspings as the poor actor struggles to get in enough air after a long sentence with many sub-clauses or commas!

DON'T STOP READING IN DISMAY!
THERE IS ACX!


(Lee ask your publisher if you have the audio rights to your books.  

If not, ask them if they could grant them to you since they are not going to use them.  

To use ACX you must own the audio rights to your book.)


For those of you who haven’t visited ACX – you should –

it is a brilliant uploading service for independent producers and authors.

They allow authors to advertise for the type of narrator they would like (accent, age, style etc) 

and provide an audition text for any interested party to use to record a sound test. 

The auditions come in, the author selects the one they like best and then the narrator goes off to do the work.

  It is a really simple utility to use 

and it marries authors and producers up and handles contracts, payments, sign offs etc 

and then gets the finished job up onto Amazon, Audible and iTunes.

They offer all sorts of payment options for producers –

including royalty splits and they then handle the payments to you when the book sales start flooding in….

With this option your outlay is minimal – you are just sacrificing half your future royalties.

But since the narrator is looking at continuing to be paid, she/he is motivated to do her or his very best work to spread "word of mouth." -- so to speak.

On the other hand -- 

when you as an author offer a royalty share deal to a narrator, you are asking them to work for free.  

Hopefully, it will pay off eventually, but that’s not guaranteed. 

The narrator is taking a risk – 

it could really pay off, given that there’s no upper limit to what a royalty share title could earn. 

However, it could completely flop, and if it does, the narrator is out of luck.   

Many quality narrators will no longer do Royalty Share for that reason.


BUT THERE IS THE HYBRID OPTION:
The option of paying a low per-finished-hour rate, such as $50 – $100 per finished hour, 

plus royalty share, to cover the cost of editing or at least provide a baseline pay 

for the narrator in case the audiobook sales don’t come through spectacularly. 

This is referred to as a “hybrid” deal. 
The way this would work through ACX 

is that the author and narrator would create a royalty share contract, 

and then the author would also pay the narrator the agreed upon rate.  

The hybrid arrangement seems to be a “sweet spot” for a lot of other narrators I’ve talked to –

the best of both worlds. 

This would be a good thing to be prepared to offer if you don’t have the budget 

to offer a pay-for-production deal, but want to attract a good quality narrator.




HOW TO USE ACX?
1. Go to https://www.acx.com/


2. Create an account (click on the big Get Started button after admiring Neil Gaiman for a minute)



3. This account works with your Amazon account - so you'll have the same sign in and password



4. Creating an account here is very similar to creating an account on any e-book platform - just follow the directions and fill in the info


5. Confirm you own the rights to your titles. 

This is similar to adding your books to your Author Central account, sort of an is this book yours? within ACX and then you confirm if it is or isn't.



6. Next comes the bit I found the most tedious - creating your title profile


a. Post a cover photo (don't worry, it's not the FINAL cover art)
b. Post a description

c. Post an excerpt for narrators to audition with

d. Post a write up of anything else potential narrators and producers need to know -
for example, I stated that I needed a female narrator that could handle doing a proper British accent.

e. Post word count, territories (most will be Worldwide like with e-books)

f. Choose your royalty.

 This is where you decide if you are going to pay an upfront hourly rate or royalty share.
Obviously, if you pay upfront...it's going to cost something.
If you do the royalty share, you don't pay anything upfront, but you do split all of your royalties with the narrator/producer 50/50.
Remember: 
Audible takes 60% of the price.  You and the narrator get 20% each of what is left.
 I chose to share my royalties, and in fact am happy to share my royalties. 
I honestly feel like my narrators put just as much work into creating the audio books as I did writing the books!

 7. Now your title profiles are listed on ACX for narrators and producers to peruse. 
(A lot of the narrators are also the producers.)

You can wait for them to come to you, but I have no patience, 
so I started listening to narrator auditions right away. 
(Go up to Search and click on Narrators for hire.)
If you have any more questions, friends, just email me.  :-)

A GOOD WORD ... OR TWO

C. Lee McKenzie
http://writegame.blogspot.com/

has written a delightful review both on GOODREADS and on AMAZON for 


https://www.amazon.com/DEATH-HOUSE-LIFE-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B00HIU5O38/
"When you listen to Death in the House of Life, you’re drawn into a world where natural laws do not exist. 
There’s no division between those living and those dead, 
there’s a fusion of history and the fantastic, real historical figures align with 
 or fight against mythical/alien ones, time can be manipulated, 
and what is evil—in the end—turns out to be what saves you.

Texas Ranger Captain Samuel McCord, 
the charming central figure of this mixed-genre delight is doomed and, therefore, heroic. 
Set in the 19th century, 
it has a cast that includes Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Nikola Tesla and the remarkable Countess Ada Byron—
all people of intellect and achievement in that century. 
It’s surprising, exciting, and at all times, stimulating to have them together in the quest for the aegis.

One of my favorite things about the book 
is how the author weaves the historical and political events into the fabric of his tale.
 It’s so cleverly done that while I was absorbing real facts from the past, 
I was always entertained and involved in the fictional adventure.

The voice actor did one fine job in not only keeping each of the characters distinct, 
but also rendering the females so well, that I wasn’t aware that a man was delivering the dialog."
For a limited time:Buy the Kindle Book for $2.99 and get the audio book for just $1.99!
 

THE TROUBLE WITH ROLAND'S POSTS

Ghost of Mark Twain here ...
I'm here to help Roland out a mite.  The trouble with his posts?

They're too dang long!  

By the time I get to Point #17 I've done forgot the first five!

Roland, take notes, son.  Here is how it is done ...



There was never a time in the last 40 years I wrote 

when my literary shipyard hadn't two or more unfinished ships on the way, neglected and baking in the sun.

This has an unbusinesslike look, but it was not purposeless.  It was intentional.

As long as a book would write itself, I was a faithful suitor, and my industry did not flag.

But the minute the book tried to shift to my head the contrivings of its situations, 

inventing its adventures, 

and conducting its conversations, 

I put it away and dropped it out of my mind.

It was by accident that I discovered that a book is pretty sure to get tired about its middle 

and refuse to go on until its powers and its interest should have been refreshed by a rest

 and its depleted stock of raw materials reinforced by a lapse of time. 

When I reached the middle of TOM SAWYER, I could not understand why I could not go on with it.

The reason was simple: 

My tank had run dry.  It was empty; the stock of material in it exhausted.

The story could not go on without materials.  It could not be wrought out of nothing.

When the manuscript had lain in a pigeonhole for two years, I took it out one day and read the last chapter I had written.

It was then that I made the great discovery that when the tank runs dry, you've only to leave it alone for a spell ... 

even for so small a time as a good night's sleep to awaken to discover your tank has filled while you dreamed.

See, children?  A short post but you still learned something important.  

But be kind to Roland.  He ain't achieved ghosthood yet.