Barbara G. Tarn's Blog, page 173

Extra post – Blog Hop Against Homophobia!

And it’s going to be sticky until the end of the hop! Welcome, visitors of the Hop Against Homophobia!So today is International Day Against Homophobia, and here I am, supporting the cause. A special thank goes to the organizers of the Hop Against Homophobia and their neat little badge – and I apologize to them for joining so late and without much advertising.

Now I’m supposed to say something about today (May 17): I’m a fantasy writer, but this doesn’t mean I’m not aware of homophobia. You’d think one could use fantasy to create a world without homophobia, right? Well, sometimes one creates a world same-but-different from ours precisely to think about issues we face every day… So, Silvery Earth has lots of homosexual characters, and most of them aren’t really liked by the rest of the world. Well, at least the Humans, as the Magical Races are wise enough to know that love – true love – knows no boundaries of gender or race. I could have set those stories today on our world, but I preferred make up one with a medieval feeling and magical beings that could oversee our foolishness – not very successfully, unfortunately. So I guess Silvery Earth’s homosexuals have the same problems that ours have. I would like to dedicate this day to all my homosexual friends out there *waves at them* – I’m with you in spirit, if not in body!

I don’t write only M/M romance, but for the purpose of this blog hop, I’ll give away one e-book copy of my only (at the moment, stay tuned for more!) M/M romance story set on my fantasy world of Silvery Earth, Allan de Sayek. It’s the only story that centers on M/M love, but if you’d like to know more about the world and its colorful characters, feel free to contact me.

To win a copy of this e-book, leave a comment below. A random winner will be chosen after the blog hop. The giveaway is open worldwide (don’t you love e-books?) and consists on a Smashwords coupon for a free download of the above title in any format you wish – including good old PDF to print out if you don’t own an e-reader! The winner will be announced during my Writer Wednesday post on May 23. As you must leave an e-mail to comment, I’ll contact you if you’re the lucky one!

Now move on to the next blog on the hop and… happy hopping! *scuttles off to check the other entries*

Writer Wednesday

After struggling with 2 documents for different reasons (an old Word.doc from 2004 and a brand new OpenOffice.doc typed on 2 different PCs), I think I know what the problem is. In spite of having the same version of OpenOffice on Desktop and Laptop, they don’t work the same way. Desktop (Old Guy) can’t accept what I do with Laptop (Young Gun). Grr.

I moved all my documents to Dropbox so I could work on them from any of my PCs. But when I opened BodySwitch (completed on Laptop) on Desktop, m-dashes were gone and “Senor” had lost the Spanish n again. I tried to put the m-dashes back in, but saving the document didn’t save the m-dashes on Desktop (it was easy to check, as there are 2 on page 1), so I had to work on Laptop to complete the manuscript and send it for the last editing pass. Oh, and, by the way, here’s the final cover AND title.

If it becomes a series, with Samantha switching people at will, I won’t have to retitle it, LOL! Thanks for the input on the cover, BTW. I’ll let you know when it’s available for purchase.

Technology, friend and foe. You probably heard of the hacker attack on Kris Rusch’s sites – read a summary here and follow all the links she points you to. And don’t miss Dean’s post on agents either. He’s not the only one pissed at AAR, of course, but do you really still want an agent? After all that’s come out in the past year? You can hear also Joe Konrath’s comments on Writers House president Simon Lipskar open letter – again, happy I’m not a member of any of those (because I’m not American? Mumble mumble…). Or Passive Guy reposting the rants of Scott Eagan – worth reading the comments too, with Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath quipping in and the agent himself deleting more and more of his posts while the comments spread – maybe he has deleted his whole blog by now, LOL! And who got in his defense? Joe Konrath, saying he’s funny and does satire. Maybe, but unlike Bad Agent Sydney, he passes it off as Agent Wisdom and people might believe him. Very bad satire, Joe!

I will now muse about e-book pricing here. Like I said before, there are 2 kinds of readers: the downloaders and the real readers. And I think downloaders have now filled their devices, so no need to have more free books. Here’s my experience with “free on Amazon”.

Jessamine went free last August or September. It reached #5 on Free Kindle Titles – fantasy and #277 on general Free Kindle titles in a couple of days.

BoI – Prequels went free April 30. 130 downloads the first day, and then we’re still a little over 100, 15 days later. It’s never going to climb Amazon’s list. Does that mean people are sick of free or cheap e-books? Hopefully.

And again, people who download free books, won’t come back to buy more. I have plenty of free downloads on Smashwords Premium distribution, but very few actual sales (and only at Barnes/Noble + 1 at Apple Germany *waves at her German pen-pals – is it one of you?*). At Sony and Kobo they download free titles but don’t get the paid ones. So either my free titles suck or they’re just downloaders and not readers!

Now, here’s a post on how to get reviews – even from Mighty Amazon. Will have to work on that, but I’m kind of tired to beg for reviews. I’d rather they come unsolicited, LOL! So please, my beloved 5 readers are kindly requested to leave reviews on Amazon, Smashwords or wherever they can, thank you! Am I the only reader who chooses his next read based only on blurb&cover without checking the sample and/or the reviews? Sigh.

OK, I don’t care, I’m proud to be a black sheep, LOL! Guess you have enough images today, so I’ll leave my Sunday drawing (I had to decompress after fighting with Open Office for one day and a half! ) for Random Friday… Have a great week!

p.s. I signed up for a blog hop, so tomorrow you’ll have an extra post that will stay up “sticky” until the 20th… I signed really late, but thanks to Arshad Ahsanuddin who mentioned it on Goodreads. So in less tht 24 hours you’ll have a new post that will stay at the top of this page for the next 4 or 5 days – scroll down for regular Friday post.  Stay tuned for the Hop Against Homophobia! Tomorrow on this very blog!

Happiness is…

Random Friday

So, after the weekend spent re-reading/editing my novels and three afternoons spent struggling with formatting (if it was my first novel, I’d have given up in frustration, LOL! Glad it the 30th or something!), I took an evening off tho go through the pile of DVDs to watch. Which means I watched one, of course.

Top of the pile was James Ivory’s The Householder, that I found for 3euros like others I’ve mentioned on this blog. It’s from the 1960s, black&white and hadn’t been dubbed, so I got the original version with Italian subtitles. It was all shot in Delhi, pity for the B&W (but after so many Bollywood movies, I could almost see the colors, LOL!). I liked the story – and in case you’re wondering, no, it’s not Bollywood, it’s James Ivory (or “Merchant Ivory Production”) shooting a movie in India, based on a novel.

I liked the extras, an interview with protagonist remembering his casting and how he convinced the writer that he was the right guy for the part (reminds me of Mr.Cruise  and Mrs Rice… I’d have happily lived without Mr.Cruise, but luckily Mr. Pitt stole the scene and I forgot the other guy. I digress, sorry). And there was the short “The creation of woman” with those wonderful dancers that left me gaping (especially the males, as I’m used to women after Kama Sutra, LOL). I guess even traditional dances from India fascinate me…

I still have to watch the other extra, “The road to Delhi” (50min.), but as I wasted those three afternoons (grrr) and fell behind with CVE3 (beta&editors, I’m almost done, you’ll get it during the weekend, I promise!), I just skipped it for now. Add to this that it’s spring and spending an afternoon reading a novel, albeit mine (and I’m my #1 fan, even if I don’t write reviews of my own books! ), kept me falling asleep at the wrong times. So more “wasted” time, no original reading I can rant about and one DVD extra missing. For a 3euro/60s movie DVD that’s a lot of extras anyway!

Oh, and Happy Fangirl Barb thanks Terry Moore for the mention! As Wednesday I rambled on and on, this post I’ll keep short. Thanks to everyone who gave suggestions for the cover, either here or on Goodreads, and have a great weekend! Still have to decide if post something on Sunday or not… Any suggestions?

Writer Wednesday

I’m going to start this with another “help me choose the cover” like I’ve done in the past. You met Samantha on Sunday. Even if she’s not the protagonist of the body switch, she’s the one who did it, as you have noticed from the excerpt, so I decided she could have the cover spotlight even if she’s not the main character. Hence two attempts:

Which one, left or right? How about I cut out the head altogether and leave the body and tarot deck (well Unicorn cards, actually, but she’s a witch and not from this planet, LOL)?

The book is now with The Editor and will come out as soon as she’s done and I revise it one last time. Sunday I worked on the final draft and discovered some formatting was screwed – the Spanish n of “senor” had become a square that ate also the “o” and all m-dashes and ellipses had disappeared! So I had to work them all back in.

After the novella (it’s less than 25k, I doubt it qualifies as a novel), I added one version of the original short story and in there not only the m-dashes/ellipses were gone, but also the space between the words (which made it easier to find them as the spellchecker underlined the united words)! Mysteries of OpenOffice, I guess.

I also struggled with formatting the Italian novel coming out this week. The original document is from 2004, I think I still had Word instead of Open Office. I put it through the Nuclear Option suggested by Smashwords (save as TXT and reformat), but the HTML file for Kindle was all screwed anyway. Had to save it as PDF, put through Calibre, generate a mobi file and upload that to KDP. Not happy with how the file came out, I decided to try again today… I downloaded Mobicreator and will try it. And I haven’t tried the Smashwords meatgrinder yet. Yikes.

Anyway, I had to shuffle things to write around a little and interrupt the sci-fi piece to start writing CVE4 while editors and betas take a look at CVE3 – the sci-fi title won’t be out until December anyway, but it will be done by July, so if you’d like to volunteer… yeah, I’m always looking for betas!

In case you missed it, on Fictorian Era  Dean Wesley Smith told the secret of his success… yeah, that’s what I’m doing, that’s why you don’t see me marketing my books. I’m too busy writing (or rewriting from my backlist, as some of those ideas only need some revamping to be put out there) to bother with marketing. He’s right, your best marketing tool is your next book. And I’m going to keep writing old and new stories, hoping to find my audience soon.

I won’t throw away those thousands and thousands of words. They were useful to learn the craft. And, like Dean, I’m still learning. Those I’m not too happy with them anymore because that’s not the kind of story I would write today? Polish and publish. Those that were only writing exercises? Keep the notebook and cherish it. Those that had something that deserves to be rewritten? Here we go!

CVE3 was originally written in 1993. I keep shuffling chapters around, taking out useless secondary characters or putting back in adventures that looked superfluous, but it’s still a good novel, so I’m rewriting it. OK, I’ve rewritten it, and will send it out to betas soon!

Anyway, I might sound like I’m in a hurry. I’m not. I’m prolific and I have dozens of stories that are almost ready for public consumption – they need to be translated, mostly. The Italian stories, I’m putting them out almost as they are (I keep finding typos, grrrr!!). But I’d like to remind you (or let know to the new blog subscribers who might not be aware of this *waves at them*) that I’ve been writing stories since 1978. So I’m not really a beginner story-teller…

Like a friend (much younger than me and who hasn’t managed to finish a longer work yet and is stuck to a handful of short stories) said, “Writing is a muscle”. Just keep writing, and you’ll get better. Don’t ever get stuck in rewriting hell. Don’t ever waste years on one novel. Pour the story out, let it rest, adjust, and query/publish it. You can’t please all your readers anyway, so… move on! Your next story will be better, I promise!

A couple of posts for you: Colleen Doran on struggling artists and bad contracts re: Before Watchmen. Valid for artists AND writers – especially beginners. Then go to J.A.Konrath’s blog and see how Harelquin screws its writers… Romance writers, forget a deal with them! And good advice from a “beginner” (Terry Compton – who seem to follow the same blogs I do, tee-hee! – guest at SPAL): write short stories and publish them on Smashwords, it will help you hone your crafts and create your backlist without spending years on a novel!

Finally, because the original post has the comments closed, here’s on genre and pen-names from SPAL again. Personally, I have a publisher account at Smashwords – yeah, if you read the web address it’s “barbaragtarn”, but when you open the page it’s Unicorn Productions. My pen-names are not secret and the books come out correctly as different authors: Barbara G.Tarn, Barbara Sangiorgio and B.G.Hope, writing in different genres and different languages. I will update the links on Unicorn Productions whenever I set up a static web page for the imprint, but I’ll leave this blog for now.

Payments go to my Paypal account under my real name anyway. On Amazon I use my real name account to upload on KDP and have opened the 3 Author Central profiles with the 3 pen-names again with my real-name account. Mostly for payment reasons: checks should go to my real name, not any pen-name I might use because of language or genre.

Maybe it’s just me, but when I opened the account with Smashwords (to read, not to publish), I hadn’t considered putting up a small imprint to publish my pen-names! And having dozens of different accounts… ouch! Can’t keep up! Even on Goodreads I joined only as Barbara G.Tarn! It works for my non-existent marketing skills, LOL!

Happy writing and have a great week!

UPDATE: cover second attempt following Rich’s suggestions… what do you think? Gee, can’t choose!

Happiness is…

Sunday musings

OK, I want to publicly thank my new beta Kelly – who will probably see this on my Goodreads feed – for her comment on her first read.

I did like that Samantha is pissed at someone interfereing with her magic while simultaneously unrepentant about possibly seriously f-ing up four lives. It makes me curious about her, wonder more about what sort of things she’s done, if she feels so righteous about switching bodies, which is good because it allows a reader access to your other worlds/works (if Samantha is the character from Silvery Earth).

Now, Samantha is a real witch, but this particular book is NOT tied to Barbara G.Tarn and Silvery Earth. It’s under my other pen-name, B.G.Hope. It’s not a secret I’m prolific and I’d rather keep genres apart. I’m not giving away my real family name anyway (LOL) and I’m not going to establish a Facebook page or Goodreads Author profile for B.G., but there is some fantasy in some of her stories. Like the one Kelly read above, which is about a body switch. That’s labeled fantasy, right?

So, I’ve been thinking, maybe I could have Silvery Earth with both pen-names. Barbara G.Tarn has the “new” Silvery Earth with its two millennia of history and medieval settings (sometimes more exotic because inspired to India/Persia or Japan/China or Africa) the chronology of which you can find at the top of this blog, along with the maps. B.G.Hope has the “old” version of Silvery Earth, that had immortal and very young inhabitants that sometimes interfered with our Earth (much like the aforementioned Samantha is doing). I have some contemporary stories with a touch of magic + the old original stories from Silvery Earth, so those could come out under this second pen-name.

Whenever I set up the Silvery Earth page (either as web-site or Facebook page) it will have two “columns”, one for the old and one for the new Silvery Earth, with the two authors names. As for Samantha the witch, she will be in Body Switch out sometime later this month…

Because it’s Sunday, I’ll end this post with a short excerpt from this upcoming novella (unedited). So, from upcoming Body Switch, please welcome Samantha the witch!

Samantha sat in the lotus position, candles burning all around her. Her eyes were closed and she was deep in meditation. She could hear the voices again.

“Still, sometimes I wish I was born a man,” Marian told Valery, unaware Samantha was close enough to hear her.

“I want breasts. Like Doris,” Johnny said.

“And I’d be gay, of course,” Marian added.

“I’d do the full sex switch if I had the money,” Johnny said.

It made sense.

Samantha took a deep breath.

“So. Be. It.”

A thunderstorm hit.

Have a great weekend!

On last thing… Krus Rusch’s site has been under attack by hackers since Thrusday, because she posted relevant information for writers (as she usually does every Thursday). Go read her informative post on the Passive Guy before they hack him too!

Random Friday

In the previous post I told why I prefer Smashwords as a writer. Now I’m going to put my reader’s hat on!

The writer hates she can’t download her own books from Amazon: my books on my Kindle are all Smashwords files. I have no idea what the customer gets except for the preview before I upload them. So 30+ title on my Kindle are my books (which doesn’t mean I’ve read them all, not even with the text-to-speech function, LOL!).

When my Kindle breaks (hopefully never, but electronic stuff quickly becomes obsolete – I’m not going to change my Kindle Keyboard for any fancy color update anytime soon, but you never know), I’ll have to put my Kindle-only books through Calibre. On Smashwords I only have to go back to the book page and download another format.

AND if the author publishes a revised version of any of the books I’ve bought, I can have it for free on Smashwords. (So, the few who bought B.G.Hope’s short stories for 99cents, can now download the double shorts and have the second story really for free. All new customers get the two stories for the new price).

And on Amazon anyone can leave reviews, which leaves room for troll reviews. On Barnes&Nobles you can even leave anonymous reviews! Now, apparently Google has found a way to detect and remove fake spammy reviews, but still… On Smashwords and DriveThru you need to buy the book to leave a review – which I find wonderful (in spite of the annoying Smashword reminder, LOL).

And of course both allow you to either create coupons for reviewers or send free review copies – something that Amazon itself doesn’t allow, if a reviewer wants a mobi file, I need to create it (for DriveThru I’m still working on the mobi and e-pub versions, it still has only PDFs. More formats will come, promised!) – or send the reviewer to Smashwords!

Now, I’ve read a paperback book – because Penguin India didn’t provide the e-book format -, remember them? It’s The Boyfriend by R.Raj Rao (link to… where I bought it!) – yeah, I still love Amazon, but not to buy e-books!

Here’s my review copy-pasted from Goodreads/Amazon:

I’m only halfway through it and I’m loving it! Also because I’m a Bollywood geek, so even if the book is set in the 1990s, there’s still mention of rising star Shah Rukh Khan and his movie Baazigar (which is the remake of A Kiss Before Dying with Matt Dillon, BTW) and other people I’ve actually heard about, LOL!

Also, this is pure gay fiction, not m/m romance written by women for women, so it’s very refreshing. And very interesting discovering the gay life of Bombay/Mumbai – something you don’t really expect exists.

And I love the mix of British English and Hindi! And the omniscient narrator, a.k.a. head-hopping so many editors and writing guru rant against!

Now I’m finished: I loved the dry humor of this story and the mix of English and Hindi – I don’t care if some words make no sense to me, they make a sense of where the characters are!

One last note: If you hate spoilers, DO NOT read the back cover of the paperback. I’ve never seen the complete plot revealed on the cover (not that it’s a mystery or a thriller, but still…). One star to the editor of Penguin India who wrote that without a “spoiler alert”!

So, there you have it! For an India/gay culture buff like me, it was really funny and a great read. Again, I was appalled at the back cover giving away the whole plot, but I don’t really care for spoilers – that’s what I actually look for in movies or books descriptions, LOL! Well, I look for that little hint of a scene or something of the story that grabs me – in this case the title and knowing it dealt with homosexuality in Bombay/Mumbai was enough, but otherwise I need a little something to make me want to buy.

Like Michelle, I don’t care if somebody tells me the end. As a reader, I don’t read the sample – not even with paper books. I go for cover, back cover and it’s in my basket or back on the shelves. OK, while I’m talking as a reader, I’ll say that I do have ONE sample on my Kindle: Rob Lowe’s book. But it’s a traditionally published book, with traditionally published e-book pricing, so I’m not going to download it all. If I must pay that price to read it, I’ll wait until I go to London or the US and buy the paperback. Heck, the paperback might even have pictures inside like Shahrukh Khan’s bio! (Maybe it doesn’t I’m just assuming! ). So I’ll stick to that sample and the Vanity Fair excerpt that came out last year until either traditional publishers lower their e-book prices or I buy the paperback.

There you have, then, this reader’s habits… they haven’t changed much in time, except from reading on different formats – from paper only to paper + PDF to paper + PDF + ebooks, but the way of chosing what to read is still the same… Now I’m back to finishing Mark Coker’s book (free download recommended to all indie writers!!) and deciding what to post on Sunday! More longer excerpts or another six sentence? You tell me!

Writer Wednesday

First I’ll send you to Smashwords blog for a post on new viral catalysts. I’m also reading Mark Coker’s Secrets to e-publishing success, but I’ll do a full review when I’m done, LOL. Well, I’ve read the part where Mark Coker credits Joleene Naylor for his new cover… I should hire her for my future non-fiction book!

I’d like to add also Michael Stackpole’s post on DRM or lack of it – he’s right, Kindle owners (except me, LOL!) shop only on Amazon, Nook owners on B&N, etc. Sure, you can use Calibre to convert those e-books, but that’s why  I love Smashwords – once I have bought the book, I have access to all formats, including old-fashioned pre-Kindle PDF.

But then, I’m not an average reader in any sense. And if you were wondering why I love Smashwords more than Amazon (hence KDP Select won’t see me at this time), well…

This will come out as Happiness is this month as well, but here’s the short version! That’s an e-mail I was really looking forward to! So one year and one month after I published the first novel on Smashwords (Jessamine was published in January, but it went free during the summer, so I’m not really counting it) – still my “bestseller, “LOL – I’m starting to see the results. In December I was stuck with 9.13$, not enough to get paid… which means that the first quarter of 2012 I earned more than the whole of 2011! Maybe because I had more books out? Not all the 2012 sales were of new titles… last year’s novels were being discovered this year!

Anyway, that much expected e-mail came with the reservation of the Chicon7 hotel and the receipt of registration for the con… so if any of your are going, let’s meet there at the end of August!

Also S.K.Y.B.A.N.D Omnibus 2 is out on DruveThruComics, BUT the wonderful guys are preparing some kind of sale, so if you add it to your wishlist, sometimes during the month you’ll be able to purchase it with 25% off. So go register and fill that wishlist of comics and graphic novels now! (Please note not all publishers might want to do this – I’ve requested to be added to that list, but I don’t know how it actually works yet!) I might end up actually buying what I have on my own wishlist there too, while I’m at it, LOL!

Oh, and thanks to all who told Amazon, Books of the Immortals – Prequels is now FREE on Amazon.com (any way of making it free on the other Amazons?). The switch having happened at the end of the month, I have no idea how many downloads on the first day yet, but here’s a screenshot from Monday (mid-day in Italy – was 99 when I last checked before going to bed).

David Gaughran made an excellent post on visibility on Amazon, so I’ll make sure to let you know when I get into the top100 free Kindle books, LOL! Also read his story with self-publishing – I wasn’t this good, as last year I didn’t see a penny or cent of royalties, but I knew it would be a slow growth. I mean my expectations weren’t really high and I chose self-publishing because I’m prolific and don’t want to wait for traditional publishers.

April was a slow month both in sales and blog visits, but I’m still quite happy and excited and thinking of ways to entice fans at Chicon7, LOL! I have to decide if I want to bring cards, postcards or CDrom with my e-books on it… will have to check Zazzle prices and other options… This following Michael Stackpole’s advice on selling direct – but don’t worry, you won’t see me pestering all the fans at the con. I’m still a very shy person who hates to be at the center of the attention. But if in a conversation somebody asks “What do you write?” I can have something handy to show, know what I mean? I will NOT obsess about it (as suggested by SPAL)!

Loralie has an excellent post on Scrivener tips, except the only thing that caught my attention is the name generator… But I think I’ll stick to Open Office for the time being, LOL! And Stephen did a wonderful round-up of articles on DoJ/Amazon stuff for whoever wants them all in one place. I think indie writers shouldn’t give anyone exclusivity, or they might as well go to a traditional publisher… don’t leave all your eggs in one basket, right?

Now, Blood Red Pencil says May is short story month… uhm… I have scheduled two novels/longer works for my other pen-names this month… no short stories… Ah, well, you can have two in June! Along with CVE3 which will soon go out to beta and editors… OK, I never liked to follow the flow and I can just say because I’m on this side of the ocean, I’m not following US “rules”, LOL!

That’s all for today – written during a holiday with only a break to have lunch at mum’s, I’ll have to find a day of the week to study all the blogs, LOL! And now I’m behind with April’s writing, so I better go back to work! Have a great week!

Happiness is…