Barbara G. Tarn's Blog, page 94

Random Friday

Let’s make it Reading Friday! :) There’s the post on reading by Dean Wesley Smith and also another on Shannon A. Thompson’s blog. I’m not a huge reader, but I do read, in most genres – as long as there’s a plot. And while I go through my SFF bundles, I took a break to read my other reading love – comics and graphic novels.

Last year two classmates gave me an Amazon gift card. I finished using it this year, with the following purchase.

To the bookseller bemoaning Amazon – if I ever get to London, I’m not setting foot in your shop, since I doubt you’ll store graphic novels. And I don’t drink whiskey. If I buy PAPER books on Amazon it’s because local bookstores don’t stock them (and not only because they’re in English and I live in a non-English speaking country – we do have English bookshops).

Now, to my purchases! I am I known fan of Colleen Doran (see my sidebar, LOL) and I’ve wanted to check Gone to Amerikay since it came out. I wasn’t disappointed, the three intertwined story-lines (1870, 1960 and 2010) are beautifully rendered by Colleen with the nice colors of José Villarubia. The story is a nice mix of history and fantasy, with ghosts and historical events. I like mostly the splash pages that show New York in the three timelines – and how it changed throughout the years.

Drawing the Line was brought to my attention by a Goodreads friend who had read and reviewed it. Being a little leery of underground comics, I did a quick google check for more about the stories inside the book. I don’t like all the drawing styles, but most of them yes. With comics and graphic novels, if I don’t like the art, I don’t enjoy the story, so that’s why it’s critical that I see something in the drawings.

None of these ladies has an hyper-realistic style like Colleen Doran, but some were really neat. An Ideal Girl and The Poet, Sharmila reminded me of some French BDs, and the simplicity of Asha, now made me wish I could see it in colors. Lots of nice stories by very nice women – highly recommended for India lovers and not only! :)

Final thoughts on reading. You may have heard that Unberto Eco is dead. 60% of Italians read less than a book a year, but 98% are mourning his passing… will we get “distilled” Eco novels at newsagents now? ;) I have never read him and I don’t know what to think of this. Definitely a leap year that’s taking away a lot of artists and writers and creators and actors and… but this year too shall pass!

Happy reading – I have a beta-reading weekend ahead, so… I won’t be idle!

 

Writer Wednesday

So, February was productive, since I finished a 50K novel – based on a graphic novel published at the time of the photocopied fanzines (read: late 1990s). Longtime friend Nik might remember Kolia and Joris… I have revised their story and made it a novel in the new Silvery Earth (the original had elves and other very usual fantasy beings, now Joris is a Genn, but since it’s earlier in the history of Silvery Earth, there are still a few unicorns and centaurs and dwarves and giants and probably faeries besides the Magical Races).

Lovers should come out next month, after Prince Splendor (another graphic novel rewritten, they were actually sorta kinda related and they still are). For now please check Colors, the Snow White revisited that still has the seven dwarves in the new Silvery Earth.

The cover is where I drew my first bird, the swallow on Nerian’s window, talking to him (although in the opening scene it’s a family of swallows… might be earlier! ;) I’m bad at drawing animals, have mercy!)… The previous attempt is also on DeviantART. Wait for this character’s interview sometimes next week.

I spent last weekend working on the covers of Lovers and Prince Splendor, since I didn’t want to use the old drawings from the graphic novels. Although I did end up doing a mash up of old drawings for Prince Splendor, but well… after 2 or 3 attempts at coming up with a new cover, I just gave up and looked at the old stuff! ;)

Linky links… just food for thought in the Day-Job Thinking post by Dean Wesley Smith. And if you want to see Joe Konrath fisking Lee Child…

Going back to writing. And reading. Have a great week!

 

Happiness is…

Sunday Surprise

Writers on writing, words of wisdom, whatever you want to call them… here’s another batch for this month!

By any definition in any book, a writer is a person who writes.

I love to write, especially when I am challenged, scared of where I am going, scared of the dark, and having fun with the topic and characters.

I hate the modern thinking that one book is important. (Put large quotes around the word important.) A book is just a bunch of writing. A story told to readers.

I’m a writer. I am a storyteller. I tell stories.

I will manage to get the books and stories I finish into print for readers to read if they want. But my attitude of writing first is also why this web site is not yet a good gateway to my fiction. It’s slowly getting better, but not there yet.

I would rather write something new, not take care of all the stuff I already wrote.

– Dean Wesley Smith

The actual writing is what you live for. The rest is something you have to get through in order to arrive at the point.

― Raymond Chandler

Writers can do the same thing. We can write what we want.

The trade-off is that hitting the cultural zeitgeist is much harder. The world has gotten bigger. The days when a single book rests on the coffeetable of everyone who reads are long gone.

What we gain in freedom, we lose in attention.

And many writers do their best to build boxes around themselves, as you can see from those comments a few weeks ago. Even indie writers believe that there are Rules To Be Followed, and Tastemakers To Be Placated.

Weirdly enough, in this world where we can upload the book today we finished writing yesterday, we have to wait to get attention for it. Yes, we might get our usual readers to pick up a copy, but for the book to have “legs,” for it to make an impact, that takes time.

And sometimes that time might be years, not weeks. The book we published today might be part of a cultural trend ten years from now. It’s up to us to remain informed, to see the trends building, to change covers or point out that this book—which first saw print a decade ago—actually has a lot to say about what’s going on right now.

It’s a whole different way of thinking about things, a way we’re not yet used to.

– Kris Rusch

At the end of the day, it feels somewhat demotivational to suggest that all the little tricks and cheats may fail you in the end — but I’d also hope you’ll take heart that, at the end of the day, EVERYTHING YOU WERE LOOKING FOR WAS WITH YOU ALL ALONG. (hashtag wizard of oz.) You have the power. You have the voodoo. You’ve got the ability to motivate yourself. You needn’t look for external things. You want time? Grab it. You need inspiration? Drill it up out of your own heart. You want motivation? Write. Write your way to it, then write your way through it. You are not beholden to anything outside yourself.

You are beholden only to yourself.

– Chuck Wendig

The most important thing you can do is follow your dream.

I’m dead serious when I say this.  Too many times we let other people live our lives for us.  If you follow your own dream, you are much less likely to have regrets in the long run.  If your dream is to find an agent who might find a big publisher who can get your book into bookstores, Walmart, the grocery store, etc, then pursue it.  Try to find the agent.  If your dream is to find a small publisher who will take the burden of having to upload your book yourself, design the cover, provide editing services, etc, then submit to a small publisher.  If your dream is to self-publish because you want full control, then self-publish.

– Ruth Ann Nordin

Random Friday

And I finished coloring Samantha the Witch and the Desi Vampire! The pages without lettering are now on DeviantART.

Beta-readers might recognize the original ending of the novel even without the balloons…

The PDF with the lettering and an introduction and probably the strips that talk about that story will be a freebie for whoever subscribes to the UPB newsletter…

Now I better go and letter it, though! :) And then I can toy with the Star Minds Kids again. As for Da Strip, I’m starting to figure out which can be published and which better stay private… but I’m not sure how to publish it. Web-strip is probably better, or maybe I’ll give it to Patreon supporters.

Don’t panic, I haven’t opened that Patreon account yet… did I mention it’s (again) the Year of the Sloth? Everything in due time… :) Have a great weekend!

 

Writer Wednesday

Another half month gone, yikes! Trying to finish that Silvery Earth novel so I can go back to my vampires through centuries. I’m now using every other morning to read the magazines I bought last year or earlier for research purposes, so when I get down to writing the actual stories, I’ll know what I’m supposed to look for.

Keeping an eye on that KDP Select title… hopefully I’ll make a Kindle Countdown soon. Got my January report for KENP read… peanuts. Not really worth it, but I had to try with at least one title! :)

When I put the Amazon links, I usually go to the KDP dashboard to get them – and take out everything after the ASIN (mostly because I hate long URLs). Turns out I’m doing something right. If you don’t do like I do, start doing it, and here’s why.

Or you can do what Joe Konrath does. I should probably do my bibliography too at some point. For now you can see the reading order on the publisher’s page for Silvery Earth and Star Minds. I’ll add more when I have more. There’s no real reading order for the Body Switches (and I do plan on writing a couple more)! ;)

I was also a guest on a couple of blogs last week – my productivity tips are almost lifted off the How to book, and then there was an interview at Book Goodies. Check them both if you haven’t already.

More writerly links: About Time and Sales, Balancing the Parts of Modern Publishing and Money Talks. Lots of food for thought on all of them. And then there’s the different kinds of English – I use American spelling, but the rest is… European, since I’m not a native, LOL! But then, I write mostly SFF, so does it really matter?

Now I better go booking my next online workshop. Have a great week!

Happiness is…

Sunday Surprise

oh, looky, it’s a holiday – one of those I so love to totally ignore! ;) So for me it’s just another Sunday. And for those like me, here’s my strip (it’s from last year, when it fell on a Saturday) about this day!

Another advocate of a year-round thing is the talented IssaArts, as you can see. I hired her to make me a personalized travel diary. Stay tuned to see the results. In the meantime, enjoy her valentine.

drawing by Issa Arts

Have a great Sunday! :D

How To Be A Productive Writer – Guest Post By The Very Polific Barbara Tarn

sorry this is late in reblogging… had a bad week and didn’t see it until today… :) Thanks again, Dan, for having me! :D

Dan Alatorre - AUTHOR

Barbnara Tarn

First of all, let me thank Dan for having me. When he heard how prolific I am, he asked me for a guest post on how to be prolific… although I might not be the greatest teacher on the planet. But I’ll do my best. I can at least share how I do it.

Who am I? Well, first of all, I’m not a young writer, since I’m half a century. I’ve been writing since my teens, which doesn’t mean that everything I wrote is worth publishing. Quite the opposite. Some of those stories were totally dreadful, but I had a lot of fun writing them. You know the theory of “one million words of crap”? I wrote those and more before I came out of my writing cave, wondering why publishers weren’t knocking at my door. Duh.

Now, I come from the age of the typewriter. With…

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Random Friday

While I wait for a manuscript to beta-read, I’ve been catching up on my TBR pile – namely, the two bundles of SFF titles I got between end 2014 and beginning 2015 (hence no more bundles until those are all read!).

I’m enjoying the current book, and I enjoyed to start of a novel by a writer friend who was trying something new and his critical voice stopped him. But at the same time, I’m worried for readers.

I’m not a big reader myself, although since I started writing in English I read a lot more compared to when I did everything in Italian. And this might be happening only in Italy where nobody reads and the few who do mostly read genre books.

Anyhow, at our newsagents they advertize abridged versions of bestsellers. A 600pages Wilbur Smith novel “distilled to 280”!! An Italian author’s 312 pages reduced to 120!! Is readers’ attention span so low these days?!

I used to read “abridged versions” for kids of Salgari books. I remember in the 1980s Mom stopped buying a TV guide because it published “distilled” Harold Robbins novels (read: all the sex scenes crammed in 10-20 pages – I thought he wrote erotica, and I never read a full novel, LOL!).

So I guess it’s nothing new, really. But what does it say about Italian readers? That they like short books? And is it the same elsewhere?

Now, I’m not particularly worried for my books (I’m not a bestseller and my books are pretty short anyway), but I’m wondering. It might be just Italian traditional publishers doing this…

So I’m asking – does it happen in your country too? Do you like “distilled” or “abridged” versions?

Have a great weekend!