P.A. Wilson's Blog, page 21

The Hobbit, what makes Middle Earth so compelling?

This time of year always reminds me of our love for the familiar. It’s not about tradition, or not all the time, it’s about the same songs, the same stories and why it feels good to re-experience the emotions.

The movie, the book, the Hobbit

I am looking forward to seeing Peter Jackson’s take on The Hobbit – although I do not understand his concept of a three film series.  I’m willing to trust him based on his history. He has a knack of bringing the world to life in a way that allows us to enjoy the vision without having to translate from his mind to ours.

Taking a familiar story and delivering it to an audience is a long tradition in the movies. So many popular films are remakes or re-imagings of older films. So many books are based on other books. What makes us keep coming back? Why do people watch so many Titanic stories? – spoiler, the ship sinks. Why are World War II stories like The Great Escape considered classics? – news flash, the Nazi’s lose.

I think the answer lies in the characters. People watch Titanic, not for the suspense, but because of the love story. People watch The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly not to find out if the bad guys get killed, but because Clint Eastwood gives such an enigmatic performance.

Christmas, the pinnacle of the repeat

No matter how old you are, there are some Christmas stories that have been around every year of your life. The list of movies starts with A Christmas Carol (black and white version) to How the Grinch Stole Christmas (Jim Carrey version). Here’s a list in case you haven’t seen all 50 best Christmas movies.

The songs only seem to change by who is singing them, so few new Christmas songs get written. You hear them in the mall, on the radio, in restaurants, and yet somehow no one has stopped the onslaught.

Let’s be clear, no network, radio station or restaurant would be doing this if it didn’t help make money. And I’m not against Christmas – it’s a great time for family, turkey and gifts (of course the fact that it runs from mid-October to mid- January is a bit annoying).

What brings you back? Rudolf always leads the sleigh, the snowman always melts. I think it’s about nostalgia. Christmas crosses generations and each of us attaches memories to the rituals. Reading The Night Before Christmas, can bring memories of snuggling up in front of the fire imagining Santa on his way to your chimney.

The characters or the memories bring you back

The familiar can bring comfort and tweaking the familiar can bring interest. As long as the same stories bring us to the cash register (or PayPal or the shopping cart), the same stories will be told and the same songs will be sung.

That’s not a bad thing. As long as there is enough new to balance out the nostalgia, we evolve.

Tradition – when does it become the way things are done?

At this time of year I find myself wrapped up in tradition and wondering why we feel that some things are changeable and some are not. Is it ok to create your own traditions and let go of some others?

What tradition means to me

I find a level of comfort in some traditions. Christmas day at the parents. Easter Ham dinner. Mother’s day brunch. It all seems to be about eating and being with family. The traditions are something to hang the memories on and each event gets richer because of the past.

I also find tradition to be confining. Having the same actions over and over leaves me with a lack of variety and a feeling I should be rebelling.

Keeping it fresh, new traditions

Among my friends we call things tradition even if we’ve only done something once. If we want to do it again, someone yells, Tradition!

We also have a habit of labeling repetitive errors as tradition – it takes away the error. If we have to make that wrong turn after leaving Henderson, Nevada every year, then so be it, tradition demands repetition!

We still gather at Mom’s place for Christmas and the tradition is turkey. Everything else is up for grabs. So we’ve had different veg, we’ve had lunch planned or denied over the years. Despite my brother-in-law’s concerted effort, we have never gone to Hawaii for Christmas.

How to let go of a tradition

I let go pretty easily of the details. I think it’s because our family is small and getting smaller over the years. It’s often a choice between changing something and stopping it all together. Our holiday dinners need new blood so we invite people and call them adopted siblings.

We bring them into the holiday dinner planning and it gets crazy. Knowing that someone we didn’t grow up with is planning Thanksgiving is kind of exciting. Will they have a turkey?

This year our Canadian Thanksgiving got co-opted for a fabulous catered meal. We decided to have our Turkey Thanksgiving on the American date. It was a lot of fun, and we had an open sky of options because we’d never celebrated it so late. I did manage to find  a turkey, but heads-up if you want to try it, the stores don’t all stock the birds at that time.

What traditions do you want to change?

Is there something you want to start doing for your tradition? I say, declare it and just go ahead. Despite the meaning of the song Tevye sings, I believe tradition should be a comfort and support not a narrow definition of what is right or wrong.

Free as a strategy to make money

When authors give away books for free, it’s to get attention. Not in a bad way; without attention we can’t sell books and without sales, most of us won’t have time to write as many books as we can.

If it sounds too good to be true it usually is

That’s a great rule to live your life by, but let’s be honest, a free ebook isn’t an email scam – although feel free to send me all your banking information. A free ebook is something you can grab and drop as fast as you like.

Why isn’t the book free everywhere?

Here’s the thing, most of the retailers don’t like free books because there’s a cost to transmitting an ebook. We authors have to find ways to get the price spread around. So, the first thing we have to do is make a choice. Amazon has a program that allows 5 free days every calendar quarter at a price. We can only list the book on Amazon while we participate. For some of us that’s not the best option.

The game we have to play is simple. Set the book as free where we can. Now Smashwords has a great program – they love free ebooks. They also distribute out to the major retailers so over time the book gets price matched at Barnes & Noble, Apple and Sony – an a few other retailers. Then eventually Amazon matches the price.

It helps to have someone rat out the author for a lower price, and I’ve got that going on. So soon I’ll have 3 permanently free books at Amazon.

If you need to make money to keep writing why on earth would you give away one ebook let alone three?

To be honest, it’s to get you to buy the next book in the series – and the next and …

It’s worked for me as a reader. I have four or five new series that I read – devour – because the first book was free. Not all of them are indie publishers either. In fact the first book that hooked me this way was Medicus and that’s a traditionally published one. I’ve read all the other books in the series to-date.

So where can I get the free ebooks?

Hubris, everywhere it’s on sale except Sony

Off Track, not yet on Amazon or Sony

Imperative, not yet on Amazon or Sony

As you can see, Sony and Amazon are a bit behind the times. If you need the format for your Kindle or Sony Reader, just get them from Smashwords, they have all the formats available, you’ll just need to manually add to your Kindle or Sony Reader.

The bottom line

I’m not trying to scam or spam – maybe addict you to the stories – I want you to try out the stories. I’ll post on Twitter and Facebook when the last vendors get the price matched, but that’s it.

Have a great weekend everyone.

 

 

Murder, how to research for things you would never do

I spent one evening writing with a group of writers as we came to the end of NaNoWriMo and saw someone doing the same thing I do when visualizing the action. Their eyes closed, they were moving their hands in a weird way.

She was trying to visualize where her characters were on a cliff face. I will close my eyes and try to imagine picking a lock, or flipping a latch. I got me wondering about other things, things authors can’t or don’t want to visualize; murder, torture, abuse.

 How real does it have to be?

This is dependent on the type of book, and the target reader. For me it has to feel real for my reader. That can mean it would look right on Law & Order, or it might need to be factually real.

When we are told to write what we know, it doesn’t mean we have to know what it feels like to commit a horrible crime, it means we need to be able to translate another experience into the story event. If my reader wants to skip the details, it shouldn’t have any effect on their enjoyment of the book. And on the opposite side of that, reading the details shouldn’t kick the reader out of the story.

How to find out information – using your Google-Fu

The mechanics of almost everything you need to know is somewhere out there. Keeping my fingers crossed that no one in authority is checking my internet cache, I type in all kinds of questions about the mechanics. What kind of weapons are used for different crimes? How do you make poison? How to escape from zip tie handcuffs. How to use a throwing knife… it goes on an on.

Some things I appreciate as a written document and others as a video – I can handle gore in writing but not so much on Youtube.

How do I use the research?

Well this is an interesting aspect of writing. I don’t always put the violence on the page. That doesn’t mean I don’t need to know how the action takes place, it just means I don’t have to write it out.

An example of this is the ritual murders in Closing the Circle. The murders happened off the page, but the results were very much on the page. In this case I couldn’t just make it all up, I had to know if things were possible. So I had to research questions about clean up of blood, the soundproofing qualities of concrete, and the best way to get your hands on a strong sedative.

Dumping the body – or disposing of the evidence

This was the most fun part of the research for Closing the Circle. Not because I disposed of any bodies, but because I got to drive around San Francisco looking at where the killer had dropped his messages. I had to make changes to the book because of two things.

I hadn’t remembered the name of a building that was critical  – Google Street View isn’t a complete help.   I found out that it wasn’t what I thought and that it wasn’t a landmark. I had to move the body dump.

I didn’t realize that there were cameras all over the place in a second location so I had to make sure the cops discussed why they couldn’t identify the killer from the video.

Whether you need to hide the body or send a message, it’s critical to get the location correct.

Knowing how real the setting should be

In every genre there are people who will tear a book apart for using the wrong weapon (or calling it a gun when in real life it would be called a weapon), or using bad science, or having the traffic run the wrong way down a one way street. As an author, I need to decide who I’m writing for and make it real for them.

I do as much research on my imaginary things as I do on the real world. In the Quinn Larson Quests and the Madeline Journeys, I had more trouble with the magic rules than I did with the layout of the Downtown Eastside in Hubris. It may be hard to believe, but getting to make up all the rules and locations is harder to deal with than just figuring out how someone would react to specific poisons. In an early version of Off Track, I had Madeline walking down a corridor that clearly didn’t exist in the house as described.

The final thought

It’s all fun. If you ever hear anyone saying something along the lines of ‘I wonder if I threw a rock in the landscape lighting, would it explode’, don’t worry they are more likely to be an author than a murderer.

Christmas gifts-books in any format

Christmas is a great time to start someone reading. The challenge seems to be that it’s hard to figure out what books to give. Before you click on the gift card option, here are a few articles about best books to give.

Someone on your list loves graphic novels?

Check out this article from The Guardian. Lots of great information for those of us who still call these comic books.

How about Poetry?

The Guardian helps out here, too. Unless you are also into poetry, it can be difficult to know what to buy.

Other types of books?

I’ve compiled a stack of recommendations over on my paper.li publication. The Guardian seems to have gone all out with it’s book lists this year.

Happy shopping.

Getting the back story

One of the hardest things for writers is figuring out how to deliver back story. It’s the information you need as a reader to understand the motivation of the characters. Done well, you don’t even notice that you are getting information handed to you. Done badly, it can kick you out of the story. Or worse, it can seem like the author doesn’t trust you to ‘get’ it.

Good ones: prologue or flashback

The image is for the prologue to Romeo and Juliet, I think this is done well. Without the prologue you might not know that the two houses feuded or that they were a reflection of the woes of the world at the time.

You can still enjoy the story, but you’ll get more out of it with this knowledge.

Others that are done well include anything that can be dripped into the story. An image reminds the hero of seeing her father walk away when she was five. An emotion on someone else can echo an emotion in the hero of when the same thing happened to him.

Done well they add depth to the story.

Done poorly – info dumps

I won’t list any concrete examples because it could hurt someone’s feeling to know their prologue or flashback doesn’t work.

I mentioned this earlier, info dumps are all about telling you, the reader, why something is important. High fantasy is notorious for this. The book will open with a ten or twenty page essay on the way the world works. The author hasn’t found a way to slip the information in as people live in the world.

For me the worse approach to this problem is to assume the reader isn’t smart enough to work out something in the story. The author has to have two characters tell each other something that they wouldn’t talk about normally. Think of CSI – anywhere – it’s unlikely that they would need to tell each other why they were conducting a certain test, but the viewer does need to know why.

Is this just a ‘writer issue’?

There are many things about the craft of writing that authors agonize  over. The ‘rules of writing’ are expressed in absolutes. Never do X, always do Y. The discussions get deeply analytical, but I wonder if you as a reader ever notice the things we writers think are important?

So the question is, how do you like to get your back story or other information about the story?

Do you prefer an info dump, you can choose to skip it or you can get it over with.  Or, do you want as little as possible so you can make it up yourselves?

Alan Rickman teatime, the short version

So this is my last ‘I’m busy with NaNoWriMo‘ post. I’ll be finished writing the first draft of my new novel tonight or tomorrow and it will be over the 50,000 word minimum – yay me.

There are longer versions of this video on Youtube, but this one does it for me. Almost makes me want to switch to tea as my primary caffeine vector.

 

Selling on the web, is it sales or readers we look for?

I don’t know how much you read about ebook sales or pricing on the web, but there are lots of comments and post and ideas out there. For me, it starts with a sale and ends with a reader. I see sales as the first step in the process.

 Selling activities cost time if not money

For most authors, the selling time is about getting on social media and finding their readers. Most of us are not trained at marketing and so we foolishly spend time doing what feels right – not what works.

The time we spend marketing is time not spent writing, editing, or publishing. I think that has a bigger effect on you than any sales activity.

The other thing we do is one side or the other of the marketing pendulum swing. We spam with “Buy my book” or “My book is free” or “My book got a great review” and nothing else, or we give away content that we think might be of value to you and never say ‘by the way, my books are available’.

What annoys you? in other words, what can I stop doing so I can write?

I’d be happy to keep doing everything I am doing, Blog, Facebook, Twitter, Google+ (okay the last one still baffles me a bit). I love giving out information and my friends will tell you that I’m never short of an opinion. But, what helps you?

One thing I haven’t done is set the first book in every series as a free book. Much of that is out of my hands with Kindle, but I want to try it anyway. So, over the next while I’ll be posting announcements on FB, Twitter, Google+ about where my books are free as they update.

Now I need to get back to writing the next book.

Banned Books, Top ten video

Banned books, every wonder why they get that way – poor upbringing?

Here’s a YouTube video that explains why the top ten books were banned, and why. The list includes some surprises for me – both in the book being banned, and the reason why.

Is there ever a good reason to ban a book? I have trouble with the concept, not because I can’t describe the books I would ban, but because I can’t articulate where the line would be drawn. Isn’t that the usual problem, it’s not the outliers, it’s the middle – the line that gets crossed.

National Novel Writing month progress

Ever wonder why some of your favorite authors go quiet in November? Well, like me they are scrambling to write their next book. I’m now 36.5 thousand words into a book that will probably be about 60 thousand words by the end of the month.

Enjoy the video.

Elbow deep in NanoWriMo so here’s an Alan Rickman reads for you

Close your eyes and think of Snape

He could read my grocery list and make me swoon. Enjoy.