Timothy Bond's Blog: Timothy Talks, page 3

Merry Christmas!

I wanted to take this time to wish all my fans and readers a very Merry Christmas.

This year has seen a dream of mine become a reality, and I love every step of the journey so far.

Thank you all!

-Tim

Today one of my characters died...

Yes, I'm sad to say that today I lost one of my characters. Not a main character, but a key supporting character for much of the first book.

This happens I'm afraid, and there doesn't seem to be much I can do about it.

You see my characters have lives of their own, and I mainly write about what's happening to them. Their stories are what I tell, and sometimes they do things that I never anticipated.

I will grieve, then move on...

Giveaway has started!

I'm giving away ten paperback copies of The Watcher's Keep.

Sign up for your chance to win today!

Smashwords Interview

I've answered some interesting questions on Smashwords. Check out the interview!

https://www.smashwords.com/interview/...

The characters change the story!

Sometimes my characters are really difficult to work with. They develop their own minds and do things that I do not expect.

Now I know this sounds crazy, since I'm writing the book, but it's exactly what happens and can really make me crazy.

In The Watcher's Keep, one of the characters died at a point in the book where he was still to play a key role going forward. His death was inevitable as it turned out, but I had already written him into the final scene in the book!

I needed to do some rewriting and ended up much happier with the story that resulted, but at the time I really thought that this character's death was something I could not deal with.

This is just one example of things that happen in the writing process that I feel I have no control over. I've always said that I "Go visit the Aren and come back and write about it," and I seem to be doing that more and more as time goes by.

Audio Book Narrator - Man or Woman?

I've just embarked on a journey to create an audio book of The Watcher's Keep.

When putting together the list of attributes for the narrator, the choice of whether or not I want a man or woman to read the book was presented.

I had never thought about this before, and was stuck on how to answer the question.

Do I want a male voice?

Do I want a female voice?

Do I care?

I walked down through the list of attributes such as accent and marked my preferences easily, but when it came to man or woman I could go either way.

I ultimately chose "either" and will see how the auditions go.

First audition came in today, a woman, and she did a very nice job. I guess we will see where this goes.

How long is too long?

My first book is 270,000 words. I've been told by professional editors that a 270,000 word book is too long.

Is it really?

The story is rich and full, the characters are interesting, there are multiple story lines that intertwine and it takes place in a new world that has a rich history.

Do you really want to read about this story in three distinct books at only 80,000 words each?

I hate the trend toward shorter and shorter eBooks. Yes, it allows the author to charge $3.99 and sell you three separate books rather than charge more for one longer book, but is that what readers really want?

As an avid fan of both Fantasy and Science Fiction, I detest the book I can read in four hours. That 70,000 word novella is not what I want when I curl up in the corner with my eReader.

What do you think? Are you happy with the trend toward shorter and shorter books? It limits the cost to a trade publishing house, and so longer manuscripts get rejected often solely on length, and not on content or value.

Apple Deals with VAT changes

Apple sent out an email today letting publishers and authors know how it's going to handle the VAT changes for EU customers starting in January 2015.

Basically they say that the prices we put on our books are customer facing and will not be adjusted (Amazon has said they will add the tax to the customer facing price).

What this means is that VAT tax will be taken of the top, then Apple will take their split and the balance will go to the author/publisher.

This will reduce revenue to the author for every book sold on iTunes.

Will authors now raise their prices in the iTunes store, and have different prices in different countries? It will be interesting to see.

For the time being anyway, I will not be increasing my prices in the iTunes store, however we will have to see what the overall impact of this change does to pricing in general.