K.C. Sprayberry's Blog, page 156

This Writer’s Life

I recently learned that all of my books are on Torrents, a site popular for downloading pirated works. The person I spoke with hit me with some brutal facts that I have a hard time accepting, but they are true.
Sure, I can do the usual DMCA notices and demand these Torrent sites take down my books. For all the good it will do me.
As soon as that Torrent site takes down the books, ten other sites will soon have my books available for download.
I can’t stop this. Why? Because people would rather take a book than pay for it.
Okay. Maybe little old me has no power to stop this type of theft on my own. Maybe many little old mes, authors around the world, can’t stop this problem. But I’m betting we can find a lot of people willing to understand and listen to why it’s important to purchase a book from an authorized sales venue instead of downloading from a “free” site.
We all have jobs. Most of those jobs give us a decent paycheck on a regular basis. Well, being an author is my regular job. Receiving a royalty payment each month is my paycheck. This isn’t a luxury for my family. It’s a necessity.
To make my point, I checked out some of those sites and took one of the claimed number of downloads to show exactly what my family is missing out on every month while we try to make our very small income meet the needs of a world where the cost of everything is out of our reach.
This book retails for $4.99 on Amazon, the most you’ll pay for any of my ebooks. That’s right. My ebooks are all less than five dollars. This particular site claimed 1,945 downloads. I’ll take that as the truth, although I think they’re being overly generous. Now, I don’t actually receive $4.99 per book sold through Amazon. There are fees to be paid before the royalty reaches me for both the sales venue and my publisher. That’s how this system works. We’re going to break down the earnings in total and then what I should receive, just so you get an idea what one of my forty-two books can bring in for a month.
One thousand-nine hundred-forty-five books sold in a month is a total of $9705.55 in gross earnings. Once we take out all the fees, the actual earnings that I would receive is $1941.11. Nope, that’s not how much I have to spend, because then I have to subtract taxes. Yes, authors pay taxes, just like everyone else. Basically, I have about $970.56 to spend in earnings from that one book, if everyone had actually purchased this book.
Well, that’s not too bad. Estimating all forty-two of my books selling like this and their differing prices, I could potentially earn in the range of about $5,000 a month. That’s a fair living wage. I can actually do a few things with that.
I’m sure at this point, you’re pretty bored. You’re thinking that I’m whining about not getting all that money every month. But hang around, because you’re about to learn a few facts.
First of all, my real monthly royalty payments now might buy me a latte. I might be able to pick up a loaf of bread. Or put a couple of gallons of gas in my truck. That would be for a full month, might I remind you.
Now, if I received $5,000 a month, based on this information from sites that offer you my books free, things might be a little different in our household.
My family wouldn’t have to scratch and juggle to pay utilities, insurance, and buy groceries.
We could afford to purchase gifts for each other on special occasions.
Promoting my books to new fans would become a reality. (Yes, book promoters get paid too, but not if I don’t.)
Maybe we could take a vacation for a few days.
It would be nice to get some new clothes when the old ones wear out.
Yeah, I get it. You’re still bored. So let me make this point.
All of you have an income that comes from working all week every month. You already pay for all of these things. You might even have a nice little savings set aside for emergencies, because you receive a regular paycheck that reflects your hard work. Usually for a 40 hour week.
My work week is seven days long, upwards of fifteen to twenty hours a day. Will I give up what appears to be a losing proposition because I’m not making enough? It doesn’t work like that for authors. Those stories I wouldn’t write won’t go away just because I find a job in the “real” world. They’ll still be in my head, demanding a release. If all authors quit tomorrow, people would suddenly find themselves without inexpensive entertainment.
That’s right. Authors provide you with entertainment for your whole family without the necessity of taking out a second mortgage on your house. All we ask is that you purchase our books from an authorized sales venue rather from a site offering a “free” download.
Remember, we’re real people too.

Listen to Your Mama!

The teen years are perhaps the worst when it comes to children listening to their parents, especially your mom. The woman who made you cookies, kissed away your owies, and made sure you were dressed appropriately for the weather has now taken on a “brainless” persona. She’s clueless about how teens are in this modern age. Your mom does nothing but embarrass you in front of your friends. And she doesn’t want you to have a boyfriend.
Just when you’re ready to consign your mom into the “will never get it” category, she amazes you with advice that actually seems to fit a modern world.
What kind of advice is this?
Well… believe it or not, teen issues today aren’t all that different from twenty, thirty, or even forty years ago. Actually, I’m betting you can go back in history and discover teen issues are pretty much the same since the beginning of time.
Sure, we have all these modern conveniences now that make our lives easier. Your parents might not have dealt with cell phones and all the things that can happen with them when they were younger. They certainly didn’t have twenty-four hour a day, seven days a week social media keeping them in touch worldwide. But… to a degree, their problems really do match yours, just at a smaller level.
Take Lorelei from Mama’s Advice. She’s a normal teen but still struggling with the grief of losing her mother to cancer. Lorelei misses her mama enough to spend time at her grave, and even hears her mama talking to her. Unfortunately, like most teens, when it comes to boyfriend advice, Lorelei believes Mama doesn’t know what she’s talking about. That decision almost gets her into trouble.
Blurb
Lorelei loses what's left of her family close to graduation, but she still has Mama to lean on, or rather she has Mama's ghost. At first, Lorelei ignores the opinion about her boyfriend, Chase, but then she figures out he is acting strangely and has a new tattoo covering a scar he never had before.
Chase, however, isn't one to give up on a girl. He dumps them not the other way around, until Mama's ghost gives Lorelei the strength shut him out of her life.



Mama's Advice 

Never Give Up

I’ve been writing for over twenty years, in the fiction field. There was a point where I wrote technical papers while I was in the military, giving me experience in both fiction and non-fiction. Basically, I’ve been in this game for a long time, and I’m still working on branding my name.
Every day, I hear authors complaining about how hard it is to get people to purchase their books. They’re ready to quit the moment someone says they need a “real job.” In my definition, a real job is one you work at many hours a day. You perfect your craft, mingle with others in your field, and do your best to advance.
How does this translate to the writing field?
First, you do work your craft daily. The craft of writing isn’t just sitting down in front of a computer and working through a complicated plot. You have to plan what you’re going to do. Even pansters like me do some planning so we don’t mistakenly give two characters the same name, or change what you’re calling a location halfway through the book. Then there is the moment you open that blank page and go “durp!”
Once you’ve moved into the flow of the book, it’s not unusual for the author to vanish from the normal world for many hours, days, or months. Please don’t disturb us during this time with questions like, “How’s the book going?” “Are you blocked?” (expect a snarl after this question) or “Aren’t you finished yet?” The snarl you heard after asking “Are you blocked?” will seem very tame in comparison to the other questions.
If you want to understand the writer, you must read Robert A. Heinlein’s The Cat Who Walked Through Walls to get the full grasp of how we operate:
There is no way that writers can be tamed and rendered civilized or even cured. The only solution known to science is to provide the patient with an isolation room, where he can endure the acute stages in private and where food can be poked in to him with a stick.

This quote is a favorite of mine and aptly describes the creation process of a book. We are a lonely lot, who actually seem well trained once we emerge into the real world.
By hinting that a writer as a wastrel who needs a “real job,” you are demeaning the craft we strive to perfect every day. You have no understanding of just how hard this job truly is.
To the naysayers who delight in offering advice, might I suggest you think about how offended you’d be if someone told you to give up the one thing you must do, the dream job you’ve strived to have all your life.
To the writers out there who hear this—don’t let those naysayers win. You are a writer. Write.

Everybody Reads YA ~ Just One More

Happy “Everybody Reads YA” Sunday! Today I’m sharing an excerpt from my YA short story, Just One More. Lanie finds herself for trouble for smoking at school and has a decision to make.




Lydia draws hard on the cigarette, blowing toward the open window. She feels the stress of not studying for Government wash out of her, relaxing with each drag on the cigarette. Waving away the smoke wafting around her, she peers around the stall door.
Was that the bathroom door opening?
Taking two more quick drags, she drops the butt into the toilet and winces at the hissing sound. Flushing, she searches for breath freshener and perfume in her purse, liberally using both. Cautiously, she opens the door and glances around. Certain no one has seen her sneak the cigarette, she walks to the sink and checks her hair, sniffing furtively.



About the Author
Born and raised in Southern California’s Los Angeles basin, K.C. Sprayberry spent years traveling the United States and Europe while in the Air Force before settling in northwest Georgia. A new empty nester with her husband of more than twenty years, she spends her days figuring out new ways to torment her characters and coming up with innovative tales from the South and beyond.
She’s a multi-genre author who comes up with ideas from the strangest sources. Some of her short stories have appeared in anthologies, others in magazines.






One more cigarette. Lydia continually fools herself, by imagining that she’ll relieve the stress in her life by smoking one more cigarette. Her habit results in being caught during finals at school, and being expelled. She learns who did this to her and vows revenge.
There is only one little issue left. Can she throw out the cigarettes or will she be caught in the same downward spiral as her brother?

Just One More 

Those Pesky Relatives

All of us have them. A relative that makes our life miserable. They’re embarrassing They’ll pop up just when you don’t need anything else troubling you. And they won’t go away until you do what they want.
Imagine if that relative is a ghost who has decided to occupy your body until the past is fixed. Imagine how you’re ready to go on a date with your boyfriend, only to discover he’s the grandson of the man who messed up your relative’s life. What’s a girl to do?
Ciara Lafferty has to get ready for a Halloween to remember for the kids in her hometown. Just when things seem to be going fine, she makes an amazing discovery. The great aunt everyone assumed ran away after getting into a bunch of trouble has returned—as a ghost! And she’s ready to stir up real trouble in her determination to make the real troublemaker pay!
Blurb
Everyone pays for the mistakes of their family, but for Ciara Tressa Lafferty, that particular mistake happened almost sixty years ago, and nobody will forget it. She's constantly compared to her great aunt, and even worse, she looks like the woman.
A senior in high school with a great future ahead of her, Ciara has no clue what this Halloween holds for her. That it's the anniversary her great aunt’s disappearance is just one more annoyance as she discovers her boyfriend's great grandfather refuses to let her move on with her own life. Then Ciara finds herself thrust in a nebulous existence within her own body when Tressa Anne Lafferty, her great aunt, possesses her. Ciara tries to break free, but Tressa refuses to release her until Ciara discovers the secret hidden within the charred remains of McLaren House--a revelation which will rock the whole town.




Secret From The Flames 

Release Control

We all have to learn how to read a contract and what questions to ask. But we also have to learn that when it comes to committing to a publisher, we have to relinquish control on a lot of things we’d like to direct from the background. After all, a publisher is in business to make money, and they do know what is best for their authors. Once a person makes the decision to submit to a publisher, they must be ready to do one important thing most never think about. You must release control of your book to said publisher. That is probably the hardest thing you, the author, will have to accomplish as you go over the contract and read all the fine print.
It’s always good to ask questions but you should be prepared to hear what you want doesn’t jive with the publisher’s in house policy.
First, you’ll usually see that there are responsibilities laid out for both the author and the publisher. You’ll have deadlines to return important data necessary for finishing your book for publication. There will be what looks like complicated royalty payment schedules for just about every possibility that exists to find your book. Those are usually non-negotiable for the author who has yet to build a fan base, but if you’re concerned about the information go ahead and ask.
Cover art always provides a lively discussion, especially with so many cover artists advertising their abilities on the web. Most publishers have a cover artist on contract and won’t negotiate this part of the contract. That’s because there are limitations on cover art a lot of the independent artists ignore, until it’s time to upload and then they’ll work on fixing those issues. That can delay the release of your book, which is why a publisher prefers to work with their own cover artist to make sure everything is right from the beginning.
The price of your ebook is an often contested subject. Price high or low is a question argued by many people Price your book too high and the market will ignore your offering, even if it is better than XYZ major author. Price too low and your readers will wonder what’s wrong with the story. A publisher takes all this into consideration when setting the price.
Promotion becomes another sticky point for most first time authors. Don’t blithely believe that your medium or small publisher has a full staff of people whose job is to stump your book day in and day out while you collect the royalties and thoughtfully create your next masterpiece. You have to be prepared to get active on social media. Facebook, Twitter, a blog, and a website are the bare necessities. Open an account on Goodreads and explore what that site has to offer the author. Check out Manic Readers, AUTHORSdB, Reader’s Gazette, and other sites offering you the chance to set up your book there for free. Some even offer reviews.
These are just the top points people have mentioned when reviewing a contract. You might also want to know how long it will be before your book has finished editing. Don’t be surprised if the response is that no one can really tell—editing time is subjective to the editor being able to finish your book in a certain time frame and you approving those edits. Then there is proofreading and one last check prior to publication.

Everybody Reads YA ~ The Lie

Happy “Everybody Reads YA” Sunday! Today I’m sharing an excerpt from my YA psychological thriller, The Lie. You’re going to see what drives Amy and Bryce Pearson in their quest to keep Jane Preston away from them. This book asks the question: “How well do you know your friends?”





The sun is peeping over the mountains all around us. The members of the Landry High School Band fill in the last of the holes where we placed our planned revenge to go off tonight. None of us has had any sleep since we woke up yesterday, yet we’re charged up and ready for the rest of today and well into tonight.
“Where are your friends?” I ask.
Jane Preston, my bestie, the true mastermind of this prank, smirks at me.

About the Author
Born and raised in Southern California’s Los Angeles basin, K.C. Sprayberry spent years traveling the United States and Europe while in the Air Force before settling in northwest Georgia. A new empty nester with her husband of more than twenty years, she spends her days figuring out new ways to torment her characters and coming up with innovative tales from the South and beyond.
She’s a multi-genre author who comes up with ideas from the strangest sources. Some of her short stories have appeared in anthologies, others in magazines.





The Lie 

For high school siblings, Amy and Bryce, the night began with a football game. Bryce was stuck at home with a cold, brought on by an uncaring coach. Amy was in the stands, playing with the band whose funding had been taken away and given to the football team.
Her best friend, Jane, brought the band together to play a prank on the team in protest.
The prank went wrong. Horribly, tragically wrong.
And the lie that started it all would not stop.



 

Spotlight on Scooter Nation by A.B. Funkhauser

From the author of HEUER LOST AND FOUND
In a gonzo land:
A city divided;
A community under seige;
Conflicting values;
And the death of a beloved.
What will it take to right the wrongs?
A line in the pavement.
SCOOTER NATION
All things are equal now.
Coming 03.11.2016
From Solstice Publishing










SCOOTER NATION is quite a title. What does it mean?
The novel on surface is about a group of people linked by community, but separated by competing interests. Alliances are made and broken and, of course, only one can win. The ‘Scooter’ in the title refers a person, Scooter Creighton, as well as the vehicles the aggressive protagonists roar around on while they’re wreaking havoc. The two—man and machine--are not always on the same side.So this is Spec Fiction? Thriller? Crime-Thriller?Crimes are definitely committed, but more in the white collar vein. The thirst for land and the desire for status and legitimacy will drive the characters to do terrible things; all for what they believe is for the common good.
Altruism through dishonesty?
In a way. Whether they know it or not, the characters are trying to reconcile their competing interests in an effort to get to the middle ground—the old ‘end justifying the means’ cliché, which I happen to be a big fan of in literature. The funeral home employees like the status quo, and they dedicate their energies to preserving it. No pun intended there, by the way. Preservation is just one part of what a funeral director does on the job, but I do try to draw a line between the embalmer’s work and the characters’ overall attitude towards the environment around them. It must be protected, preserved for all time.




Who are the main characters in the novel?
Scooter Creighton is a long practicing funeral director married to ‘traditional’ funeral practices which are disappearing to his chagrin. Big caskets, churches and motorcades are being replaced by direct cremation, memorial services and customized receptions styled by the client families. Scooter struggles inwardly with these changes, which he resists largely out of a fear of the unknown.
Carla Moretto Salinger Blue is Scooters subordinate but in reality acts as the senior embalmer. Their work life is under threat from a powerful corporate entity that seeks to remake Weibigand Bros. over in its own image. Carla and Scooter despise the move and seek to undermine it. I love Carla for her tenderness and malice. She is driven by revenge and she is bogged down, battling protracted complicated grief from the death of a beloved pet.
Jocasta Binns is the undisputed power behind the throne when it comes to running Weibigand Brothers Funeral Home. She has big ideas where modernization is concerned, but she has to overcome closed minds and decades of resentment from her older half brothers.
Alma Wurtz is the leader of the not so banal Beehive Gang, which divides its time between ransacking local establishments and spying on everyone else’s business. A great deal of the comedy comes from Alma, although Scooter has some choice one liners.
Hamsi Jalaluddin Haq is the owner of the Take It And Go convenience store adjacent the funeral home. Linked by a parking lot, Hamsi has a lot in common with Carla and Scooter in that he is often put upon by others. As a war survivor, he is tougher than he looks and is often the voice of reason in the thick of crisis.
Robert Stache-Martin is the unseen bogeyman in the drama. He heads up a fitness empire beloved in North America. His ‘There is no half way, only all the way’ ethos is curiously in line with everything the funeral directors believe, yet his arrival in their quiet corner of Michigan is the last straw that sets off a high stakes rebellion that will leave some people very dead.When does the book come out?I hoped to have it out by my birthday, March 13, but my Editor in Chief says that might not be possible, in which case it might be later in the month or the first week of April. It’s releasing as an ebook first on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the publisher’s site
Solstice Publishing 
Is this a sequel to HEUER LOST AND FOUND?
SCOOTER NATION is my second novel and, like HEUER, is part of the series UNAPOLOGETIC LIVES. UL examines complex relationship between bosses and coworkers; neighbors and strangers; the able and unable to name a few. What likes HEUER and SCOOTER are some shared characters and the funeral home proper. The building, in fact, is a character on its own, spanning above seventy years of history from the first book to the last.
How many books do you have planned?
I thought seven at first, but it’s beginning to look more like nine. People working towards achieving a balance between ‘what is’ and ‘what it should be’ never gets old for me. Plus funeral service has a rich a history not often spoken of because of the confidentiality component built in to every aspect of what we do. So I could probably write for ever on the subject, but most likely won’t. I let the characters decide where I go next.






So you take direction from your characters? Do you plot your books before trying the first draft?Yes and know. I spend a  lot of time mulling things over before I actually sit down at the keyboard and try the first draft (which is so exhilarating once I finally get to it). I keep character ideas and story elements in subject specific folders, along with any popcorn scenes (my sparkling diamonds) that come to mind in the course of the mulling process. Conjuring up something new usually takes a year, which is fine with me because the rest of the year is spent on refining, editing, publishing and then PROMOTING.
Are you a big fan of promotions? Not everybody seems to embrace it as enthusiastically as you do.I think I was a Mad Man in another life because tweeting and tag lines seem to be my thing. I also like to design blip ads A.B. Funkhauser Blogand blog. Blog, blog, blog. Can’t stress enough the importance of blogging. I think we’re all pretty sure that E.L. James’ success with FIFTY SHADES OF GREY came in no small part from her website and fan blogs. And that makes sense. Writer’s need an audience; new writers get their audience from twitter followers, facebook friends and through guest blogging. Oh, yes, and book reviews! Karmically I believe that we must read others in order to get read ourselves. We learn so much from our colleagues, and I like saying so through the reviews I do. It’s probably the altruist’s best way to get heard and do some good all at the same time. It’s a win, win.

Dealing with the Unexpected

All of us have run into situations where we’re caught unaware. Teens seem to experience this more than any other age group. Usually, the unexpected in a teen’s life means the world around them is thrown into turmoil.
How does someone tackle a problem that hits you at the worst moment? Do you go with the flow? Do you weep and wail, demanding that everyone around you stop what they’re doing and fix your problem? Or do you decide to make the best of the situation, turn it around to give it a positive twist?
What do you do if you’re the poor kid in town and your mom forgets to pay her utilities? You’re stuck going to school smelling like last year’s gym socks, after they’ve fermented all summer under a hot sun. Of course, you run into your mortal enemy and piss her off because you don’t smell like a fresh flower.
This is the situation Chrissy faces in The Curse of the Wolf. She’s trying to avoid a certain individual but runs into her. This person creates trouble in Chrissy’s life but she doesn’t even pause when that pops up. Instead of freaking out, she makes the best of the situation by helping others in her situation.
Blurb
A group of inept witches is the wrong people to piss off. Chrissy Thomas learns this lesson, after a humiliating encounter at school. Cursed to run as the wolf at night, expected to unleash her werewolf side, she fights instead for those who have no protector. Until the night the witches attempt to do away with her in order to regain the powers their curse ripped from them.




The Curse of the Wolf 

Do You Work For Free?

In recent years, a trend has begun in the book buying community. People no longer see it as wrong to download a book for free. I don’t mean from Amazon or another authorized sales venue. I’m talking about pirate sites, where thousands of books are given away on a daily basis.
One must ask why someone might think it’s all right to take a book that an individual has spent months if not years creating and not pay a single cent for it.
I recently came across an article written by a performance artist, outlining why she didn’t accept a gig with a big name star, who had many other big name stars appearing that day. Those individuals were all being paid commensurate with what they felt their time was worth. Yet, when this performance artist asked what she’d be paid, she was told that she was getting the gig for the “exposure.”
That attitude seems prevalent to many authors during these troubled financial times. We are not seen as an individual who deserves payment for our product. When confronted with the truth that an author didn’t receive payment for a book an individual has downloaded fro a pirate site, the usual reaction is “well, they were giving it away.” This, therefore, begs the following question…
Are you willing to work for free?
Seriously. You expect me and all other authors to give you our books. While I will provide free copies to professional reviewers for an honest opinion of my work, or allow a pre-determined number of copies to be handed out as prizes in a giveaway, I would never hand over the work I’ve done up to fifteen hours a day for months on end without expecting reimbursement.
To compare this to the normal every day occupations, I wonder if I could visit my doctor and tell him or her that I wasn’t paying, because their work wasn’t worth the money. A lawyer won’t take on a case without a retainer and certainly won’t complete the work if you don’t pay the bill. Imagine how grocery stores and restaurants would survive if everyone quit paying for their meals.
Now think about this. I am a professional writer. I’ve been at this job for a long time. In order to pay for the basic necessities of life—utilities, a home, transportation—I must make money in my chosen profession.
As little as a decade ago, no one would have considered taking a book for free and not expecting to pay a criminal price for that choice. Today, websites offering free downloads of books are a dime a dozen. Many authors like myself search our names and titles weekly, seeking those places offering something for nothing, so we may inform these people they are in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). That takes away from the time we have for a new story, for promotion, for appearances. It’s a necessity, because people everywhere have now decided we don’t deserve payment for our hard work.
So ask yourself this: If I had to exist like many authors today do, can I justify taking someone’s book without paying for it?
Can you actually survive on the small amount of money provided by the sales of your product those who are too honest to take something for nothing purchase?
Then ask: Are you really a thief?