Randy Attwood's Blog, page 20

Rabbletown Live as a Print Book

Rabbletown: Life In These United Christian States of Holy America is now live on Amazon as a print book. I've priced it at $7.99. I found a really good designer/formatter who prepared the pdf and cover files for me to use. His name is Edwin Stark (esterkus@hotmail.com). Very reasonable. Couldn't be happier.



Seems to make sense to move forward now on getting my two most downloaded works available in print: Crazy About You and One More Victim .

Crazy is a novel size. One More Victim is a novella, so I'm going to use that as the collection title and wrap it together with another novella, The Saltness of Time, and then three short stories: Blue Kansas Sky, Innocent Passage, and Downswing . That will bring the word count to around 48,000, which seems reasonable. Innocent Passage hasn't been published yet. I'm looking for a photo of an abandoned farm house to use as the cover art. Open for submissions.

Get into the print business and dedications suddenly pop into one's mind. Here's the one I'll be using for Crazy About You:


DEDICATION
In memory of my father John Kenneth Attwood, DDS,and all who worked and work in the struggle against mental illness.
I donate $1 of every sale of this book to Headquarters Counseling Center, Lawrence, Kansas. Those wonderful folks work the Suicide Prevention Hotline.

How We Live in the Epublishing World Today

Seems a good idea, from time to time, to sit back and reflect on where I'm at with this whole epublishing business.
Curiosity Quills is at work getting Blow Up the Roses ready for ebook and POD publication. I hope that will happen in August or early September. I'm very anxious to see how they market a book. They're building an impressive community. It appears more of these operations are starting up. I've submitted Crazy About You to Jaffabooks in Australia.
Curiosity Quills has right of first refusal on my next two works so I've sent them Heal My Heart So I May Cry and A Heart to Understand. I've also submitted them to Paradon, which is also a new book publishing venture.
I've been very happy in my dealings with Curiosity Press so far. They seem to be reputable and talented people. I have no way to judge with Jaffa and Paradon. Just have to see if they are interested and offer a contract and then study the contract. If that bombs at both places, I'll self-publish. I have a growing list of Twitter friends who are Navajo and I'm most anxious to start marketing and getting reactions. Several have replied to the blog about book covers.
Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America has been professionally edited and proofed. I am always aghast at the errors I make. I've read each of my works dozens of times, and I still miss stupid things like waver for waiver. And trying to parse grammatically where commas go gives me a rash. Rabbletown is being formatted now so I can use Amazon's Createspace to produce a POD book. So that may be my first work actually available in print. Katy Sozaeva who did the edit and has become an ambassador has written on her blog that it's the best work she's EVER read. I kid you not.  Here is the comment.
If Jaffa doesn't respond soon regarding Crazy, I'll get that one in print next.
I'm tempted to bundle One More Victim, The Saltness of Time and The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley into one volume for a POD.
One More Victim got a really nice comment from a Goodreads reviewer, Anthea Carson:
"It is so rare to find a book you can't put down. That's why I am so happy I discovered this writer. I couldn't stop reading this and my only disappointment with it was that it ended. It is the intriguing story of kids discovering things that people throw away. A young romance develops between two kids rummaging through trash cans and discovering things. The things they discover in those trash cans would haunt them forever and change their whole lives. Amazing book. Can't wait to read the next one by this author."
This is a young writer worth keeping track of. She's already developed her own writing voice and putting it to good effect.
The Saltness of Time has also been professionally edited, so it is ready as we move forward on the Kickstarter project. I'm working with local artist/printmaker Nick Naughton, who teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute. W want to use his letter press to turn The Saltness of Time into a fine art book with great paper and locally bound. That is, if we can fund it through Kickstarter. Nick's been very busy this summer so this will probably be a fall project. He would also do etchings for illustrations and, wow, is that guy good, and he likes realism. Former KC television news photographer John Tygart has agreed to do the video work for the promo spot with Pete Wilkerson doing the sound and editing. Then if we get funded we'll include costs to use them to document the process so that backers can receive not only the book but a DVD about the process.
Haven't heard from my agents for a long time about SPILL: Big Oil + Sex = Game On. Always afraid to press them because the news may be bad. I still have hopes one of the traditional publishing houses will publish that book. They still have the big marketing connections that are so important in this whole game. I think the day is far down the road when you might see a self-published ebook reviewed in the New York Times.
An odd thing has happened with SPILL. Its Facebook page has received a lot of likes from some hotties in India. I know it has "Sex" in the title, but is that all it takes to get attention? And from women? I have no evidence that a single one of them has bought the book and read it. So what is going on? Some of them even post it on their info pages as books they like. The whole thing baffles me. But I enjoy looking at their profile photos. http://www.facebook.com/pages/Spill-Big-Oil-Sex-Game-On/134440113311148
Best news is I've started writing again. I found a project I stalled on several years ago, but think I can move it forward. It's a science fiction work set in the near future here in KC on the Plaza. It's one of those stories where time stops for everyone except the protagonist. That's been done, but I think I have an interesting twist.

Blogfest an Opportunity to Promote "One More Victim:" Has Not the Soul and End Which Nothing Else Can Fulfill?

The Buccaneer Blogfest sails on and we're at the stage when we are supposed to share and promote one of our works. I've chosen One More Victim and wanted to share some recent positive, really positive, comments about Victim .
One More Victim is a literary novella that contains a Holocaust element and when offered free (and I'm not going to do that anymore) has gone to #1 Amazon ranking for World Literature>Jewish. As a paid ranking, it once it #92. I think that gave me the right to call it a best seller, but that is term much abused. It has a strong romance element, too. And it can be considered a coming-of-age young adult work, as well. Most of my works are pretty difficult to put into genres. How about the genre of grab-the-reader?
Anthea Carson recently had this to say.Page TurnerI could not put this book down. It was absolutely mesmerizing. First of all, I have a thing for books about loves that start in childhood, so it had me hooked right there. But also, this writer is just amazing. The way the language flows makes you want to keep reading. There is something very erotic in the story too, even though it was not cheap eroticism. I like that, when a book is sexy without overdoing it. Anyway, I highly recommend this book, and I will be looking for more books by this author. Can't get enough of his work.
Nicola Lawsonjust wish there was moreThis short story packs so much into a short length it's hard to believe. It's very well written and like I say in my title I wish there was more of it, not because the story doesn't satisfy because it definitely does. I guess I'll just have to get some more of the authors work.
CJ A flash novel?I'm an older gentleman living out in the boonies, so sometimes I forget that the world has seemingly sped up, even as I've slowed down. Having said that, this book felt like a duststorm packed in a tornado and wrapped in a hurricane. And I say that in the most flattering way. Attwood (this is my first experience with this author, and I'm pleased to say a surprisingly delightful one) manages to include so much back story in such a short space that I couldn't help but feel a bit rushed...and yet it didn't feel rushed. It was just the right back story and it was well constructed. The story itself was such a delight to discover. It left me breathless.
These and other reviews can be found here.

Welcome to the Buccaneer Blogfest

I'm participating in one of those Blogfest things, and if you don't know what that is, I'm not sure I can explain. You sign  up and for about a month post on specific topics and you go to other people's blogs and read their posts and they come to yours. I've only done one before and it created quite a bit of traffic. And traffic brings potential readers who may be interested in your offerings. I think that's what it's all about.
This is the introductory post and that's pretty simple for me. I simply direct people to the best explanation of my writing life that I've already posted and that's right here.

I hope this link takes you to the other participants: <script src="http://www.linkytools.com/basic_linky..." type="text/javascript" ></script>

Input from Navajo Readers Appreciated

A Heart to Understand has a major character who occupies much of the book who is half-Dine and half-White. I started this mystery/suspense/thriller in Lawrence, KS with the premise (and several more premises) that two women were missing from Haskell All Nations University. I researched Haskell and found that the majority of students there were Navajo. That led me on what turned out to be a quest, really, to learn more about the Navajo culture. I encountered the Navajo creation story and was blown away: Here is a creation story as every bit as complicated and wonderful as the Greek myths. I did the best I could to incorporate that creation story into A Heart to Understand. Obviously, I hope it will appeal to the Navajo people and to readers who are interested in Navajo culture. So, I really care about the cover design. And, if you are Navajo, I hope you'll comment on which cover approach would appeal to you. Here is the prologue to the story:


In the beginning was the wind. And when the earth came, the wind cared for it. And when the darkness came, the wind breezed across it beautifully. And when the dawn came and laid its lightness over the darkness, We, the People, were created. And the wind kissed our faces.
Here are the cover design approaches I'm looking at.

Cover Design Discussion for Heart Series

I've got my two Philip McGuire novels ready to publish. Both professionally edited and proofread and I want to issue Heal My Heart So I May Cry and A Heart to Understand simultaneously because I've included the beginning of each at the back of the other one. So if I reader likes one he or she can make a quick decision to go get the other.

Cover designs are tough for these so I'm using pinterest to put them up and seeking feedback. I'm now leaning to the landscape look. http://pinterest.com/randyattwood/upcoming-book-cover-drafts/

Philip McGuire is a burnt out foreign correspondence who has given up journalism to go back to his college town and buy and run a bar. But his past keeps coming around to visit him.

Price Reduction in July on Smashwords

I've enrolled ten of my works in the July summer sales at Smashwords. You'll see a code to enter that will be you a 25 percent reduction. One of my fans, Katy Sozaeva is promoting it on her own blog and here's what she had to say:

"I have read every single book and story he has available out there (and one he doesn't yet have available to younyah nyah!) and just loved every single one! You won't find all my reviews on Smashwords, unfortunately, because they won't allow folks to review a book they haven't purchased there, but you CAN find my reviews on his Goodreads pages for his books, so feel free to check there if you want to read my opinion (which, as you know, is better than yours laugh)! I've also posted most of them here on my blog. He offers 12 of his 13 stories on Smashwords. Ten of those works will be listed at 20% off; you should just go ahead and buy the rest of them while you're buying, 'cause they're totally worth it!"


My titles are here.


And a reminder that I donate $1 of every sale of Crazy About You to Headquarters Counseling Center in Lawrence, KS. They are the people in this area of he US who work the suicide prevention hotline. That donation won't get cut 25 percent. Those people offer an outstanding service.


And the Fourth of July is my birthday. The best gift I can think of would be to gain a new reader!

First Person Alternating with Third Person POV

Then and Now: The Harmony of the Instantaneous All uses first person POV in, what shall I say, an interesting way. I can't say unique because I'm sure it's been done before. I just haven't encountered it.
Story line: Stan Nelson, in his forties, is mired in nostalgia for the 1960s and the woman he lost then. He figures his only cure is to write about why he is so frozen. This isn't a hippie frozen in time. This isn't a stereotype. This is a character for whom events in the spring of 1970 in Lawrence, KS so affected him that he stays sort of locked in that timeframe.
The set up is from the first person POV: He talks directly to the reader about what he is trying to do:
I think back to the 1960s too much now. Not sane. A fixation on then is no way to deal with now. My fascination with those times is not the kind of healthy diversion with the past the way an interest in history can become a worthwhile hobby. Maybe it's worse than a fascination or a fixation; maybe it's an obsession. Can obsessions ever be worthwhile? Probably not. I know I long too much for the psychology of those times, the psychology of others then, of the me then that is so different from the selfish, cynical, jaded, boring psychology of the times, other people and, I fear, the me now..
What Stan goes on to do is to create the spring of 1970 in Lawrence, KS as he experienced it using scenes written from the third person. Like this:

Peter Thomas looked down again into his coffee cup at the small jagged pieces of broken glass. They were dispersing a film of oil as they floated on the brown surface of the coffee he had brewed for himself just a hour ago. He wondered if what Jenny, his assistant director, had told him were true: a poisonous substance coated the surface between the outer glass liner and the thermos body.

Then he tries to contact the people he has written about to get their opinion if what he has created in words is close to reality:
I tried to reach Peter later. I learned he was directing community theater on the East Coast and sent him a letter. He never replied and I never bugged him with a phone call. I was reluctant to write from anybody's point of view unless I could talk to him or her about that point of view. That was kind of a standard I set for this effort, a standard that quickly went out the window. But I got to know Jenny later on. She helped me really quite a lot. Told me about Peter, remembered things. We talked about Peter and those times over a lot of dinners, through a lot of drinks late into a lot of evenings. Those talks helped. And my own memory. Then the diaries of Melvin Washington were a real victory. Those really helped. Reality checks. All I had to do was go looking for them.Check this entry out:
The diary from Melvin also provides another kind of first person point of view andnd the story continues. The writer talks to the reader in the first person and then creates segments for various characters in the third person and reports back to the reader how true they are. I found this approach very powerful for this novel. Especially when the end came. And the story has a love element I should only describe by repeating this first person section:
I won't do that again, enter Yen Li's mind and present the narrative from her point of view. It's improper. Indecent, in a way. And yet I enter her mind with love and tenderness to show the love and tenderness that I believed was there. To try to get closer to her understanding of the Tao, that I believe was there, too.
I have to admit. Whenever I reread this book I cry at the end. How's that for first person point of view? Worked for the writer. Important question is: does it work for the reader?

First Person Point of View in Crazy About You

Crazy About You is my novel that has received the most reviews (I could still use more, hint, hint because to be considered for some Kindle promotions you need at least 25 reviews 4 stars or better).
The novel is told from the point of view of Brad Adams, a high school junior who has grown up on the grounds of an insane asylum because his father is the hospital's dentist and the state has provided housing, thus he calls himself an asylum brat, not a military brat.
As with most of my novels, Crazy took me a long time to write. I don't even remember how long. I try to force things forward and they just sound false, so I learned to step away for a while.
But I knew first person was the way to go. And what that means is that the reader can only know what Brad knows and encounters and experiences. But what I realized while writing Crazy and what my subconscious learned in those periods when I was away from it was this: Brad doesn't just exist during the period of the story; he exists after the period of the story. He can step forward into his future life and reflect back on himself and events.
The time of the story is 1964. A teenage girl patient at the hospital, Suzanne, reveals her father had sexually abused her. In 1964 sexual abuse by fathers of daughters was still a very cloudy issue. It was often thought any girl who reported such a thing must be crazy. This going forward and then looking back technique allows for this sort of episode.
In this scene, Brad is telling a former fellow patient of Suzanne's about her situation:

“You know why she picks her palms?”“No.”I explained.“No shit. That’s another reason I want to get away from home. I’ve never told Mom. She wouldn’t believe me. It would destroy her. And he leaves me alone now. But I can’t stand to look at him.” And then she told me her story.One historian of psychiatry would later propose that it was so many neurotic women telling Freud that their fathers or uncles had sexually abused them that led Freud to conceive the subconscious. He couldn’t believe that so much abuse actually had happened. Instead, some other common factor must be at work, something that affected something he called the subconscious. There may or may not be a subconscious, but it became painfully obvious–after women like Suzanne and Kelly later confronted the issue in the 1970s and 1980s–that too many men let their Very Important Things turn into Alex Krouts.“I’ve never told anyone that before. You’re easy to talk to. I know why Suzanne likes you. You care about people, don’t you?”

By stepping forward past the story and looking back at it, Brad is able to impart knowledge learned in the future and inform the reader about what is happening in the past, at the time of the story.
Crazy I think works in first person, too, because it has an abbreviated time frame: one week and the book is divided into the days of the week until we hit the final chapter set several years past 1964 and something happens that brings everything together for Brad in an emotional finale that I won't spoil because when I hit that ending, it blew me across the room and made telling the story in first person absolutely perfect.

Straight-forward First Person Point of View: Blue Kansas Sky

Blue Kansas Sky is a short story set in my high school town of Larned, KS. It's autobiographical in the sense that I did go play snooker, a lot, at Duke's Snooker Hall. Always curious to me is why snooker was the pool game in Kansas. I didn't play eight-ball until I went to college. All we had in that small town were snooker tables. I never rode the bus with the insane to town, but I remember there was one. So here is the opening:
There really is a Kansas sky, wide as the land is flat. On fall mornings it seems as if the stratosphere drops down just before dawn to touch the trees, make crisp the leaves of brown and red and yellow, rise again to paint the sky a deep blue, and leave the air as clean and as fresh as a newly-cut lemon.This Saturday the crystals of the first light frost melt on the buffalo grass and wet my shoes as I go to catch a ride to town on the bus for the insane.
This is what I call straight-forward first person. The opening paragraph is the character making a kind of proclamation. The second paragraph sets the scene. Not a bad scene when you are riding on a bus with insane people to town. Hope that provides the hook.
First person allows for the narrator to do summary descriptions from his point of view. Such as this one
Later in the morning the old men will enter: ancient men who have become a part of the soil and are only waiting to reenter it. They sit in chairs against the wall as if they are still waiting for the Great Depression to end. Their faces have been furrowed by watching mud balls form in the air as rain fell through the dust storms of the 1930s; faces creased by seeing wheat burn in the sun, eaten by disease, consumed by floods. They have smelled their neighbors lucky oil wells, have plowed and plowed the soil like a sailor the sea, always searching, hoping, and finally despairing of making a living on their land. Yet somehow, like a stubborn leaf, late in fall, still on the tree, not knowing summer is over, they persist. Finally, near 70, perhaps the wife dead, the children who want nothing of farming gone into the city, they sell their land. Then, their soul torn from their body, they fill the poolroom with their lost stares. They come in hopes of finding a brief friendship and a bit of humanity over a game of dominoes.
It allows, too, for action:
I bend down to shoot at the pink six, but stop when I see the huge insane man is watching me and drooling on his folded hands. His hands are in direct line from the six and the pocket. I can see the pool of saliva run off the back of his hand onto his pants and another glob drop down as I shoot. The pink ball, as if repelled by the hands, catches the corner of the pocket, bouncing away.As the ball comes to rest, two of Larned's best snooker players, Jackson Jones and Melvin Washington, walk through the front door. They are black, they are feared and Duke's is one of the rare places, other than school, where we have any kind of social contact with them.

This was a good story for first person, too, because of the time frame. Everything happens in a few hours. I think not a bad rule of thumb is that for first person the shorter the time frame the better.