J.M. Sloderbeck's Blog, page 2

Until the End

Don't mistake a good set-up for a satisfying conclusion — many beginning writers end their stories when the real story is about to begin. — Stanley Schmidt

How do you decide when the story's finished? Does your hero get the girl? Does the monster kill all the teenagers and then go back to sleep at the bottom of the lake? Maybe the ship sails off into the sunset?

Writing fantasy and horror makes for some very unusual endings. Neverend was fairly easy to finish — David tries to take back his kingdom, falls in love with the girl he left behind, and then the door closes. Everything hopefully comes together, and say goodbye to each other, and to the reader who shared the experience with them.

Horror is … a little different. Horror is about scares, about terror and usually about death — either the protagonist's or someone close to them. I won't ruin my own shorts because they're so, well, short (see what I did there?), but the ending hopefully isn't what the reader was expecting. Horror has to shock or startle the reader somehow so that it sticks with them, and makes an impression that lasts longer than the text.

I think the ending could be the most important part of your story — not how it starts (although that IS important), and certainly not the downtime that always comes during the telling of the story. A friend of mine confessed the other day that most books are usually a source of frustration for her because their endings are rarely as satisfying as what she's hoping for. I highly doubt that she's the only person who feels this way, too.

I'm less of a reader than I am a writer these days, but I'll admit that endings have frustrated me as well. I have at least one novelette that's hanging around in Literary Limbo because I don't have a satisfactory ending. It sat for months because I didn't even have an ending, and now the one it does have right now seems so divisive to the people who've read it for me already. So I've tucked it away in the hopes that an ending will come to me someday. At least one or two novels are in the same state, although I do intend on finishing them — by force, if necessary.

Do you know how your stories end? Does it come in a flash, or as a slow burn that builds as the story progresses?

Welcoming Inspiration

Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing.     — Melinda Haynes

It's strange where inspiration comes from.

I'm still neck-deep in writing my next book, Swordbearer's Light (you can find a sample of Chapter One at the top of the page). It's looking to be shorter than Neverend was, hopefully about 1/4th shorter, give or take. It'll be done when it's done, and I'm hoping to have it done by March.

But a creative burr got under my proverbial saddle yesterday. I went looking for cover art a couple of weeks ago, and found some excellent options on some of the websites I check for photographs. Not only did I find an excellent cover for the first book, I found one for the second in the series (which I've already tentatively started calling Swordbearer's Might – there's a theme going on here, I'm sure you'd noticed it). These covers weren't just neat pictures that I thought I could use — the only way it could have been any more dramatic would have been them reaching through the screen, giving my collar a shake and yelling "YOU WILL BE USING ME FOR YOUR COVER ART!"

I was obsessed. I spent most of yesterday playing with the pictures, manipulating and changing and adjusting this trick or that one. I turned Photoshop loose and I had the most fun I've had in months. I've never considered myself an "artsy" person, but I have never been so proud of my work as I was yesterday, grinning like an idiot at the screen.

[image error]

So shiny...

And after I was through, I hammered out 3,000 words in one sitting like it was nothing. I'm not a slow writer by any means, and intending to finish 4 books in a year is a monumental challenge, but I don't usually just sit down to write and have an entire chapter finished when I'm through.

It was a fun experience, one that I would love to have again and again. That's why I've included a "Hire Me!" link at the top of the page. If other indie authors are struggling with artwork for their own book covers (or with being able to afford the prices of some professional book cover artists), why not offer an affordable alternative? If nobody ever contacts me, all I'm out is the time I put into making the page.

I took a chance and found out a new love and inspiration for my writing, and I hope you'll do the same, whether it's through your own cover art or what someone creates for you. You never know where you'll find a new wellspring of creativity — it might hit you when you least expect it.

The Light Upstairs

Writing is physical work. It's sweaty work. You can't just will yourself to become a good writer. You really have to work at it. — Will Haygood

NOTE:  Both of my stories are available for FREE at Smashwords until February 6th. Details below.

Take yourself back to your childhood. The days are brighter, and the nights are darker. Shadows aren't just things to be recognized, they're something to be feared and abhorred. The night is not your friend when you're still a kid — you huddle under the blankets and crave the simple, understated comfort of a nightlight and the feel of a soft teddy bear.

Sometimes the secrets hiding in the dark know you're there, even if you may not know about them. That's the insidious manner of secrets, after all — you're only safe until they find out about you. Sometimes you can't avoid them at all, and find yourself on a collision course with the monsters who are hiding under your bed, in the hallway closet … or in the loft of your father's garage. Secrets kept aren't always kept forever, and the bad choices others make have a way of coming back and biting you after the fact.

My second horror story, The Light Upstairs, is a journey back to a childhood you might not remember (or that you wish you could forget). Our protagonist knows that his father is doing something out in that old garage behind their house, but he's too young or too afraid to ask what it might be. He and older brother Eddie are told to never go up into the garage loft; their father keeps the doorway blocked and boarded up. So when Eddie wakes up Little Brother to tell him about seeing a light in the garage's upstairs window, it sets off a frightening, tragic chain of events that reveals a secret their father's been keeping from them, and the true nature of that lonely light — where it comes from, and what it means.

You can check out the story at the links below, where you can find it available for any e-reader format or for reading on your computer. If you check it out, I hope you enjoy it (and might even recommend it to someone you know). Thanks!

[image error]

Buy it on Amazon (Kindle) | Buy it on Smashwords (all formats).

Read my stories for FREE at Smashwords! Good until February 6, 2012.

Seeing Red HERE, coupon code at Checkout: ZF28P

The Light Upstairs HERE, coupon code at Checkout: ZL85G

Shouting into the Echo Chamber

Writing is an occupation in which you have to keep proving your talent to those who have none. — Jules Renard

There comes a time in every new author's career when they have to see the light for what it is. Sometimes it's jarring, sometimes it's disconcerting or painful … and sometimes it turns out to be just one very unpleasant flop.

I joined Twitter sometime last year on a personal account. I haven't hidden it or who I am on there, but most people who know me by that account are friends, family, or random acquaintances I've connected with. There MIGHT be 50 people following me, without checking, and I think that number is still too high. I didn't do anything on Twitter for more than half a year — it was there for a nebulous "some day," and I left it at that.

When I put Neverend up for sale, I created an "author account" as an experiment — it's the one I link on the Contact page you can find at the top of the site. I was a Twitter neophyte at the time — still am, mostly — and I knew Twitter was and is mostly a victim of the "echo chamber effect," where people stand there shouting things about themselves to anyone else who happens to be listening. That may or may not be what Twitter was originally intended to do, but that's what it has turned into.

Earlier today, I became aware of The Independent Authors Network (IAN), which promotes itself as "a group of like minded authors who are self published or published by a small indie press." A basic membership is free, but they ask a $24.95 set-up fee to pay for web traffic and server maintenance. Seems legit, but it never hurts to ask, right?

So off to Twitter we go! I've got almost 250 people following me on Twitter, and that's after less than a month of trying to find people who might be interested in my writing. I asked about IAN, seeing if anybody knew anything about them. I've seen people using the "#ian1″ hashtag, by which people identify or categorize certain subjects or questions, like ebooks or Kindle or Amazon, so people can find posts about that subject.

My response was about what I expected, unfortunately: lots of things for people to say, but very little in the way of finding out what I needed to know. Another author named John L. Betcher was kind enough to answer my questions, and for that reason I want to point you in the direction of his IAN page, where you can find more information about him and the books he's written. IAN looks on the up-and-up and admits the $25 fee is a one-time cost of admission (handled through Paypal, no less), and I'm looking forward to contacting them as soon as Paypal has the funds available.

I've had a few conversations over Twitter now, and it's still a useful tool for getting news of your writing out to those who're interested in hearing about it, but it helps to remember the bad of it with the good that comes with it. Sometimes shouting into the echo chamber is a useless exercise, but sometimes you get lucky and you'll find a glimmer of someone who wants to talk back to you.

Seeing Red

Writing is turning one's worst moments into money. — J.P. Donleavy

Picture yourself somewhere in the future. The Next Great Space Race is going on, and Humanity is not only stepping out into space again, it's reaching for the stars themselves. The best and brightest minds are exploring the cosmos, and young people dream about going into space like their forebearers dreamt of going to the Moon or to Mars.

You, on the other hand, know you're not one of the best or the brightest. All you've ever dreamt about was love, falling into it and finding one person that you want to be happy — preferably with you. But that young lover you've fallen so hard for has their eyes set on those stars, and even if it kills you, you willingly step to the side and encourage them as they excel and work hard to earn their place on one of those ships set to explore the deepest reaches of space. With a heavy heart, you each share a last goodbye before they leave to go off on their great adventure, and you're left behind with your heart in your hands.

… but what happens if your long-lost love has an accident? What if their ship vanishes, if everyone is considered dead, but your never-forgotten lover is the only survivor? What if they refuse to talk about what happened to anyone but you? Would you go? Would you confront them and face your fears? Go in the hopes of conquering your old demons?

My new horror short story, Seeing Red, asks many of these questions. Kaseem has lived his entire life in the shadow of his love for a girl — the titular Red — who leaves him behind for a chance to explore Space, until an accident almost destroys the ship and leaves her as the only survivor. What he will find out is nothing that anyone could expect, and forces Kass to face the love in him that never went away … and the depths to which a human being will descend in order to survive.

You can find it at the links below, available for any e-reader you can think of, as well as for easy reading on your PC. I hope you'll give it a look; I priced it as low as I could, but Amazon doesn't allow listing anything under 99 cents.

Valentine's Day is coming up — why not try some scares with your romance?

[image error]

Buy it on Amazon (Kindle). | Buy it on Smashwords (non-Kindle).

A Need to Eat

I never had any doubts about my abilities. I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this. — Cormac McCarthy

It's time to go all-in, Ladies and Gentlemen.

In less than a week, it'll have been a whole month since Return to Neverend has been available on Amazon as a Kindle e-book. It's been a learning experience, filled with some moments of frustration, some moments of exhilaration, and lots and LOTS of sitting on my backside checking sales reports and seeing no change at all. Word to the wise: if you expect to go into this game and break sales records in your first month, you will almost certainly be disappointed.

That doesn't mean it's been a wasted month — on the contrary, it's been a long process with plenty of lessons learned and lots of tweaking to a finished product. In a way I feel very fortunate to be doing it this way. If this were a POD book or something I was doing on my own before the days of Amazon or Kindle books, just trying to imagine all of the costs in changes is enough to give me a headache. Technology can be a wonderful thing when it's used to your advantage.

I've also had to come to a decision about my own publishing future. Either I can use Amazon (or Smashwords, or B&N) as a "throwaway" for failed projects and stories I couldn't convince anyone to take, or I can focus all of my attention on this still-developing market and try to take my piece of the pie while it's in its infancy. And that's the beautiful thing about the ebook market: sales just keep going up. The pie keeps getting bigger, and everyone can still get their own piece if they work hard enough at it — capitalism at its finest, to be sure.

So I am, as I said, all-in. In the next couple of days, some horror short fiction I've had languishing and lying about will be receiving the Kindle treatment as well. I could tell you that I almost sold one of them, that one of them got to the last stage of an anthology contest before it got cut, but that's water under the bridge. These are stories that need to be shared, and have a market out there looking for them — horror fans need stuff to read too, right?

I'm not able to able to support myself solely on what I'm writing and trying to sell — that dream is still a long way away (I assume). This is just the next step on that long road ahead of me, and if you'll permit the marketing in the future, you're welcome to come along with me.

Using All the Colors

Detail makes the difference between boring and terrific writing. It's the difference between a pencil sketch and a lush oil painting. As a writer, words are your paint. Use all the colors.            — Rhys Alexander

I was going to write this post and talk about "rules." I've been reading a few articles or discussions lately that talk all about the sorts of rules that writers should or shouldn't follow. There are even rules about what kind of books you can or can't write (spurred by this post over at io9: http://io9.com/5879434/10-writing-rules-we-wish-more-science-fiction-and-fantasy-authors-would-break).

Everywhere I'm looking lately I see rules. I managed to break six of the rules from io9′s article in one book, so either I'm absolutely insane or some kind of trendsetter (or, more likely, I just wrote the story that needed to be written completely ignorant of any rules).

But that's my point for this post: sometimes you have to write the story as it comes to you, and not care a whit about whether or not it conforms to someone's guidelines or ideas of what's acceptable or what isn't. I wrote my story as I knew it had to be, wrote it with the best of intentions and stayed honest to the original inspiration and source that it came from. Having to change some or any of it just because I was worried about what someone might think about it would have completely ruined the story as a whole.

As writers — and fantasy writers, at least when it comes to people like me — we can't always dictate what the story will be about or what it involves. When it hits you, it hits you: sometimes slowly or a little bit at a time, or other times it'll pile on top of you like a snowdrift until you can barely breathe or function — the story is ALL THERE IS, and you have to get it written down somewhere before it can escape from you. What's important isn't worrying about whether you can "sell" it right away, or maybe sell it at all.

It is interesting for me to note that io9′s list contains the rule "No Portal Fantasy," a la no Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe style stories — accessing one world from another via a portal is apparently unacceptable. THAT IS THE ENTIRE REASON NEVEREND EXISTS! It wouldn't even BE a story if not for the use of a portal. Lewis' fiction was a huge inspiration for me as a child growing up, and some of that came back in my own writing, just as every author draws from their literary inspirations and favorite stories from growing up. It might explain why one agent after another kept giving it the boot, even those who said they personally liked the story. Just goes to show you that the people who win the Agent Lottery are even luckier than I even originally expected — the best writing in the world doesn't mean Jack if it isn't a story that an agent will allow to be told.

So where does that leave us? It means that you and I need to write the stories we're meant to write even if it might not automatically lead to fame and fortune. It means writing the stories that are in us even if nobody will pay attention to it right away. It means being the writer you want to be and telling the stories you want to tell even if you get one rejection after another — dozens of them, hundreds even. Don't worry about if you can get an agent. Don't worry if you can sell a million copies in one year, or ten years, or in your lifetime.

Write the stories that are in you. Use all of the colors you've been given, and don't let anyone tell you to do any different. Write because YOU MUST WRITE – let success or failure take care of itself.

Giving Thanks

Be anything you want to be, but don't be dull. — Frank Robinson

Ah, the allure of the paid author. It's something that would-be writers the world over dream about, isn't it? Waking up late (or early, if that's your thing) without being a slave to an alarm clock, sipping coffee (again, if that's your thing) with a slow, comfortable ease and perhaps indulging in a midday nap whenever it suits you. Get up, write some, take a ride into town on some errands or just because you can, spend the evening with the entertainment of your choice, maybe write a bit more, and then go to bed as late (or as early) as it suits you, just so you can do it all over again the next day.

Fun dream, isn't it? It's certainly the dream I had when I was younger, in some ways I still have that dream. I've done the corporate grind, I've worked for a slew of unbelievably awful bosses (and a couple of very good ones), and if I never have to work for "the Man" ever again, I could die a happy man. I heard of one writer who went into writing his particular flavor of genre fiction because "that's where the money is," and he's certainly living more comfortably than I am right now.

I would wager that his story is a rarity, though. We write what we write because it's what we know, what we love and what we want to share with the world. I write about magic swords and imaginary worlds because it's where my first love was founded, and even though I flirt some with horror or science-fiction, I'll always come home to fantasy fiction at the end of the day. Taking that final plunge off into the deep, dark, cold waters of e-publishing means that I want to share those stories with the world, and I'm willing to back up my writing if I can.

Which means that I'm now my own agent. I'm my own marketing department. I represent myself. I'm the QA guy, the PR guy, and I manage the product from beginning to end. That means I had to step out and find out how to set up a Facebook page. I had to learn how Twitter works. I've had to start tinkering with Photoshop to learn how to make new book covers (for some short projects I hope to show here soon, and for the book I'm writing now).

Will any of this have an impact? I don't know, to be honest. E-publishing is something you have to learn to measure in months and years, not days or weeks. I'm still in my first month, and while 500 free copies is a monumental number to me, that's not 500 SALES – that milestone is going to take a long time to hit, barring some miracle or event I can't even begin to guess at happening. I said when I started that if I could go buy a burger value meal after six months of sales, I'd be happy. I'm still sticking to that — Neverend is a very special seed I'm trying to plant for what I hope are years of e-books waiting ahead of me.

So if you're on the Twitter feed and following me or if you've joined the Facebook page, first off, THANK YOU for that. Thank you for speaking with me, for being even a small part of Neverend's dialogue, and for thinking that what I'm doing is important enough to share. Secondly, I hope you don't mind my having to, yes, "pimp myself out" in order to make a sale. It's my hope that I can always keep Neverend at the $0.99 price, or maybe even keep the future books that cheap as well. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen.

Whatever comes next, from my pen to yours, I thank you.

Tinkering

The only way to learn to write is to write. — Peggy Teeters

I'm beginning to believe that nothing a person works on is ever TRULY finished. No matter how many times I sit back and look at that store page, the book on the other side of the cover keeps whispering to me: "But wait, there's just one more thing for you to fix!"

Whether it's removing page numbers in my TOC, updating the copyright information, including cover art in the file, adding a Dedication page, you name it, I never seem to be satisfied with it for long. It feels like an obsession some nights, as I stay up for ungodly hours just to change the tiniest thing. The process is never-ending.

Now this is all good practice for the next books in line, and I'm excited by the opportunities that are coming up in the future for me, but it's hard to be patient with myself when I'm just rehashing old content to tweak the tiniest bit in order to "make it a little bit better." Nothing seems to be the death of my productivity like a perfectionist's streak and the weird, quasi-OCD I find myself in as I keep making "just one more change."

That being said, I'm not so sure that it's a real bad habit to have. If I put a book up for sale that was filled with spelling and formatting errors, forgot to include the right bookmarks and page links, or just was sloppy all around, who would take me seriously? I've (mostly given away) hundreds of copies of this thing, and people can be cruel if they want to be. Once they find one thing they don't like, they won't give me the time of day ever again because of ONE bad experience.

So the thing to remember is not that always wanting to tinker with a finished product is bad. The thing to remember — for me, anyway — is that I can't excuse away not working on new writing just because a finished book needs some slight changes here or there.

And now that I think about it, there might be some other things I need to fix. Excuse me.

News Flash: Writing is Hard

If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do. — William Zinsser

Captain Obvious just flew by to deliver me a message: having a written outline, a grand vision, and all the enthusiasm in the world won't make you want to write.

This ridiculous urge that some of us get — this madness that most people call "wanting to be a writer" — is probably one of the greatest and dumbest things anybody could want to do. I've sat like a lump for the better part of 48 hours accomplishing absolutely nothing … and this after I wrote just a few days ago about the importance of setting goals and wanting to write 4 books this year. Hypocritical much?

But there's no help for it. When the story is fresh in your mind, when you're excited about wanting to create something and you can see it bright and clear in your mind, sometimes the words can STILL feel like squeezing water from a stone, while other times the book will practically write itself. Some people talk about accomplishing 10,000 words in a day. If I accomplish that in a week, it's been a really, REALLY good week.

I can't honestly say or ever be sure if fantasy authors have it any better or worse than other genres. We can spin worlds out of whole cloth that have little possibility of ever existing on this world or any other. On the other hand, sometimes it's that very act of creation that's so difficult, in my personal opinion. I did so much research for my new series a couple of weeks ago that I'm still seeing Google results in my sleep.

There's one quote I know of, supposedly from Hemmingway, who said something along the lines of "Writing's the easiest thing in the world. All I do is sit in front of my typewriter and bleed over it." Another quote from Red Smith says something similar: "There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit at a typewriter and open a vein." Whether they're both real quotes or not isn't my concern for the sake of this message. What needs to be said is this: wanting to write is hard. Damned hard. You force yourself to write some nights — most nights, maybe — because if you don't keep moving forward you'll want to sit, and mope, and criticize your work.

And that is the real, true death of any story: when we sacrifice it on the altar of our own Self-Doubt.

So keep moving forward. Keep sitting yourself down, every day if you have to, and write.