Sara Niles's Blog: Sara Nile's Blog - Posts Tagged "writing"

Art survives whole civilizations and it is what makes savage man civilized; art inspires, impassions and motivates the human mind and spirit to soar higher, to do better than ever before. Writers are artists whose words formed on paper create a literary canvas that lingers long after the writer is gone. If you doubt the truth of those words, call to mind the words trapped in the books of long dead writers, such as the works of Shakespeare, John Milton, Herman Melville, Emily Bronte, each well remembered for the artistry of their words and the depth of their storytelling.

But Art, is an individual thing, it is the visible and palpable exhibition of inner drives and imaginations, a literary Rorschach test for all to see. Writers expose their inner selves when the art of writing is performed by the authentic self. A few examples come to mind: Charles Dickens wrote of deep dark fears possessed by children whose lives were engulfed in poverty and abandonment and his childhood heroes and heroines were all victims of an unfair society that abandoned them to the degradation of work houses after snatching their parents from them. Fyodor Dostoevsky suffered exile as a debtor by a society that had little mercy or pity for the hapless among them, and so the author wrote of hapless souls whose spirits were governed by societal conflicts. In Dostoevsky’s masterpiece work, Crime and Punishment, one can almost feel the pain of the author who transposed his fears and anguish into the character of Raskolnikov whose ill formed conscious was not adequate for the moral conflicts he was tested with. In the famous American story To Kill a Mockingbird, the author Harper Lee writes of a social recluse by the name of Boo Radley and after the book gained international fame, the author slowing slipped from view and became a mystery to the world; perhaps too well aware of how Boo Radley felt and thus able to artfully portray him to the world.

Whether the art is created from words and music or words on paper, it still leads the patron into their own unique caves of emotion and enables them to see with new eyes. In the case of literary art, the imagery is sometimes created from simple words, sparse descriptions that wield powerful effects; or the words themselves can be artistically presented in such a way as to maximize the emotional and social experiences of the reader. The book becomes the stage and the words put on the play, the theater becomes a new world and the reader journeys into new insights.

Not all art is great and not all books are well written, but once in a while, a few great books come along that remain timelessly unforgettable, classics, true works of art, their authors immortalized forever by their work.

Sara Niles
Author of The Torn Trilogy

The introduction of high speed internet and the globalization of publishing by digital means is a dream come true for self published authors; or should I say, it is a dream come true for some self published authors. The truth of the matter is no matter what market opens up, the early bird may get noticed first, but eventually the market becomes crowed and glutted with products so that it once again becomes difficult for a lone author to get noticed. My my, how things have changed.

In an article posted in The New York Review of books (link below), how much things have changed is very well presented:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...

The digital marketplace is displacing the power once held solely by the big ‘brick and mortar’ publishing houses. I checked my Twitter account the other day and found several of the big publishing houses are offering new eBook editions free as a promotional endeavor. Wonder where that idea came from? I would not be surprised if the door even opens up for ‘indie’ (Independent) authors in some form soon, that is, officially.
In 1995, I began my long and arduous writing career as an idealistic new author who thought that all you had to do was write a good book and send it to a publisher and they would go oooh and ahh and send you a contract pronto! I hear all of you veterans of the trade out there laughing. Yep. I not only believed that, I did like many anxious new parents of a great book did and sent out query letters to agents-hundreds of them at once. I waited and soon the mail started coming in. Rejection after rejection came in on form letter head, with not so much as a consideration.

By the year 2004, I had self published my first book (the old edition is still out there) and it was during that year that I emailed three thousand libraries, thousand of domestic violence programs (Torn From the Inside Out has a domestic violence theme) and countless other possible leads only to find out just how difficult it was to ‘break into’ a closed market with no professional backing.
Then Amazon launched the Kindle- the angels in literary heaven began to sing and applaud-the great door was opening to non celebrity authors and new talent the world over. By 2010, The Kindle was in full operation and the Barnes and Noble Nook was trying to keep pace; iphones and reading applications made it possible to read a book on your phone! Can you imagine that? Steve Jobs led the way with the ibook store and heaven opened another door-my god, what an El Dorado of opportunities lay ahead.

And then it happened. The first big success stories began: Joe Konrath, John Locke, Amanda Hocking, Darcie Chan and many others hot on their heels, for example, Kerry Wilkinson just wrote his first book less than one full year ago-as an experiment and now look at him:

Kerry Wilkinson
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/bo...

I am certain more will continue to follow because readers know what readers want. If you put the material out there so that readers can find it, if they like it, they will come.

So what is the key to success in this market?

A great product
A product that is in demand
Good Marketing

When it comes to books, a great product can be defined by the market itself such as in the case of Amanda Hocking’s books and The Meyer Twilight series, those were the products in demand by the readers who wanted them. The market for Young Adult Paranormal romance demands more and until the market is glutted, there is room to get noticed.

In the case of Joe Konrath, the man is a super marketer and has been for a long time-I give him full credit that his success was no accident, it was bound to happen.

So what about the rest of us who write in a genre that is more common and has been popular forever such as general nonfiction and fiction?

I am not the expert but I would suggest to create the best product you can and market like demon.

The Torn Trilogy and I were honored with a guest spot on Ebooks4all.blogspot.com and I will take the liberty to quote my suggestion:

“What advice would I give for new authors and what should they expect?

The publishing industry has changed dramatically over the last few years and is changing so rapidly that the new independent author must keep up with those changes and innovate, keep up with what is going on in the market and meet the needs of the market. If the author is committed to writing, then he or she must commit to marketing as well.
I have noticed a trend in self publishing that I would avoid: much of what is self published is not refined, the plots are thrown together and the characters are under developed, the writing is choppy and repetitive; although the gems in self publishing are out there too. There is a lot of impressive talent among the self published new works if you can find it.
Readers are intelligent people, I would advise new authors to remember that fact and challenge themselves more. Create the best work in your field, refine it and find the best market for it, then market it like a madman or woman”
Excerpted from Author of the Month JosephinEbooks4all.blogspot.come Thompson (Sara Niles pen name);

Thomas A. Edison, who was notoriously gifted with a creative mind, said that “genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration”, which is a truth that most successful and semi-successful indie authors have discovered. I have certainly discovered having a creative mind or special talent for writing, is not enough in today’s highly competitive book market, there needs to be one more added element besides creative writing, that is vital to success: you have to perspire a lot. The days of sending off a query letter to a handful of hungry literary agents and subsequently landing a large writing contract, are long gone; with the rare exception of a few select breakaway newbies who have been extended the scepter of honor for the day.

The publishing world has evolved markedly since 1974, when Stephen King almost never was discovered. According to the story of King’s first contract, after continuous rejections from publishers and a last ditch effort on King’s part when his wife saved his manuscript out of the kitchen trash and urged him to mail it “one more time”, King was discovered as a great writer, and the rest was history (http://www.horrorking.com/biography.html ). Those were the simple days, before the massive onslaught of eBooks at the rate of thousands a day, not to mention the 43,000 plus eBooks available through the Guttenberg Project (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/).

The frantic scramble to reach the top of the book pile, by relatively unheard of authors is both easier now, and more difficult. It is easier to become noticed, if you can break through the crowd before it closes in on you; but it is more difficult because the crowd of eBook publishers and indie authors, is growing daily, while the holes in the fabric of eBook marketing, are being filled almost as fast as they are created. Two Independent Authors who broke through the opening in the Young Adult genres, in a big way, were Amanda Hocking and Colleen Hoover, both were independent authors at the time, and both sold a million copies or more of their books. Hoover (http://colleenhoover.com/ ) made it to the top of the charts on Amazon with a number one bestseller and Hockings (http://www.worldofamandahocking.com/ ) was one of first indie authors to make it big. Many more are hot on their heals.

In the case of Hoover and Hockings, did either of these authors just get lucky? Although luck has something to do with it I am sure, from what I have seen and read, these two women worked off their respective glutei maximi; as I have discovered while following their tracks. Whew!

So what does it take to break through into the publishing world?
Creative talent= one percent
Perspiration= ninety-nine percent
Add perseverance and hope for luck!


Bio: Sara Niles AKA Josephine Thompson
Sara Niles is the author’s pen name, chosen for Torn From the Inside Out Torn From the Inside Out

A Most Unusual Life Wish:
A Bucket List to Remember
July 12, 2013

By Sara Niles (A.K.A. Josephine Thompson)
The term ‘bucket list’ is a term that was made more popular by the 2007 movie by the same title: The Bucket List and it means to list things that you want to do before you die. Most people list things that they never got around to, or special achievements that may have been lifetime dreams.

I have one primary thing in my life that has achieved a ‘do or die’, sacred mission status to me: it is the one thing I want to do, no matter what happens in my life. It is the thing that is of greatest importance to me, besides the most obvious and universal goal that most of us who are human share, that of putting family and loved ones first; but in order to clearly articulate why this one thing is so important to me, I have to tell a short version of my long life. The life altering, and consuming mission that I have been propelled into, was aroused by my own personal life experiences and cultivated by unfortunate circumstances along my journey.

In order to tell the story of my mission, I have to tell a snippet version of my life:

I was born to a country prostitute during a time when race relations in the southern United States were less than ideal and as a result, as a child of mixed race in the 1950’s, I was given away to my great-great uncle and aunt to raise, both of whom were in their eighties when I was barely past my toddling years. My relatives died while I was still a child and I married a man who was both abusive and mentally unstable, and about fifteen years and five children later, I found myself on a run for my life with five small children. After a traumatic upheaval, my children and I found an oasis of sorts in a small community in another state and life appeared to be grand.

To make a long story short and without telling the details, life was far from grand, as I discovered over the years. My five children had been damaged psychologically in ways that were not readily apparent, and it would take years before I fully understood the triple impact of domestic violence and abuse upon impressionable young children, or how childhood abuse affects them as adults. The impact of prolonged and extreme dysfunction is often triple and generational, successive generations are affected. I call this triple effect that predisposes victims toward drug addiction, trauma reactions and mental health issues, the ‘Three Headed Monster’.

My mission is to keep the Three Headed Monster at bay and my tools are my words: I wrote The Torn Trilogy, a monumental 1200 page work that is a testament of the power of the human spirit under fire, and as a long mission statement against family dysfunction and extreme domestic violence.

When my mission is completed, I want to visit one of the greatest mountains in the world:
Mount Kilimanjaro

The remarkably successful Fifty Shades of Grey by Erica James, or E.L. James, was so successful that it reportedly sold one paperback book per second during the summer of 2012, according to Barbara Walters (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XzRbcL...), to become the fastest selling paperback of all time. The subject matter of Fifty Shades of Grey revolved around sex, but not just regular sex, all forms of sex: bondage and masochism included, or perhaps we should say highlighted.

In USA Today (http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/bo..., James says in an interview that women all want romance and fantasy, or in other words, most women want to escape into a world of romantic fantasy and forget the chores and the mundane day to day pressures of life; whereas men prefer to escape into a world in which power, action and adventure predominates. The most noticeable gender difference between book buyers is reflected in books sales data. Women are the overall biggest book buyers. In a 2010 news article it was stated that women make up over 60 percent of book buyers and the average age of those women is over 40 (http://seattletimes.com/html/books/20...).

So to recap the idea of break through novels in the book world, women evidently control the market. To test that theory out: Amanda Hocking sold over a million eBooks in which romance and the paranormal made up the plot, Danielle Steele (never forget the mega romance author), who has become her own brand, has sold from 600 to 800 million copies (depending of the source of the count) of her romance novels, which is getting close to the one billion sales mark. The subject matter of Steele’s books deals primarily with romance in every possible setting, and the majority of the buyers are women.

Most recently, Colleen Hoover penned romance novels that appeared to be aimed at the young adult audience, although the numbers of her sales suggest older buyers. The subject? Yes, it is romance and sexy romance (http://bloodybookaholic.blogspot.com/...). I could go on and on, but the finalize the point: if you want to attract the most eager buying crowd , it may be a good idea to write steamy romance aimed at the young adult crowd, while knowing the 42 year-old female buying power will back it up.

I don't write romance novels,and even if I did, there would be no guarantee that I would be able to ‘break into’ the crowded market. When you read the success stories of the authors who have made it big, you find a common denominator in many of the success formulas: luck and timing.

So keep writing and hope for luck, and be ready when the timing is just right.

So the secret is out: J.K. Rowling hid her identity behind the pen name Robert Galbraith in order to pen her second adult book since the Potter series (http://www.hypable.com/2013/08/16/jk-...). Of course, when you are as big and internationally famous as Rowling, there is no use trying to hide. We know who you are, and we will find you, no matter what pseudonym you use.

It seems obvious why Rowling would not want her name to get in the way of her writing-she wanted to be known for her writing and not her name. Either way, the results will be the same: readers read because they want to. There is no way to make a reader love your writing simply because of a name.

So what is the verdict so far, from the true judges, the readers? Good and exceptional.

If you go to Amazon and check the thousands of reviews, they are all overwhelmingly five stars, and I agree: http://www.amazon.com/The-Cuckoos-Cal...
I did not really like her first book: The Casual Vacancy, but this one is much better; she is definitely getting her adult writer’s pen in shape and her adult plots in form. I look forward to more from Rowling, under whatever name she chooses next.

There are best sellers in books, and there are epic, mega-bestsellers: books that have sold over one hundred million copies. The authors who have had the distinction of being included among this very elite group, as mega-authors, are few.

The book by author Agatha Christie that was published in 1939, And Then There Were None reportedly sold over one hundred million copies worldwide; which is no small feat considering the fact the prolific Christie has reportedly sold over four billion books worldwide, making Agatha Christie one of the most prolific authors of all time.

Books that have sold over one hundred million copies include The Lord of the Rings, by J.R.R. Tolkien and A Tale of Two Cites by Charles Dickens; both English authors whose long running sales dated back to the nineteenth century, which of course, gave them both a good head start.

Since the dawn of the second millennium, there have been noteworthy authors who may eventually eclipse the former prolific champions for the prize of mega-authors; to name a few:

Barbara Cartland (1 billion), Danielle Steele (800,000,000), and JK Rowling (450,000,000)
From USA Today: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/b...,
Followed by Dean Koontz, Stephen King (350,000,000), and Louis L’Amour (330,000,000), with a pretty long list of authors who have sold over one hundred million books per volumes of work http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_... however, there remain two distinct authors who are set far apart from the crowd: Suzanne Collins and E.L. Grey.

E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey and Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games topped the list in 2012 of book sales: http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...
AS of 2012 the Hunger Games reportedly outsold JK Rowling’s Harry Potter series with over fifty million copies sold worldwide.

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by...
Wow! Now that is a lot of book sales…but wait, Fifty Shades of Grey by Suzanne Collins has sold over seventy million copies, according to the Wall Street Journal in its March 26, 2013 issue: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/S...
The latter two authors, American author Suzanne Collins and English author E.L. James, are epic mega-authors whose names will live long in the annals of literature.

The Hunger GamesFifty Shades of Grey

Review of the book: Long Walk to Freedom
It was said by psychologist Abraham Maslow, that when it comes to human growth, only a special few ever reach the pinnacle of altruistic achievement that marks the best they could be, the point of being self-actualized. Nelson Mandela was one of the special few, as his point of achievement reached legendary proportions: after spending twenty-seven years in prison on manufactured charges designed to stop him from his mission of freeing the South African people from an unjust and tyrannical Apartheid, he was set free (1990), only to almost immediately become the president of South Africa (1994). The story of Nelson Mandela’s life sounds almost magical, as though it was concocted in the mind of a fantasy author-yet, it was true. Mandela was a living legend in his time; and until only a few days ago, he was a living legend all of my life. A Long Walk to Freedom is now a chronicle of world history, and Mandela is part of the ‘ages’.

In a Long Walk to Freedom (I first read it in the 1990’s), Mandela speaks of all the happenings in his life that made him the person he became, from his birth and childhood, his relationship with family members, and into his adulthood, and his eventual mission to end Apartheid and the cruelty it inflicted upon his country. Mandela spoke of what nature and nurture added to his determination, and of how his family culture added to his development as a man. Mandela recounted his education and his role as a reformer; his imprisonment and the ordeal that lasted for almost three decades, and finally, his freedom: The Long Walk to Freedom.

There is no ‘poor me’ attitude, nor is there an air of superiority in his story, only the honest revelations and inner reflections, of what we now know for sure, was the mind of one of the world’s greatest leaders. Mandela, the son of a ‘kingmaker’ who himself became ‘king’, the president of South Africa, and an international icon.

The writing style is polished, and full of insight and detail, making it a very enjoyable read. This book should become one of the great autobiographies of all time, along with The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and Malcolm X.

Love is one of the greatest human emotions and a powerful force in its own right, but even love cannot prevent some things from happening”

“Sometimes when you become so accustomed to loss, a new loss is only part of your usual ‘normal’”

“Our flight to freedom and safety was filled with a calm suppressed terror in the children and I, the type terror you have when you are used to living with danger”

“Emotional breaking'The Journeys are delicate to repair and even harder to decipher. I was not smart enough, nor did I have the wisdom needed for such a job at that time”

“Ariel was the perfect emotional adapter when things went wrong, but she was not amenable to life when things went right. It seemed her coping mechanism was geared towards trouble”

The effect of trauma and abuse often affect how people interact with others over the lifespan. The resulting lack of trust, and the fear of being hurt or betrayed again, is usually at the root of many defensive mechanisms, and it forms part of the core weakness that leads to deep-rooted, self-destructive behaviors and addictions.

Authors who write about abuse, and do it well, include these behaviors in their character's development.
This discussion Group addresses abuse via Books and Authors

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...