David R. Michael's Blog, page 19

Excerpts Should Include a Blurb

 
I'm slowly accumulating experience and useful bits of publishing tradecraft. A couple weeks ago it was "Free Ebooks Should Include Excerpts".
 
This week, I realized that I should also include the backcover blurb.
 
Excerpt Structure

Cover image with "An excerpt from…" announcement
Backcover copy
Excerpt
Link to book in appropriate bookstore

 
Like this:
 
[image error]


An Excerpt from
Gunwitch: A Tale of the King's Coven
by David Michael.


Copyright © 2011 by David Michael.
Published by Four Crows Landing.





In 1718, in an England that might have been, the law found Rosalind Bainbridge guilty of witchcraft. In lieu of execution, she became Private Bainbridge of the 101st Pistoleers…


A Gunwitch of the King's Coven.


Twenty-four years later, dishonorably discharged and working as a scout on the Amerigon frontier, Rose's past comes looking for her. A summons and a request from the officer who saved her from the hangman's noose. A reunion with another veteran of the 101st, someone she never wanted to see again. And a meeting with the Misses Janett and Margaret Laxton, the daughters of the man who pressed her into service as a gunwitch.


Reluctantly, Rose agrees to take Janett and Margaret to their father at Fort Russell. No one knows the swamps around New Venezia better than Rose and her bloodsister, the enigmatic Chal. The trip should take only a few days.


But there's more waiting in the swamps than mud and mosquitoes. War and betrayal threaten Rose and the girls, while an ancient, unspeakable evil pursues them all the way to the walls of Fort Russell.





An Excerpt from
Chapter 1
Rose


Rose, rifle again slung over her shoulder, presented herself to the sergeant on duty. "Rose Bainbridge," she said. She resisted the urge to give him a salute. "Scout," she added. She pulled the folded summons out of her blouse and handed it to him. "Here at the request of General Tendring."


The sergeant took in Rose, her worn cotton and buckskin clothes, and her similarly attired native companion, and managed to express extreme annoyance and displeasure, all without moving a muscle on his lined face… (and so on)





Gunwitch: A Tale of the King's Coven
By David Michael


Available from !


Learn more at Four Crows Landing:
www.fourcrowslanding.com


# # #


Seems so simple, doesn't it? And yet this is probably my 3rd or 4th iteration on excerpts in ebooks.


I will learn. I just know I will.


-David
 
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Flintlock Fantasy

 
Is there already such a thing as "flintlock fantasy"? Or did I inadvertantly create the sub-genre with the release of Gunwitch: A Tale of the King's Coven? (Though, if I created the sub-genre, it won't technically exist until I finish and release the sequel.)
 
I'm betting it's already out there, and not just in the form of RPG's and tabletop wargames like the Iron Kingdoms or WarMachine by Privateer Press. (And I will not deny that my Iron Kingdoms RPG campaigns were a big influence on Gunwitch. Dig a bit through the session logs and you can find the first appearance of one Rosalind Bainbridge.)
 
If anyone can suggest examples, I'd love to read 'em. Especially if the protagonist is a woman with magic and a gun. Because, as I've said before, I love women with guns.
 
-David
 
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"Done Enough"

 
I'm declaring the outline for Gunwitch2 "done enough". Any additional work I do on that is goldbricking. Dawdling. Not, in fact, writing. The outline will evolve during writing, but for a day or two this week I can pretend that I know how everything goes.
 
I *might* start writing tomorrow. Maybe. Or maybe I'll let the whole thing "gel" for a day, then start. Because I'm a wuss sometimes.
 
The word-count for the outline is 5600. That's longer than I expected, but still in the ballpark for an outline written by me.
 
My target for the book is ~100K words (AKA, about the same length as Gunwitch). With 24 planned chapters, I think that won't be a problem. Anything from 90K to 110K words is acceptable, of course.
 
How long will it take to write? I have no estimates that I'm willing to make public.
 
-David
 
Related Posts:
Outline to Completed Novel Word Count RatioPlanning (Almost) FinishedI Can Haz Story?

Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, November 28, 2011.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Gunwitch2 outlining.







Tuesday


Gunwitch2 outlining.







Wednesday


Gunwitch2 outlining.







Thursday


Gunwitch2 outlining.







Friday


Gunwitch2 naming characters and locations.







Saturday


Gunwitch2 outline tweaking.







Sunday


Gunwitch2 outline tweaking.

















Total








 








Publishing/Marketing




Monday





Tuesday





Wednesday





Thursday





Friday





Saturday





Sunday





 
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Outline to Completed Novel Word Count Ratio

 
Was chatting with a friend yesterday and showed him my outline for Gunwitch: A Tale of the King's Coven (since he'd already read the book I didn't have to worry about spoilers). Giving the outline a quick read myself, I noticed how much the story had evolved in the writing. That always happens. But I also noticed that a 4700-word outline grew into a 100000-word novel (a ratio of 1:21).
 
Made me curious. Especially since in the process of getting Gunwitch2′s outline finished.
 
Here are the ratios for all my completed novels (in the order written):

Threads (unpublished) – 4700:125000 (1:26.5)
The Door to the Sky – 3700:35000 (1:9.5)
The Summoning Fire – 4600:64000 (1:14)
The Girl Who Ran With Horses – 3300:64000 (1:19)
Gunwitch: A Tale of the King's Coven – 4700:100000 (1:21)
GoSH1 (in production) – 8300:67000 (1:8)

 
Not much pattern there. And I'm kinda stunned at how long the outline for GoSH1 came out. I'd forgotten how long that outline was (and I only wrote it back in February). I was including lots of detail in that outline. More than normal.
 
I've been thinking lately about the way I outline. It would seem that the first, full outline is my first draft of the novel. A rather short first draft (more like a treatment), and not entirely readable or coherent, but still a first draft that I then expand and (hopefully) improve by writing the *real* story from it.
 
Not sure that it *matters* how I think of it, but that's been wandering through my head.
 
-David
 
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Don't Eat Your Seed

NOTE: I originally wrote this article in 2005 for my Joe Indie blog, so it focuses on indie game development. Much of what it says, though, can be easily applied to writing and indie publishing.


The Millionaire Next Door provides a simple, almost 100% guaranteed way for any American to become a millionaire within their lifetime:
 
1. Spend less than you make.
 
2. Invest the difference.
 
3. Re-invest all earnings.
 
Those who have a bigger income that they can spend less than have an edge, but it's an egalitarian plan that will work for pretty much anyone with an income.
 
This is only a slight modification of the advice you get from a lot of financial advisors:
 
1. Invest $25/$50/$100/whatever (it goes up as you get older) per month, every month.
 
2. Leave it alone until you retire, letting all earnings remain in the kitty.
 
With this plan, any 25 year old can become, if not a millionaire, at least comfortably set, even at historically conservative interest rates. That's the magic of compound interest.
 
Both plans involve the same principles:
 

Self-imposed scarcity (AKA, "self-discipline")
Time
Re-investing the earnings

 
I take the same approach to indie game development (and indie software development, or "micro ISV's", and indie publishing). You take a portion of your available resources (time and money) and invest them in a game (or product or book) of your own creation, and let the result(s) increase over time, assisted by re-investment of your early earnings.
 
No one serious about building a "nest egg" for their retirement expects it to replace their regular income stream in less than 5 years (unless they are over 60 when they start and/or are hopelessly optimistic). Yet how many indies expect exactly that from their efforts?
 
Quite a few, in my experience. They're Big Plan is to "burn the ships", focus their efforts, and release their game/product/book. Then it's all "Sit back and relax and spend the profits."
 
How many actually achieve that? Not so many.
 
Depressed yet?
 
I'm one of those evangelists who try to win converts by pointing out how much hard work is involved rather than focusing on the Potential Riches That Could Be Yours. You get fewer converts, but maybe they stick around longer.
 
So what am I suggesting? In the words of the farmer, "Don't eat your seed."
 
The only way investing and compound interest work for anybody is by taking the early proceeds and re-investing them. Apply this to your indie projects. Don't try to live off the proceeds of your efforts, not at first. Take what you make from your initial game and use it to improve the game (adding more value for your existing players and new players) or make a better Next Game. Don't eat your seed by spending it all on a new Blu-Ray/DVD player. Or rent.
 
Treat your indie efforts as an investment, with an eye to the long term, instead of as a slot machine where you insert the proper coin and pull the lever. Accept that it may take more than a few months–or even a few years–for you to be a full time indie, earning enough to live off of.
 
Though obviously not a Get Rich Quick recipe, this is an approach with some advantages. Here are a few:


The freedom to take creative risks. You're not investing anything you can't afford to lose, so you're free to try anything.



The freedom to be wrong. Time is on your side. You don't have to get it right the first time.



The freedom to change your mind. Life is change. No one remains the same forever. Sometimes we have things we want to try. So try them. Maybe you'll move on, maybe you'll stay. You never know until you try.


Or look at it from the reverse angle. If your indie efforts MUST support you, then you will find that you've lost all of those advantages. You no longer have creative freedom. Instead, you have to do something that generates $X. You must be able to extract your investment, starting immediately. Which means you can no longer afford to be wrong. Welcome to the world of endless clones and sequels. And changing your mind could prove disastrous, since you have nothing else to fall back on. What you started out doing because you wanted to, is now something you have to do, nose to the grindstone day after day, or you starve.

Be content to build with what you have, not gamble on what might happen. Take the long view, invest–and re-invest–in yourself. Don't eat your seed.

-David
 
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, November 21, 2011.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Gunwitch2 brainstorming.







Tuesday








Wednesday








Thursday


Gunwitch2 brainstorming and outlining.







Friday


Gunwitch2 brainstorming and outlining.







Saturday


Gunwitch2 brainstorming and outlining.







Sunday


Gunwitch2 brainstorming and outlining.

















Total








 








Publishing/Marketing




Monday





Tuesday


Updated "He Came" to include an excerpt of TSF.
Updated "When Writers Attack" to include an excerpt of Door Sky.
Updated Gray Angel stories to include an excerpt of Gunwitch.




Wednesday





Thursday





Friday





Saturday





Sunday





 
Reading List

The Man Who Did Too Much by Camille LaGuire.

 
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I Can Haz Story?

 
It's been 3 weeks since I saw a story emerging from my Gunwitch2 notes. 3 weeks is a long time. Longer than I expected.
 
As I reported back on 3 November, I had the first third of the novel pretty well mapped out. I even thought I saw how the novel would proceed and end.
 
Turns out I saw nothing of the sort.
 
I kept bumping into issues of character motivation, story flow, and the urge to include more and more "cool stuff" from the setting that just didn't seem to fit anywhere. I even had entirely new characters jumping out of my notes and demanding–demanding!–to be in the story (though seldom offering clues about how and where, the little buggers).
 
After another couple thousand words of notes and outline sketches, though, I'm happy to report that I now have a high-level outline and the full shape of the story. And the best part is: Most of that first third of the outline I had mapped is still usable. Some of the backstory has changed, but most of what I had designed up until my stall is still intact.
 
This coming week I should be able to get the details of the outlines filled in, name all the important characters, and maybe (if I'm lucky *and* industrious) even start writing.
 
I will make no estimates of how long it will take me to write this novel (2012 is looming, after all). I'm also not going to promise the story outline won't change between now and "The End" (it usually does; battle plans, the enemy, all that). Still, I'm excited. Progress!
 
-David
 
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Free Ebooks Should Include Excerpts

 
Consider this a "Note To Self". Followed by a .
 
There I was, all pleased with myself for releasing 5 backlist ebook singles that are "mostly free". And over the weekend I realized I should have included excerpts in those mostly free ebooks to ebooks that are not free. Specifically, my novels that seem a good fit for the stories.
 
So, I'm updating all 5 of the recently released ebooks to include excerpts from The Summoning Fire ("He Came"), The Door to the Sky ("When Writers Attack"), and Gunwitch (the Gray Angel stories). And all of my upcoming releases like this will include excerpts, as well.
 
Free ebooks (and mostly free ebooks) are marketing tools. Not using them to their fullest potential is just silly. And, yes, I feel a bit silly for missing that last week.
 
-David
 
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Sometimes the Luck Works

NOTE: I originally wrote this article in 2005 for my Joe Indie blog, so it focuses on indie game development. Much of what it says, though, can be easily applied to writing and indie publishing.
 
In his 2003 book, Sometimes the Magic Works, in a chapter titled "Luck", Terry Brooks described how his first novel, The Sword of Shannara, was picked up and marketed by Ballantine Books:
 
"The perception in publishing at the time [1974] was that fantasy did not sell, that its readership was small and not broad based, and that the potential for expansion was limited. Yes, J. R. R. Tolkien had sold hundreds of thousands of copies of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. But that was because he was J. R. R. Tolkien, and no one else was. Fantasy, as a form of category fiction, was too esoteric to be widely marketable.


"Lester [del Ray] believed that this was horse pucky. He believed the market was huge, the readership vast and hungry, and the potential for sales enormous.


"He decided to use The Sword of Shannara to prove his point." [p. 15]
 
I won't go into the details of how well Lester del Ray proved that point. I read The Sword of Shannara too much past the age of 17 to ever think it was a great book, but it's entertaining, and there can be little argument that it helped create the market for fantasy fiction in the 1970′s and helped it grow in the 1980′s and 1990′s.
 
What's the lesson to be learned?
 
To the inobservant and lazy, the most obvious lesson is: Convince someone you're the next Tolkien and cash in.
 
Except that Brooks didn't convince anyone he was the next Tolkien. He was the lucky author who had written a Tolkien-esque book and happened to have submitted it at the right time to the right publisher when someone working there was looking for exactly that kind of book. No cookie for you.
 
And no cookies for anyone who points out the early days of fantasy fiction are over and there are no more chances to be lucky in that manner. Or that it's harder than ever to launch a career writing fantasy fiction. Both are incorrect.
 
The lesson is that sometimes we all get lucky. We're in the right place at the right time and doing the right thing. The bitch is that you can't know when that's going to happen. All you can do is: keep doing your best and never give up.
 
Without the near-immediate success of The Sword of Shannara, Brooks might not have written so many Shannara books, but (a) I have no doubt the first book would have been published anyway; and (b) since he would've continued writing (it was what he wanted to do) he would've had other books published and likely have had growing success with each book. That is, after all, the standard road to success as a writer. And as an actor, filmmaker, restaurant chef, and even game developer.
 
When a success story like that of Terry Brooks (or Pretty Good Solitaire, or Snood, or WinZip, or Firefox) comes along, there are always people who deride the simplicity or obviousness of the book/game/product. "Damn. I could do better than that," they say. Often, rather than doing better, though, they do the same damn thing.
 
And even if they manage to do better, they're still following someone else's path to success. Someone else's well-trodden, paved-over road to success, I mean. Because they weren't the only one who thought they could do better and/or duplicate the success by duplicating the product.
 
The most common result, of course, is frustration: with being noticed in a crowded marketplace and/or the ever shrinking profit margins that come from having to compete on price. They get fed up with it, declare the whole thing to be a bust and go back to what they were doing before they got "suckered in" to this whole useless endeavor. It's not what they really wanted to do, anyway. Just something they thought they could do and make some easy money. AKA: Probably the worst reason to ever do anything.
 
On the other hand, to pull another example from creative writing, copying the style and subject matter of authors you like is considered part of learning the craft. It's an inevitable part of the process, and the only way anyone develops their own "voice" as a writer. In a similar vein, Robert Rodriquez, the filmmaker, likes to say that all filmmakers have a dozen or so "bad movies" in them, and should try get past those as quickly as possible.
 
The only way we're going to get past the copying and the "bad movies", though, and have a shot  at the luck beyond, is to suck it up and prepare ourselves for the lack of success that is going to dog us in the meantime.
 
And how does anyone manage to make it through that long, painful, frustrating apprenticeship?
 
Because it's what they want to do.
 
Question: Who in their right mind is going to keep designing and developing games when:

players say the games aren't that great?
sales grow slowly–or don't grow at all?
they put years of effort into creating something that hardly breaks even?
time after time, the best they can do just doesn't seem to be good enough?

 
Answer: Only someone who really, Really REALLY wants to design and develop games.
 
(And probably someone who has a separate job that pays their expenses and leaves them enough free time to pursue their non-profitable interest; but I've covered that before in The Indie Alternative Part 1 and Part 2).
 
If you like making games, and its what you want to do, you'll keep it up, whether you "make it" or not. You might get discouraged every so often, and maybe take some time off to do something else for a while. But if it's in your blood, if it's something that you just can't help wanting to do, and can't help doing, you'll come back to it. And you'll get better each time you do, because you're learning from your mistakes, honing your skills, and accumulating experience in design and in life.
 
Maybe you'll never make it big, or earn enough to retire off of because your games just never clicked with the gameplaying public. That can happen. Life offers none of us any guarantees.
 
So what? Making a living doing what you love is a perk, a bonus, not a reason to love it. How many people can honestly say that they are spending their time doing what it is they really want to do? Are you one of them? And if not, why? It is, after all, your own choice.
 
I'll end with a couple of quotes.
 
"Don't let the fear of the time it will take to accomplish something stand in the way of your doing it. The time will pass anyway; we might just as well put that passing time to the best possible use."
– Earl Nightingale
 
"…For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day."
–Conclusion to the "St. Crispen's Day Speech", Henry V, Shakespeare
 
-David
 
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