David R. Michael's Blog, page 20

I Like Women With Guns

 
I'm sure this comes as no surprise to anyone.
 
[image error] "Wind-Up Action Figure On Her Day Off" – An action/urban fantasy story by David Michael.
 
On those rare Mondays with no new contract, the Gray Angel wonders if that means there is no one on Earth who deserves killing. She tries to remain optimistic, but she's sure there's someone out there who needs to be given the choice of a bullet to the brain. (3200-word short story) (FREE on Swashwords, 99-cents on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.)
 
This is the last of the current crop of Gray Angel stories. I need to write more of them. I always enjoy writing her adventures.
 
Despite what I said yesterday, I had to range outside the collection of photographs I had found on iStockPhoto. I didn't like the remaining poses. This *might* be the same woman, with her hair pulled back and wearing a different suit. But it is the same photographer and the same "set" and lighting. So the cover matches the other two.
 
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I'm happy with how these covers turned out. I'm sure, though, in a few months I'll have learned enough/improved enough that I'll look back at these and get all twitchy with how much better I *could* do them.
 
-David
 
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Another Cover by the AuthorDistracted by Indie Publishing AgainNow Available – "Evanescent"

“Working Girl”

[image error]“Working Girl” by David Michael

Short Story (1900 words)

The Gray Angel #2

Hitwoman the Gray Angel’s latest target is elusive businessman Neil Spencer Thomasson, who is staying in a high-rise hotel with an unknown number of armed guards. Fortunately, Thomasson has called in an escort for the evening, a woman who comes highly recommended and whose face Ange hopes he’s never seen.

Available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords and more!

Distracted by Indie Publishing Again

 
I will start writing again soon. I just know it.
 
In the meantime, though, I'm having fun making simple covers for stories I've already written.
 
Here's the latest, another Gray Angel Story:
 
"Working Girl" – An action/urban fantasy story by David Michael.
 
Hitwoman the Gray Angel's latest target is elusive businessman Neil Spencer Thomasson, who is staying in a high-rise hotel with an unknown number of armed guards. Fortunately, Thomasson has called in an escort for the evening, a woman who comes highly recommended and whose face Ange hopes he's never seen. (1900-word short story) (FREE on Swashwords, 99-cents on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.)
 
I was tempted to rename this story "Sensible Shoes for the Working Girl", but decided not to. I want *some* of the image to show.
 
There is one more Gray Angel story I'll be releasing. Probably this week. Because it's fun.
 
Fortunately, I found a photographer on iStockPhoto who had shot a small bundle of pics with the same woman wearing the same suit and carrying the same gun. So all three covers will have a very similar look-and-feel.
 
-David
 
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Another Cover by the AuthorShort Story Ebook CoversLookit! I Did a Cover!

Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, November 7, 2011.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday








Tuesday


Gunwitch2 outlining and brainstorming.







Wednesday








Thursday








Friday








Saturday








Sunday


















Total








 








Publishing/Marketing




Monday





Tuesday


Updated Gunwitch forum threads on KB, NB, MR.




Wednesday





Thursday





Friday


Created a cover for "He Came".
Created base ebook doc for "He Came"
Formatted "He Came" ebook doc for KDP, PubIt, SW.
Uploaded "He Came" to KDP, PubIt, SW.




Saturday


Worked on a cover "Down Hill".




Sunday


Created a cover for "Waking Up …"
Created base ebook doc for "Waking Up…"
Formatted "Waking Up…" for KDP, PubIt, SW.
Uploaded "Waking Up…" to SW, PubIt.
Created a cover "Working Girl".
Created base ebook doc for "Working Girl".
Formatted "Working Girl" for KDP, PubIt, SW.




 
Reading List

50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School: Real World Antidotes to Feel-Good Education by Charles J. Sykes.
Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World by Tyler Cowen.

 
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Another Cover by the Author

 
I'm on a roll this weekend. I might even be doing a good job with all this rolling.
 

 
"Waking Up Can Kill You Some Days" – An action/urban fantasy story by David Michael. The Gray Angel is a hitwoman with a heart gold. She always gives the target a choice. Because everyone deserves a choice. Even a petty gangster like Dennis Karnof. (2100-word short story) (FREE on Swashwords, 99-cents on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.)
 
"Waking Up…" is from 2006, and has never been released as an ebook. The other two Gray Angel stories I've written will be released in the near future.
 
I'm having fun with Paint.NET and iStockPhoto. And, yes, with some old short stories. Paint.NET isn't the best graphic tool available, but it's very powerful for the price (free).Plus, the original photo cost me only 5 credits on iStockPhoto ($7.50). So that makes two short story covers this weekend for a total cash outlay of $15 (and a few hours of time). I can work with that.
 
My goal is to keep short story ebook covers as inexpensive as possible. Novels and collections, I don't mind spending more for covers, but short stories just can't carry heavy outlays of cash. I say this because I had actually started hesitating before writing short stories, not wanting to have buy a cover for it when I was done. The best way to get past that, I figured, besides winning the lottery, was to take cover design into my own hands. Thus all my graphic twiddling this weekend.
 
I'm looking forward to writing more short stories. Maybe even more Gray Angel stories.
 
-David
 
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Lookit! I Did a Cover!

 
I'm not saying it's a *GREAT* cover, but it's a cover designed by me. My first ever.
 

 
The ebook should be available in all the normal places in the next 48 hours or so.
 
"He Came" is included in Nasty, Brutish & Short Short, so I won't do much announcing besides this post.
 
Police respond to an emergency call at the house of known religious fanatic, William Revell, to find the floor, every wall, every window, even the ceiling, splattered and smeared with blood. "He came," Revell says when he's asked what happened. "He came…" (1200 word short short story)
 
The ebook is FREE from Smashwords, but $.99 from Amazon and Barnes & Noble (because they don't let me set FREE there).
 
My plan is to release a few more of my short short stories as separate ebooks with self-designed covers (I hope to get better as I go along). Most of those will have the same FREE/$.99 price structure, as well. Some of these will be stories already released in collections, but a few will be stories I haven't released yet.
 
Have a great weekend!
 
-David
 
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Short Story Ebook Covers9 Months of Indie Publishing – Ebook Pricing AddendumApril Wrapup

The Indie Alternative Part 1

 
Sometime back, I had the opportunity to speak for the ACM chapter (ACM="Association for Computing Machinery"; AKA "computer club") at my alma mater. After a bit of pondering, I decided to share with them one of the key lessons I've learned since I left college 13 years before (now 20 years), and tell them about "The Indie Alternative".
 
In short, the Indie Alternative is freedom. Freedom to follow your own dreams, to work on the projects you choose, to work with the people you choose (or work alone), and maybe, eventually, freedom from the tyranny of the paycheck.
 
Go to College, Get a Job…
 
For at least the back half of the 20th Century, the primary purpose of going to college seemed to be to get a job. And not just any job, but a well-paying job. And, maybe, if you were lucky, a job you liked.
 
The myth of working for a single corporation for your entire career was already dying by the time I started college in the fall of 1987, and had been shot quite dead by the time I graduated in the spring of 1991 (and found myself looking for a job in a recession). Still, the plum jobs were the ones with the biggest corporations, with the best benefits–especially strong 401k's.
 
The Internet Boom of the mid- to late-1990′s turned even that plan on its head, as college students dropped out, created startup companies, and became paper millionaires almost overnight. How could 3 weeks of paid vacation after 5 years with a company compare to the rush of an IPO?
 
Those heady days didn't last, though, and college has again become the post-high-school, pre-career refuge for people looking for stable jobs with adequate benefits.
 
But even though the days of venture capital firms gleefully throwing millions of dollars at any lame idea that crosses their desk have passed, there is still a whole world's worth of opportunity out there.
 
What I'm suggesting is: Do both. Go to college (or not, your choice) and get a job–and be an indie.
 
What is an "Indie"?
 
In the simplest terms, an "indie" is someone working on their own projects, on their own  time, for their own reasons. No one tells the indie they have to do what they're doing. No one is telling them how to do it. Being an indie is being you, and no one else.
 
Whether you want to make games, shoot movies, play music, write books, opine about the sad of politics, or anything else, you can.
 
That's the good news.
 
The flipside of doing your own thing, however, is that you probably won't get paid for it. At least not right away.
 
That's what the job is for. In case you were curious.
 
How to be a "Working Indie"
 
What usually happens after college? You get a job, you get married, you buy a house, you have children, and so on. The "American Dream", more or less, and there's nothing wrong with that path. But each step along that path tends to bind you tighter and tighter to your current job and its steady paycheck. Even if you skip the married-with-kids track, it's easy to get stuck in an earn-consume-earn-consume cycle because of "easy credit terms".
 
When we're in college, we dream big dreams, and make big plans. We're young, we're excited, and we have nothing to lose. After we graduate, though, and get a job, and get married, and buy a house, and so on, we do have something to lose. It's easy to become risk averse, to avoid taking actions that will threaten the status quo–and our standard of living.
 
I remember my boss at one job telling me how pleased he was to hear I was buying a house. And why wouldn't he be? A house means a mortgage with a monthly payment. That mortgage, along with the car payment and groceries and everything else involved with my standard of living, was yet another reason for me to show up at work every day, on time, and do what I was told.
 
But I was already a "working indie" by the time my wife and I bought our first house. I spent my 8-to-5 day working for my boss, and my evenings working on my own projects.
 
As a working indie, I was able to take advantage of "corporate welfare", in the form of a steady paycheck and employee benefits like paid vacation, health insurance, and so on (though, in this Republican-dominated era, those last few might be hard to find now) while taking small, virtually risk-free steps toward my independence.
 
You Are Not Your Job
 
The first step to becoming a working indie is realizing that you are not your job. What you do to the pay bills is just that: what you do to pay the bills. By working on your own projects on your own time, you take the first steps toward separating yourself from your job.
 
Too many of us define ourselves by what we get paid to do each workweek, just like in college we defined ourselves (and our future social status) by what we studied. In both cases, such thinking reduces our individuality and turns us into cogs in a bigger machine (the job or the university).
 
And who wants to be a cog?
 
Work to Live, Don't Live to Work
 
Once you've separated yourself from your day job, you will gain the perspective to see that you are working not to give your life meaning, but to provide funding for the life you really want to live.
 
This change in perspective also makes it possible for you to choose a job based solely on how well it fits your life. It makes it easy to limit the job's impact on your non-work life. Managers love freshly minted college graduates. Who else works so many hours for so little pay? But if this job is just how you earn your living, and you have a project of your own to work on when you get home, it's easy to resist the urge to clock 60-80 hours of salaried (exempt from overtime) pay.
 
Let your boss pay your living expenses while you handle the actual living on your own time.
 
Work for Yourself
 
Once you recognize that you are not your job, and are using your job as a source of income to cover your living expenses, you have become a free agent. You are working for yourself. And working for yourself is what being an indie is all about.
 
When you work for yourself, you choose the projects you work on. Which can be a heady feeling all by itself. More importantly, though, when you have completed your independent project you own it. It's yours. From first frame to last, from "Prologue" to "The End", from the title screen to the final credits, it's all yours.
 
Anyone who's worked in corporate America can tell you about long hours spent toiling on The Next Big Product. Weeks, months, maybe years, are spent completing bullet point after bullet point to come down to the final day. It's completed! And after the small in-house celebration, they get a plaque, a t-shirt, and dinner with the CEO (if they're lucky, the boss picks up the tab). And then they get handed the blueprints for The New Improved Next Big Product.
 
Welcome to the Rat Race.
 
Unless you own the company, you might as well get used to Xmas Hams and the occasional pat on the back as all the royalty payment you will ever get for your hard work.
 
If you own the result of your labor, though, you have a lot more options.
 
Don't be Afraid to Start Small
 
It may take some time, but you're young(ish). You have time. That's why retirement counselors like to show charts of the millions of dollars you could retire with if you just put $100/month in savings at 10% (gawd, those were the days, neh?), starting from age 25.
 
Being an indie can be just like that kind of investment: you start small, keep it up over time, and re-invest your earnings.
 
Your first indie projects may not show much financial return, but there are other kinds of rewards. For example, the pride of seeing your something you imagined become a reality. It's hard to beat the self-esteem boost of the simple phrase, said while pointing proudly to the completed project: "I made that."
 
Every completed project teaches you something about yourself while simultaneously improving your skills at writing, filmmaking, programming, or whatever. Experience is built by completing projects. The more projects you complete, the more experience you get–and the more intellectual property you own.
 
Sooner or later everyone has a hobby. Or several hobbies. What are hobbies? They're a form of self-expression that usually ends up soaking up both all your spare time and spare money. Why not pick a hobby that has a chance of paying you back?
 
Next Week: The Indie Alternative Part 2
 
Next week, I will continue describing the Indie Alternative, covering more of the nuts-and-bolts of being a working indie.
 
-David
 
NOTE: This was originally posted on my Joe Indie blog in 2004. At the time, I had be a self-employed indie for 5 years. Now I'm coming up on 13 years.
 
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Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, October 31, 2011.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday








Tuesday


Gunwitch2 brainstorming.







Wednesday








Thursday


Gunwitch2 brainstorming.







Friday








Saturday








Sunday


















Total








 








Publishing/Marketing




Monday





Tuesday


Posted "The World of Gunwitch" to blog, 4CL, KB, NB, MR, Twitter.




Wednesday





Thursday





Friday





Saturday





Sunday





 
Reading List
 
Related Posts:
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A Story Emerges

 
In On Writing, Stephen King uses the analogy of carefully digging out a fossil to describe how he "finds" his stories. The concept being that the story is already there, but it's also very fragile. We can't dig it out too fast or we run the risk of damaging a delicate artifact.
 
On Writing is a great book, and I can't recommend it enough, but I'm not sure I do it that way. In fact, I'm sure I don't. I think I tend to pile a lot of ideas in a heap and then start sifting (wallowing) around in them to see which ones click in my head–and click together in interesting ways.
 
So far, after a couple weeks of sporadic "Gunwitch2 brainstorming", I have about 9000 words of accumulated notes and outline beginnings. I think I've sifted-clicked-together the first third of the novel outline, which is cool. I know the overall arc I want the story to follow, so I have a rough idea of how the rest of the outline will come together.
 
What's kinda funny/interesting to me is that the story that's emerging hasn't got a lot in common with where I started. Most of the first ideas shovelled on the pile are still there, but not in their original form. And some few of those ideas are buried, no longer even visible. For example, I thought I had my title when I started, and I think that tripped me up a bit, but now I know that I'm just going to call it "Gunwitch2″ until such time as a real title comes to me. (My plan is to use that title for another, later sequel.)
 
One of the issues I had to contend with was what kind of sequel I was writing. It was tempting to pick up right where Gunwitch ended and carry forward. Much the way the Wheel of Time books by Robert Jordan were written. That's how I plan to write the sequels for GoSH1, with one story leading right into the other, but that approach didn't feel right for Gunwitch2.
 
After lots of typing and pondering, I realized that what I wanted was more akin to Louis L'Amour's Sackett novels. Sorta. That is, largely standalone novels that comprise a greater whole. And with no need or intention of writing them in sequential order, or always about the same characters. More a superset of characters and situations that sometimes cross paths. That said, Gunwitch2 will (so far) be about Rose, and will (so far) take place after Gunwitch. There will be other familiar characters in the novel, and some references to events in the first novel. Which means, yes, Gunwitch2 will be a sequel. Really. Just, you know, some time has passed.
 
Unfortunately, I won't be getting my outline finished this week. Tomorrow morning I'm headed off to three days of tabletop wargaming in Springfield, MO, at Warmachine Weekend 2011. I wasn't planning to go…but now I'm going. One of life's little surprises.
 
Have a great weekend!
 
-David
 
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Risking it All to Take That Step…Or are You?

 
Sometimes we avoid taking certain actions because of the risk of failure. It's a part of being human. Often, though, we let ourselves be stopped by the perceived risk, or the perceived cost of failure, without putting the risk in its proper context.
 
I used to go "bouldering" at a nearby park. Demolition (to build the Arkansas River spillway, I think) decades ago left a lot of exposed rock face, and in the spring I used to head up there with some buddies to drink beer and climb rocks. (Fortunately, most of the rock faces are only 3-5 meters high, so we weren't being that reckless. We thought we were pretty impressive, though, climbing with a beer in one hand. Then we met a one-armed man doing the same thing.)
 
There was one spot in the park that proved interesting: a place where two 5-meter cliffs came to within less than than a meter of each other. The distance between them was so small any adult could easily step across without even breaking stride. You had to be aware of the drop, of course, but otherwise it was a quick step and onward.
 
What happened, though, was that people would treat that short open space as almost impassable. Many would never step over it, choosing to remain on the side they were on rather than take the step to the other side. They could see that the gap was incredibly narrow. They would even agree, if asked, that the gap was less than their normal walking stride. But they wouldn't step over it.
 
To be fair, the first time I came to it, I paused to consider it too. I think anyone would. A 5-meter drop down a rough, stone cliff, to land on more rock, is definitely a cost of failure that should be considered. But how many times a day or week do we walk along a busy street, often less than a meter away from vehicles hurtling along at speeds that would be fatal if they hit us? That's another situation where a single misstep could put you in a lot of danger, and yet most people never even think about it. Why? Familiarity? Obliviousness? A mix of both? Once I actually stepped across that gap, though, like everyone else who would just take the step, from then on I could take it at a run. Just pay attention to where you are, and take it in stride.
 
One obvious lesson is that some people just don't like risk, and avoid it when the perceived cost of failure is just too high–even if the real *chance* of failure is miniscule. They only see what *could* go wrong, and they let that stop them.
 
Another lesson is that I could never get anyone to take that step who didn't want to. They had to decide for themselves.
 
But that never stopped me from trying to point out how safe and easy the whole thing was, and how little risk there really was.
 
I'm stubborn, I guess, and yet optimistic. I really do believe that anyone can achieve whatever they want. But *they* have to believe it too.
 
-David
 
NOTE: This was originally posted on my Joe Indie blog in 2004.
 
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