David R. Michael's Blog, page 37
January 10, 2011
Writing Progress Report
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, January 3, 2011.
Writing Project
Words
Monday
Gunwitch
3022
Tuesday
Gunwitch
3141
Wednesday
Gunwitch
3029
Thursday
Gunwitch
3018
Friday
Gunwitch
767
Saturday
Gunwitch
1283
Sunday
Gunwitch
749
Total
15009
Marketing/Submission
Monday
Updated promo thread for HG on KB, MR, and NB.
Tuesday
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Created CreateSpace project for Demon Candy.
Saturday
Sunday
Reading List
The Delta Star by Joseph Wambaugh.
January 9, 2011
Not Exactly How I Planned It…
So, I finished my first 15K words of 2011 today. My plan was to finish them Friday (because I like weekends off), but the last 3K words ended up spread over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Nasty allergies on Friday, and other responsibilities yesterday and today.
But I got 'em done!
My plan for next week is: Do it again.
I finished chapters 11, 12, and 13 of Gunwitch this week, and I'm about half way through chapter 14. At this rate, I should be able to type "The End" for Gunwitch before the end of January. Which is, of course, The Plan.
Which also means I should definitely get cracking planning what I'm writing next…
In other news, Don sent me the cover for Demon Candy today. Here is a sneak peek:
I hope to be announcing the release of Demon Candy before the end of January. I'm looking forward to it. I I like releasing new books.
Have fun!
-David
January 6, 2011
My 2010 Reading List
Fiction
Red Thunder by John Varley.
The Skystone by Jack Whyte.
Insatiable by Marne Davis Kellogg.
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead by Tom Stoppard.
Trading Tatiana by Debi Alper.
Runaway Twin by Peg Kehret.
The Cricket in Times Square by George Selden, with drawings by Garth Williams.
The Family Trade by Charles Stross.
The Stupidest Angel: A Heartwarming Tale of Christmas Terror by Christopher Moore.
The Hidden Family by Charles Stross.
The Clan Corporate by Charles Stross.
Bite Me: A Love Story by Christopher Moore.
Wireless by Charles Stross.
Fiction: A Pocket Anthology, Third Edition edited by R. S. Gwynn.
The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler.
Last of the Amazons by Steven Pressfield.
Reaper Man by Terry Pratchett.
Mouse Guard: Fall 1152 by David Petersen.
Mouse Guard: Winter 1152 by David Petersen.
Nation by Terry Pratchett.
The House with a Clock in Its Walls by John Bellairs.
The Road by Cormac McCarthy.
A Handful of Dust by Evelyn Waugh.
Cell: A Novel by Stephen King.
Nobel Lies by Charles Benoit.
The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett.
The Bookman's Wake by John Dunning.
The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larsson.
The Figure in the Shadows by John Bellairs.
Lines and Shadows by Joseph Wambaugh.
May There be a Road by Louis L'Amour.
On My Way to Paradise by David Farland.
The Translated Man by Chris Braak.
Wizard in Waiting by Mark Fassett.
Haiku by Andrew Vachss.
Extraordinary Engines, edited by Nick Gevers.
Draculas by J.A. Konrath, Blake Crouch, Jack Kilborn, and F. Paul Wilson.
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.
Salem's Lot by Stephen King.
Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia.
The Letter, the Witch and the Ring by John Bellairs.
Tripwire by Lee Child.
The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett.
Nonfiction – Writing
How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lights by Ariel Gore.
Rejection, Romance & Royalties: The Wacky World of a Working Writer by Laura Resnick.
Other Spaces, Other Times: A Life Spent in the Future by Robert Silverberg.
The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle by Steven Pressfield.
Nonfiction
My Life in France by Julia Child.
Looking for Calvin and Hobbes: The Unconventional Story of Bill Watterson and his Revolutionary Comic Strip by Nevin Martell.
The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss.
A History of the World in 6 Glasses by Tom Standage.
A People's History of the United States: 1492-Present by Howard Zinn.
The New Elite: Inside the Minds of the Truly Wealthy by Jim Taylor, Doug Harrison, and Stephen Kraus.
You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto by Jaron Lanier.
Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness by Richard H. Thaler and Cass R. Sunstein.
Creative Capitalism: A Conversation with Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and other Economic Leaders, edited by Michael Kinsley.
Frankenstein: A Cultural History by Susan Tyler Hitchcock.
Wrong: Why Experts* Keep Failing Us–And How to Know When Not to Trust Them by David H. Freedman.
House Thinking: A Room-by-Room Look at How We Live by Winifred Gallagher.
Bounce: Mozart, Federer, Picasso, Beckham, and the Science of Success by Matthew Syed.
The Devil's Broker: Seeking Gold, God, and Glory in Fourteenth Century Italy by Frances Stonor Saunders.
RPG
GURPS: Mysteries by Lisa J. Steele.
GURPS Discworld by Terry Pratchett and Phil Masters, illustrated by Paul Kidby.
GURPS 4e Low-Tech.
I count 64 books for 2010. This year I cut all the books I didn't finish. Not even going to list them. There were 20-ish books I started and didn't finish for one reason or the other. If I hadn't wasted my time one those, I probably could've finished another 5-10 books, at least. Ah, well. So it goes sometimes.
I bolded my favorites for the year.
Happy reading!
-David
My 2009 Reading List
My 2008 Reading List
My 2007 Reading List
My 2006 Reading List
January 4, 2011
Dark Eva Reviews THE SUMMONING FIRE
Dark Eva Reviews The Summoning Fire!
The writing style is very engaging, to the point, and direct, which helps flesh out the characters…
I'd like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the author for casting a demon who actually acts like one and doesn't spend the entire novel moping about his existence and how sorry he was to be born. And he uses a magic language system that isn't Latin or Anglo-Saxon derived, which is a nice change…
A word of caution: this novel contains highly graphic depictions of violence. I'm not talking about cartoon violence. I mean that if you squirm at some highly graphic, sadomasochistic sex scenes, you might want to skip this one, as Michael doesn't hold back at all…
Click here to read the whole review.
-David
Where I Live in What I Write
Write what you know, they say.
When it comes to where I set my stories, I do that a lot. Here are a few quick examples:
The Summoning Fire – I had Hell make their Rift here in Tulsa, where I live. So, yes, Tulsa is the geographic center of Hell on Earth. Too bad it got rather … blasted.
"Nostalgia" – I set the story at the Tulsa State Fair. I think I even mentioned that in the story.
Demon Candy – All of the stories in the soon-to-be-released collection are set here in Tulsa.
"The Perfect Hiding Place" – I set the story in my rather suburban neighborhood. The chimps live in my house. For that matter, so do the two kids.
Nasty, Brutish & Short Short – Multiple stories in the collection are set in the house we used to live in. "Emmy", "When Writers Attack", and "Straightening Up" all happen in a house with the exact same floorplan.
The Girl Who Ran With Horses – Set in Oklahoma, mentions Tulsa a few times.
A few more:
"Wind Up MILF Action Figure On Her Day Off" – Starts out at a Tulsa apartment complex where we used to live.
"Effie Two-Five" – Set in a fictionalized, urbanized version of Tulsa that I call Rio Cruces (which is a Spanish phrase that means "river crossing", which, if you dig deep enough, is what Tulsa meant in some Native American language).
"Evanescent" – A story I haven't released yet also takes place in my neighborhood. I even used the odd-looking house across the street from us. And a Starbucks a couple miles away.
Most of the time, though, you probably wouldn't know. I don't use names city names or street names a lot. I don't usually go into a lot of nitty gritty setting detail. I paint with a broad brush. Like the old house where we used to live. I don't describe the house so much as that's the house I have in my mind while I'm telling the story. Where the details are important, I include them. To you, when you read the story, it probably looks completely different. I'm OK with that.
So, yeah, write what you know.
-David
January 3, 2011
A Stevie Story
NOTE: This is the second story I wrote about Stevie Buckbee. You can read the first story here. In this story, the family names and horse names are all settled, as is most of the backstory. So this story is almost canon.
Stevie Gets Back in the Saddleby David Michael
"Yes," Stevie Buckbee said, again, "I'm ready. I have to do this. Today."
"Do you want me to hold him?" Dad asked.
"No," Stevie said. "This is between him and me."
Thirteen year old Stevie couldn't quite lift the saddle over Jack Rabbit's back, so Dad had saddled the horse, then led him into the corral. There Dad had dropped the reins and said for the umpteenth time that morning, "Are you ready? You don't have to do this yet. You have all day."
But she did have to do it, ready or not. The fingers of her right hand brushed across the scar on her lip, a nervous habit she had developed the last couple weeks.
Forcing her hands to her sides, Stevie pushed herself off the top rail of the fence, landing so that the impact pushed her feet deeper into her boots. She hesitated only an instant before walking to where Jack Rabbit stood, looking as nervous as she felt, his eyes flicking from her to Dad to her brother Blake and then back to her.
As Stevie moved toward Jack Rabbit, Dad moved to the fence, where Blake also stood, watching, the two of them giving the girl and the horse space. Not a lot of space, though.
Stevie looked Jack Rabbit in the eye as she stepped up. "It's OK, boy," she said. She let the reins continue to hang untouched while she stroked Jack Rabbit's long nose with her right hand. "See? The bruise is almost gone. The scars are healing."
"My god, Stevie," her friends at school had said the first day after spring break. "What happened to your face?"
Even Kelly Butcher and Amber Coffee, her nemeses at school and soccer and all things social, had been taken aback. At least on the first day. By Friday they had been back to normal, and their comments about the bruises had moved from concern to pity to assurances that "your new face can't help but be an improvement."
On the first day of spring break, not quite two weeks ago, Jack Rabbit had thrown Stevie, then kicked her, one of his rear hooves hitting her in the face. Which hoof no one seemed to agree on. All Stevie could remember was moving up to help Blake, seeing Jack Rabbit hunch, and then feeling the shock, breathing the dust as she lay on the packed earth of the corral, staring up at the sky, one eye swelling shut while she tasted blood, wondering if she had lost any teeth.
"Everything's OK, boy," Stevie said, still stroking Jack Rabbit's nose. She couldn't be sure if she was reassuring the horse or just putting off the moment. The moment she had to face.
Getting thrown hadn't hurt Stevie any. Except her pride. Some. She had lived around horses her entire life. She had been thrown more times than she could remember. She had learned to get up, dust herself off, and get back on. And, after enough times, she had learned how to slide off, how to land on her feet, how to not get hurt.
Jack Rabbit was her horse, though. Her first horse that was really hers. A three year old gelding that Dad purchased just for her.
Stevie hadn't had much time to ride Jack Rabbit. A couple times at Thanksgiving, then Christmas. They had ridden all over the ranch during the days of Christmas break. Those days had been the best, and she had hated traveling back to her Aunt's house in far away Tulsa for school again. Stevie had been looking forward to spring break ever since, through almost three whole months.
But she had only been able to ride Jack Rabbit once. And he had thrown her. Then kicked her.
Dad had almost killed Jack Rabbit that first night. He had gotten as far as loading the gun. But he had calmed down as both Stevie and Blake convinced him that it wasn't the horse's fault. They had been careless. Dad calmed down, but not before chewing out Blake and Stevie both.
Dad wasn't at the corral when it happened, hadn't even been at the ranch. It had just been Blake and Stevie, putting the young horse through his daily exercise.
Jack Rabbit had thrown her as soon as she settled into the saddle. Blake had made sure Stevie was alright, then taken the reins, stepped into the stirrup and threw his leg over. "I'll settle him down a bit for you," he had said. But then Jack Rabbit had hunched and jumped and Blake, caught by surprise, had flown off too. Stevie had moved to help Blake–and stupidly walked behind the horse.
Blake had rushed Stevie to the emergency room, calling Dad on the way.
Blake had blamed himself. Dad had blamed Blake too, before he started blaming the horse and loading his gun. Stevie had cried and cried. Jack Rabbit was her horse, and now Dad was going to kill him, but it wasn't Jack Rabbit's fault.
That had been a bad day for everyone at the ranch.
The week hadn't improved much after that. Dad wouldn't let her ride again, not any horse, not that week. He had stopped drinking, though, mostly, that week, as he took care of Stevie. That had almost made up for her not being able to ride, seeing Dad sober and helping Blake with the daily chores.
"It's not your fault, boy," Stevie said, keeping her voice calm. "I still love you." She finally reached for the reins.
Jack Rabbit tensed as she took the reins and moved down his left side. Left hand on the pommel, holding the reins tight, she put her left foot in the stirrup. Then she put her right hand on the cantle of the saddle. Jack Rabbit shifted.
She heard both Dad and Blake begin to move from their positions by the fence.
"Steady boy," she said, loud enough for all three of the men in her life to hear. Despite the confidence she tried to keep in her voice, she was scared. She had to get back in the saddle now. Or she wouldn't have another chance before summer.
Dad had driven up to get her last night, a four hour trip both ways. And he would have to repeat the trip, drive her back tomorrow night. That was unusual, a rare outing for him. Stevie harbored no hopes that he might be willing to do it again before school was out.
It was now or never.
Taking a deeper breath than was necessary, she pulled herself up, swinging her right foot over the saddle. She secured her right foot in its stirrup before she settled into the saddle. Jack Rabbit shifted again, and both Dad and Blake edged forward.
She kept her left hand on the pommel, still gripping the reins, her knuckles white. With her right hand, she patted Jack Rabbit's back. "It's OK, boy," she said. "It's all good."
Jack Rabbit snorted and shook his head, but that was all.
"All is forgiven," she went on. "But let's talk about it as we walk, OK?"
Jack Rabbit snorted again, but when Stevie relaxed the reins and touched his ribs with toe of her boot, he moved forward.
Stevie smiled at Dad and Blake, as she and her horse walked away. She turned her attention back to Jack Rabbit. "All is forgiven," she repeated. Jack Rabbit flicked his ears, as he listened to her. "You're just lucky you didn't knock any of my teeth out. Dad would've been so upset then, about all that dental work down the drain…"
Writing Progress Report
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, December 27, 2010.
Writing Project
Words
Monday
Line edited "Afterimage" with Editor.
Tuesday
Line edited "Afterimage" with Editor.
Wednesday
Edited "Inferno".
Line edited "Inferno" with Editor.
Edited "Summer Breeze".
Edited "Sweet Tooth".
Thursday
Line edited "Summer Breeze".
Line edited "Sweet Tooth".
Created project for Demon Candy book interior.
Friday
Finished "rough cut" of Demon Candy printed book interior.
Planned next two short story collections.
Saturday
Sunday
Total
Marketing/Submission
Monday
Setup all 6 ebooks on Smashwords so they now ship to Sony and Apple stores.
Posted a 5-page preview of TSF to Guns & Magic.
Updated promo thread for HG on KB and MR.
Updated promo thread for TSF on KB and MR.
Tuesday
Updated promo thread for HG on NB.
Updated promo thread for TSF on NB.
Built a tool for converting my blog-formatted stories into basic ebook formatting.
Wednesday
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Updated promo thread for "Baptism" on KB and MR.
Created a promo thread for "Baptism" on NB.
Created a promo thread for "Nostalgia" on NB.
Created a promo thread for NBSS on NB.
Created a promo thread for Serene Morning on NB.
Reading List
The Warded Man by Peter V. Brett.
January 2, 2011
I'm Interviewed on I Am A Reader, Not A Writer
Author Interview & Book Giveaway: The Girl Who Ran With Horses by David Michael
If you could invite any 5 people to dinner who would you choose?
Mark Twain, Robert Heinlein, Elliot Erwitt, Vincent Van Gogh, and Tom Petty.
That would be one bizarre/awesome dinner party.
If you could be one of the Greek Gods, which would it be, male or
female, doesn't matter and why?
I loved James Woods's portrayal of Hades in "Hercules". If I could be that cool, I'd go for Hades. Otherwise, I'd probably settle for Ares. If you're going to be a god, might as well be in charge of something cool.
And you can sign up for a giveaway of The Girl Who Ran With Horses!
Read the whole interview here…
-David
December 31, 2010
Woot! Royalties!
Amazon DTP direct deposited my first Kindle ebook earnings this week. Not a lot of money, but very exciting nonetheless.
Now I just need CreateSpace, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble to cough up.
-David
December 30, 2010
How I Stopped Feeling Like a Self-Published Author
I made the decision to "go indie" with my writing this year. I don't regret this decision in the slightest. But even after releasing The Summoning Fire, a couple short stories, and a some flash fiction collections, I still didn't feel like a Real Author.
When I thought about going to a local writers con next year, I felt nervous about mentioning my book to anyone I met. Because it was, you know, self-published. When I showed the printed proof to a local writing group, I got the delusional relative treatment. Obviously, I should be pitied–and I must suck–because I had taken publishing into my own hands.
Sometime in November, though, around the time I released The Girl Who Ran With Horses, I started feeling like a Real Author. I didn't even notice the transition. I only spotted the change in my attitude in the last couple weeks.
Selling copies of both books helped, as well as accumulating mostly-favorable reviews from people I don't know. But I think the real cause of the change was simple math.
That is, I added 1 more novel to my list.
The stereotypical self-published author of the 20th century spent years writing his magnum opus. He is the Great American Author of the Great American Novel. He has written a book that simply must be published. He doesn't mind spending the money because the book is that important to him–and to the world. And once he's done this service to humanity, he doesn't write anything else. Why would he? He's already written the most important book ever. Look at how long it took him to finish. It must be important. Look at the rejections from publishers. It must be ahead of its time. And so on.
That's not what I was doing. That's not how I was approaching the release of my books. But I still felt the stigma and shame associated with self-publishing.
With the release of my second novel, though, I (finally) broke out of that pattern in my mind.
With the upcoming release of Demon Candy next month I will break out further. Then still more with the release of another short novel in February. After that, I have even more work that I will be releasing. Plus, I'll be writing more than ever before as I pursue my goal of full-time writing. Full-time indie writing.
There are still some lingering bits of self-published shame clinging to my psyche. But I think I should be rid of them before the end of 2011. Consider it another goal for the New Year.
-David
