David R. Michael's Blog, page 41

The Origin of Nasty, Brutish & Short Short

I wrote my first horror story in 2006 as part of a project I called "A Short Story a Day". Surprised me rather. Didn't know I had it in me.
 
By the end of the year, I had written just over 200 short stories (just over 150 if you take out the stories that later became chapters in The Summoning Fire and a yet-to-be-released novella). I only labelled 11 of those as "horror" when I wrote them. Many of the rest (just like The Summoning Fire, BTW), I didn't consider horror at all. I thought of them as "urban fantasy". Maybe "dark urban fantasy". Sometimes "speculative fiction". But not horror.
 
I have since been corrected.
 
All of the stories collected in Nasty, Brutish & Short Short were written during the A Short Story a Day project. Which is why they're flash fiction. These are the best of the darkest stories I wrote that year–whether or not I thought they were horror at the time I wrote them.
 
Happy reading!
 
-David
 
PS If you're curious about the A Short Story a Day project, you can learn more about that here:
A Short Story a Day: A Post Mortem
 

Back to the Treadmill

 
I spent 3-4 weeks after the release of The Summoning Fire submitting the book for reviews. It was a somewhat tedious business.
 
I started at the beginning of a list of reviewers and book blogs and visited each one's Web page. I checked to see if the Web page was current or the blog still active. Then I had to find their review policy to see if they accepted horror novels. Then I had to find where they had hidden their contact info. Finally, I sent a request for a book review, giving the title of the book and a short summary, and offering a free copy (ebook or paperback).
 
And I did that over and over and over. I would reach the end of one list of reviewers and blogs, and start on another list. Eventually, I ran out of lists.
 
I've sent out a few review requests since "the end of major operations" in that regard. Usually because I bump into a new reviewer or blog that sounds promising (and accepts horror).
 
Overall, I think I did a pretty good job. I had never done anything like that before. I even improved my short description of The Summoning Fire and my query email as I went along. I've had 6-7 reviews already come in, and there are still more on the way.
 
The real point of this post, though, is that I get to do all of that all over again. This time for The Girl Who Ran With Horses.
 

 
On the upside, since I've done this before I'm better at it now. Somewhat improved, anyway.
 
Also, there are far, far more reviewers who will accept "Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy" books for review than "Horror". So I should be able to net more positive responses to my queries. This means sending out more free copies of the book, of course, but I'm cool with that. In fact, I'm looking forward to it.
 
Finally, it helps that I have a really good short description of the book already. Between myself and five or six other early readers, we hammered out a short description/back cover blurb. That I then improved on still more yesterday as I went around to various places announcing the book.
 
So, back to the treadmill. As an indie author, I can't expect anyone else to do this for me. Certainly not for what I'm willing to pay myself to do it…
 
-David
 

The Girl Who Ran With Horses – Now Available!

 

 
Welcome Home, Stevie!
 
It's summer vacation and all 13-year-old Stevie Buckbee wants is to be close to her family again and to ride her horses–especially her first horse all her own, Jack Rabbit. But past tragedies threaten her plans before the summer even begins. Even as she discovers that she is somehow able to communicate with Jack Rabbit and the other horses on the family ranch, she finds she can no longer get through to her Dad and brother Blake. And what good is it to be able to run with the horses if no matter how fast and how far she runs, everything she knows and loves is lost?
 
The Girl Who Ran With Horses
 
Available in trade paperback and ebook formats!
 




The Girl Who Ran With Horses Edition


Price




Trade paperback (Amazon)


$9.99




Kindle edition (Amazon)


$3.99




Nook edition (Barnes & Noble) – Coming Soon!


$3.99




Ebook (Smashwords)


$3.99




 

Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, November 22, 2010.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Gunwitch outline review and edit.
Gunwitch



1027




Tuesday


Gunwitch outline review and edit.







Wednesday


Gunwitch


1085




Thursday


Gunwitch


544




Friday


Gunwitch


380




Saturday


Gunwitch
Edited "Insanity".


1042




Sunday


















Total



4078




 








Marketing/Submission




Monday


Posted Part 3 of "Baptism" to Guns & Magic. Updated promo threads at KB and MR.
Formatted Horse Girl ebook for Smashwords.




Tuesday





Wednesday


Created a promo thread for TSF on Nook Boards.
Formatted Horse Girl ebook for Amazon DTP.
Formatted Horse Girl ebook for PubIt.




Thursday


Uploaded Horse Girl to Amazon DTP.
Uploaded Horse Girl to PubIt.
Uploaded Horse Girl to Smashwords.




Friday


Submitted TSF for review to darkeva.
Updated TSF promo threads on KB and MR.




Saturday





Sunday


Tagged all my books on Amazon.




 
Reading List

Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia.

 

Amazon Book Tagging

 
Today I learned about a feature on Amazon called "tagging". Go to any book page on Amazon (click on one of mine if you need a handy example), and scroll down to "Tags Customers Associate with This Product". The particular tags (like "horror", "revenge", etc) are used by Amazon to find similar books, recommend books, and generally organize all the millions of books available. To put it another way: tags help your book get found on Amazon.
 
Authors can select an initial set of tags. Readers can use (check) those tags or add their own. The tags with the most "votes" move up in the list.
 
I had not paid much attention to this feature until today when I finally read the "Author Tag Exchange" thread on KindleBoards.
 
I spent a few hours today "exchanging" tags with other authors, and learning from the tags those authors had selected for their own books.
 
Before today, I had not set any tags on my own books. I assure you that mistake has been rectified.
 
Here are a couple thoughts that came to me as I tagged about 200 or so books (yes, it was a slow Sunday afternoon):

I am an indie. My books aren't. 99.9% of readers could not care less that I'm an "indie author". They're just looking for a good book.
I am not a "Kindle author". I'm an author . Again, why would I tag my book with "kindle author"? Readers don't care. The Kindle is just one of the platforms I'm supporting.

 
So, yeah, that's what I did today, marketing-wise.
 
-David
 

How I Built The Summoning Fire

 
This is the structure I used to outline and write the first draft of The Summoning Fire :
 

 
In short, the story was built and written as a spiral, expanding outwards.
 
Why a spiral?
 
Why not?
 
The idea for a "spiral structured story" occurred to me in August 2006, appealed to me immediately, and I refused to let it go. My original idea was to spiral *in*, instead of *out*, but the storyline I came up with seemed to work better exploding out from the center.
 
It took me a couple days to decide on the shape of the spiral, including the positioning of the little "spurs" that come off the main arms (which represent the stories of secondary characters related or tangential to the particular main storyline). And for some reason, I insisted on having the shape visually balanced.
 
The vertical axis is time, with the past at the top and the future at the bottom. The horizontal axis is less well defined. I started out with the idea that the horizontal axis indicated "relevance" to the central event. But that's not quite it. And, frankly, the time aspect of the vertical axis got abused quite a bit.
 
Ultimately, though, it doesn't matter what either axis represents. I wasn't trying to create a 100% accurate representation of the story in 2D space. And I'm not even sure what that means.
 
So, once you get down to the essentials, this picture is just a graphic aid, a pretty diagram for a story with 4 main storylines that either converge toward or diverge from a particular event.
 
I liked the experimental, non-linear nature of the spiral.
 
I wrote the first draft of The Summoning Fire exactly as shown, with the exception of cutting the planned chapters #14 and #22. As I reached those chapters, they seemed redundant. I had already covered what those chapters had been outlined for.
 
The final draft, though, the story as it is now in paperback and ebook, was shifted a bit to make it less confusing (your mileage may vary ). Also, and perhaps more importantly/usefully, I added the simple phrases "Before the Fire" and "After the Fire" to each chapter heading. The "Before the Fire" chapters move backwards from the first chapter, while the "After the Fire" chapters move forward from the fire.
 
-David
 

A Thanksgiving Scene

 
This is an excerpt from my first completed novel, Threads:
 
* * *
 
(Editor's Note: "Jack" is a 15 year old girl, Jacqueline Weber.)
 
Jack and Dad spent Thanksgiving day as they had for the previous nine years. They worked all morning fixing enough food to feed a small army. Dad prepared the turkey, herb stuffing, and green bean casserole, while Jack created the cranberry sauce, baked the dinner rolls, and candied the yams. In the living room, the TV blasted out commentaries on the many floats and marching bands parading across the country.
 
When the feast was ready and spread on their small dining table, Dad took Jack's hand and said, "Thanks, Jack."
 
Jack smiled and responded, "Thanks, Dad."
 
And then they ate.
 
There had been few "family traditions", as Dad called them, before Mom died. Not that Mom hadn't tried to create some. She had frequently set up mini-celebrations on random days picked for obscure reasons, as well as celebrated most of the more traditional holidays. Little Jackie and Dad, however, had been more inclined to lay about the house on these days, wearing pajamas until almost evening, watching TV and playing games and otherwise just being happy slobs. When Mom had found out she was pregnant with the baby, however, she had declared that next year was going to be different.
 
The next year had been very different.
 
Beginning with that first painful New Years, Dad and Jack had planned out which holidays, and special Mom Days, they would celebrate, and structured their celebration in ways that Mom would have approved of. Valentines Day they skipped, because Mom always hated its commercialism, choosing instead to celebrate "Sweethearts Day" in mid-March. On Easter they decorated eggs, and participated in whatever public egg hunts they could find. Flag Day and Independence Day were the summer holidays, with Halloween and Thanksgiving being the fall holidays. Christmas and New Years completed the set. They spent the holidays together, for themselves and for Mom.
 
After eating as much as they could, an important part of the Thanksgiving tradition, Jack and Dad put away the leftovers, packaging them to be eaten over the next week, also a part of the tradition. Then they rested on the sofa and flipped through the various football games and network TV movies, watching nothing for more than a few minutes before moving on. Dad sat with his feet on the ottoman, while Jack sat sideways with her feet in his lap.
 
Jack's eyes drifted from the TV screen to Dad's profile. His eyes were drooping, though only slightly more than Jack's.
 
Mom always seemed present on these days–and after the full moon last week, Jack wondered if maybe she really was–but she and Dad never talked about her. If they didn't talk about her, then Mom might be in the kitchen, putting up the last of the leftovers, or in the bedroom at her craft table, pinning a quilt. She might emerge from either place at any moment to wake up Dad and Jack, remind them that a movie was coming on that they wanted to watch. Talking about her, though, would break the spell, force them to remember.
 
Dad had said nothing about what he had seen at the full moon dance. Jack longed to know what Mom had said to him, wanted to know if he had seen her or only felt her there. Dad had known Mom from long before Jack arrived. They had been husband and wife, boyfriend and girlfriend, classmates, years before they became Dad and Mom. Jack knew this, but it still seemed an odd concept. She liked to think that she knew everything about Dad. But there were still secrets, secrets only Mom would ever know. That night under the full moon had been a private moment between her parents, such as few children ever got to see. She didn't really need to know what they said to each other, she decided. Seeing them together again, even if only so briefly, was enough, and was more than she had had a right to hope for.
 
"Yeah," Dad said suddenly. "Me too."
 
Jack found she had to blink away tears to see Dad. She hadn't realized she was crying. Dad looked at her, his face full of compassion.
 
She wiped her eyes, mad at herself for spoiling the day. "I'm sorry," she said.
 
"Don't be," Dad told her.
 
Jack returned his smile as she felt a small stirring in her mind. Sylvia must have noticed the momentary distress and turned her attention to Jack. Jack sent a heartfelt, Thanks, Sylvia, and received a warm rush of gratitude in return.
 
* * *
 
Happy Thanksgiving!
 
-David
 

Enjoy Your Freedom (To Write Whatever You Want) While Ye May

 
New authors in general, but new indie authors in particular, should take full advantage of the freedom that obscurity makes possible. When you first start out, and no one is paying you to write anything in particular, you can (and should) write whatever the hell strikes your fancy. Be it charnal horror or low fantasy or space opera or romantic action plumbing, if you can think of it, you should write it. And you should write it quick, before you start making money at one or the other genre.
 
Because once you start earning money with a form of writing or a particular genre or sub-genre, you've entered the Positive Feedback Loop.
 
No money coming in? Total creative freedom.
 
Money starts flowing? Totally different situation.
 
Once money gets involved, it colors everything. It especially colors your choice of next project.
 
Money is to writers (and artists of all types) what food pellets are to rats in a researcher's cage. The rats mill about until they figure out that hitting the lever in the back corner of the cage gives them a food pellet. Then there's a lot less milling about, and lots and lots of hitting the lever and eating the food.
 
You write something that makes money, and you've found yourself a lever you can hit, a button you can push. A button that gives you money. A button you're going to want to push as many times and as often as you can.
 
This isn't bad, necessarily. The button is neutral. You choosing to push the button isn't an evil act. Most of the time, it's probably the best thing to do. Especially when "best" is defined as "what will make me the most money for the time/work invested?"
 
What happens is that you will find yourself focusing on the button you know works. And since you know it works, it becomes very hard to try out other buttons. At least, not until you wear this one out. Even then, you'll keep coming back to that button.
 
That's how positive feedback works. You do something, you get positive feedback, so, hell yeah, you do it again. Presto! Learned behavior.
 
So, yeah, embrace your obscurity. You're probably stuck with it for a while, anyway. Might as well make the most of it. Take the opportunity and write about anything and everything. Explore and expand your creative reach. Try new viewpoints and storytelling techniques. Try everything.
 
It's much easier to be risky when there's nothing on the line but the time spent. Once money comes into the equation, the solutions all start looking the same.
 
-David
 

My Nano History To Date

2006 – The Summoning Fire – Planned and plotted the story in August, long before I needed it, then went over it time and time again before the first of November. I wrote 61500 words in 23 chapters. Each chapter was written in a single day (though some of them took more than 4 hours to finish). While writing such a dark book took a psychological toll, especially towards the middle of the month, I rocked this project. Of course, I had been writing nearly every day since February and The Summoning Fire's 61.5K words were less than 1/3 of my total word count for the year. So I was "in shape", writing-wise. As if I had been prepping for a marathon all year.
 
2007 – Running Waters (now renamed) – Planned and plotted the story in the last weeks of October. I wrote 51000 words across 8 chapters (out of 25 chapters planned). I had written probably 50K words in 2007 before 1 November, most of it the Horse Girl project. I won Nano. But I didn't finish the book (I'm working on it again now, with an updated outline and a new working title).
 
2009 – Finished the Horse Girl Project – I had been not writing the last 2 chapters of the Horse Girl since the middle of 2007. Self doubt can really slow you down. I finished Horse Girl in the first couple days of November. Which was less time than I expected it to take. So then I decided to finish out the month of November writing stories. Trying to duplicate what I done in 2006 by writing one story every day. That didn't last. Just because I could do it in 2006 didn't mean I could do it again, without any practice. I wrote 9 stories. Before November 2009, I don't think I had written more than 10K words that year. Still, since I had (finally) finished the first draft of Horse Girl, I counted it a Good Month, even if not a Nano "win".
 
2010 – The Closing Crew (shelved) – Barely plotted and loosely planned in the last week of October–and put on the shelf after 26000 words. Another not-win.
 
I would say my Nanowrimo Performance has been largely downhill since doing so well in 2006, my first time ever. Maybe I should just let Nano go. Support it, sure, but don't try to fit it into my schedule any more.
 
I would also say that "loosely prepared" and "winging it" are not how I should approach writing novels. Short stories, sure. I can wing short stories and write lengths from 5K-20K words with only a character, a situation, and a vague idea of how I want to structure it. Novels? Not so much. Novels need planning. And I should know the story enough to have an outline of it before I start writing.
 
Will I do Nano again? I have no idea. Ask me next October.
 
-David
 

Still Writing, but No More Nano

 
It's official: I'm no longer participating in Nanowrimo 2010.
 
Today I wrote the first 1000 words in another (newly resumed) project. Depending on how many words I rack up each week, this project will likely be my main (only) focus for the next 4-6 weeks. I might do more writing later today. Or not. I consider the work I did on the book outline before I wrote to be "writing", even though it generates no words I can count.
 
I thought about adding my word production on this project (which will be called "Gunwitch" in my progress reports) to my Nano total, but decided that wasn't really in the spirit of Nano. Also, I'm more interested in my longterm continued writing than in Nano. There's more to the year than November (thank your favorite deity).
 
So…I wrote 26K words for Nano 2010. Not bad.
 
By the end of November, I should be up to 40K (or more) total words written in November. Which is, again, not bad.
 
I was tempted to add up my word count for 2010, but I'll wait and do that after the New Year.
 
On with the writing!
 
-David