David R. Michael's Blog, page 43

Featured at Smashwords Books Review

 
Featured Author: David Michael
 
I talk about The Summoning Fire (of course) and writing and stuff like that.
 
Check me out!
 
-David
 

Nano Day 18 – A Crisis of Fiction

 
I have to stop launching into novels without proper preparation. That is, "proper" as defined by me, for me. Your "proper" preparation could be (and probably is) very different.
 
When I look at the (still incomplete) outline of the book I've been working on, what I've already written as well as what I have yet to write, all I can see are flaws. Flaws in the character concepts. Flaws in plotting. Flaws flaws flaws.
 
And yet: I like a lot of what I've written. Most of it, even.
 
So I'm pretty sure that what I'm suffering from here is a crisis of fiction. I can salvage what I have and move on. Maybe.
 
What I need, I think, is a bit of separation. I need to get my mind off this project for a bit. Then, when I'm not so close to the prose and the outline, I can look at it again with fresh eyes and (maybe) see how I can move forward on it. Or fix it (somehow) and then move forward on it.
 
To that end, I'm going to put this project on a backburner. I will now turn my attention to a (too long) incomplete project and see if I can achieve something useful there. Coincidentally, this long neglected project I'm picking back up is the novel I started for Nanowrimo 2007. That year I did write 50K words (and "won" Nano), but after the month was over I was less than halfway through the novel. I now wish I hadn't, but at the time it seemed the best idea to abandon the novel and focus on my "day job". I always liked the central idea (and characters and setting) of the novel. Now we'll see if I can pick up where I left off nearly 3 years ago.
 
This might hammer my participation in Nanowrimo, since I don't know that I'll be over the crisis before the end of November. If I do end up working on the incomlete book past a few days editing and reorganizing (both what I've written and the still-to-be-written parts of the outline), then I won't be back to this project until after the new year. I'm OK with that, though.
 
So…I don't know if there will be any more Nano 2010 updates after this one.
 
Let's see what happens, shall we???
 
-David
 

It's Simple Math

 
Imagine, as a thought experiment, that you are a company who sells ebooks, and has a proprietary ebook reader, both of which you want to promote.
 
You have, at this point, already established that you can sell most ebooks for a minimum of $.99, with enough margin to support giving the author of the ebook 35% of the gross ($.35 out of $.99).
 
You decide, as part of your marketing efforts, that you might get more support for your ebook reader if you appeal directly to the authors. The goal being to get more authors to create more ebooks for your ebook reader, thereby giving you even more market share. What's the fastest way to an author's heart? Yes, that's right: a bigger royalty.
 
So, you decide to double the royalty to 70%. You still need to clear at least $.64 per transaction ($.99-$.35 = $.64). So that means you have to set a minimum price for the 70% commission. It can't be $.99 any more. In other words, you need to solve this equation:
 
$.64 = 30% of X
 
Here's the solution:
 
X = $2.14
 
As any marketer will tell you, $2.14 is a silly minimum price. You need something like $1.99 or $2.99. $1.99 is too low. You can't make your margins at that price. $2.99, though, makes perfect sense. You clear your costs and you graciously offer more to the authors.
 
Voilá!
 
You set your minimum price for the 70% royalty to $2.99.
 
And, then, because some of the people on your board of directors are dicks who see an opportunity (and never liked artsy fartsy artist-author-types anyway), you pass off the cost of download to the author, eroding the 70% by a few pennies.
 
And you're done.
 
NOTE: This is just me thinking like a businessman. Some large, aggregator Web site that sells books and stuff–and a proprietary ereader–might have come to the $2.99 minimum price point for a 70% royalty by a different set of priorities. But if I was in charge, this is how it would've gone down.
 
-David
 

The Summoning Fire Now Available for the Nook!

The Summoning Fire for the Nook @ Barnes & Noble!
 
All Reese Howard has left is pain. Pain and a pump-action shotgun. The Old Man killed Reese's lover right in front of her, a blood sacrifice for whatever twisted powerplay he has in mind. She hopes the Old Man made a mistake, leaving her alive and armed. But she doubts it. He knows she's coming. Bastard has to know. Whatever. Reese plans to make him pay. And she plans to die trying.
 
-David
 

Nano Day 17

Today's Words: 1971
Month to Date: 26037
 
I didn't want to write today. At all. But I did.
 
The funny-peculiar-notable part of it was that even feeling less than rah-rah-write, and starting out doing just a word here, a phrase there, hardly trickling forth verbally, I clocked my 2K-ish words in about the same time I have all month (2-3 hours).
 
Was it a good day of writing? Or a bad day? I don't know.
 
In the financial industry there's a concept/strategy called "dollar cost averaging". If you're not familiar with the concept, here's the definition from Wikipedia:
 
Dollar cost averaging (DCA) is an investment strategy … [that] takes the form of investing equal monetary amounts regularly and periodically over specific time periods (such as $100 monthly) in a particular investment or portfolio. By doing so, more shares are purchased when prices are low and fewer shares are purchased when prices are high. The point of this is to lower the total average cost per share of the investment, giving the investor a lower overall cost for the shares purchased over time.
 
I think of myself as practicing "prose quality averaging". That is, so long as I write every day (or nearly every day), I'll be producing good (or better) prose at least as often as I produce low (or worse) quality prose. With the result that my "average prose quality" will be somewhere between the two extremes–and trending upwards. Or, to put it another way, my good days will offset my bad days, and (maybe) I'm getting better over time.
 
Which is why, even on days when I don't want to write, if I'm supposed to be writing, I at least give it a shot.
 
-David
 

Almost an Interview at Murphy's Library

Murphy Wants to Know: David Michael
 
I answer the questions:

Do you have writers block?
Where did the inspiration for the Old Man come from?
Trick or Treats?
And more!

 
-David
 

Nano Day 15

Today's Words: 2014
Month to Date: 22055
 
Back to writing today. I lost 4 days to my stall-and-reconsider, but I'm OK with that. I'll be back ahead of the Nanowrimo suggested daily totals before the end of the week. More importantly, because of the time spent not writing, I have much clearer vision of what the completed novel will look like. I like to know where I'm going, even if I'm not always entirely sure how I'm going to get there.
 
In other, semi-related news, I pulled this novel project back into The Journal. I like StoryBox OK, and it has some features I'd still like to use, but after so many years writing in The Journal (2 nonfiction books, 3 novels, 1 novella, and over 150 short stories) it's hard to use anything else. StoryBox is still improving, though, and I expect I'll give it another shot on a future project.
 
-David
 

Baptism (Part 2 of 3)

 
by David Michael
 
Read Part 1 of "Baptism" here.
 
Spring Solstice (continued)
 
Myra screamed– No, she wanted to scream, but nothing came out. She didn't–couldn't–open her mouth as she felt Antonio's life pulled into her. She couldn't even whimper as her lovely, young husband mummified in front her eyes. The desiccation started in the fingers of his left hand and his toes and moved toward his heart and head. She saw his sculpted limbs deflate, his washboard abs and square-cut pecs shrivel and finally his lips pull away from his teeth and his eyes dry into wrinkled prunes. She heard his last breath come out as a wheeze, felt it touch her face. It smelled of damp dust.
 
When she released his right hand, it didn't fall. What had once been Antonio was now a kneeling sculpture of ripped leather stretched over bones.
 
What was left of her managed to scream. But she couldn't stop herself from reaching to touch–to grab–the next kneeling person, an elderly Latina dressed in the blue-gray uniform of a resort maid. Or the pudgy white man in the too-small Speedo trunks behind the woman. Or the little Asian girl.
 
She couldn't stop herself.  When the people–finally–began to pull away from her, to run for their lives, she had no choice but to follow them.
 
The people were still saying her name, but now it was a scream. "Myra! Myra!"
 
She would reach, grab, and–she didn't know what she did then. She felt as if she inhaled their lives. She felt the water coming out of them, flowing into herself. Her body didn't change. She remained the shape of Myra Acevedo. With each person she–absorbed–drank–killed–though, she became less and less Myra Acevedo.
 
Myra Acevedo drowned for the second time in one day. After a while, she didn't even scream. It was too late. Even for screaming.
 
Winter Solstice
 
Myra spread her hands in front of her. They were still the hands of a beautiful trophy wife who had never had to work a real job once she blossomed in college. Long, slender fingers with a spa-perfect manicure. The only thing that had changed since she died was that the nail polish–aqua, to match her new suit–had been etched away by the hot, dry winds.
 
She didn't know how long ago she had died. It could have been years. It could have been yesterday. It might have been last week.
 
How long did it take to destroy the world? How long did it take one young woman to drain the oceans?
 
Not long enough for her still naked breasts to sag, it seemed, but long enough for the last remnant of her bikini to be gone.
 
"Holy Mother," said the voice of a girl behind her.
 
Only the girls would speak to her, or the youngest of the boys. Perhaps it was her nakedness.
 
A part of Myra still objected to the children calling her Holy Mother. It was blasphemy. Or heresy. Or worse. She had become a demon. A monster. She had done monstrous things. But another part of her accepted the appellation. Myra Acevedo had never been a mother, not really, but some part of her had.
 
"Holy Mother," the girl, Sumalee, said again. "Why have you brought us here?"
 
Sumalee didn't speak English or Spanish, but Myra understood her. She understood all the children, and as long as she was nearby, they understood one another.
 
Myra didn't turn around. She didn't open her mouth to speak. She didn't know what she would say. She spread her arms, palms backward toward the children, indicating that they should stay back.
 
"There is no food here, Holy Mother."
 
Myra didn't respond. She stood there, on the broken edge of what had once been the Golden Gate Bridge, arms spread, palms down now, face forward and up, eyes closed against the brightness of the sun.
 
She didn't say anything. There was nothing for her to say. There was no food anywhere. She had been very thorough.
 
Summer Solstice
 
She didn't kill everyone. She didn't need to.
 
Where she walked, dry death followed. Where she stepped, plants died. Where she breathed, people and animals choked on dust and killed one another fighting over scraps of food and drops of water that evaporated before touching their tongues.
 
Some people tried to run away from her. She didn't give chase. She merely walked, one foot after the other. Where people waited for her, usually on their knees, hands clasped in front of them, praying their ignored prayers, she touched them and took them and left their husks disintegrating in her wake.
 
She walked with her arms spread, palms forward, as if she expected someone to hug her. As if she were looking to embrace everyone and everything. Some men and women accepted her embrace, throwing themselves at her, weeping or crying for mercy for themselves or their families. Always she put her arms around them and held them to her as they fell apart and fell away. Orphaned children–children she had orphaned–cried and held out their little arms to her to hold them, and she did. At first.
 
After that first day at the resort, the day she died, Myra never again walked along the sea coast or the bank of a river or the shore of a lake or pond. The waters of the world, including the man-made resevoirs, were picked up by the hot, hungry winds and brought to her. She took the waters in and they were lost in the depths of her. The oceans of Earth disappeared into the beautiful, walking corpse of Myra Acevedo.
 
A swirling vortex formed around her. The winds of the earth pushed against her, tried to take back the moisture she stole from them. The winds failed to budge her even as they tore apart the forests and jungles of Central and South America and ravaged the flesh of the living and scoured the bones of the dead.
 
The points of knifes and swords, the bullets of Glocks and Brownings and AK's and AR's, all of them tried to stop her. Tank shells and LAW rockets and artillery bursts and bunkerbusters rained on her in their attempts to free the rains locked within her. Like the winds, the weapons failed. The greatest, deadliest weapons ever built didn't even slow her. She walked among the corpses the weapons left behind and burned and blackened flesh crumbled and was picked up by the winds.
 
To her, she only walked. She put one foot ahead of the other. But where each foot would set down she had no idea. At the beginning of her odyssey she had walked through Central and South America, and then North Ameria. She had walked in Brazil and Argentina and Mexico and Canada and the United States of America. Then, for no reason that she knew, she shifted, from one step to the next, thousands of miles. She had walked in China and Thailand and India and Australia and Indonesia and Saudi Arabia and Myanmar and the Congo and Italy and more. She might take a step in Chicago, and her next step would be in Rome, and then in Chihuahua followed by Buenos Aires and Shanghai. She could be in a field of withering soybeans, then step into a rice paddy that dried and cracked even before her foot pressed against the rich soil.
 
Myra had no names for all the lands she walked, all the cities she saw surrounded by rings of shiny, abandoned cars clogging highways, all the villages and towns that burned and left nothing behind. The part of her that was not Myra, though, had no use for the names of the places. None at all. She just walked, always walking.
 
Her next step brought her to the peak of a dune. She let her arms drop to her side and her shadow slid under her feet to hide from the sun directly over her head. She faced east and looked across the rounded dunes. The dunes ended less than a mile from where she stood, sloping into dark canyons.
 
The dunes, which had once been a beach, gleamed with bits of seashells and the dried skeletons of fish and was littered with broken metal and glass and plastic. In the canyons beyond the dunes, which had once been the Atlantic Ocean, she saw boats lying on their sides. As she watched, she saw a man step from one of the boats. He had a bright white hat on his head and carried a bundle bound in tarpaulin.
 
She took a step, and she was behind the man, close enough to touch. He spun as she put a hand on his shoulder, but she didn't let go. His suddenly weak arms dropped his bundle and it burst, spilling canned goods and bottles of water across the naked rocks.
 
The cans and bottles around their feet collapsed in on themselves with loud pops and protests, some of them flopping about like the fish that had died weeks–months?–years?–before. The thin, stiff corpse of the man broke along his waistline and fell away from her as she let go.
 
"Daddy!" The voice of a little boy, coming from inside the boat.
 
Myra turned to look at the boat. A little boy looked out of a dusty window. The boy saw her see him, and disappeared into the darkness of the boat. She found him in the bow locker.
 
The little boy cowered and squeezed his eyes shut so he couldn't see her.
 
She wanted to tell him that she didn't hate him. That she didn't know why she had to do this, this thing she had to do. But when she opened her mouth, all she could say was, "It is too late." Then she put her hand on his head, as if to comfort him.
 
Winter Solstice
 
The winds swirled around Myra on the bridge, but they had lost their fury, their passion. The winds had been reduced to rejected suitors who could not bear to be near her and yet always sought her out. Only their need remained.
 
It is too late.
 
Those were the only words she had been able to speak for as long as she could remember. So she had stopped saying anything.
 
If this was the end, she had no one left to talk to.
 
Except the children.
 
Behind her she heard the children whispering. Whispering to one another, whispering about her. Whispering about their empty bellies and dry throats and chapped lips.
 
She had never said a word to the children. They had talked to her.
 
TO BE CONTINUED

Part 3 of "Baptism" will be Posted on
Monday, 22 November 2010.
 







Read the rest of the story on your ereader right now!
 




"Baptism" Edition


Price




Kindle edition (Amazon)


$0.99




Ebook (Smashwords)


$0.99








 

Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, November 8, 2010.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


Nano


1999




Tuesday


Nano


2025




Wednesday


Nano


1993




Thursday


Nano Novel Character Stuff







Friday


Nano Novel Character Stuff







Saturday


Nano Novel Outline







Sunday


Nano Novel Outline

















Total



6017




 








Marketing/Submission




Monday


Posted "Baptism" Part 1 to the blog.
Announced "Baptism" on FB, KB, and MR. And Amazon's Horror discussions.




Tuesday


Updated the description/summary for "Nostalgia" on Amazon, SW and KB, and (finally) posted it on MR.
Updated the description/summary for TSF on Amazon.




Wednesday


Puzzled out how to add a "Books" page to FB.




Thursday


Created an account on PubIt.
Uploaded TSF to PubIt.




Friday





Saturday





Sunday


Posted TSF excerpt to B&R forum.




 
Reading List

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman.

 

THE SUMMONING FIRE Gets 4 Stars at The Book Bee!

The Book Bee gives The Summoning Fire 4 stars!
 
…David Michael has created a world where the creatures of Hell have exploded upwards and are now mingling with people on Earth….


…This book is not for the faint hearted and I would recommend it to readers who enjoy a good horror book.
 
Read the whole review here…
 
-David