Alexandra Sokoloff's Blog, page 29

Screenwriting Tricks for Authors - FREE this week!

 Okay, to celebrate NaNoWriMo (and get you all prepped in time!), I've made the first Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbook FREE for Kindle this week. Now those of you who don't have it  can download the book instead of hunting through these posts (I know some of you still do...)



It's free worldwide, and remember, you don't have to have a Kindle - you can download a free Kindle app to read it on your computer.

 





- Amazon US



- Amazon UK



- Amaxon DE



- Amazon FR



- Amazon ES



- Amazon IT







Are you finally committed to writing that novel but have no idea how to
get started? Or are you a published author - but know you need some
plotting help to move your books and career up to that next level?



Screenwriting
is a compressed and dynamic storytelling form and the techniques of
screenwriting are easily adaptable to novel writing. You can jump-start
your plot and bring your characters and scenes vibrantly alive on the
page - by watching your favorite movies and learning from the
storytelling tricks of great filmmakers.



With this workbook,
based on award-winning author/ screenwriter Alexandra Sokoloff’s
internationally acclaimed Screenwriting Tricks For Authors blog and
workshops, you'll learn how to use techniques of film writing such as:



- the High Concept Premise

- the Three-Act, Eight-Sequence Structure

- the Storyboard Grid

- the Index Card Method of Plotting



-
as well as tricks of film pacing and suspense, character arc and drive,
visual storytelling, and building image systems - to structure and
color your novel for maximum emotional impact, unbearable suspense and
riveting pacing, no matter what genre you're writing in.



You'll
create your own personalized workbook of genre tricks based on your
favorite books and movies and tailored to your own brand of
storytelling, and a collage book to build visual image systems. And the
emphasis on premise is invaluable for crafting that all-important query
and pitch.



In this rapidly changing world of publishing, more and
more agents and editors are looking for novels that have the pacing,
emotional excitement, and big, unique, "high concept" premises of
Hollywood movies (and the potential for that movie or TV sale!).



Whether
you're just starting to develop a book or script, or rewriting for
maximum impact, this workbook will guide you through an easy, effective
and fun process to help you make your book or script the best it can be.



Includes
detailed film breakdowns and analysis as well as chapters and resources
on how to get a literary agent, writing a query letter, professional
networking, and screenwriting contests.



"Sokoloff's advice is spot-on, and her teaching style is direct and effective. A must-have book for authors and screenwriters."

--- JA Konrath, A Newbie's Guide To Publishing

NaNoWriMo Prep: The Three-Act, Eight-Sequence Structure

So hopefully you took the last exercise seriously and are now armed with a Top Ten list and a hundred pages of all your story ideas, and woke up this morning with THE book that you want to write for NaNoWriMo.  If not, keep working!  It'll come.



What I'm going to talk about in the next few posts is the key to the story structuring technique I write about and that everyone's always asking me to teach.  Those of you new to this blog are going to have to do a little catch up and review the concept of the Three Act Structure (in fact, everyone should go back and review.)



But
the real secret of film writing and filmmaking, that we are going to
steal for our novel writing, is that most movies are written in a
Three-Act, Eight-Sequence structure. Yes, most movies can be broken up
into 8 discrete 12-15-minute sequences, each of which has a beginning,
middle and end.



I swear.



The
eight-sequence structure evolved from the early days of film when movies
were divided into reels (physical film reels), each holding about ten
minutes of film (movies were also shorter, proportionately). The
projectionist had to manually change each reel as it finished. Early
screenwriters (who by the way, were mostly playwrights, well-schooled in
the three-act structure) incorporated this rhythm into their writing,
developing individual sequences that lasted exactly the length of a
reel, and modern films still follow that same storytelling rhythm. (As
movies got longer, sequences got slightly longer proportionately). I'm
not sure exactly how to explain this adherence, honestly, except that,
as you will see IF you do your homework - it WORKS.



And
the eight-sequence structure actually translates beautifully to novel
structuring, although we have much more flexibility with a novel and you might end up with a few more sequences in a book. So I want to get you familiar with the eight-sequence structure in
film first, and we’ll go on to talk about the application to novels.



If
you’re new to story breakdowns and analysis, then you'll want to check
out my sample breakdowns (links at end of this post, and full breakdowns
are included in the workbook)
and watch several, or all, of those movies, following along with my
notes, before you try to analyze a movie on your own. But if you want
to jump right in with your own breakdowns and analyses, this is how it
works:



ASSIGNMENT:
Take a film from the master list, the Top Ten list you've made, preferably the one that is most
similar in structure to your own WIP, and screen it, watching the time
clock on your DVD player (or your watch, or phone.). At about 15 minutes into the film, there will
be some sort of climax – an action scene, a revelation, a twist, a big
SET PIECE. It won’t be as big as the climax that comes 30 minutes into
the film, which would be the Act One climax, but it will be an
identifiable climax that will spin the action into the next sequence.)



Proceed
through the movie, stopping to identify the beginning, middle, and end
of each sequence, approximately every 15 minutes. Also make note of the
bigger climaxes or turning points – Act One at 30 minutes, the Midpoint
at 60 minutes, Act Two at 90 minutes, and Act Three at whenever the
movie ends.



NOTE: You can also, and probably should,
say that a movie is really four acts, breaking the long Act Two into two
separate acts. Hollywood continues to use "Three Acts". Whichever
works best for you!



So how do you recognize a sequence?



It's
generally a series of related scenes, tied together by location and/or
time and/or action and/or the overall intent of the hero/ine.



In
many movies a sequence will take place all in the same location, then
move to another location at the climax of the sequence. The protagonist
will generally be following just one line of action in a sequence, and
then when s/he gets that vital bit of information in the climax of a
sequence, s/he’ll move on to a completely different line of action,
based on the new information. A good exercise is to title each sequence
as you watch and analyze a movie – that gives you a great overall
picture of the progression of action.



But the biggest
clue to an Act or Sequence climax is a SETPIECE SCENE: there’s a
dazzling, thematic location, an action or suspense sequence, an
intricate set, a crowd scene, even a musical number (as in The Wizard of Oz and, more surprisingly, Jaws. And Casablanca, too.).



Or,
let's not forget - it can be a sex scene. In fact for my money ANY sex
scene in a book or film should be approached as a setpiece.



The setpiece is a fabulous lesson to take from filmmaking, one of the most valuable for novelists, and possibly the most crucial for screenwriters.



There are multiple definitions of a setpiece. It can be a huge action scene like, well, anything in The Dark Knight,
that takes weeks to shoot and costs millions, requiring multiple sets,
special effects and car crashes… or a meticulously planned suspense
scene with multiple cuts that takes place all in - a shower, for
instance, in Psycho.



If
you start watching movies specifically to pick out the setpiece scenes,
you’ll notice an interesting thing. They’re almost always used as act
or sequence climaxes. They are tentpoles holding the structure of the
movie up… or jewels in the necklace of the plotline. The scenes
featured in the trailers to entice people to see the movie. The scenes
everyone talks about after the credits roll.



That elaborate, booby-trapped cave in the first scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark. The crop-dusting plane chasing Cary Grant through the cornfield in North By Northwest. The goofy galactic bar in Star Wars. Munchkinland, the Scarecrow’s cornfield, the dark forest, the poppy field, the Emerald City, the witch’s castle in The Wizard of Oz. The dungeon – I mean prison – in Silence of the Lambs.
In fact you can look Raiders and Silence and see that every single
sequence contains a wonderful setpiece (The Nepalese bar, the
suspension bridge, the temple in Raiders…)



Those are
actually two great movies to use to compare setpieces, because one is so
big and action-oriented (Raiders) and one is so small, confined and
psychological (Silence), yet both are stunning examples of visual
storytelling.



A really great setpiece scene is a lot
more than just dazzling. It’s thematic, too, such as the prison
(dungeon for the criminally insane) in Silence of the Lambs.
That is much more than your garden variety prison. It’s a labyrinth
of twisty staircases and creepy corridors. And it’s hell: Clarice goes
through – count ‘em – seven gates, down, down, down under the ground to
get to Lecter. Because after all, she’s going to be dealing with the
devil, isn’t she? And the labyrinth is a classic symbol of an inner
psychological journey, just exactly what Clarice is about to go through.
And Lecter is a monster, like the Minotaur, so putting him smack in
the center of a labyrinth makes us unconsciously equate him with a
mythical beast, something both more and less than human. The visuals of
that setpiece express all of those themes perfectly (and others, too)
so the scene is working on all kinds of visceral, emotional,
subconscious levels.



Now, yes, that’s brilliant
filmmaking by director Jonathan Demme, and screenwriter Ted Talley and
production designer Kristi Zea and DP Tak Fujimoto… but it was all there
on Harris’s page, first, all that and more; the filmmakers had the good
sense to translate it to the screen. In fact, both Silence of the Lambs and Thomas Harris's Red Dragon
are so crammed full of thematic visual imagery you can catch something
new every time you reread those books, which made them slam dunks as
movies.



So here's another ASSIGNMENT for you: Bring me setpieces. What are some great ones? Check your watch. Are they act or sequence climaxes?



Another note about sequences: be advised that in big, sprawling movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone,
sequences may be longer or there may be a few extras. It’s a formula
and it doesn’t always precisely fit, but as you work through your master
list of films, unless you are a surrealist at heart, you will be
shocked and amazed at how many movies precisely fit this eight-sequence
format. When you’re working with as rigid a form as a two-hour movie, on
the insane schedule that is film production, this kind of mathematical
precision is kind of a lifesaver.



Now, I could talk
about this for just about ever, but me talking is not going to get you
anywhere. You need to DO this. Watch the movies yourself. Do the
breakdowns yourself. Identify setpieces yourself. Ask as many
questions as you want here, but DO it - it's the only way you're really
going to learn this.



My advice is that you watch and
analyze all ten of your master list movies (and books). But not all at
once - screening one will get you far, three will lock it in, the rest
will open new worlds in your writing.



And every time
you see a movie now, for the rest of your life, look for the sequence
breaks and act climaxes, and setpieces. At first you will embarrass
yourself in theaters, shouting out things like "Hot damn!" Or "Holy
!@#$!!!"as you experience a climax. Uh... an Act Climax. But
eventually, it will be as natural to you as breathing, and you will find
yourself incorporating this rhythm into your storytelling without even
having to think about it. You may even be doing it already.



So go, go, watch some movies. It's WORK. (Don't you love this job?) And please, report your findings back here.



- Alex



===================================================



And
if you'd like to to see more of these story elements in action, I
strongly recommend that you watch at least one and much better, three of
the films I break down in the workbooks, following along with my notes.



I do full breakdowns of Chinatown, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, Romancing the Stone, and The Mist, and act breakdowns of You've Got Mail, Jaws, Silence of the Lambs, Raiders of the Lost Ark in Screenwriting Tricks For Authors.



I do full breakdowns of The
Proposal, Groundhog Day, Sense and Sensibility, Romancing the Stone,
Leap Year, Notting Hill, Four Weddings and a Funeral, Sea of Love, While
You Were Sleeping and New in Town in Writing Love.





=====================================================



Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files. Either book, any format, just $2.99.







- Kindle



- Amazon UK



- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)









- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)



- Amazon/Kindle



- Barnes & Noble/Nook



- Amazon UK



- Amazon DE



-------------------------------------------------------------------



Previous NaNoWriMo Posts



- October is NaNoWriMo PREP month

- What's your premise?

Nanowrimo Prep: First, you need an idea.

So I'm at Bouchercon, but we need to get busy on this NaNo Prep thing. (You better believe I'm scribbling ideas during these panels. Bouchercon SF was where I got inspired to write Huntress Moon....)



And of course there's a panel here called "Where do authors get their ideas?"



When people ask, “Where do you get your ideas?”,
authors tend to clam up or worse, get sarcastic - because the only real
answer to that is, “Where DON’T I get ideas?” or even more to the point,
“How do I turn these ideas OFF?”  




The thing is, “Where do you get your ideas?” is not the real question
these people are asking.   The real question is “How do you go from an
idea to a coherent story line that holds up – and holds a reader’s
interest - for 400 pages of a book?”  




Or more concisely:  “How do you come up with your PREMISES?”




Look, we all have story ideas all the time.   Even non-writers, and
non-aspiring writers – I truly mean, EVERYONE, has story ideas all the
time.   Those story ideas are called daydreams, or fantasies, or often
“Porn starring me and Edward Cullen, or me and Stringer Bell,” (or maybe
both.   Wrap your mind around that one for a second…)

 


But you see what I mean.




We all create stories in our own heads all the time, minimal as some of our plot lines may be.




So I bet you have dozens of ideas, hundreds.   A better question is “What’s a good story idea?”




I see two essential ingredients:




B) What idea gets you excited enough to spend a year (or most likely more) of your life completely immersed in it –




    and




B) Gets other people excited enough about it to buy it and read it
and even maybe possibly make it into a movie or TV series with an
amusement park ride spinoff and a Guess clothing line based on the
story?




A) is good if you just want to write for yourself.




But B) is essential if you want to be a professional writer.




As many of you know, I’m all about learning by making lists.  
Because let’s face it – we have to trick ourselves into writing, every
single day, and what could be simpler and more non-threatening than
making a list?    Anything to avoid the actual rest of it!




So here are two lists to do to get those ideas flowing, and then we can start to narrow it all down to the best one.




List # 1: Make a list of all your story ideas.




Yes, you read that right.   ALL of them.




This is a great exercise because it gets your subconscious churning
and invites it to choose what it truly wants to be working on.  Your
subconscious knows WAY more than you do about writing.  None of us can
do the kind of deep work that writing is all on our own.  And with a
little help from the Universe you could find yourself writing the next
Harry Potter or Twilight.




Also this exercise gives you an overall idea of what your THEMES are
as a writer (and very likely the themes you have as a person).   I
absolutely believe that writers only have about six or seven themes that
they’re dealing with over and over and over again.  It’s my experience
that your writing improves exponentially when you become more aware of
the themes that you’re working with.




You may be amazed, looking over this list that you’ve generated, how
much overlap there is in theme (and in central characters, hero/ines and
villains, and dynamics between characters, and tone of endings).




You may even find that two of your story ideas, or a premise line
plus a character from a totally different premise line, might combine to
form a bigger, more exciting idea.




But in any case, you should have a much better idea at the end of the
exercise of what turns you on as a writer, and what would sustain you
emotionally over the long process of writing a novel. 




Then just let that percolate for a while.   Give yourself a little
time for the right idea to take hold of you.   You’ll know what that
feels like – it’s a little like falling in love.   (We’ll go more into
this in the next few days.)




List # 2:  The Master List




The other list I always encourage my students to do is a list of your
ten favorite movies and books in the genre that you’re writing, or if
you don’t have a premise yet, ten movies and books that you WISH you had
written.




It’s good to compare and contrast your idea list with this IDEAL list.




This list of ten (or more, if you want – ten is just a minimum!) – is
going to be enormously helpful to you in structuring and outlining your
own novel.  




Now, the novelists who have just found this blog recently may be
wondering why I’m asking you to list movies as well as books.  Good
question.




The thing is, for the purposes of structural analysis, film is such a
compressed and concise medium that it’s like seeing an X-ray of a
story. In film you have two hours, really a little less, to tell the
story. It’s a very stripped-down form that even so, often has enormous
emotional power. Plus we’ve usually seen more of these movies than we’ve
read specific books, so they’re a more universal form of reference for
discussion.




It’s often easier to see the mechanics of structure in a film than in
a novel, which makes looking at films that are similar to your own
novel story a great way to jump start your novel outline.




And just practically, film has had an enormous influence on
contemporary novels, and on publishing. Editors love books with the high
concept premises, pacing, and visual and emotional impact of movies, so
being aware of classic and blockbuster films and the film techniques
that got them that status can help you write novels that will actually
sell in today’s market.




And even beyond that – studying movies is fun, and fun is something
writers just don’t let themselves have enough of.  If you train yourself
to view movies looking for for some of these structural

elements I’m
going to be talking about, then every time you go to the movies or watch
something on television, you’re actually honing your craft (even on a
date or while spending quality time with your loved ones!), and after a
while you won’t even notice you’re doing it.




When the work is play, you’ve got the best of all possible worlds..



- Alex 






=====================================================



Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files Either book, any format, just $2.99.







- Kindle



- Barnes & Noble/Nook



- Amazon UK



- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)









- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)



- Amazon/Kindle



- Barnes & Noble/Nook



- Amazon UK



- Amazon DE

The Gutter Margin (or How E Publishing Saved Me)

 So it's the first day of October, and to kick off my NaNoWriMo Prep
series (see here), I have a special guest.  I don't have guests here
that often, but Kealan Patrick Burke is one of my many author friends
who have found success, creative fulfillment and financial stability
through e publishing, and I thought you might find his story as
inspirational as I have. It really speaks to why THIS IS THE TIME to be
an author, like maybe no other time in history, plus his spooky work is perfect
Halloween reading, and so I thought this would be a good way to jump
start the month.



Please welcome Kealan Patrick Burke!





 The Gutter Margin (or - How E Publishing Saved Me)    





I’ve
been writing since I was eight years old, submitting stories to magazines since
my teens. On my eighteenth birthday, a story of mine appeared in an Irish
writing magazine entitled, appropriately enough Writings. They hadn’t notified me (I
discovered the story while flipping through one of the issues at a newsstand),
and there was no payment, but at the time I didn’t care. It was the best
birthday present I’d ever gotten. I promptly bought all the copies they had and
sent them to friends and family members, who were suitably impressed. I was a
writer, by gum, and I challenged anyone to debate the fact when I had the pub
credit to prove it!




            Of
course I later discovered that in order to qualify for publication in Writings magazine, all you had to do was
send them something. Anyone could get published there, and rather than getting
any compensation, you were out the cost of a stamp.




            Lesson
learned.




            In
2001, a few weeks ahead of the 9/11 tragedy, I accepted the invitation to come
to the states. The way I saw it, I had nothing to lose. I had exhausted all
employment possibilities in Ireland and hadn’t written a word outside of
bar-napkin soliloquys in about two years. It was to be a three-month stay with
an American woman I had met while she was traveling Ireland. As a writer friend
of mine once put it, I was “arguably the world’s first Irish mail-order husband”.
Okay, so it wasn’t that cheap or that simple. We were good friends, but the
marriage, at least in the beginning, was definitely one of convenience. That
changed as time went on, and we got closer. It helped, selflessly on her part,
selfishly on mine, when she proposed that I take two years to do nothing but
concentrate on writing. If it was meant to be, she said, then two years would
be enough to prove it. If not, I’d rejoin the workforce and become a worthwhile
member of society (my words, not hers.) 




            It
was a big risk. After all, though I’d been writing most of my life to that
point, who was to say that I had any talent to back up my passion for the
art—certainly not the sole credit in the come one, come all Writings magazine. 




            Well,
call it luck, call it persistence, call it talent, or some combination of
these, but the ability to just sit and write paid off. I got my share of
rejections in the beginning, but used them to learn, and mere months since I
embarked on this trial run, my stories began to get picked up by modest
semi-pro magazines. I quickly learned to aim higher. Then, a year to the day that
I accepted my wife’s gracious offer, I cracked my first professional market.
From there, there was no turning back.




            Cut
to two years later and my name was starting to become known in the small press.
Strangers and peers recognized me at conventions. Professional editors started
inviting me to contribute to their magazines and anthologies. Life was good.
What wasn’t so good was the money. Short stories in professional paying
magazines can net you about a nickel a word, ten to twenty cents a word at the
high end (higher if you’re a big name, which I wasn’t.) It was good money, but
not enough to allow me to feel as if I were repaying my wife’s investment in
me.




            I
started writing novellas. One of them, The Turtle Boy , struck a chord with readers and
fellow writers for its nostalgic view of American childhood summers, and went
on to win the Bram Stoker Award that year, beating out Stephen King’s
novella-length version of Lisey’s Story in the same category. I think King probably
deserved the award more, but you wouldn’t catch me admitting that back then. I
was over the moon. Three years into my odyssey and I had won a prestigious
award! I followed it with a sequel for Cemetery Dance Publications (a personal
benchmark), a handful of novels (one of them for Subterranean Press, another benchmark!),
edited some lauded anthologies featuring the biggest names in the genre (King
among them), and had published hundreds of short stories. Things couldn’t be
better.




            Naturally,
because I’m a writer, not the most stable of vocations, and sometimes life
outside the page feels compelled to intervene, it couldn’t last.




            Fast
forward again to 2010. Things have taken a dramatic and depressing turn.




            I’m
divorced (amicably, I may add; we’re still the best of friends, but conceded
that the marriage thing, ill-advised in the beginning, had turned stale and
given rise to surface tension we both knew was merely masking the true root of
a deeper discord.) I live in a modest (read: claustrophobic) apartment, work
ungodly hours as a fraud investigator (a job I liked, and was good at, but
hated because it wasn’t writing), and haven’t written a word in years. My
books, once trophies of pride, are packed in boxes in the closet because I have
nowhere to put them. The Bram Stoker Award (a wicked cool little bronze haunted
house) sits beside the TV wearing a patina of dust like a sad reminder of the
good old days. The dream is over, and so is my “career” as a writer. I resign
myself to this, but occasionally snap back to myself at work and realize I’m
still trying to eke out stories, none of which I am ever likely to finish and
which may in fact get me fired if I’m caught doing them on the clock.




            Frustrated,
I get to thinking about ways to sell the rights to the stuff that’s already
written. I quickly dismiss the idea of peddling my trunk stories (i.e. stories
that I deemed unsellable and relegated to the file for such things), because I
don’t want my name out there on sub-par work. Despite how far I’ve fallen, I
still retain a measure of pride. I consider reworking them and know I no longer
have the requisite concentration to see them through. So I turn my attention to
the novels, the novellas, the collections, the dozens of titles stowed away in
those boxes in the closet. New York publishers are unanimous in their
appreciation for my skill, but equally (and eerily) unanimous in their lack of
faith that it would sell, or that they could effectively market it. The small
press publishers are in the market for new work only, and even then they’re being
increasingly selective because the economy is in the toilet and finances are
tight. Readers are just not as inclined to splurge on high-priced limited
editions as they used to be.




            I
start googling news articles on the state of publishing, just to pour salt in
the wound. I have one wary eye on the clock because I have to be at work in
five hours. And in my online travels, I keep seeing the words “digital”,
“self-publishing”, and “Kindle”. I am peripherally aware of what all of this
means, of course. At the height of my time in the small press, digital was a
seldom heard of outlet for publishing, whereas self-publishing was viewed as toilet
paper on the shoe of legitimate publishing, mostly because what it produced (with
notable exceptions, of course) was sub-par amateurish pap, and usually via
presses that gouged their writers. Quick-fix validation was the order of the
day, it seemed. Writers unable or unwilling to go the traditional route either
because of lack of knowledge, patience, or some subconscious awareness that
their work wasn’t ready, turned to vanity presses. Writers, whether established
or not, who took the digital route, found little success. Few people wanted to
read on their computer screens, and the means to do so comfortably and conveniently,
hadn’t yet come on the market to any significant degree.




            Then
came the Kindle, and everything changed.




            That
night, as I sat in my apartment wearing a heavy coat because the heating had
broken for the tenth time in as many weeks, I found myself growing intrigued.
The Internet was rife with success stories about folks who’d chosen the digital
route. I noted names like Konrath, Eisler, Hocking, Locke, and read more about
them. I was only familiar with Joe Konrath because our short fiction had
appeared in many of the same magazines, and we moved in similar online circles.
And so, like many others, I ended up at his blog, and slept not at all that
night as I read what he had to say.




            The
next morning, groggy and ill-prepared for the day ahead, I went to work.




            On
my day off, I downloaded or read up on everything I could get my hands on about
the digital publishing process. I already had something of a knack for graphic design,
so that was no problem. The formatting proved to be the hardest part. So over
the next few weeks, I studied and studied like I was prepping for a final exam,
and I taught myself how to do it.




            In
September of 2010, I put The Turtle Boy and some short stories up for sale. I followed it
with The Hides,
and eventually the other books in the Timmy Quinn series. By the end of the
year, I’d managed to sell a grand total of 101 books, and made $134.00. And I
was pleased. My expectations going into it had been grounded and realistic,
because if my almost a decade in the small press had taught me anything, it was
that lightning in a bottle is usually something that happens to other people.
Try to duplicate it and you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. And this
was alien territory for me. So when I started, I expected nothing to happen, that my books would
remain just as forgotten in their digital box as their physical counterparts
had. When the books started to sell a copy here and there, I was delighted. The
sales were just enough to cover the gas bill every month, and I thought that
was pretty damn cool.










            In
January of 2011, the post-Christmas rush resulted in over a hundred sales for
the month, and I was ecstatic. It didn’t even matter that February’s total was
a quarter of that. Finances were dismal after Christmas and a couple of hundred
dollars was a welcome bonus.




            Fast
forward again to August of 2011. The Turtle Boy, about 88 pages in print, and
the first of a five book series, had changed things for me back in 2004 when it
won the Stoker. I had no idea that making it a free download was going to
change things again. I had already made it free at Smashwords, and so a week
into that month, Amazon price-matched it. Downloads were through the roof, and
as a result, sales of the other books in the series increased. August ended
with 823 paid sales in the US, and resulted in a permanent increase in
popularity for the entire series.




            By
December my earnings through Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, and especially
Amazon US & UK, had started to eclipse the paycheck from my day job. By
March of the following year, I was making more than I had at any job I’d ever
had, and decided to quit my job and go back to full-time writing. A risky move,
you’ll agree, and in the back of my mind I found it difficult to shake the fear
that this was all temporary, that the next month might be the one where it all
came to a screeching halt and left me dangling in the wind. But I knew that my
decision to quit a stable job would only work if I considered writing my
full-time job in every sense of the word, and treated it as such. Digital
publishing meant that for the first time I was not just a writer but a
publisher too. This was my business, and like any business, the success of it
would be directly proportional to the effort I was willing to invest.




            Up
to this point, I had relied primarily on sales of my backlist, and it had paid
off. Not only that, but the success of those titles yielded hundreds of emails
demanding more than I had available, and questions about when I was going to
finish the Timmy Quinn series. The demand staggered me, inspired me,
revitalized me, and slowly but surely I began to write again. The passion I had
allowed myself to forget, allowed my life to bury, came back with the force of
a freight train.




    Two
years ago I was in a dismal place and took a half-hearted risk on a digital
venture and then promptly put it out of my mind. I was not happy. I was not a
writer. Common wisdom states that real writers never give up. I disagree. I
think that when life squats over you when you’re already down and takes a
magnificent dump on your shoulders and you find yourself with no passion left,
you forget how to write. You can only kick a dog so many times before he
forgets his loyalty and just decides to quit coming back. Writing is like that.
But the stories never stopped coming. I just forgot how to write them down. A
real writer remembers when the opportunity presents itself, never forgets what it felt like
to have ink for blood, and when he or she picks up the pen, that ink flows from
the veins like its business as usual. That’s what digital did for me. That’s
what my readers, both those who shelled out for the small print run hardcovers
back in the day and those who read on their Kindles, Nooks, and iPads, do for
me now. Digital was initially a curiosity, a last-ditch effort to save
something of myself, a struggle to retain any connection at all to the writing
world before my ship sank for good. It ended up giving me the magic, my life,
and my passion back.




       







            In
the past year I have paid off my debts, moved to a more spacious (but still
modest) apartment, and I’m living comfortably with a woman I love (who is also
a writer—she’d have to be, I think, wouldn’t she?), and I’m writing as much, if
not more than I did back in the good old days.




            Because
these days are better.




            This
is what I tell those who—just as I would have done once upon a time—turn their
nose up at digital self-publishing. To those of us who do it for the right
reasons, it is not an attempt to cash in, or become famous millionaires; it’s a
matter of survival. To write you need talent, yes, but you also need time, but
to have time you need to be able to support yourself or have someone willing to
do it. Some people can work two jobs and still find time to write. I have the
utmost respect for these people because I’ve never been able to do it.




            Digital
publishing allows us to survive, grants us a way out of the gutters,
legitimizes our efforts, allows us to control our own futures and to connect
with the people who really matter: our readers. It allows us to tell our
stories, stories that would drive us mad if denied their outlet. And why would
anyone begrudge us that?




            It
is a good time to be a writer, a good time to be a dreamer. A good time to
remember how cold the edges of the gutters felt when our backs were pressed
against them, and to retain that memory forever more, because in the end, it’s
what made us who and what we are.




            - Kealan Patrick Burke




      Download The Turtle Boy for free 

      Find more of Kealan's books here.     

            

And he's going to kill me, but I KNOW some of you out there will appreciate this photo as much as I do....









Happy October!



- Alex

             

October is Nanowrimo PREP month!

Oh my God, October tomorrow, how did that happen? (Did you see the Huntress Moon last night? Still huge this morning...)



So do you remember what October is? Yes, right, Halloween.  But it's also the month before Nanowrimo, which means it's Nanowrimo PREP month.



(This is actually the one thing I hate about Nano - why did it have to be in November so if I do a novel prep series it has to be in October, the busiest month of the year for me and all my, you know, supernatural thrillers?)



But that's okay, I'm psyched anyway. Fall is my favorite season. Maybe it’s that Halloween thing, maybe
it’s the “back to school” energy, maybe it’s the Santa Ana winds (that
were so much a part of my life growing up in Southern California that I
made them a character in The Space Between), maybe it’s just that you get a jolt of ambition because it gets cooler and your brain returns to some functional temperature.



Because
it’s sort of ingrained in us (whether we like it or not), that fall is
the beginning of a new school year, I think fall is a good time for
making resolutions. Like, if you're an author, about that new book you’re going to be
writing for the next year or so.



I’m
sure many if not most here are aware that November is Nanowrimo –
National Novel Writing Month. As explained at the official site here, and here and here, the goal of Nanowrimo is to bash through 50,000 words of a novel in a single month.



I
could not be more supportive of this idea – it gives focus and a nice
juicy competitive edge to an endeavor that can seem completely
overwhelming when you’re facing it all on your own. Through peer
pressure and the truly national focus on the event, Nanowrimo forces
people to commit. It’s easy to get caught up in and carried along by
the writing frenzy of tens of thousands – or maybe by now hundreds of
thousands - of “Wrimos”. And I’ve met and heard of lots of novelists,
like Carrie Ryan (The Forest of Hands and Teeth) Sara Gruen (Water For
Elephants), and Lisa Daily (The Dreamgirl Academy) who started novels
during Nanowrimo that went on to sell, sometimes sell big.



Nanowrimo works.



But
as everyone who reads this blog knows, I’m not a big fan of sitting
down and typing Chapter One at the top of a blank screen and seeing what
comes out from there. It may be fine – but it may be a disaster, or
something even worse than a disaster – an unfinished book. And it
doesn’t have to be.



I’m always asked to do Nanowrimo “pep talks”. These are always in the month of November.



That makes no sense to me.



I
mean, I’m happy to do it, but mid-November is way too late for that
kind of thing. What people should be asking me, and other authors that
they ask to do Nano support, is Nano PREP talks.



If
you’re going to put a month aside to write 50,000 words, doesn’t it make
a little more sense to have worked out the outline, or at least an
overall roadmap, before November 1? I am pretty positive that in most
cases far more writing, and far more professional writing, would get
done in November if Wrimos took the month of October – at LEAST - to
really think out some things about their story and characters, and where
the whole book is going. It wouldn’t have to be the
full-tilt-every-day frenzy that November will be, but even a half hour
per day in October, even fifteen minutes a day, thinking about what you
really want to be writing would do your potential novel worlds of good.



Because even if you never look at that prep work again, your
brilliant subconscious mind will have been working on it for you for a
whole month. Let’s face it – we don’t do this mystical thing
called writing all by ourselves, now, do we?



So once
again, I'm going to do a Nano prep series and hopefully get some people not just to commit to
Nano this year, but to give them a chance to really make something of
the month.



Here's the first thing to consider:



How do you choose the next book you write? (Or the first, if it's your first?)



I
know, I know, it chooses you. That’s a good answer, and sometimes it
IS the answer, but it’s not the only answer. And let’s face it – just
like with, well, men, sometimes the one who chooses you is NOT the one
YOU should be choosing. What makes anyone think it’s any different with
books?



It’s a huge commitment, to decide on a book to
write. That’s a minimum of six months of your life just getting it
written, not even factoring in revisions and promotion. You live in that
world for a long, long time. Not only that, but if you're a
professional writer, you're pretty much always going to be having to
work on more than one book at a time. You're writing a minimum of one
book while you're editing another and always doing promotion for a
third.



So the book you choose to write is not just
going to have to hold your attention for six to twelve months or longer with its
world and characters, but it's going to have to hold your attention
while you're working just as hard on another or two or three other
completely different projects at the same time. You're going to have
to want to come back to that book after being on the road touring a
completely different book and doing something that is both exhausting
and almost antithetical to writing (promotion).



That's a lot to ask of a story.



So how does that decision process happen?



When
on panels or at events, I have been asked, “How do you decide what book
you should write?” I have not so facetiously answered: “I write the
book that someone writes me a check for.”



That’s maybe a screenwriter thing to say, and I don’t mean that in a good way, but it’s true, isn’t it?



Anything
that you aren’t getting a check for, you’re going to have to scramble to
write, steal time for – it’s just harder. That doesn’t mean it’s not
worth doing, or that it doesn’t produce great work, but it’s harder.



As
a professional writer, you’re also constricted to a certain degree by
your genre, and even more so by your brand. I’m not allowed to turn in a
chick lit story, or a flat-out gruesome horrorfest, or probably a spy
story, either. Once you’ve published you are a certain commodity. Even now that I'm e publishing, too, and am not so constrained by my publishers' expectations, I have to take my readers into account.



If
you are writing a series, you're even more restricted. You have a
certain amount of freedom about your situation and plot but – you’re
going to have to write the same characters, and if your characters live
in a certain place, you’re also constricted by place. Now that I’m
doing my Huntress series, I am learning that every decision I make about the books
is easier in a way, because so many elements are already defined, but
it’s also way more limiting than my standalones and I could see how it
would get frustrating.



If you have an agent, then input from her or him is key, of
course - you are a team and you are shaping your career together. Your
agent will steer you away from projects that are in a genre that is
glutted, saving you years of work over the years, and s/he will help you
make all kinds of big-pitcure decisions.



But what I’m
really interested in right now is not the restrictions but the limitless
possibilities. I'll get more specific next post.



For now let's just think about it, and discuss:



- How DO you decide what to write?  And do you know what you're working on for Nano?



- And even more importantly – How do you decide what to READ?



Because I have a theory that it’s actually the same answer, but we’ll see.



Now, a couple of announcements:



1. This week I'm off to Bouchercon, the World Mystery Convention - I'm absolutely thrilled to be doing a panel with my idols Val McDermid and Elizabeth George, and also to be performing with Heather Graham, F. Paul Wilson, and the Slushpile band at the House of Blues on Friday night (e mail me at alex AT alexandrasokoloff DOT com) if you want a free ticket). And of course partying the rest of the time. I mean, you know, networking.



MEN ARE FROM MARS WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS


Date: Friday, October 5, 2012

Time: 1:30 p.m.-2:20 p.m.

Location: Ambassador Room- double check the program book before your
panel as a location could change.

Subject: How can an author convincingly write from the point of view
of the opposite sex?

Book signings will be held in the bookroom immediately after the
panel.




2. If you DO NOT have the first Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbook
and you want it for Nook, this is your last day to get it for the next
three months.  I'm very sorry about that, but as I've blogged about here, it's costing me a fortune not to have at least one of the
workbooks in the Kindle Select program. However, all the story structure
you could ever need is in the second workbook, Writing Love , available
in all e formats, so I refuse to feel guilty about it.



Happy Fall, everyone...



- Alex



=====================================================



Screenwriting Tricks for Authors and Writing Love, Screenwriting Tricks for Authors, II, are now available in all e formats and as pdf files Either book, any format, just $2.99.







- Kindle



- Barnes & Noble/Nook



- Amazon UK



- Amaxon DE (Eur. 2.40)









- Smashwords (includes online viewing and pdf file)



- Amazon/Kindle



- Barnes & Noble/Nook



- Amazon UK



- Amazon DE

Getting Real - the Writers Police Academy

I love the smell of cordite in the morning.  




Okay, someone
just had to scrape Lee Lofland off the ceiling. NO. You DO NOT smell
cordite after gunfire. Not since WW II, anyway. I know that now because
last weekend I attended Lee's Writers Police Academy.




Lee Lofland, a former police detective and author of the Writers Digest bestselling book Police Procedure and Investigation
(a must-have!) is not only a law enforcement professional who knows the
job inside and out, but a writer who understands what other writers
need to learn from law enforcement professionals in order to do OUR best
work. And knowing that, he's assembled a cast of characters any one of
whom could easily be the star of their own series. Because it's not
about the facts, it's about the people. And wow, the people.  (Photos by Patti Phillips and Julie Goyette.).



 

So I walk into my first forensics investigation workshop and the incarnation of my agent from Huntress Moon
turns from the whiteboard.  I thought I was hallucinating, or having
one of those dreams where... well, never mind that.  Dave Pauly,
forensics professor at Methodist University in NC, has a resume that’s
half Indiana Jones, half Jack Reacher. He team-taught with Robert Skiff –
two of these for the price of one! (When I first arrived at the
conference I wondered why 90 percent of the attendees were women. That
got cleared up for me in the first hour. Testosterone was rolling down
those corridors in waves...)








Skiff is more
of a scientist, the training manager at Sirchie, a leading manufacturer
of fingerprinting and forensics supplies. I may not know every single
detail I need to know about blood spatter, print impressions, cold
cases, and alternative light sources to finish my sequel - but let me
tell you, after a day of forensics classes and demos with these two
instructors, I am a lot closer than I was a week ago.

Then
there was Corporal Dee Jackson, of the Guilford County Sheriff's
Department. A former Marine, one of the very first women to go into
combat in the Gulf War, and if anyone ever thought a woman isn't capable
of the most intensive combat duty? Look no further than Dee, here
playing a bad guy in a simulated shootout.






She is
hilarious, profound, such a great comic and physical actor it floors me
she hasn't been scooped up by Hollywood, and committed to her mission
in a way that literally halts your breath. The whole room - male,
female, animal, vegetable, mineral - just stops when she walks in.

Katherine Ramsland.
My first time meeting this powerhouse after reading a half-dozen of her
forensics psychology books (and her brilliant biography of Anne Rice, Prism of the Night ). 
This woman has LIVED with death in a way most of us will never
comprehend, and she is deep, funny, philosophical and mesmerizing.

And talk about powerhouse women.... I lived in L.A. during the Simpson trials and meeting Marcia Clark
was like meeting a movie star. Her lecture on putting a case together
for the prosecution was stellar, and she is a warm, witty,
encompassingly charismatic human being. Thrilled to know her!


Andy Russell, one of the main organizers of the conference, was one of
our Firearms Training Simulator (FATS) instructors. Somehow he managed
not to break into hysterical laughter at my first attempts to heft a
handgun, and in fact gave me some useful tips ("Try not to drop the
magazine") with a straight face. 




On a later
panel he kicked off a series of stories that made me understand that
people go into law enforcement mainly because every other call or
traffic stop turns out to involve a naked perp.

Marco Conelli, a retired NYC undercover cop (now YA mystery author) is such a doll I was in total fear for him just listening to
his buy and bust stories (narrated in a voice just like Woody Allen's).
You could see him slipping back into his junkie persona as he described
the scenes. Fascinating. 



This was my schedule:



Thursday night: Jail Tour (a post in itself)



Friday: Impressions Evidence, Cold Case Investigation, Building Searches, Blood Spatter Analysis, Forensic Anthropology.




Saturday:
Anatomy of an Undercover Detective, FATS Training, Arrest and
Handcuffing Techniques, Personal Survival Training for Women, Building a
Case for the Prosecution.




The only frustration was not being able to take absolutely every workshop on offer. 




Probably
halfway into the second day, a lovely and radiant EMS technician, one
that I can tell you for sure you would want there with you if you were,
you know, dying, turned to me in the elevator between classes and said,
"How can you possibly describe any of this?"

And I really
wanted to answer her, and it's a hard answer.  What I said was something
like - "You have to put across enough of the science for a reader to
kind of understand but it's not ABOUT the science.  It's about making
the science real enough that readers will give themselves over to the
EXPERIENCE you're trying to create for them, which is about the searing
passion of wanting to help people and the live wire adrenaline rush of
fear and danger and commitment, and the intimacy of doing this job with
people who are as skilled and committed as you are and who understand
good and evil and pure life force the way you do and the way that no one
who hasn't done the job will ever know. It's not about the science
practically at all, it's about the way you guys move, and the way
ninhydrin crystals look in the light, and the things you say to each
other and your twisted sense of humor and your absolute radiant love for
all of it."

I said some of that, not enough of it, because you can't possibly say enough.


Some of these courses redefine the concept of adrenaline rush.  Lt.
Randy Shepherd (aka Honeybuns, and yes, the moniker is accurate) put a
squad of fifteen of us through our paces during Building Searches. 
We've all seen this on a million TV shows, but now I have some grasp of
the choreography and the constantly changing, split-second
decision/dynamics of a bust like this - I have the flow of it in my
BODY, and because it's my own particular job as a writer to do so, I
know I can put the experience of it onto the page for someone else to
live through. I have been menaced and I have been shot at and I know the
exact weight of the shield and the vest and the gun and I know the
paralyzing fear of having to grasp ALL possible dangers behind ALL doors
and windows and fireplace screens (even when there was no real danger
there for me) and I know for damn sure that I am hopelessly inadequate
and yet that I may still somehow survive... somehow... if I can manage
not to kill anyone on MY OWN SIDE.

That is a hell of a lot to
learn in a two-hour class.  And that's just two hours of a non-stop
marathon of police academy training.

There's a saying in
Hollywood that "Nobody knows anything." Well, I'll tell you what you
don't know.  You don't know how you or anyone you know is going to react
in life-threatening situations, even simulations of them, until you're
right there.

My five-foot tall (and that's on a good hair day)
roommate earned the title of "Killer" from the Firearms Training
Simulator instructors when she put down every bad guy in the training
DVD without even breathing hard.

While I seem incapable of
shooting at anyone under twenty years old (although I also managed never
to get killed or to kill a fellow officer). But - I was the only person
in the Handcuffs Techniques workshop flexible enough to slip my body
through my handcuffs back to front, putting me in a prime position to
choke my arresting officer to death before she realized I was relatively
loose (all right, so I'm more experienced with handcuffs than guns...)


And in Women's Personal Survival Training, it was pretty clear how many
women in the room had never actually let themselves think about what
would happen to them if they LET a stranger force them into a car, or
van, and why it is essential to make the choice to fight BEFORE anyone
ever gets you into the car. Or at least understand the consequences of
not fighting. Not many people in that class slept that night, I'd wager.

In fact, it's five days later and I'm still not sleeping all the way through the night. The adrenaline is that powerful.


You cannot research those things by READING about them, or interviewing people who have lived it. I'm not saying
it's at all the same to go through simulations, compared to the actual
experience.  But compared to reading about it?  No contest.


Do we want to be better mystery and thriller writers?  Or what?



If you do, you owe it to yourself, your books and your readers to make the WPA a MUST DO event in your year. 




I've written more about it here, and plan to do more posts as I'm processing everything I learned for myself, but here's a better taste of the weekend on Lee's blog.



My deepest thanks to Lee, all our superb instructors (ALL of whom volunteered their time) and to Sisters in Crime, who generously underwrote a large portion of the event to keep the tuition at rock-bottom.



And the question of the day is about research. Authors, how do you do
the research that you need to do to write your books? Tell us some
stories! And readers, how detailed do you like your police procedure?
Who do you really think gets it right, in fiction?



- Alex



-------







Huntress Moon , an Amazon bestseller

The Writers Police Academy (and preemptive research)

 I just got back from an amazing four days at Lee Lofland’s Writers Police Academy, a marathon of forensics workshops; hands-on training infirearms, building searches, jail searches, handcuffing techniques;demonstrations of police/ criminal shootouts; lectures in court proceedings and the life of an undercover cop – all conducted by top experts in their fields,interspersed with inspirational talks by the likes of Lee Child, Marcia Clark
and Katherine Ramsland.

The WPA is a goldmine of practical story information.  My head is about to explode with scenes and clues for my new book and the real-life details I needed to make them play.

It’s going to take me the whole next month to sort through even a fraction of
what I learned. But there was much more more to it than that. Being a writer himself, Lee Lofland has
assembled a cast of characters - instructors – every one of whom could be the star of their own series. These are brilliant, funny, dedicated, passionate
professionals - the real good guys. I’m still high from the sheer crackling energy of the weekend.

I’m going to blog in detail about the WPA because I think every author and aspiring author in the genre needs to know about this incredible resource. But it’s going to take me some time to get the photos and links together, and calm down enough to do it justice, so today I wanted to start by talking a little about the process of research.

Every author is constantly doing what I think of as “preemptive research”. We all forage widely in the fields that we write in so that when we sit down with a new story we already have some general knowledge of the arena. Then we have to do specific research to get the details of each particular story right, or right enough.

So I’m constantly reading psychology, especially abnormal psychology, criminal statistics, true crime, books by police officers, federal agents, lawyers, sex workers – and interviewing all of the above every chance I get - so I don’t have to start from scratch every time I sit down with a new book.

We are really blessed in the mystery and thriller community that
conferences and conventions generally have a law enforcement track, where
authors can take workshops and go to panels and demonstrations with various law
enforcement officials in the particular communities where the conferences take
place. I try to go to every law enforcement workshop offered at any given
conference.




The Writers Police Academy is the ultimate in preemptive
research.




It’s a godsend for me, especially because I’m in the middle of
Book 2 in the Huntress series and the forensics are killing me. Almost every
day that I sit down to write I feel like what I really need is to go back to
school in forensic science. Also every day I feel like even if I did I could never get it right enough to pull this story off.




And that’s the point at which I have to remind myself of what I’m actually trying to do, here. 




Thrillers are an incredibly visceral genre. The
promise of a thriller is about sensation. So the research I do for a thriller
is not really about getting the science of it right; it’s about getting enough
details RIGHT ENOUGH for a reader to buy into the story and give themselves
over to the experience. 




In my supernatural thrillers I am very scrupulous about research,
constantly reading about and interviewing people about how certain supernatural
phenomena present themselves, so that as much as possible I can give readers
the actual experience of a haunting as people have consistently reported it. 
It is that feeling of suspense, wonder, anticipation, and sometimes
deliciously terrified submission that I need to create, and I need to be as
detailed as possible AND as credible as possible in those details to get people
to suspend their disbelief and give themselves over to the experience.




With Huntress Moon I wasn’t setting out to write an FBI story at all. I had a core premise about a woman who is killing like a serial killer,
when arguably, in reality women don’t commit sexual homicide. Not on their own,
anyway. That’s what I wanted to explore, and I wanted to do it with a The Fugitive type of structure, in which the pursuer of this killer comes to
empathize with the killer.




And unfortunately for me, especially because I wanted to cross a
lot of state lines and jurisdictions, an FBI agent was the most logical
character for me to use to achieve that structure.




But it’s not a story about the FBI.  It’s a story that uses the device of the FBI to put the
reader through a roller coaster of emotions, sensations, and moral dilemmas.
Which meant that I had to create the illusion of a real FBI agent and bureau,
with enough realism to allow a reader to suspend their disbelief and commit to
the roller coaster.




Anyone with real knowledge of the FBI would probably throw the
book against the wall (a more forceful image than deleting it from a
Kindle...), but I think those people mostly know to avoid FBI novels, anyway,
just to keep their blood pressure down. But so far so good - apparently I’ve
created a true enough illusion to get a lot of readers committed to the ride.




Now I have to learn enough forensics to get enough readers
committed to the ride in the second book. 





Thanks to Lee Lofland, Denene Lofland, Prof. Dave Pauly, Cpl. Dee Jackson, Robert Skiff,
Andy Russell, Lee Child, Marcia Clark, Dr. Katherine Ramsland, Lt. Randy Shepherd,
Retired Detective Marco Conelli, Jerry Cooper, and Dr. Elizabeth Murray, I’ve got at least a start on that process.




More later, but here are some photos on Lee's blog. 




- Alex

Book industry scandal: paid and fake reviews

I posted about this on Murderati earlier in the week, and am not crazy about the idea of getting into the topic again, but I know a lot of readers of this blog don't have time to read Murderati, too, and I wouldn’t be doing my
job as an author community blogger NOT to report on the scandal du jour
(or de semaine, or du mois, probably.)



The subject is paid and fake Amazon reviews, and the internet is
burning up with outraged posts, petitions, and condemnations against
several authors:




- Stephen Leather and Roger Ellory and Sam Millar for creating
sockpuppet accounts to praise their own books and trash those of
competitors.




- John Locke for paying for at least 300 Amazon reviews and then –
what I personally find even more reprehensible – writing a book on “How I
Sold a Million E Books in Five Months” and charging $8.99 for it, while
OMMITTING the fact that he paid for at least 300 Amazon reviews, which
surely had a great deal to do with his sales success.




I’ve linked to some main articles below so you can catch up.




Go read here and here and here and here, and then if you feel like discussing, meet me back here.




There is a lot of sadness and discomfort mixed with my own outrage.




I like Roger Ellory very much as a person and I actually agree with
his own reviews of his books, they’re some of the best crime fiction
I’ve read in recent years.  Why he thought that he had to pump up his
already stellar reputation by creating fake reviews and trashing other
fine authors like Stuart MacBride and Mark Billingham is beyond me.




Except that it’s not.




I have done many stupid, regrettable things in my life, and paid
dearly for those things, too. Usually when I have been completely out of
my mind with – something – grief over a dying parent, grief over the
loss of a loved one or a loved project, fear over my financial
situation, fear over just about anything.




As completely unchristian as I am I can’t help thinking of that
little verse about “she who is without sin” and “casting the first
stone.”




It’s very easy to get caught up in the maelstrom of  - well,
anything, really, but publishing is what we’re talking about - and do
stupid things we wouldn’t ordinarily condone or be caught dead doing
ourselves.




When we can see other authors blatantly gaming the system: racking up
success after success by faking reviews, publishing fan fiction that
skirts or crosses the line of plagiarism which turns into a series of
multimillion dollar bestsellers and a major movie deal, hiring other
authors to write books for you and slapping your name on them while
grossly underpaying the authors who actually WROTE the books - there’s a
huge temptation to jump on one of those bandwagons because, hey,
everyone’s doing it.  And while I’m able to flatly say that the above
practices are wrong – what about tagging parties?  What about asking
friends to bury nasty one-star reviews by clicking “unhelpful” on Amazon?  Is
that gaming the system?  Is it wrong?




BUT - even as I am remembering that I'm fully capable of doing stupid
and condemnable things myself, I do very strongly believe that we
authors have to police ourselves as a community.  We need to talk, to
debate, to develop standards and be able to say when required: This is
wrong, this is duplicitous, this is unacceptable.




Whether that will stop the behavior, I have no idea.




But I also believe authors are for the most part an
empathetic and moral lot.  I really do believe that.  I hope that all of
these authors who have been caught out and are being held up as
examples will take all this furor and censure to heart, self-correct,
make appropriate amends to anyone who has been wronged, and go on to use
their influence to do better. Much better.



So far Roger Ellory seems to be the only one of the four authors in the spotlight willing to step up and say, "I fucked up," but I hope that the others will, too.




And I would hope that friends of authors who are drifting toward moral gray areas would be the first ones to speak up and say - WTF - what are you thinking?  Stop that shit NOW before you do somethiing you'll regret for the rest of your life.. 




I SERIOUSLY hope that my author friends would step up and say it to me.




I hope we ALL will. Because we need to remember how easy it is to get
caught up in the desperation of trying to make a living at this very
tenuous profession and how easy it is to fall into behavior that serves
no one.  We ALL need a little help from our friends.




So, I have a lot of questions today. Were you aware of the
blazing heat suddenly surrounding this issue of paid and fake reviews? 
Are you feeling outrage about any of this behavior, and if so, or if
not, what are you feeling? Do you believe that given all the success
ladled on cheaters, you have to cheat to remain in the game?  Or do you
believe in karma?  Or do you believe that a belief in karma is the
modern opiate of the masses?




And here’s another question – who should be policing reviews and author behavior, if anyone?



And another - how do you feel about one-star reviews in general?  Would you post one? Do you find them accurate and helpful?




- Alex

Labor of Love - 99 cent books for Labor Day!

Earlier this week I blogged about author collectives as a rising method of book promotion. Here's another fast-growing approach: group sales events, in which a group of authors will join forces and drop prices on their books for a limited time, then cross-promote the event so that they're able to reach a new group of readers through each other's FB and Twitter followers and general buzz about the event. I'll blog more in depth about the details of setting an event like this up, but for now, here's the list of books.  My parapsychology thriller The Unseen is already up for 99 cents if you want to grab it; all of the other books will be listed at 99 cents by midnight tonight.  So browse away and grab some deals!



We love our readers, and that's a fact. So a group of us writers are coming together to say a big thank you to everyone.

For four days over the US Labor Day weekend, we are offering our books for 99¢ to say a huge thank you to all the readers who’ve supported us over the years. Elle Lothlorien, who has coordinated this labor of love, says, “We’ve had such amazing support from readers over the years. They’ve posted reviews, friended us on Facebook, helped us procrastinate on twitter and sent emails telling us how much they appreciate our work. As a little thank you for all that love, we
wanted to give something back to them.”

From this Friday, August 31st through Monday, September 3rd, all of these books are 99¢ on Amazon.com. Click on any of the titles to go straight to Amazon, where you can also spread the love to your friends through Amazon’s ‘give as a gift’ button.

Scroll down for all books, listed by genre.


Horror, suspense and mystery - not for the faint-hearted:

THE UNSEEN by Alexandra Sokoloff



A terrifying novel of suspense based on the Rhine parapsychology experiments at Duke University


After experiencing a precognitive dream that ends her engagement and changes her life forever, a young psychology professor from California decides to get a fresh start by taking a job at Duke University in North Carolina. She soon becomes obsessed with the files from the world-famous Rhine parapsychology lab experiments, which attempted to prove ESP really exists.

Along with another charismatic professor, she uncovers troubling cases, including one about a house supposedly haunted by a poltergeist, investigated by another research team in 1965. The two professors and two exceptionally gifted Duke students move into
the abandoned mansion to replicate the investigation, unaware that the entire original team ended up insane... or dead.

THE DEVIL IN THE WOODS by Heather Graham



In
this novella by NYT bestseller Heather Graham, Christina Hardy and Jed Braden
(The Seance) head down to Miami to help out when there's a death in a friend's
family. But the old family residence, in a little known overgrown area of the
beach , was filled with legends, especially that of a "devil in the
woods." Strange events begin to occur, and the group is left to wonder if
the stories they told around campfires on dark nights as children might have
some essence of truth. Is murder always committed by men, or does a demon lurk
in the mangroves and the water, and prey upon the unwary?






THE GIN PALACE by Daniel Judson



Declan “Mac” MacManus, some-time PI turned full-time
Southampton cabbie, has had to endure much in his young life: the loss of
family and friends, grave bodily injuries at the hands of ruthless enemies, and
the knowledge that more than a few lives have been shattered by the decisions
fate has forced him to make. But nothing of what Mac has encountered—and
nothing of what he now knows about his own mysterious past—can compare to what
awaits him in the heart-pounding final installment of The Gin Palace Trilogy.
On a cold winter night, a troubled woman enters Mac’s cab and within moments
sets into motion a series of devastating events that will test the young
MacManus to his very soul. As he chases down leads, and his losses once again
begin to mount, Mac finds himself dangerously close to a line he swore he’d
never cross. And when one utterly unbearable loss threatens to transform him
into an avenging angel, it is an unlikely ally—a stranger stalking him like a
shadow—that may very well be the difference between Mac’s final act of
self-destruction or his ultimate salvation.





DEEDS OF MERCY by M.P. McDonald



In No Good Deed: Book One in the Mark Taylor Series, Mark
Taylor discovers first hand that no good deed goes unpunished when the old
camera he found during a freelance job in an Afghanistan bazaar gives him more
than great photos. It triggers dreams of disasters. Tragedies that happen
exactly as he envisions them. He learns that not only can he see the future, he
can change it.



In
Deeds of Mercy: Book Three, an unexpected visitor from Mark's past brings him
unwanted attention from the authorities. Unable to decide who is friend and who
is foe, Mark becomes a fugitive from the law, but with thousands of lives at
stake, he is forced to put aside his fear of capture, and instead, seek help
from his pursuers.





Here's some great chick lit/women's fiction:







THE FROG PRINCE by Elle Lothlorien



It was his pheromones that did it.
With one sniff, sex researcher Leigh Fromm recognizes that any offspring she
might have with the mysterious stranger would have a better-than-average chance
of surviving any number of impending pandemics.





But when Leigh finds out that the handsome “someone” at her
great aunt’s wake is Prince Roman Habsburg von Lorraine of Austria, she
suddenly doubts her instincts—not that she was intending to sleep with the guy.
The royal house of Habsburg was once completely inbred, insanity and impotency
among the highlights of their genetic pedigree. (The extreme “bulldog
underbite” that plagued them wasn’t called the Habsburg Jaw for nothing.)




It doesn’t matter that his family hasn’t sat on a throne
(other than the ones in their Toilette) since 1918, or that Austria is now a
parliamentary democracy. Their lives couldn’t be more different: Roman is
routinely mobbed by paparazzi in Europe. Leigh is regularly mocked for having
the social skills of a potted plant. Even if she suddenly developed grace,
charm and a pedigree that would withstand the scrutiny of the press and his
family, what exactly is she supposed to do with this would-have-been king of
Austria who is in self-imposed exile in Denver, Colorado?







ONE PINK LINE by Dina Silver

Can the love of a lifetime be forever
changed by one pink line? Dina Silver's tender, absorbing novel, One Pink Line,
is the warmhearted, wry story of love, loss and family, as seen through the
prism of one singular, spirited young couple who find themselves in a
predicament that changes the course of their lives, and those closest to them.




Sydney Shephard, a sweet-tempered, strong-natured college
senior is young, in love with an exceptional man, and unexpectedly pregnant.
Faced with a child she never planned for, she is forced to relay this news to
her neurotic mother, relinquish her youth, and risk losing the love of her
life. Then there's Grace, a daughter, who believed she was a product of this
great love, grows to realize her existence is not what she assumed, and is left
with profound and puzzling questions about who she really is.



Spanning generations and every imaginable emotion, One Pink Line reveals how
two points of view can be dramatically at odds, and perhaps ultimately
reconciled.






BUILD A MAN by Talli Roland

Slave to the rich and the rude,
cosmetic surgery receptionist Serenity Holland longs for the day she's a
high-flying tabloid reporter. When she meets Jeremy Ritchie -- the hang-dog man
determined to be Britain's Most Eligible Bachelor by making himself over from
head to toe and everything in between -- Serenity knows she's got a story no
editor could resist.



With London's biggest tabloid on board and her very own column tracking
Jeremy's progress from dud to dude, Serenity is determined to be a success. But
when Jeremy's surgery goes drastically wrong and she's ordered to cover all the
car-crash goriness, Serenity must decide how far she really will go for her
dream job.



And Talli's other books, The Hating Game and Watching Willow Watts are also 99¢ for these four days.




SINGLE IN THE CITY by Michele Gorman

Take one twenty six year old American, add to
a two thousand year old city, add a big dose of culture clash and stir




To think Hannah ever believed that Americans differed from
Brits mainly in pronunciation, sophistication and dentistry. That’s been the
understatement of a lifetime. She lands upon England’s gentle shores with no
job, no friends and no idea how she’s supposed to build the life she’s dreaming
of. Armed with little more than her enthusiasm, she charges headlong into
London, baffling the locals in her pursuit of a new life, new love and sense of
herself.




ROMANTICALLY CHALLENGED by Beth Orsoff


Being single is tough enough without
constantly being asked, "When are you getting married?" Julie Burns,
a 32-year-old Hollywood entertainment attorney weary of being asked about her
marital status and informed of the dismal statistical reality regarding the
matrimonial chances for a single woman of her age, decides to put more effort
into her search for a decent man. She is willing to try just about everything,
except giving up her standards (for more than one date). The results are
disastrous and hilarious. Urged by her friends, she gives a schlemiel she meets
on an airplane a chance as well as trying dating services, blind dates, and
speed dating. How can a cute, intelligent woman with a great career fail to
meet the man of her dreams? Her friends claim she is just too picky, but Julie
is just looking for a man with a future.







WENDY AND THE LOST BOYS by  Barbara Silkstone


When a deathbed promise to a friend
leaves Wendy Darlin, feisty Miami real estate broker for billionaires, trapped
on a super-yacht with Ponzi-king, Charlie Hook, she’s forced to join him on a
quest to recover his hidden treasure. Along for the danger-filled adventure are
an undercover SEC Investigator, who kindles a spark in Wendy with his ‘Johnny
Depp’ eyes and Hook’s young female helicopter pilot who befriends Wendy as they
sail the high seas, one step ahead of modern day ruthless pirates.


 



THE MERRY-GO-ROUND by Donna Fasano

When Lauren divorces her husband, she
has one thought on her mind...stepping off the merry-go-round. However, her
life quickly turns into a three-ring circus: her hypochondriac father moves in,
her ex is using her shower when she’s not home, and her perky assistant is
pushing her out into the fearsome dating world. She also has to decide if the
dilapidated barn and vintage merry-go-round she was awarded in the divorce
settlement is a blessing or a bane. As if Lauren’s personal life isn’t chaotic
enough, this slightly jaded attorney is overrun with a cast of quirky
characters who can’t stay on the right side of the law. What’s a woman to do?
She can allow life to spin her in circles forever. Or she can reach out and
grab the brass ring. 



THE FRENCH ROSE by Lyn Armstrong






Paranormal/psychic suspense:








THE UNSEEN by Alexandra Sokoloff



A terrifying novel of suspense based on the Rhine
parapsychology experiments at Duke University





After
experiencing a precognitive dream that ends her engagement and changes her life
forever, a young psychology professor from California decides to get a
fresh start by taking a job at Duke University in North Carolina. She soon
becomes obsessed with the files from the world-famous Rhine parapsychology lab
experiments, which attempted to prove ESP really exists.

Along
with another charismatic professor, she uncovers troubling cases, including one about a
house supposedly haunted by a poltergeist, investigated by another research
team in 1965.  The two professors and two exceptionally gifted Duke students move into
the abandoned mansion to replicate the investigation, unaware that the entire original team ended up insane... or dead.



THE FOREVER GIRL by Rebecca Hamilton






"Whatever
you do, fight."

 Sophia's family has skeletons, but
they aren't in their graves.



At
twenty-two, practicing Wiccan Sophia Parsons is scratching out a living waiting
tables in her Rocky Mountain hometown, a pariah after a string of unsolved murders
with only one thing in common: her.



Sophia
can imagine lots of ways to improve her life, but she'd settle for just getting
rid of the buzzing noise in her head. When the spell she casts goes wrong, the
static turns into voices. Her personal demons get company, and the newcomers
are dangerous.





BET YOU CAN'T FIND ME by Linda Prather



Imagine
a killer who can kill at will from a distance. No gun, no weapon. Nothing more
than a thought.

Catherine
Mans has the ability to see and hear what others can’t. With the help of
Homicide Sergeant Cody Allen, she’s turned that talent into a successful
profession as a psychic consultant.

But
Catherine’s past is coming back to haunt her. Someone is threatening the lives
of everyone she loves.



Nine
bodies have been discovered, and Catherine is the FBI’s prime suspect. To
prove her innocence, she must unravel the secrets of her past, and answer the
challenge of a deranged psychic.

Bet
you can’t…FIND ME!







Fantasy/sci-fi:







STUPEFYING STORIES AUGUST 2012 ANTHOLOGY edited by Bruce Bethke



Edited
by award-winning writer Bruce Bethke and featuring stories from 12 outstanding
American, British, and Irish authors, the new "Weirder Homes &
Gardens" edition is filled with all-new tales of the fantastic, funny, and
frightening things that can happen in that most mundane of places: the home,
and attached garden. Includes "No Onions" by M. Bennardo, "The
Growing" by Sylvia Hiven, "Family Magic" by Michele Winkler,
"Mission Accomplished" by Peter Wood, "Helen Went Beep" by
Erin Entrada Kelly, "The Prototype" by Judith Field, "Colorful
Caps" by JC Hemphill, "Lifesource" by Barbara V. Evers,
"The Centaur Bride" by Eric J. Juneau, "Rooting for You" by
Michael Heneghan, "Security" by Chris Bailey Pearce, and "The
Garden" by R. L. Bowden.



And young adult:

 



THE TOADHOUSE TRILOGY by Jess Lourey



Aine (pronounced "Aw-nee") believes herself to be a
regular teenager in 1930s Alabama, but when a blue-eyed monster named Biblos
attacks, she discovers that the reclusive woman raising her isn't really her
grandmother and that she's been living inside a book for the past five years.
With her blind brother, Spenser, she flees the pages of the novel she's called
home, one terrifying step ahead of Biblos' black magic. Her only chance at survival
lies in beating him to the three objects that he desires more than life.



As
she undertakes her strange and dangerous odyssey, Aine must choose between a
family she doesn't remember and her growing attraction to a mysterious young
man named Gilgamesh. Only through treacherous adventures into The Time Machine,
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, A Tale of Two Cities, and the epic Indian saga The
Ramayana will she learn her true heritage and restore the balance of the
worlds... if she can stay alive.

Killer Thrillers and author collectives

Yes, I have been away for a long time, two mind-bending weeks in Australia, which I will post about when I can wrap my own thoughts around the trip.  That will not be today, however. I'm still trying to wake up.



But life and work go on, especially work, and today is a big launch of a new venture in publishing that I wanted to write about: a collective of thriller writers called Killer Thrillers.



I've been blogging more and more here about e publishing and marketing, because these days it's impossible to have a career as a novel writer without being an expert in both. So today I'd like to talk about the issue of filters.



One of the huge problems of e publishing from a quality perspective is that in the brave new world of self publishing, "gatekeepers" have essentially been eliminated.  Agents and publishers are no longer filtering books before they're put before the public. While there's an argument that that's a good thing, I know from my years as a reader for film production companies how very much absolute dreck is screened out by early readers:  agents, editorial assistants, editors - and when I say dreck I mean scripts and books that should never have been read by another soul besides the purported author.



I'm all for readers being allowed to discover books on their own, and it is true that the actual purchase or publication of a script or book is subject to personal taste, the specific needs of a publishing house or line, and the vagaries of the market.  But those screeners also kept some seriously awful material from ever seeing the light of day.



So now that anyone who can figure out the e publishing platform can upload virtually anything to Kindle, Pubit, Kobo and Smashwords, where's the quality control?  You can argue that the readers are their own quality control now, but seriously - the vast number of books - and especially free books - on offer has made
sorting through the dreck that's out there (and oh yes, the dreck is
out there) a time-consuming proposition for a reader.



Personally, I WANT some screening.  But where is that going to come from?



While literary agencies are a logical entity for promotion of quality authors and books, they seem so far reluctant to set themselves up as publishers or storefronts for their clients.  And since agencies are not performing this function, I have thought for some time that authors should be banding together to support and promote their own books, and there are more and more of these author collectives springing up (not surprisingly the majority are romance authors).  I've been asked to join various author collectives but have so far been wary about committing because I haven't heard of or more importantly read most of the authors involved.  I can't in good conscience post about other authors' books on Facebook and Twitter and on this blog and others when I haven't actually read the goods. I think we all have a responsibility not to waste other people's time by randomly promoting mediocre books and leaving readers to find for themselves that those books were better avoided.



So so far my only choices have been to form a collective of authors I admire myself, or wait for someone like-minded to do it. And luckily for me, thriller author Karen Dionne has done exactly that. Karen is a bestselling author and organizer extraordinaire: the founder of the writers forum Backspace and the Backspace Writers Conference.  For Killer Thrillers she's put together a group of thriller authors I would have approached myself: friends and blogmates from Murderati:  Rob Gregory Browne, Brett Battles and Zoe Sharp, and other authors I know and love like David Morrell, Blake Crouch, CJ Lyons, Keith Raffel - all authors I have read and can recommend without reservation.



All Killer Thrillers authors are bestselling, award-winning and/or internationally published; most are traditionally published as well as e published.  Those qualifications do not guarantee that a particular reader will love all or any of the books offered, but they do say that a significant number of readers have found the books worth reading. And most of the authors involved know each other from Bouchercon and Thrillerfest, MWA and ITW and Sisters in crime, and can promote each other without the slightest hesitation.



In essence authors are banding together to establish their own publishing imprints, just as publishers do. We are creating an umbrella organization that guarantees a certain genre and a certain quality of work. How effective these collectives are going to be in the Wild West of e publishing is an open question, but Killer Thrillers is a brand I can put my energy into building with real enthusiasm. I hope you'll check out the site and the books today, and if you see anything you like, tell your friends.



Killer Thrillers



And today I'd love to talk about book screening.  How do you find your books these days? Have you seen other effective methods of quality control and promotion?



- Alex



Related e publishing and marketing posts:



My e publishing decision 

E publishing - Where do I START?

To Nook or Not to Nook? 

Giving it Away (Kindle Select promotion)

Marketing = Madness

Letting it Ride (Kindle Select promotion)

Bestseller lists and Tag lists

Liking, Sharing and Tagging



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In other news...



I'm thrilled that Huntress Moon is a featured book in Amazon's KDP newsletter this week. 



And I made IndieReader's  Top 100 Indie Authors list for August with the sales of Huntress Moon alone.



Yes, I am happy I decided to e publish!



A driven FBI agent is on the hunt for that most rare of all killers: a female serial.









Amazon US

Amazon UK

Amazon DE

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Amazon ES

Amazon IT