Steve McHugh's Blog: Steve McHugh - Writer, page 18

Pick a Winner

Right, I figure it’s been too long since my last competition and it’s time for another one.

So, here’s what I’m going to do.

I’m going to send the MP3 of all 3 Hellequin books (Crimes Against Magic, Born of Hatred and With Silent Screams), to 2 lucky people. I’ll sign the boxes of both and the winners will probably get some other stuff put in the bag too.

 

This is going to be a little different, because to enter I want you to nominate 1 person who you’d like these to go to and tell me why.

That’s right, we’re going to be all altruistic about this and give these to someone you think will enjoy them. It could be your other-half, your parent, child, friend, neighbour or even random dude in the street. That last one is probably a little weird. Just tell me who and why.

 

Next Friday I’ll get one of my daughters to randomly pick names out of a hat and those two people will get MP3 copies of my books sent to them.

 

Good luck

Official

 

 

This is just a brief post to say now that everything is signed and done, I can happily announce that I’ve now acquired an literary agent in the form of the awesome Paul Lucas from Janklow and Nesbit.

Janklow and Nesbit Associates, and Paul in particular, represent many wonderful authors, and I look forward to working together.

 

 

 

To The Point

Right, started chapter 25.

75k in and still some way to go. New species, new powers and new characters.

I’m enjoying writing book 4 a lot.

 

Just Publish It

Anytime someone says to you, “Ah, you’ve written a book, just publish it.” Ignore them. Just publishing your book, be it on Amazon or ibooks or wherever, is a terrible idea. Here’s why.

 

You have a book. congrats. Take a moment to pat yourself on the back, have a beer and bask in your exhausted glory. Then you see someone write the above statement. They put their book out on Kindle or ibooks, and it did well, why can’t you? Well, I guarantee you they didn’t just write a book and publish it for a start.

 

Here’s what it should say.

1. Write a Book.

2. Edit the ever loving crap out of said book.

3. Get people to read your book. Not your loved ones or friends, but other writers or critique partners. Don’t have any? Join a writing group and get some.

4. Edit your book.

5. Research the best way for you to publish. Self publishing IS NOT FOR EVERYONE. I can’t stress that enough.

6. Write a synopsis and query letter, even if you have no intention of looking for an agent. Do it anyway, they help.

Here’s where the list diverges. 

7. You can search for an agent. It’ll probably take a long time and be full of heartbreak and woe, but if your work is good enough, you’ll get one. I got mine after my publishing deal, everyone’s way of getting one is different. Don’t loose heart.

8. You decide to self publish. Congrats.

9. Edit the book. Professionally. Hire someone.

10. Get a cover. Professionally. Hire someone if you suck at art.

11. EDIT THE BOOK.

12. Research how to get to the people who would want to read your book. Figure out how much you want to price it at.

13. Research the best platform for your work. Do you want to use KDP or have it on Kobe, ibooks etc?

14. Make sure you book is formatted correctly for every format you want it in.

Now they diverge back (mostly).

15. Start building toward a launch. Use Social Media and other methods to build buzz. DO NOT SPAM PEOPLE about your book, either now or when it comes out.

16. Launch the book.

17. Learn how to deal with people who won’t like it. Or don’t read reviews. The latter is preferable, but any writer who says they don’t ever read reviews is lying or has someone do it for them.

18. DO NOT ANSWER REVIEWS. Seriously, don’t. Not even the good ones.

19. Behave professionally. Always.

20 to 19,999,999. Work your ass off.

10,000,000. If you’re lucky and good. Profit.

 

I’ve probably missed a few ‘edit your book’ steps, and I certainly can’t emphasise that enough.

 

I know, that looks like a lot, and it is, but here’s why you never ever just self-publish your book without all the work. Well there’s 2 big reasons.

 

1. Publishing your book is a little like playing poker. There’s a lot of skill involved, but more than that is the need to have some luck. Launching without preparing properly is like playing poker, but you’re holding a tic-tac-toe board. Launching after you prepared, is like playing poker, but you’ve stacked the deck slightly. It’s still needs a lot of skill to win, but your chances of getting a lucky hand are higher.

As a self-published writer, you’re going up against other self-published writers who know how to play the game, and traditional published authors who have backing and probably an agent’s help. You go out there cold and it’s not gonna be pretty.

Those people who just throw their book out there unprepared, are the same people (usually), who complain about no one buying or liking their work.

2. Those people who just throw their books out without proper editing and cover. Other Self-published writers don’t like them. Why? Because they’re unprofessional. You need to get your book the best life it can have, you need to lavish it with attention and love. Get it edited, get it a good cover, get wise on how to market it.

 

And that’s my advice for going from writing your book to publishing it. Anyone who says, just publish it, remember it’s never that easy.

Writing A Series

To the shock of absolutely no one reading this, it turns out that writing a series isn’t easy. I’m now on book 4 of the Hellequin Chronicles and making notes for book 5, and there are plenty of things I’ve learned over the course of the series that I shall now impart for your reading pleasure. Or to enjoy the warm glow from my misery, it’s up to you.

1. You need to have a good idea of the number of books you’re going to write.

It doesn’t have to be exact. You can say 4 or 5 and do 8, but saying it’s going to be 3 books and you write 30, is probably going to mean a lot of extra work when you realise your life now consists of one series.

I always knew how many books the Hellequin was going to be. That number has grown by a few, but it’s still in the right ball-park. And no, I’m not going to say the number in case it changes. Let’s just go with many for now.

Having a number means you have a rough idea about how it ends. Which brings me on to.

 

2. You know how it ends.

From a personal point of view, I had to know how the series ends. Yes, that ending is capable of change, and adding new characters to the series means there’s always going to be a difference from your original view, but you should at least have a good idea of how you’re going to end the whole thing. Getting to book 6 and realising you have no more story to tell, but no idea how to end it, probably isn’t going to endear you to your readers a whole bunch.

Also, if you have an idea how it ends that makes it easier to drop hints about future plot points. I’ve learned that people like hints, they hunt for them and even the smallest thing will become fodder for discussion.

 

3. Spreadsheets are your friends.

I’ve used Excel most of my adult life. That might be the least interesting sentence I’ve ever written, but Excel is a beautiful thing when it comes to writing a series. The last thing you want to do is get to book 3 or 4 and write something that contradicts what you wrote in book 1. Because when you do, people will notice.

I have 1 spreadsheet with 6 tabs open. Each one for a different book, containing each character for that book. It lists where they start in the book, where they finish and anything I need to remember. For every character. No matter how small a part they have.

It’s a lot of work, but it would be almost impossible to do it without.

 

Even as a Mac user, I’d still rather use Excel over Numbers.

4. Drop Hints.

See above. People love hints. I’ve got them in every book about where things are going. Just little things that I know will pay off later in the series, but for the moment don’t really mean much. The naming of a character not in the book, a throw away sentence or something a character sees. They’re great fun to sprinkle through the books, and even more fun to see people notice them and try to figure out what they mean. I’m cruel like that.

 

5. Timeline.

I use Aeon Timeline. This is mostly because Nate is 1600 years old and my memory for over 1000 years of history isn’t that great. Timeline software for any character is helpful. Knowing where a character was at a moment will help you if you’re going for an epic series.

 

6. Write Novellas/Short Stories.

I can’t tell you how many people have asked for novellas or little short stories between books. On the minus side, yes it’s extra work, but the plus outweighs it in my opinion. People get to keep your books in mind as they wait for the next one, and in my case I have a millennium to play around with, so I can set the novellas in periods of time that my main books won’t cover.

Also you can spotlight other characters, which is a fun way of adding depth to people’s favourite characters.

 

 

7. Each book should move the overall plot forward.

If you’re writing a series, each and every book should have a forward momentum to the overall story. It might not mean much at the time, but there should be changes, or introductions, to things that will impact later on.

 

8. Standalone.

Every single book should be able to be read as a standalone. Whatever you need people to understand for that book should be explained in that book. Sure, if someone has read the previous books in a series they should get more out of it, but if I pick up book 5, I should be able to understand the plot without needing to go to Wikipedia to figure out who a character is.

According to my editor this gets less and less of an issue the further in the series you get, but personally, I like the idea of making the books standalone. I want people to be able to pick up the new book and enjoy it, whether they’ve read the past ones or not.

 

9. You’re Gonna Piss People Off.

Accept it, do it anyway. Everyone has a favourite character, and as a writer your job is to create interesting stories people want to read. Sometimes that means screwing with a character people love. Actually scratch that, it usually means screwing with a character people love. Characters die, or do things people won’t like. You can’t please everyone, so don’t bother trying. Please yourself. Okay, that sounds weird.

Basically if you’re happy with it, others will be. If you pander to people because you don’t want to upset anyone, you’re going to be the author of the dullest books in the world. You think George R.R. Martin or J.K. Rowling would stop writing something because it would upset someone? Actually, George might do it just because it would, but that’s beside the point. You write the story you need to write.

 

I won’t say who she killed off that I liked, but damn you, JK, damn you.

10. Don’t Needlessly Piss People Off.

Seriously, don’t. Don’t get to book 4 decide you need to shake things up and massacre half the cast with no build up. Don’t get bored with a character so do something completely out of character for them just to give them something to do. Don’t make them suddenly idiots (unless there’s a reason). Don’t do things for the sake of it. Whatever you do to your characters, or have them do, has to have a point. It has to make sense. Killing off characters is fine, sometimes it’s even shocking, but killing off people over and over again becomes less shocking and more and more boring. Don’t make your books boring.

 

So, there’s 10 points to think about when writing a series. There’s a bunch more I imagine, but we’ll leave it there for now. Writing a series is a lot of work, mostly in preparation and remembering what happened where, but it’s also a lot of fun. I guess I should probably get back to it.

 

It’s Been a While

 

 

I noticed the other day that I haven’t had a blog post about writing for some time. I figured an update on book 4 was probably in order.

 

Hellequin Chronicles Book 4: Prison of Hope is currently about 70,000 words in, so I’ve probably got 50k-ish left. It’s got quite a lot of characters from Greek mythology in it, but I don’t want to say too much more for fear of giving it away.

The question I’m getting asked the most is when will it be out?

I don’t know is the honest answer. It’s up to my publisher and it’s something I hope to find out in the not too distant future, so once I’m aware of it, I can let everyone know.

In the meantime, I’m plodding along with it and it’s all coming together very nicely. We’ve got a bunch of new species in book 4 and some very cool new characters I’m looking forward to people enjoying/hating.

I can tell you that the flashback scenes in book 4 are set in 1936, Berlin. Book 3’s flashbacks in the 1970s are going to be the closest to current times that we’re going to see for a while, so I plan on going back further and further now to learn more about Nate and his past.

So, there you go, a short update.

If you’re interested in discussing the books, there’s not a group on Facebook that does just that (In fact I’ve posted the first sentence of the book there). Click the picture below to go join in. Until next time

The beginning of book 4′s current setting is here. Not saying where that is though. I’m cruel like that.

Street Team

I’ve been considering organising a Street Team for a few months now, but after talking to several friends, decided to go ahead and start one.

I’m going to be adding people over the next week or so (I hope) and then we’ll make the group secret, so until then if there’s anyone you know who’d like to join, then go ahead and invite them.

So, what is a Street Team?

Well, primarily the people involved in this will review books as they come out on their blogs/amazon/goodreads etc, share Facebook/twitter statuses about book related stuff and generally tell people how much you like the books. In return, this is the place you’ll get to see cover reveals or parts of the book before anyone else, there will be exclusive competitions not available to anyone else and I’ll be giving away stuff like mugs and things on a fairly regular basis.

There will be things that aren’t required of you to do and things that are, but I’ll state which things are required by every one (mostly reviews and pimping new releases/sales). Those who regularly participate will be eligible for things like ARC of future books and the like.

I’m pretty new at this whole Street Team thing, so if anyone has any suggestions then feel free.

To begin with, I’m going to get everyone together and then I’ve got an idea to share. I’m looking forward to seeing what happens next.

If you’re interested, click the covers above. I hope to see some of you there.

Discussion

Just to let everyone know, I’ve created a discussion group on Facebook for people to talk about the Hellequin Chronicles books old and future.

 

If you want to take part, then click the cover below. I look forward to seeing some of you there.

 

Film Thoughts

As a sort of sequel to my blog post about trailers a few weeks ago, here’s one about actual movies I’ve seen!

To be fair it’s only 3, but that’s 3 more than I usually get to watch in a week, so here you go.

 

Captain America: The Winter Soldier.

The first CA film was merely okay. Chris Evans was pretty good in the role, but it took far too long to do anything and when the action started it wasn’t really that interesting. The sequel changed all of that by being action from beginning to end, with a much more interesting story. And it was fantastic for it. It helped that the characters in the film are all great, with Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L Jackson and Anthony Mackie all getting some decent screen time. Sebastian Stan is great as The Winter Soldier himself, and the interplay between him and Cap sets up things nicely for a third movie.

It’s certainly up there with the best Marvel movies done so far, probably just behind Avengers and Iron Man 1. A really great 2 hours. Go watch it.

 

Considering how important Falcon is to the whole movie, there’s not a single poster I could find with him on it. So, here’s Black Widow.

47 Ronin.

I wanted to love this film. I love period Japanese movies, I love samurai and I love magic. Put  the three together and it should be fantastic. It wasn’t.

To be fair, the actors did a mostly good job with what they had, but it was just so wishy-washy. If they wanted to do a full-blown fantasy epic, they failed, and if they wanted to do a violent samurai movie, they failed at that. For a film with so much sword fighting, there was barely any blood, which I found very odd.

The fantasy parts, while interesting to begin with, were never really embraced into the story and Keanu’s character, who I guess was meant to be the big hero, never really did anything interesting. Also, the bad guy never really came across as the big evil everyone said he is and the witch was… well, she was dull.

That said, it wasn’t terrible. I watched the whole 2 hours (although the love story was needlessly shoehorned into the story) and when the action started it usually looked pretty good. I just wish they’d picked one or the other and gone with it. A real shame and a waste of some excellent source material and interesting characters.

The whole time I was watching it, I just kept thinking, “I should put Ninja Scroll on again.”

 

Of these 3 characters, 1 is in it for all of 10 seconds. No idea why he’s even on the poster, except because he looks cool.

The Hobbit 2

A confession to make; I like the first Hobbit film. It’s a bit overly long, and the singing Goblin King is annoying, but Sir Ian McKellen was awesome as always and Richard Armitage was excellent as Thorin.

But despite my enjoying the first, the second film is better in every way. It’s paced better, it’s more exciting and Benedict Cumberbatch is awesome as Smaug. Luke Evans as Bard is a great addition and the whole films 2+ hours time flies by.

I don’t mind the addition of Legolas, and the barrel escape was wonderful to watch and a lot of fun too. The only problem I had was with the love story between Tauriel and Kili, which came across as pointless and forced (although I like both characters).

Looking forward to part 3.

 

The film looks great, as you’d expect. Except the spiders. They’re horrible.

So, 2 films I recommend as they’re great and 1 that probably had far too much interference from studios to be anything other than okay. That said, if you want to watch a great Keanu film, go see Man of Tai Chi, which is brilliant and Keanu places a pretty good bad-guy.

Until next time, have a good week.

Trailers

Had a bit of a new Trailer watch last night and I figured what else is a blog for if I can’t share my opinions!

TMNT: Megan Fox being awful and it looks like it’s either going to be good fun or a train wreck. Now I like early Bay films (The Rock and Bad Boys), but since then they’ve all been dreadful. Still, he’s not directing so there’s a glimmer of hope.

If the movie sucks at least the new cartoon is good fun. What, am I saying, ‘if’, of course it’s gonna suck.

Lucy: I’m happy to admit I do like Scarlet Johansson, and Luc Besson’s films are usually, at the very least, entertaining. But saying that, the whole using more than 10% of your brain has been played out a bit. Still it looked pretty good and something I’d probably enjoy.

I don’t really need a caption here, do I?

Joe: Nic Cage in acting shock! It reminds me a little of the sublime, A History of Violence, and when Nic is on, he’s very much on.

And if nothing else, that is a masterful beard.

 

Jinn: I have no idea what the hell happened in this trailer. Bright colours and noise. Looks dull.

Oh there was a car in it, and the car looked pretty good. There, that’s the end of what I remember.

Jupiter Ascending: Okay confession time, I like Channing Tatum. He seems like a nice guy and he’s been in a few films I’ve enjoyed, but nothing spectacular. I don’t see this changing that view. It looks like an okay science-fiction/action film with Sean Bean, who I’m sure will die at some point in heroic fashion.

I’m guessing he dies with fighting a hoard of aliens, cup of tea in one hand and broken bottle in the other. As a Yorkshire-man should.

 

Edge of Tomorrow: It’s a Tom Cruise film based on a Japanese novel. Interesting premise, where a soldier dies in battle and has to constantly relive the same battle over and over in an attempt to win and get better, but the trailer didn’t do it any favours.

Brick Mansions: Paul Walkers last completed film is a remake of the incredible French film, District 13. This looks identical to the original, with some of the same cast returning. Should be good fun.

Hercules: Not the shambolic movie that came out a few months ago, this one has Dwayne Johnson in it. I’ve always liked The Rock in action films, so I can see this being a great watch.

If nothing else, he damn well looks the part. That lion he’s wearing is probably the happiest it’s ever been. You know, if it weren’t dead.

The Raid 2: If you haven’t seen The Raid, stop whatever you’re doing and go watch it. It’s the best action film for the last… well, since Die Hard. After 20 minutes of set up, it’s then an incredible 90 minutes of brutal, unrelenting action that will have you glued to your seat. And the sequel looks like being even more insane. I can’t wait to see this.

In any Asian action film, when the above part happens, you just know the following fight is going to be amazing.

Moms’ Night Out: Yeah, I know, I was just curious. Trailer raised a chuckle until it got to the bit where the dads are left alone with their kids and they don’t cope. Because as we all know, dad’s are fucking useless. Total horseshit.

So, there you go all the trailers I watched. Some look good, some look bad. But what I can take from all of it is that The Raid 2 will be full of awesome, so I’m happy.