Phillip T. Stephens's Blog: Wind Eggs, page 3

Public reading to promote your book

Nikky Finney at Annikki Poetry Festival in Tampere Finland. (Kirjavirta)

Sooner or later you will be asked to promote your book with a public reading. Many authors love to read in public. Others shy away. Few read well.

I spent years organizing and working book fairs, and years reading at them as well. Chris the Story Reading Ape published tips on how to prepare for a reading based on those experiences. (The last in my series on inspiration and publishing.)

 

Public reading to promote your book

SaveSave

Browse artists’ brains

Some of my best ideas came from art. The story in the picture may not move me, but the way light and shadow interacts with a subject, or the expression on a face might.

(I also browse design sites and art looking for cover art and illustration ideas.)

Modern thought developed from the ability to symbolize and without it we might not even have language. We painted and sculpted befoe we wrote.

[image error]concept and image meet in this artist’s journal (Palimpsest)

But art doesn’t flow directly from the artist’s brain to the canvas or page. She doodles, draws and plays and from those sketches the final image emerges. The Art Journaling Tumbler site archives a number of artist’s journals, documenting their thought process over a period of time. Bookmark it. When you need a break, instead of solitaire, browse some pages. One of the images might unblock that thought you’ve been struggling to express.

Art Journaling

True Soldier

“Don’t you get it? Nine more worlds, a couple of dozen missions, and we’ll have peace through the galaxy.”

“I fought twenty-seven final wars to restore peace to the galaxy. Nineteen hundred missions in two hundred and twenty-five years. When we finish off the Yukarins, we’ll move on to someone else.”

[image error]

Why do we send soldiers to war? Find one answer in my latest short story at The Creative Cafe:

True Soldier


Book Reviews

 |  |  |

check out my books at Amazon.com

 

[contact-form]

SaveSave

The Coming Out of Spicey

A precautionary tale

He was back. He shined in the spotlight for a few, painfully brief hours. Now he’s gone again. What went on in that poor boys mind during a comeback we’ve already forgotten?

I submitted this to three different publishers. Two never bothered to respond. Even though the story was now two months old, I decided to pitch it as a comeback now fallen way. The third editor pointed out that a Presidential like line I used in parody would still be insulting to a group the President loves to mock. I agreed, changed it and the next day it was up.

[image error]

I avoid politics in this blog, but every once in a while I have to make an exception.

You can read the complete text and listen to the audio, or listen to the audio.

Resistance Poetry presents:

The Coming Out of Spicey

 

 

Men Who Break Promises

and the women who let them
a precautionary tale.
A broken promise cuts both ways. You just don’t know it at the time.

The women at the table by the window chatted like childhood friends.

One wore a blouse as white as her hair. The silk draped her flat chest. Her black pencil skirt crept under her thighs. She kicked her ankle back and forth in a paradiddle, the same rhythm, only the pace of the beat changing.

Her drink? Vodka neat.

Her companion faced the window and rolled her wine stem between her fingers cautiously, as though afraid to sip. She leaned forward, across the table, closing the circuit between them. The hem of her gypsy skirt brushed her ankles and espadrilles.

Her ginger hair cascaded in curls past her bare shoulders and down her spine. Each gesture exploded, unplanned and awkward. You might have pegged her for a smoker, except her fingers and teeth showed no stains.

They laughed, touched each other on the wrist. Only crumbs remained of the blonde’s salmon tartine. Shreds of black kale and cilantro littered the cloth around the redhead’s baguette . If you didn’t eavesdrop, you’d never guess they’d just left a therapy session for women whose husbands passed.

My latest short story in Literally Literary.

Men Who Break Promises

SaveSave

Online Selling: The Brutal Reality

I recently worked with an aspiring young writer who needed five thousand immediately and decided to publish his book on Amazon. By his calculation, if he released the book in the first week of June (two weeks from the day we were talking) he’d have the money in time to pay his July 1st rent.

What are the odds he succeeded?

Chris the Storyreading Ape allowed me to do a series of guest posts on writing and promotion. This month I decided to explore the realities of marketing your work online.

the story continues at: Article 3: Online selling – Guest Post by Phillip T. Stephens…

Do time travelers dream of broken watches?

Carmen Maverick turned the job down. Then her client deposited three million dollars in a Swiss Bank. In 1792. By now it’s worth trillions.

The job? Collect an item and make a drop, just do it in the 25th century. Which begs the question: If her client can travel in time too, why hire her?

[image error]The winter edition of CQ International is all science fiction and speculative science.

Check out my story Radiation Rhapsody on page 94 of Sci-Fi Season, CQ International’s winter special. How will Carmen navigate through a five-century web of intrigue involving aliens, multiple dimensions, and a phenomenological computer to uncover the truth behind one of history’s unexplained events? Featuring stories, articles, and interviews by  Tom Falwell, Kate Mantis, and Neal Stephenson.

Preview:

Carmen Maverick travels in time. Not with machines, or holographic clones. Carmen rides on dreams. She can ride the same dreamer for days—eavesdropping on his thoughts and conversations—or she can jump to the dreams of someone the dreamer knows.On her last job, she leaped from a grandmother’s nostalgic reveries to her nephew’s fevered cheerleader fantasies. The nephew led her to the nightmares of his son decades later, nightmares of apocalypse he will forget when he wakes. From the son to his cabbie, to the cabbie’s barista, until she reached her final target: the programmer drinking the barista’s coffee while he composes concertos with code.

On her last job, she leaped from a grandmother’s nostalgic reveries to her nephew’s fevered cheerleader fantasies. The nephew led her to the nightmares of his son decades later, nightmares of apocalypse he will forget when he wakes. From the son to his cabbie, to the cabbie’s barista, until she reached her final target: the programmer drinking the barista’s coffee while he composes concertos with code.She can ride but she can’t retrieve. She can only bring back what she sees and hears. No treasure, no microchips, no bearer bonds from 1823.

She can ride but she can’t retrieve. She can only bring back what she sees and hears. No treasure, no microchips, no bearer bonds from 1823. No loss. She remembers every conversation, every page that passes her ride’s eyes: maps, contracts, schematics; secrets hidden by time. For that information, her employers pay well.

No loss. She remembers every conversation, every page that passes her ride’s eyes: maps, contracts, schematics; secrets hidden by time. For that information, her employers pay well. For instance, she earned seven figures for the code composed

For instance, she earned seven figures for the code composed in the coffee bar. Code to patch a network breach, finished minutes before the distracted programmer stepped in front of a speeding car.If she needs to, she can take their bodies for a drive to find the information she needs. Suggest that Shakespeare reread Cardenio before the night’s performance, or that Percival Fawcett double check the map he drew to Z. But driving brings risk, increases the chance the body will reject her.

If she needs to, she can take their bodies for a drive to find the information she needs. Suggest that Shakespeare reread Cardenio before the night’s performance, or that Percival Fawcett double check the map he drew to Z. But driving brings risk, increases the chance the body will reject her.This jump? To the year 2408, June 28, four hundred years into the future. Into the dreams of a Triakuza mercenary who calls himself “Croc.” His apartment reeks of stale smoke and sweaty socks.

This jump? To the year 2408, June 28, four hundred years into the future. Into the dreams of a Triakuza mercenary who calls himself “Croc.” His apartment reeks of stale smoke and sweaty socks. Croc doesn’t notice the smell, but she does. Not as bad as fourteenth century Europe when shit littered the streets with plague-ridden corpses. Noxious none the less.

Croc doesn’t notice the smell, but she does. Not as bad as fourteenth century Europe when shit littered the streets with plague-ridden corpses. Noxious none the less.

The gig? Nothing she’s ever been asked before. Simple collect and delivery. As long as she collects and delivers in 2408. Her brief is exhaustive: climate, history, robotics, culture, the Triakuza gangs. At first, she declined. Then her client emailed her fee. Three million dollars, deposited into a Swiss interest-bearing account when the first bank opens in 1792. She can’t calculate the total in her mind.

At first, she declined. Then her client emailed her fee. Three million dollars, deposited into a Swiss interest-bearing account when the first bank opens in 1792. She can’t calculate the total in her mind. (A window opens in Croc’s neural interface: $276,452,670,919,368.34.)

(A window opens in Croc’s neural interface: $276,452,670,919,368.34.)Which begs the question. If her employer manipulates time too, why hire her?

Which begs the question. If her employer manipulates time too, why hire her?

Book Reviews

 |  |  |

check out my books at Amazon.com


[contact-form]

Get under the skin of a Victorian genre painting

Bridget Whelan suggests her readers take inspiration for their writing from Emily Mary Osborn and her best-known painting Nameless and Friendless. Before you en

Before you dive into your exercise based on the subject matter alone, however, take a moment to consider the color palette and how it affects your perception of the story and the characters portrayed. Artists create an extremely limited palette from millions of possible colors and mix them with black or white to create a specific mood. The illustration I included shows an example palette of colors selected fro Osborn’s painting.

The colors in this painting are dark and moody, mostly browns, blues and grays. You might also find these colors in storm clouds or night skies. (Notice how dark the colors are compared to the rest of the color wheel.) The colors create an emotional correlation with the story. How might you use color to add to the description in the story you write from the prompt?

Notice the dark colors in Osborn’s palette, Blues, browns, and grays—the color of winter and fall, or stormy skies. Seeing them on the color wheel helps you see how dark they are.

For example, does the can you describe the colors of the sky to suggest how the weather might affect the plot or character moods? What might the colors of their clothes tell readers about your characters? The colors used in the shop decor?

Get under the skin of a Victorian genre painting: ART FOR WRITERS

You might also look at:

Introducing Color Into Your Writing
Goethe on the Psychology of Color and Emotion
Color Theory for Designers, Part 1: The Meaning of Color

These 10 Questions Will Make You the Wisest Person in the World!

I should know. I wrote them.

Have you ever asked yourself, “If self-help books and seminars really help, why are there so damn many of them?”

Have you ever blown a hundred (or a thousand) dollars on a self-improvement seminar and not improved?

Did you feel like it’s your fault? You shouldn’t because the world (and self-help industry) depends on us not improving. Find out why in my exposé on Medium:

[image error]If you find yourself confused by this chart, congratulations. You’re just like most of us.
These 10 Questions Will Make You the Wisest Person in the World!

Smorgasbord Media Training and Marketing for Authors – Selling Snippets

Sally Cronin developed a huge (or, as we now say in America, hyuge) fan base with her blog and media promotions. One of her strategies: an email signature. My mail automatically attaches a signature similar to the banner I include at the bottom of my post. If you’re a PC user, you can check her post to see how. Macs are a bit more complicated but MacUsers can use the tutorial at my design pad.1

[image error]

Source: Smorgasbord Media Training and Marketing for Authors – Selling Snippets

1I haven’t followed this step-by-step, but the instructions are almost identical to the steps I used to create mine.back

Book Reviews

 |  |  |

check out my books at Amazon.com


[contact-form]