Justin Bell's Blog, page 4

The struggling author – tracking progress with Self Publishing School

I’ve made a few posts on the ole blog here referencing my struggles with selling my work, and mostly I try to make light of the situation, but in truth, I absolutely love to write, and in further (more painful) truth, if I don’t find a way to at least make it pay for itself, I may not be able to do it as much as I’d like.

See, I write about what I love, and I have a pretty eclectic window of interests.  I like military fiction and political thrillers (why yes I’ve read every Tom Clancy novel, why do you ask?).  I love “10 minutes in the future” technology intertwined with the military, like Metal Gear Solid and G.I. Joe.  I like certain elements of horror, and I like the whole concept of genetic engineering and creating the “perfect” soldier.  These topics are all in my wheelhouse, so it only made sense that when I dove headfirst into the novel pool, I’d write what I know.

Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be resonating with much of an audience.

Don’t get me wrong, my friends and family have been there every step of the way, helping me move a number of copies of my first novel, at one point even breaking the Top 10 in the Werewolf fiction category.  But besides that short jump, it’s been a flat, even line all along the way, not just for copies sold, but also for Kindle Select/Kindle Unlimited.  People don’t even appear to want to read my work for free.  :/

So, I figured, I needed to do SOMEthing.  I strongly believe in my work, I think I’m a good writer, I think my work is captivating and exciting, and I’m 100% certain it would find an audience if the right crowd was made aware.

How do I make that happen?

Well, I will admit there was a bit of desperation as I combed through the Internet to try and find something to latch onto.  Something that might lead me towards a path of at least a little more financial sustenance with my writing.

At this moment that path has led me to Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing School.

Please keep in mind, I am in no way affiliated with this course, I just read through some of the descriptions, and a lot of it resonated with me.  So I carved aside that last little bit of “book money” and plunged right in.

Over the next couple of weeks I’m going to talk about my experiences with the school and some changes I’ve made and hopefully report on whether (or not) certain aspects are working for me.  A lot of this is common sense, but even more is a clear path towards potential success.  It’s not a path that everyone will reach, but I can start seeing things getting a little clearer.

Hopefully you’ll follow me down this road and we’ll end up in a better place.

The post The struggling author – tracking progress with Self Publishing School appeared first on Justin Bell .

Dip your toes into Operation: Harvest FOR FREE this holiday season!

As my revision work on Book Three continues, I struggle to find a way to get folks into the Operation: Harvest universe, so finally I decided that maybe it was just time to start letting people get introduced for free!

To that end, I’ve launched the World of Wolf’s Head Publishing, a mailing list which promises exclusive content, starting with the following:

– An eight page TOP SECRET classified research paper from GenTech discussing the Operation: Harvest experiment.  This free look behind the curtain at Operation: Harvest is only available to members of the World of Wolf’s Head Publishing!

– The first THREE CHAPTERS of Operation: Harvest Book One – The Fog of Dreams

Joining the World will also allow you to be first in line for give-aways, contests and other cool things going on here at Wolf’s Head Publishing.  We’re getting ready to jump full bore into 2017, I hope you’ll be there to jump in with us!  I promise you will not be disappointed.

Join the World of Wolf’s Head Publishing today and have a Happy Holiday season!

The post Dip your toes into Operation: Harvest FOR FREE this holiday season! appeared first on Justin Bell .

Tipping Point Draft 1 is to the Editor

The next step towards publishing novel number three has been taken…  this past week I completed my own internal revisions and shipped off the first draft of Operation: Harvest Book Three – Tipping Point to my stalwart editor friends at KAEditing.

I cannot recommend these folks enough.  I’ve been using their complex editing services for both of my initial novels and not only do they go through the grammatical stuff, but they check the novel for context as well and offer some great ways to pull the whole thing together.

They really saved my bacon with Book 1, did a great job with Book 2, and I greatly look forward to getting their feedback on Book 3.

I know when it comes to Self Publishing there can be some difference in opinion between using professional editing and winging it by yourself, and I have to say without hesitation professional editing is worth the money, especially if you can find a good one.  Prioritize what to invest your money in when you produce your book, and put editing near the top.  You won’t regret it.

B42ART Editing an English language document

The post Tipping Point Draft 1 is to the Editor appeared first on Justin Bell .

Ten years in my head, three years on paper – Operation: Harvest is done

Well, mostly done.

For pretty much my entire adult life I’ve wanted to be a writer.  I went to college for English and as far back as I can remember I was sketching out new worlds for my 80s action figures and crafting elaborate backstories for what were essentially soulless pieces of plastic.  While I spent much of my time writing histories for existing characters, eventually I started building my own world in my head.  A world strongly influenced by my love of action figures, to be sure, but still my own unique world.  “Ten minutes in the future” so to speak, a universe where genetic engineering and cyber-robotics weren’t exactly mainstream, but were certainly plausible.

This was a place where a man was experimented on, imbued with amazing animalistic abilities, and a time when he had to use those abilities to fight back against the corporation who did it to him.

Some of the details changed over the past decade, but in late 2013 I sat down and committed to putting this plan to paper.  Excitedly I published my first novel, Part 1 of the Operation: Harvest trilogy in August, 2014.  Six months later, I published the second edition, after making some suggested changes.

Shortly thereafter, Book Two: Loose Strands hit the virtual shelves on Amazon.com and I renewed my commitment to finish the trilogy on a high note.

As of approximately midnight two nights ago, that work was done.  I typed “The End” on a manuscript nearly 190,000 words long that wrapped up the Operation: Harvest trilogy and completed a task I set forth for myself nearly ten years ago.

It feels amazing.

The work is not yet done, not by a long shot.  I’ve got plenty of revisions to make, I’ve got an editor to submit to, I’ve got a cover designer to work with, but I feel fairly certain that early in 2017 my third novel will be published, and the tale of Operation: Harvest will finally be told in totality.  How it ended on paper wasn’t precisely how I pictured it ending back in 2007 when I began crafting it, and it certainly wasn’t how I pictured it ending in 2013 when I began putting the words down, but I’m happy with it and I feel an immense feeling of satisfaction for a job well done.

Many more hours still to go, but as of now it’s a celebration, and one I’m more than happy to share with all of you.

For anyone who bought Book One and Two, thank you very much.  Those proceeds have helped and hopefully will continue to help fund Book Three.  Keep watching and keep reading, when it comes to my writing “career” this is just the tip of the iceberg.  Much more still to come.

The post Ten years in my head, three years on paper – Operation: Harvest is done appeared first on Justin Bell .

Self publishing your novel tip #2 – Where do I start?

Two of my personal icons in the writing world are Stephen King and Lee Childs, two authors whose stories have captivated me, interested me, and driven me to become an author myself.  Two men who I completely and utterly respect and who undeniably know what they’re talking about when it comes to writing.

Yet, when it comes to starting a novel, I can’t even listen to them.

Both King and Childs are what is known as “Pantsers” which sounds far dirtier than it really is, but essentially it means they write “by the seat of their pants”.  They create characters and hand the reigns to those characters, and let them tell the story, just going with the flow.

I’ve tried this.  I can’t write this way.  I just can’t.

From my perspective, the trick is outline, outline, outline.  I need to know where I’m starting, I need to know where I’m finishing, and it sure as hell helps to know where I’m going each step of the way.  I’m not saying my work is some kind of intricate web of interweaving plot lines, but when it comes to telling a logical story, I need to be able to trace events step by step.  That’s how I work.

I’m not saying that’s the only way to do it, obviously there are plenty of people (King and Childs included) who make a pretty awesome living by just letting their characters tell the story.  But for me, it’s gotta be outlined.  That’s not to say the outline doesn’t change as the story evolves, it sure as hell does and always will.  My characters absolutely have a voice and sometimes that  voice will dictate a ninety degree turn from the outline and in those cases I generally go with the flow until it feels natural to stop.

But once I stop, I check that outline and make sure there’s still a way to get to Point B without sacrificing what’s happened from Point A and in between.

Speaking of outlining, while I used Microsoft Word to generate outlines in my first three books, I’ve made a commitment to try Scrivener for whatever might come next and I’m excited to kick the tires.  A lot of what it does seems to automate and organize what I usually do manually, but I didn’t feel like I could introduce it mid-stream, so that will have to come when I jump into my next adventure.

The post Self publishing your novel tip #2 – Where do I start? appeared first on Justin Bell .

This one hits me hard – rest in peace Steve Dillon

Even for folks who are really important to me (but people who I don’t know) I’m not often personally affected by their deaths.  For some reason, though, comic book artist Steve Dillon has hit me pretty hard.

Maybe it’s because I recently finished watching the premier season of AMC’s adaptation of Dillon’s seminal work, Preacher, a comic he drew for Vertigo going on…  holy crap, fifteen years ago?

I was an absolute rabid comic book consumer throughout junior high and high school, voraciously sucking down nearly every single Marvel Comic in existence, and skimming off the top of the DC world as well.  I shudder to think just how much money I dumped into my local comic store throughout the late 80s and into the 90s.  Then I graduated and went to college, and still kept up to some degree, though it was tougher as a freshman without a car.  Still, I satisfied my love of comics with my friend Jerry (who is now an excellent independent comic artist!) and we fed off each other’s love of those super hero worlds.

Then I was engaged, and I moved to Massachusetts with my fiance, and while the comic shops were actually MORE plentiful down there, I felt like I had finally outgrown that world, at least somewhat.  But I clutched onto Preacher and never let go.  Preacher was my lone connection to the land of make believe for many years and even though I was no longer buying X-Men, Spider-Man, or even Captain America or Daredevil, I was buying Preacher religiously (no pun intended) and enjoying every moment of it.  I bought every individual issue, every trade paperback, and even bought a $200 statue, which at the time was an unbelievable luxury I could not afford.  I lived, ate, and breathed Preacher, and when it ended, so did my last grasp to comics (at least until Devils’ Due resurrected G.I. Joe a short while later, though I still have never jumped back into super hero land).

I’m not an especially religious person, but Preacher was a comic unlike any I have read before or read since, and much of that was due to the understated, yet evocative way that Dillon drew his characters.  They looked natural.  Real.  Normal.  They weren’t strapping spandex warriors, but thin people, fat people, normal people walking around with normal expressions.  It made the comic almost seem more real to me.  Through my evolution from nerdy, unpopular kid to young man engaged and starting a life of his own, Preacher was there, and an ongoing constant in my life.

Now one of the key creators is gone.

In truth, 2016 has been a cast iron bitch with deaths not just in the celebrity world, but in my own family as well, and by the looks of things, she’ll continue being a bitch right up until the very end.

Rest in Peace, Steve Dillon, I didn’t know you, but your work was a deep and engaging part of my life.

The post This one hits me hard – rest in peace Steve Dillon appeared first on Justin Bell .

Dealing with writer’s block… or even worse, the opposite

Is there anything worse than writer’s block?

In my mind, yes, there is.  I’ve been suffering from it for a few years now, though some people might scoff at the notion of “suffering”.  My problem is actually the opposite of writer’s block, it’s a veritable writer’s flood.

When I first decided to become a writer, I had a very specific story in mind to tell, and as of this writing I’m well over 2/3 of the way done.  My Operation: Harvest trilogy has two books published on Amazon, and I’m 150,000 words into book three, but to me, the issue isn’t not finding the words to finish it, the issue is finding too many other words to write about other topics.

While I’ve been working on this trilogy, I’ve crafted and submitted two other novellas to agents/publications (both turned down… yay?), and also written and submitted over a dozen short stories (1 accepted by those bad asses at Cohesion Press, all others politely declined).

With that work, I’ve probably written the equivalent of a fourth novel, but in reality still haven’t finished my third.

Is that a problem?  Some might say it is.  The more you write the more you hone your craft, but regular published content is constantly stated as the best way to stay relevant.  If you write 100,000 words of dead end material that never gets seen, and it keeps you from finishing your novel on time, was it worth it?

In my case, I think it was, yes.  I learned things about myself as a writer.  Things that have helped me develop my style on this third book, yet now, even as I’m nearing the finish line of Book 3, I find myself constantly distracted by other open submissions and other windows for material that keep opening.  Am I distracted because I’m honestly not interested in telling the story I’m telling?  Should I shelf this for a while and explore other avenues?

Nope.  I’m pushing ahead.  Closing my eyes, damning the torpedos and working through until the end of book three.  In my mind, being able to explore other worlds and other characters will be my reward for getting through this one.  It’s been a long hard road, focusing (mostly) on this narrow universe for over three years, but even if the payoff hasn’t been in sales, maybe it will be in self satisfaction.

The post Dealing with writer’s block… or even worse, the opposite appeared first on Justin Bell .

Lord help me, I think I just pre-ordered a Google Pixel

As a career IT guy, I have this thing against early adoption, and generally prefer to let others struggle through the first few generations of technical evolution to work out all the bugs.  Yet, when the Google Pixel was announced yesterday (officially, anyway) and up for pre-order shortly thereafter, for some reason, I jumped on it immediately.

Why?

As an avid Samsung fanatic over the past five years, I’ve now burned through (or am just about to burn through) two Galaxy phones and a Galaxy tablet, but it’s not the hardware I struggle with, it’s the Samsung bloatware that somehow takes up almost 30% of the storage space on the SD card.  I love Android and have always wanted a more pristine Android experience, but that has always been impossible (I mean, yeah, there’s the Google Nexus, but they’ve never quite felt revolutionary enough).

So when Google appeared to finally mirror performance, state-of-the-art functionality, the latest Android platform, plus a version of Android “in it’s purest form” I had to jump on it.  It certainly helps that my Galaxy S5 was just about ready for trade in anyway.

Like many people are with Apple and iOs, my identity is pretty fully mired in the Google ecosystem.  Me and my kids use Google talk, I depend heavily on Google Docs for my writing, I use Google photos and Gmail…nearly every element of my personal and professional life is somehow interwoven into Google’s web based presence, so having a singular device that feels more “clean” than one leveraged by another secondary vendor felt like the right move.

I pre-ordered it and its due for delivery October 20th.  Hopefully I’m as excited October 21st as I am right now.

The post Lord help me, I think I just pre-ordered a Google Pixel appeared first on Justin Bell .

Self Publishing your novel tip #1 – whatever you do, don’t listen to me

Still here?  Don’t follow direction very well, huh?

Honestly, I’m starting this post not having a clue how I’m going to finish.  In that way, it’s very unlike how I write, which is exceedingly outline-based. I am not a “seat of the pants” writer by any stretch.

Well, apparently, unless you count blog posts.

At this point I’ve been a self-published author for over a year, and have around six works of varying lengths on Amazon.com.  Most of them are from the G.I. Joe Kindle Worlds Library, but I also have my own two full-length novels, which are the work I’m most proud of.

And the work that nobody is reading.

For that reason and that reason alone, I suggest you temper any judgement based on my opinion, because I’m sure as hell not selling any books, so if that’s your end goal, then move along little doggy.

But if you’re at all interested in the writing process…how I got here, how I go about getting stuff from my brain up to Amazon, well, then maybe I can provide some insight.  Maybe there are some things about this little art of writing that go beyond (or at least circumvent) just the financial.

Don’t get me wrong…there has to be a financial component to this.  Truly I believe to do self publishing the way it deserves to be done, certain financial investments could and I’d argue should be made.  If I had to boil all possible costs down to a pair of critical junctures, I’d probably say the following:

Pay a professional editor
Pay a professional cover designer

The rest you can probably get by on your own.

Now I’m not going to sit here and tell you that throwing a thousand bucks at a professional editor is going to guarantee you a return on investment.  It hasn’t for me.  But what I can tell you is that the peace of mind of knowing a professional looked over your work, recommended changes and (hopefully) caught those pesky grammatical hiccups is worth the cost.  It’s worth it for me to be able to confidently hand my book over to a friend or relative and not be concerned that rampant typo’s will convince them I’m an ignoramus.  Lord knows, I’ve spent decades convincing friends and relatives of that fact, I don’t need a shitty book to reinforce their opinion of me.

Do you absolutely have to invest tons of cash in an editor?  Nah.  Nobody can make you do anything.  But I strongly believe anyone’s work (yes even you, mutant hybrid romance novelist) will be better with a second set of professional eyes on your work.

(Psst, I use KAEditing, and they’re awesome).

So really, I guess that’s what this post (and potentially future posts) are all about.  A stream of consciousness opinion peace on how I go about writing and how it’s working (or not working) for me.  Your mileage may vary.

The post Self Publishing your novel tip #1 – whatever you do, don’t listen to me appeared first on Justin Bell .

NaNoWriMo 2016 is almost here and I have no idea what I’m doing

While I’m a big fan of writing all year round, not just in November, I can’t pretend that NanoWriMo didn’t play a role in my final surge into becoming a self-published author.

It was NanoWriMo 2013 that  finally kicked my ass into putting my first novel in its place, and it was NanoWriMo 2014 that gave me the focus on tying up my second novel.

I used NanoWriMo 2015 to assemble the rough draft of book three (a rough draft which now stands at 140,000 words and is nearly complete), so I can’t lie… NanoWriMo has played a pivotal role in my work, even though I write where and when I can all year round.

So here we stand in October, 2016 and I got my first notification that NanoWriMo 2016 is starting its spin up process, but I have no idea what to work on this year.  As I said, Book Three’s first draft is nearly complete, and until I get that wrapped, I’m very hesitant to consider work on something else.

Although I have a great editor, I don’t think I can finish this work and get a first run back by November, so I can’t even use it for a second draft of this novel.  Will this be the first year since 2013 that I don’t actively work on something?  I hope not, but it’s possible.

Anyone else struggling with this question?

The post NaNoWriMo 2016 is almost here and I have no idea what I’m doing appeared first on Justin Bell .