Roger Eschbacher's Blog, page 32

We Have a Winner!

Congrats to Eric Schwartz of Kentucky for winning a signed copy of Dragonfriend in my Goodreads giveaway. I'll be mailing out his copy later this week along with some bookmarks and postcards.



(Side note to authors: I highly recommend trying out this gratis Goodreads feature. It's an inexpensive way to generate some interest in your book (basically, your cost on a hardcopy and the necessary postage). I had 790 people sign up for the giveaway, many of whom also put the book on their "to read" list. Nice!)



Savor this sweet victory, Eric, for the gods of logarithmic randomness are not always so kind.

Campaigning It

I'm doing Rachael Harrie's excellent Writer's Platform Building Campaign for the second time. I met so many nice people the last time I did it, I just had to participate again. Here's the deal from Rachel's site:

"Basically, the Campaign is a way to link those of us in the writing
community together with the aim of helping to build our online
platforms. The Campaigners are all bloggers in a similar position, who
genuinely want to pay it forward, make connections and friends within
the writing community, and help build each others' online platforms
while at the same time building theirs."

If you're an author/blogger, who wants to make some new like-minded friends, I highly recommend going over to her site and signing up. The deadline to register is February 15 and the Campaign runs through March 17. Do it!

Special "Year of the Dragonfriend" Book Giveaway

I've decided that another Dragonfriend giveaway is in order since this is the Year of the Dragon in the Chinese zodiac. Yes, add "clever marketing genius" to my list of attributes. Yup, that's what you should do all right. Sigh. Anyhoo, feel free to click on the link if you'd like to win a free copy of the book. It'll take you over to Goodreads where you can sign up and enter.








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Goodreads Book Giveaway









Dragonfriend





by Roger Eschbacher



Giveaway ends March 03, 2012.


See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.




Enter to win

Dragonfriend Book Trailer

Trend slave that I am, I've decided to join in on the book trailer craze by asking my twelve year old to put one together. I think she did a wonderful job, especially considering she was working with a budget of $0 (some of the fancy ones I've seen must have cost many thousands with impressive graphics, animation, sfx, live action, etc.). She used Windows Movie Maker, public domain photos (except for the cover), and creative commons licensed music.



I'm not convinced that book trailers "work," nor, obviously, that it's a good idea to spend a lot of bucks producing one, but I do place them squarely in the "It couldn't hurt," column.



What do you think about book trailers? Help? Hindrance? Meh? Has a book trailer ever tipped the scales in favor of you buying the book? Let us know in the comments.

Dragonfriend Postcards and Bookmarks

Hot off the presses, these beauties arrived early last week. Designed by the excellent Mike Wykowski, I love how they turned out and look forward to giving them out at readings and signings. Penguin sprang for a bunch of postcards for my picture book, Road Trip, and I was surprised at how helpful they were in terms of generating reader interest. I mailed them out to bookstores and left stacks of them at places where there were likely readers -- libraries, bookstores, schools, churches, etc. -- and received invitations to read/sign from these places as well as some mentions of postcard inspired purchases on my website.



Naturally, I had to have some postcards for Dragonfriend and, as publisher, made the savvy executive decision to have some bookmarks printed, too. Yeah, that's me, savvy.



Got any promotional suggestions you'd like to share? Please leave them in the comments.

Guest Blogger Scott Bury Talks Editing

Author Scott Bury can be found at his blog, Written Words. He can also be found in Canada which explains why he spells "favor" funny. I've got a guest post on his blog called "How to Fund Your Novel" so make sure you check that out, too. 

Part one of Scott's excellent fantasy novel, The Bones of the Earth , can be found online in the usual places.  It's got a really cool cover and even cooler words inside.

And now, please, a round of respectfully exuberant applause as Mr. Bury talks about his process...





Scott Bury


First,
I want to thank Roger for inviting me to contribute to his blog. He
asked me to write about my own editing process in writing my novel.

Right
now, I am putting the final touches on my first-published novel, The
Bones of the Earth. Part 1 is available on e-book retailers now, but
before I could bring myself to put the whole thing up, I thought I would
take one more look.

I
have written about the four steps every writer, professional or
otherwise, needs to take before starting any document.  I call it
"getting a GRIP," for goal, reader, idea and plan.

I
call the plan, or outline, the best favour writers can do for
themselves. Not only does it help you make sure that your report, story
or novel makes sense, when you have one you don't have to start writing
at the beginning.

What I need to edit

Like every
big job, preparation makes the actual work much easier. Once you've
finished writing your draft, you have to re-write, revise, change and
edit several times.

Every
writer should have an editor. You need that second set of eyes, because
you just don't see what's on the page — you see what you intended to
write. An editor is a frank appraiser of your work. But the
responsibility to make the changes, to polish the work and make it as
good as it can be, stays with the author.

I
edit while I'm writing, correcting typos and silly errors, changing
phrases and sentences as I change my mind. It's so much easier with a
computer than with a pen and paper.

But
really editing requires some time. I need to put my work aside for a
while. With my fiction, I find that I need at least a week in between
drafts. I also need to edit it at least twice before I show it to anyone
else, whether a friend, a beta-reader, a critic or an editor.

It's
important to leave time between drafts. It allows you to detach from
the work. You don't feel so much like every word is your baby. Work on
something else in the meantime. Every sentence you write improves your
writing ability, so that you're a better writer when you come back to
your earlier work.

What
do I need to edit out? Excess description. Readers don't need to have
every single twitch described. They need to read a story that's moving
along. Here are some examples from my own work:

"Some of the older nuns were trying to explain away the dragon as an illusion of the devil."


becomes

"Some of the nuns said the dragon was an illusion."








"He
rose, and the others of the kobold council rose, too. Goldemar said
something in the kobold tongue to Krum Chimmek, and they all walked
across the hall."


becomes

"The council stood and led the visitors across the hall."








"Javor
was the first to spotting the ancient jetties that projected into the
river. Austinus decided to stop for the night before they came to the
town, and found a campsite near the river, downstream from the crumbling
city walls."


becomes

"Austinus decided to camp near the river, downstream from an abandoned town."

The
leaner text moves the action along. You have to leave some room for the
reader's own imagination to fill in the details. Just give enough for a
sketch and let the reader's imagination do the rest.

Your job is not to paint pictures—that's the painter's job. Your job is to tell a story.

I hope I've succeeded.






##







Thanks, Scott!


How about you? Any "must do" editing tips? Feel free to share them in the comments.

Wouldn't You Really Rather Write Fantasy?

"Pedro, just listen to your heart. That's what I do." -- Napoleon Dynamite



Jaq writes from Lithuania (via Goodreads):

"How did you come up with the idea for "Dragonfriend"? Did you always want to write about dragons?"

Thanks for the question, Jaq.

It's funny. I've known for the
longest time that the first book I ever wrote would be a relatively hard
sci fi novel. Just known it. After all, that's the genre I started out
reading and that I read the most of over the years. That was the serious
branch of speculative fiction, right?

Yeah, well...

Then,
along came NaNoWriMo (the novel-writing contest where the goal is to
write 50k words in the month of November) and what ended up coming out
of my brain? A middle-grade Arthurian fantasy adventure jam-packed with
magic and dragons, the most popular of all the mythical beasts of
fantasy fiction. Where did all of that stuff come from?

Gee, I
guess maybe all of those fantasy stories I'd been inhaling "for fun"
over the years were having an influence, too -- those repeated boyhood
readings of Ivanhoe, the Arthurian legends, and even the old "Prince
Valiant" comic strip. What about all of the works of Tolkien, C.S.
Lewis, and the other giants of fantasy? Think they might count for
something in my pot of "influence stew?"

Yup. They where telling
me that, if I really listened to my inner scribe, my writer's heart,
I'd probably much rather write a fantasy novel.

The idea for
Dragonfriend pretty much just popped into my head when I was trying to
figure out what to write for NaNo. I can't ascribe it to anything other
than a tiny flash of divine inspiration that told me to draw on
influences I'd forgotten about (or was in denial over -- I mean come on,
Tolkien? I'm not worthy to touch the hem of his garment, much less toil
in his, and I do mean HIS, genre).

Don't get
me wrong, I still love sci fi (and have the first draft of a YA space
opera I'm going to start editing after the third Leonard book), but I'm
very happy that I listened to my heart and remembered that, whether I
knew it or not, I really always wanted to write about dragons.

A Nice Gift from Amazon

For the time being, Amazon has decided to discount the Dragonfriend paperback by nearly 30%.



It surprised/alarmed me when I saw the price change on the book's page last night, but I was quickly assured by customer service that it doesn't affect author royalties which are calculated off the full list price. On the other hand, it does save you some decent bucks so if you're interested in owning an analog copy of my book, this may be the time to act.

Real Books on My Doorstep!

They're here! My first shipment of Dragonfriend paperbacks arrived this week in all of their two-box, back-breaking glory. This order is primarily destined for the folks who helped me get the book published -- beta readers, etc. and the backers of my Kickstarter project. I'm also setting aside a few copies for the local school libraries, signings, and long-time "book friends."











I know the whole eBook thing is all the rage with the kids these days,
but we here at the Novel Project (meaning me and Lizzy, the Border
Terrier) love the heft and feel of holding a "real" book in our
hands/paws. Right, Lizzy?





"Yeah, right, whatever."





Elsewhere in the news, there's still time to enter my Goodreads Dragonfriend giveaway (20 days a/o 11/23) so, if you haven't already done so, head on over and sign up. Five lucky entrants have a chance of being plucked out the the scrum by a soulless Goodreads algorithm.



Finally, a very Happy Thanksgiving is wished for the folks here in the States. To everyone else, may I heartily recommend the roast turkey dinner? Mmm.

Dragonfriend is Now on Smashwords

Set up a Smashwords account last night. It was pretty easy to do although they are sticklers for what they consider proper formatting. Not saying they shouldn't be, they just like things the way they like them. The good thing is that they lay everything out for you in their style guide and quickly bounce back an error report if their "autovetter" finds some formatting it doesn't like. All free, too.



So in addition to the Amazon and B&N accounts, thanks to Smashwords you can now read an ebook of Dragonfriend on these devices, too: Apple iPad/iBooks, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, others.



And there was much rejoicing.