E.D. Martin's Blog, page 43

Weekend Writing Warriors 1/19/14 #WeWriWa

I just got back from India! Between a long last day, spending the night in an airport (and not sleeping for most of it), and then another 26 hours flying halfway around the world, my body’s not really sure what day or time it is.  Fortunately I wrote a lot while over there and have something to share today.

Today’s excerpt is from an experience I had visiting a Dalit village. Dalits are gypsies, one of the lowest castes, but you wouldn’t know it by talking to them because they were so happy, so glad to interact with us.

Intricately beaded necklaces cover half a blanket on the ground, and rubber stamps are displayed on the other side. Rajeesh turns her hand over, then studies the stamps before selecting a large rose which he dips in the ink, then presses onto her palm. Tenderly he inks each finger with a dotted leaf pattern. Again he studies the stamps, finally selecting one. “Fishies.”

“Fish,” she corrects.

“Fish,” he says as he grins at her and she grins back. He quickly presses the stamp against her skin, six fish swimming to Chennai, to Paris, to wherever they want, while he stays here in his village.

Post a link to your eight sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Weekend Writing Warriors website.

Weekend Writing Warriors 1/12/14 #WeWriWa

I’m currently taking a class in southern India, two weeks down and one left. As a project, I’m writing a story each day about what I’m experiencing, but as a twist I’m tryig to put them in the POV of locals. Today’s snippet is from “Dust,” a story I wrote about a beggar woman on the street.

Dust is everywhere. It blankets the streets and sidewalks, stray dogs and abandoned sandals and trash. It is kicked up by passing buses and motorbikes and rickshaws, mixing with their exhaust to form a perpetual haze above the city. Dust, along with the scents of garbage and spices and a million people crammed together, is inescapable.

 

Gheeta, a creature of the streets, has been surrounded by dust for so long she no longer notices it. It cakes her bare feet, decorates her sari and hair, and flavors whatever food she is lucky enough to have.

 

“Feed Gheeta,” she keens as she approaches them, pantomiming scooping food to her mouth, “feed Gheeta.”

 

They walk on.

Post a link to your eight sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Weekend Writing Warriors website.

Weekend Writing Warriors 12/29/13 #WeWriWa

I’m in India for the next few weeks, so I thought I’d post something from my WIP novel, A Handful of Wishes, which is about a boy who’s given a wish-granting genie (who conveniently happens to be from the same part of India I’m in, which makes her parts so much easier to research!).

He opened his eyes and started.  A girl sat on the bed next to him.  Her long dark hair was swept back from her olive skin.  She wore a pale blue silk scarf around her neck, matching her sleeveless silk blouse and billowy pants.  She was the most exotic, beautiful girl he’d ever seen.  Her brown eyes regarded him, smiled at him.  She extended her hand.

 

“Hello,” she said, “I’m Paribanu.”

Post a link to your eight sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Weekend Writing Warriors website.

Happy Holidays!

Some random thoughts on my Christmas this year:

A couple deer ran across the road in front of my car on Christmas Eve. How cool a story would it be to tell everyone I killed Prancer and Vixen?
There were a lot more families at the movie theater on Christmas night than I expected. Also, American Hustle is not appropriate for little kids.
No one likes the Christmas Shoes song. No one.
I only made 6 kinds of cookies this year, compared to the dozen+ I usually make. I think I’m okay with that though.
This year’s Christmas was pretty low-key. I think that next year, instead of ham or turkey, we’re getting Chinese. I would’ve done that yesterday but I’d already bought a ham.
I have 134 unread books on my Kindle, with two 20-hour flights approaching. While I plan to make a sizable dent in my list, somehow I don’t think it’ll happen.
And finally, this:

Happy Holidays, everyone!

Weekend Writing Warriors 12/22/13 #WeWriWa

I’m switching gears this week, from my newly-released novel to a snippet from a short story collection I hope to release this spring.

Artie’s grandfather fought in WWI, and his father fought in WWII. He’s been drafted for Vietnam, but he doesn’t want to go. In this scene, he’s trying to spend as much time as he can with his girlfriend before being sent over.

“It’s just a real bummer, you know?” said Gina. “Here I thought we were going to get married some day, have a family, a big house and all that. But how can I marry you if you’re dead?”

 

Marriage. The word echoed in Artie’s mind. The marriage deferment was nonexistent, but maybe, just maybe, if he married Gina, he’d have a leg to stand on when reporting tomorrow. Maybe they’d take pity on a newlywed, give him an extra week, buy him some extra time to come up with a real excuse.

 

“So what’s stopping us?”

Post a link to your eight sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Weekend Writing Warriors website.

Author Interview: Jonathan Brookes

This week I chatted with Jonathan Brookes, author of the thriller novella Relic.

Warfare has entered a new era. The cold war is long over. Battleships, bombers, and tanks, the big iron of twentieth century military might, have taken a back seat to unmanned drones, IEDs, and suicide bombers. Fueled by cutting edge biotechnology, in a world where Dr. Strangelove politics and Jurassic Park science collide, the military embarks on a desperate project to seek out and destroy enemy combatants on their home turf.

Disturbingly close to the truth, Relic describes a world in which human soldiers are replaced with something much deadlier, and much more uncontrollable, with consequences that could spell the end of humanity as we know it.

Me: Your book focuses a lot on genetic research. How plausible do you think your story is?

Jonathan: I believe it is plausible based on the research I’ve done. There are currently efforts in the scientific community to clone/resurrect wooly mammoths and perhaps other extinct species of animals. It’s not a stretch to clone a complex mammal like a human or Neanderthal.

Me: Do you think the government and private contractors are attempting it as we speak?

Jonathan: Perhaps not today, but in 10 years maybe. Certainly, cloning a mammal has been done before some years ago with Dolly the sheep. There’s a small team that was advertising for a volunteer surrogate to carry a Neanderthal to term. It’s a fringe group and most scientists don’t support the effort for moral ethical reasons. I can get you the specifics if you like.

Me: No, that’s okay. I’m not planning on cloning anything or anyone. And my readers can research it themselves.

Jonathan: Okay. I don’t know how much detail you need. Harvard geneticist George Church is the scientist who was trying to do this

Me: Let’s discuss your characters. It seems like none of them are completely good or completely bad; rather, they’re driven by a goal, and they’ll do anything to reach it. Is that something that was intentional, or did it just turn out that way?

Jonathan: Okay, the characters… Goal oriented characters was intentional — most real people are like that. There’s always some motivation that drives a person to do something. Even someone who believes they’re all good or all bad never really are like that all the time.

Me: I felt like I could identify with just about all your characters, even with how diverse they were. Have other readers voiced that?

Jonathan: I’m still waiting for a reader, any reader, to comment on the story. You’re the first, not including my editor.

Me: I definitely enjoyed it. While it had a lot of sciency stuff in it, it was really accessible for a layperson who doesn’t have a genetic or military background.

Jonathan: Yes, one of my goals was to make the science accessible. I dislike sci-fi that delves so deep into the science that I feel like I’m taking a college course. I want science to enable the story, not be the story.

Me: I think you captured that well.

Jonathan: Thank you.

Me: Next question: Jonathan Brooks is a character in your story. Why did you choose to write yourself in?

Jonathan: I’m thinking of sequels.  I wanted to have enough loose ends to go in a few different directions with the next books. Originally that wasn’t the plan, but as I wrote it made sense to me to have this rogue character who leaks the project info to another author. Now he’s on the run.

Me: One of my questions for you was going to be about sequels, because just about all the characters could have one. Are you currently working on one, or is it just something to look for in the general future?

Jonathan: I’m in the planning stage for the next sequel. I probably will start writing after the new year. Right now, I would like to write a book per year. It took me less than a year to write this first book. I think I should be able to pull it off. Of course, I may be optimistic.

Me: I think we all set optimistic schedules for ourselves, and then life gets in the way.

Jonathan: I tend to write in bursts. For example, this novel relic was mostly written over a two-month period.  Then lots and lots of editing after that. Yeah, life, mine is getting less complicated. My son is heading off to college next year so my wife and I will be empty nesters.

Me: So plenty of time to write.

Jonathan: I hope so.

Me: Will you be writing more political thrillers like Relic and its sequels, or do you plan to focus on another genre?

Jonathan: For now I plan to stay in this genre, but who knows, I may write something else. I didn’t originally plan to write in this genre; it just sort of happened. It feels comfortable for me.

Me: What did you initially want to write?

Jonathan: What did I originally want to write? …. hmmmm. Not sure how to answer that. I’ve spent many years writing technical documents, etc. I wanted to see if I could write something entertaining. I used to write when I was in college. I got my B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering and computer science, but I minored in theater arts. I really enjoyed theater but knew I couldn’t make a living at it. Now, thirty years later, I have the financial luxury of being able to slow down my career and do some writing.

Me: I had a college math professor who minored in creative writing, but felt the same way – he couldn’t make a living at it. It definitely made him a more rounded person, not focusing just on numbers.

Jonathan: Yeah, it’s like scientists and engineers who are also musicians.

Me: Have you kept up with the theater arts/creative side of yourself, or did you focus solely on technical stuff?

Jonathan: I happen to be an engineer who writes. For about ten years after I graduated college, I stayed active in theater by being involved in community theater. I was mostly involved in lighting design but also did scene construction.

Me: The technical parts.

Jonathan: I acted only once. I had the part of Steve in “Say Goodnight, Gracie” by Ralph Pape my senior year at Northeastern.

Me: Any plans for more acting, or will you stick to writing? And any desire to write scripts?

Jonathan: Screenplays perhaps. I had that in mind as I wrote Relic. There’s a lot of dialog

Me: Yeah, the story moves quickly.

Jonathan: I imagined the story sort of in movie form as I wrote.

Me: I could see it making a good film.

Jonathan: Got to find a studio, eh?

Me: Yeah, if only it were that easy.

Jonathan: Ha. When I first started writing I was much more descriptive. Lots of narration. The critiques shot it down, said I needed to do more showing and less telling, so I switched to dialog.

Me: I think for a thriller like Relic, more action and dialogue works better. Although introspection would’ve been interesting too, to see how the characters view their actions. But you could probably show a lot of that in sequels focusing more closely on various people.

Jonathan: Yeah, my editor wanted me to delve more deeply into the minds of the characters, wanted me to explore what made them tick. I thought that would make the story drag. It’s a balancing act.

Me: Definitely. Why did you go the self-publishing route?

Jonathan: Good question…Not sure if I have a good answer. I can get impatient

Me: It’s a personal decision, so whatever your answer, it’ll be a good one.

Jonathan: I wanted to write a quality book, but I didn’t want to shop it around for 5 years. Since it took me less than a year to write, I didn’t want it to sit on a shelf. I ‘m not in this for the money; It’s a personal endeavor. I’m doing it for my pleasure

Me: That’s a great reason to write.

Jonathan: If folks read it, then that’s good. In fact, I’d even be happy if folks hated the book; at least they read it.

Me: How easy did you find the process? Would you self-publish your next book?

Jonathan: The mechanics of self-pubbing is very easy, especially for ebooks, kindle. I focused on publishing as a paper book first. I went through CreateSpace because they have top-notch tools and support for creating the finished product. The process also slowed me down so that I would not “pull the trigger” prematurely and publish without first reading and rereading the text. It made me think. Going straight to kindle is too easy.

Me: Do you think you’ll have the same hesitation next time?

Jonathan:  Hesitation?

Me: Checking and rechecking.

Jonathan: That wasn’t hesitation. It was the right thing to do. I found a lot of mistakes by doing all that rereading.

Me: It paid off; I don’t think I caught any mistakes in the version I read.

Jonathan: There’s one grammatical error, very subtle.

Me: Shh, don’t tell me if I didn’t notice.

Jonathan: But I know it’s there. I had several other folks read the manuscript before pubbing. Beta readers. They found mistakes and stuff. Having several folks read it was good. Each person found different problems and had different opinions. However, none of them read the final version.

Me: They did a good job. Any final thoughts to offer about your book?

Jonathan:  One thing we didn’t touch upon in the interview was why I gave the book that title “Relic”. What do Neanderthal DNA and Morse code have in common? They’re both artifacts of bygone days that somehow still capture our attention and imagination.

All through the book there are references to historical artifacts: Morse code, Neanderthals, General Holbrooke’s personality, sailing ships, out-of-date warfare tactics and equipment, people who are past their prime but still exerting an influence. Artifacts like that are all around us in real life and still capture our attention and imagination. Artifacts that not only claim our attention but can alter our lives. There’s some mystical power that certain artifacts have. Some folks call it nostalgia. Whatever it is, these artifacts still exert some power over people.

Me: Okay, last question: what tips do you have for writers who want to publish?

Jonathan: Tips? Hmmmm. Make sure you have a quality product. Be proud of what you write, what you deliver.

Relic is available through Amazon as both an ebook and in print.

NaNo’s over – now what?

This year I got involved in the local NaNoWriMo group, which we’ve decided to keep going throughout the year. While I didn’t come close to finishing, many people hit the 50k mark and were wondering what the next step is. I recently presented the following information; hopefully you’ll find it useful too.

NaNo’s Over – Now What?

 Before you even think about publishing…

Self-edit your manuscript.



Length – is it long enough according to industry standards?
Show vs. tell – if your book were a movie, would you rely on the actors or voiceovers to convey emotions and plot points? (BUT you don’t need every detail)
Plot, subplots, and themes – identify these and make sure that everything in your story relates to them. Take out or rewrite scenes and characters that don’t fit



Beta readers



Find someone who will give you constructive feedback on what works and what doesn’t in regard to theme, characters, plot, etc.
NOTE: your mom/significant other/best friend will generally not be objective or specific.



Revise.
Repeat steps #1-3, as many times as necessary.
Line edits (no point until you have a well-written manuscript)



Grammar, I-bombs, filter words, repetition, etc.
Consider hiring an editor because spell check is not enough!



Publish!

 Publishing

Generally selling exclusive first rights

Not published elsewhere – non-password protected sites Google/anyone can access (your website)
Generally less than 10% public is okay – snippets, 1st chapter


No matter what option, you’ll be doing the majority of the marketing
Options


Self-publishing



You do all the work (or hire someone) but maintain all control.
$ = as much as you want to spend
Smashwords, Book Baby, Kindle, Createspace, Lulu, etc



Vanity



You pay someone to publish your book on their terms
$ = generally thousands of dollars, plus you pay inflated rates for your own books
Tate, Publish America, generally any company that solicits you



Traditional



Someone does all the work and pays you (flat rate or royalties; advance)
$ = generally nothing but depends on contract
Two types:

Big Five – generally 15% royalties, need an agent
Indie/small press – higher royalties (30-50%), don’t need an agent


Querying process:





Find an agent who does your genre or a small press. Pay attention to books/authors you like to see who they use. Follow industry people’s blogs and on Twitter.
Send a query exactly as instructed – 200-word blurb, first x pages or chapters.
Repeat ad nauseum – expect dozens of rejections/nonresponses.




Hybrid



Mix of self-publishing and traditional
Whatever works for you – varies from writer to writer, story to story

Author Platform

Essential no matter how you publish
Relationships, not advertising – do NOT spam!
Polite to follow back but don’t feel obligated to become king/queen of [platform] – better to have engaged, interested followers than high numbers.
Best engagement – ask questions people can answer, then respond
Social media


Twitter

Follow people you find interesting – agents, writers, celebs, etc
Try to tweet at least once a day – something interesting, not necessarily always about writing
All about engagement – retweets, favorites, responding
140 characters
Hashtags to get noticed: #amwriting, #amediting, #amreading; be creative


Facebook

Author page – people can like it, can’t see their info; easy to separate from personal
Author account – friends with fans, can see their info and they see yours; technically not allowed to have 2 accounts
Easier to have conversations
FB limits who sees your page posts unless you pay; 10x more views for FBTwitter than TwitterFacebook, so try to use 140 character posts


Not as popular (yet?)

Google +
Pinterest
Goodreads




Website

Essential central spot to send people who may not be on FB, Twitter, etc.
Consider buying your own domain – looks more professional
Layout

Main page
Bio – same for everywhere (long and short versions) + 1 pic for everywhere
Novel/stories – titles, novel summaries, covers, publication dates, links to full text or place to buy
Contact info – form/email address, mailing list, social media links
Blog

If you have one, update regularly: daily, weekly, monthly, whatever works for you
Blogger, Weebly, Wix, WordPress.com (free but limited customization), WordPress.org (on your own host; more flexibility)

If you’ve published, is there anything you’d like to add to this? If you’re an aspiring author, is there anything you need clarification on? Let me know in the comments!

Weekend Writing Warriors 12/15/13 #WeWriWa

Let’s go for one last snippet from my newly-released novel, The Lone Wolf.

After her husband’s infidelities are revealed, Kasey Sanford just wants to rediscover who she is. After an abusive childhood and years as a career soldier, Andrew Adams just wants someone to tell him that he’s doing the right thing with his life. When their paths cross, Kasey and Andrew embark on a tumultuous journey that demonstrates just what they’re willing to do to save the ones they love.

In this scene, Kasey’s at the local farmers’ market with her daughter.

Aida studied the booths around us as we walked, trying to determine which would be most likely to give her samples. I waited next to her, making my own list of what to purchase, when I felt a hand on my elbow and jumped.

 

“Did I scare you?” Andrew asked, a grin on his face. He looked delicious in civilian clothes, a t-shirt that clung slightly to his muscular chest and a baggy pair of cargo shorts.

 

“No. Maybe,” I said as I tried to frown at him, but it didn’t work. “You don’t come across as the farmers’ market type.”

 

“I’m full of surprises.”

What kind of surprises? Read the book and find out!

And as always, post a link to your eight sentences blog entry, or join the fun at the Weekend Writing Warriors website.

And the winners are…

I just finished up a big contest to celebrate launch week, giving away two signed print copies and 3 ebook copies of my novel, The Lone Wolf. The results are in:

Print winners: Naomi and Sarah

Ebook winners: Heather, Heidi, and Becky

Congrats to the winners! And thanks so much to everyone who participated – now that you’re connected to my updates somehow, you’ll have a competitive edge the next time a contest roles around.

If you’d like to get even more insight and prizes, consider joining the Evolved Publishing Street Team. In return for spreading the word about EP, you get sneak peaks on upcoming novels, special giveaways, and the ear of your favorite writers. Win-win all around!