Robert R. Peecher Jr.'s Blog, page 6

Free today and tomorrow

In recognition of the 167th anniversary of the U.S. Senate’s ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, ending the Mexican-American War and giving the United States the territory that would eventually become Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah and parts of Wyoming, Colorado, Kansas and Oklahoma, I thought I’d give away some Kindle versions of Jackson Speed: The Hero of El Teneria.

So the first novel in the Jackson Speed series is free today and tomorrow.

This is the story of Jackson Speed’s corruption, first marriage and flight from an enraged and cuckolded husband. In it you can read Speed’s first-hand account of the Battle of the Boat on the Rio Grande and see his introduction to Jefferson Davis, a man who would several times force Speedy into the death. The novel also reveals Speed’s adventures with Ben McCulloch and the Texas Rangers.

I think it’s a fun story full of adventure and excitement, and if you download it for free today or tomorrow and you decide that it’s not to your tastes, I’ll offer you a no-questions-asked money back guarantee.*

To download the book at no cost to you, click here.

*The money back guarantee is only good for free downloads.

Update on Jackson Speed at the High Tide

The trauma of NaNoWriMo has left me speechless. I’ve not written a blog post in two months.

For you fans of Jackson Speed, here’s where things stand: The fourth book is written but I am still editing/rewriting.

Taking Jackson Speed at the High Tide as a continuation of Jackson Speed on the Orange Turnpike and considering them one complete work as they were initially intended, I’ve got to say Volumes III and IV of the Jackson Speed memoirs are my personal favorites so far. I’m really proud of these two books, and I cannot wait for Jackson Speed fans to see Volume IV!

Speaking of Jackson Speed fans, I’ve occasionally written about my sales here, and I’ll say a word about sales today, too. December was awful. I’d been riding a pretty good wave of sales from May through November, but December my sales fell off the wagon.

Thankfully, January picked up steam and February (so far) has been very good. Interestingly, I’m selling books in the United States again. Back in June my sales in the United Kingdom began to increase dramatically, and through the second half of 2014 almost all of my sales came out of Britain. But my U.S. sales outpaced foreign sales in January. I think that’s a good thing, because my novels offer a chance for more people to learn about U.S. history as seen by Jackson Speed – and what better way to learn than with Ol’ Speedy as your teacher?

When I say that I am grateful beyond words to you people who buy my books, I hope you understand that I am being completely genuine. It’s not the $1.34 I get from the sales in England or the $2.05 I get from the sales in the United States … it’s the fact that people are enjoying my work enough to come back and read the next book. That’s really so amazing to me.

When I started writing the Jackson Speed novels, I was writing stories that would entertain me. I created this character who I found amusing and put him in historical situations that I found interesting. I didn’t know if I would ever sell a single book or if anyone who read the stories would even enjoy them. Basically, Jackson Speed was just a pleasant diversion for me.

But when I go to look at my sales chart and see that I’ve sold a copy of Blood Tubs or Orange Turnpike – that people enjoyed El Teneria enough to want more – it truly is the most gratifying experience.

While I work on edits of High Tide, I’ve also got some other projects that I’m working on – many of which are in some latter stages of completion – and I hope to soon be able to share some details about some of those projects.

My target date for publishing Jackson Speed at the High Tide is late March (though it could be mid-May), and when the time gets a little closer I’ll release the cover image that Alex McArdell created for High Tide. It’s spectacular!

Some final thoughts on NaNoWriMo 2014

Now that I’ve had some time to rest, I’ll to post some thoughts on my first NaNoWriMo experience.

When I first heard of it, maybe a couple of years ago, I was very dubious about the value of NaNoWriMo. But a lot of indie writers have participated in NaNoWriMo, and I wanted to at least give it a shot.

One of the things I was most looking forward to was attending some of the local events. There aren’t but a couple of them (maybe only one), but I do not have the opportunity to sit down with other writers and talk the way I did in college, and I miss that. I thought it would be worthwhile and fun. But as I’ve noted, time was not my friend in November, and I couldn’t make any of the events. So one of my primary motivations for participating never happened.

Nevertheless, I walked away from NaNoWriMo with a new respect for it. In my experience at least, I found it hugely beneficial.

If you don’t know what NaNoWriMo is, it’s a writing challenge where, to win, you have to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November. NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month.

If you’re writing diligently every day (which I was not), you have to do about 1700 words a day to win NaNoWriMo. For me, that’s not a particularly high bar to hit. Obviously, plotting a story, character development, research – all of that takes time – but if you’ve done your planning ahead of time,1700 words can easily be written in a couple of hours.

I suppose the difficulty of NaNoWriMo depends a lot on your story and your writing style and how well planned your novel is before you get started. I knew long before November rolled around how my story would unfold, but for every hour that I spent writing I probably spent another 15 to 30 minutes researching.

The thing I found most worthwhile was having a goal imposed by a deadline. I’ve spent a career writing to meet deadlines, but I’ve never put a deadline on any fiction writing. Setting a goal and working hard to meet that goal forced me to put into writing what was already in my head.

For me, the last week of NaNoWriMo was a huge and difficult 30,000 word push. Fortunately, my wife cleared the decks for me and allowed me time to write. If it had not been for NaNoWriMo, I suspect she would have still expected me to do my part around the house – emptying the dishwasher, taking out the trash … whatever else I’m supposed to be doing. The only thing she asked me to do all week was build a fire in the fireplace, and I think that took three minutes of writing time.

I’m glad I decided to participate in NaNoWriMo. I’ll probably try it again next year, though hopefully I’ll write a little every day instead of trying to squeeze my writing into massive 10,000-word chunks.

If you feel like you’ve got a novel in you but you’re lacking the motivation to write it, you might find that NaNoWriMo could be helpful to you. Throughout the forums there are a lot of people who were first time novelists, and in the little that I was able to go to the website and spend a little time, there were several of those first time novelists who successfully got their 50,000 words.

Writers, generally, seem to be a very supportive bunch of people. I’ve run into several indie writers online – either in blogs or on Twitter or wherever – and most everyone seems to be genuinely interested in seeing others find success. In the NaNoWriMo forums, it’s no different. Folks tend to serve as cheerleaders for the other people trying to get their novels written.

For my part, I was ready to give up on November 24. I’d only written 16,000 words and reaching 50,000 in just a few days seemed insurmountable.

But I read an email from my ML (municipal liaison), Lucy (aka boomchick). I don’t know Lucy, and she doesn’t know me, but as an ML, she sent a mass email to all the Athens, Georgia, NaNoWriMo’ers on November 15 (yes, it took me nine days to read the email).

In it, Lucy said, “You can absolutely power through this Novel, without a doubt!”

I read that and thought, “Maybe I can.”

That was my motivation to keep going when I’d already decided to give up – a mass email from someone I don’t know who did not know whether or not I could power through the novel.

But Lucy (aka boomchick) was right, and I did power through the novel, and if I’d not participated in NaNoWriMo, I would right this minute be thinking about how I should probably get back to writing if I’m going to finish Jackson Speed at the High Tide by the end of the year.

As it is, I’m now thinking about how I need to be editing and rewriting Jackson Speed at the High Tide if I’m going to publish it by spring of 2015.

I’m a NaNoWriMo winner!

 

If that looks like a NaNoWriMo winner banner at the top of this post, that’s because that’s what it is.

At 3:48 a.m. I topped 50,000 words for November!

Conveniently, I also finished out Jackson Speed at the High Tide. I still have edits and rewrites in front of me, and who knows how long that takes because I do not believe there is a NaNoEdiMo in December (National Novel Editing Month) or a NaNoReWriMo in January. But with the novel finished I think it won’t be long now before I can get that baby polished up and ready to present to the world.

I’ll come back later when my fingers aren’t so sore from all the writing I did this last week and talk a little more about NaNoWriMo. Honestly, I was very skeptical about the value of it before I did it, but now I’m a true believer.

Anyway, as always, I owe Jean a huge THANK YOU for constantly supporting me in whatever foolish endeavors I get into.

Over the past week, when I was in a 30,000 word hole and trying to write my way out, my beautiful wife created an environment where I could do it. She only once interrupted me while I was writing (and that was to spend three minutes building a fire in the fireplace last night) and at least twice – probably more that I did not notice – she took on my chores around the house so that I could stay planted in my chair at my keyboard. She didn’t complain when I didn’t come to bed at night this past week, and she didn’t gripe when I couldn’t wake up in the mornings because I’d been up so late writing.

Jackson Speed at the High Tide comes in at a staggering 101,900 words (by way of comparison, the other Speed books are all around 65,000 to 70,000). I imagine it will be shorter or longer when I’m done editing, but I don’t know that I ever expected to write a 100,000-word novel.

I think it’s good stuff, too. If you’re a fan of the other Jackson Speed novels, I do not think this one will disappoint. It picks up immediately where Jackson Speed on the Orange Turnpike left off.

If you were following my progress and rooting for me, thank you so much. Over the course of the last week I got some kind words of encouragement from some friends, and I appreciate that. If you were following my progress and deep down wanted to see me fail, then the only thing I can say to you is, eat that!

Now I’m going to go watch some Walking Dead and then go to bed early.

NaNoWriMo 10,000 to go!

Just a quick update for those keeping score at home … I’ve been writing all day (and most of last night) and I just this moment passed 40,000 words! With less than 10,000 words to go to win NaNoWriMo, I have a fair amount of confidence.

Our hero Jackson Speed is currently in the woods on Seminary Ridge with George Pickett. Pickett is writing a love letter to LaSalle Corbell, and Ol’ Speedy’s bowels are exploding to drown out the cannons.

“Run old hare! If I was an old hare I’d run too!”

NaNoWriMo and the legend of Spangler’s Spring

I’m posting another NaNoWriMo update.

Back in September when I decided to try NaNoWriMo (the National Novel Writing Month project where, to win, you have to write 50,000 words in your novel in the 30 days of November) I was thinking it would be great fun to attend some of the local events, maybe communicate with some other writers in the forums at the NaNoWriMo website and try to write a new novel.

But, as I reported earlier this week, November just wasn’t my month. My paying job seriously got in the way of my non-paying writing job, and by November 25, I’d only written about 16,000 words in my novel.

I’ve been seriously busy, and the days when I did have time to write there was not much writing going on.

But on Monday, Nov. 25, with 16,000 or so words written I looked at the rest of the month and thought, “Maybe I can still do this.”

I have not closed myself up in a closet with a laptop. Yesterday I spent the entire day with friends and family and enjoyed the day feasting and playing front-yard football with the boys (and girls), and last night when everyone else went to bed I started writing. I’ve spent most of my writing time with my family – I on my laptop, they huddled around the fireplace or the television or whatever they were huddled around.

But four days later, I’ve topped 30,000 words. As of the close of writing Thanksgiving Day, I was at 30,694 words, and I’m looking at a weekend where I should have plenty of time to write.

I don’t know that I can get 20,000 words in three days (this week I did 14,000 words in four days), but I am still trying.

I don’t think the writing is poor, either. I admitted to Jean last night that I wasn’t sure about a particular scene I was writing and whether or not it would make it to the final draft of the book, but I woke up this morning pretty pleased with that scene.

In some of my author talks, I’ve discussed how the historical record often lends itself really well to my wandering character, and that scene I wrote last night is sort of an indication of that.

In the scene, Speed was fleeing Gettysburg in the night after the second day of battle. For the story, I needed him to wander through the ranks of the Yankee army on Culp’s Hill and then somehow pass over into the Confederate lines without anyone noticing him or shooting him.

Spangler’s Spring as it did not appear during the Battle of Gettysburg.

Obviously, even at night, crossing through the no-man’s-land between two entrenched enemies is no easy feat, even for a man as adept at getting away from stuff as our reluctant hero Jackson Speed.

Stuck for a moment in trying to figure out how Speed would move from one army to the next, I picked up my handy-dandy research material and found a passage in Glenn Tucker’s book about how in a meadow near Culp’s Hill on the night after the second day of battle, the Federals and Confederates filled their canteens at Spangler’s Spring, and the water carriers for both armies stood there together, chatting with each other, sharing gossip and filling their canteens.

It created the ideal opportunity for Speed to move from one army to the next unnoticed. Thanks historical record!

Possibly, probably, the legend of Spangler’s Spring isn’t true. We do know for a fact that there was fighting during the night around Spangler’s Spring, and it is probable that the legend of the local truce allowing both Union and Confederate troops to fill their canteens from the spring was a story made up entirely for the purpose of promoting reconciliation between North and South in the years following the war.

That said, the legend of the local truce at Spangler’s Spring is not without precedent. Frequently in Civil War battles the soldiers of either side met and talked in lulls between the fighting, though in most of the accounts I can find they did not mingle at close range and merely called out taunts at each other. But because the legend fits well with my fiction, I don’t mind incorporating it.

If you want to read more about Spangler’s Spring, I’ll point you to this blog which I found particularly interesting. It’s not overly supportive of the notion that Speed was able to mingle with both Yankee and Confederate soldiers who chatted amicably while filling their canteens, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

At any rate, I’m still writing, still hoping that I can finish out NaNoWriMo. If I win it this year, I think next year I’ll sign up and just go to local events and chat with other writers in the forums, because I feel like I’ve missed a lot of the experience by only focusing on the goal.

But if you’re a fan of Jackson Speed and eager for the next book, you can consider NaNoWriMo a success even if I don’t hit my 50,000 words. The truth is, I’d been stalled for a long time in my writing of Jackson Speed at the High Tide, and at the pace I was going I was not finishing the book before the first of next year. With NaNoWriMo motivating me, I now expect to finish writing the book within the next two weeks (three days if I can!) and then I’ll start on editing and rewriting, and surely I’ll be able to hit my goal of publishing Jackson Speed at the High Tide next spring.

NaNoWriMo update

Just a quick update on my post from yesterday about NaNoWriMo …

I started writing in earnest last night around 11 p.m. When I went to bed at 4 a.m., I’d managed to knock out 4,000 words. I’ve gotten an accurate word count of everything I’ve written so far in November on High Tide, and I’m 19,496 words into the 50,000 (that includes the 4,000 I wrote last night). If I can hit a pace of 5,084 words a day, I can finish out NaNoWriMo!

I’m really excited about what I wrote last night. I think it’s pretty good stuff. It was a scene that came to me more than two years ago when I first started writing about Jackson Speed, and it is the moment in the Battle of Gettysburg when Speed earns himself a Congressional Medal of Honor.

I have this print of a painting by Dale Gallon hanging in my office at home, and it helped to serve as inspiration for me as I wrote the scene. I love Dale Gallon’s work, and if I’m ever a rich man I’ll paper my house with his paintings.

That’s it for now … I have to get to writing!

November 24, ready to start on NaNoWriMo

Six days left in NaNoWriMo and I’m ready to get started. 50,000 words in six days? No sweat.

For those not familiar, November is National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo for short). The goal is to write 50,000 words in 30 days.

Somewhere along the way I became intrigued with the idea of participating in NaNoWriMo. I wrote the first Jackson Speed novel (El Teneria) in 28 days. It came in around 60,000 words. But I did that in June of 2012, so I picked the wrong month to do it and it didn’t count. But I figured if I could do it once, I could do it again.

My initial plan for NaNoWriMowas to write the fifth Jackson Speed novel, and in October I sort of started doing research for that book. But I never really got moving on the research the way I needed to. And I’m still writing the fourth book, and I found it harder than I thought I would to switch from one book to another.

The rules of NaNoWriMo allow me to finish an already-started novel as long as I write 50,000 words in 30 days. I was already just over 50,000 words into High Tide, and I’ve always figured it would be close to 100,000 words (much longer than the other three Speed novels, but it is Gettysburg, after all).

So a couple of weeks ago I abandoned my initial plans and decided to just keep rolling on the fourth book, Jackson Speed at the High Tide.

But November has been terribly busy for me. The boys have had soccer games and tournaments on the weekends and it’s been cold and I’ve been sleepy a lot. The result is I haven’t been writing much at all.

I’ve got six days left in NaNoWriMo and I’ve written somewhere between 16,000 and 20,000 words. So I’m not really starting from scratch with just six days to go, but I am very much in a hole.

But I’ve not given up. If I can write an average of 5,000 words over the next six days, I can still win NaNoWriMo, and I think I can do it. I’ve got a couple of days off from work this week thanks to Thanksgiving, and there’re no soccer games this weekend.

So I’m deep in a hole, but I’m committed to seeing this thing through.

I’ll post an update December 1 (or sometime thereabouts) and let you know how it turned out.

In the meantime, keep watching this space. My hope is to release some short stories prior to Christmas for all you people who have Kindles on your wish lists.

The new pulp fiction

Several months ago I became intrigued with a notion that was new to me but not, as it turns out, an original idea.

I was doing some research for a new project I’ve been working on when I formed an opinion that ebooks are the modern era’s pulp fiction. Like I said, it wasn’t an original idea, but it was new to me.

The first cover of the old pulp fiction magazine Adventure.

Pulp fiction was popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Often raw and almost never of very high literary value, it was published in books and magazines that used poor quality paper (which is where the “pulp” comes from). Cheap to publish, it opened the doors to a few now-famous authors and helped to build the popularity of a variety of genres (science fiction, crime fiction, thrillers) that possibly would not have been given much chance were it not for the ability of publishers to print the material cheaply.

To me, that sounds a lot like today’s ebooks.

Compare a Raymond Chandler or a Dashiell Hammett to a Hugh Howey or an Elmer Mason to a Robert Peecher. (What? You’ve never heard of Elmer Mason? Well, nobody’s ever heard of Robert Peecher, either.)

Pulp fiction allowed writers a certain freedom from the confines of the tastes of editors and publishers. Today’s ebooks, to an even greater extent, set writers free.

I think ultimately those who enjoy reading fiction of all kinds are the ones who truly win. If you describe yourself as an avid reader, you have so much more opportunity now for fresh and creative stories.

I will grant you that quality control among the self-published book market isn’t great, and a fair number of the ebooks available are just absolute garbage – poorly written, grammatical failures and bad stories.

But the readers get to police that, don’t they? Through reader reviews and sales rankings, readers can sift through the selections available, and the good stuff is bound to rise to the top. And no different than picking up a pulp fiction magazine and flipping through it a century ago, readers have the opportunity to read the first few pages of a book or download free samples.

As a writer, the whole thing is fun and exciting to me. I’ve got all kinds of ideas for new projects I’d like to write, and the fear of failure just isn’t there. If I publish something and readers don’t care for it (giving it poor reviews or just simply not buying it), well I can just try again with something else if I decide I want to.

And for a few writers, who might have tried dozens or hundreds of times to get their work through the gatekeepers of the traditional publishing world, they have now an opportunity to reach readers that wasn’t available to them even five years ago.

Jackson Speed and the cover illustrator

I’m not yet going to post the “reveal,” but I am going to say I CAN NOT WAIT for you to see the cover illustration for the next Jackson Speed novel.

It is glorious.

When my youngest son saw the first draft of the cover, he said, “You’re going to have to write a better book to go with that cover.”

He wasn’t kidding. It really is that good.

Several weeks ago I was trying to decide what to do about the cover for the next Speed book, and I decided to try something different from the previous covers. So I started searching the internet on a number of different freelance artist sites looking for someone who I thought would be able to create a cover for me.

I spent a few days searching various sites and looking at different artists’ work when I finally ran across some pieces by Alex McArdell. I spent a couple of days looking at some of his work. Then I came back the next day and looked at his stuff again. I waffled back and forth about whether or not I even wanted to do this.

Dumbledore and the Inferi by Alex McArdell

One of his pieces in particular convinced me Alex was the right guy. He did an illustration of a scene from one of the Harry Potter books – Dumbledore and the Inferi – and being familiar with the scene (I’ve read the Harry Potter books to each of my sons), I was very impressed with it.

So after looking at Dumbledore and the Inferi a couple more times, I sent an email to Alex to see what would happen.

Alex responds to emails very quickly.

That afternoon we sent a couple of emails back and forth and by the next day I think we were both pretty comfortable that we wanted to go forward.

I told Alex everything I thought I knew I wanted for the cover illustration. Alex told me all of that was a bad idea, and then I told Alex to do what he thought was best.

Telling Alex to do what he thought best was a really, really good idea on my part.

Alex took the cover design more seriously than I did with any of the previous Jackson Speed books.

After just a few emails back and forth, him asking thoughtful questions about the book and about the characters, Alex came up with some ideas that impressed me.

I explained to him that Speed was a true rascal, a coward who looks to save his own skin however he can. I also told him that in the fourth book, Speed “fights” for both the North and the South.

I wasn’t sure how he was going to accomplish it, but Alex suggested putting Jenny Rakestraw (who makes a return appearance in the fourth book) behind Speed, pulling at his Federal coat to reveal he’s wearing a Confederate uniform beneath it.

I loved the idea!

He also thought it would go along with the ironic humor of the stories to put Speed in a heroic pose – the cowardly, traitorous Jackson Speed looking all brave and daring.

Spectacular!

I told Alex I liked his ideas and to run with them, and then I waited.

Honestly, I expected to wait several weeks. I’m still months away from being ready to publish the book, and I told Alex not to be in any hurry on my account. But it was only three or four days later when Alex sent me the first draft.

I was blown away. I showed it to my wife and kids. My youngest son, Robert, said I would have to write a better book to go with the cover. Jean and I were both as impressed as we could be with what he’d done with Speed and Jenny, but we weren’t particularly thrilled with the background.

I threw out some suggestions for the background. I sent Alex some historical photos I thought might help. A day or two later – almost no time at all – Alex sent what was basically the finished piece. He still needed to do some sizing, but the image was nearly perfect.

It’s no secret that the fourth book takes place during the Battle of Gettysburg. One of the most recognizable features of that battlefield – at least from the first day – is the cupola of the Seminary building up on Seminary Ridge. When I saw how Alex managed to incorporate the Seminary and its cupola into the background, it was a wonderful surprise to me.

You’ll probably never have the opportunity to look at a high resolution copy of the illustration in Photoshop the way I did, but trust me when I say that every tiny detail in the background is there. You’ll never see the light coming from the windows of the Seminary, but having zoomed in and looked at it in almost microscopic detail, I’m just astounded at what Alex did.

For Jackson Speed fans, the good news is that having such a great cover is pushing me to write more frequently, so there’s a decent chance I’ll have the book finished sooner because of it.

If you’re an indie author looking for a cover illustration, I would urge you to consider getting in touch with Alex. I think you’ll find he offers reasonable prices, and based on my experience with him, I am certain you’ll be thrilled with the final product.