R.J. Crayton's Blog, page 16
June 23, 2015
New Covers for Life First series
Happy Tuesday to you. Hope you guys are all having a lovely summer. Unfortunately, it’s just starting for folks in my neck of the woods, as today is the last day of school (Yay that it’s here; Booo that it took soooooo long to get here. I wish they actually padded the calendar with snow days. Urggh).
Anyway, I just wanted to let you all know that I’ve gotten new covers for the Life First series. I was looking for a more cohesive, dystopian theme and hopefully this does it. You may have noticed the change in the sidebar (the image is generated from Amazon), but I wanted to make sure the change was likely to have taken place at all the vendors before announcing it. So, Life First’s cover is to the left. and the remaining two are below. The series continues to be sold at all major outlets.
June 17, 2015
When Truth is Stranger than Fiction… What Rachel Dolezal Teaches Us about Good Story
Over the weekend, the country became obsessed with Rachel Dolezal, the woman who claimed she was black, even though she wasn’t (Not even a little. Not even by way-back-in-the-day standards, when octoroon was an official census designation).
This is one of those cases that is just fascinating to all because it has all the elements of a great story. I thought I’d talk for a moment about what makes it so fascinating that it fills hundreds of news stories and hours of talk show time.
It’s Unexpected. There’s that old expression that there only basic seven stories in the world and people just retell them with a different spin. Well, this is definitely an unexpected twist that makes you go, hmm. Because of the racial history of this country (and much of Europe), white has been right. That has been the ideal. It was no uncommon for slave children who were very light to attempt to “pass” as white to get away from slavery and racism. But to go the other way. That’s different.
It’s about a core human desire. When I first heard about this case, about Rachel Dolezal’s story, my first thought was that she simply wanted to fit in. She had a deep interest in African-American culture, attended the same HBCU (a historically black college or university) I attended, Howard, and was deeply involved in the NAACP. She was living in a world of Black people and just wanted to be a part of the group. I’m not condoning what she did, but I think, story wise, we are fascinated because everyone yearns to fit into the in group. Countless books have been predicated on character’s desire to fit in with some group. What lengths will they go to in order to achieve it?
It’s Controversial. While most people have condemned the lying, some are asking the question, “Why can’t she black if she wants to?” I won’t answer that, because this is not that post (and there are others who express why way better). But, Dolezal has defenders of her concept, as well as several naysayers.
Family Strife. Her parents narced on her. From the minutes her parents came out and said, ‘she’s lying to everyone, she’s white,” people asked why. Why were her parents choosing to rat her out? Was it just to do the right thing? Were there other motives? As the story grew, reporters unearthed a custody battle between Dolezal and her parents over an adopted sibling. Also, Dolezal is now suggesting her parents are attempting to discredit her because she is supposed to testify in a sexual abuse case against her biological brother. Frankly, family strife is always good fodder for novels. If this were a novel, I’d say the author had gone a bit 0ver-the-top in the strife department. Sadly, this is very real, and a very bad situation for any family to be in.
Irony. The interesting thing is, Dolezal’s desire to fit in caused her to do this horrible thing. Now, the exact opposite is going to happen. Ultimately, what she has done leaves her outcast from the very group she hoped to be closer to. The group she deceived will not accept her because of her deceit. Had she just been honest, she would have had a better chance of receiving the acceptance she sought.
Race. While in-your-face racism has become unacceptable, racism is still a problem in this country. After slaves were freed by Lincoln, the people of the US made a hard pledge to ensure that former slaves had little value or freedom. The best way to do that was laws that declared you were white or non white. It fostered the one-drop rule (one drop of black blood means you’re black) and ensured that anyone with the faintest of pigmentation that could be traced to a black person was considered black. Therefore, it made it easier for Ms. Dolezal to pass. A white parent and a black parent, means all your whiteness
Hypocrisy. Some of the most fascinating parts of this story are that Dolezal sued Howard, claiming she was discriminated against for being white. The suit was dismissed as being meritless. Even though it wasn’t racism, Dolezal was offended enough by her treatment that she sued over it. Yet, if you look at media stories, Dolezal, in her role as NAACP president, often shot down white speakers when they were suggested, solely because they were white. After the story of the deception broke, white anti-racist essayist Tim Wise revealed that Dolezal “recently objected quite strenuously to my coming to Eastern Washington University to speak, because in her estimation a white person cannot speak legitimately about racism issues concerning black people.” I can just imagine Dolezal saying at meetings, “Can’t we help our own people? Can’t we hire speakers of color?”
Anyway, the story isn’t quite going away, as Dolezal hit up the Today Show yesterday to stir the pot. But it’s also not going away because it hits all the right notes of a good story. It’s something people wish to talk about and explore. If only all our fiction could be as juicy and detailed. Sadly for the people involved, this is truth. But, as story tellers, we can certainly observe what about this makes the people keep discussing it.
Because I’ve been as absorbed in this story as everyone else, I’ve found some pretty interesting stories on the subject, so I thought I’d share.
Reported Articles
Rachel isn’t the first white person to pass for black. Read about a famous New Yorker who secretly pretended to be a black Pullman porter and married a black woman in Brooklyn. This from NPR: American Lives: The ‘Strange’ Tale Of Clarence King
Spokane Review: Rachel Dolezal told student that ex-husband forced her to live as a white woman
Commentary:
NY Times. Black Like Who? Rachel Dolezal’s Harmful Masquerade
Washington Post: I’m a white woman who dated a Black Panther. I could have been Rachel Dolezal.
XO Vain: How Rachel Dolezal Just Made Things Harder for Those of Us Who Don’t “Look Black”
June 15, 2015
Emerging from the Writing Cave
Is that a sunny day out there?
Happy Monday to you.
It’s me, and I’m emerging from the writing cave for a blog post.
Or perhaps, I should say, Live from the Writing Cave, it’s RJ Crayton’s blog post! (a la Saturday Night Live.)
Regardless, I realized it’s been a while (May 31, yikes) since I’ve written a blog post, so I wanted to pop in and tell you what I’ve been up to.
Let’s start with the bad news, as I hate to end things on a down note. We might as well get that stuff out of the way first. I’m behind in my daily word count. I’d started off the year with the hopes of knocking out 1,500 words per day to ensure I was getting decent output in terms of writing. Well, I’m way behind on that. I had several days where I wrote nothing, or miniscule amounts of words (200-300). For some reason, other parts of my life have been very busy and the writing has fallen to the wayside on too many occasions.
The good news is, even though I’m not completely on target, I’m not too far off, either. The last couple of days have been pretty good, with me exceeding my daily word count goal by a thousand words each day. As of Sunday night (June 14), I should have written 247,500 words for the year. I had actually written 229,233. That’s an average of 1,389 words per day. So, not too shabby. I think I may actually be able to close the gap if I really focus over the next two weeks. However, I do have some doctors appointments and things of that nature scheduled that disrupt my daily routine (which is how I end up not writing).
So, what are these 229,233 words I’ve written? Some of them are blog posts, either here or for Indies Unlimited. However, that’s a small percentage. The Self-Publishing Road Map, which I published earlier this year, was around 63,000 words. I have another 60,000 word manuscript I have not published yet. Unfortunately, you won’t be seeing it here. I’ve started writing in a different genre under a pseudonym. However, I won’t be discussing that work here, as I’m just testing the waters with it. Still, that pseudonym has eaten up another 30,000 words of what I’ve written.
Of the stuff you’ll see is my still untitled virus story. That’s planned as a three-book series that will need to be read together. I’ve written (and rewritten) the first book in the series, which comes in around 42,000 words, and I am about 20,000 words into book two of the series. I need to actually finish book two before I release book one. It’s more serial in nature, so when you finish book one, you’re really going to need to have book two available. My goal is to release those books in September, just a couple of weeks apart. But, we have to see how the writing goes. Given how little I’ve published this year, I’m working hard to make that happen.
Since I’ve mentioned the virus story, I thought I’d post chapter one for blog readers to see. I actually sent it out to people subscribed to the mailing list already. I don’t know that I’ll be posting chapter two anytime soon, as I’m trying to focus on getting this piece finished. You can read the story either in PDF format or HTML (like a regular webpage).
Last up, I’m getting new covers for the Life First series. “Again?” you say. Yep. Again. I’m trying not to be fickle, but I think the covers are just not as genre clear as they need to be. I think the new covers will be more indicative of that. Hopefully, I’ll have more info on the cover front next week.
That’s all for now.
Hope you have an awesome week ahead of you.
-RJ
May 31, 2015
Self-Publishing Sunday: It’s All About Your Rights
Source: Pixabay.com
Happy Sunday to you. A big thanks to all those who showed up for my self-publishing seminar on May 19 at the South Bowie library branch. Also a big thanks to the library and the PG Arts Council for hosting us. A special thanks to Robin, who got us moved to the big meeting room. That was awesome.
Today, I thought I’d take a quick minute to discuss rights. Why? Because I saw this wonderful blog post by Roxanne St. Clare. Now, the post isn’t wonderful because of what happened. What happened to Roxanne is awful. It was wonderful of her to share.
For those who don’t have a moment to read Roxanne’s post, she is an author who used to be traditionally published and has now turned to self-publishing. Her traditionally published book, Hit Reply, was published in 2004 and is about a woman who reconnects with an ex via the Internet (even though married). The technology between 2004 and today is vastly different and Roxanne would love to update the book and re-release it. It sold 4 copies last year. Only, her publisher won’t revert the rights, and is selling the ebook for a price Roxanne believes is way too high, $15.99. It’s a cautionary tale about what happens when someone else holds the rights to your writing.
In the old days, you had to give up those rights to get published. But, in the old days, books also went out of print, and rights reverted to the author when that happened. With today’s technology, ebooks never go out of print, and authors are having their rights tied up forever. And it’s unfortunate.
I think Roxanne’s blog post serves as a great reminder that one of the benefits of self-publishing is you keep the rights to your book. If you choose to update it in the future, you can. If you want to lower the price you can. If you think the book is so hopelessly out of date that you want to pull it from the shelves you can.
Just like Membership has its privileges, so does ownership. I think self-publishers are so fortunate in that they retain complete control of their title. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple, Google Play and the like are just companies authors hire to distribute their work. In most cases, you have utter control of whether to put your book on sale and at which retailers.*
So, if you’re self-publishing, count yourself lucky that the sky’s the limit for you! Your rights stick with you as long as you want them and if something sticks in your craw after you publish it, you can change it. You are in complete control of the direction of your book. You get all the credit and all the blame, and think that’s a lovely place to be.
-RJ
*The one caveat to this is if you commit to exclusivity via KDP Select. So if you change your mind day after signing up, you will be restricted to placing your book only on Amazon until the Select term ends. All Select terms are 90 days, so that’s your maximum committment.
May 26, 2015
Will they still be singing our tunes in 100 years?
When I wrote my book Second Life, which is set in the same future as the Life First series, about 100 years from now, I decided it would be fun to have the character of Rob be a Beatles fan. Susan, who spends a fair amount of time with Rob, says something to the effect of, “Who listens to music from more than a century ago?”
One of my beta readers thought the Beatles would still be a quite recognizable band, though I wasn’t so sure. They could be like a Mozart or Beethoven, studied pioneers, or they could be forgotten. Second Life came out in December of 2013, but earlier this year, when Kanye West did a song with Paul McCartney, several of the younger generation said in online forums, “Who’s this Paul McCartney guy? He’s pretty good. He may have a future.” People hoped they were joking. But, ummm, I don’t know.
But it did get me to thinking about whether popular music survives over centuries. Sure, most Americans can –at the very least– hum the Star Spangled Banner (fewer know all the words). But, do we know other songs from the past?
Oddly enough, I was surprised to learn a few weeks ago that I know a couple of the ragingly popular tunes of the late 1800s. You probably do as well. On May 5, Google did a doodle to celebrate Nellie Blye, a 19th century journalist and novelist. Because she was right there in front of me, I decided to read about Blye, and learned Blye was a pen name inspired by the Stephen Foster song Nelly Bly. Having no recollection of hearing of Foster, I clicked through a link to find out about him. Turns out, he’s written songs I’ve heard of. Oh Susanna, Camptown Races and Old Folks at Home. Now, the first two, I recognized immediately as songs I’d heard. However, I had to look up Old Folks at Home, which I recognized, once I saw the opening line: “Way down upon de Swanee Ribber, Far, far away….”
Interestingly enough, the Wikipedia page for Foster mentions the music being used in cartoons, and I’m pretty sure I recall these songs primarily from Looney Tunes episodes I watched as a child. So, it simply took one generation inserting the songs into something that the younger generation enjoys to get the songs to carry. My daughter, 8, was familiar with Oh Susanna, but not the other two songs.
Today, with movies and other media that spans generations, I do wonder if the future generation’s recollection of songs and other pop culture from past eras will be wider. On some level, the odds are better that people can experience more from times gone by because of our recording abilities. However, with so much new stuff, will the people of the future really care what was done in the past.
I don’t know that a ton of pop music continues a century later. However, it is nice that books seem to be kept and read, even after centuries. Yes, the older the item is, the fewer that are read popularly (lucky Homer), but still as you get closer in time to today, there are a multitude of authors from a century or two centuries ago whose work is so popular, it is adapted over and over again (I’m thinking of people like Charles Dickens or Jane Austen)
or whose works are still read outright, like Mark Twain and Nathaniel Hawthorne.
