Cameron D. James's Blog, page 42

Where I’ve Been

I feel so bad for neglecting this blog for 10 days!

I’ve had an insane amount of things going on, and a some of it will soon show up here!

I will be self-publishing a short story, Gaymer, later this week.
I have almost reached the contract-signing step for my next novel, tentatively titled Silent Hearts, which should be released in March 2014.
I’m about to do a massive update of my website.
I’ve started writing my third novel, still untitled.
I’ll be appearing on The Writers Vineyard tomorrow to continue my ongoing posts about social media and authors, by discussing how to effectively use LinkedIn for book promo.  (I’ll post a link here tomorrow!)
Any day now, I’ll be getting paper copies of Autumn Fire in my hot little hands (and will post pics when I get them)!
I’m preparing for the local Comic Con, at which I’ll be manning a table for our publisher with a number of other local authors from the company (although I’m the only smutty author — the rest are all fantasy folk).
By the end of the week, or early next week, I should be appearing in Outwords Magazine, the LGBT magazine of the prairie provinces (of Canada).  I’ll post links to it when it’s out!
And sometime soon, I’ll be hosting a (hopefully) weekly feature on this blog where I interview erotic romance and erotica authors.  (I’m currently attempting to set up my first interview.)
My reading has slowed down quite a bit due to everything, but I’m almost done a Star Trek book, and soon behind that will be an MM erotic romance.  (Part of the reason my reading has slowed is because I’m reading Les Miserables.  It’s a long book.  Long.)

And on top of my writing life has been my real life — my daily job (which I enjoy immensely) and my volunteer commitments (which consumed the last month or so) and school (which has been slow lately, but will soon pick up).  But, upwards and onwards!

See ya soon, peeps!

Book Review: Writing the Breakout Novel

Writing the Breakout Novel

Donald Maass

Take your fiction to the next level!

Maybe you’re a first-time novelist looking for practical guidance. Maybe you’ve already been published, but your latest effort is stuck in mid-list limbo. Whatever the case may be, author and literary agent Donald Maass can show you how to take your prose to the next level and write a breakout novel – one that rises out of obscurity and hits the best-seller lists.

Maass details the elements that all breakout novels share – regardless of genre – then shows you writing techniques that can make your own books stand out and succeed in a crowded marketplace.

You’ll learn to:

establish a powerful and sweeping sense of time and place
weave subplots into the main action for a complex, engrossing story
create larger-than-life characters that step right off the page
explore universal themes that will interest a broad audience of readers
sustain a high degree of narrative tension from start to finish
develop an inspired premise that sets your novel apart from the competition

Then, using examples from the recent works of several best-selling authors – including novelist Anne Perry – Maass illustrates methods for upping the ante in every aspect of your novel writing. You’ll capture the eye of an agent, generate publisher interest and lay the foundation for a promising career.

This is a book on writing that is, surprisingly, well written.  It really doesn’t come as much of a surprise, though, as I’ve had this book recommended to me by many people and they wouldn’t do that if it wasn’t well written.  Sadly, though, a lot of books on how to write a good novel are a real slog to get through.

Maass makes this writing book highly accessible and practical.  Many writers know how to tell a story, but how do you kick it up a notch to create something that is truly unputdownable?  Maass pulls together a huge list of examples that cross all genre lines.  What I find truly interesting and inspiring is that a breakout novel can happen in any genre.  Breakout novels are not only found in bestselling thrillers — you can have breakout science fiction, romance, fantasy, mystery, and literary fiction.

The secret is all in the storytelling structure.  Maass breaks down the book into chapters that each cover an important aspect of the breakout novel and after explaining each concept, he throws in some examples from the past several decades and pulls them apart to analyze what went right in these breakout novels.

What I find truly interesting, though, is that none of the advice in here is truly unique.  A lot of it I’ve actually heard before.  But Maass strings it all together to show us how following all of these rules can create stellar fiction.  And by pulling in examples that are from modern fiction, not just from classics, helps place this advice in the context of books we probably already know and love.  So, though the advice is stuff I’ve mostly heard before, it is presented in such a manner that it is both engaging and engrossing.

This book is a must-read for anyone that is hoping to make a career out of writing.  Also highly recommended to me are Maass’s other books on writing — which I will definitely be picking up soon.

Autumn Fire in Print!

*Happy Dance*

Autumn Fire is now available in print on the Carnal Passions website!  I gotta order some copies and get it into my hot little hands!

Squee!

Gay Erotic Graphic Novels

Anybody got recommendations for a good gay erotic graphic novel / comic book?

I’ve got a hankering for something visual.

eBook Pricing

I’ve been cruising through Smashwords lately — I’ve got a free short story up there and I occasionally check the stats — and I’m about to self-pub another short story through Smashwords in the next few weeks.  Whenever I log in, I see a whole ton of erotica in the list of latest publications… and I’m constantly amazed at what people consider to be an appropriate price for an ebook.

The short story I self-publish in the next few weeks will be $0.99.  I think that’s an appropriate price for a fairly short story.  If I were to write something over 10,000 words, I might bump it up to $1.99.  Over 50,000 — maybe $2.99.  And anything at 80,000 and above would be $3.99.  I don’t foresee ever pricing my own stuff at above $3.99… and I feel it’s important to have the price reflect the general length of the novel.

Yet, on Smashwords, it’s not unexpected to see a short story of 3,000 words or less priced at $2.99 or higher.  I don’t think I would ever pay three bucks or more for a story that’ll take me 10-20 minutes to read.  The pricing has to be part of the appeal of the ebook — if the price is too high, the book loses appeal.  (If I recall correctly, I saw one erotica short story of 760 words — and that’s not a typo, it’s 760 words — priced at $3.99.  I don’t understand how a story that short could possibly be worth that much money.)

It also doesn’t help that a lot of those overpriced short stories have descriptions filled with typos, clumsy sentences, and vague statements.  A lot of them just list a few details of the setting and characters and… it just fizzles for me.  Selling ebooks is an extremely competitive task as there are thousands, if not millions, of people who are all competing for readers.

In addition to a solid story, a professional editor, and a top notch cover (and a writer should be hiring editors and cover designers unless they are supremely gifted), a writer MUST price their works appropriately.  To do otherwise works against the effort the writer has put into their story.

There are some truly good works on Smashwords — but there’s a lot of rather questionable stuff.

But I’ll throw it out to anyone who’s reading this:

What do you consider to be an appropriate price for an ebook short story?

What about an ebook novella / novel?

Book Review: Hardball

Hardball

T. Hitman

Tommy Bruno, the aging star center fielder for the Seaside Top Socks, returns for spring training smarting from an ugly divorce and furious to discover he has been paired as roommate with the hot-dog rookie Tim Weare.  It isn’t long, however, before Bruno discovers the advantages of rooming with a man in his sexual prime.

Soon the rest of the Top Socks get in on the action, including manager Mitch Hudson, star pitcher Roger “Thunderbird” Twain, hirsute catcher Damon “The Werewolf” Thorne, Latin sensation Hector Valenza, and the team’s 18-year-old Italian batboy, Ricky Catalano.

The season is full of surprises, both on and off the field, but in the end the Top Socks’ teamwork stands them in good stead, pushing them into the play-offs and a World Series showdown against their arch rivals, the Philadelphia Pilots — whose hated star pitcher has been sleeping with Bruno’s ex-wife.

This book is dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty dirty… and I like it.

This novel is almost non-stop sex.  Guys are masturbating left, right, and centre, there are blowjobs galore, and tons of sex.  I’d say that about 70-80% of this novel consists of sex scenes… yet Hitman somehow manages to string together a sports plot and a romantic subplot.  A lot of that is accomplished through the sex scenes.  That takes skill, but it’s also the mark of a good writer.  A sex scene should never exist just for the sake of being a sex scene — even in an erotic novel.  A sex scene must always be there for a good reason, a reason that furthers the plot.  (In erotic novels, sometimes a sex scene will further the erotic/romantic plot — so it still does have a reason.)

While the ending is quite predictable, the journey there is a lot of fun.

What I found particularly enjoyable about this novel was that while it featured the first-time gay sex experiences of Bruno, Hitman spends very little time having Bruno agonizing over what a same-sex experience means about his sexuality.  So, it’s a self-discovery novel without all of the typical emotional mumbo-jumbo of most other self-discovery novels.  And I think it works well here because of the macho and masculine environment that Hitman portrays.  Emotions in the locker room?  They’re generally unwelcome.

Hitman made a few choices in his writing, however, that I felt detracted from the narrative.  Yes, I get that this is a sports book and it revolves around a baseball team, but I found Hitman continually referring to a cock as a “bat” to be distracting.  And an ass is almost always called a “can.”  There was little variation in how Hitman referenced body parts, which is surprising given the huge variation in how he referenced characters.  The characters were easily the most confusing part of this novel — there’s a whole baseball team of men, plus the manager, plus the batboy, plus a couple members of Bruno’s family, plus the archrival referenced in the blurb above… and I found it nearly impossible to keep them all straight.  Hitman would sometimes refer to characters by the first name, last name, team position, nickname, or ethnicity — so, other than a small number of characters, I could never remember who’s who.

Now, I know my first line called this book very dirty.  Holy crap was it ever.  (But in a good way.)  There is a wide variety of sex scenes, both in terms of location and acts, and they progressively get dirtier or more daring — as they should in a novel.  The intensity of sex must increase as the novel goes on, and Hitman does just that.  I was surprised when I first realised all the sex in here is bareback (which means unprotected, for anyone unfamiliar with the term).  And then my eyebrow went up quizzically when people started sniffing each other’s piss-stained jockstraps.  Then I was mildly disgusted at the first ass-to-mouth scene (which I’m not going to define here — you can Google it).  And I was a little more disgusted, but quite intrigued, by the several acts of felching (again, not defining it here, Google is your friend).  And, finally, I was surprised by the two watersports scenes, even though they were foreshadowed very early in the novel (again, Google is your friend).  I wasn’t aware that any publisher would touch a watersports scene, as many submission guidelines for erotica publishers explicitly state they will not publish it.

While the sex came fast and furious and didn’t let up, I sometimes found it a bit much.  I took quite a while to read this book because it was non-stop sex… which is usually a good thing, but I found here I couldn’t take sustained readings of it.  However, I’m not saying that’s an actual problem — I read a handful of pages every single night, so Hitman’s writing pulled me in and kept me coming back.

I had found this book in a used book sale and almost didn’t buy it.  When I flipped through it and saw the scene where the batboy is measuring the giant cocks of two of the players, I knew I had to take it home.  I’m so glad I did — this was an awesomely erotic read.

Book Review: Test of Magnitude

Test of Magnitude

Andy Kasch

Revenge is only justice when it can be administered without hatred.

Welcome to the Tora star system, home of the spectacular Cardinal-4 space station overlooking Amulen and Banor, twin worlds that share the same orbit. One visit and you’ll understand why this station is the pinnacle of Torian achievement and a wonder of the Erobian Sphere.

Unfortunately, your timing isn’t great. Many centuries of peace and prosperity are on the verge of collapsing for members of the Erob coalition, as signs of the first interstellar wars loom. The half-breeds tell us it is because we are now forsaking the ancient law, and have thus allowed an evil infection to begin spreading through the galaxy. But those Erob half-breeds have always been a little over-dramatic, haven’t they?

Brandon Foss, an unhappily married Virginian in his early thirties, awakes from a strange dream to discover he has been abducted from Earth and kept in cryonic preservation on Amulen for two decades. One other resuscitated human is with him, a knucklehead who almost seems as alien to Brandon as their reptilian captors. A friendship of convenience forms as the two Earthlings soon become unwittingly intertwined in Torian politics and military affairs–at a time, it turns out, when the Torians desperately need just such intertwining.

This full-length space-adventure novel has been professionally edited and specially formatted for all Kindle devices (including the latest Torian lightpads). We promise a smooth and enjoyable electronic reading experience, complete with a click-able table of contents. Download it today and embark upon your own personal test of magnitude.

Test of Magnitude is an interesting science fiction read.  Brandon, captured from our timeframe, and Derek, the other human in the blurb who was captured in the sixties, form an interesting pair of friends and allies as they enter into this alien world and are quickly caught up in its politics and secrets.

Kasch utilizes some common science fiction tropes, but generally subverts them and makes them unique in how they play out.  The first is obviously alien abduction, but rather than having them wake up on an examination table with lights and sinister devices above them, the captured subjects are kept in cryonic preservation and largely forgotten about for decades.  The second is the messiah trope; lots of science fiction features messiah-like or visionary characters who speak great wisdom and foretell the future (for example: Dune).  When Brandon is bitten by a serpent, he generates these abilities — but rather than having him lead people to freedom, like is common in a lot of science fiction, Kasch has him almost unknowingly babbling wisdom.  Brandon doesn’t develop the messiah-like leadership qualities that the trope usually expects.  And the third quite common trope is that the main character comes from essentially nothing and then must fight to save an entire world.  Normally, I’d roll my eyes — how come an alien world can’t protect itself?  And how come a human who’s never flown a spaceship before is suddenly expected and able to save this world?  Well, Kasch does an interesting job of developing the alien society such that not only does Brandon fighting to save a world make logical sense, but it also doesn’t come off as Mary-Sue-ish.  The development of this plot line is quite believable.

I found the world and the plot that Kasch develops to be quite interesting and engaging.  There were a few rough spots in the narrative, as can be expected of a first novel (things of which I am certainly guilty of, as well), but they are smoothed over and the reader is carried along by the engaging nature of the narrative.  There seems to be a level of playfulness and humour to Kasch’s writing, which I find lightens the mood enough, while still taking itself seriously.  One of the features of military sci-fi (of which this is a blend) that I generally dislike is the always serious and straight-forward nature of it — but Kasch’s writing pulls the reader in with what seems to be a hybrid of a variety of sci-fi sub-genres.  This blend could make Test of Magnitude appealing to more than just the military sci-fi fans — I’m generally not a lover of military sci-fi, but I did enjoy this.

Test of Magnitude creates an interesting world, peopled with likeable characters.  And while the beginning may be a bit slow-moving, it soon picks up pace and moves along quickly.  Test of Magnitude is an enjoyable science fiction read.

How to Use Twitter as an Author — Part II

My latest social media marketing post for authors is up on The Writers Vineyard!

This month I talk about what to tweet and what not to tweet (and how to best reply to a tweet)!

Click here to check it out!

Book Review: Star Trek: The Next Generation: Cold Equations: Book 1: The Persistence of Memory

Star Trek: The Next Generation: Cold Equations: Book 1: The Persistence of Memory

David Mack

A BRAZEN HEIST Captain Jean-Luc Picard and the Enterprise crew race to find out who has stolen Data’s android brother B-4–and for what sinister purpose.

A BROKEN PROMISE One desperate father risks all for the son he abandoned forty years ago–but is he ready to pay the price for redemption?

A DARING MISSION Against overwhelming odds, and with time running out, Commander Worf has only one chance to avert a disaster. But how high a price will he pay for victory?

This was certainly an interesting book, but I didn’t find it all that captivating.

The book starts off well enough, with the brazen heist, as the back cover describes, that includes the theft of B-4, as well as other Soong-type androids (including Lore and Lal).  This leads to a planet-wide search and then a chase through the stars.  They follow a small ship following a large ship.  It’s presumed the large ship is of the people who stole the androids, and the smaller ship is of someone else wanting to find the stolen androids.  What a covert team from Enterprise finds when they land on a small planet is… the long-presumed dead Dr. Soong, looking particularly youthful and, well, alive.

The novel then launches into a very long section told in first person through Dr. Soong’s POV, following him from the moment TV viewers thought they witnessed his demise.  Turns out he transferred his consciousness to an android body.  We follow him for years as he traverses the stars, accumulates obscene amounts of money, and hurries through life.  When he learns that Data has died, as shown in Star Trek: Nemesis, he grieves.  When he learns that Data had uploaded a copy of his memory engrams to B-4′s brain, Soong sets out to build Data a new body and bring him back to life.  And this new body is later destroyed during the Borg attack, as depicted in the Destiny trilogy of books.

My biggest issue is that I don’t find Dr. Soong to be a particularly likeable character.  However, I don’t think Soong was ever particularly likeable, and from what I can remember of his character on TV, Mack did a good job of writing him.  I found the tie-ins along the way, of Soong following Data’s mission logs, to be interesting, as it allowed us to see Soong’s reaction to Data’s work and life.  David Mack, though, is a very skilled and entertaining writer — I strongly suspect that in anyone else’s hands this novel could have been dreadful and tedious.

When Mack leaves the first-person POV section and returns to the main storyline, things move along smoothly and some energy is brought back to the book.  The reason the androids were stolen was, well, interesting.  Mack also has a tendency to kill of characters — so I knew the “red shirt” guy would be offed.  But Mack usually goes further, killing significant secondary characters.  The ones who die were interesting choices.  However, I didn’t find the deaths too shocking or moving.  I’m not sure if it’s because I’ve numbed myself to deaths in Mack’s books or if I had disinvested myself from the narrative during the first-person POV section.

My biggest issue has nothing to do with David Mack or this book, but with the Star Trek universe.

In Star Trek, death has no meaning.

Spock died in The Wrath of Khan and was brought back in The Search for Spock.  Kirk died in Generations and was brought back in the book The Return.  I think a couple original series characters died and then were revived within episodes.  Kai Opaka died and was revived in an episode of DS9.  And Janeway died in a Peter David book and I think she’s about to be revived in the next Voyager book I read.  And Kirk died and was revived in Into Darkness — and in the process, they seem to have created an immortality serum, potentially forever removing the threat of death.  And, as discussed, Data died in Nemesis and at the end of Nemesis there were hints that it was possible to bring him back — and that’s the main thrust of this novel.  These are just the examples off the top of my head — I’m sure there are a few more.

There are some characters that, when they die, they stay dead.  But it doesn’t seem to be many.  (And oddly enough, it seems to happen more in the original series and Next Generation storylines — perhaps there is more fan outrage when those characters die?)  The deaths of characters in Star Trek has really lost all meaning to me.  If a character dies, even if it’s my favourite one, I’m left feeling like “So what?”

Anyway, back to this book.

The story was interesting — and any weaker points were saved by having David Mack as the author.  It’s the first book in a trilogy, though, so I’m hoping things pick up from here.  There were some interesting threads left tantalizingly untied-up at the end.

Writers and Social Media

I got my copy of the latest issue of RWR (Romance Writers Report) and flipped through it like usual — and stumbled across two articles on how to use social media as an author.  It’s interesting timing because I recently stopped by The Writers Vineyard to talk about how to use Twitter as an author.  My once-monthly post on The Writers Vineyard for the foreseeable future will be about how to use the various social media platforms effectively.

As well, at When Words Collide in August of this year in Calgary, a colleague and I spoke to a room full of writers about the various social media networks (Twitter, Tumblr, WordPress/Blogger, LinkedIn, etc) and how to use them effectively.  The talk was well-received, but what I’ve found is that a lot of people just don’t know what they’re supposed to do on social media, especially if they’ve got a product to sell.

While a lot of what I will be sharing in this post, future posts, and over at The Writers Vineyard will largely be based on my personal experience, I am also in the midst of taking a social media marketing certificate course (and have so far passed the modules for Twitter and Facebook, but it will also cover, among other things, blogging and Pinterest).

So what’s the number one thing you, as a writer, should NOT do on social media?  Promote your book.

I know, that’s counter-intuitive.  You joined social media for the sole purpose of promoting your book — and you were likely told by your publisher or by friends that you need to be on Facebook/Twitter/Whatever to sell your books.  To an extent, that’s true.  It’s all about how you manage the network.

As the two articles in RWR highlighted (“What readers wish writers knew about social media” by Lisa Kessler and “The virtual living room” by Shana Galen), on social media you are expected to be social.  To be successful on social media, you need to be friendly and approachable…and not always hawking your book.  People who do constant promo are quickly ignored and often unfollowed/unfriended.

So why do the investment?  When readers get to know you, they get to like you.  And when they get to like you, they want to buy and read your books.  And, often, they are likely to help you promote it in their own networks be retweeting/sharing, recommendations, or book reviews and ratings.  Social media does NOT have an immediate result.  Social media is a long-term investment that will bring returns in the future.  How much returns it brings is dependent on the success of your social media platform.

Since social media requires a lot of investment, it understandably requires a lot of time and attention–so, as a writer, you probably can’t launch yourself on every social network, even though you want to.  You need to pick one or two (or however many you think you can reasonably handle) and give it a try.  Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads are at the top of the list in terms of writer/reader popularity, so make sure you are handling one of those capably.  (For example, I know how much of a time suck Facebook can be, so I’m not on there.  I’m on Goodreads, but not to the extent I wish I was.  But to make up for it, I have a fairly active Twitter presence and seem to interact a fair bit there.)

Writers and social media is a massive topic, not able to be covered in one blog post… so I think I’m going to bring it to an end here.  Keep an eye on my blog for future posts about social media — not only will I post here, but I’ll also notify y’all when I’ve got a post up on The Writers Vineyard.  (In October on TWV, I’ll be talking about what you should and shouldn’t tweet about, and November will be about Facebook — profile vs like page.)