A.M. Gray's Blog, page 14

Lifeline book fairs

There was a flyer in my letter box for the Lifeline Book fair. Lifeline is an Aussie charity.I emitted an excited squeal. I love books. And I still love actual physical paper books. I have embraced e-reading with a Kindle app on my PC but I still haven’t quite got to the e-reader stage. There is something about holding a book in my hand while I am reading that adds to the experience. Turning the pages, feeling the paper, smelling that new book smell, smelling that old book smell… I don’t know. Maybe it’s just that I move away from my PC to do it? It’s a kind of location break and feels like a real break. Curled up in a chair with a mug of coffee, or snuggled under my quilt in bed.But others, who have whole heartedly embraced the e-reader revolution, are getting rid of their paper books. And they give them to charities like Lifeline.Years ago a charity bookshop was full of bad Reader’s Digest expurgated editions or ten copies of whatever book was big that year and turned out to be rubbish. But these days that is not the case. I have picked up entire series for one dollar a book.So on that date I’ll be there with my cash and my granny trolley - you know the pull along shopping carts. Voice of experience here… man, I can pack some books into that thing.And if I have to pile them high on top of my already full bookshelves, I don’t mind. I might need a bigger house, though.
Links:Lifeline book fairs

Pinterest secret boards

I am currently doing camp nanowrimo. I have set myself a total of 80k words for the month. It’s a big project and that is only part of it. It is also a very visual project. In scrivener (my writing program) I can load in pictures and I can have a split screen open. So that as I write, I can see the photo I have as inspiration for my lover, or a sexy image, or a travel photo of where they are, or whatever.You get the idea.I have been searching for a program that would allow me to make a kind of scrapbook of inspirational images that help me to write. Most of my photo websites didn't really do that and the last thing I needed when I am pushed for time was to start trying to learn Gimp again to make my own collages. Really… I've tried and it is too hard for me. *lip wobble*I knew of Pinterest but I avoided it because I imagined that I would just get caught up in pretty images or feel guilty about all the fabulous house projects I would ‘pin’ and then never make. Also some of the images I need may not be final things. I might have three options for my love interest and change them as I write.And then I read an article. (link below**)And then I saw another article.***And then I gave up and joined Pinterest.And I think I am sold.And the secret is… well, it’s a secret. Pinterest lets me keep a ‘board’ of images secret. I am the only person who can look at them unless I specifically invite other people to see them. I can make as many boards as I like. I can make them public, but obviously, can’t undo that action once I have done it.If I can’t find things on the site, I can google search normally and pin them very easily with a tool added to my browser. Almost too easily.If this project gets off the ground, I can share my board with a cover-maker and they can see exactly what inspired me, or where my characters visited. And maybe, one day, I can make my boards public and readers can see what inspired me.As I write, I can open a pinned image, and the program keeps the link attached. If I want to check how tall my model is, I click on the picture and go to the original website. What do the bathrooms look like in this hotel? Click. And I'm there. It is very easy to remove pinned items from a board if I change my mind.And it is really working for me.Now all I need to do is stay away from the public boards and those craft projects.Yeah right… that can’t be hard?Ooh… quilts…Links:ScrivenerPinterest**Growing social biz***Andrew Lownie literary agency

Camp nanowrimo

I have not done a blog post for a little while, nor have I written any publishable flash fiction as I was working on a new project. *rolls eyes at self* I know, I know… finish one of the old projects, AM.And… in order to get a big chunk of this project done, I have signed up for camp nanowrimo. I hit deadlines when they are not set by me, and oddly having the separation of the word target held by nanowrimo, I will probably hit it even though I was the person who said I could write 80k in a month.No. I don’t understand my brain, either and I have lived with it way longer than you have.Wish me luck.No… not with the brain… with the writing.

New Wattpad stats

I loaded up a few stories on Wattpad a while ago and just recently they have updated their story statistics. In case you haven’t used Wattpad, it is designed to be read on phones and mobile devices. So, each chapter loads in a number of smaller parts and the stats record if readers read all the parts of each chapter, or if they skip ahead.It looks like this for “I’ll be home for Christmas’.


It looks pretty good. Most readers read all of each part. The story kept their attention.I will admit to scratching my head at the huge dip for chapter/part 1 but then I understood; if people start a new story and they don’t like it for whatever reason, they stop reading. I was trying to work out if they had read it before somewhere else. So I guess that is a record of how many people gave up.At part 9 you can see 20% of readers didn’t finish that section.This is kind of neat for writers. I can go to that section and try to work out why I lost readers. I have to guess; they aren’t telling me. For nearly 3,000 reads the story has 127 stars and 8 comments (4 of which are me replying). Wattpad stars are the equivalent of Ao3 kudos or Facebook likes.Now I can’t see what they don’t like about ch9; it is Bella meeting up with the pack after her absence of five years. And there are some later chapters that they didn’t read all of as well, but if one really dips then perhaps it is worth rewriting it?The stats also tell me which parts got stars and on what dates they were given, and it also reveals the demographics of my readers.

Oddly, the numbers don’t show unless you hover over it but the lavender half is age range 13-18, the green quarter 18-25 and the brown private.In gender, half is female and half private.I do love stats and I think this is all useful. It will even tell me when I got new readers as it knows when people reread. So if I do a promotion, I can tell if it worked. I only have 14 followers here and I have been very lax at posting anything, (I’m not writing fanfic at the moment) but I also haven’t been reading and commenting on other people’s stories either. And that is the way to be a real participating member of a community.So if you are reading, take the time to review; writers need to know what you liked and what you didn’t.

If you don’t care about your book why would anyone else?

I’ve read a couple of articles recently where people talked about their experience as an e-book writer and self-publisher. Each had a friend who made a success of it and raked in the money and they were inspired to give it a go.Pansexual free for all; my time as a writer of kindle eroticaConfessions of a failed romance novelist
One male, one female - each throwing up an e-book with the sole desire to make money and they attempted this because they were desperate. One chose romance, the other erotica with shape-changing dragons, and neither should have been writing in either genre. He describes it as embarrassing and an uninviting stew. His research was asking one ex-girlfriend what she read as erotica. She spent an inordinate amount of time generating a fake persona and opening twitter accounts in that name. But she has an agent who says her book got readable after the 135th page and clearly doesn't normally represent romance novels at all given the way she said ‘she understood’ that they had simple plots.If it only gets readable at page 135, I have serious doubts about the whole thing; or is that the whole thing? *snorts* It got readable when I could see ‘the end’ on the page.They slap some awful cover on it and load it onto Kindle expecting the money to roll in.And *spoiler alert* it doesn't. One sells 18 copies and the other 3 or something.I consider my books and my stories as wordy babies. I love them. I cry with the characters. I fall in love with them. I have honestly sobbed when I have killed characters off or broken their hearts. And if the sex I write doesn't turn meon, how the heck will it turn anyone else on? Why would I be ashamed of them? Why would I shove them out poorly dressed and prepared for the world?Is it worse that they fail after I have put my heart and soul into them? Maybe. But I will know that I did the best I could for them.They are both so ashamed of the book they have written that they don’t put anycare into marketing or releasing them. I’ll bet that they aren’t tagged correctly. I can’t imagine they put much effort into writing a summary or teaser pitch for them. Her book doesn’t sound like a romance novel at all given she says it is super angsty. Romance readers expect a HEA or HFN (happy for now) ending. There is a formula and she hasn’t researched it and she doesn’t know that because she doesn’t read the books.Their products must reek of the desperation they exude. Unlike their friends’ efforts.They can both clearly write. They have funny, self-deprecating articles published on webpages. And I hope they got paid for it.So where did they go wrong? I reckon they both chose genres they didn’t understand or care about. They don’t read in the genre they chose to write in. I don’t read military fiction, why would I try to write it?And they missed another big marketing opportunity. In each article, they don’t say what the book was or give their penname and they don’t give a link to it because they are still so ashamed of it. Thankfully, Beverly Bush is a fake penname because if it was real you’d be ruined right off the blocks for romance writing.A few people who read the article might have gone to buy the book or read it on their Kindle account to see if it is as bad as the authors say it is. That’s some more sales and reviews they didn’t even try to get. In the world of self-publishing right now, you have to be everything; writer, marketer, editor, agent and promoter. And if you can’t do all of that by yourself, find people who can help you, even if you have to pay them.Because if you don’t care about what you produce, no-one else will. 

Real life

I have been wrestling with a life decision. I do that. I agonise over things. Having an over-active imagination is awesome for writing, and not so good for dealing with real life. But what if THIS happens???? Cue panic attack.I wrote out a table of for and against, as I like to do. I mean it when I say I agonise over things. The for column came out ahead but I was still worried.And then I went for a long walk to think it all over. And I started singing an Amanda Palmer song in my head. She’s been in the news a lot lately for her tedtalk on ‘the art of asking’ and the book she was asked to write subsequently. She believes that giving things away comes back to you in the end. I was thinking that I can be more like her, too. Even if I suck at the ukulele.Then, when I got home I made myself a drink and sat at my PC. My tumblr feed is a mix-up of a myriad of things; mostly TV shows and the sites of fans and writers. I do not follow photography or travel sites. And there was a photo of the city at the centre of the issue I was struggling with. Fine.I switched to Twitter. I usually have the ‘What's happening now, tailored for you’ tag open so that I don’t get flooded with stuff. Another shot of the same city. Okay, that’s getting weird. It’s not even in the news right now.I tried Google+. There it was again. And it is all different shots. Seriously?I go to make dinner. Watching TV with kid 1 after dinner we tuned into a new Australian show called ‘Judith Lucy;is all woman’. She’s a great Aussie comic and in one scene she was jelly wrestling another woman in the name of feminism. You’d have to watch the show to understand this.I will give you one guess who that other woman was… yep; Amanda Palmer. Jeez. What are the odds?I know most it is probably search engines throwing up what they think you are interested in, but maybe I should take nudges when I get them?Fine, universe; I get it. I hear ya.

Worth the wait

Writer’s Block A picture says a thousand words. Write them.Mission: Write a #story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a critique about this picture. Write something about this picture.Be sure to tag #writeworld in your block!picture source: pascalcampion.deviantart.comhttp://writeworld.org/post/1040261274... she climbed the stairs to her apartment, she glanced to the right and saw him. He was sitting on the bottom step of the next flight of stairs clutching a bunch of flowers. He had obviously been there for a little while. Stopping in front of her door, she fumbled in her bag for her key.She sighed, and then she spoke to him, “Are you waiting for Cleo?”“Yes.”“Ah...” she fiddled with her key and then turned to face him. “She’s not here. She went away for the weekend.”“What? But she said-”“She left on Friday afternoon.”“But... I don’t understand, she said she’d have lunch with me.”“She might have forgotten?” she suggested carefully, but Cleo did this all the time. She was constantly seeing men ring Cleo’s doorbell. This one, with his hopeful bunch of flowers attracted her sympathy.“I don’t think she forgot.” He looked crestfallen. He stood, and shook himself. “Who did she go- No. Don’t answer that, I don’t want to know.”She waited.“Who?” he asked again, looking terrified that she would answer.“Charlie.”“Ah. She said they had broken up.” A pause. “I know... she lied.” He looked at the flowers in his hand as if he didn’t know what to do with them. He thrust them at her. “You may as well have these.”“Um... thanks.” She took them but in doing so, she dropped her keys. He picked them up and handed them back to her. “Did you want to come in?” she asked him.“For?”Her face fell. “I was just trying to be nice. Forget it, then.”“I’m sorry,” he said. “This has been a disappointing day.” “Sure.”He looked as if he wanted to touch her arm. “I apologise. Please ask me again?”“It was just going to be a drink and probably only a mug of tea at that.”“That would be great.” A pause. “And you could put the flowers in water.”She gave him a tentative smile. “Yes.”After half an hour he admitted that he had tickets for a play that night. Two tickets.They went together and it was the start of their relationship. He always laughed that if he hadn’t hung around waiting for Cleo that he would never have met her. And she was worth the wait.

The grass looked like it hadn’t been mowed in years.

Writer’s Block
In one sentence is the spark of a #story. Ignite.

Mission: Write a story, a description, a poem, a metaphor, a commentary, or a memory about this sentence. Write something about this sentence.

Be sure to tag #writeworld in your block!http://writeworld.org/post/1074100215... grass looked like it hadn’t been mowed in years. There wasn’t a garden although there had been in the past; a long time ago from the look of it. It was an older style house in an older style area and it didn’t look like a paintbrush had been anywhere near it for a very long time either.The family stood there and looked at the house with expressions ranging from horror to awe.The youngest, the daughter, clearly thought it was awesome and all part of an extraordinary adventure. The son had a moue of distaste. The father just looked battered and defeated. The mother looked utterly horrified. “It’s a squat,” she choked out.“We’ve got a key,” the father suggested.“If it was a squat, it wouldn’t have a lock,” the daughter pointed out.She got a look for that.The paint was peeling on the front door. She picked at it with a fingernail and saw at least three colors underneath.The lock worked and the door opened into a long hallway tiled in black and white tiles with a curving set of stairs leading to an upper level. There was stuff everywhere; all over the floor. “Whoever lived here left in a hurry,” suggested the son.“They said he had to move urgently,” the father said.“Even people who move pack their stuff,” the mother noted.“I bet he was killed,” the daughter said with relish.“Don’t be ridiculous,” the mother argued. “They would not have put us here if there was any danger.”“”If he’s dead, the danger has passed,” said the father.“You always manage to find some good in things, don’t you, honey?” She kissed him quickly and a look of relief crossed his face. It was clear that he was the cause of this unexpected move. He was frightened that his family would blame him. He went to pick up a bag and winced. He was clearly carrying some sort of injury.“We’ll get those,” the mother suggested.“Yeah, you think the cops could have arranged someone to show us around,” said the son. “While they were arranging everything else.”“This is our only option,” the father said for the hundredth time.“I didn’t cause this,” the son hissed at him. “You did.”The man sighed. “I did... yeah...”“We don’t have a choice,” the mother said.The daughter tried to be conciliatory. “Can we just go see upstairs? Can I have the room with the tiny balcony? Is there a name for those?”“A juliet balcony?” her mother said, distracted. “Really?” She loved renovating and had always wanted to do up a Victorian terrace. She looked at the house with new eyes.Her father hugged the girl and winced again. “Of course you can, love.”“Is it actually ours?” the mother asked. “Or is it just temporary?”“I think this is a long term thing,” the father suggested carefully.“Ugh,” the son said, and pushed past them and started up the stairs.The daughter chased him, shouting, “Don’t you take my room.”The father gave the mother a nervous smile.Maybe this witness protection thing would work out?

Writing excuses season 10 master class Ep 5

Episode 5 boring main characterhttp://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/02...
I only did two thirds of my homework... bad AM
Writing Prompt : Take three different characters and walk them through a scene. Convey their emotional states, their jobs, and their hobbies without directly stating any of those. The scene in question: walking through a marketplace, and they need to do a dead-drop.
The older man stood, looking at the table of china figurines and odd pots, his clothes were dishevelled; a tweed jacket with elbow patches, tan trousers and tan brogues. They had clearly lasted him some years and had been good quality when he bought them. The patches were necessary not decorative. He had a badly wrapped brown paper parcel under his arm. It was held together with twine or jute; that rough brown fibrous thread. He picked at the corner of it with his fingers. The other corners already bore signs of his inattention.Glancing around he clearly didn’t see the person he was obviously waiting for and turned his attention back to the pottery. With a cry of delight he dumped the parcel on the table and picked up a plain flat plate with a slightly rounded edge.“See this?” he asked the stallholder. “Clearly Song dynasty.”“Uh, huh.” Eyed him off sceptically.“It’s only small… about 6 inches… what is that? 15 centimetres… never can get that metric system.”The stallholder frowned. “Is it worth something?”“Oh, about 15,000 I should think. But I am only an amateur.”A man brushed past him and scooped up the parcel.“Dollars?” the seller checked.“Yes.”“What? You are nuts.”“No… really. It probably dates from the 12th century.”“Twelfth? Yeah, right. Don’t waste my time. Are you going to buy it or not?”The man patted his suit pockets, pulled out an assortment of detritus; a button, a broken pencil, a whiteboard marker with no lid, an aged piece of chalk, several receipts and finally a scrunched up note. He smoothed it out on the table and offered it to the seller.“That’ll do.” The seller collected both the note and the plate. “Did you want it wrapped?”“Yes, please. I have a bus to catch back to the campus.”It was only as he was wandering off, still looking around distractedly that the stallholder noticed he didn’t have the parcel. And then he thought he must have been mistaken.
*******Purple was clearly her favourite colour. Her skateboard, all her clothes, her lipstick and eye makeup, and her hair was dyed purple too. And spiked. The only thing that didn’t match was her black canvas satchel. It hung low over her shoulder and banged into her hip as she strode through the car boot market in her boots. Purple.The security decided she was a potential shoplifter and had been following her since she arrived. It didn’t seem to upset her. She turned suddenly and shouted ‘boo’ at the man who jumped nervously. She cackled.But as she spun back, her skateboard clipped a wooden lamp and knocked it off the edge of the stallholder’s fold up table. It landed on the grass.Shouting ensued.“You’ll pay for that,” said security.“It isn’t damaged.”Security ignored her. “How much?” he asked the seller.She plonked her bag down and rifled in it for her wallet, leaving it open on the table as all three heads leaned over to examine the lamp. An old lady shuffled past and took a small packet out of the girl’s bag.“It looks fine,” the stallholder said, eager to get them all away before they scared off any realbuyers.“It looks ugly,” she said.“Hey?” He brushed some grass from it. “Just clear off.”Security looked offended and frustrated.“You, too,” the stallholder suggested to him.The guard let out an annoyed huff. “I’m watching you girlie,” he threatened, as he did a sign with his fingers pointing at his eyes.She just cackled again, shouldered her bag and strode off.She darted back and handed the stallholder a cd with scrawled writing on it. Also purple.“What’s this?’ he asked.“Mix disk.” She shrugged awkwardly. “For your trouble.”He looked at it doubtfully but placed it on the cashbox. “Thanks.” A pause. “Punk?”She grinned. “Yeah.”He nodded. “Cool.”
******

Chuck Wendig flash fiction challenge - three things

This week is easy enough:Roll randomly on the three tables below, and you will select three things that must be contained within your story. A story that will be 1000 words long, posted at your online space, and linked back here by next Friday, noon, EST.That’s it. Easy.Use a die or a random number generator for the tables.Now, get to writing!TABLE 1A spiderA pocketwatchBetrayalA murderA journalPoisonA strange birdA talismanA libraryA sword
1.  
TABLE 2An assassinA lost comic bookA found dogTrue loveThe end of the worldSurvivalA divorceA shopping mallPublic drunkennessA vampire
TABLE 3WarA magicianA bombA horseResurrectionA caveA forbidden trystA gatewayA shoebox full of photographsA prison
1.I rolled 7,1,2 and here's my attempt. It is too late for the challenge... oopsies*****It was the show that everyone wanted to see. The Great Magnifico the magician. Magic shows were all the rage at the turn of the century. As 1900 ticked past into a new century, Sydney was a city with places to go and a burgeoning reputation to go with it. The newly rich, courtesy of the goldfields, crowded into theatres in their best dressed to see all the new shows.There was enough talk of this new fangled science stuff, but people still liked to see a bit of magic; be wowed by a bit of dramatic performance. A bit of razzle dazzle.And they queued up for the Great Magnifico. The crowd watched as things disappeared and reappeared with a wave of his wand, a flourish of fingers, or a magic word and a drape of fabric.Tonight’s performance was marred as a woman close to the front stood up. The people behind her shouted at her to sit down. When she pulled out a gun they fell quiet.She pointed it at the magician.The crowd was confused; was this part of the show? A few people clapped nervously but she shouted at them and waved the gun around before targeting the magician again.He said something to her that only the first few rows could hear. Police questioned them later and it seemed that he had said, “Oh, Alexandra. No.” Or perhaps it had been, “No, Alexandra.” He was in the middle of the disappearing canary trick. He had already placed the tiny bird inside the little cage and he was about to throw the cloth over it and make it, and the cage disappear. It chirped happily at the delay, as the magician appealed to his assassin.He waved at the cage and asked, “May I finish?”Her voice shook, “The last of your tricks?” she asked. It sounded like an accusation.The crowd held its breath.He said the magic incantation and everyone felt that it was somehow different. An usher who had seen the show several times before said that the words were different and that he usually slapped his hand on top of the cage and it vanished, but this time the box under the fabric grew larger.The Great Magnifico yanked away the fabric with a flourish that threw his arm and the scarf towards the assassin. An enormous bird of prey rocketed towards her. It screeched at her and she screamed, the gun fired, the audience shouted and all the house lights dimmed.When they came back on, the woman stood looking utterly confused; Magnifico and the bird were gone. The stage was empty.The audience applauded until someone shouted that a man was hurt and to call the police. Then the crowd understood that she had shot him and that she was not part of the show.The police arrived before any real harm was done to her but she did have a scratch on her arm. She told them it was the bird. She thought it was an eagle. He didn’t believe her.The theatre owner packed up the rest of the magician’s gear and locked it in his storage room. A few days later when the police asked to see it, he unlocked the room for them to find it empty.He shrugged. “It’s magic,” he said.The policeman rolled his eyes.