Rowena Wiseman's Blog, page 14

Aunty Arty is now on Facebook!

Aunty Arty is a series of books for junior readers that love art ... written by me, illustrated by Narelda Joy and soon to be published by Jet Black Publishing. Here's a little about the first book in the series Aunty Arty and The Disquieting Muses:

Aunty Arty takes Frieda and her sister Mona into Georgio de Chirico's painting 'The Disquieting Muses'. Will they be able to save their new friend Fibula from Cupid’s lead arrow, sentencing her to a lifetime without love? The statue of Venus is suffering from lovesickness, she’s lost her common sense and her keys, but will she be able to help them?


I've loved working on the first book with Narelda Joy - she's a true creative soul. She lives in the Blue Mountains, near Sydney, but I can't wait to be in the same room as her one day soon. Here's her gorgeous cover:




We've had loads of fun creating this series together ... Her illustrations have transcended anything that I could even have imagined (I may have even burst into happy tears the day she sent through her layouts!). I always felt that it would take someone really talented to be able to illustrate this series well ... in each book the characters enter a well known painting, so it's tricky, in that the characters have to work with different backgrounds depending on the artwork. But Narelda has been able to work her magic in the first book, where they enter Georgio De Chirico's metaphysical painting The Disquieting Muses. I can't wait to see what she does with the next two books we have in the pipeline!


And while I'm on a bit of a gush fest, I must say that Kim Mungcal, Publisher at Jet Black Publishing, has been an absolute pleasure to work with as well. I love his attention to detail, professionalism, and patience ... especially when we're negotiating tricky image permissions with overseas artist estates and having to search for Chinese translators ...


Aunty Arty has just entered the world of Facebook. You can follow her here at: https://www.facebook.com/AuntyArty


And this is Narelda, Aunty Arty style ...


And this is me ...

About booktubing with Megan Olivier

I might be living in a bubble world, but I only just came across this 'booktubing' phenomenon a little while ago. A booktuber is a person who posts videos about books to YouTube. I've now watched quite a few of these booktuber videos, from people reviewing books, to unpacking boxes of books, to showing us what is on their bookshelf. Megan Olivier is an eighteen year old booktuber, writer, and filmmaker from the North West of England. Her videos are charming and beautifully shot and she has over 10,000 subscribers to her YouTube channel. Here I ask her about booktubing ...


Tell us a little about what is a ‘booktuber’?
The simplest definition would be a YouTuber who talks about books! 'Booktubing' evolved from a couple of people posting book reviews and fangirling over their favourite series. People really enjoyed those early videos and more and more book lovers started making their own videos talking about their love of books. I think it just snowballed on from there and now we have hundreds, maybe even thousands of people in the community. The best thing about booktube is that everyone is so lovely and supportive. It's the nicest community that I know of on YouTube!


Why did you decide to become a booktuber?
I just really enjoyed watching other booktubers and thought I'd like to add my opinions into the mix. The fact that I had been making short films and editing videos for quite a few years definitely helped me get started. I love doing anything the involves editing! It's my favourite part. I also write a lot and hope to become an author one day. The YouTube writing community is very much intertwined with the booktube community, so it's a great way to find and share tips.


How do you decide which books to feature on your channel?
I just choose whatever I like and whatever I feel like reading! I read and review such a mixture of things. The majority of the time it's contemporary YA (e.g. John Green, Rainbow Rowell) because that's always been my favourite genre, but I do read some adult fiction, non fiction, historical fiction…all sorts! The theme is just books that I've enjoyed. If I didn't like a book, I probably won't feature it on my channel at all, even in a negative review (I much prefer posting positive reviews for those books I did like!)


What kind of bookish videos do people respond the best to?
In terms of views (which everybody looks at and takes into account - don't believe anyone who says that they don't!), definitely book hauls. Maybe that's just because we're all really materialistic, I don't know! But I love watching them too. It's a great way to keep up to date with what's being released. Other than that, it's probably the reading wrap up videos where I talk about all of the books I've read in a month. In general my most popular videos seem to be those where I speak about multiple books at a time. Book review videos that are solely dedicated to one book very rarely do well, but that doesn't stop me from making them. I still love getting my thoughts out there and discussing them with the few people who do like to watch them.


Visit: https://www.youtube.com/user/MegIsInWonderland

Writ Poetry Review - Alexis Lateef

Writ Poetry Review is a new online poetry journal that aims to showcase 21st century Australian poetry. Published out of Perth, Western Australia, it seeks to connect the poetry community in the West. Here I ask editor Alexis Lateef more about the journal. Alexis is a West Australian poet, freelance editor and poetry enthusiast.

Please tell us a little about Writ Poetry Review? 
Writ Poetry Review is a new Australian poetry journal published out of Perth. It aims to showcase bold and exciting new poetry, by both established and emerging poets, in a heady mix of talent and promise.  We plan to have at least one feature poet every issue, and a selection of up to twenty seven additional poets. We publish poets from across Australia, but aim first and foremost to connect the poetry community in the West, so our priority is Western Australian poets.


Why did you want to launch an online poetry journal?
I first noticed a lack of WA online journals when I started reading poetry journals at uni, and was inspired by online journals like Cordite and Mascara Literary Review. I noticed a lot of these journals were dominated by East coast poets, so I thought that WA should have one of its own, a journal that focuses on helping emerging WA writers get their work out there. I was excited by the possibilities of online publishing, and how it could provide easy access to poetry. I was also intrigued by different online formats, and how we could best design the website so it's visually pleasing and fun to navigate.


What kind of submissions are you looking for?
We are looking for bold and exciting 21st century Australian poetry. We are interested in poems about all sorts of subjects and themes, from nature poetry to self dissections to experimental forms.


How do you see Writ Poetry developing over the next couple of years?
We are already full of new ideas for our second issue, and hope that Writ will continue to expand. We started off with only one feature poet in our first issue, but aim to have at least three in our next issue. We will also include poetry reviews, and publishers have been very supportive in sending us their titles. We are concerned with all things poetry, so will hopefully include relevant articles down the track as well. And we aim to keep developing the website and making it as interactive as possible. We also hope to expand our staff, so if you're reading this and you're a poetry enthusiast and have some time to spare, do get in touch with us at writpoetryreview@gmail.com.


Visit: http://www.writreview.com.au/

Happily Ever After ... a Wattpad ending

After about eight months of serialising my YA novel 'Silver' on Wattpad, I posted the final two chapters this morning. Along the way I've accrued over 200,000 chapter reads and a dedicated group of readers that pounced on new chapters as I posted them. I was quite happy with my ending. It was inspired by a film called Marwencol (watch it - amazing) and I practically cried with joy when I wrote it. But I knew my ending wasn't going to fulfill some readers. I personally like when a story gives me more questions than answers, but I knew that some might be dissatisfied.

So I waited to see what the response would be ...


After a few minutes, I got my first comment: 'Is this it? I wanted more! I wanted to see them reunite in maybe even one more chapter.'


Second comment: 'What?!! What?!!'


It was going down just as I'd suspected.


Then the requests of was I going to write a sequel started streaming in. The answer is no.


I could understand the reader who said, in her very eloquent way, 'That felt like taking a train for a scenic tour, enjoying the scenery and then coming to a very sudden final stop.'


Two hours later, someone said, simply, 'The perfect ending.' And even if it was just one person that felt that way, it made me feel as though I'd done my job. I'd written the ending the way that felt right to me. Even if some people feel cheated by it, I still feel as though it is the right ending for this story. And I'm glad that someone else agrees.


So 'Silver' comes to an end on Wattpad, and it makes me sad, because although I know there will be new readers, I'll miss the old readers that have accompanied me on this journey. And I really like these readers, even when they're brave enough to tell me they don't like my ending. Maybe because they remind me of me when I was that age. So, I've started writing a new YA story just for them. It just goes to show that when one story finishes, another one is only just beginning ...


Visit: http://www.wattpad.com/story/11440868-silver

Writer's digital toolkit 2014

From animation and book trailer creation programs, a thesaurus and a hormone horoscope app, here are a few of my favourite things in my writer’s digital toolkit right now ...

Animoto for book trailersAnimoto is a great program for making book trailers. They’ve got lots of great templates to choose from with quirky special effects. You can easily upload your own images or videos, add some text and music and share on YouTube or download as a video file. 30 second videos are free.


Visit: https://animoto.com/
Moovly for animationsI was recently invited to do a writing tip video for Wattpad and I wanted to show some written examples in an animation. A quick Google search led me to this site. It has loads of great templates to choose from with cute illustrations to use as animations. It took a little while to understand how to use it and creating a 10-second animation is time consuming, but once I got used to the process it is a lot of fun to use. You can create up to a 10-minute animation for free.


Visit: http://www.moovly.com/
QuoteandquoteQuote and Quote is a new social platform based around the love of quotes. Writers can pick quotes from their own books, pair with an image and link to the source of the quote (eg. a listing of where to buy the book, or website, blog post). You can share to other social media platforms such as Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook. People can like and comment on each other’s quotes. A great way to showcase those one-liners that you’re quietly patting yourself on the back for.
Visit: https://www.quoteandquote.com/
LettrsWe recently had a couple of highschool students working at the gallery who addressed some letters by putting people’s names right up the top of the envelope, in between the stamp and the corporate logo, and placing the postcode in strange positions. We marvelled at how the kids couldn’t even address an envelope and how written communication is dead for that generation.
Lettrs is a social media platform that is bringing back the art of letter writing in a digital format. Lettrs believes that we are communicating more, but saying less. On Lettrs people are encouraged to write long, meaningful letters and they can write open or private Lettrs to people. Open letters are shared with the world, on the site, private Lettrs are sent just to that person. There is even an option to send a printed version of a letter to someone special.
Visit: http://about.lettrs.com/#home
The Chambers ThesaurusIf you’re pumped full of inspiration and haven’t got time to open a thick hardcover thesaurus, this app is for you. It gives formal and colloquial versions of words, as well as antonyms. I love clicking on suggested words that then give more suggestions and so on and so on … and I sometimes end up with a new idea entirely. $6.49
Visit: https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/chambers-thesaurus/id342112144?mt=8
Hormone horoscopesOkay, this is one just for the girls, but gee I love this app. Download it to your phone and it tells you your good days for creativity and those days when you shouldn’t even bother, but turn off your alarm and have a sleep in instead. And sometimes when I’m filled with self-doubt and feel as if everything I write is terrible and that I should throw in the towel, I can check in on this app and see that it’s just my hormones!


Visit: https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/mood-horoscope-period-tracker/id498355157?mt=8

Jenna Moreci's advice for writers on using YouTube

I came across one of Jenna Moreci's videos in one of those Paper.li newspapers that people keep linking my content in (what on earth are those newspaper things? I need to interview someone about them in a future blog post! ...) Anyway, I happened to click on a Jenna Moreci video and I'm really glad I did. The video was called 'The Consequences of Taking Risks'. I found Jenna to be engaging, dynamic and, even more importantly, she had interesting things to say ... like 'being ambitious often means being lonely' or if you take risks 'you're going to have to do things that make you uncomfortable.' Jenna is a model, sci-fi writer, blogger and YouTuber ... here she has some great advice about how writers can use YouTube ...

Why do you think YouTube is a good platform for authors?
YouTube is great for a couple of reasons:


First, this particular medium isn’t over-saturated with writers yet. Sure, every writer has a blog, but not every writer has a YouTube channel. There’s an obvious reason for this—most of us writer folk are of the introverted variety—but that’s what makes YouTube such a great option for us. It’s the perfect place for a writer to stand out.


The second reason is branding. It’s a lot easier to sell a brand than it is to sell an individual product. As writers, our books are our products, but we are the brand. It’s one thing for your story to have fans, but it’s significantly more powerful for you, as an author, to have a following. YouTube gives you the opportunity to make yourself known as a unique, multi-dimensional human being rather than simply being some unknown and unseen face behind a book.


What kind of videos do people respond the best to?
In order for a video to be especially memorable, specifically if it’s an advisory video, it needs to have a hefty dose of useful information as well as personality. Viewers want you to help them with whatever problem they’re having, but they also want to be entertained along the way. One of my most popular videos is all about outlining—which is easily the most miserable part of the writing process. But a lot of people struggle with outlining, and I happen to have a method that works wonders for me, so I decided to share it. On top of that, I loaded the video up with bloopers and silliness, which made a usually tedious topic fun and engaging.


How do you prepare for one of your videos? Do you script anything? How do you get yourself in the mood for it?
To be perfectly honest, I’m almost never in the mood to shoot a video. Like most writers, I don’t particularly enjoy self-promotion and would much rather be working on my story. But with each video, the process gets easier and easier, and now I simply look at it as a weekly task to cross off my To Do list. So, rather than trying to get in the mood, I focus on the fact that people are counting on me to have something ready for them every Wednesday, and I don’t want to disappoint them or myself.


As far as prep goes, I really don’t do much. I spend about twenty minutes putting together a rough script, which mostly serves as a way to organize my thoughts and keep myself from being too redundant. Then, I wait for a decent hair day (it’s hard when you’ve got a mane like mine), and no matter how I feel or how much I’d rather be doing something else, I force myself to put on a smile and get a video done.


What kind of technical equipment do you use?
I record with my webcam and edit with iMovie. I know, super professional, right? But hey, it works!


What other advice do you have for writers thinking about using YouTube?
Keep your videos short, and get to the point. Don’t drone on and on, because viewers have a short attention span, and they’ll move onto another video with the same information if you don’t pique their interest right away. Also, think about what it is that you can potentially offer to the viewer, and film it. If every single video is just a promo of your work, no one’s going to tune in. You need to build a trustworthy and reliable reputation before you can dive into selling. And lastly, at the risk of sounding cliché, be yourself. Not only that, but own being yourself. If you’re nerdy, awkward, or silly, own it. It’s only embarrassing if you act embarrassed. Viewers want to see truly authentic people—people they can relate to. So don’t try so hard to be some eloquent, polished, scholarly writer. Just be real.


Visit: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCS_fcv9kBpDN4WWrfcbCrgw

Small press pop quiz - Penner Publishing

What makes Penner Publishing different to other publishers?
Unlike a lot of small publishers that have emerged in the last few years, we are an advance paying publisher. While we agree that eBooks are the present and likely the future, we don't want to shun print books. We're planning to do a simultaneous or near simultaneous print release. We're also seeking out opportunities to feature selected titles in bookstores. We don't believe in alienating readers who might prefer print. We also don't want to eliminate opportunities for discoverability. As readers, we've found a majority of our favorite authors at libraries and in bookstores and want to keep those options open for our authors.

What kind of manuscripts are you looking for?
First and foremost we're looking for compelling stories that our readers can't put down. Our main interest at this time are novels driven by women characters. We like women with problems they're trying to overcome. Whether that comes in a romance package or in fantasy wrapping doesn't matter as much as the story. Our motto is, Sure to Satisfy. We want readers to walk away glad they've read our author's books.


What are you excited about for the coming 12 months?
The most exciting thing we're looking at in the next year are bringing stories we love to the market in nearly every format available. This includes audiobooks. We're based in Los Angeles where the car is king and audiobooks are a big part of our lives. We're excited to be making connections that will keep our authors in your hands, on your digital devices, and in your ears.


Visit: http://www.pennerpublishing.com/

10 reasons why I'm pleased I self-published on Screwpulp

My first novel Searching for Von Honningsbergs was longlisted for the Australian Vogel Award twice, but it was one of those books that I could never come up with a neat one-liner for. It was a fun, but almost unexplainable book. If someone asked, I would mutter 'it's about an artist that travels around the world trying to retrieve paintings by another artist for an exhibition back in Australia, but it's really his story about wanting to be an artist.' I usually lost people by the third time I said the word 'artist'.  The novel had a certain quality about it that two sets of Vogel judges liked, but somehow I felt as though I was going to struggle finding a publisher for it. I never really thought about self-publishing until I came across Screwpulp in January this year. I liked the look of their site and the crowd-driven pricing model for their books. I thought ‘what the hell, I’ll give it a go’. 
As often happens after I make a rash decision, I freaked out a bit. It was the first time I'd had a novel out there in the public domain. I sweated over a lot of things, I replaced the front cover I'd designed with a professional one, I downgraded some of the racy scenes that I didn't want my dad to read and I worried incessantly about certain people reading it. And then a strange thing happened, I received my first ever review on Goodreads, showering it with five stars and so many compliments I blushed. Suddenly it felt good to have a novel out there.

I’ve watched as Screwpulp has grown and developed. They’ve received generous investment funding and are starting to shake up the publishing world by giving the power to readers about what books become popular. Their internal marketing machine is just kicking in and in the last two weeks I've had four times the amount of downloads that I had in the first eight months.

Here are some of the reasons why I'm really happy to have self-published on Screwpulp ...
I really like the crowd-driven pricing model. Screwpulp has developed a unique algorithm, based on the number of downloads, ratings and reviews, that sorts the more popular books to a higher price and position on their site.Authors receive 75% of book sales.It's exciting going up a pricing tier, there's something to aim for, a sense of achievement, it creates a buzz. It also gives authors the chance to market their books at special prices, eg. final ten copies for $1, before it goes up!The team at Screwpulp are really supportive, featuring authors on their social media networks, retweeting authors' tweets and being open to feedback.It's so easy to use. I set up my ebook files in one evening with Pressbooks, who Screwpulp has partnered with. In a couple of hours I’d created professional-looking epub, mobi and PDF files.I'm able to edit my blurb, profile and even book pages if and when I need to.It's not Amazon.I love the name Screwpulp and the brand they’re building. For some reason it feels nice to say that Searching for Von Honningsbergs is available exclusively on Screwpulp. (Authors are allowed to have books on other platforms, but I’ve opted to have mine just on Screwpulp.)I’ve got high hopes for them building a community of readers that trust in the books on the site and are looking for their next great Screwpulp read.Simply because they do things like this ... 

Visit: http://www.screwpulp.com/rowenawiseman

100,000 reads and 8 things I love about Wattpad

For anyone who has been reading this blog, you’d know that I’m a big fan of Wattpad. Three years back, I submitted my half-complete novel ‘Silver’ to a YA competition with a major Australian publisher. It didn’t make the longlist. I felt discouraged. I felt like it was never going to fit into YA; it was too slow, there were too many descriptions of fine architecture, there was sex in there, which I’d recently discovered was a no-no for YA (violence is okay, but sex is not, apparently!) I felt like I didn’t read enough YA, I didn’t know the audience well enough. I was so overcome with self-doubt that I stopped writing it. I shifted it to a folder named ‘development’ and forgot about it. Then this year, I discovered Wattpad and all the teen readers on there, and I thought I’d post a few chapters of ‘Silver’ to see how it went down. I started receiving glowing feedback really quickly and reader’s comments like ‘you have to finish this’ and ‘I relate so much to Sylvie’ inspired me to finish writing it.

‘Silver’ is now on the featured list and I’ve just reached 100,000 reads. I’m getting thousands of chapter reads and dozens of comments a day. It seems that I connected with the audience after all.

8 things I love about Wattpad ...

I get to know my readers. I get to read their profile and find out a little bit about them such as whether they’re female/male, how old they are, what country they live in, what they like/hate about being a teenager.I get to observe their reading behaviour - I can see how much they’re reading at once and where they're stalling. If people are voting on my stories, I sometimes see them reading 30 or 40 chapters in one sitting!I get reactions from people, which is fascinating and often surprising. Just recently I posted a chapter on Wattpad that I thought was slightly controversial and was sure to stir up a bit of a reaction. I posted it and waited. Complete silence. Nothing. People were reading, but no one commented. Then just this week, I posted what I thought was a rather straightforward chapter, and it received an outpouring of abuse for a certain character from readers. I hadn’t even intended for it to be such a crucial moment in the story. Writers can learn a lot from their readers and we can’t get this sort of feedback from printed books.Wattpad writer @SeeThomasHowl in his piece Persona Grata: Truth & Dare said ‘let your ads be your art’. This is what Wattpad allows me to do. It’s all about my writing, it’s not about 140-character witty tweets, or pretty Facebook posts, I’m a writer, I write, Wattpad lets me showcase my work to actual readers.I’m getting such a blast out of hearing from my mostly female, teen readers, that it makes me want to write more YA. I’m totally blown away by how engaged they are with my story and how they feel like they can relate to my main character, Sylvie. I had no idea they would be such a great audience to write for (although, when I think about it, I never had so much time to read as I did when I was a teenager!). I’m continually delighted by the thoughtful and articulate responses that I’m getting from them - and I feel so positive about the next generation of readers and writers.It’s true, there are publishers looking at works on Wattpad. I had a well-known commercial publisher take a look at ‘Silver’ just last week. If you’re tired of sending out those submissions, spend your time building your profile on Wattpad instead. Who knows, perhaps there’s as much chance of being discovered on Wattpad, as there is in getting to the top of the slushpile.The readers on Wattpad have given me so much confidence in my own work. They’ve shown me that if they trust in the writer, they’ll go along with the story, even if there are a few typos.Wattpad has revolutionised the reading and writing experience. There’s no need for writers to spend years filled with self-doubt and loathing, wondering if there will ever be an audience for their work. They can find out on Wattpad.Visit: http://www.wattpad.com/user/outaprintwriter

Steve Vincent on his debut novel The Foundation

Steve Vincent's debut novel The Foundation was published by Momentum last week. The Foundation is a political thriller, described by one reviewer as: ‘This is a jet-setting, alarming, bang-pow-kaboom read full of metaphorical and literal bloodshed, political machinations you’ll hope desperately will never become reality, and late-night giant-popcorn-wielding funsies.’ Here Steve tells us about how he came to write The Foundation, about writing like a madman and the '10k day' ...

How did you come to write The Foundation?
The idea for the book was planted during a drinking session nearly a decade ago, by a guy named Jeff. I’ve barely spoken to him since, except for when he calls me up thinking I’m his plumber. True story. The seed? What would happen if the largest media organisation in the world was subverted? It took a while – like, five years or so – to start writing the book, but the idea was always there.


I really got cracking in 2012, when I signed up to do a course through Writers’ Victoria. I needed something meaty to work on and The Foundation was it. During the course I smashed through a draft, and then did another course in 2013 to workshop the manuscript. It was a great way to write a first book, nestled in the positive cocoon of an experienced author alongside others going through the same thing.


It seems like it has been a long ride, with lots of dead ends and trapdoors, but I’ve loved it. I’m not sure I’d be keen to take such a roundabout path to finish a book again, but I think it was useful. I trashed about 40,000 words along the way, on top of the scenes that were heavily amended. Given the whole book is 88,000 words, it gives an idea about how much extra work didn’t make the cut.


What is The Foundation about?
It’s a book that looks at the dilution of democracy and the concentration of power in think tanks, the media and unelected individuals. It plays with the consequences of what could happen if someone nasty took advantage of this. Beyond that, I’m going to point to my blurb, because my publishers did a much better job in summing up the book than I can:


He who holds the pen holds the power.


When a corrupt think tank, The Foundation for a New America, enlists a Taiwanese terrorist to bomb a World Trade Organization conference, the US and China are put on the path to war.


Star journalist Jack Emery is pulled into a story far more dangerous than he could have imagined. Because the Foundation's deputy director, the ruthless Michelle Dominique, recognizes that whoever controls the message controls the world. And she will take control, no matter the price.


Enter Jack's boss, Ernest McDowell, owner and chairman of the largest media empire on the planet. In the midst of political upheaval, EMCorp is about to become the final play in the Foundation's plan. When Dominique traps the EMCorp owner in her web, Jack's the only one left to expose the conspiracy before it's too late.


As the world powers smash each other against the anvil of Taiwan, Jack will risk everything to battle the Foundation and prevent them from taking control amid the devastation of a global war.


Tell us about how your book got picked up by Momentum?
It was only towards the end of the second course that I realised my work might be good enough to try and publish. Up until that point, it had been a nice dream, but not something I’d seriously given thought to. I think authors, especially first timers, work themselves up into such a mess about how hard it all is to get published that we get a little bit paralysed. I definitely did. But I’m so glad I had a go and submitted it.


I originally submitted the book to Momentum’s big daddy, Pan Macmillan. When I received the email back it was mixed news: their Commissioning Editor liked the book and thought readers would as well, but thought it would do better as a digital-first release. If I was interested, she offered to consider it for Momentum’s list.


Given I read pretty much exclusively on my Kindle, this didn’t seem like a big deal to me. I gave the nod, and a few weeks later I had an offer in front of me and the real fun began. It has all been a whirlwind. One of the advantages of digital is the publishers seem to get the book ‘to market’ very quickly. I’ve had to learn a lot on the fly.


What advice would you have for others starting out on their writing journey?
Treat it like a job and give it regular time in your schedule. Then write. Lots and lots and lots. Finish a draft of something. Show it to some honest friends. Welcome feedback with a smile. Revise it a few times. Do a course or get a manuscript assessment. Revise it again. Flick it off and see if anyone wants to publish it. If they do, great! If they don’t, self-publish or try again.


In terms of the first step (writing like a madman), the teacher of those courses I did was crime writer PD Martin. She introduced me to the ‘10k day’, though I’m not sure if she invented it or not. Basically, turn off all your devices, your wifi, your spellcheck. Boot any distractions (pets or people) out of the house. Sit down and write madly for 2 hours, with no editing and no looking back. Take a 15 min break. Repeat 3 more times. It doesn’t work for everyone, but it’s the best way I’ve found to punch out large chunks of a novel. The stuff you throw down quickly isn’t great and needs to be revised heavily, but it gets words down. I do these every now and then, then supplement it by scratching out a couple of thousand words a week in ‘spare time’ writing. An hour here, 30 mins there. Getting to the end of that first draft is the hardest bit. Once you’re there, you can see the book, flaws and all. Once you can see it, you can fix it.


What are you working on next?
State of Emergency is the working title. It’s a sequel to The Foundation. Jack is back and the book is looking at what the end point might be for the creep of anti-terrorism laws and the assault on civil rights and freedoms in the name of safety. Totalitarianism comes to America!


At the same time, I’m thinking about a prequel novella for the series, a tiny thing to explore Jack’s adventures in Afghanistan prior to the first book.


And I’m an inch or two into a post-apocalyptic zombie thriller…thingy. It’s on the backburner in a pretty big way, but if I get time I’d like to finish it at some point.


Website: www.stevepvincent.com
Twitter: @stevepvincent
Facebook: www.facebook.com/stevepvincentwriter