J.B. Garner's Blog, page 67
May 31, 2014
Saturday Morning Update: Memorial and Review
Quick Saturday morning talking points:
- I slept horribly but for a good reason. Back when my friends and I were active in MMORPGs, we started and ran an Internet radio station for a game called The Secret World. Jon was the station manager, and we passed it down when we left the game. When he died, the station and game community put together a tribute show, which aired last night. I would guess 80 to 100 people were there in game with no idea how many total listeners. Very emotional and it stayed with me the rest of the night. So, because it’s just fair to shout it out, here’s a shot out to Radio Free Gaia (www.radiofreegaia.com). Even if you aren’t a player in the game, they play great music in general and are worth a listen.
- I got my first review on any site today. Check it out over on Goodreads:
I am actually really happy I didn’t get a cut and paste 5 star review. It makes me feel like I am doing well, but I have more room to grow and improve as a writer!
- There is a bit more work to be done to recover from Jon’s passing. Mainly the fact that there has been a severe lack of motivation to keep up certain normal day-to-day things, but this weekend is the ‘Get-Your-Act-Together’ weekend. Expect fewer posts until Monday, when I should be caught up.
Thanks for reading!
May 30, 2014
The Ethics of Reviewing: Questions for veteran authors
One thing that remains clear to me as I continue my odyssey as a self-published author is that, for all the research and preparation, I could never be totally prepared for what all is involved. The biggest stumbling block, the one that I imagine stymies most indie authors, is self-promotion. The truth is I am horrible at it. Not in the sense that I tell prospective readers to stuff it or any conventional PR disaster, it is simply that I don’t want to be bothered by it. I’m a writer … I would much rather be left alone to, you know, write. The vast amount of time and energy to be invested in constantly shilling oneself is amazing and, frankly, to someone such as myself who usually has a humble self-image, it is hard to put myself forth as ‘THE BEST THING EVAR’ because I don’t truly believe that, no matter how good I feel about my books.
What does this have to do with the topic of this piece? As many of you may know, reviews and ratings are a critical part of marketing success. You can have a good cover, a nice blurb, but get shot in the foot by a string of 1-star reviews. Even if you have no reviews, you are basically asking people to give you a chance with no assurance of success. This can be especially vital if your book has a ‘slow burn’ and the real meat of the novel may not be apparent in whatever preview the retailer allows. It’s a classic ‘chicken and the egg’ conundrum: You need good ratings to get people to read your book but you need people to read your book to give you good ratings.
Obviously, there is a financial market that has sprung up around this. I notice one key service almost every book marketing package includes is guaranteed reviews. On top of that, I noticed, to my absolute confusion, that I could review my own books?! Talk about ultimate bias!
I suppose here are my questions to veteran indie writers:
- How do you approach trying to gather reviews?
- Do the ethical implications of some of the more questionable promotional services bother you, such as guaranteed reviews and changes that alter your vision of your work (radically rewritten novel blurbs and descriptions, tagging to fit the market and not the book, etc.)?
- Do you think it is ethical in any sense to review or rate your own book, beyond a simple ‘Like or Don’t Like’ system?
- Is there a way to balance self-promotion and actual writing without paying hundreds of dollars to someone to manage it for you?
- Should I just damn the ethics and charge full speed ahead into self-promotion land?
May 29, 2014
A Sneak Peek: Indefatigable Chapter 1
Here we are, the first look at the coming sequel to Indomitable! As with The Tale of the Tape, I am previewing these from deviantART. If you want a more direct copy, let me know in comments and I will repost it in full here directly on my blog.
Characters: Stepping outside of your skin
As a writer, it is an obvious thing that I often have to write characters that are not fully represented by my life experience. After all, I am a white mid-30s college-introduced man born and raised in the United States. Obviously, my life experiences can never hope to capture many of the roles I am required to write for a good story, let alone those things that are pure fiction. I know most people find nothing wrong with that at all.
The funny thing, though, is what kind of reaction can happen when you ‘step out of your skin’, especially for major characters, and into something that is quite real. A white person writing about a person of color … a man writing a woman … a woman writing a man … a rich man writing about a poor man …. you get the picture. It’s one thing to write about an alien from Alpha Centauri. That carries no preconceptions or societal baggage. Again, most people just go with it. They don’t make social judgements if you don’t lay them down; they just read it and like it or hate it as it comes.
Some people, though, can take offense at the very idea of the writer taking on a very different type of character from their experience, even if there is no social commentary intended. Everyone has a right to an opinion and they certainly have a duty to stand up to anything that could promote social injustice, but what about those people that have an instant knee-jerk reaction?
I suppose what I’m ultimately mumbling to myself about is this: Do you, if you’re a writer, worry about writing characters outside of your life experience that are also quite real? Do you, as a reader, give a flip when a writer does so, assuming they do so in a tactful fashion?
May 28, 2014
A Sneak Peek: The Tale of the Tape Chapter 1
Here it is, a link to the entirety of the first chapter of the sequel to The Opening Bell. If you have an allergy of deviantART, let me know and I can post the text of the chapter here on my blog.
A page written in memorial
About a week before I began this blog, my dearest friend and one of my strongest supporters, Jon Compton, passed suddenly and unexpectedly. The day before I began this blog, his cat and another dear member of our family, Jade, passed. Last night, I wrote this piece in memorial of both of them.
THE MAN AND THE CAT
Let me tell you a story about a man and his cat.
The man was ill and so was his cat. One was ravaged by disease, the other by age. They still loved each other, though. The man would say that he could not live without his cat and that to see her die would break his heart. The cat could not speak her heart but, to anyone with eyes to see and a heart to feel, she felt the same. Neither wished to outlive the other.
The man grew sicker and so too did the cat. Each struggled on, unable to bear parting from the other. It was a scene that filled their family’s heart with conviction in love’s power and a scene that tore vicious rends in that self-same heart as the race against the Grim Reaper dragged on.
Finally, one evening, shocking even those most-learned and caring doctors who looked after the pair, the man died. His family wept and tore at their hair in their grief. The cat could not shed tears as men do. She could not tear at her hair as men do. All the same, she mourned. Her race was over. She had lost for winning for her heart was broken.
Despite their tears and faint remaining hopes, the family could not even fake surprise when, but a scant week after her true and noble human had passed, the cat too finally slept, tired from those seemingly endless steps.
Once more, the family wept and tore at their hair for now their grief was two-fold. In it all, though, there was a small glimmer of comfort: The man and cat that loved each other so much were now reunited in the heavens above, to fear the race against Death no more.
The genre novel: It can be as good as the deepest drama (if you let it)!
As I sit down here with my extra-large cup of coffee and prepare to dig into the first chapter of my next novel, I got a message from one of my readers. He had purchased Indomitable first, as he liked the superhero genre, but was initially reluctant to buy The Opening Bell. It was a wrestling novel, after all. How good and how deep could it really be? One could argue that this was coming from a superhero fan but, frankly, the superhero genre has proven itself with many great works (Watchmen, The Dark Knight Returns, The Killing Joke, All-Star Superman, much of Gaiman’s graphic work, etc.). Still, he decided to give it a try after reading Indomitable.
He told me that he was surprised. He felt that The Opening Bell was possibly more, as he put it, ‘mind-grabbing’ than Indomitable was. He devoured over half the book in one sitting. That made me realize something that I suppose I already knew: A genre book, no matter how obscure the genre, doesn’t have to be popcorn. It isn’t inherently limited to ‘a fun read’. You can make it something deeper and more fulfilling. Not to be taken as a stick-in-the-mud, there isn’t anything wrong with being ‘a fun read’. It’s just that if you crack open your next sci-fi or fantasy novel and just limit your brain to the possibilities, you could really miss out on something truly special.
May 27, 2014
The sneak preview: Does it hurt or help?
A little exposition is in order. I wrote and developed my first two novels chapter by chapter, posting them on my deviantArt page to gauge the opinion of the community there. At the time, while serious as to writing professionally, I was unsure if I really had something people would like, so it seemed as good a way to any to look. Despite being entirely original works with no basis in any particular fandom (a popular thing on dA), I acquired a fair number of regular readers and even some amount of community goodwill. I obviously had something worthwhile, so I finished, edited (something I have learned that I need even more help with), and published.
So here are is the question: Did having the rough manuscript, chapter by chapter, already out in the public hurt me? How many people were content to simply copy and paste it into a book? How much, if any, of my subsequent books should I post for free?
Instinct makes me think I should at least post the first couple of chapters as teaser material. Whet the appetite of the public and all of that. Even that, though, I remain unsure on.
If you’re a writer and you read this, hell even if you aren’t, what do you think?
My second act: Mess with things!
As I figured I’d be spending this entire day messing with self-promotional things, expect things to rapidly flit between themes and amounts of information.
I’d also like to thank the first few fellow authors who have noticed this crop up and taken the brave step of following. I look forward to reading about your own works and your own struggles. Strength in numbers, eh?
My first act on this blog: Beg for readers!
Alright, not really. However, I have dutifully added a Link page, accessible by the first button on the header bar, that has links and information to find my currently published works online, both in electronic and physical form. If you haven’t already, I would suggest to take a look at the previews and samples and, God willing, purchase a copy.
Tonight/tomorrow, the great works moves on and I will be working on the next books in both series. Expect first chapter teasers within a few days!
