Sean Patrick Little's Blog: Still in Wisco, page 13

Back Cover Copy?

How does this sound for the back cover synopsis for LONG EMPTY ROADS?


After a hard, cold winter, Twist is no longer willing to struggle to live in Wisconsin. The time has come for him to move south. There he will begin to rebuild life after the viral apocalypse. The world he knew is changing, however. Nature is slowly reclaiming the land. Exotic animals released from zoos roam freely. Stores of food, once fresh and plentiful, are beginning to spoil. Surviving in the South is no guarantee, but it will be warmer there. And there will be wild game to hunt and plenty of land to farm. The South represents his best chance at building a new existence. But first, he needs to search for other survivors. Even if the Flu did not kill him, loneliness just might.

A Personal Pep Talk

"I had found a medium that required no collaboration or approval. No equipment, other than the computer I already owned. It had no union rules and no producers. I could do whatever the fuck I wanted. After all this time I found that the novel is in fact punk rock."
--Craig Ferguson




I’ve been having a bad week when it comes to getting into that headspace where I need to be to write. It started with the crisis of conscience that came with logging into my Facebook author page to be assaulted with a notice that 14 people “unliked” the page in the last three days. Did I really need to know that, Facebook? I would have been fine not knowing that ever. I wouldn’t have even noticed. But, Facebook had to tell me and now that’s all I’m thinking about. I shouldn’t take it personally, but I do. It bothers me that I do, too.

Whenever I have those crisis of conscience moments where I start to question writing, I always bust out the quote in the .jpg attached to this post. It’s from Craig Ferguson’s autobiography “American on Purpose.”

When I first read that line, it made sense to me why I do what I try to do.

I didn’t grow up in Minneapolis, but I was there for about five years during a very formative period, from the ages of 17-22. I attended a lot of concerts with my buddies Matt and Scot. We went to First Ave. and the Seventh Street Entry a lot. We met a lot of really cool bands–my favorite of all the bands we ever met was House of Large Sizes. Dave and Barb of HOLS encompassed that punk rock, DIY, we-don’t-need-no-stinkin’-approval spirit of just forming a band, writing songs, playing shows for all you’re worth, and letting the chips fall where they may. I’ve probably seen HOLS play more than fifty times. Every time was worth it.

One of my favorite T-shirts HOLS sold was one that had tab reference on how to form three guitar chords. Then, on the back of the shirt it said, “Now go form a band.” Hell, yeah. Three chords and the truth. That’s all U2 needed in the beginning, right?

The world of publishing is a lot like the world of music. There are the big novels that get put out by the big corporations. Writers like Stephen King, Nicholas Sparks, Tom Clancy, JK Rowling, etc..–they’re the U2s or the Aerosmiths or the Adeles. They’re the writers that are going to sell a billion copies no matter what.

Then you have much smaller, but still high profile writers like Vince Flynn, Lee Child, and Jodi Picoult–they’re that next level of music–represented by bands like Coldplay or Dave Matthews. They can sellout an arena, no problem–but they have to work. They have to tour. They can’t just subsist off album income alone.

Then you’ve got the next level–lower profile writers who do well, but have to keep working. There are tons of these writers. And tons of these bands. They’re the sorts of journeyman bands who are still out there, still playing, and still making music even though people don’t listen to them like they used to, and maybe they only had a hit or two before sort of fading into the background.

Me, I’m more like the guy who is playing his own garage with the door open hoping people who pass by on the street will stop in and enjoy what I’m doing. There are as many of us out there as there are garage bands trying to “make it.” But, hey–you gotta start somewhere, right? Maybe you’re not a slick musician. Maybe you don’t have the engineers and production facilities to make your album sound awesome, but you have GarageBand on your Mac and you invested a couple hundred in a mixing board and a halfway decent mic. You can do this.

I will never understand why people look down on independent publishing or solo writers. To me, they’re the same as bands just starting out. Go watch the movie about CBGB’s (not a great film, but still worth a view). Not the bands that got their start in CBGBs in an era when disco and overproduced rock albums were what the major productions houses were pumping out. Do you think we’d even have the Ramones if they were forced to go through the machine of major production? Or the Sex Pistols? Or Blondie, Crowded House, or the Police, etc…

This is what I have to tell myself whenever I get to the point where I really don’t feel like writing again. I just picture that garage band getting their feet wet on the stage at the Seventh Street Entry. I hear the heavy chords and screamed lyrics. There is feedback, missed notes, and a bad mix from the soundboard. It might not be perfect, but at least they’re not quitting.

I just repeat that to myself. At least they’re not quitting. At least they’re not quitting. At least they’re not quitting.

Even when I feel like it, I don’t quit. Tomorrow will find me at the keyboard again. I guarantee it.

The 'death' of eBooks is greatly exaggerated

After a lot of consideration and evaluation of the facts at hand, I'm thinking that I will probably stop publishing hard copies of novels in the near future.

I know that there are a ton of articles claiming that books are making a comeback and that eBook sales are slumping, but I'm not seeing the proof. My best-selling book is AFTER EVERYONE DIED. It was downloaded over 20,000 times in the past 18 months. That's a pretty staggering amount. I'm humbled by that stat. It is far more than I probably deserve and far more than I ever figured I would get. More than that, this book has helped keep my family afloat in my period of unemployment. It has been extremely important to me.

In that same eighteen month period, it has sold less than 200 hard copies. People do not want hard copies of small-time books.

When you see those articles touting the alleged decline on Ebooks, what they're not telling you is more important than what they're telling you. The two biggest things that hamper eBooks' popularity, as far as I can tell, is this:

--The majority of people who consistently read eBooks do so with a dedicated eReader (such as a Nook or Kindle). Reading on a back-lit tablet does not work. Unfortunately, the majority of eBooks being sold are being bought by people who try to read on tablets (or their phones!). I don't fault anyone for buying a tablet. I have one; they're great. However, when it comes to being a reading device, they are awful. My Nook tablet looks like a book. It reads like a book. The difference between dedicated readers and tablets is night and day. If you're serious about reading, get an eBook reader.

--When big companies price out eBooks, they overprice them. Considering how easy and fast it is to format an eBook, for a company to try to charge $15 or $20 for an e-copy is ridiculous. Many times, if you pick up a hard copy on the day of release, it's already marked down. Add to that the various discounts that people get (such as the Barnes & Noble members club discount), and the hard copy actually becomes cheaper than the eBook. How can you charge more for an eBook than a hard copy?

--Some people talk about the need to charge eBooks, and how that never happens with a real book. You know what does happen with a real book, though? You finish it. And then you have no other books. I have yet to have that happen with my Nook. Both formats have positives and negatives.

There are various other arguments against eBooks, but they boil down to personal preference issues. I was a big "real book" guy until I bought my first Nook. Once I realized I could carry 400 books at once.

When it comes down to it, for small fish like myself, as much as I really enjoy having hard copies of my books, I'm not seeing the return on them that I need to keep producing hard copies. I have no idea how to fix that, so I think eBooks are the only way to go.

I have made friends with many, many authors on Twitter. I read their posts, I see them shilling their novels. I see a microcosm of the world of publishing every single day, and it's staggering. There are so very many books. There are more books than consumers, and that's a fact. The supply and demand portion of the publishing world is heartbreaking. I hear from best-selling authors how hard it is to move paper copies of books. Even best-selling books don't move a ton of paper.

As a writer, as someone who has wanted to be a novelist literally his entire life, there is nothing more life-affirming to me than being able to point to a physical book on a shelf and say, "See that? I did that." It is all I ever wanted, but unless I can build an audience that demands hard copies, the effort to put them out is extreme. So, I think the only path forward now is to concentrate on eBooks. It's a little disheartening to me, but I think that's the only sane course of action.

I will still put out a hard copy of LONG EMPTY ROADS, and I will probably put out hard copies of the LORD BOBBINS novels, if there is demand for it, but for the other things I'm writing, they're probably going to be eBook-only.

Realistically,
--Sean

Second-Pressing Arrived

The second run of LORD BOBBINS AND THE ROMANIAN RUCKUS has arrived. All orders that weren't picked up in person are in the mail, and all is right in my little corner of the steam-verse.

I checked the initial sales figures, and after the wonderful start at Teslacon and then a very good opening day for the Kindle version, sales have pretty much fallen off the table, but that's to be expected. This is why posting reviews is so important to the life of a book. Basically, a book will not even begin to be noticed until it has at least fifty reviews. Here's to hoping the reviews start to trickle in and boost the signal on this little guy.

I have a couple other promotional things working right now. Juggernaut Productions LLC is going to possibly be doing an audiobook version of it. And I think my little buddy Jack Quincey, the Master of Disaster himself, is working on a promotional video(s) for it. All will be posted to all the regular networking if and when they become available.

In the meantime, I am beginning work on a third LORD BOBBINS book, and I've just completed the sequel to AFTER EVERYONE DIED. It will be called LONG EMPTY ROADS, and I'm shooting for a February 2 release. I'm already penciled in to speak at Mystery to Me that night, so I'm hoping I can make it a two-book launch. If you can join us that night, that would be amazing. If you can dress in your steampunk gear, even better!

https://www.facebook.com/SeanPatrickL...

Vicious Cycle

A while back, I wrote about the physical aspects of my creative process—where I write, the tools I used, etc… Now, to mix it up a little bit, I want to talk about the mental aspects of the creative process, at least the mental aspects of my creative process. I can’t speak for every creative person, and I certainly can’t speak for other writers.

I am impressed by how some writers have an incredible, workman-like approach to the craft. Stephen King is amazing, of course. He is prolific. He writes every day, rain or shine, holiday or not. He’s at his desk by seven or eight in the morning, and he goes until lunch, maybe later. Of course, there are other writers than make King look like he’s suffering from writer’s block. John Creasy, a British mystery novelist, has written over 500 books under a dozen pen names. That guy is a workhorse. In Stephen King’s book, ON WRITING: A MEMOIR OF THE CRAFT, King talks about Anthony Trollope:


“At the other end of the spectrum, there are writers like Anthony Trollope. He wrote humongous novels (Can You Forgive Her? is a fair enough example; for modern audiences it might be retitled Can You Possibly Finish It?), and he pumped them out with amazing regularity. His day job was as a clerk in the British Postal Department (the red public mailboxes all over Britain were Anthony Trollope’s invention); he wrote for two and a half hours each morning before leaving for work. This schedule was ironclad. If he was in mid-sentence when the two and a half hours expired, he left that sentence unfinished until the next morning. And if he happened to finish one of his six-hundred-page heavyweights with fifteen minutes of the session remaining, he wrote The End, set the manuscript aside, and began work on the next book.”


That is an admirable work ethic. And an incredible pace. Every writer has to figure out what works for him or herself. Writing is a personal art. Some people work better at night. Some in the early morning. Some need quiet. Some blast music (the louder, the better). Some have little spaces set up where they write daily. Some write in various locations—you get the idea. Whatever works best for you, you must do. When people tell me they’d like to write, but they don’t have the time, I always think, “Then you don’t really want to write.” You make time for what’s important to you, always. If you value television (as I do), you find the time to watch. Runners find time to run. Anglers find time to fish. Painters find time to paint. Barbarian hordes find time to bathe in the blood of their enemies. You make time for what is important to you.

When it comes to the amount of dedication it takes to write 300 pages of a rough draft, that has never been a problem for me. I have been churning out novels since I was in high school. I wrote at least one or two piles of garbage in high school, and I probably cranked out several thousand pages of unreadable hack when I was in college. (This is a good thing, though—Brian Michael Bendis said that you have to write about 20,000 pages of slop before you start to figure out what you’re doing.) I can always find time to write. Even when I worked jobs that had me doing 12-hour days, I would manage to scrape out a paragraph or two at night. Before John Grisham quit law to write full-time, he wrote on legal pads between court cases. I read a story about a mystery writer who was driving semis, and he would dictate his story into cassettes while he drove, then he paid a local gal in his hometown to transcribe the stories to MS Word for him. I have known servers who wrote scraps of stories in order pads with cheap pens standing at the counter waiting for an order to be put up. Point is—if it is important to you, you’ll do it.

Writing isn’t about waiting for some mythical muse to kick you in the ass. It’s not about art. It’s not about being attuned to the celestial heavens. Over my lifetime of writing, reading about writing, taking classes on writing, and teaching classes on writing, more than anything else I’ve learned, writing is about putting your butt in a seat and writing. That’s it. No magic. No inspiration. Just sit and do. If you can’t do that, you can’t write. I get people (especially students) telling me about stories they have in their heads. They can summarize them well. They can tell you about them for days. However, the story stays unwritten until they can put themselves in the chair and write it out. My good friend, Nella Citino, gave me a mug a few years ago that I keep on my desk at home. It says, “Any idiot can come up with a good idea—get it written!” That is the truth of the matter. Put up, or shut up. Sit down and write.

That’s all fine and dandy to say, I know. The actual practice of it is much harder in reality. I have learned that my own creative process tends to follow an ebb and flow. When I’m writing, I’m 100 percent writing. I don’t want to edit. I don’t want to read someone else’s book. I don’t want to watch TV. I write as long and as hard as I can. I write until the backs of my hands hurt from typing. I write until my vision goes blurry from staring at the screen.

When I get into editing, I don’t have time for writing. The two modes are different parts of my brain, it seems. I cannot switch back and forth between the modes easily. I don’t have time for someone else’s book, either. I cannot enjoy reading a new book when I’m in editing mode. I get too critical. I get too into the “That’s not what I would have done there…” mode, and I start to hate that book. I feel like I have unfairly subjected some authors to that mode of my brain and now I dislike their stuff.

When I am out of the writing and editing modes, I get fully into the reading mode. I will read six or seven hours a day. I will put away three or four books a week when I’m in that mode. I have always been a fast reader, and when I’m in that mode, I read even faster. I enjoy reading in that mode. When I’m trying to read when I’m in writing mode, I have no patience for reading. Why read someone else’s story when I’m not done telling my own, yet? I do force myself to read when I’m in writing mode, but it’s only after I’ve put in a full day of writing, or I’ve had to take a break from writing because my hands hurt too much to continue. (Getting old is for the birds.)

My final mode in the creative process is the do nothing mode. It happens usually after I first finish a book and my brain begins to feed me the “why bother” rap it has perfected over the years. “Why bother?” it says. “Wouldn’t you be happier lounging back into depression and playing video games for fourteen straight hours?”


--You have a point, Brain.


“How about you maybe just watch Scrubs reruns instead of writing?”

--Brain, you are on fire!

“Hey—remember five years ago when you accidently read that really negative review of one of your books? Go back and reread that comment so you know not to do this anymore.”

--As you command, Overlord.


This do-nothing mode is one of the worst things my brain tries to do to me. It is very easy to slip into, because doing nothing is literally the easiest thing in the world to do. Doing nothing requires zero effort. Doing anything at all requires 100 percent more effort than doing nothing.

I have quit writing books at least a thousand times in my life, maybe more. Every time this weird creative cycle in my brain hits this point in the rotation, I quit being a writer. “Been thirty years with no real success to show for it, Fatso,” says my Brain. “Do the world a favor and shelf your keyboard.”

And I do. I do every time. Every time I hit that point in my creative process, I officially quit writing.

Sometimes, that brain-forced retirement lasts months. Sometimes, it’s only a few hours. But I always quit.

I also always come back.

In the movie, THROW MOMMA FROM THE TRAIN, Billy Crystal uses the expression, “Writers write. Always.” It is something my father has repeated to me many times over the years. It is something I have imparted to my students many times. It is okay to quit writing. If you stay retired from it, though—that is where you run into problems.

I have found that I am able to claw my way back from those self-imposed bouts of retirement through sheer force of will. Pick up the computer. Open the file. Put your damn hands on the keyboard and make some words. Sometimes, I do that, and I will only get a few words, maybe a sentence or two. Nevertheless, I will have written something. That’s the key. The next day, I might only get a few words again. Maybe I only sat at the computer for ten minutes before letting that negative part of my brain take over for the day. (“C’mon Fatboy…let’s go re-watch THE PRINCESS BRIDE.” –Swell idea, Brain.) But it IS a few words that I did not have that morning, and that is what counts.

I am getting better and the productivity side of writing. I am getting better at knowing that I can sit down and churn out five or ten pages in a sitting, even if I don’t “feel” like doing it. Those pages might need some enhancement later on, but they will exist. It is always easier to go back and enhance. You cannot edit if the pages don’t exist.

I know I’m hardly an expert on writing. I know that my pathetic sales are a misty, almost evaporated drop in the wide and vast lake of publishing. I know that I am not an expert on the creative process. This is just a summary of how my brain works when I write. It is why I do what I do. And why I want to write. It might not help you, but it is something to read and consider.

If you struggle in a creative field like I do, like so many of us do, I think it is important to remember that we are not alone. We are all tiny little ships making our own way on a large, cruel sea. Your mast might snap. You might hit a rock. A big whale might sneeze on you. Maybe you don’t feel like holding the tiller anymore. This is okay. It is all part of the process.

But don’t give up.

Keep sailing.

I hope we all get to where we want to go.

The Shine is off the Apple

Well, the shine has definitely fallen off the apple of the past week.

It was exciting to launch a new book at TeslaCon. It sold well at TeslaCon and people seemed really excited to read it. It was exciting to finish another book and really start getting to brass tacks on that one. It was exciting to put the TeslaCon book out on Kindle, and for the first day, that book jumped into the top 50 Steampunk books for a whole glorious day. When it started out, it was somewhere around #350 in Steampunk. On Kindle, it climbed all the way to #47. Sadly, it's fallen again and is now dwindling somewhere around #180.

Alas.

Book sales are long, tedious enduro-marathons, though. Not sprints. It takes a long time to build sales on a new product or a new series. We can't just leap into first place.

I met with Eric Jon Larson on Friday morning to talk about the future of the book series. LORD BOBBINS AND THE DOME OF LIGHT is already done. I'm about to start work on a third LORD BOBBINS book. He also has some other, smaller novella-length projects in mind that I hope to get off the ground sooner than later. There could be a long and interesting future for these books if the audience can find it.

I just hate the waiting process. Waiting is why I don't have hair any more.

It also reinforces how important it is for people to post reviews, tell friends, and use social media to really push books they like or books they want to succeed. Without everyone's help, these things are dead in the water.

I'll keep writing. I keep trying to quit, but I just can't. I will keep putting out books, even if I can only release them as Kindle ebooks and nobody reads them--I'll still do it. It's the same sickness that makes standup comics do their set in empty bars or makes struggling actors monologue in their living rooms. We can't stop. We have to do what makes us happy.

It's just better when others come along for the ride.

Perhaps I should do some live-streaming or something like that. Read a chapter or two, or something. I know I've talked to Randall Stewart of Juggernaut Productions LLC about possibly doing some YouTube videos of chapters, or maybe some audiobook stuff. We'll have to see how that goes. And I hope to gem up some new promotional material in the near future.

If you're not following writers on Twitter, you should. I'm on there. Most of the rest of the writers I know are, as well. You kind of have to be nowadays, although it is not my favorite social media.

Fingers crossed, all.

Let's hope the good luck keeps rolling.
--Sean

Edits for LONG EMPTY ROADS are done!

It's done!

I finished the revisions and edits of LONG EMPTY ROADS five minutes ago.

I think, in many ways it is better than AFTER EVERYONE DIED.

Still no warring factions. Still no children forced to battle to the death in gladiatorial combat. Still no zombies.

Just a continued, realistic look at surviving in an empty world.

Jeez, I hope people will like this book.

I'm going to print it and mail it off to an editor now. I have gone over this thing with the proverbial fine-toothed comb. If it went out just as it is now, I would stand behind it proudly.

Put it on your calendars: February 2, 2018.

The New Book is Available as an eBook and Hard Copy

LORD BOBBINS AND THE ROMANIAN RUCKUS is now out in both hard copy and eBook. Initial response has been positive. Given that there aren't a ton of #steampunk books out there, and given how dedicated the steampunk and #teslacon fanbase is, it is encouraging to see the first couple of days be a step in a positive direction.

It makes me anxious to work on the next books in the series. I have to finish the sequel to AFTER EVERYONE DIED, first. I think the name of the sequel is going to be changed to LONG EMPTY ROADS to stick with the three word title motif. It's nearly edited on my front. After I edit, I will send a hard copy to an editor and have her look it over. Paige Krogwold is excited to work on the cover. (She hasn't told me this...Paige is just an excitable little gnome...) Right now, we're going to aim for a February 2 release date. I've already been penciled in for a speaking engagement at Mystery to Me for LORD BOBBINS on that day, so I'm going to try to combine it to a two book launch day. I really hope people will come to it. I would like to pack the bookstore to an uncomfortable standing-room-only capacity.

I'd like to take a moment to remind people that much like Blanche Dubois, I depend on the kindness of strangers. I don't do a ton of promotion for my books.

Actually, I do almost nothing. I post stuff on my various social media accounts for better or for worse. I rely on people to retweet, to share links, and to make their own posts. It's not the best method of achieving sales and interest, but there are only so many hours in the day.

So, here's a helpful list of things you can do to help promote LORD BOBBINS AND THE ROMANIAN RUCKUS and the Survivor Journals:

1) Post reviews. I cannot emphasize how important this is. When AFTER EVERYONE DIED hit fifty reviews on Amazon, it started getting wedged into promotional emails from Amazon and I saw my sales triple. It helped the book really take off in Australia (of all places) and helped it become a much, much bigger success than I could have even hoped. When it got to 100 reviews, it ended up hitting Amazon's best-seller eBook list for a week or two. That was amazing.

2) Ask your local bookstores to carry it. Ask your local library to get a copy. More exposure means more readers which translates to more demand. People can't read it if they aren't seeing it.

3) Post about the books on your own social media. If you enjoy the books, tell friends. It makes a difference.

4) If anyone has any venues for promotion like blogs, website, podcasts, etc... Let me know! I'm happy to call in to radio stations or podcasts. If you're within two or three hours of me, I'd probably drive to you to guest on a podcast on my own dime. I'm a little demented that way. If you have a blog and want content, I'm happy to throw a few hundred words your way.

5) Fan art, cosplay, etc... This is invaluable, both for my own enjoyment as well as a promotional tool. If you post it, link it to me. I'd like to see it as well as share it.

I can't do what I do without your support. I'm grateful for everyone who has liked the book so far. I hope many, many more follow suite so that we can do the second, and possibly third books in the series even bigger.

Fingers crossed.

All the best,
--Sean

TeslaCon Was Great

The LORD BOBBINS eBook has been submitted. It will be available before Friday. I'll keep you posted to let you know when.

It will only be available for Kindle (.mobi) format, initially. If you require an .epub format, message me and we can get that worked out in private.

The Kindle version looks REALLY good on an actual Kindle. It's just so-so on a tablet. If you're serious about eBooks, invest in an actual reader (Nook, Kindle, etc...) instead of trying to use a tablet. Back-lighting is not good for reading.

I sincerely hope people enjoy this book and look forward to the next one (or two or three or six...). As long as there is a demand, I'm happy to keep writing.

If you enjoy the book, please write a review and post it. You have no idea how much reviews help spread a book. Especially if it gets more than fifty reviews, or a hundred. And tell friends. Share it on message boards and social media. If you're feeling creative, fan art is brilliant.

We should have a Draw Lord Bobbins contest, or something.

Again, if you bought a copy this weekend--from the bottom of my heart, thank you. I speak for Eric and myself when I say that we hope you enjoy it. Eric has wanted this to happen for a long while, I'm grateful for being given the chance to realize this project.

The second book in the series is written. It's done. I think it's even better than the first. There are more familiar characters, plus some new faces. Hornsby. Krieger. Proctocus. Bella Bobbins. Lord Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, Third Earl of Salisbury. Plus, a new character that I think people will really like.

I know a lot of people were hoping this novel was the story so far about TeslaCon, but the intent with the books is to build the world, create more stories, and create more characters.

Thank you again.

I had a blast at TeslaCon. It was my first time there, and I was absolutely blown away by it. It was pretty surreal and amazing in the best way possible. Y'all know how to party.

I shall look forward to returning next year, if people will have me. I would like to be there a lot more next year and have a chance to chat with you all.

All the best,

--Sean

https://www.amazon.com/Lord-Bobbins-R...

PS: If I took your picture holding a copy of the book, I've posted those photos over on my page:

www.facebooks.com/seanpatricklittlewr...

I'd appreciate it if you let me know who you are so I can tag you in them!

Post-TeslaCon

All hard copies of LORD BOBBINS AND THE ROMANIAN RUCKUS sold out.

Not bad for an initial press run. I will get another order in tomorrow.

A billion thanks to all who bought one. I hope you enjoy them and look forward to the sequel(s).