Jonathan Kile's Blog, page 2

My Blog is Loafing, Creatively

If you’re wondering where all my wit and wisdom has gone, my energy has been siphoned over to my bi-weekly column on Creative Loafing, the Tampa area’s preeminent entertainment magazine. My intention has been to post here weekly, but my intention was also to publish 2 books in 2015, paint the upstairs of my house, and re-stain my deck.

In the next few weeks the sequel to The Grandfather Clock, titled The Napoleon Bloom, will leave the hands of beta readers. I will sit with each of them over beverages and take in their very critical reviews. Then it will go to my editor, we’ll call her Shelly because that’s her name and we only protect the innocent on this blog. To give you an idea of what happens when Shelly gets her hands on my manuscript, look only to the changes in The Grandfather Clock. 

In its first draft my main character, Michael Chance, made a lot of mistakes and said stupid things. When this happened, Shelly would tactfully write something like, “IDIOT,” or “MORON,” in the margin in order to subtly point out when Michael behaved questionably. Sometimes she would expound upon these comments with words that would make Michael openly weep. The end result was a (somewhat) smarter, more likable, more sympathetic protagonist people would pull for. The book also got shorter (when I thought it would get longer).

I encourage you to read my other blog, The Self Publishing Notebook, and take advantage of my book’s 99 CENT Kindle price. Don’t have a Kindle. Yes, you do. Kindle is available for every platform of phone, laptop and tablet (even Blackberry.) It’s not available on Nook, because Nook was murdered by Amazon, as I’m sure I predicted.

My next post hits next Tuesday and I’m considering setting my critical sights on a bigger fish than my page’s editor, and taking (kind and respectful) umbrage with a bestselling author.

Thanks!  – JK

 

Crawl before you walk… Pub Crawl, that is

A quick update… my last two blog posts for Creative Loafing are HERE and HERE. I talk about the arranged marriage that self publishers must enter into with Amazon.com and the latest data that suggests… nay, proves… that self publishing is a better investment of your time and resources than sending query letters and waiting for someone to ask you to prom. Find out why Hugh Howey says, “Self-publishing is simply a more viable path to earning a living and reaching readers than sending query letters to agents, and it isn’t even close.”

Also, for my St. Pete area readers, tomorrow I’ll be joining my infamous neighbor, Nathan Van Coops for part of the SunLit Festival Pub Crawl. We’ll be reading a fictitious (?) piece about the increasingly tense rivalry between two self published authors living across the street from each other. Nathan recently hit #1 on the Sci Fi charts on Amazon UK with his second book, The Chronothon. Then he hit #1 in Australia for good measure. I’ll be inviting Nate to share his wisdom here, but only when I’m ready to promote my new book along with said wisdom. Come see us at Bodega on Central at 7:00 on Wednesday, March 9. We will either be funny enough to make you laugh, or so unfunny, you’ll laugh harder.

No designers were harmed in the making of this logo.

My beta readers are still reading my first draft, so I don’t have any feedback yet. When I do, I promise to post a play-by-play of the emotional stages that follow these discussions. It’ll be fun.

Thanks for reading!

By day I am a peddler of petroleum products, navigating a Glengarry Glen Ross landscape of cutthroat sales. By night I assume the identity of novelist and child-wrangler. My first published novel The Grandfather Clock is available on amazon.com. I am currently writing my second and third novels, blogging here and at Creative Loafing and cursing my editor.

 

 

Beta Readers on Deck AND More Talk About Chai

First draft manuscripts of The Napoleon Bloom are currently being printed and will be delivered to my beta-readers within days. Who are my beta readers? One is a local journalist who specializes in the deep investigative journalism of a bizarre small town (Who is stealing the ducks from the pond?) and she’s also arts editor of a big local magazine and writes romances and travel books and apparently has way more time than I do.

Beta reader #2 is an architect with an IQ of 428 and one of the most deadpanned honest people you’ll run in to. She’s incapable of sugar-coating her thoughts, but in a way that doesn’t (typically) leave me in tears.

Beta reader #3 is a local attorney who I met via Facebook (and a pediatrician’s waiting room) – with a sense of humor that rivals only my own (humbly speaking, of course.)

Jon Talk Chai. Jon Talk Chai Very Well

I have to correct a wrong. Last month I was unfair to chai tea. First, that sentence is redundant because “chai” means tea in Hindi. I had just finished reading Gregory David Roberts’ brilliant The Mountain Shadow (the follow-up to his even more brilliant Shantaram), and I commented on how the characters were constantly drinking chai. It’s set in India, so it’s basically the equivalent of having coffee in New York, but it stood out to me and I had to find out what the fuss was all about. I’m not talking about old ladies having tea. These were gangsters, drug runners, murderers and gun dealers, taking their chai very seriously. So I bought some really cheap “Chai Green Tea” from the supermarket shelf, next to the Earl Grays and chamomiles. This was the chai equivalent of calling Miller High Life “craft beer.”

As luck would have it, a meeting of local literary minds was called to be held in a new tea shop in St. Petersburg called The Station House, featuring tea from a locally successful tea empire called TeBella. (Locals, even if you don’t drink tea, grab a cup of coffee in what has to be the nicest tea/coffee lounge within a thousand miles. It’s Versailles.) In my original blog post, I decided that an adequately tattooed and pierced barista would need to prepare a proper chai tea. Well this one came with dreadlocks too, and she guided me perfectly through the ordering process.

We’ve Created a Chai Drinking Monster

Now my wife is tired of hearing me talk about chai. Afternoon coffee no more – I go for the less caffeinated, nerve soothing, soul purifying, and oxford comma loving chai latte. Not too sweet. Thank you, lovely barista, for the life-altering cup of goodness. Since that maiden cup of chai, I’ve tested a few other versions. Kawah coffee – good – also uses TeBella tea. Starbucks, very tasty – but a bit sweet, and I learned that it has as much sugar as a Snickers bar, which sort of destroys the Zen aspect of the experience.

At home, things have improved in my chai brewing skills. I found a better brand of black tea chai. I learned to heat the milk and quickly give it a little whip while the water boils, and I sweeten it with a little honey. Before my friends start calling into question my masculinity, I saw that peppermint-gingerbread-bliss K-Cup in your Keurig rack (you know who you are – and you drank it.) If it’s good enough for a fictional money laundering Australian escaped convict and his Mujahideen friends, it’s good enough for me.

Not stock photography. This is my actual home brewed chai latte from Sunday afternoon. I now understand the function of a doily.

The book I’m reading now also has quite a bit of tea drinking going on. I’m sinking my teeth into Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment. So far, the main character is served lots of tea that has been brewed from already steeped-once tea leaves and he has a tendency to run around the streets of (that other) St. Petersburg in a state of delirium, barking insanely at people. It’s a change of pace and I’m enjoying it.

Thanks for reading. Check out my other online locales at Facebook, Twitter, and my every-other-week blog at Creative Loafing Tampa.

 

 

Check Out My Guest Post on “Amid The Imaginary”

Just a quick note to let you know that I have a guest post on a blog called Amid the Imaginary this week. Amid the Imaginary is devoted to reviewing Self Published books exclusively. Anela, who writes the blog, asked me to talk about how I persevere as a writer with all of life’s distractions. I told her to stop distracting me (no I didn’t.)

I’ve been looking over the the reviews Anela has posted and let me tell you, she does not hand out stars easily. I don’t know if she plans to review The Grandfather Clock, but if she does, I know it will be an honest one. She’ll drop 2 stars on a book and let you know why. Her commentary is thoughtful and she reviews a LOT of books. Be sure to check it out regularly.

Amid the Imaginary: Reviews of Indie Published books.

 

Tomorrow you can also check out my next Self Publishing Notebook column for Creative Loafing, where I invent a new term: The Mess-U-Script. You learn a little more about the novel I spent over a year on, and then put it out of it’s misery like Ol’ Yeller.

I’ve been getting lots of mail at jkilewrites@gmail.com. Join the wave and send me your comments. Sign up on the left to get updates, or drop a comment below.

-Jonathan

Challenge: Find Four Hours In Your Day To Write

I recently read Stephen King’s memoir On Writing. Actually he read it to me, because I did the audio book (part of my routine as an outside sales rep is to use the drive-time wisely.) Reading this book also makes me the very last writer to read this book. I know, I know. “How can you call yourself a writer and you haven’t read On Writing.” I’m sorry. About 5 years ago I basically swore that I would write rather than read more books about writing and I hadn’t made it to his.

I’m not going to review it. It’s really good and every writer should check it out. There was a good piece of advice (of many) that I took to heart, even if I can’t put it into practice every day. I’ll paraphrase. He said aspiring writers should be working on their craft at least four hours per day. To this, I said, “Shit, if I had four hour per day I’d take up scuba diving or golf.” No, I didn’t really say that. But really, who with a full time job, kids and some semblance of a life has 4 hours to devote to something else? Well… I almost do. Sort of.

Free stock photography often looks like it was free. Photo Credit: Secret Agent Sarah via Compfight cc

No, I don’t write for four hours a day. I’m lucky if I get in one or two hours at the end of the day, and many days I don’t write at all. And right now, I’m editing, so I’m not churning out words by the thousands. But, Mr. King also considers reading to be an important part of a writer’s development. He said, “A writer who says they don’t have time to read should (there were then a bunch of expletives) and give up.” Again, paraphrasing. Counting my reading time, I might actually be getting close to that daily 4 hours. I’ll explain.

First, I mentioned the audio books. This is cheating. It’s easy to get 2 hours of audio books in while I’m running around in my day job. I won’t even count this as a full two hours. Then there’s the TV time (about 90 minutes a night, give or take.) I’m not going to claim that I have any control over what comes on our TV after the kids go to bed. Lately, the person who picks those programs has an obsession with reruns of Dateline and 20/20 on the OWN (that’s the Oprah Winfrey Network to you singles.) I believe that this fixation is a direct result of the two weeks we spent taking in Making a Murderer (and neglecting personal hygiene.) Now we can get in the full Making a Murderer experience in 44 minutes and the crimes are usually much easier to solve. During this time, I edit my manuscript. Real work.

Then before bed I read – about an hour. I’ve already knocked out 4 or 5 books in 2016, form Dennis Lehane’s The Given Day (great), to Augusten Burroughs Running With Scissors (I usually won’t finish a book I hate, but I find this book to be so terrible, I’m still going to finish it and give it a full blog post, just to anger its fans.) Also, for reasons that I won’t get in to, I have developed a new habit of waking up at times like 4 am, and reading for an hour, then going back to sleep (and it’s awesome, I suggest it.)

So, by my count, I’m hitting my 4 hours of devotion to writing and reading. When I start writing my next novel, I’m going to have to convert more of this time to the actual act of writing, but reading a lot of fiction is imperative to writing good fiction. I just finished the audio book of The Martian and this is one that I highly recommend on audio (get an Aubible account and audio books are worth the money.) The voice given to the story by R.C. Bray really brought a story heavy on scientific language to life. (Same goes for the audio version of Gone Girl with the two narrative voices for the male and female characters, brilliantly read.)

No one has fours hours available in their day, waiting to be taken. But by using those little five, ten, and twenty minute increments, it’s not that hard. I just logged 30 putting this blog post up while my daughter recovered from what I call the Post Nap Blues (that time after she wakes from a Saturday nap when she shan’t be addressed directly.) Sorry, beautiful wife, I did not hang the curtains today. But Createspace just dropped $1.47 into our bank account. Have a… um… pack of gum.

By the way, check out my new every-other-week gig at Creative Loafing, where I’m bringing the gospel of Indie Publishing to the good people of the Tampa Bay region. Thanks for stopping by!

-Jonathan Kile

By day Jonathan Kile is a peddler of petroleum products, navigating a Glengarry Glen Ross landscape of cutthroat sales. By night he assumes the identity of novelist and child-wrangler. Jonathan’s first published novel The Grandfather Clock  (available on Amazon.) He is writing his second and third novels, blogging at Well Oiled Writer and cursing his editor. You can email him here. 

 

 

Bad Bestsellers and Making Sausage

Sometime in the next two months, I’ll hand the manuscript for my next novel to my editor. She knows this and I’m noticing that while she is always a really fun person to be around, she’s being extremely nice to me lately. She bought me lunch the other day. We never even talked about my book. It’s like she knows that in mere weeks she’s going to be heaping harsh words on a year’s worth of my work, with relentless fervor and even a bit of glee.

So I’m putting a lot of pressure on myself. I want readers to universally declare the sequel to be better than the first book. I woke up at 3am last night, unable to sleep, so I got up and edited for an hour. I’m giving up reading the newspaper (a morning ritual I never skip,) until I’ve got this book in the hands of Beta Readers. I need feedback soon. I’ve read several great books lately and I want my work to measure up. It’s intimidating. Fortunately, right now I’m reading a memoir (a bestseller selected by a book club) and it’s absolutely terrible. It’s well written and I understand to a certain extent its appeal to some (I guess.) I won’t name it, out of professional courtesy for the highly successful author (because I haven’t finished it and maybe he’ll acknowledge the depraved criminal behavior of those that raised him), but he’s not funny, his story is sick and sad and not entertaining. I’m more than 1/2 way through and I might just quit out of respect for whatever good book I could be reading. Bad books on the bestseller list tell us that a career in writing is not just about writing good books, but finding a story with an audience.

Speaking of audience, this Well Oiled Writer, is about to get a few more eyes. The Tampa Bay Area’s local weekly entertainment magazine Creative Loafing has asked me to do an online blog/column on Indie Publishing. Similar to this, but different, I’ll be giving readers an inside look at the sausage making process of bringing a draft to print, and hopefully developing a place for indie writers to commiserate. When it goes live, I’ll provide links here, so you don’t need to go looking for it. By no means am I the authority on any of this stuff, so my goal will be to keep readers entertained with my successes and failures.

This is not a metaphor for my book. This is my actual manuscript. My printer uses Inkjet Veal and Chorizo. Photo Credit: GluehweinEffects via Compfight cc

Also coming soon… book cover design! Because you can judge a book by its cover.

By day Jonathan Kile is a peddler of petroleum products, navigating a Glengarry Glen Ross landscape of cutthroat sales. By night he assumes the identity of novelist and child-wrangler. Jonathan’s first published novel “The Grandfather Clock” is available on www.amazon.com. He is writing his second and third novels, blogging at welloiledwriter.wordpress.com and cursing his editor.

 

The First Draft and a Spot of Tea

A few weeks ago, before I was done with the first draft of my next novel, I met with a couple of local writers over tea and a yogurt parfait – because that’s what writers do in the morning. After lunch it’s all whiskey and pills. One requirement that morning was to bring a piece of writing for another writer to review – which is not something I’ve done very often. So, without as much as a cursory review, I printed the first twenty pages of my book and passed it across the table.

It was kind of like serving a meal without tasting any of it first.

I got a great reaction to those pages. In fact, both writers marveled at the quality of the paper I printed it on. 28lb Bright White from Office Depot. I use good paper for work presentations. I can’t stand cheap paper. Since that day I’ve revised the first 3,200 words twice, and it might get 6 more rewrites. Maybe more. I thought my first draft would be cleaner this time, and it actually might be. But for some reason this is harder than the first time. This weekend I’ll bring those revisions to that same meeting, I’ll pay for the tea for subjecting them to that unrevised collection of English words.

Speaking of Tea

I mentioned before that I just finished The Shadow Mountain by Gregory David Roberts, his second epic novel set in India. The characters are constantly drinking chai. To me, chai has been one of those menu items classified with tofu, flax, quinoa, and soy milk (it’s soy juice.) But after his great characters drank their 400th cup of chai, I had to find out what was going on. I bought some chai tea at Fresh Market, brewed it up, and even added milk at the suggestion of the box. Meh. I think I need to get some made by a professional barista with more tattoos and piercings than fingers. The second time I made it, I added honey and it tasted like… tea. Why are you talking about tea still? Hey, it’s my blog, dammit.

What am I reading now, you didn’t ask? The Given Day, by Dennis Lehane. I’m really enjoying it. The second book in this particular series, Live By Night is set in nearby Ybor City. Ben Affleck is making the movie, which would be really exciting for the Tampa Bay area if they hadn’t built a replica Ybor City movie set in Brunswick, GA. On the plus side, I fully expect my college roommate turned actor who lives in Georgia to be in the film. He’s a regular “walker” on Walking Dead and is in a new Zaxby’s ad. You go, buddy. You have a role in the film version of The Grandfather Clock, starring Ben Affleck, filmed at Epcot Center.

I could have taken a picture of my actual tea, but I had Ben Affleck build a different cup of tea. Photo Credit: jmerelo via Compfight cc

Send instructions on how to make a proper chai to jkilewrites@gmail.com. Better yet. Buy my book and I’ll go buy a cup at the nearest Indian restaurant.

Manuscript complete. Get out the red pen. (And the bourbon.)

So, yes, the blog has been quiet for good reason. The manuscript for the sequel to The Grandfather Clock is finished. First draft. Very rough. Get me a drink.

What my editor does to my draft. Photo Credit: myguerrilla via Compfight cc

Now the fun part. The other half of writing the book. First, I give it my edit. Then it goes to carefully selected Beta Readers (friends who are willing to read and critique in exchange for food and beverage.) Then to my trusted editor, who will then tear the whole thing apart like a piece of Walmart furniture left in the rain. Then I put it back together and give it to a copy editor to take care of all the typos I didn’t find or added in the editing process.

Four Months. Give me four months and I will give you the The Napoleon Bloom. April. There, I said it.

In addition to writing a lot over the last couple of months, I’ve also been reading some great stuff. Here’s a rundown of the best:

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the most successful writer on my block is Nathan Van Coops. I read his time travel adventure In Times Like These and it was terrific. I’m not the first person to go reaching for sci-fi or much outside of the real world we live in. Van Coops has written a time travel adventure for people who live in the read world. I mean… he considers, very carefully, questions like: What happens if you travel into the future to the same place and the pretty field you were standing in became an interstate highway? Time travel in In Times Like These is dangerous. Mix in a serial killer and a story of great friends and you’ve got a book for everyone. Oh… and the book is FREE on Kindle, so what’s your excuse for not downloading it now? (Yes, you.) It’s the #1 Time Travel book on Amazon. Soon I’ll be tackling his sequel The Chronothon which I just picked up on audio book on Audibel.

A while back I told you about a great book about an escaped Australian convict hiding in Bombay by Gregory David Roberts called Shantaram. His sequel The Mountain Shadow just came out and I’m almost done reading it. It’s so good, I find myself waking up at 2am and sneaking 20 pages in. Seriously. The book is killing my sleep.

On audio book I’m “reading” something  a little different. It’s a New York Times Bestseller from a few years ago by Sam Harris called Waking Up. Harris is a controversial writer, known better for another book called The End of Faith: Religion, Terror and the Future of Reason. Waking Up is a look at spirituality from a secular point of view (i.e. spirituality without organized religion.) Not new agey… Harris goes at spirituality from a scientific / neurological / societal / meditational / mindfulness focus that leaves the dogma out. So far, it’s thought provoking.

I’ll finish by sharing a very special moment that I got to experience for the first time as a writer. I’ve long thought that when an author finds their book on the shelves of the thrift store, they’ve really arrived. Well, a few weeks ago, my book appeared – second hand – on Amazon, offered by Goodwill of Greater Seattle. Now, I have several friends in Seattle, one in particular who bought copies of my book for all of her friends last Christmas, so I’d like to thank her for proliferating my prose in the Pacific Northwest to the point that someone tossed it in their thrift store box. Top it off that “Thrift Shop” hitmakers Macklemore and Ryan Lewis come from Seattle, I was soooo close to being an rap song… I’m gonna pop some tags / Only got twenty dollars in my pocket… 

You know the drill: Don’t forget to sign up for updates on the left. Got a question or comment? Leave it below or drop me an email at jkilewrites@gmail.com. Check me out on Facebook and Twitter too.

Cheers!

-Jonathan Kile

Rumors of my blog’s demise are greatly exaggerated

I know, I know. It’s been a month.. more?.. a long time since I posted something. In the midst of trying to finish the manuscript to my second novel, The Napoleon Bloom, life threw a few curve balls. Much of my next book is set in Paris, and I actually wrote and never published two posts about the events in Paris (opting to spare the universe of one more in-expert opinion.) The good news is that I’m very excited about how the book is finishing. I just wish I could get it done.

The reason I wanted to get this post up is that I stumbled upon a new show on The History Channel that pertains directly to a “twist” in my novel The Grandfather Clock. When I was researching that novel, I read a book called The Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, by Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams. In very detailed manner, the authors present the case that Hitler escaped the Fuhrerbunker and lived more than a decade in seclusion in Patagonia. I don’t endorse or refute this theory. Hitler’s body was never found, and lacking total proof in any direction, I don’t have a stake in either opinion. But it provided a cool motivation for the villains in my book. In cooperation with the authors, The History Channel is running a documentary series about Hitler’s supposed escape. It’s called Hunting Hitler and it airs at 9 p.m. every Tuesday night, or you can view episodes online (like I do if I can’t sleep.) After four episodes, the show makes no conclusions.

Upstart cable station, The History Channel, is riding the waves of my book.

It’s exciting to see this get some mainstream attention because now, when I’m talking to people about my book, their eyes don’t roll into the back of their head when I start sounding like a foil-hat conspiracy nut. The show is good. I wish it were great. They feature investigators in Europe and South America as they follow the cold trail. The investigators tend act a little over-dramatically when they find clues and the editing is really heavy on “recap” after every commercial – but I might feel this way because I’m already really well acquainted with their research.

I can’t wait to talk about the real-life twist that comes up in my next book. But no spoilers on that right now. Thanks for checking back in. I promise more activity here and updates on the upcoming release. There’s something poetic about a Spring 2016 release of … The Napoleon Bloom. 

Don’t forget to sign up for updates on the left. Got a question or comment? Leave it below or drop me an email at jkilewrites@gmail.com. Check me out on Facebook and Twitter too. When my daughter gets older I’ll have her teach me Instagram.

-Jonathan Kile

 

And The Most Successful Writer on My Block Is… Not me.

I ran into our neighbor who just moved in across the street. He’s a few years younger than me, just got married. Since he has no kids, his fills his extra time with softball leagues, ultimate frisbee, lunching on tacos… and his day job is merely fixing airplanes. My kids are enamored with him (and his garage full of set props from various productions he’s taken on.)

As we were chatting he commented that he hoped it wouldn’t rain the next weekend. I asked why, assuming it would be aviation related. He replied, “Oh, I’m going to have a table at the Tampa Bay Times Festival of Reading.” What for? I ask, assuming he’s written some dry technical book on fixing Cessnas. He went on to tell me that he has self-published not one, but two young adult Time Travel Adventure novels. Small world. I told him about my books and over the course of several conversations I learned that he’s done really well with these two books. He isn’t signing a movie deal yet, but with two books out, he’s way ahead of me when it comes to running effective promotions and building a readership.

I’ve been to the Times Festival of Reading and I’ve seen the lonely self published authors sitting by a sad stack of books. Not Nathan Van Coops. The guy was slammed, talking to readers, and selling books at a great looking booth. Believe me, I’m going to steal every idea he has and bring them a good bottle of wine at Christmas.

So, check out the most successful writer on my street: Nathan Van Coops on his BLOG, or FACEBOOK, and his books on AMAZON. The first one In Times Like These is FREE.

In Times Like These – Nathan Van Coops

I really liked this quote from his blog:

Here’s the honest truth. Novels aren’t written by people with lots of free time on their hands and a fantasy lifestyle that lets them be creative in just the right environment. Novels get written by people who are busier than you but who have made less excuses for themselves. Writers write. Want to be one? Get to it.

I look forward our growing success fomenting a rivalry in which “my son” leaves flaming bags of poo on his porch and we leave each other 1 star reviews.

I know I was away for a while between blog posts. Halloween is serious business in our neighborhood. November is NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and my goal is to finish the draft of The Napoleon Bloom (here’s a secret… I have to admit it’s not going to get released by Thanksgiving.) Back at it…

-JK