Indie Publishing Guide Tip #3: Be persistent
My next (unsuccessful) novel featured a character that I ended up spending over a decade developing. His name is Topher, and he is arrogant, impetuous, immoral, and extremely funny. I don't know where he came from exactly, but I do remember wanting to create an anti-hero who was entirely repellent but whom the reader couldn't help liking.
In that novel, simply titled Topher, he stuffs the ballot boxes of a small beach town in Virginia in order to become the mayor. Once elected, he embezzles all the town's money, buys a Korean mail-order bride, and builds a subterranean casino with water slides and cat races. Then a hurricane comes and wipes it all out, essentially bankrupting the town. To apologize, Topher throws a parade in his honor. In the middle of it he looses a team of monkeys and dozens of little people armed with water guns filled with cooking oil on the unsuspecting townspeople, and is carried away into the air by a hot air balloon.
Even though that novel didn't work, I liked Topher and his friends (Michael Zorn and Kenneth "Gertrude" Hughes) so much that I wrote a sequel in which they find themselves held captive in another small Virginia town straight out of a Twilight Zone episode. At first everything seems to be going well, but soon the men realize that if they're ever going to get out alive, they must fight to the death in a series of bizarre games. After a few initial successes, they die one by one and end up in hell. That novel, titled Igor's Inn, was a little bit better, but it also failed.
Even so, I still couldn't get Topher, Zorn, and Gertrude out of my mind. I always knew I was going to write about their past together, something having to do with the boarding school they attended as teenagers, but I didn't want to change anything about their personalities. I thought that if they were younger, they wouldn't be able to speak in as elevated a manner as they did later on in life or be as corrupt. I struggled with it for a while before finally saying, "Screw it. They've always been that way." That's when I wrote Raleigh's Prep.
Though it took nearly half a decade to draft and draft and re-draft, I wouldn't give up on the idea. I knew there was something about it that worked, I just needed to learn how to write it better. I finally published Raleigh's Prep as a part of my first book, A Knife in the Back, in 2013.
It's garnered some nice reviews. Most recently, I sold a copy to someone at Marscon, and this is what she wrote about it on Amazon:
"I bought this book at Marscon directly from Mr. Noll himself. I love the horror genre, and the book definitely interested me. I truly enjoyed all the stories in the book. There are 7 short stories and a novella, plus the beginning of another story with some of the same characters from the novella. I enjoyed all the stories, but a couple of my favorites were 'Beta', regarding a remote village being terrorized by...something in the woods, and 'Under the Rocks', which dealt with a river and the monster therein. The novella was different as well; interesting characters, quite a lot of death and gore and some twists and turns.
I look forward to reading more of Mr. Noll's work in the future!"
A year later, I published Tracker's Travail, the second novel in the series, in my second book, You Will Be Safe Here
, which also received some nice reviews:
"I really enjoyed these stories. They contain a nice variety of themes, some of which are dark and some of which are actually pretty humorous.
My favorites were "The Unan" and "Savages." (These two stories actually tie together.) There were elements to The Unan that reminded me of the world of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series and I imagine the Gunslinger would have fit in pretty well in this setting. Anyway, the author has done a good job or world building here, the stories contain good characterization and solid action, and I greatly enjoyed them. Going into more detail would be doing a disservice to any readers who plan on checking these stories out.
Recommended, especially for fans of sci-fi fantasy or readers who simply appreciate a diverse and interesting collection of stories."
Thank you, Dr. Gonzo!
Those reviews, and my tenacity, led me to finish the final book in the series, Topher's Ton, which I published in my third book, Burn All The Bodies.
Raleigh's Prep was a mess from the start. Episodic, disjointed, and too zany, I had no idea what it was about or where it was going. Still, I worked on it wherever I could: sitting on the hillside during my daughters' soccer games, after school (I'd become a teacher by that point) while the girls were playing, in the few moments I had before bed. I dropped it several times, frustrated with the lack of shape or momentum. Eventually I hit upon the idea that the school was actually a prison, and that the boys had done something horrible to get there. I always knew that there was something equally horrible in the woods that was gradually taking over the school, but I never knew why until I had another epiphany: nobody was ever supposed to leave. From there the structure became simple. There was a new headmaster, and he was trying to put a stop to the practice, to actually reform and rehabilitate the boys, but it was too late. It took a few more months before I was able to whip it into any kind of shape, something worth publishing, which I did in 2013.
My point is this: I wrote two novels featuring Topher in his friends before finding the right one that worked. It took a few years and thousands of words that nobody would ever (thankfully) read. Then I spent a few more years writing, tweaking, beta-testing, and writing again until I was satisfied with the result.
It's easy to rely on platitudes like "Never give up," and "You need to have grit," but that's not totally what I mean here anyway. If you find a character or set of characters (or setting or time period or subject—anything) you like to write about, find a way to write about them. Don't be afraid to try out several different scenarios, to write entire books featuring them. Eventually you will hit upon something. You just have to do the work.
Next up: Three tips for Book Marketing Indie Publishers Need to Follow
Are you a fan of horror or post-apocalyptic fiction? Join my email list and receive a free short story, audio book, and theme song for "Beta":
A monster terrorizes an isolated village in the mountains of Eastern Europe, draining the blood of its victims, leaving them frozen in the snow. The villagers hunt wolves, decapitate “vampires,” but the murders continue. As each new body is found, the residents grow more and more paranoid. Who will be next? Will it ever end?
Sign up here!
www.jamesnoll.net
--JN
In that novel, simply titled Topher, he stuffs the ballot boxes of a small beach town in Virginia in order to become the mayor. Once elected, he embezzles all the town's money, buys a Korean mail-order bride, and builds a subterranean casino with water slides and cat races. Then a hurricane comes and wipes it all out, essentially bankrupting the town. To apologize, Topher throws a parade in his honor. In the middle of it he looses a team of monkeys and dozens of little people armed with water guns filled with cooking oil on the unsuspecting townspeople, and is carried away into the air by a hot air balloon.
Even though that novel didn't work, I liked Topher and his friends (Michael Zorn and Kenneth "Gertrude" Hughes) so much that I wrote a sequel in which they find themselves held captive in another small Virginia town straight out of a Twilight Zone episode. At first everything seems to be going well, but soon the men realize that if they're ever going to get out alive, they must fight to the death in a series of bizarre games. After a few initial successes, they die one by one and end up in hell. That novel, titled Igor's Inn, was a little bit better, but it also failed.
Even so, I still couldn't get Topher, Zorn, and Gertrude out of my mind. I always knew I was going to write about their past together, something having to do with the boarding school they attended as teenagers, but I didn't want to change anything about their personalities. I thought that if they were younger, they wouldn't be able to speak in as elevated a manner as they did later on in life or be as corrupt. I struggled with it for a while before finally saying, "Screw it. They've always been that way." That's when I wrote Raleigh's Prep.
Though it took nearly half a decade to draft and draft and re-draft, I wouldn't give up on the idea. I knew there was something about it that worked, I just needed to learn how to write it better. I finally published Raleigh's Prep as a part of my first book, A Knife in the Back, in 2013.
It's garnered some nice reviews. Most recently, I sold a copy to someone at Marscon, and this is what she wrote about it on Amazon:"I bought this book at Marscon directly from Mr. Noll himself. I love the horror genre, and the book definitely interested me. I truly enjoyed all the stories in the book. There are 7 short stories and a novella, plus the beginning of another story with some of the same characters from the novella. I enjoyed all the stories, but a couple of my favorites were 'Beta', regarding a remote village being terrorized by...something in the woods, and 'Under the Rocks', which dealt with a river and the monster therein. The novella was different as well; interesting characters, quite a lot of death and gore and some twists and turns.
I look forward to reading more of Mr. Noll's work in the future!"
A year later, I published Tracker's Travail, the second novel in the series, in my second book, You Will Be Safe Here
, which also received some nice reviews:"I really enjoyed these stories. They contain a nice variety of themes, some of which are dark and some of which are actually pretty humorous.
My favorites were "The Unan" and "Savages." (These two stories actually tie together.) There were elements to The Unan that reminded me of the world of Stephen King's The Dark Tower series and I imagine the Gunslinger would have fit in pretty well in this setting. Anyway, the author has done a good job or world building here, the stories contain good characterization and solid action, and I greatly enjoyed them. Going into more detail would be doing a disservice to any readers who plan on checking these stories out.
Recommended, especially for fans of sci-fi fantasy or readers who simply appreciate a diverse and interesting collection of stories."
Thank you, Dr. Gonzo!
Those reviews, and my tenacity, led me to finish the final book in the series, Topher's Ton, which I published in my third book, Burn All The Bodies.
Raleigh's Prep was a mess from the start. Episodic, disjointed, and too zany, I had no idea what it was about or where it was going. Still, I worked on it wherever I could: sitting on the hillside during my daughters' soccer games, after school (I'd become a teacher by that point) while the girls were playing, in the few moments I had before bed. I dropped it several times, frustrated with the lack of shape or momentum. Eventually I hit upon the idea that the school was actually a prison, and that the boys had done something horrible to get there. I always knew that there was something equally horrible in the woods that was gradually taking over the school, but I never knew why until I had another epiphany: nobody was ever supposed to leave. From there the structure became simple. There was a new headmaster, and he was trying to put a stop to the practice, to actually reform and rehabilitate the boys, but it was too late. It took a few more months before I was able to whip it into any kind of shape, something worth publishing, which I did in 2013.
My point is this: I wrote two novels featuring Topher in his friends before finding the right one that worked. It took a few years and thousands of words that nobody would ever (thankfully) read. Then I spent a few more years writing, tweaking, beta-testing, and writing again until I was satisfied with the result.
It's easy to rely on platitudes like "Never give up," and "You need to have grit," but that's not totally what I mean here anyway. If you find a character or set of characters (or setting or time period or subject—anything) you like to write about, find a way to write about them. Don't be afraid to try out several different scenarios, to write entire books featuring them. Eventually you will hit upon something. You just have to do the work.
Next up: Three tips for Book Marketing Indie Publishers Need to Follow
Are you a fan of horror or post-apocalyptic fiction? Join my email list and receive a free short story, audio book, and theme song for "Beta":
A monster terrorizes an isolated village in the mountains of Eastern Europe, draining the blood of its victims, leaving them frozen in the snow. The villagers hunt wolves, decapitate “vampires,” but the murders continue. As each new body is found, the residents grow more and more paranoid. Who will be next? Will it ever end?
Sign up here!
www.jamesnoll.net
--JN
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