iFiction! introductions part 3: Your freindly host, Mike Whetzel. Also included-the pains of writing a series...
Since I made both John and Chris suffer through the introduction questions, I guess it's my turn now.
-Who are you and why should we care?
Well, if you are reading this blog, there is a good chance you already know who I am. I'm Mike, and this is my place, on the web so to speak. I'm a father of three, a husband, a housekeeper, and a writer. And you should care because Jesus said so.
-What books have you written?
My first published book was The Voice, the first book in the sci-fi epic Black Rain Journals. I followed that up with two novellas. The first, BOOM, follows a young man who finally decides to "explode" and take control of his life. The second is the immensly popular The Pied Piper of the Undead. It's a zombie story about a young boy surviving on his own in a small mid-west town. It will be released as an audiobook as soon as ACX finishes its auditing process.
-What are your aspirations/goals as a writer?
To be accepted as a quality writer. There are two sides to this question. The first is a creative answer. I want to build exciting, entertaining worlds and invite you to share them with me. And I don't want it to be the same old stuff we always see (are you listening Hollywood?) but new things with new twists and new interpretations. On the other side, how cool would it be to say I pay my bills by writing genre fiction? Very cool.
-What projects are you bringing to iFiction!? What other projects are you working on?
I seem to be always busy with something. And new ideas spring up almost every day.
For iFiction!, I'll be re-releasing BOOM under the new imprint with a short flash fiction piece called Punchy and previews of more iFiction! works. At the same time another short novella, Bandwidth, will be released. Then we drop the first serialized mini-series for iFiction!, Miner 36, which is based on a concept by Chris Whetzel and will be 5 to 6 episodes long and hit sometime in January. And then look for many other shorts and minis coming throughout 2013.
For myself, I am wrapping up book 2 in the Black Rain Journals called The Widow and The Orphan. Then it's preliminary work on Book 3: The Town. I also have a sequel in store for The Pied Piper of the Undead and will be working on a stand alone novel entitled, Firecracker, which has been in development for quite some time.
-Who are your main influences/favorite authors?
There are so many but it starts with one person: Stephen King. Not just the master of horror, but a great craftsman of story and fiction. Other authors include Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, Michael Chabon, Warren Ellis, Robert Cormier, Grant Morrison, Joe Lansdale, JRR Tolkein, Neil Gaiman, HG Wells, Robert Heinlein, and the great Ray Bradbury.
Outside the word world, influences include Robert Rodriquez, Steven Speilberg, Joss Whedon, JJ Abrams, Guillermo Del Toro, Ridley Scott, Chris Nolan, Joseph Gordon Leavitt, Coen Brothers, Coheed & Cambria, Pink Floyd, Bill Watterson, and the list goes on and on and on....
-What is your favorite book?
Whoa, that's a tough one. I have to go with IT by King. I read this in middle school and, even though I did not understand everything in it, this book forever changed the way I would view fiction. Gone were the "safe" worlds of The Hardy Boys and The Three Investigators. Nope, King changed all of that. I've since read IT over 10 times and come away even more mesmerized than before.
Robert McCammon's Boy's Life was also a great book I have read over and over again. And Hemingway's Islands in the Stream is my favorite of his. The Great Gatsby is also a perrenial favorite.
As you can tell, it's hard for me to just pick one.
-How do we follow/reach you?
I update this blog weekly (or at least try to). You can contact me through here or email me at michaelwhetzel@gmail.com. If you look above on the right side of the screen my twitter and facebook feeds are available. I'm on facebook a lot so LIKE my page and you can get daily updates and such.
Now enough questions, let's talk about writing......
Writing the Black Rain Journals as a series.
If I had it all to do over again, I would have never chosen to make my first foray into self-publishing the first book in a series. Knowing what I know now, the time and effort required to complete Black Rain will not begin to see any fruition until at the earliest the thrid book of the series. That means I am probably not going to make any headway in sales until around year 2 of the project. Why is this you ask?
Simply because I am still an unknown. Readers will not take a risk on starting a series until they see several books already completed. No one wants to buy book 1 from a self published writer, not knowing if their time and money investment will be rewarded with the rest of the series. You see, a lot of self published series for ereaders, are never finished. They're half formed ideas that are thrown away when sales are not good or the writer grows bored with the characters/story. A reader gets pretty angry when they feel left hanging and a writer should know better before making that commitment. I say that, but then I sure didn't know enough before making that decision myself.
There have been numerous times I almost un-published The Voice. Why bother spending so much time on one big story when I could write several stand alone stories and garner better sales. The numbers don't lie. I sell more copies of The Pied Piper of the Undead than The Voice at a ratio of almost 80:1. The money is there and the readers lean towards the single stories too. So what are the benefits of continuiing a series under such circumstances?
The one thing that comes to mind is the power of the epic. Think how many times you have finished a really good novel and wished there was more to read. Or you wanted a sequel to that really cool movie. We like extended stories. I would much rather read the Dark Tower, or A Song of Fire and Ice, or Harry Potter than just one good book. I actively seek out a good series, looking for the next epic story I can jump into. Because if a world is creatively good, readers don't want to leave it. They want to continue to explore it and watch its characters grow and evolve.
The other thing that a series can help with is maintaining an author's platform, or branding. I think authors with a successful series under their belt have greater name recognition over their peers. It is a lot of work, designing the world and rules, creating the characters and setting the story beats over the course of several books. But in the end, if the story is good and readers continue to follow it, I have gotten them to commit not to one peice of work, but several. The more time a reader invests in reading my story, the more time they invest in me.
There is one drawback to the way I am writing Black Rain though. With a series, self published authors have learned that getting them out as quickly as possible helps the series find better success. Readers don't want to wait. Unless you are Stephen King or George RR Martin, that is. So authors churn out the books back to back to back in order to get the whole story out quickly. I am not able to do this. As much as I love the world I am creating within the pages of Black Rain, from a creative standpoint, it is taxing to stay there for an extended period of time. I put breaks in between the Black Rain books to work on other stories, and recharge my batteries so to speak. In this way, I will not burn out on the world and characters I am creating, and maintain a fresh perspective whenever I am working on them. I have set a pace of 2 Black Rain books a year and feel that is almost pushing it. I'm taking my time growing this series in the hopes that readers will find it worth the wait. I guess I won't know until around book 3 or 4.
Well, patience is a virtue.
So what about you? How do you feel about series vs single stories? And what are some of your favorites? Drop a line here and let us know.
Next blog I'll talk about the evolution of characters and the burden of continuity while writing the series. And we'll delve more into iFiction! projects as the launch date approaches. Where did this year go?
Mike
-Who are you and why should we care?
Well, if you are reading this blog, there is a good chance you already know who I am. I'm Mike, and this is my place, on the web so to speak. I'm a father of three, a husband, a housekeeper, and a writer. And you should care because Jesus said so.
-What books have you written?
My first published book was The Voice, the first book in the sci-fi epic Black Rain Journals. I followed that up with two novellas. The first, BOOM, follows a young man who finally decides to "explode" and take control of his life. The second is the immensly popular The Pied Piper of the Undead. It's a zombie story about a young boy surviving on his own in a small mid-west town. It will be released as an audiobook as soon as ACX finishes its auditing process.
-What are your aspirations/goals as a writer?
To be accepted as a quality writer. There are two sides to this question. The first is a creative answer. I want to build exciting, entertaining worlds and invite you to share them with me. And I don't want it to be the same old stuff we always see (are you listening Hollywood?) but new things with new twists and new interpretations. On the other side, how cool would it be to say I pay my bills by writing genre fiction? Very cool.
-What projects are you bringing to iFiction!? What other projects are you working on?
I seem to be always busy with something. And new ideas spring up almost every day.
For iFiction!, I'll be re-releasing BOOM under the new imprint with a short flash fiction piece called Punchy and previews of more iFiction! works. At the same time another short novella, Bandwidth, will be released. Then we drop the first serialized mini-series for iFiction!, Miner 36, which is based on a concept by Chris Whetzel and will be 5 to 6 episodes long and hit sometime in January. And then look for many other shorts and minis coming throughout 2013.
For myself, I am wrapping up book 2 in the Black Rain Journals called The Widow and The Orphan. Then it's preliminary work on Book 3: The Town. I also have a sequel in store for The Pied Piper of the Undead and will be working on a stand alone novel entitled, Firecracker, which has been in development for quite some time.
-Who are your main influences/favorite authors?
There are so many but it starts with one person: Stephen King. Not just the master of horror, but a great craftsman of story and fiction. Other authors include Ernest Hemingway, F Scott Fitzgerald, Michael Chabon, Warren Ellis, Robert Cormier, Grant Morrison, Joe Lansdale, JRR Tolkein, Neil Gaiman, HG Wells, Robert Heinlein, and the great Ray Bradbury.
Outside the word world, influences include Robert Rodriquez, Steven Speilberg, Joss Whedon, JJ Abrams, Guillermo Del Toro, Ridley Scott, Chris Nolan, Joseph Gordon Leavitt, Coen Brothers, Coheed & Cambria, Pink Floyd, Bill Watterson, and the list goes on and on and on....
-What is your favorite book?
Whoa, that's a tough one. I have to go with IT by King. I read this in middle school and, even though I did not understand everything in it, this book forever changed the way I would view fiction. Gone were the "safe" worlds of The Hardy Boys and The Three Investigators. Nope, King changed all of that. I've since read IT over 10 times and come away even more mesmerized than before.
Robert McCammon's Boy's Life was also a great book I have read over and over again. And Hemingway's Islands in the Stream is my favorite of his. The Great Gatsby is also a perrenial favorite.
As you can tell, it's hard for me to just pick one.
-How do we follow/reach you?
I update this blog weekly (or at least try to). You can contact me through here or email me at michaelwhetzel@gmail.com. If you look above on the right side of the screen my twitter and facebook feeds are available. I'm on facebook a lot so LIKE my page and you can get daily updates and such.
Now enough questions, let's talk about writing......
Writing the Black Rain Journals as a series.
If I had it all to do over again, I would have never chosen to make my first foray into self-publishing the first book in a series. Knowing what I know now, the time and effort required to complete Black Rain will not begin to see any fruition until at the earliest the thrid book of the series. That means I am probably not going to make any headway in sales until around year 2 of the project. Why is this you ask?
Simply because I am still an unknown. Readers will not take a risk on starting a series until they see several books already completed. No one wants to buy book 1 from a self published writer, not knowing if their time and money investment will be rewarded with the rest of the series. You see, a lot of self published series for ereaders, are never finished. They're half formed ideas that are thrown away when sales are not good or the writer grows bored with the characters/story. A reader gets pretty angry when they feel left hanging and a writer should know better before making that commitment. I say that, but then I sure didn't know enough before making that decision myself.
There have been numerous times I almost un-published The Voice. Why bother spending so much time on one big story when I could write several stand alone stories and garner better sales. The numbers don't lie. I sell more copies of The Pied Piper of the Undead than The Voice at a ratio of almost 80:1. The money is there and the readers lean towards the single stories too. So what are the benefits of continuiing a series under such circumstances?
The one thing that comes to mind is the power of the epic. Think how many times you have finished a really good novel and wished there was more to read. Or you wanted a sequel to that really cool movie. We like extended stories. I would much rather read the Dark Tower, or A Song of Fire and Ice, or Harry Potter than just one good book. I actively seek out a good series, looking for the next epic story I can jump into. Because if a world is creatively good, readers don't want to leave it. They want to continue to explore it and watch its characters grow and evolve.
The other thing that a series can help with is maintaining an author's platform, or branding. I think authors with a successful series under their belt have greater name recognition over their peers. It is a lot of work, designing the world and rules, creating the characters and setting the story beats over the course of several books. But in the end, if the story is good and readers continue to follow it, I have gotten them to commit not to one peice of work, but several. The more time a reader invests in reading my story, the more time they invest in me.
There is one drawback to the way I am writing Black Rain though. With a series, self published authors have learned that getting them out as quickly as possible helps the series find better success. Readers don't want to wait. Unless you are Stephen King or George RR Martin, that is. So authors churn out the books back to back to back in order to get the whole story out quickly. I am not able to do this. As much as I love the world I am creating within the pages of Black Rain, from a creative standpoint, it is taxing to stay there for an extended period of time. I put breaks in between the Black Rain books to work on other stories, and recharge my batteries so to speak. In this way, I will not burn out on the world and characters I am creating, and maintain a fresh perspective whenever I am working on them. I have set a pace of 2 Black Rain books a year and feel that is almost pushing it. I'm taking my time growing this series in the hopes that readers will find it worth the wait. I guess I won't know until around book 3 or 4.
Well, patience is a virtue.
So what about you? How do you feel about series vs single stories? And what are some of your favorites? Drop a line here and let us know.
Next blog I'll talk about the evolution of characters and the burden of continuity while writing the series. And we'll delve more into iFiction! projects as the launch date approaches. Where did this year go?
Mike
No comments have been added yet.
