Leon’s Comments (group member since Aug 12, 2014)

Leon’s comments from the Authors' Helpline group.

I’m about halfway through posting Serenity to Facebook. There were some difficulties along the way, such as that I had to start numbering the posts for people who came in late, and to make sure that everybody read the book in the right sequence.
I’m very happy with how the experiment is going, some of the posts have seen up to 100 views. It always helps when others share the posts, then I get even more views, but I don’t want to badger people to share my posts, as I think it’s rude. They will share it if they liked what they read.

Hi Yelena
If you read Terry Pratchett or JK Rowling, you will get hundreds of them.
For instance From JK, think of words like Muggle (A non magical person), disapparate (to disappear and then reappear at a different location) etc. used in the Harry Potter series.
In my own book Hordes there is a drug called Morphoset. People trying to obtain this drug uses the letter 'M'on the Internet to confuse legal issues.
Hope this helps.

Update time.
I have now posted the first 30 parts of the book to Facebook. Usually I get more than 50 views of the post, which I think is fantastic.
I cannot truthfully say that the experiment has resulted in sales yet, even after a month of posting. However, I can truthfully say that I have gotten a lot of public notice, and that can never be a bad thing.

Yelena, can you please give us an example of what exactly it is that you want?
I am sure an example would help.

I am exploring the idea of what I think of as a concurrent novel.
My newest novel is nearing completion. It takes place over a time period of about three months. However, because of the topic of the novel, there is a large amount of ideas that I never got to explore in the story.
So the question is, would it work to use the exact same timeline, but new characters and new plots to explore the ideas I missed on first time round? The events of the first book, which was of a global nature, would all still be exactly the same. That is why I’m thinking of it as a concurrent novel, the timeline of the second novel is concurrent with the first novel, it’s not a sequel.
It’s difficult to explain without giving away the plot of my new book, so I’ll make up a story to explain further.
Let us say that there has been a nuclear disaster. The first novel explored the lives of 10 people during this holocaust.
Now let us suppose that I write a next book, based on the exact same nuclear disaster as the first book, but I use a new set of characters, plots and events.
The reader, of course, will be left in no doubt that the two books are connected through the same event.
Hope that is clear.
Any thoughts?

I am doing an experiment on Facebook, and would like to take this opportunity to invite you all to join.
Here is what is happening. I am going to publish my book Serenity on Facebook, bit by bit, until the whole book is published. So far, I have posted 3 parts, and will be posting a new part every day. So saunter over to my books page – Leon de Kock Books – on Facebook, and have a look.
For indie authors, this is an experiment to see if it will lead to increased traffic, and, hopefully, increased sales. I will post results if and when I start seeing them.
Regards
Leon

Here are some excellent tips I've found this morning.

http://www.examiner.com/article/44-pr...

Filler
Before going into a discussion on filler, it’s probably important that we understand what filler in a story is.
Filler is anything that does not directly influence the story line, the characters or the plot. When describing scenes, you can also get to a point where you are over-describing, at which point the descriptions would become filler.
When reading, I hate coming across things that look like filler. It’s difficult though, because what looks like filler on page fifteen may turn out to be an important part of the plot or an important aspect of the character on the second to last page.
A good example of overused filler (to me) was what I found in the book ‘The curious incident of the dog in the night time’ by Mark Haddon.
In the book, the character keeps on telling us exactly how things are. He is so many years old, so many months, days, hours, minutes seconds. The character tells us exactly what he had in his pockets, down to the paperclip.
This is all very amusing during the first few chapters of the book, and it helps to show that there is something fundamentally wrong with the character, he is different. Pretty soon though, it becomes boring. I don’t want to hear a conversation about exactly how the cake looked, unless it has something to do with the story. And so I stopped reading the book, it got shelved.
Even Stephen King, in some of his longer novels, had me bored with things that turned out to be filler.
We need to recognise that there is a line between description and filler, and on re-reads of our story we need to cut out the filler and leave only the important bits. I suspect that some people do re-writes to add filler and make a book thicker, and I’m also quite sure I can spot these filler pieces a mile off, and it puts me off the book.
Terry Pratchett was a master of writing filler, but that was because his fillers were mostly hilarious. He could write a whole page that had nothing to do with the story and have me rolling off the bed laughing. Another such master is JK Rowling in the Potter series. She didn’t do the comedy bit, but she wrote a spellbinding story and her fillers were true fleshing out of the scenes. She was so good at this that one person I read somewhere described the school Hogwarts as a character itself. She brought the school to life in a way few other writers can.
If you can write like Pratchett or Rowling, then go for it, write the filler and amuse your audience. The rest of us, I suspect, should stay as far away from fillers as possible.

Rohn, I think you have to be part of the Goodreads Librarian's group. You can send the Librarian's group a message and ask them to add the book too.

I got the following great link from the group Support for Indie Authors (https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...)

The link is really worth a read.
https://medium.com/@pierzy/what-happe...

Dealing with writing problems
There are, and probably always will be, some problems that a writer has to deal with. Here are a couple, and ways to deal with them.

Dream Breakers
You will always get people that tell you that you are wasting your time, or think that you are crazy for doing what you are doing. (Sometimes that person might even be you!) Decide beforehand how you are going to deal with these people. Remember that there are millions upon millions of books out there, and each one of them was written by a person. You have the right to enjoy writing as much as those other authors have the right to enjoy writing, so whenever someone asks you what you are trying to accomplish, or tells you that you are wasting your time, tell them that is fine, you are enjoying what you are doing.

Deal with fear
Sometimes, especially if you are writing or thinking about writing your first book, you will have to deal with fear. Don’t let that fear keep you from writing, rather use it as a tool. Sit down behind your keyboard and explore the full fear factor. You will soon realise that the keyboard cannot bite. There is a backspace button, you can change things you don’t like. Start out small, write an overview of the book that you want to write, and then start exploring that overview, expand on it, take small bites, until you are so submerged in your book that you have forgotten about the fear. Then finish your first book, and start the second.

Procrastination
That one word, procrastination, is the killer of many good things, especially time. Don’t put your writing off until tomorrow. Make the time, tell the family to leave you alone, use your writing time. At some point in the future, you want to have a complete copy of your book. It is your dream, a thought that keeps you awake at night. Every day that you put of working on your book, is a day longer that you have to wait to make your dream a reality. Stop that, start turning your dream into a reality right now, today! When you are done writing today, know that you are one day closer to realising your dream. If you don’t write today, scold yourself, for you are one day behind on reaching your goal.

Deal with distractions and interruptions
Some interruptions, especially family, are just not avoidable, but some are. Put your phone on silent, switch off the internet. If the kids or the next door neighbours are noisy, listen to your favourite music. Tell your immediate family not to bug you unless they really have to.


OK, so I have mentioned a few of the problems writers face that you will have to learn to deal with. If you have any others, feel free to add them here, and tell us how you are going to deal with them, or better still, how you are already dealing with them.
Leon

Sorry for taking so long to get back to you.

I think that question will be much better answered by a legal eagle than by a writer.
I know this is not much help, but that is my honest feeling.

Only saw this now, shows you how busy I've been.
It looks very interesting, did you enter a story?

A few months on, and I've dumped Smashwords. There were no sales for me there, and I am trying the free ebook giveaways that a person can do if the book is enrolled in the Select program.
So far I've had two book giveaways, one for a day and one for two days, but as yet it has not really increased my sales.

I was doing some reading on the net last night, trying to see which genres make the most money, and there is a surprising amount of websites that come to sometimes differing conclusions.
I found the following one quite good though.

5 Biggest selling genres.

Obviously I'm not saying that a person should write outside of his/her genre to make more money, but there might be other ways, such as incorportating other genre's into your books. Add a bit of smut to your horror novel, or have a sub-plot of a murder mystery in your fantasy novel.

I have decided to start a thread on online resources. If you find an online resource, in other words a website that gives great advice on how to get your indie book published, please share the link on this thread.

To start off, have a look at The Book Designer

Why, why, oh why do YOU want to be a writer?
Why do you want to be a writer? This, surely, is a question that any serious aspiring writer should ask him or herself. Before you can answer this question clearly to yourself, you are going to stumble around the typewriter blindly.
The natural answer should be 'Because I have something to tell the world.'
Somewhere inside you, there should be a story that you want to tell to others, ideas that you want to explore and know that you can only do so if you put them down on paper.
I do not think that any writer will write purely for the pleasure of writing. Nobody is going to write a novel and then hide it from the world. At least they shouldn't. A writer must, at some time or another, take his or her audience into consideration.

Once you understand why you want to write, you can get over some of the other hurdles that might be keeping you from penning that first award winning novel. Here are some of the things you might face in your writing career.

* Procrastination - the thief of time. Remember, if you had started writing when you first thought about it, your novel would probably have been finished by now. So tonight, set aside two hours and then sit behind your keyboard for those two hours and start writing. Once that is done, you are two hours into your new career as a writer. Congratulate yourself, have a coffee or a glass of wine to celebrate.
* Fear of failure - Yes, you cannot fail if you don't start, but by not starting you have already failed. So face your fear of failure head on and remember the mantra - 'You lose out on one hundred percent of the opportunities that you do not take.'
* Dealing with competition - Here's the truth - there is no competition. Huh, what? Remember, it is not a contest, it is just your chance to share your story with others. If you are afraid that other writers will be better than you, and that the public will rather buy their work, then here's an idea - decide today that you will give your first book away for free. There you go, no more competition. But now your book will be read. That does not mean you do not have to do a professional job on it, because your next novel is going to cost the readers money, and your first book is your great advertisement.
* Writer's block - There are ways to get over writer's block. Read what other author's have to say about writer's block. Goodreads Author pages have excellent answers to this question.
* Distractions etc. Get rid of them. Let the family know that you do not want to be bothered. Leave your phone off or with the family.

Every new challenge we face brings anxieties. Learning to drive, dive or draw, everything takes a bit of time to get used to. Start writing today, because you WANT to tell a story.

I have just pulled all my books from Smashwords and decided to go for KDP Select for a period of at least one year. The reason?
Since leaving KDP Select some time ago and joining up with Smashwords, I have had Zero sales on Amazon, and only one sale on Smashwords. I've therefore decided that Smashwords is just not worth it.
But the real thing I want to ask you is your opinion of KDP Select. Do you or don't you use it, and why or why not?

Interesting.
If I was reading this as a book, I would definitely not put the book down right there and then.
There are one or two points that I don't understand, but I think it's because I'm from South Africa, and I've taught myself to read around this kind of thing, so I don't think you need to take them out. I'm talking about things like the high-beams on the Crown Victoria. 'Public enemy number 1' is probably Iron Maiden, I imagine. (I can see Eddie's face on that black hoodie, dumping Ree into even more trouble!)

Good luck with this, it sounds really good.

Something I do wrong quite regularly is to get fixated on a word, or sometimes a phrase, and then I start using that word or phrase in my work, over and over again.
Readers pick up on this of course, and it annoys them to the point where they find my writing irritating. Luckily for me, my first reader points most of these out to me, but sometimes they still slip by.
In my book Hordes, I used the word 'Bust' (referring to a police raid on an illegal operation) so many times that, when I re-read the book, even I got tired of the word. It was on every page, sometimes many times on one page. It was sickening, nauseating, and it spoiled a large part of the book. During the current edit (which I'm busy with right now), I am substituting the word 'Bust' with all kinds of other words, like Raid, Arrest, Search etc.
Another example is my use of the phrase 'A moment later,' as in 'A moment later she turned and jumped through the window.' My work is peppered with this phrase, but once again it's a hindrance to reading the story.

When writing the initial story, it's more important to get the story down, so I don't concentrate on that kind of problem, but it's important to recognize and fix this before your work goes out to the public, as it will annoy them. I'm not saying that all writers have this problem, but if you do, it is crucial to recognize and correct the problem!