Dale’s Comments (group member since Sep 15, 2017)

Dale’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

My new Writing Cooperative piece: Listen To Your Editor

Carrie wrote: "Hi, all. I need some feedback on the blurb for my second novel. Dark(ish) Contemporary Fantasy, Adult. Have at it! :-D

I'd take a different approach, something like this:

Some things are better left dead.

Twins Avery and Chloe Parsons recognized the face in the cracked crystal ball. From within its shadowy depths, their grandmother Magda tells of a desparate spell cast in a moonlit cemetary to awaken her deceased lover. It's a terrifying tale of lust, betrayal, and demons.

Now only the twins can stop Magda's resurrected lover before he unleashes an unstoppable evil, but the only tools they have at their disposal are their grandmother's trapped spirit and a book of dark magic written in a language they cannot read. And time is running out.

D.J. wrote: "(I want an editor... moan... first I need to earn money... sigh)"

Yeah, it's cheaper if you have a built-in editor. Or can sell your work to a publisher, so they'll edit it for free.

I have done some collaboration with my wife Kathleen. She has edited all of my work since we were in college, and we're coming up on the 42nd anniversary of the day we met. She is tough on me, and it's not always easy to listen to her input, but I respect her abilities so much that I force myself to listen and learn.

She provided so much input to Ice on the Bay, even writing a few of the scenes from scratch, that I told her I wanted her byline on it. We are planning on writing the next Howard County Mystery novel together, although a lot of things have prevented us from getting far with it as yet.

We are currently having a lot of fun jointly writing a tale that will probably just be our own private little story never to be published. It features the mythical characters Thor and Loki and falls halfway between the mythology of the Edda and the film characters from the Marvel "universe".

And one detailing my adventures in buying a new charger for my laptop. Nothing Is Ever Easy

Theodore wrote: "Good article on moving from CS to IngramSpark:

https://www.indiesunlimited.com/2018/...

"It’s $49 to upload a file to IngramSpark, but they have fr..."

I saw that article, which was timely for me since we're shutting down our publishing company and I need a new alternative for my books. $49 doesn't sound bad to me, but I've been doing print runs of 200 or so books, which costs a lot more than that. Plus, if the books get listed at some major distributors as a result (which I think they do) without me having to do the work, that's a big plus.

Congratulations, everyone!

Since my last experiment along these lines worked out so well, I've done a 3-parter, writing a story, revising a story, and presenting the final copy. Comments accompany the first two parts, explaining what I did and why. The whole shebang has been published in Lit Up. Each one links to the others, but here they all are for your convenience:

The Test - Part 1 (first draft)
The Test - Part 2 (revised draft)
The Test - Part 3 (final copy)

Carole wrote: "Thanks, Alexis, I was nervous about publishing that one!! You made me feel better!!! xxx"

Great story, Carole. You need not be nervous at all about it.

The Writing Cooperative just published my latest instructional piece, The Action Scene. I hope I know what I'm talking about. ;-)

Written for my Catholic wife. She hasn't seen it yet. I hope she finds it to be of some comfort. It's Not the Church

Angel wrote: "Dale wrote: "Here's a story I wrote from a prompt at the creative writing workshop I lead. I expanded it a bit before submitting it to Lit Up: The Fortune Teller"

Shared, Dale!"

Thank you!

Here's a story I wrote from a prompt at the creative writing workshop I lead. I expanded it a bit before submitting it to Lit Up: The Fortune Teller

Hoang Chi wrote: "Hello fellow authors,
First time posting here and would love to have your follow and support. Here's my most read story on Medium. https://medium.com/@hongchitrngsmith/......"

Followed and clapped.

Sam (Rescue Dog Mom, Writer, Hugger) wrote: "My Medium Profile states I'm a Top Writer in Mental Health. That cannot be right! Out of how many... a thousand? Ha, ha! Hugs to All!"

Congratulations! It's not too hard to become a top writer in a category. All you need are a lot of stories tagged with that category.

The Writing Cooperative just published my latest: Typography Isn't Writing, which is subtitled, "So WHY would you DO that??!!??!!" ;-)

I did a BargainBooksy promo for True Death last Sunday, but this time only got 6 sales. That pays for a bit less than half of the promo. Not sure what the difference was between this and the first highly successful one. I didn't do any additional postings because of lack of time, which may have had a little to do with it. It might also have been the competition I was up against with the other highlighted books, or maybe the description wasn't quite as catchy (apparent serial killing based on the Fibonacci murders vs. a detective faced with the unsolved killing of his own wife). Or maybe I just got lucky with the first one. In any case, I'll be doing one for Ice on the Bay next month, sort of coinciding with my birthday.

Something other than writing instruction and fiction: Coyotes Among Us.

One of my granddaughters, who is 13, reads a great deal of fan fiction online on her tablet. There may yet be ways to capture the attention of teens with literature, but it may often have to be done by sneaky tech-enabled means.

My next flash fiction piece, about a drug deal gone wrong: You're Joking.