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

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

Got the rejection this morning. I plan on sending it to F&SF next, and then Analog if necessary, before moving on to lesser venues.

Today's story: Orca: a flash fiction threat.

Today's is a biographical ramble of sorts, along with ancient computer stuff: An Excellent Pair of Afflictions

Clapped for everyone. Great stories!

I signed up for the Navigating takeover, too.

Alexis wrote: "Hey Dale! You just need to tell me which book(s) you want featured on the banner and if you want, suggestions of the text to add."

Ice on the Bay is my new one. I wouldn't mind having its predecessors, The Fibonacci Murders and True Death on there. Books are on sale at www.serpentcliff.com in all formats, and on Amazon, in Kindle. My favorite testimonial for Ice on the Bay so far is:

"...a cracking crime suspense novel with enough twists and turns to make a belly dancer faint." --Dianne James (Novel Experiences)

Thanks!

Oh my . . . and one more. I submitted this to The Writing Cooperative yesterday and expected it wouldn't appear for three or four days, but they surprised me and published it today. Sorry about that . . .

Show and Tell Reinterpreted

Theodore wrote: "LOL You know, it was confusing. They said "no prompt," and yet, they posted a photograph. In any event, good luck."

Yeah, I was tempted to write to the photograph anyway, but about a month after I got the announcement, a story occurred to me that I thought would be good for them. I don't even know where it came from.

Anyway, thanks again. And you never know, maybe you'll find a story for them, too, before September.

And this morning (sorry for bombarding you) I've reposted my next IU flash fiction piece, Moonlight Sonata, a science fiction romance tale and one of my personal favorites. I hope you enjoy it.

Theodore wrote: "Alyssa and I have decided to leave the field to you."

Two fewer tough competitors. I'm a shoe-in. ;-)

Alexis wrote: "I’ve done this before in a different group and it was quite fun.

I basically just make you a banner/header for Facebook with promotional text on it.

I’m making one for Alex today, and then I will..."

Great work! I wouldn't mind one. What do you need?

A couple of new things today:

Nonfiction: Attention Shock, on the subject of our allegedly shortening attention spans.

Fiction: Rebirth, in Lit Up, for their April flash fiction prompt.

Alexis wrote: "Dale wrote: "It depends on what one means by a "personal" website. I suspect they mean a "personal" URL, that is a URL that can be your name or some other memorable thing you pick and not something..."

True, although there may (note I say "may") be some advantage in having a personal URL because search engines might give a site a bit of a bump if the URL seems to match the search terms.

In my case, I feel it's worth it, because believe it or not, there is another Dale E. Lehman out there who has published some books. He's an economics professor and has published in his field, but there could be some confusion between us for those who don't know. I own the URL matching our name. ;-)

May wrote: "I'm 3 chapters into (what I hope to be) my debut novel, and guess what! I just realised that my plot may be another pile of regurgitated, done-before, boring mess that doesn't make sense to anyone ..."

It's fine. Write it. If nothing else, you need the experience.

My "debut" novel (the one that was actually published by my own little company) was my sixth. That, after writing piles of unsellable short stories for a couple of decades. I don't mean to scare you--your trajectory will be your own, not mine--but honestly, most of us don't write a winner the first or second or third time out. But we must write those early works anyway, because that's the only way to gain experience and expertise in writing. So just write it and don't worry about it.

I'm 59. Genre doesn't matter so much. Audience does. Tell the story. If you want to tell it for a YA audience, make it a YA something or other. If you want to tell it for an adult audience, make it an adult whatever. It sounds like horror or dark fantasy to me, but I'm not much into either of those genres, so what do I know?

Carole wrote: "Do you think a name gives people a preconceived idea of who they are? Do they shape the characters?"

I haven't generally found that the name affects the way I develop the character. There can be some extreme cases, however. In Space Operatic I've given all of the opera company employees relatively silly stage names, and some of them are reflective of what the characters think of themselves, although mostly they're just silly.

I've read some books in which names were rather painfully symbolic of the characters' roles in the story. The worst case I've encountered--and I'm not making this up--was a reporter character named Frankly Unctuous.

Just typing it makes me feel ill . . .

Thanks everyone! Just remember not to cross digits and drive . . . or type. Either one can be dangerous. ;-)

It depends on what one means by a "personal" website. I suspect they mean a "personal" URL, that is a URL that can be your name or some other memorable thing you pick and not something that has the Wordpress brand (or whatever) as part of it.

The value in having a personal URL is that it is easy to remember and find. If you know you're looking for me, and you know my byline reads Dale E. Lehman, you can easily go to or find www.DaleELehman.com.

The rest of it is largely a matter of how technical you are. I have a Wordpress site, but it's not hosted through Wordpress. I use a hosting company called 123ehost.com (which is a Canadian company). I've been with them since 2001, and have hosted several sites through them. Because I'm a software developer, I've been able to employ a varitey of techniques, from writing my own site from scratch to using Wordpress (for my author site and the current incarnation of Planet Baha'i) to Drupal (for my e-commerce sites for One Voice Press and Serpent Cliff). I pay for a business hosting account right now, which is a bit pricey but was necessary to get certain features I needed for smooth operation of my e-commerce sites. However, that lets me host a number of sites under one plan, so in effect I'm paying for my business sites and piggybacking everything else onto it for free.

Many hosts do offer software packages such as Wordpress, so you can do this kind of thing without being uber-technical. But you do have to go pay for a domain name (and possibly several), buy the hosting plan, and learn how to use the provider's tools to get your site up and running. I like 123ehost because they are not too expensive, they provide good customer support, and I find their tools fairly intuitive, for the most part.

Alexis wrote: "There's this website.
I've never been featured on it.
I've never even visited it.


:)"

That says so little, yet I find it really intriguing!

"The Fibonacci Murders" is pure description. It's a book about murders based on the Fibonacci series.

"True Death" occurred to me one day as a neat name for a novel. I think the inspiration was probably religious/spiritual, and that's how I applied it thematically to the book. This was a bit backwards; I don't usually pick the title before writing the book.

Except it happened again with "Ice on the Bay." I was coming up on the Francis Scott Key Bridge during a record cold winter in Maryland when I realized the whole river was covered in ice. I'd never seen that before and I thought, "Ice on the bay. What a great title!"

By the by, you'll remember that Francis Scott Key was being held captive on a British ship when he wrote the poem that became the words for the U.S. National Anthem. The spot where that ship was anchored during the bombardment of Ft. McHenry is just south of the bridge. If you look north, you can see in the distance a beacon flashing on the point where Ft. McHenry is situated.

There is almost never ice covering the Patapsco or the upper Chesapeake Bay, but it has happened a few times over the past century.

Like Alex, I've ended up with characters whose names all start with the same letters, or more generally that sound too much alike, (same number of syllables, same ending sounds, etc.).

In recent years I've started looking up names online based on nationality. I decide my characters' primary ancestry and then search for " surnames" and " given names". I try to pay some attention to the area in which my story is set. For my Howard County Mysteries, I try to get a reasonable amount of diversity but focus a bit more on English names, since Maryland was settled by the English and those names are more prevalent here.