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

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

Been thinking of it, but never did one before and so am not quite sure what it entails. Examples? Also, time might be an issue for me.

Erica wrote: "Sorry to hear about your illness. I hope you get to feeling better soon, Dale."

Thank you. It's not bad, more in the annoying category. :-P

Thanks, Angel, and I think I caught up on everyone. If not, let me know and I will.

I'll catch up with everyone's new stuff shortly. I spent a day resting up from a slight illness by running my son to the doctor and whatnot (not exactly restful!) but got around to posting another flash fiction tale: Tombstone. Enjoy!

I've written a two-part article on using Medium.com for Indies Unlimited. The first part is online today (4/16). Please enjoy and share!

The second part will be online tomorrow (4/17). I'll post the link to it then.

Thanks!

Let's try a different approach:

First they get sick. Then they vanish.

Lillian thought her new school and new friends would erase past sorrows. But now her classmates are falling ill and disappearing without a trace. When she happens upon a curious device, she realizes she holds the key to the mystery.

But the creators of this fusion of technology and human mind want it back and will stop at nothing to get it. Lillian and her young friends are no match for such powerful adversaries. But who can they turn to for help, when they hold in their hands a technology so powerful it should never have been created?

Ted and I both have stories in the IU flash fiction competition this week. Ted's is about a fast and furious race, while mine deals with the consequences of automated vehicles for a certain nefarious profession.

Stories are in the comments. Voting will be open Wednesday and Thursday. One of us will surely post a link to the voting poll then. Meanwhile, enjoy both stories!

I've caught up with reading and clapping. (Great start, Sam!)

My flash fiction story "Lost and Found" is now available on the publication Lit Up. I had intended this for last week's Indies Unlimited competition, but I didn't get it posted in time, so I sent it to Lit Up instead.

I also have submitted another Writing Cooperative article. I'll let you know when that's available.

Sam (Rescue Dog Mom, Writer, Hugger) wrote: "You got it, Dale. Hugs"

Thank you!

I've posted a story today that's not part of the Partnership Program and so won't be earning money. But I'd appreciate your support for it anyway: Baha'i Houses of Worship: The growth of a religion illustrated in architecture. At the very least, I'm sure you'll enjoy the pictures. ;-)

Amy wrote: "Dale wrote: I'm very tired. I hope that made sense.

It did. :-)

Erica wrote: "New article:
https://medium.com/@egraham040/the-be..."

Clapped and commented.

Alex wrote: "Dale wrote: "Today's post is flash fiction story Solitary. It's a cruise story . . . sort of . . ."

Clapped and tweeted yours Dale, I like it.

Here's my latest offering, inspired by the wonderful..."

Thanks! I clapped for yours, too.

Alexis wrote: "All of you wonderful people have great advice. But I think, actually I know that by now we all know how this works. Sometimes you’re just looking to VENT. I think, that that is what Aislinn was loo..."

Probably so. I have an excuse for my reply, though. I'm told that whereas women are looking for sympathy and understanding at such moments, men are usually looking for solutions. That apparently causes a lot of communications problems between us. ;-)

Evelyn wrote: "New here. Great idea.

I only 'do' Twitter, but have followed all those on that platform

My links are


Twitter: https://twitter.com/EwOwl

Good reads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show......"

Followed!

Today's post is flash fiction story Solitary. It's a cruise story . . . sort of . . .

Amy wrote: "My husband almost smiled when he saw this cover for my latest novel. It's a very good sign. (Draft copy, hence the Fiverr logo)

What do you think?
"

Beautiful. I'd go with it.

Aislinn,

Find another likely publisher and send it. Don't worry too much that you wrote it to a particular publisher's specs. A well-written book can find a home in any number of publishing houses, if it arrives at the right time and on the right person's desk.

A rejection doesn't mean your work isn't good enough. Often it just means it didn't spark enough interest in an overworked and possibly jaded reader. Agents and publishers may receive thousands of submissions every year but can only accept a small percentage of them. Even if every single submission were an absolute gem, they'd end up rejecting the vast majority of them. I once read a comment from an editor who said, "Most of the submissions we get are not inept, but many are inapt." So long as you make sure your writing is as good as it can be and you submit to agents or publishers who are looking for the kind of material you've written, you've done everything you can do. The rest is largely just the luck of the draw.

I've semi-self-published three of my own novels (a mystery series) through a small company my wife and I own, but I'm looking for an agent for an SF/humor novel I've written. So far this year I've received four rejections and am awaiting the fifth. I've gotten to the point (because a long time back I submitted oodles of short stories to magazines and never sold one) where I can shrug my shoulders at rejection slips. I expect to receive them. That way, if the happy day comes when I receive an acceptance letter instead, I can be pleasantly surprised, but rejections will just earn a shrug of the shoulders and I can move on.

It's not a terribly fun process, but make up a list of possible submission targets and send your work to each one in turn. It's sort of an assembly line process. And meanwhile, work on your other writing projects.

Also, if you'd like a neutral opinion of your manuscript and where else you might submit it, I'll offer a bit of my limited time to look it over and make a few suggestions, no charge. (Er, this is a one-time offer only extended to Aislinn; as much as I'd love to similarly help everyone, I don't have the spare time.) Send me a private message so we can make arrangements.

Stay positive, and good luck!

P.S. I totally get the "indie publishing is not for me" thing. I'd love nothing better than to have the resources of a major publisher in my corner. But as others have said, there is no guarantee of success, and not every publisher has the resources to fully market every book. As I understand it, they pour most of their marketing resources into books you might think don't need much of it--those by big-name authors--because they can get a substantial return on that investment. That enables them to publish us "smaller" folks, but they may be reluctant to put much into marketing us. I've heard that during contract negotiations it's worth asking for a marketing budget, even a small one. You might get one if you ask, but might not if you don't. That's just 15 or 20 year old hearsay, but it may be valid.

Erica wrote: "A local bookstore shared this article. I never thought about this and am thinking twice about my buy links or at least including both Amazon and indie bookstores as options for my paperbacks. I may..."

Interesting article and good points. Thanks!

Not all editing is about structure, flow, continuity, sentence structures, and typos. Sometimes it's about context. The following made me laugh, in a cringing sort of way. Or is it cringe in a laughing sort of way? You decide:

"Autonomous vehicles are currently subject to a lot of hope, hype and hysteria, especially after the recent fatality in Arizona, when a pedestrian was struck and killed by one of Uber’s self-driving cars. Autonomous vehicles will likely have as significant an impact on our lives as electricity, computers and the internet all did. However, just like the aforementioned innovations, we cannot predict all the varied impacts and implications, both positive and negative, of self-driving vehicles."

[From the Medium article What Do We Know About Autonomous Vehicles? by Carl Anderson.]

Technically there's nothing wrong with this passage, but as I read it, I about choked when I realized that mention of a pedestrian being struck and killed by a self-driving car was followed by not one but two instances of the word "impact." I think I'd change the first one to "effect" and cut the second one.

By the by, I've made my wife spout her drink from her nose a time or three with my own failures to consider context when choosing a word, so I'm not criticizing, just pointing it out.