Q&A with Josh Lanyon discussion
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Writing Questions for Josh
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I guess if everyone's an equal creative partner, it might give some leeway? I don't know. I suspect being a screenwriter must be one of the hardest jobs around for the writerly ego -- given that so many screenplays end up being written by a committee.
Josh wrote: "Jordan wrote: " your words made my blood run cold.Chilly.
Cold.
(Hmm. I've used cold 110 times already...)
Icy.
Cold."
LOL! Brrrrr
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The sentence that really threw me was a long one. Granted, it could easily have been read just fine both ways. If I didn't have the book in front of me I never would have noticed. But I had to go back and relisten to it a second time to see the difference. My immediate thoughts went to those who don't speak/read English well. Normally I don't read and listen together. But having bought the book in print, it somehow didn't feel right skipping that to listen to the audio first. I'm weird, I know. Cause I bought the audio for a long train ride so thought I would attempt to keep my eyes open and do both.
Hey Josh --I've been listening to several mm audiobooks recently -- including A Dangerous Thing (good job -- I noticed fewer production glitches than in Fatal Shadows, though IMHO the sibilants were still too strong -- yes, I'm picky) and the His for the Holidays anthology (just started on Icecapade).
Of all these books, I have most enjoyed a narrator named Alec McKellen. He did ZA Maxfield's I Heard Him Exclaim. Unfortunately, that is the **only** story he's credited with on Audible. I'm hoping that he's done other jobs under a different name. REALLY liked him. Great job with the timbre, the expressiveness, and the character voices.
I just want to put his name out there for anyone who's looking for a narrator. I'm certainly going to be keeping an eye out for him. :-)
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Hi Josh - "strip-mi..."
It's not a popular view, I realize, but I do think strip-mined is the correct term. Too many authors, too many publishers were (and still are, frankly) determined to cash in while the cashing was good in a genre that offered a relatively wide and open field.
This is the way of the world, of course. I'm not saying it's exclusive to M/M or niche fiction or even indie publishing. In every publishing cycle there is a boom and a bust.
Frontlist drives backlist. Always. And the more visible the frontlist, the bigger the push to the backlist. Which is why choosing the right publishers is so important.
In my particular case I've gone roughly two years with only three (now four) self-pubbed short stories and an experimental novella to drive my backlist sales. The fact that those sales are only really tumbling now speaks to the size of my existing backlist. The last "big" release I had was Lonestar in December 2011.
For me, the problem wasn't the break so much as that during the break I couldn't make myself plan for the coming year. So here we are at the midway point of the second year and and all I've managed to produce in the way of new work is the experimental Blood Red Butterfly, the short story In Plain Sight, and the Haunted Heart (which I am naturally pinning a lot of hopes on).
On the other hand, what I did do on sabbatical was diversify enormously and my audio and print sales have largely made up for the plummet in ebook sales.
So despite the rush of panic when I see my kindle numbers, the overall financial picture is still strong. PROVIDED I begin to produce again. Because audio and print can only pick up so much of the slack. The vast majority of my earnings come from ebooks. I probably have until the end of the year to get back on track.
Interestingly, now that I am back and online again, my sales are creeping up, so the other thing that would seem to drive them is online presence and visibility. During the week I was on vacation, first time visits to my site dropped an average of 200. OUCH.
I had no idea my erratic social media presence had such an impact.
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I've been listening to several mm audiobooks recently -- including A Dangerous Thing (good job -- I noticed fewer production glitches than in Fatal Shadows, though IMHO the sibilants w..."
It probably isn't his real name. I had a similar experience with the narrator of my two Carina novellas. I liked "Max Tatch's" narration a lot (and I even forgave him mispronouncing Noel's name in Icecapade) but when I went to try and hire him for another project I quickly discovered no such person existed.
ACX promised to contact him for me, but I never heard from "Max." And given that I am paying more than the average bear (more than Carina, I'm sure, just because publishers often pay lower hourly rates but promise a lot of projects) I don't know if ACX did contact him or if Max just didn't realize he could have used another fake identity with me too. :-D
Not like I'm a stickler about these things.
I don't remember the voice that narrated ZAM's story, but I'll have a listen.
Josh wrote: "Interestingly, now that I am back and online again, my sales are creeping up, so the other thing that would seem to drive them is online presence and visibility. During the week I was on vacation, first time visits to my site dropped an average of 200. OUCH.I had no idea my erratic social media presence had such an impact. ..."
That's quite a large difference. I kept track of conversations on this site, but didn't participate much while you were gone. However part of that was due to my work blowing up in my face, not lack of interest in the conversation.
Josh wrote: "It probably isn't his real name. "Yeah, for some reason pseudonyms are quite common amongst narrators. There's at least a coupla well-known ones I know of with three different names each. ;-)
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Yeah, for some reason pseudonyms are quite common amongst narrators. There's at least a coupla well-known ones I know of with three different names ..."
Probably for the same reason a lot of writers do it. Mixing genres can be confusing for listeners and other publishers. I think some narrators are definitely not comfortable reading erotic scenes and books. Even M/F erotica.
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Yeah, for some reason pseudonyms are quite common amongst narrators. There's at least a coupla well-known ones I know of with three different names ..."
It does make it hard to track someone down!
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I agree. It seemed like a startling difference. Especially for first time visitors.
When you get your book back from an editor, how is it edited? A marked up doc file? Paper?On copy editing do they make the corrections or just show you where the mistakes are and you correct them yourself?
Curious minds, and all that.
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On copy editing do they make the corrections or just show you where the mistakes are and you correct them..."
Pretty much every publisher I know at this point used Track Changes. It'll all done electronically. Even mainstream publishing is doing electronic track changes now days. Although I'm sure there are companies who insist on going through the postal service.
Susinok wrote: "When you get your book back from an editor, how is it edited? A marked up doc file? Paper?On copy editing do they make the corrections or just show you where the mistakes are and you correct them..."
No properly trained editor will autonomously make corrections, unless the error is something simple and unambiguous, like a dropped letter or word, some punctuation weirdness, or an obvious misspelling (and even in those cases, s/he will double-check with the author). Editors can make suggestions re. more significant textual issues, but they can't take it upon themselves to make changes.
My last editor made the changes, but this is my third spin with him and I trust him implicitly. It's also on the understanding that, if I don't like it, I can solve whatever problem in a different way. Since he is very good about mimicking my style, I accept about 99% of those (tracked) changes. And he is a pro from the big print pubbing world, so not an amateur at all.
Susinok wrote: "On copy editing do they make the corrections or just show you where the mistakes are and you correct them yourself?"**Every** change that an editor makes on a MS is a SUGGESTION. The author ALWAYS has the option -- and the opportunity -- to reject those suggestions.
(And yes, it's done with Track Changes and copious comment bubbles.)
No, I'm not an author -- but I do get paid occasionally (on contract) to meddle with other peoples' manuscripts. ;-)
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**Every** change that an editor makes on a MS is a SUGGESTION. ..."
Well, I would argue with this based on my experience with one indie publishers I will no longer work with. :-) The only publisher I've ever worked with -- in some 30ish years of mainstream and indie publishing -- where the copyeditors could overrule the content editors. That's when you know you're working with career amateurs.
Saw this today about young, gay, British playwright Tom Wells: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainme...I thought it was interesting that Tom always wanted to write but only fell into writing plays because he attended a workshop at a local theatre and got a break.
Have you ever considered writing a play Josh? Would you want to?
There are thankfully still opportunities in UK provincial theatres for creative work by new talent despite funding cuts to the arts. I don't know whether similar opportunities exist in the US or elsewhere to the same extent?
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Just FYI--I'm actually doing a paper edit right this very second. But it's because I want the author to have complete agency in the edits, rather than just saying yes or no to things I did.
I wouldn't use this method every time, but I think there are cases where it's definitely useful.
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I'm very sorry, but I have to say that this is just not true--at least not in my experience. There are some edits that are absolutely required in order to comply with either the house style or brand content. I've demanded them as an editor. I've also had them demanded of me by editors when I work for other publishing companies as an author.
I'd say that in 99% of all cases what you wrote is true, but that 1% comes up at least one time in every single manuscript. Sometimes it's just an argument about when people are allowed to use numerals instead of letters. Other times whole scenes are cut or inserted.
I'd be interested to hear if that's just my experience though.
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Yeah... *sigh*
But some of use use our editorial powers for good instead of evil. :)
Nicole wrote: "There are some edits that are absolutely required in order to comply with either the house style or brand content."True. Loose Id comes to mind.
Nicole wrote: "Other times whole scenes are cut or inserted."
By editors? (I'm not sure what you mean by this.)
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Yeah. The inserted scenes are more like, "This rough outline is the scene that you need to write to make this whole story make sense/comply with brand. It goes here--do your best."
It depends on what the author wants/ will do, to a large extent. I'm working with someone at the moment who responded to a list of requested changes with 'Sure, as long as *you* do it', so I've ended up rewriting chunks of the book for him. I'm not precisely overjoyed about this, I have to admit.
K.J. wrote: "It depends on what the author wants/ will do, to a large extent. I'm working with someone at the moment who responded to a list of requested changes with 'Sure, as long as *you* do it', so I've end..."o_O That gentleman needs a 190-proof shot of Commitment to Craft.
Wow - I can't imagine wanting an editor to write a scene for me, much less asking for it. I've had editors ask me to add scenes, but no one's ever given me an outline. Of course, since mostly they're asking for the sex scene that I faded to black, I guess an outline isn't really necessary ;)
Nicole wrote: "I'm very sorry, but I have to say that this is just not true--at least not in my experience. There are some edits that are absolutely required in order to comply with either the house style or brand content. I've demanded them as an editor. I've also had them demanded of me by editors when I work for other publishing companies as an author."Yeah, I should clarify. Most of my editorial experience has been freelance -- no house rules to accommodate -- and only recently have I started work with a publishing house, as a junior editor. So when I say every editing suggestion is a SUGGESTION, I am speaking only of my individual input and not as the enforcement arm of a publishing house. ;-)
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That's awful! If it were up to me, and if i were that editor, I'd probably turn them down and not publish them. That sounds like the rich bratty child who doesn't want to clean their room. Seriously.
Then again, as some of you have pointed out, I wouldn't want someone else messing with my book like that, writing scenes for me? No thanks. I'll write it myself, otherwise it's no longer my book.
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I thought it was interesting that Tom always wanted to write but only fell into..."
Not a play, no. What a challenge that would be!
I've tried a few screenplays. I even briefly had an agent for my screenplays, but nothing came of that.
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I'm very sorry, bu..."
True. And to be honest, I fight almost nothing in edits. Ever. I accept 97% of all edits without a blink. Because of most of them just don't matter to me. The whole point of having an editor is to have the advantage of an unbiased (and trained) eye.
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Yeah... *sigh*
But some of use use our editorial powers for good instead of evil. :)"
Very true. For all the bitching I do, I have loved almost all of my editors. And I am grateful to them. I've been very lucky to have mostly very experienced editors, and that does make a difference. Editors learn their craft just as writers do. None of us start out brilliant.
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That's unacceptable. For many reasons.
Hi Josh, I'm not sure if this question has been asked or if it belongs here but anyway. Why do you as an author allow lending on your ebooks? (B&N, Amazon etc.) I looked up a few of the mainstream authors that I read and none of them allow lending. Lending sounds "nice" but financially there doesn't seem to be a benefit.
Josh wrote: "That's unacceptable. For many reasons."Indeed. I guess this guy sees himself as a jobbing writer: do the job as quick as possible, move on. I can't really understand why you'd want to be a writer at all with that attitude, but there you go.
Speaking as an author, I love being edited. It's much more fun that dealing with a blank page. Which is what I'm currently doing.
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Yes, I've done this before too. (Not with BEB, but in freelance work.) It's really hard b/c you've got to write to match the author's style. Requires mad impersonation skills.
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Hahahah! I love this. I'm going to call my self an enforcer from now on. :)
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:)
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Then again, as some of you have pointed out, I wouldn't want someone else messing with my book like that, writing scenes for me? No thanks. I'll write it myself, otherwise it's no longer my book."
Well, sometimes it is true that an author is being petulant or lazy, but other times an author kind of just drops dead from fatigue and needs help.
Also as an aside, I'm really enjoying this conversation. So many exchanges involving the subject of editing are totally theoretical and based mostly on addressing feelings of ownership on the part of authors. That barely scratches the surface of the author/editor relationship, IMHO.
I would lose my mind if an editor wrote and inserted a scene into my work. Lose. my. MIND. I've rewritten scenes, added entire chapters...Hell, I rewrote an entire book from 1st POV to 3rd (and that editor was 100% right because it was better). I'm not afraid of work, but it's still has to be my work. Not in part, either. All of it.Then again...I'm just coming out of a royal fubar of WTFery that was Noble Romance, where entire chapters were added to books (not mine, thank God) without author participation or even notification, if I remember right. Getting burned in a publisher funeral pyre tends to make a body paranoid.
Kari wrote: "I would lose my mind if an editor wrote and inserted a scene into my work. Lose. my. MIND. I've rewritten scenes, added entire chapters...Hell, I rewrote an entire book from 1st POV to 3rd (and tha..."Oh, lord, this reminds me of the first "editor" I ever had! She was a woman who started her own romance e-pub maybe 12 years ago. It was a tiny one-person operation, with a stable of no more than a dozen authors, and the owner wore every hat that exists in publishing. Problem was, none of them quite fit. :)
She took it upon herself to rewrite a crucial paragraph in the first book I published with her. I'd aimed for subtlety; she, obviously a fan of Seventies Harlequin romances, aimed for melodrama. When I saw her rewrite, I started laughing. Not only did her naive gall amuse me but also the final phrase she'd devised for this emotional conclusion to the book's first half.
I'd written, "It was then she noticed a worn copy of Blue Highways tucked like a message beneath a corner of her pillow. A single sprig of lily-of-the-valley lay between its pages." My self-styled editor added (among other bits of brilliance), "and she keeled over." :-D :-D :-D
I had no compunction about emailing her and saying, "No. Leave it the way I wrote it. Sometimes, less is more."
Funny, but she never said a word about the book's exuberant head-hopping.
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That's pretty awesome.
K.Z. wrote: "Kari wrote: "I would lose my mind if an editor wrote and inserted a scene into my work. Lose. my. MIND. I've rewritten scenes, added entire chapters...Hell, I rewrote an entire book from 1st POV to..."Not enough keeling going on in this business. Not by half. LOL.
I won't even consider subbing to new-to-me publishers for a while. Probably a long while. On pain of death. I just don't have the patience for this crap anymore. If I don't want to take a story to LI or Riptide, it's not like I don't have editors I can turn to, cover artists, others for format/conversion...Not the ideal. I don't enjoy handling production. But I am purely fed up with amateur hour bullshit and being jerked around by skeevy wankers I wouldn't deign to spit on if they were on fire.
Not that I'm bitter. ;D
ETA: I should add that I'm 100% happy with both LI and Riptide. No amateur hour bs, no skeevy wankering (which is a verb because I say so).
Nicole wrote: "K.Z. wrote: "and she keeled over." :-D :-D :-D"That's pretty awesome."
Isn't it? My mother (who'd be over 100 were she still alive) used the phrase keel over. It makes me think of a doomed ship with a Victorian maiden figurehead.
Kari wrote: "But I am purely fed up with . . . being jerked around by skeevy wankers I wouldn't deign to spit on if they were on fire.Not that I'm bitter. ;D"
Your editorial brought two letters to mind: C and E (not necessarily in that order). ;-)
Kari wrote: "ETA: I should add that I'm 100% happy with both LI and Riptide. No amateur hour bs, no skeevy wankering (which is a verb because I say so)."Yup, they're both stand-up publishers.
Isn't "wankering" a gerund, a kind of noun/verb hybrid? (Man, I hate myself when I get like this. Why should I give any more of a crap what a gerund is than whether Putin actually boosted a Super Bowl ring?)
K.Z. wrote: "Isn't "wankering" a gerund, a kind of noun/verb hybrid?"You just broke my brain.
K.Z. wrote: "Isn't "wankering" a gerund, a kind of noun/verb hybrid? (Man, I hate myself when I get like this. Why should I give any more of a crap what a gerund is than whether Putin actually boosted a Super Bowl ring?) ..."You're scaring me,K.Z. And I'd have to agree, it's a gerund.
Kari wrote: "K.Z. wrote: "Isn't "wankering" a gerund, a kind of noun/verb hybrid?"You just broke my brain."
But see, it was the "skeevy" adjectival modifier that made me think of gerunds. A straight-up (no rocks, no mixer) verb would be modified by an adverb, e.g., "That troll is always skeevily wankering."
o_0 I think I just broke my own brain on that one. Skeevily?
K.Z. wrote: "o_0 I think I just broke my own brain on that one. Skeevily?"Whatever skeevily is, I'm confident Noble fulfills all requirements.
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Q&A with Josh Lanyon
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I wonder if it's an actor thing? I've read about screenwriters and playwrights being annoyed about actors changing the dialogue they'd written because they felt it "worked better that way". I suspect directors do it too...