The Tourney has been published

After a major revision, much editing, and a new title, my sci-fi book The Tourney has been published. You can find it at Smashwords for only 99 cents. Smashwords supports most, if not all, ebook formats, so you are bound to find my book in a format your reader can display. 

I hope everyone who reads my book enjoys it. If you do, I ask that you please leave a review. If you don't like it and leave a negative review, please be constructive in your criticism.

For those who do like it, the sequel has been written and is currently undergoing what I hope is its final edit, and I hope to have it out by Christmas. 

The final book in the Keestu Ranell trilogy has been written and will soon undergo its first edit.  I hope to have it out early next year.

However, more books are planned for this series. 

In addition, the novel made from a series of urban fantasy short stories I wrote about 20 years ago is undergoing editing, and I hope to have it published early next year as well. 

Until then, please check out The Tourney!

Preparing to market your book

There are several options for self-publishing your book, and each taps into a little different market.

Ebooks are one of the fastest growing markets, as readers are compact and can access many books at once, so different members of the same family sharing a single reader can each read a different book at the same time.  Many Ebooks are offered for free or at discounted prices.  A publisher such as Smashwords will convert your book to as many Ebook formats as are supported in order to reach the most consumers, making Ebooks very attractive to self-published authors. 

Print on demand.  There are a number of companies offering POD services, and it's up to the writer to select which one best fits their needs.  Many offer copies at a discount so the author can have several copies of their books on hand, which are great for promotional giveaways--have a contest on any social media, including Facebook, Twitter, and your blog, and give away a few autographed copies.  You can also loan out your book to family and friends who want to read your book in the traditional form. 

Audio books.  This option is often overlooked by self-published authors.  I'm currently gearing up to record my first book, which will be first published as an Ebook, then offered in POD, and finally as an audio book.  One thing that most authors don't understand is that unless you record your audio book yourself, it can make the audio book cost prohibitive to produce, requiring a higher price than either Ebook or POD formats.  However, I think I'm in the majority to say that I'm not overly fond of hearing my own voice, especially when I started recording it using my Windows 7 indwelling sound recorder.  A simpler version than what was offered on Vista or XP machines, this one records only and doesn't offer any editing features as were found on older versions.  However, if you get into the control panel, hardware and sound, and manage audio devices, you'll see a tab labeled "recording".  You select your microphone and go into "enhancements".  DC offset cancellation is the default choice.  I found that it made my voice sound incredibly nasal.  I recorded each of the filters separately and in groups and wasn't happy with any of them.  I either sounded extremely nasal, really processed or tinny, or all three.  Further research into recording audio turned up a simple device you can make at home that will filter your voice but not make it sound overly processed.  You see it in images of singers and voice actors in recording studios.  It's called a "pop filter".  The pop filter can be made using items found in most households where women are present.  All you need is a frame of some sort (which can be made by cutting rounds out of an oatmeal box), and a pair of pantyhose.  I used a knee-high stretched over a hand-held weaving loom since I also work with yarn.  An embroidery hoop or an empty picture fame would work as well.  You simply stretch the hose over the frame and place it between your mouth and the microphone.  My mic is part of an old Labtec headset/mic get-up I used to try speaking my work rather than typing it out by hand, but last I knew VR still hated women's voices and all the technical medical jargon I use in my day job as a medical language specialist. There's also a technique called "de-essing", which reduces the hissing of sibilant sounds when a recording is remixed in a pro studio, but a way you can reduce the hissing without having to record in a studio is to position the mic so it's not in a direct line with your mouth so the hissing air isn't picked up. A few practice sessions of recording your reading are the only other things necessary to get started making an audio book, since most people need to learn to speak more slowly when reading in order to obtain the best results.

Self-publishing

It's been a while since I updated my blog because I've been busy pursuing the traditional publishing route.  I think it's more difficult than it should be to get an agent to look at your work.  However, with the steep rise in population comes a steep rise in the number of people competing for the same thing I want, which is to get my written work out there. 

After having numerous agents reject me after my sending them requested pages for my first book after they responded positively to my query, I've decided to publish my book myself since self-publishing doesn't have the stigma attached to it that it used to.  Vanity publishers whose only goal is to make as much money off you as they can still exist, but there are now several options for writers who can't seem to get their foot in the door of an agent and don't want to submit their book to a single publisher's slush pile and then wait for a year or more to find out if the publisher wants to take on their book. 

There are a few things that you need to do when you self-publish.  First off, you have to make sure you polish your manuscript, which means edit, re-edit, and re-edit again, which I have done.  Have test readers go through your work and critique it, which I have done.  After the initial test reading, I made a major revision of the book I'm nearly ready to publish and had test readers read it again, which resulted in completely positive feedback over the plot and characters and no complaints regarding anything in the book. 

After the polishing is done, you need to format your work for the publisher.  I've decided to go with Smashwords, and so I downloaded their free formatting guide, and I've gone through my book and made the necessary formatting changes.  Find/replace is a powerful tool, and with the detailed information given in Smashwords' formatting guide, I was able to quickly make the changes required for a manuscript that will be made available in numerous formats. 

 

Next up is the cover art.  I looked at Smashwords' recommended cover artist list and browsed most of their pages.  Unfortunately, it sounds like most of the listed cover artists use stock photos to create a book cover.  As I'm certain there are no stock photos that come close to portraying how I envision the cover art for my books, I have begun contacting artists who make the kind of images I have in mind for the covers of my books. 

Once the cover art is done, my first book will be ready to launch!  That means I have to find time to hammer out the details I'm going to share on my web site and begin building it, since I already own my domain name, so there's no excuse to slack off on getting it up and running around the same time I publish my book.

Test readers and editing

I've heard a lot about test readers and editors lately and thought I'd weigh in on it.

If you have your friends test read or edit a book for you, it's best to not give them a deadline on finishing it. Most people have extremely busy lives, so if you want quick feedback on your story or a fast editing job, you're better off hiring someone for the task.

When you ask your friends for feedback, be aware that they won't want to hurt your feelings, so they'll probably be vague in their critique, and you'll have to analyze their comments in order to interpret what they are saying. For instance, two friends said the same thing about one of my novels "the second half of the book was a much faster read than the first half". This told me that the first half of the book needed a serious revision. I added more action and ruthlessly cut fourteen pages using rewording and deletions in order to try and balance out how fast it read and was told that it greatly improved the book.

Some people think a single edit of their finished novel is sufficient. However, the writer is too close to the story and will not notice that they've repeated information two or three times that they wanted to make sure was included in the novel. I suggest after the first edit that you read the book aloud to yourself or someone else, because it will bring to your attention things that you've already covered in your story, and in addition will highlight awkward passages that you need to edit so they are easier to read.

There is no substitute for a spell checker, but it's not an absolute. There are many sound alike words that people misuse, including simple words such as "there", "they're", and "their", and if you have trouble remembering which is which, you should expect to pay a premium for editing services.

Keep in mind that even if you have professional editors working on your novel, they're human and will miss things. One writer blogged about how many people he has editing his work and test reading it, and yet I found mistakes in the first chapters of both of his novels that I read (both wrong words), so you have to keep in mind a spell checker won't tell you you've used the wrong word if it's spelled correctly, and having multiple people edit your work won't catch all the errors. You just have to decide how many times someone examines your work with a critical eye before you declare it finished and be ready for the comments of others when they find things that everyone else missed.

Something different--a derivative constructed language

For my Urban Fantasy short story series to book conversion, I decided to make up a Native American tribe rather than offend any tribes by taking liberties with their histories and cultures.

I figured they would need a language, and rather than try and make up a native-sounding language, I found info on an ancient form of a language still spoken in the Americas today, though the modern form is very different from classical. I decided to use the classical form and have it influenced by English rather than Spanish, the language that influenced many of the real modern dialects of the language.

I also found info on several related languages and started comparing where they diverged. Interestingly, I found two languages spread further apart in modern times that were more closely associated before whites took over the US, so they often have similarities to each other for words that are completely different from the dead classical form of what I consider their mother language to the point that I have no idea how they got from the mother tongue to the modern ones.

However, it gave me a starting point to see how changes took place. I had derived a few words based on the mother tongue, and on comparing them with the real languages, I saw similarities in what I had derived with the real langs, but at the same time, the words were different, which is exactly what I was looking for; all three language groups should find many of the words familiar, while others will not be instantly recognized.

The writing system was actually much less of a challenge than I anticipated. Glyphs for the mother language are listed on ancientscripts.com, and taking a cue from the scribes of ancient Egypt, who came up with two faster ways to write their hieroglyphs, I studied the shapes of the language's known glyphs to come up with simpler forms to quickly print the derived language. Taking it one step further to a cursive form was much easier than I had anticipated, but I had had practice in taking an angular printed constructed script to a cursive form for a sci-fi book series.

It may sound like it took a long time to do all this for a couple of names, phrases, and descriptions in a book, but it only took a couple of lunch hours to accomplish, and as studying languages is a hobby of mine, they were pleasant hours.

Plot points—Luck of the draw

If you are working on a complex plot sequence like a fight, and the outcome for some minor characters is no consequence, it can be difficult to match characters against each other.  I don’t know if anyone else does this, but when I’m faced with this situation, I leave the results up to chance.

When I had a complex fight to choreograph, I had an uneven number of characters who would be fighting in pairs, while one character would sit the first round out.  I had no clue how to match the minor characters up, so I wrote all the names of the minor characters on slips of paper and put them into a hat, drawing two at a time in order to pair them up for the fight.  When it came time to write each fight sequence, I cast a die to determine who won the match.  That left me free to concentrate on planning the fights of the main characters who would eventually face off.

In another book, I had to choose who would be afflicted with a genetic defect.  Again, I chose to draw names from a hat for characters other than the two main people I already knew were going to be afflicted.  That particular draw turned out so that more women were afflicted than men, but I worked it into the plot the way I drew it, and if anyone asks, I will tell them that for that particular corner of the universe, that’s just how the luck of the draw turned out.

World building—games

As many serious sci-fi fans know, having a complex world that people can immerse themselves in can be a lot of fun.  Harry Potter fans have Quidditch, Star Trek fans have Tri-D chess, and Star Wars fans have versions of Holochess and the card game Sabacc they can play.

Fans have been known to extrapolate rules for games based on a few descriptions by the writers and then find a way to play the game.  For instance, fans of Star Wars came up with a way to play Sabacc using a Tarot card deck rather than the “electronic chits” described in the books, Tri-D chess boards now exist, and computers provide a way for Harry Potter fans to play Quiddich.

So if you are going to include a game in your universe, you should know some basic things about it:

1.  The name of the game and any specialized pieces or moves used in it.

2.  Is your game a card game, board game, other type of game, or a sport?
3.  If it’s a card game, does it require a custom deck of cards?
4.  If it’s a board game, is it a race game or strategy game?
5.  How many players can play your game?
6.  If it’s a sport, is there a specialized arena it’s played in?  If so, how is it laid out?
7.  Is betting allowed?

Once you’ve answered all these questions, I recommend that you try and play some hypothetical games, either by yourself, or more preferably with a trusted friend or group of friends if it’s a multiplayer game to see if there are any errors in your descriptions that would prevent the game from being playable.  It sounds complicated but doesn't take very long if you already have the concept for your game in mind, and with a fixed set of rules written down, you can describe game play that isn't contradicting in multiple scenes without having to have your character (and thus readers) learn the game with a detailed description that may detract from your plot.

World building—place names

A couple of years back, it seemed that much of the sci-fi I was reading had names or languages incorporating an apostrophe.  In particular, I found a continuation of a series I was reading quite tedious, as it seemed EVERY name had to have an apostrophe and/or a Y in it, many new planet names were words with “land” tacked onto the end, or they consisted of names already used that had one letter changed and were passed off as being new. 

Frankly, I was surprised that the series got approved and published, since it came on the heels of what IMO was much better work.  I thought to myself, “It’s hard to read a story when you’re disappointed that the names suck.”

In the age of the internet, there is no excuse to skimp on details like names (and constructed languages) because there are many tools out there to help you.

First get an idea about how you want your alien language to sound.  Consonant and vowel clusters are easy to pair using a word generator to give you syllables, and then run it again with some additional syllables to get larger words.  Once that’s done, you can use a fantasy name generator to come up with name ideas, and then translate some of your fantasy names into the alien language you generated.  Viola!  You have a nice selection of names to incorporate into your universe.  (I personally tend to use something descriptive of the area where I envision an evaluation team landing.)  If that’s not enough for you, you can manipulate a name to “age” it, so that it closely resembles but doesn’t exactly match the conlang words you created, or it can undergo major changes so that it doesn’t remotely resemble the original name you created, since dialectal changes are inevitable in any language over a long period of time.

So do your readers a favor by putting an hour or two of work into creating names instead of misusing an apostrophe to cobble together a couple of unpronounceable consonant clusters.

World building—Writing systems

I know many aspiring writers develop languages and/or writing systems for their worlds.

I believe that writing systems in the past have been influenced by the materials available:

The Babylonians used shaped reeds to press wedge-shaped lines into clay tablets to write.

The Egyptians used several forms of writing, fancy logograms that they carved into stone; and demotic and hieratic, which were used on papyrus sheets and were derived from their original hieroglyphic writing system.

Phoenician was originally written with straight lines, but I posit the reason it became more rounded over time is that the available writing materials evolved as well.  Phoenician is believed by some to be the origin of all writing systems used in the world today, with the exception of the Chinese scripts, and that covers a lot of writing systems.

Therefore, I decided to create some writing systems based on materials I made available to the cultures I was creating them for.  After I had the basic scripts, I tried “aging” one script so that there were several derivatives, the last of which ended up looking very little like the original, a la hieroglyphs to demotic.  I then took an angular printed script and created a plausible cursive version of it.  All this I did purely for fun, since creating ciphers has been a hobby of mine since junior high.  I’m quite fond of the angular printed script and its cursive version, because unless you see the portions of the printed script that were used to create the cursive, I think it would be impossible for the average layman to recognize them as being related, which is what I was aiming for.

Query letters

Facing a dilemma today—query letters. SFWA has a couple of samples provided by writers who have been published, which are a rather formal read. It’s what I’d expect in a business letter, & it initially made a lot of sense to me; be polite, concise, & make sure to thank the person you write to for their time.  

However, on reading a couple of agents’ blogs regarding queries, a totally informal approach is shown as having gotten the agents’ attention. I haven’t read that many blogs (yet), so don’t know if this is considered the industry standard in queries or not. If so, then the query I composed based on the samples I have already seen is completely wrong and will probably result in no reply, which will equal no interest in my work.

I am not sure what approach to use, perhaps something somewhere in the middle? I do know the lengthy synopsis I was advised to write is probably a bad idea, and I pared it down from the “required minimum of 500 words” to around 250, since in the electronic age, I know people tend to skim over or skip reading extra long posts.

If I find out which is preferred, I’ll be sure to update my blog!