In case you pay attention to the progress meter regularly, you may have noticed that The Journal of Jeremy Todd has been changed to reflect the second draft is starting on it, even while I have yet to finish the second draft of One Last Dance. There is a reason for it, and it's a good one.
This might end up changing some things, too. I don't know yet, but here's what's happening.
When you're an aspiring author who has no money, like me, you tend to shoot for traditional publishing before going the self-pub route. There's one reason for it, one thing that makes the lower royalty rates seem worth it. To avoid paying for an independent editor and cover art. I'm guilty as charged here, though I feel I have to say not once have I ruled out self-publishing as a viable option. But if I can save some money on the front end by taking a little less on the back end, I'm okay with that. I'm doing this because it's what I feel compelled to do, not because I expect to get rich at it. I have a day job to pay the bills; this is just to give me fulfillment in my craft, my life, and help me to make the dream of having people pay to read my work come true.
There's a problem with this, however, and I'm sure I'm not the only author who's come across it. You have to find a balance between quality and that desire that's driving you. It's why I'm willing to pay some money if I have to in order to self-publish. It's why I researched the options before deciding on my course of action should I go that route. I'd go into detail on what my plan is in that regard and why, but it's not relevant to this.
The thing that made me bang my head against my keyboard was that so few small horror publishers are accepting submissions right now (not trying for one of the big five because of that balance I mentioned. Not getting into it here, but Google "Author Royalties Agency Model" or spend some time reading through J.A. Konrath's blog, conveniently linked at the lower right of this page as "A Newbie's Guide to Publishing", and you'll understand). Many of the ones that are fall when weighed on that balance of quality versus desire. I have the desire, they can't provide the quality I want.
Then today I discovered that one of my top two choices (the other being where I sent Consequences), the one that was closed for submissions when I started researching, is now opening their submission channel until the end of the month. That's not a very big window.
In submitting for potential publication, there's this thing called "Simultaneous Submissions". Basically, it means submitting the same work to multiple potential publishers at the same time. Some allow it, some don't. Since there was nothing stating one way or the other on this publisher's guidelines page, and since sending Consequences there as well would feel like giving up on the other one when it's halfway through it's waiting period, I found myself in a pickle about how I should proceed.
Let me go ahead and say there were other factors involved in making that pickle. I'm not getting into them here either, because I'm not going to comment on the situation one way or the other since my gut says one thing, my brain another, and my heart yet another. But there was something I had to take into consideration while I debated with myself.
Ultimately, here were my options:
1. Send Consequences to both and hope one said yes. Fifty fifty odds, right? Or would that be one in four since both companies could say yes or no? I'm not good with calculating probabilities, and like Han Solo said, "never tell me the odds".
2. Withdraw Consequences from consideration and submit it to the other publisher. Like I said, giving up when it's just now at the halfway point in the wait time I was given.
3. Submit something else to the other publisher.
Since I know Consequences has to come out before the Cochran books do, there's only one other option to send. And considering the publisher I'm looking at here, it might actually be a really good fit. Better than the one I sent Consequences to would be.
So I made a decision. I'm going with number 3.
The second draft of One Last Dance is going on hold for the time being, so I can try and hammer out a submittable draft of Jeremy Todd. Technically, since the submission only wants the first fifteen pages, I could just focus on those, send it in, and call it a day. But if they ask for a complete manuscript, then what? I've just screwed myself. So I'm going to polish those fifteen pages and send them in, then polish the rest in preparation in case I get a full manuscript request. Ergo, Jeremy Todd takes precedence over any other revisions in my personal pipeline.
I'm not mentioning publisher names yet because I'm not a hundred percent sure I can pull this off. I'm going to try like hell, though. If I manage it, you'll know about it and I'll give you the dirty details here. If I don't, well, they'll take submissions again at some point, and at least I'll know I gave it a shot.
So here's to hoping, and let's see how strong my desire really is.
Sunday, November 8, 2015
Friday, November 6, 2015
Where Did That Come From?
You are seeing things correctly. There is a new listing on the progress meter, it has never been up there before, and it is already listed as a third draft in progress. I can explain.
Back in 2005, I started what ended up being my first original novel. I freely admit I really had no idea what I was doing with the actual writing craft part of it, but I knew it was a story I wanted to tell. I finished it in 2006, a year and a half later, and then filed it away.
Some time passed, and I found myself working in a bookstore in a college town. Someone I worked with there, a lovely woman named Patti, was an English major and agreed to do an edit on the first draft for me. When I got the manuscript back from her, I was floored. Stephen King mentions in On Writing how he reacted the first time he ever saw one of his pieces of writing edited. All I can say is that reading is one thing, seeing is something completely different. And this wasn't even from a professional editor, just someone who knew what they were doing.
Out of the nearly 270 pages I gave her, maybe five did not contain markings of some sort. It opened my eyes to the process, and I was re-energized. I wanted to make this work. I started banking on it, to a degree.
Let me go ahead and say it now: while I thought I understood how the publishing industry worked, I truly had no clue. The other thing I neglected to take into consideration was that the economy was bottoming out due to the recession, and the industry was shifting into eBooks, which were nothing more than a novelty at this point. We won't even touch the fact that I was a first-time, never before published author who was expecting his first submitted work of any kind to be the ticket to fortunes. Bottom line, I was an idiot. But I digress.
I got to work and finished a second draft at the end of 2007. Thinking the book was as done as it could get (hilarious to look back at now, but that was what I thought), I pulled out a copy of the Writer's Guide and queried a bunch of agents. I did get one request for the full manuscript, which I sent off gleefully only to be told they didn't feel passionate enough about it to offer me representation. I know now that it was a polite way of saying it wasn't good enough.
Life took over, I got discouraged, and into a manuscript box and the depths of my hard drive it went.
Fast forward to now.
I sat down and wrote Consequences with the intent of trying for publication through a small press, or doing it myself if no one bit. While working on it, I realized that if I did self publish, there were these things called formatting guidelines to follow if I didn't want it to look like something a five-year-old threw together one rainy afternoon. Several people offered to do it for a price, usually $200 and up, but since I'm not exactly rolling in cash here, I decided why pay for it if I could learn to do it myself with a little work? Only I didn't have a finished manuscript to practice with.
So I dug through my hard drive and digitally dusted off Homecoming. As I worked on formatting, I realized there were parts of the book that weren't that bad. With a little polish, it might even be salvageable. Then I finished Consequences, moved on to Demon and the rest and forgot about it. Sort of.
It sat in the back of my head. See, this was my first, and you never forget your first. So I decided to conduct a little experiment. I was going to teach myself how to edit using Word's "Track Changes" feature, since any professional editor I use nowadays will be using the same method. In doing so, I was also going to see if I could breathe some new life into this old manuscript, maybe apply some of the things I learned in the intervening years and make it something I would be willing to put out there for other people to read and not wince any time someone brought it up.
The first step? Clean up. It took no time at all to realize that I had no idea how to properly format a manuscript, even in draft form, back when I started this one. Since I now use a Word template already set up with the styles I need for new projects, I copied and pasted the entire mess into the template, then spent roughly six hours fixing my old formatting errors. Once that was done, it was time to start playing Doctor Frankenstein.
I decided to go from scene start to scene break: make the edit notes, copy and paste it into a new document, then make changes. I learned a few things in doing this. First, I had no idea how to break chapters properly. Chapter one became chapters one and two pretty quickly. Same for two becoming three and four. I'm sure more will appear as I go, too. Second, there is definitely something to be said for letting something rest for such a long period of time before approaching it again. As I write this, I've got fifty pages into what is effectively the third draft but feels more like a complete rewrite. Out of that fifty pages, I've made 480 edit comments. On some pages, Word has to collapse all the notes because they won't fit in the margin of the page otherwise. Honestly, it's made me a little afraid to see what a professional editor would do to one of my manuscripts that I've already done four drafts on. Excuse me while I shiver uncontrollably for a second.
The third and fourth things I learned I'll put together, since they belong that way. I've gotten better at my craft since that first attempt. To my mind, the fact that I have that many notes in such a short span reinforces that fact. Everything I've changed, removed, reordered, or rewritten has made the story stronger. But that only makes sense, because like any other craft, writing can only be perfected through practice.
Homecoming was not the only thing I wrote in the years between when I first started it and when I developed the work ethic I have now with it. While I have no plans to give those stories the same treatment I'm giving this one (though I'm not ruling it out, either), I have a funny feeling that if I did, I'd be able to see improvement with each successive one. Since I got serious serious about this in July, I've finished four more first drafts and am almost halfway through a fifth. But there's even more than that, if you think about it. I did four drafts of Consequences before I submitted it, and I'm about to start the third for Demon at the Window, and am in the midst of the second for One Last Dance. That means, in a sense, eight complete books, plus two halves (first for the current one, second for OLD), so nine books since July. I'm not tooting my horn about being prolific; just reinforcing the bit about practice bringing improvements.
I have no idea if I'll be satisfied with the final result of this experiment, whether or not I'll call it a success or a failure, but it's definitely been a learning experience. I feel good about it, at least for now. So it goes on the progress meter. If it doesn't work, I'll remove it again. But maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to someday get to see that dream of having Homecoming with a cover and binding in my hands and yours.
Wish me luck!
Back in 2005, I started what ended up being my first original novel. I freely admit I really had no idea what I was doing with the actual writing craft part of it, but I knew it was a story I wanted to tell. I finished it in 2006, a year and a half later, and then filed it away.
Some time passed, and I found myself working in a bookstore in a college town. Someone I worked with there, a lovely woman named Patti, was an English major and agreed to do an edit on the first draft for me. When I got the manuscript back from her, I was floored. Stephen King mentions in On Writing how he reacted the first time he ever saw one of his pieces of writing edited. All I can say is that reading is one thing, seeing is something completely different. And this wasn't even from a professional editor, just someone who knew what they were doing.
Out of the nearly 270 pages I gave her, maybe five did not contain markings of some sort. It opened my eyes to the process, and I was re-energized. I wanted to make this work. I started banking on it, to a degree.
Let me go ahead and say it now: while I thought I understood how the publishing industry worked, I truly had no clue. The other thing I neglected to take into consideration was that the economy was bottoming out due to the recession, and the industry was shifting into eBooks, which were nothing more than a novelty at this point. We won't even touch the fact that I was a first-time, never before published author who was expecting his first submitted work of any kind to be the ticket to fortunes. Bottom line, I was an idiot. But I digress.
I got to work and finished a second draft at the end of 2007. Thinking the book was as done as it could get (hilarious to look back at now, but that was what I thought), I pulled out a copy of the Writer's Guide and queried a bunch of agents. I did get one request for the full manuscript, which I sent off gleefully only to be told they didn't feel passionate enough about it to offer me representation. I know now that it was a polite way of saying it wasn't good enough.
Life took over, I got discouraged, and into a manuscript box and the depths of my hard drive it went.
Fast forward to now.
I sat down and wrote Consequences with the intent of trying for publication through a small press, or doing it myself if no one bit. While working on it, I realized that if I did self publish, there were these things called formatting guidelines to follow if I didn't want it to look like something a five-year-old threw together one rainy afternoon. Several people offered to do it for a price, usually $200 and up, but since I'm not exactly rolling in cash here, I decided why pay for it if I could learn to do it myself with a little work? Only I didn't have a finished manuscript to practice with.
So I dug through my hard drive and digitally dusted off Homecoming. As I worked on formatting, I realized there were parts of the book that weren't that bad. With a little polish, it might even be salvageable. Then I finished Consequences, moved on to Demon and the rest and forgot about it. Sort of.
It sat in the back of my head. See, this was my first, and you never forget your first. So I decided to conduct a little experiment. I was going to teach myself how to edit using Word's "Track Changes" feature, since any professional editor I use nowadays will be using the same method. In doing so, I was also going to see if I could breathe some new life into this old manuscript, maybe apply some of the things I learned in the intervening years and make it something I would be willing to put out there for other people to read and not wince any time someone brought it up.
The first step? Clean up. It took no time at all to realize that I had no idea how to properly format a manuscript, even in draft form, back when I started this one. Since I now use a Word template already set up with the styles I need for new projects, I copied and pasted the entire mess into the template, then spent roughly six hours fixing my old formatting errors. Once that was done, it was time to start playing Doctor Frankenstein.
I decided to go from scene start to scene break: make the edit notes, copy and paste it into a new document, then make changes. I learned a few things in doing this. First, I had no idea how to break chapters properly. Chapter one became chapters one and two pretty quickly. Same for two becoming three and four. I'm sure more will appear as I go, too. Second, there is definitely something to be said for letting something rest for such a long period of time before approaching it again. As I write this, I've got fifty pages into what is effectively the third draft but feels more like a complete rewrite. Out of that fifty pages, I've made 480 edit comments. On some pages, Word has to collapse all the notes because they won't fit in the margin of the page otherwise. Honestly, it's made me a little afraid to see what a professional editor would do to one of my manuscripts that I've already done four drafts on. Excuse me while I shiver uncontrollably for a second.
The third and fourth things I learned I'll put together, since they belong that way. I've gotten better at my craft since that first attempt. To my mind, the fact that I have that many notes in such a short span reinforces that fact. Everything I've changed, removed, reordered, or rewritten has made the story stronger. But that only makes sense, because like any other craft, writing can only be perfected through practice.
Homecoming was not the only thing I wrote in the years between when I first started it and when I developed the work ethic I have now with it. While I have no plans to give those stories the same treatment I'm giving this one (though I'm not ruling it out, either), I have a funny feeling that if I did, I'd be able to see improvement with each successive one. Since I got serious serious about this in July, I've finished four more first drafts and am almost halfway through a fifth. But there's even more than that, if you think about it. I did four drafts of Consequences before I submitted it, and I'm about to start the third for Demon at the Window, and am in the midst of the second for One Last Dance. That means, in a sense, eight complete books, plus two halves (first for the current one, second for OLD), so nine books since July. I'm not tooting my horn about being prolific; just reinforcing the bit about practice bringing improvements.
I have no idea if I'll be satisfied with the final result of this experiment, whether or not I'll call it a success or a failure, but it's definitely been a learning experience. I feel good about it, at least for now. So it goes on the progress meter. If it doesn't work, I'll remove it again. But maybe, just maybe, I'll be able to someday get to see that dream of having Homecoming with a cover and binding in my hands and yours.
Wish me luck!
Saturday, October 31, 2015
Everything's "Groovy": The King is Back!
Happy Halloween! Hope everyone had a wonderful day of creeps, ghouls, and goblins! Mine didn't start out that way, since I had to work at the day job, but it's sure ending on a much better note.
See, I thought by working that shift today, I was going to miss out on something I'd been looking forward to for months officially, and twenty years unofficially. But I came home, checked On Demand, and there it was on the main page. I went into it hopeful but not expectant. I was rewarded. I immediately started it up and for the next forty-five minutes or so sat on my couch with a grin that wouldn't go away.
I'm talking, of course, about the premiere of Ash vs Evil Dead on Starz tonight. After seeing the trailers and hearing everyone talk about it, I was psyched. After hearing the feedback when they debuted the first episode at New York Comic Con, I was delirious. Now that I've actually seen it, I'm ecstatic.
Ash is back, and baby he's better than ever. Well, not really. He's actually worse of an idiot than he was in Army of Darkness, but isn't that what we wanted? He's older, but not really wiser. Unless it's about fighting Deadites. Then there's nobody better.
It's been thirty years since Ash faced the armies of the dead and saved the day. He lives in a run-down trailer and is still a stock boy at ValueMart (who we can assume bought out S-Mart at some point). He spends his nights looking for that one last lonely drunk woman at the bar just before closing time, and doing stupid things with the Necronomicon that even he regrets. When the result is the return of the evil he thought he defeated, the results are carnage, slapstick, and buckets of the red stuff.
Seeing how this plays out, I have to wonder how long Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi, and Rob Tapert have been wanting to do this. It's obvious they're having fun revisiting this world, and it's also obvious they're trying to do things right while not taking anything too seriously. From Sam's frenetic camera movements to Bruce gleefully chewing the scenery every time a camera's pointed at him, it's that taste of the familiar in a whole new way.
I don't want to go into too much detail and spoil it for any of you who haven't been lucky enough to see it yet. What I will say is that when the credits rolled, I applauded from my sofa, laughing my head off, and drew some strange looks from my beagle who I apparently woke up with my enjoyment. The weeks will not go fast enough between these episodes, and I definitely see myself binge watching the entire ten episode run at the end of all this. I'm sure even that won't be enough, but not to worry! Starz has already renewed the show for a second season, even before the first episode hit the airwaves.
Will it go on for a long run? I doubt it, but then again, why should it? This is the Evil Dead 4 we could never have dreamed of in a million years. What I am curious to see is the impact this has on television in the future. If it's anywhere close to what Raimi and company did for the horror movie industry since that first low-budget splatterfest in 1981, we horror fans should be in for an interesting time to come.
Bottom line: stop reading this review, go find the show, and watch it. When it's over, watch it again, then you can wait breathlessly for the next episode like the rest of us!
See, I thought by working that shift today, I was going to miss out on something I'd been looking forward to for months officially, and twenty years unofficially. But I came home, checked On Demand, and there it was on the main page. I went into it hopeful but not expectant. I was rewarded. I immediately started it up and for the next forty-five minutes or so sat on my couch with a grin that wouldn't go away.
I'm talking, of course, about the premiere of Ash vs Evil Dead on Starz tonight. After seeing the trailers and hearing everyone talk about it, I was psyched. After hearing the feedback when they debuted the first episode at New York Comic Con, I was delirious. Now that I've actually seen it, I'm ecstatic.
Ash is back, and baby he's better than ever. Well, not really. He's actually worse of an idiot than he was in Army of Darkness, but isn't that what we wanted? He's older, but not really wiser. Unless it's about fighting Deadites. Then there's nobody better.
It's been thirty years since Ash faced the armies of the dead and saved the day. He lives in a run-down trailer and is still a stock boy at ValueMart (who we can assume bought out S-Mart at some point). He spends his nights looking for that one last lonely drunk woman at the bar just before closing time, and doing stupid things with the Necronomicon that even he regrets. When the result is the return of the evil he thought he defeated, the results are carnage, slapstick, and buckets of the red stuff.
Seeing how this plays out, I have to wonder how long Bruce Campbell, Sam Raimi, and Rob Tapert have been wanting to do this. It's obvious they're having fun revisiting this world, and it's also obvious they're trying to do things right while not taking anything too seriously. From Sam's frenetic camera movements to Bruce gleefully chewing the scenery every time a camera's pointed at him, it's that taste of the familiar in a whole new way.
I don't want to go into too much detail and spoil it for any of you who haven't been lucky enough to see it yet. What I will say is that when the credits rolled, I applauded from my sofa, laughing my head off, and drew some strange looks from my beagle who I apparently woke up with my enjoyment. The weeks will not go fast enough between these episodes, and I definitely see myself binge watching the entire ten episode run at the end of all this. I'm sure even that won't be enough, but not to worry! Starz has already renewed the show for a second season, even before the first episode hit the airwaves.
Will it go on for a long run? I doubt it, but then again, why should it? This is the Evil Dead 4 we could never have dreamed of in a million years. What I am curious to see is the impact this has on television in the future. If it's anywhere close to what Raimi and company did for the horror movie industry since that first low-budget splatterfest in 1981, we horror fans should be in for an interesting time to come.
Bottom line: stop reading this review, go find the show, and watch it. When it's over, watch it again, then you can wait breathlessly for the next episode like the rest of us!
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Another One Done, Another Begun: A Status Report
The Journal of Jeremy Todd has now officially landed in the "Completed" category. It ended up weighing in at just over 64k words, or just enough to make it hard for me to classify. I'm going to stick with "short novel" instead of novella, since the formatted and printed version I gave my wife to read (since she gets 'em all first) was right at 200 pages.
As with the Cochran books, there's no release date set on this one yet, though I think it will be the next one I submit to Samhain once they give me a response on Consequences. Time will tell. I'm going to let it settle for a while before I start on the second draft, mainly because it ended up being such a dark book that I need to play with something lighter for a bit.
To that end, I'm now working on the third Cochran book. It's called Blood Games, and the case is already laid out. Now Cochran just has to see it through.
On the later draft fronts, I've finished the second draft of Demon at the Window, and am now working on the edits for One Last Dance. Once those are done I'll go back and do the third draft of DatW since I should have some feedback from the betas on it.
If you're curious, here's my timeline for what I'll be working on, and when it might be finished. Pay attention to that "might" in there, since I'm not actually setting deadlines for myself yet. These are only estimates based on what I've been doing up until now:
Blood Games, First Draft: Expected completion around the beginning of December.
One Last Dance, Second Draft: Should be done sometime around Thanksgiving.
Untitled Standalone Novel, First Draft: The idea's there, and I'll start on it right after BG, so let's say New Year's at the earliest.
Demon at the Window, Third Draft: shooting for Christmas to have this one done.
The Journal of Jeremy Todd, Second Draft: It's shorter, so the second week of January is likely. I'm also thinking this will be the final draft of this one. If I fiddle with it too much, I think it'll stop feeling like it was written by the narrator.
Untitled Cochran #4, First Draft: I've only got the barest idea of a story for this one, but hopefully it will manifest by the time I'm done with the standalone. Let's go with the beginning of February on this one.
One Last Dance, Third Draft: Also shooting for late January / early February on this one.
As you can see, I plan to stay busy for a while.
Now for a couple of not-so-good news announcements.
First, as you can see by the removal of it from the progress meter, Justicar is back in a holding pattern. I don't want to abandon it entirely, but I've got too much running through my mind in the horror genre to be able to fit it back into my work schedule. If nothing more demanding pops up, I'll try and get back to it after Cochran #4, but no promises, either to you or to myself.
Also, at this point it looks like Cochran #4 will be the last of them for the foreseeable future, as much as it pains me to admit that. There's only so many stories I can tell with those characters before it starts feeling like it's cliche or I'm repeating myself. I'd rather keep them fresh and fun. If I try and force it, I'm going to destroy both of those things. I love these characters, and hate to think they've got a final tale on the horizon, but that's how it's starting to look. On the bright side, I do have an Alexis-centric short story I want to tell when the time's right. It'll be a Christmas present to you guys at some point in the future, that's all I'll say about it.
And that's it for now! Another night of productivity complete, now on to the next!
As with the Cochran books, there's no release date set on this one yet, though I think it will be the next one I submit to Samhain once they give me a response on Consequences. Time will tell. I'm going to let it settle for a while before I start on the second draft, mainly because it ended up being such a dark book that I need to play with something lighter for a bit.
To that end, I'm now working on the third Cochran book. It's called Blood Games, and the case is already laid out. Now Cochran just has to see it through.
On the later draft fronts, I've finished the second draft of Demon at the Window, and am now working on the edits for One Last Dance. Once those are done I'll go back and do the third draft of DatW since I should have some feedback from the betas on it.
If you're curious, here's my timeline for what I'll be working on, and when it might be finished. Pay attention to that "might" in there, since I'm not actually setting deadlines for myself yet. These are only estimates based on what I've been doing up until now:
Blood Games, First Draft: Expected completion around the beginning of December.
One Last Dance, Second Draft: Should be done sometime around Thanksgiving.
Untitled Standalone Novel, First Draft: The idea's there, and I'll start on it right after BG, so let's say New Year's at the earliest.
Demon at the Window, Third Draft: shooting for Christmas to have this one done.
The Journal of Jeremy Todd, Second Draft: It's shorter, so the second week of January is likely. I'm also thinking this will be the final draft of this one. If I fiddle with it too much, I think it'll stop feeling like it was written by the narrator.
Untitled Cochran #4, First Draft: I've only got the barest idea of a story for this one, but hopefully it will manifest by the time I'm done with the standalone. Let's go with the beginning of February on this one.
One Last Dance, Third Draft: Also shooting for late January / early February on this one.
As you can see, I plan to stay busy for a while.
Now for a couple of not-so-good news announcements.
First, as you can see by the removal of it from the progress meter, Justicar is back in a holding pattern. I don't want to abandon it entirely, but I've got too much running through my mind in the horror genre to be able to fit it back into my work schedule. If nothing more demanding pops up, I'll try and get back to it after Cochran #4, but no promises, either to you or to myself.
Also, at this point it looks like Cochran #4 will be the last of them for the foreseeable future, as much as it pains me to admit that. There's only so many stories I can tell with those characters before it starts feeling like it's cliche or I'm repeating myself. I'd rather keep them fresh and fun. If I try and force it, I'm going to destroy both of those things. I love these characters, and hate to think they've got a final tale on the horizon, but that's how it's starting to look. On the bright side, I do have an Alexis-centric short story I want to tell when the time's right. It'll be a Christmas present to you guys at some point in the future, that's all I'll say about it.
And that's it for now! Another night of productivity complete, now on to the next!
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