RIP Roger Ebert

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Never really watched Siskel & Ebert or Ebert at the Movies, but I loved reading his reviews. The man was one hell of a writer and it seems, overall, a pretty good dude.

Rest in peace, good sir.

“I believe that if, at the end of it all, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.”

Roger Ebert

Did Carl Go Too Far?

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Just saw the season finale of The Walking Dead.

Spoilers below. If you haven’t seen it yet, run away.

What did I take away from this episode? Well, Carl’s turning into a nice little sociopath. Eh…maybe sociopath isn’t the right word. I don’t know what psychiatric term I’m looking for. But his actions in the forest, along with the little lecture he gave his father, made my eyebrows go way, way up, and not just because I was a good kid who never talked back to my parents.

I’m sure some will look at it as him “Well, he’s doing what needs to be done.” This argument works if doing what needs to be done entails becoming an entirely closed off group, completely hostile to outsiders and viewing everyone as an enemy.

Except in a situation like you have in Walking Dead, with countless known enemies (in this case the zombies), you really can’t afford to be a tiny, isolated group that treats every other living being as the enemy. There’s too few of you to go around already.

I probably could have forgiven Carl one or the other. The thing in the forest – hey, they were in a scary situation, adrenaline was high, he pulled the trigger. The situation with his father…he’s in a bad place, they’ve just barely avoided losing their home, and I think there’s still some part of Carl who wants to see his father the way a lot of kids see their fathers (or mothers – but we’re talking about Rick here), as a sort of hero and as a leader. Shit went screwy, people died, that means Rick failed. So I do think there’s some anger there…that Carl thinks Rick has let him/them down.

But both? This ain’t just teenage rebellion. The show is planting the seeds for some future strife between father and son.

Hooboy. That little shit is gonna be trouble in the coming seasons.

As an aside, where the hell did the Gov go off to? With all his “you kill or you die” chatter, I half-expect him to wind up hanging out in Westeros, helping Cersei in her plot to seize power once and for all.

Actually…if I was still into fanfic…

 

Amazon Buys Goodreads

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Not sure about this Amazon-Goodreads things.

Full disclosure: I don’t do much on Goodreads. I had an account some time back (well, I still have the account, but I don’t use it) and quickly realized that spending tons of time on an Internet forum talking about books and other things that interested me was pretty much my kryptonite. Goodreads is like Reddit. Way too easy to get sucked into. So I logged out and haven’t gone back, not because I don’t like it, but because I am way too easily distracted and this is the best I can get to enforced self-discipline.

With that said, I think it’s a valuable tool for authors and readers, and just a fun place to hang out.

And now Amazon has eaten it.

I happen to love Amazon. Not just because the bulk of my sales come from them, but because they’ve just plain been good to me. I ordered books off them when they first came into being. When they opened their music store, it was the only way I could have gotten my hands on Armageddon: The Score by Trevor Rabin, still one of my favorite soundtracks. It came out in 1998 or 1999; don’t remember which, but Amazon carried it, and I played it so often in my Discman (and later, my car) that I am pretty sure I wore out the CD.

From there, it’s been a steady stream of awesomeness for me, the consumer. Print books, ebooks, CDs, MP3s, movies, the occasional poster and beauty product. And now I can make a little money off them through my books. Hey, I heart Amazon.

With that said, I do see them buying up other companies and yes, it makes me nervous.

I also wonder what this is going to do to Goodreads as the supposed Bastion of Book-Reviewing Neutrality. Amazon’s been dealing with the issue of sock puppets and fake reviews for quite some time; how is this going to spill over into Goodreads? Maybe it won’t, but this is certainly something regular users should be wondering about.

It could be an outstanding opportunity for writers (including indies) to get noticed, but I do feel a little sad that yet another independent company has been bought out by a bigger one. Yeah, yeah, capitalism and all, but it gets tiresome.

Anyway, I’ll be watching the AG union with great interest. Here’s hoping it works out for everyone.

 

Oh, Esquire

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Esquire had an interview with Lena Headley (a.k.a. Cersei Lannister on Game of Thrones), where writer Peter Martin describes the franchise like this: “Adapted from author George R.R. Martin’s hugely successful fantasy series, A Song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones came with a huge, built-in, and devoted (if pimpled and asthmatic) fan base, along with a tested, long-running story line.”

Hey now, Peter. I may have the occasional zit, but pimpled and asthmatic? C’mon, dude. Lord of the Rings won a freakin’ Oscar. Fantasy isn’t just for lonely, zit-ridden teenagers anymore.

This brings me to my next point: for reasons I cannot explain, I have this mental image of Merle traipsing about Westeros now that he’s…er…a free man.

P.S. I’m pretty sure tattoos do exist in Westeros, though the article claims they do not. Patchface comes to mind. Maybe tattooing isn’t done in Westeros (don’t remember entirely) but there are certainly tattooed characters.

Working the Day Away

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It took me a little longer than I thought it would to dig out the appropriate Echoes file.

I’ve been through a few computers in the last three years. I back up everything – only had one or two slips lately – (knock on wood) but the end result is I often have multiple copies of everything. Considering how long it took me to properly format Echoes the first go-round (and how many versions I have just to fiddle with), selecting the right one was a bit of a challenge.

But it’s set, and now I’m trying to put the finishing touches on it in Calibre. It would be nice if Echoes decided to give me a break this time around and just behave itself, but things never quite work out that way. I’ll probably be tinkering for another two hours at least. Meh.

Coffee recommendation: McDonald’s hazelnut iced coffee. Picked some up last night with dinner (what? I was hungry and it was cheap) with the intention of saving it for this morning. Which I managed to do. Go me.

Hmm. Echoes actually looks pretty decent thus far as I flip through it in the Kindle app.

I can’t say it hasn’t been a bit of a professional disappointment. It’s a good story. I love my happy-go-lucky zombie survivalists, but Echoes was a more “serious” work, I guess, and I think it’s the best-written of the three novels (well, two novels and one novella) I have out at the moment. I never in a million years thought Grave New World would take off the way it did. It was “my silly zombie story” that I threw up there as an experiment and it ended up paying my rent.

I guess the zombie craze was strong, or something. It must have been; there’s been virtually no crossover between GNW and Echoes readers (a few folks who really liked one or the other made the jump, but they’re very different genres. I respect that.). So Echoes, really, is my effort to break into the space opera genre, which I do love.

Hmm. Well, Echoes looks great on the Kindle app. The next step will be viewing it on an actual Kindle, and then the Kindle previewer on Amazon. And then of course it will take a while to be uploaded to Amazon, but maybe by Monday or Tuesday…

Then rinse and repeat with the B&N version.

Aw, aren’t ebooks fun?

 

Repurposing

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Every now and then, the universe cuts you some slack.

Back in October of last year, I started writing the initial draft of GNW3, working title Zombie Rock Machine. I got through 18,000 words before realizing I was not in the right space to work on that particular story, so I closed it up and let it sit.

This week, I came back to GNW3 and restarted it. 2,600 words into things, I opened up the original file to see if there was anything I could salvage.

Happily, there is.

Looking at it with fresh eyes, I can probably use about eighty percent of the original beginning (though the pacing is different; my revised edition will use different chunks at different times). That’s great news for me. The other ten percent I’ll have to junk; still, that’s a ton of words I get to reuse and not throw away.

Hey, it’s the small stuff.

New Echoes Cover

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No, I have not managed to upload it properly yet. The computer I wrote and published Echoes on is long gone; yes, I have a backup, but I’m chest-deep in projects and haven’t managed to pull the file from the external drive yet. This weekend for sure.

In the meantime, enjoy Steven‘s beautiful new cover art!

Things like this make me realize I don’t have an iota of graphic design skill.

I think this is actually the first of my books where you can see a character face. Vibeke is on DBG, but you see her back. So…there’s Kate Hawkins.

Top lesson in self-publishing? (Besides “Don’t make changes after your editor’s been through it.”) Get a real cover artist. It makes all the difference.

On Covers

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What do you do for the book that won’t sell?

Echoes has a lot going for it. I think it’s actually the best of the three books I have out, but sales have never been all that strong. I’m going to try some different things with it in the coming year, just to see if I can bump up its sale rate a little bit, and step one was a new cover.

When I published Echoes and GNW (I think they were about three weeks apart?) I was flat broke and had no money for cover art. I did have an old copy of Photoshop and some classes under my belt, along with some photo manipulation skillz left over from a previous magazine gig. My covers weren’t great, but they were serviceable. When GNW took off, I promptly hired a real cover artist, Steven Novak, and he gave it a new look. Steven also did the DBG cover.

I left Echoes alone. Maybe not the best thing I could have done for it, but sales were so meh anyway, I found it hard to justify sinking money into it. But while updating my Facebook page, the Echoes cover looked so…sad…next to the GNW/DBG covers that I emailed Steven to inquire about a redesign.

The bottom line is that I think Echoes is a good story. Despite its poor sales, it’s been extremely well-reviewed, and if I can give it a chance to shine, well, I should do that.

Steven out-did himself on this one. He listened to my vague ideas of what I was going for and knocked together a beautiful cover for Echoes. I’m going to have to dig up the original file to add the cover to, so that will be tomorrow’s task, along with re-upping to B&N and Amazon. I’ll also upload the cover to the site tomorrow.

Now all three of my books have proper covers. I’d squee, but that would be undignified.

Oh, all right.

Squee!

Facebookin’ It

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I am not a fan of Facebook.

Never have been. I dumped my personal FB page last July and have never missed it; beyond that, I always had trouble with the FB author page vs. the admin account I used for it vs…look, I’m just not Facebook-savvy, okay?

But…it’s recommended for authors, and I do occasionally get messages from readers through it, which I discovered when I logged in today and found some sitting there.

Say it with me now: Oh, shit.

So I’m going to try to get into it. Try being the key word here. I updated my author photo (which came about because I had way too much fun with the Dead Yourself app) and responded to some messages and liked The Walking Dead, and…that’s all I’ve done so far.

I sent my Dead Yourself pic to a pal before putting it up.

“Really?” she asked. “Really?”

“I think I make a cute zombie,” I said. I also made it my Twitter picture.

Speaking of zombies, reached 2,024 words on GNW3 today. Not too shabby. Finished a gigantic, soul-eating freelance project last night (well, early this morning) so that will free me up for more writing time.

At least, that’s the great hope.

In the meantime, a very happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all! Drink some green beer for me.

Sheepishly Returning

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Well, I sure did a bang-up job of maintaining this blog, didn’t I?

Um, sorry, all. If anyone actually reads this. I did try to keep tweeting consistently, even though most of my tweets seem to be centered around coffee. I think the problem with blogging and tweeting is that I just find myself really…really…boring. I’m not a very exciting person, really. Why would anyone want to read my scrawls?

If you think this is bad, you should check out my Facebook page. Or better yet, don’t.

Anyway.

A few things happened between this post and my last one. Namely I decided Atlantis wasn’t working the way it should, so I scrapped that for a while; I also got saddled with some very time-consuming projects, both of which pay me far more than my novels at the moment, so of course they have received the bulk of my attention. I’m actually on the tail end of a huge ghostwriting project and some managerial stuff, so maybe in the next few days everything will settle down.

On the plus side…I have about 1,092 words on GNW3.

But didn’t you start GNW3 like, months ago? And have a lot more words?

Oops. Yes, yes I did. I started it in October, actually. And while I liked the overall plot of the story, it just wasn’t quite working for me. I think in hindsight I needed more of a break after the summer rush to get DBG out.

So the other night I was looking at my calendar and realized I was actually supposed to start work on GNW3 on Monday. (I think I looked at it on Wednesday.) Feeling rather guilty, I sat down and wrote 500 words. Then today I wrote 500 more. That’s about all I can manage at the moment with my workload (I really shouldn’t even be blogging, but I gotta start somewhere). So hey, I’m a week behind and many, many words behind, but…actually I can’t really find the silver lining there.

All my own writing is behind. I am more bummed about this than I thought I’d be.

My original release calendar went something like ATLANTIS I (April), GNW3 (June), BIG INTERSTELLAR ADVENTURE (fall sometime). Oh, I also had three 2013 releases slated for a second pseudonym.

Except then I realized A1 needed reworking, I dropped GNW3, and that interstellar adventure is going to have to wait.

I don’t know if there’s a lesson here, but this is what happens when you treat your writing as a hobby. I still do that. I acknowledge it and I’m mostly okay with it. The three books I have out have done surprisingly well, considering how little I do to promote them (little meaning nothing, in this case), but there’s only the three of them. The “real” authors out there, the ones that keep cranking out the books no matter what…I tip my hat to them. I find I am just not willing to work on my own stuff after I’ve been asked to crank out two novellas in a week. The brain is fried.

(Ghostwriting is deadly work, folks. Maybe there’s a post unto itself…taking on more than I can chew.)

Every now and then I think, Maybe if I take this thing seriously I’ll get better dividends from it. I invariably spend a week or two planning to do just that, and then get distracted by the newest shiny thing (or more likely I’m waylaid by actual paying work) and that’s the end of my planning.

In the end, I don’t know what the answer is. I will get GNW3 out this year. I’ll get a couple of books out under a pseudonym, too. Once this work crush slows down I’ll be able to reassess and see what I need to do to really get the Blackmore brand, so to speak, off the ground.

The ironic thing in all this? I am making a living as a writer. I ghostwrite in many genres and I handle a lot of nonfiction as a freelancer. That’s my words earning me money. When people ask me what I do, I can say I’m a writer and it’s not a lie. I could have business cards made. Then it would be official.

(I do have business cards, by the way. They say many things on them, as I was juggling many trades when I had them made. Writer is on them, but so are other things.)

(Can you tell how much I like parentheses? Also, I really need to sleep. Like now.)