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Lurking Musings

~ Musings of a newly published writer

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Tag Archives: traditional publishers

Fantasy Writing contest

30 Sunday Sep 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Fantasy Writing, Fantasy Writing Contest, productivity, Publication, reading period, traditional publishers, writing, writing contest


A hell of a long time ago, I sent off a short story that had been hanging about in my hard drive for a while to the fantasy writing contest. It was a tale of an elderly woman being mugged for a magical dagger she carried with her. It had previously been rejected by Sword and Sorcereress and Tor.com and I saw no harm is sending it off to be rejected by this contest too. I had more or less forgotten about it as the submission window numbered several months and the reading period many more (the reasons why are outlined in this blog by the editors).

Now a casual tweet by the editors has sent me into a panic. They have decided on a short list. However, instead of dealing with the cuts in a quiet and civilised manner, they are publishing the list of lucky people in small increments… One small selection of the list released each day until the entire list is out there. So now, of course, I am absolutely desperate to know if I have been successful despite not caring until now.

So well done to the editors of this contest for making me feel like this… I am off to sit in a corner gibbering until the entire list is released. 🙂

Good luck to all who entered and commisserations to those of you who, like me, don’t make it to the final cut.

Transitions on Amazon…

27 Monday Aug 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Publicity

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

amazon link, BBW Romance writers, books, paranormal romance, Publication, traditional publishers, writing


Now there is another way in which you can purchase Transitions – it is now listed on Amazon and can also be linked  from my Author page there.

The direct Amazon link is here…

The Amazon link means that those of you in the UK can now buy the ebook without needing to do any of that complicated maths in your head to work out the exchange rates. Alternatively, those of you who can do the maths or who want it in an alternative format to Kindle, can still get it from the publisher’s link.

Next post I promise will be about a different topic to my recent release… though I cannot promise it won’t be about politics or something equally controversial…. I may even talk about the recent photoshoot I went on. Yes, I went and did that again and had a great time so look out for that post soon.

[Vampire Month] You’re only given one shot by Jason Petty

30 Friday Mar 2012

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Guest posts

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Crossbow, guest blogging, guest posts, Jason Petty, Publication, self publishers, Self Publishing, traditional publishers, Vampires, writing


For his Vampire month blog post, Jason has decided to post about his reasons for choosing self publication as his method of getting his work out there…

“You’re Only Given One Shot…”

                Thanks for having me on! I think your readers might enjoy a quick recap of how I got to where I am. Sick and tired of condescending rejection letters, I decided to self-publish. It amazed me how rude agents thought they could be toward me and how offended they got when I’d reply with similar tact. I was just tired of the mess and sick of eating crow from my family.

                So I started looking for a good self-publishing house. Step one, as you will find, is not getting scammed. I looked around for a place that let me keep the copyright and had good prices. I found Lulu and was happy with them at first. But then their customer service was kidnapped by Somali pirates or something. With the new management traipsing about, “fixing” everything that made the service remotely usable, I left. Finally my wife found Createspace and we were back in business.

                So now I had 25 copies and a $100 hole in my wallet. Since my family had bought most of my previous orders I knew I’d have to find real fans now. And so began the legwork. I hit every shop and book store I could find knowing full well that most of them weren’t going to give me shelf space. I didn’t even bother with big chain stores: they only stock stuff corporate sends them.

                I hit used book stores, coffee shops, local produce shops, campus newsstands…any place that looked like they might carry pages with ink on them. After talking to dozens of places I finally got two stores interested. One of them was so snooty I finally gave up dealing with them, the other still orders books from time to time.

                So I had venues selling my wares! I was in! I felt like the big dog! I WAS the big dog! I made the front page of the paper (narrowly beating out a story about a dog that caught a quail) and that helped some, too. And then it all came down. Everyone who gave half a crap had bought it, read it, and moved on.

                So I decided to do an audio book. I was reading through it and realized something: the book sucked. I couldn’t read it and keep a straight face. I was embarrassed, depressed and ready to give up writing. I couldn’t, though. This was my only job and is still my primary bread winning effort. But I couldn’t stand behind a product I didn’t believe in.

                So I did the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I pulled the book from shelves so I could sort out some of the overly descriptive crap. About half way through I realized I didn’t want to read any more of it. It just went on and on and on! I worked on one chapter for two weeks because I couldn’t find the give a damn to fix the dead plot. It was over. I knew it. It was time to stop kicking this horse, get the shovel and give it a proper burial.

                I was literally about to cry one night when I pounded my fist on the desk and just said “Ugh! If only she’d have CALLED instead of showing up on the door step I could skip this and…GREAT SCOTT! THAT’S IT!”

                That simple tweak changed everything! And I mean everything! That moment made the whole ugly thing worth it. That “little tweak” was no small venture and I knew it. I’d have to change the entire second half of the book, throw out two of my favorite scenes and rework some motives. Say goodbye to 60 thousand words. When I had sat down earlier that month I’d planned to change a few things, edit some of the descriptions and make what I had read better, like buffing the paint and hitting it with a coat of wax. This wasn’t just a wax job anymore. It was major surgery. It was like gutting the thing to the chassis, replacing the old and busted engine with a race motor and reinforcing the entire car to hold up to the abusive new motor. And you know what? It worked like a charm. Those sixty thousand worthless, boring words I disparaged over deleting? They were replaced with 80 thousand fast-moving, exciting words.

                What I had before was a boring book about two characters with no clear motives with a good ending and final plot twist. What I have now is a murder mystery thriller with Grindhouse leanings and paranormal twist starring two characters that almost everyone has a strong feeling for. The only gripe I really get is that I need an editor. I have that now and the spelling mistakes will be fixed by early April. And right now, even with the typos, repeated words and all of it, people tell me over and over again that they can’t put it down! That’s a book I can stand behind!

                With my new-found confidence I’ve gone at it like I’m, killing snakes! Sales are up! Fan count is up and generally climbing! I’m back on the road, and with much style, I might add. So if you want to be an author my advice is simple. Step away from your book for three months, then read it aloud. When you hate it (and you will) make a backup, tear it down, build it up and go for broke.

Look around on facebook till you find a page that reviews books like yours. Concentrate on finding one that favors books with similar plots, characters, events, etc., but is willing to give a bad review to a bad book. Don’t worry about a bad review. If you’ve done your homework and read up on their page and your book is good, that threat evaporates. Pick that first reviewer strategically and watch the fans come tumbling in! Make sure you have it available for the Kindle and Nook and you’ll be shocked how well you do. I sure was.

                You only get one shot, so aim well!

                                Jason Petty

Terry Pratchett: Tracing the evolution of a writer

24 Thursday Nov 2011

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Musings

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Captain Vimes, developing as a writer, Discworld, Fafhrd, Fritz Lieber, Havelock Vetinari, Jane Austen, Lankhmar, Pride and Prejudice, Publication, Rincewind, Snuff, Terry Pratchett, The Colour of Magic, The Gray Mouser, The Patrician, traditional publishers


This is something I have been thinking about for a while now. In fact, I’ve been thinking about this ever since I started reading fantasy and science fiction. I have been pondering the ways in which a writer develops. Not particularly thinking about how they improve their writing to the point where they become good enough to be published but rather considering what happens to your writing after you get published.

After all, none of us are static. No one is born a great writer and it is ludicrous to assume that the progression of the writing craft simply comes to a stop once the first novel hits the shelves. Instead a good writer is always looking to improve on what they did before and this is what I want to discuss today. To do this, I am going to use the example of Terry Pratchett.

Now, for those of you who have been in a cave for the last 20 years or so and don’t know who Terry Pratchett is, I suppose I should enlighten you. Those already up on Britain’s most popular and prolific fantasy comedy writer may feel free to skip this paragraph altogether and move onto the good stuff later…

Terry Pratchett is the writer of far far too many to count novels set in the  Discworld – a fantasy world which sits on the back of four elephants who are sat on the back of a turtle. As a world with such ludicrous metaphysics, naturally strange things happen there (many of them powered by that elusive element never found in the real world – Narrativium) and this leads to comedic situations. Pratchett has also written a number of novels set in other worlds – Strata, the Bromeliad trilogy (Truckers, Diggers and Wings), Nation and, of course, The Carpet People (his first publication in 1971). He has an OBE, a Knighthood and a number of publishing awards to his name. He is largely considered to be a very prolific writer with an average speed of one book a year. In 2007 he announced that he had been diagnosed with Alzeimers and, as well as making generous donations to various charities for that disease he has also stated his support for the right to die. He has stated that he intends to take steps to end his own life before his disease progresses to a critical point.

So, brief biographical information out of the way. If you want to know more, feel free to look him up on his Wikipedia page Time for the real meat of this piece. How has Pratchett developed as a writer since his first publication?

In order to keep things simple, I am not going to discuss The Carpet People or any of the non-Discworld novels. I am keeping thing solely in the province of his best known creation. The first Discworld book was entitled ‘The Colour of Magic’. It was published in 1983 – which totally blows my theory about the origin of its name being due to either a pun on the title of the novel, The Color of Money (published 1984), or the Robert De Niro film of the same name (released 1986). The Colour of Magic introduces us to the Discworld as a vibrant and chaotic fantasy realm and takes us on a travelogue which spans a significant part of the disc. We meet one of Pratchett’s most memorable characters – the cowardly wizard, Rincewind – and are introduced to a plethora of characters and plotlines, each of which parodies an element of fantasy literature. For example, the character of Hrun the Barbarian is your typical  musclebound thug of an adventurer, the classic Conan the Barbarian stereotype, while Bravd the Hublander and the Weasel (two characters who have brief appearances in the story) are clearly derived from Fritz Lieber’s Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser. A part of the intention behind the Discworld is also to subvert many of the fantasy cliches and so Rincewind, our main hero for the first few books, is a wizard who is neither brave nor capable of casting spells. Admittedly, the last one is due to him being unable to learn spells due to one of the eight, great spells that helped create the universe being stuck in his head, but even after he later gets rid of that impediment he still has a major problem actually using any magic. We also later (in the sequel, The Light Fantastic) get Cohen the Barbarian, the ludicrously wonderful subversion of the Conan schtick in the form of a barbarian hero who is still adventuring well into his eighties.

From these parodies in the early books, there slowly develops a complex and involved world. As the series develops we see more and more of the world and meet more characters. For many of the early books there is still the sense that Discworld is a parody of a fantasy realm and that Ankh Morepork, Pratchett’s fantasy city, is a play on the concept of Lieber’s Lankhmar.

At some point, however, things change. It is a slow change and a subtle one, taking place over a number of novels and with the development of several storylines and characters. I think it begins properly with the first Night watch book, Guards! Guards!, as Pratchett clearly needed a grittier and more realistic setting for the somewhat noirish adventures of Captain Vimes and the members of the Night Watch. This series takes the ruler of Ankh Morepork, the Patrician, and turns him into a more rounded character by planting him in the position of the ‘City Mayor’ as popularised by many a US cop show. It also rounds out the city, letting readers see the seedier side of the streets and goes into more detail regarding the role of the Thieves Guild in enforcing the law. At some point between Guards! Guards! and the latest offering, Snuff, Ankh Morepork ceases to be a parody of Lankhmar. Instead it becomes something more akin to a strange hybrid of Lankhmar with London and New York of the early 19th Century. The characters take on a decidedly Regency cast to them, something which is emphasised in Snuff’s parodying of Austen’s Pride and Prejudce, and there are themes inherent in the storylines which harken to concepts of the industrial revolution and the social, political and economic changes which eventually led to the Victorian era. These issues are especially apparent in the Moist books – Going Postal, Making Money and the soon to be released, Raising Taxes – where Vetinari is seen to be actively in the process of modernising the city and such issues as mobile phone companies and the gold standard are challenged with satire.

In other words, Discworld represents Pratchett’s evolution as a writer from someone who only wants to poke fun at the fantasy trends of the time to someone with the confidence and ability to tackle serious, real world issues by poking fun at examples from literature and history.  I believe that all writers undergo this process of maturation. Initially, in a desire to get published, many writers are conservative about what they want to write about – seeking popular topics which may allow good sales. However, post publication, they begin to gain more confidence and feel as if they can stretch their muscles more and be experimental in what they write. In Discworld, Pratchett gives us the opportunity to see that process in action in a way that is not possible with many writers. We have 28 years of books, all set in the same world by the same writer, to show it.

Reflections on Self Publication

10 Thursday Nov 2011

Posted by D.A Lascelles in Reviews

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Caxton., new thang, Publication, reviews, self publishers, Self Publishing, slush pile, traditional publishers


There is apparently a war going on in the writing world between ‘traditional publishers’ and ‘self publishers’. A lot of bad blood is being spilled, a lot of blogs are being written about how one way or the other is ‘the only right way’ and there seems to be intense polarisation between those who support ‘ye olde fashioned way of publishing such as how our forefathers have been doing it since ye time of Caxton’ and ‘the hip new thang which has become possible cos we has the internets and stuff now’.

I am not going to delve too deeply into the arguments for and against self publishing, I am not even going to talk about the apparent evils of traditional publishers or how it is possible to make millions of dollars by publishing your own book (if you happen to get lucky and have a good product to start with and do a lot of work…). Those arguments have been done to death and people are still flogging them, despite the fact no one seems set to change their positions. Instead, I am going to reflect upon my own opinions of self publishing based on my experiences as both a reader and a writer.

I’ve always been a bit of a self publishing sceptic. To my mind, a book is not properly published unless it has been judged by someone with some expertise to be worth publishing and then given a thorough editing and cleaning and polishing before being dressed up in its prettiest marketing clothes to walk about in the public eye for purchase. Editors at publishing houses act as a filter – picking out the wheat of good literature from the chaff that makes up the majority of their slush pile. If you get past an editor then you have passed some form of test or maybe a rite of passage which proves you worthy to call yourself a Writer rather than someone who merely writes. With this mindset in place, I’ve therefore been somewhat derogatory of self published works. They’ve not passed the test, they’ve not had to convince an editor or an agent that their work is worthy. All they’ve done is rattle off a few thousand words, done some formatting and either sent it to Lulu to be printed or uploaded it to Createspace. Logically, therefore, this prejudice implies that all self published works will be badly written and not worth buying.

And this is where my brain goes ‘hang on, you’re being prejudiced’. This is where that argument falls down because I am indeed being prejudiced by assuming that everything in one category has the same characteristics – a major failure in logic. I don’t like being prejudiced. I am not sure anyone does and I really hate my brain when it points out these nasty little truths to me. More to the point, my prejudice was based entirely on circumstantial evidence with not one whit of actual evidence to back up my claim. You see, because I had the strong belief that ALL self published books were badly written and badly edited I religiously avoided actually reading any. Obviously, this sort of hypocrisy cannot stand!

So, I was quite pleased to be able to do reviews for the ePublishing a Book site. Because the site is quite self publishing focused they want reviews of self published books for preference and so I have been forced into reading and commenting on some self published books. I faced this task with a high degree of trepidation, not knowing what I would find in the darkest depths of hell that I imagined existed in the self publishing world.

I posted a request for authors with self published novels to contact me and tell me where I could get hold of their books for review and I got a lot of replies. So many that, at the rate of 2 reviews a month which I am obliged to do, I am not going to be short of things to read and review for a long time. I’ve read a few of these books now and written the review for one of them (which is due to be posted tomorrow – watch this space for details) – and I have come to a conclusion about self published books:

Some of them are actually not at all bad and some of them are even rather good.

I suppose I should not have been surprised at this revelation. After all, there are a lot of good writers out there and not all of them make it through the publishing filter. This may be because one of the flaws in the filter is that it doesn’t necessarily take out only those books that are really badly written. Quite often it takes out books which are very well written and merely don’t fit with current marketing projections. However, I was surprised which is why I felt it necessary to write this blog post to atone for my previously snobbish nature about self publishing.

Ok, here is the caveat… one of the books I read and reviewed and really liked was actually a previously published author who had recovered the rights to the book and decided to push out a reprint by themselves. This, of course, is one area where self publishing is potentially useful with publishers rarely wanting to touch reprints but you could argue that this might have skewed my subjective assessment of the books I read. I accept that and as a scientist I take it into account and will continue to collect data and testing the hypotheses until one of them breaks. However, given that all of the books I read so far have been enjoyable and I’ve seen no really terrible ones, I am going to read the rest of the ones I have on my list with an open mind and hopefully enjoy them without the trepidation that comes from expecting them to be awful.

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