Yard Sale Scheduled

Okay, we finally got ourselves together and finalized our details on the yard sale. Hopefully I can get rid of everything I can't fit in the 5th wheel so mom can start parking in her garage again! We are motivated. Lots of stuff to sell. Of course when you tell people that you are having a yard sale lots of people join. So weather dependent it should be quite the event. I've got stuff I really want to sell and stuff I'll part with if the price is right. So be it. Here's the add on Craigslist. http://portland.craigslist.org/clk/eve/3807319960.html Not very sexy an add I know, but that's the bandwidth I have to spare.

Creating an Eye Grabbing Title

From K.M. Weiland http://www.helpingwritersbecomeauthors.com/2013/05/17-steps-to-reader-grabbing-title.html Smart readers know better than to judge a book by its cover (or maybe not), but what about judging a book by its title? A book’s title is there not just to identify the book, but also to make a statement about what’s inside its pages. Readers will gain their first impression of your book from either its cover or its title, and that makes your title one of your most important bits of marketing. No pressure, right? Some authors wait until after finishing the first draft to title the book. Some, like me, need at least a working title before the idea can even begin to gel. Traditionally published authors may not have much say in their book’s final title. Independent authors sometimes have too much say. Whatever camp you fall into, your title shouldn’t be chosen lightly. Today, let’s consider some of the factors that should inform that decision. 5 Elements of a Good Title Take a moment to consider some of your favorite titles. Write a list. What elements within these titles particularly attract you? More than a few of your titles will probably fall into the following categories: 1. Catchy: Neverwhere 2. Humorous: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies 3. Poetic: Something Wicked This Way Comes 4. Curiosity Inducing: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? 5. Genre Reflective: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy 7 Questions to Ask About Your Title As you’re planning your title and throwing around ideas, stop to ask yourself the following questions: 1. Is it unique? Although titles aren’t copyrighted, you always want to think twice about choosing a title already in use. If nothing else, your title will have to compete for search engine rankings and could confuse readers. 2. How many words is it? The number of words in a title often depends on the genre. Thrillers and suspense novels often have titles of a single word. Literary and humorous novels might have titles that consist of half a dozen or more words. Shorter titles are often more memorable and more convenient for cover design; longer titles are often more unique and descriptive. 3. Is it specific instead of vague? Which book are you more likely to pick up—Lunar Colony or The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress? Loving a Scoundrel or Gone With the Wind? Trouble in a Small Town or What’s Eating Gilbert Grape? 4. Is it memorable? Readers probably aren’t going to snap up your book the first time they see or hear your title. But if that title is an earworm that sticks in the backs of their brains, they’re much more likely to pay attention the next time they run across your book. 5. Is it consistent with your brand? Remember: titles are marketing. Particularly if you’re writing a series, but even if you’re not, you ideally want to choose a title that fits in with your previous books and overall brand. Consider Janet Evanovich’s use of a number in every title in her Stephanie Plum series or Sue Grafton’s use of letters in the titles of her Alphabet Mysteries. 6. Does it spawn any good cover image ideas? Your cover image (which may be totally out of your control anyway) may end up having no obvious connection to your title. Indeed, sometimes that very contrast is a good hook. But as you’re brainstorming titles, consider how each one would look on the book cover. What images would you envision seeing beneath or behind each title? 7. Is it cool? As marketing expert Rob Eager puts it, “Would a reader feel cool if someone saw them reading a book with that title? Readers have egos, and titles that people deem offensive or out-of-date can hinder sales.” 5 Tips for Brainstorming the Perfect Title Now that you have an idea of a good title’s components, what steps can you take to come up with your own perfect title? 1. Research titles in your genre. Zoom by Amazon and take a look at your genre’s bestseller list. What do the top twenty titles have in common? Write down the ones that particularly pop out at you and note the elements that make them attractive. How can you replicate their effect? 2. Consider your book’s text. Your title makes a promise to readers about what they will find inside the book. So why not look inside the book itself to find the title? Are there any lines that pop off the page? Any particularly memorable or unique phrases? What one line in the book best sums up the theme, premise, or protagonist? 3. Look up words in the dictionary. Grab your dictionary and flip it open to a random page. Do any words pop out? Make a list. 4. Analyze songs/poems/books. One of my favorite techniques is to pull vivid imagery from songs, poems, and old books (the King James translation of the Bible is particularly full of strong and unique words). Make a list of the best phrases and start playing with them. A little clever wordplay can go a long way toward making your title stand out. 5. Free write. Scribble down every title, word, or combination of words you can think of. I often cover pages in my notebook with various title ideas. Most are dumb, but there’s always one that finally pops out as the perfect representation of the book. Titles can be both fun and difficult. Don’t feel pressured by their importance, especially early in the process (you can always change titles later on). But don’t discount their importance either.

Writing Update...That's right, a day early

I managed to complete the rough draft of my WIP a day early so I thought I'd update the blog a day early to celebrate. I was just bragging to someone last night that I've now proven I can do a novel in 6 weeks, but I realized this morning that I made this WIP (a Mystery/Thriller) my focus for both NaNoWriMo (November) and Camp NaNo in April. So technically I worked on it closer to 10 weeks. In my defense, those were both hellacious months so it's a miracle that I got as far as I did in November, and I did actually win Camp NaNo by passing 30k on the project. (I set a goal I knew was challenging for that month but I also knew I wouldn't get the whole book done and move in the same month. So I also have to confess that I'd written a little less than half of this book as a screenplay in April 2011. I wanted to try my hand at mysteries and screenplays so I did both at once with mixed results. If you are tempted to think that it was an unfair advantage to have half done in another format, then you've never novelized an unfinished screenplay. It wasn't awful but it was slower than just drafting the darn thing from an outline, which I discovered when I finally ran out of script to convert and started drafting the back half of the story. The other big hold up was actually taking the time to read a book on how to write a mystery so I had a chance of completing the outline. I've never outlined a book before (I'm a pantser) so this was still a twofer (first novel from outline and first Mystery/Thriller). I set out to write a straight mystery but I'm an action junkie so I ended up with a thriller. It works sooooo well though. I have an action climax followed by a riveting denouement where the mystery is resolved at last. This book really transcended my hopes for it. I can't wait for it to come out. So if you're following along at home here's the updated plan, modified to accept the fact that I took two weeks longer than I'd planned to complete this draft. I still need to let this project cool for a bit so that when I clean it up I'll have fresh eyes. I'm really happy with the voice in back half of the book (the part I drafted after I ran out of screenplay to convert). So I don't want to do another novel length revision before I get back to this book as I'd originally intended. That's okay though. I've got plenty of projects to tackle for the remainder of May. I'll complete my revision and send The Vancouver Scooter Club Mystery off to an alpha reader in June. The back half of may will be consumed by... I've got a yard sale this weekend, (perhaps the first of many) so I can clean out my extra belongings. I'm still dropping about 5lbs a month due to dietary changes (and prayer). I'm going to finish reading through research I've collected and finish compiling that research into my final customized diet plan. I should get the finished edits from the audiobook of "On Becoming a Man" soon. They've been promised for a while now. I'm fixing up my short stories and compiling an anthology called "Denny's Tales." I will be releasing several of these stories individually on Kindle only so the complete anthology won't be out just yet, but look for those stories to start appearing about one a month for the rest of the year beginning in June. Those last two items mean I've got about 10 covers to design. For those who think this a crazy amount of work for two weeks, this about my normal approach processing through things. I'm essentially a small business owner between my personal writing and the gigs I get freelance. The difference between that last two years and this year is that I've doubled the volume of output I expect of myself, I've implemented some of the project management techniques I've discovered and refined as well as implementing some of the health and writing techniques I've discovered. That's why I'm blogging about this years adventure. Well, I have two reasons. 1) I think the goal of taking a 6 month tour to sell books (some of which I haven't written yet) is an interesting challenge and deserves to be chronicled. 2) I'm experimenting with and refining techniques that I've been working on for a decade or more. I want to commit, publicly to this goal and the plans I've made to accomplish it and I want to record what worked and what I tweaked to accommodate the unforeseen. Upcoming challenges include finding a number of alpha readers willing to turn my books around in roughly one month, and raising the funds to pay editors this many books in one year. (I'm willing to swap edit for edit, but that means adding in editing two books and some short stories to the schedule. Maybe some of both. We shall see...

Irony

This is as good a time as any to announce a new campaign I'm starting. One technique for drawing attention to your work, is to start a campaign to promote something fun and silly that people can easily get behind. By promoting that "cause" people get to know you without having your "real" work shoved in their face. It's a great way to build a fan base that's larger than the genre you already have a book to sell to. So...(drum roll please)...My first non-writing campaign will be to redefine the word Irony. Most non-English-major types aren't aware that the dictionary definition of Irony is "the use of words to express something other than and especially the opposite of the literal meaning." If that sounds oddly familiar, it's because its the same definition as sarcasm. Most people use Irony to mean a situation which makes a recent statement seem false. Or something along those lines. Yes I do find it ironic that the definition of irony is wrong, and yes, it's annoying when I get corrected by someone who insists that it a coincidence. I don't think everyone in America is wrong. I think the dictionary is wrong and I want to change it. This question will take me deep into the etymology of those words and likely make me pariah to grammar Nazis everywhere but I am unafraid. I shall champion this cause and the world will one day know that the English language was made for man, not man for the English language. This will also be a great test project for the new skills in marketing I'm hoping to pick up. Look for a website about Irony later this summer. In the mean time, I'll try to plan the campaign here so you can learn alongside me. Together we can redefine irony and restore order to the universe. A. Bunch https://www.facebook.com/TaleScribe

Tour Update

It's been a busy and turbulent week since my last Wednesday update. Lot's of progress but no big milestones to report, so it's one of those challenging updates to write. I couldn't write Sunday because I was busy working on settling into the 5th wheel. Fortunately, I wrote a chapter and a half on Saturday and Monday so I stayed on pace. Yesterday was uber-productive I was up at 6am to take advantage of the morning cool to play tetris in the garage and wrote about 2k words. So I'm still exactly 2 weeks behind on both organizing and writing. That's not too bad considering how irrational my scheduled plan is. I've built in some less busy months in the middle of the summer so if I don't fall further behind I should be able to make it up before fall. That's not including the financial goals which took a big hit when my website contract fell through. However, I didn't plan to make giant steps on building a war chest till later this summer so I don't consider myself behind there yet. There's every chance that I will be a month or two delayed in leaving on at least one front, but I'm still going to try to make my goal departure of March 2014. So to recap: WIP is Vancouver Scooter Club Mystery (working title of the pilot) Word count is 40,500. 8 chapters (8 days) to go before finished Projected final size roughly 60,000 words Projected date of complete first draft May 15th. Still to do this month: I'm waiting on the edits for the audio book version of "On Becoming a Man" which is behind schedule but could come in any day. I need to design the cover for that audio book. One linchpin of this entire plan is the tweet from Jack Canfield that I won back in January. I need to schedule that SOON! I'm also continuing to tweek my organization system (making great strides) but I need to design a new action hopper I thought up. If I can do all that I'll be caught up to the end of April, WOOT! LOL. Then I need to dig into learning new skills at promotion. I've got a ton of resources I need to start gleaning through. I also need to start on the next set of writing projects. The next work in progress shall be... Revising my steampunk novel! (Crowd Cheers) Well I'd better get back to it.

Smashwords: The good, the bad, the ugly

Those who know me well probably think I'm anti-smashwords. I'm not really, they just have a lot of issues that make me cast about for an alternative from time to time, and I often post about what I find to forums I belong to. So I thought I'd collect my thoughts in one spot for an official statement. The Good: Smashwords.com (http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/71489) allows a writer to do a basic conversion of an ebook file into the ten most common file types. It also allows an author to have a commerce page to sell that book in any format. The advantage here is huge, because when you are out selling your book and someone wants it electronically you can send them to one location no matter what their reading device. There is also a nifty coupon feature which allows a writer to print a card with the link and the code, then sell that card to folks who then go download it for free. Best of all, Smashwords provides all this for free. Smashwords is also really good about fixing issues when things go wrong. The Bad: The bad news is that it can be hard to get your file formatted for their program to convert it and even when its perfect they may not accept it for expanded distribution. So it's quite likely that you'll have to contact them to fix your problem. The Ugly: The reality is that no one is searching smashwords for your book. There is no one stumbling upon your book while looking for something to read. That's the big advantage to the big fish in the market like Kindle. I had high hopes for the expanded distribution list, but I've not generated any sales through that until I went to places like Kobo (http://goo.gl/THcXq) and directly uploaded the file myself. So is smashwords worth doing? Until there is a viable option, yes. It's free. There's a chance you'll get some sales out of it. It's the easiest way to get a basic conversion (I'm not really a fan of calibre either). One possible option is http://direct2digital.co.uk/, but as yet I've not had a chance to investigate them. I'll update this post when I do (Likely June when I start publishing short stories for my upcoming anthology.)

Super Controversial and Super Cool!

Everyone was excited by the idea of 3D printers, myself included. I believe there's tremendous opportunity for change because of this technology. It's possible this could reduce the outsourcing of jobs to other countries. Well now someone has designed a gun that can be 3D printed and the left is freaking out. I'm not the least bit concerned. People who want to do bad things seem to have no difficulty finding a weapon to use. I'm simply not that worried that someone is going to print one of these things off and kill someone with it. Most people are honest, especially when given the opportunity to do the right thing. I trust our citizens. Now lets see if the government does. http://www.gizmag.com/liberator-3d-printed-pistol/27393/