Hello, all!  Now that the vacation period is over (I know this because today was light even for a Monday, so I am not looking forward to later on today…), and I am back to work officially as both writer and Dreaded Day Jobber, I would like to say that if you have any questions for me (limited to writing, as I like to keep my private life off the computers — what’s put up on the Internet stays on the Internet, right Beyonce?) feel free to ask them.

As far as the novel goes, I am getting the pair out of the house and off to the cousin’s tonight.  I’ve been wanting to write this scene because I am trying to work on how my characters sound when they talk to each other.  Sometimes, I get the feeling that there is little difference in how one character sounds compared to another.  For all the time I spend talking to people on the phones, I should have dialogue down pat.  For me, I am trying to not have to fall into the trap of writin’ foh-net-cally but give a hint of some sort of accent or manner of speaking through vocabulary.  Of course, I still need to get an idea of what the cousin is like.  He’s a moonshiner (where it’s not considered illegal, merely troublesome) and he is the one who Ehren buys his moonshine from in order to charge it with a little bit of the healing power — technically, it’s Vimala’s power, but we know what’s what around here — and his cousin charges him a slightly higher (“We’re cousins on your momma’s side, but that ain’t really family.”).  In my mind, I’m casting this guy just because he perfectly embodies the slimy part of the business — any business, really.  Yes, Ehren is a bit of a shyster and a lazy gadabout, but he’s at least trying to keep a small sense of respectability about him.  I see his cousin calling him out on it every now and then because he knows he can really tweak him with the reminder that there’s very little difference between the two of them.  Just that one of them accepts what fate has handed him and is making good money out of it and the other wants to put on airs of ‘benevolent capitalism’ to make himself feel good about himself.  Whether this improves or not, I am not sure — it’s still early in the draft for me to see what’s happening in between now and the end of the book (how much should he have left when it’s all said and done?  Really depends on my mood — could be the clothes on his back, could be nothing.  We’ll just have to see.).

Well, it’s getting near the time I should get some sleep.  If you’re interested in what I’m listening to when I write this, I’ve put my Spotify list out here and here.  I take no responsibility for your disappointment or enthusiasm.

Have a good day everyone,

Seething Apathy

Hello, everyone!  I hope everyone had a good three day weekend.  I didn’t do much in terms of writing over the course of the weekend, but I did get to go see Terminator: Genesys.  

Wow — if you’re a fan of the franchise (like me) this film has everything.  It continues the story quite well and there are some genuinely funny moments in the film (still can’t get that smile right…).  There are some great callbacks to both films and while yes there is a big reveal that’s killed by the trailers (seriously, guys? A running time of 126 minutes and you pick those?), there is still enough surprises in the movie.  Oh, stick around after the credits for an additional scene that is going to lead into the next movie.  It’s in the top five movies of the summer for me, knocking Avengers: Age of Ultron from a very close second to an even closer third.  Mad Max: Fury Road remains on the top for me.  There are still a bunch of movies I want to see like Spy and Inside Out.  Those might be coming up for me in a couple of weeks.

Like I said earlier, there was no writing on the weekend for the holiday.  I am kinda chomping at the bit to get something started again, which is why this blog entry is a little late.  We’re still at the wainwright’s, but the axle is getting fitte in the wagon, so our main character will be off to see his cousin and get more swill to charge up and sell to others.  As any good writer (and me) will say that a scene needs to advance the plot, show us something about the character or their environment.  This scene is going to show that poor Ehren is estranged from both family and polite society.  With the scene with the wainwright, we see that Ehren is not a complete jerk.  He does grab some food to help with the scurvy and rickets ridden boy (Vimala wants him to do more…might rhyme with schmidschmapping), and gives up some of his food for him (if I’m lucky, I can write that scene today).  This little rule is useful to bring in when you start editing.  Of course, this rule must be used ruthlessly, and I try to use it early so I can kill my darling scene before they’re committed to paper.  Like ripping off a band-aid rather than easing it off, it better that way.

I apologize for this entry being late.  I was working on the aforementioned novel before I realized I didn’t have anything ready, so this will be a little short.  I will have more to say tomorrow.

Until then…

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

No post today.  Relax and have fun.  I certainly will.

Hello — now that I’m done spilling my guts out about next year’s project, I am going to bring up something that has started quite a kerfluffle on Facebook and on the Internet: Amazon’s new borrowing system.

Previously, Amazon did this: you borrowed a book from their service and in doing so, you read it and borrowed another.  To you, it was free…and it is as far as you paid nothing.  However, if you read 10% of it, it was counted as a “sale” and the author got a little something from it (I’ve been seeing $1.30, but I think it might have depended on the price of the book if bought).  This doesn’t seem bad really, if someone reads a book, but doesn’t like it, they return it by borrowing something else.  This is an excellent way to try new authors and even support them (Disclosure: I’ve had one of my books borrowed be people and got paid a very little bit).  I’m sure you can see where things could become gameable.

Example: you grab a fantasy novel, which could come in at 100,000 words easily.  If each page is on average 250 words, you’d have to read 10,000 words or 40 pages for the author to get paid for the borrow.  Most erotica comes in at around 5,000 to 8,000 words which comes out to 2 to 3.2 pages for the author to get paid (and less on average, something that small doesn’t usually get the 70% royalties that other things do).  Which do you think is going to happen?

Now, I have a friend who writes erotica and romance (Her books are to the left, feel free to buy one or two — she quite good) and she’s not happy about what’s going on.  What is going on is that Amazon is switching to a different pay scheme for borrowing books.  You are now going to get paid per page read.  Yep.  If someone borrows a book (and even at Kindle’s prices for books, how is someone going to turn down free?  Don’t think it’s possible?  The Quietest Heart had nothing May 31st — no sales, no borrows, nothing.  When I put it up for free the next day, 53 units given away and it went up and down for a while until the promotion ended in June 7th.  Doesn’t do a whole lot for my ego to be honest.), the writer is only going to get paid for what he reads.  If you’re a good writer, then you’ll get a good rate.  If you’re a middlin’ writer, then well you might enough so that you can take your family out to the upscale Outback restaurant right across the street from the mall.

Amazon has been clever enough to not release the formula that they’re going to use to determine who gets what.  I’m hoping that it’s going to be the royalty divided by the number of pages read…which could come out to something along the lines of 2 to 3 cents a page.  This is going to do a lot of harm to the self-publishing community.  Beyond a lot of people losing revenue (ever read a cookbook from cover to cover?), this puts a lot of advantage in Amazon’s court.  Books that don’t perform well hardly get paid (which makes a wonderful opportunity for Amazon to come in with their ad campaign for self-publishers — for mere $100, they can put your book in ads that most people are going to ignore) and books that get read cover to cover might not get the same royalty rate as if someone bought it.  If it is not royalty divided by page count, then what is it?  What is this going to do to the market in general?  If you only get a couple of bucks for a full read (consider that the average book is going to be $2.99 at a 70% royalty [not adding in the reseller 4 to 6 percent] is 2.09 minus Amazon’s “transfer fee” (yep, get you coming and going) and the average length of a novel is 60,000 words.  60,000 words translates into 240 pages which means each page is going to be worth… .008 cents.  Read 10% of that book and the author makes .048 cents.  Amazon’s Kindle Lending Program and Kindle Unlimited are how Amazon is going to stay solvent.  That money that’s not being used it going to go into the war chest, which they need to invest and grow.  Why?  Read this article (Amazon is #2 on the list) and the change in attitude will become clearer.

There is actually an upside to this beyond that company staying afloat to sell us Kindles.  Writers are now going to have to get better.  They write a kick ass 10% and a crappy 90% now.  I doubt that this is Amazon’s initial idea, but it’s going to be an unexpected benefit.  However, while I hope that it will make self-publishing a little more of a good idea rather than a ‘bless your heart’ notion, I am not in favor of something that is going to hurt the honest people out there (like my friends to the right).

What’s a writer to do?  People out there are going to go from making about $3,000 a month to maybe 10% of that on a good month.  The answer is three-fold:

1) Don’t use their system.  Amazon is not the only game in town when it comes to self-publishing.  They may be the best know, but there is Kobo, Barnes and Noble and iBook.  Draft2Digital is a good service to use.  Smashwords is another.  They may not have the heft or reach of Amazon, but they’re there.

2) Use Amazon’s referral service as well if you’re a writer.  See my links to the right of the page?  I get an additional 4 percent when you click on them and buy the book.  That helps a lot.  It doesn’t take a lot and it helps.

3) Be prolific as a (censored) rabbit.  This is the best way to game the system.  The more books you have being borrowed, the more money you’re going to get.  That’s the best way for a lot of erotic writers to work, since they’re used to churning out a lot of work in a short amount of time.

4) Sell it yourself.  This does hand in hand with number one.  You have to have a website nowadays (even for a modest blog like mine)  You’ve got a captive audience reading your works online — set up a small shopping cart and sell your stuff for the right price directly to the consumer.  There are free programs out there to format your book and places to store it online.

Amazon is not the great giant it thinks it is.  We are the underdogs and we are all still too pretty to die.

As I left everyone last night: Anya is getting off the boat where she and Rhona are going to spend their honeymoon in Ozur-Soren.  As Anya looks around, she sees a ship flying the banners of Tarjen with a set of students coming off, walking in formation with the jackets of their schools.  Anya looks down at her jacket, crafted by Skein’s Glow.  While it’s better than anything made by the hands of man, Anya reflects that there is no symbol of her School on her jacket (nor can they be, since she left them in the last book).  In Tarjen, the Scholars are to which everyone aspires to be in life.  You’re there, you’re set up.  Better training, better food and living quarters, even a chance to wield political power.  As she watches the students march by her, she sees that they regard her as a civilian (fightin’ words in Tarjen).  She recognizes the ranks on the jacket, nothing that these are students fresh out of the Academies — not the ones you want with the job to guard the ranking monarch.

As the students meet with the Provost Marshal (the closest thing the Tarjentians have to an ambassador here).  Anya makes her way to the gates to check in and get her weapon bound.  She’s asked her name:  she stumbles a little bit and finally spits out Anya Sirota (she can’t take her family name, as it would identify her as still in the Scholarship.  Yeah, her bridges are burning bright).  The gatekeeper asks Rhona for her name.  Rhona carefully spells it out with her fingers, using the elvish naming convention of her name and the name of her new family: Rhona of the family Sirota.  If you read the previous book, she always identified herself as Rhona of no family.  The gatekeeper has no idea what Rhona is doing, so Anya translates, getting as close to emotional as she’s going to get.  The gatekeeper asks the purpose and duration of the stay.  Anya says one week it’s for celebrating.

“You picked the right time.  Harvest Days are here.”

Before Anya says it’s called Exaction Day, Rhona holds up her mandolin.  The gatekeeper says that Rhona will have more than enough opportunity to play and make some coin and then asks the question that Anya has been privately dreaded: are you carrying any weapons?  Yet another reminder of her past. Those blades she had earlier belonged to her father — the Head Scholar of her School.  Instead, she has blades made by Skein’s Glow.  Again — better than even Tarjentian crafted blades with ore taken right out of the mountain, but it’s not the blades from her school.  She unbuckles her baldrick (belt for holding blades, worn from shoulder to hip) and belt to hand over the sword and dagger set.  The gatekeeper just shakes his head and gives her a length of knotted rope to attach to the handles of the weapons.  Out of the corner of her eyes, she sees the students from Tarjen handing over their weapons.  “Not everything’s bad.”  She catches the eye of one of the students…and he’s not happy.

The gatekeeper takes their arrival tax (“for the health of his Royal Highness”) and they pass through into the City of Ozur-Soren.  Luckily for them, the monarch has finished up a speech formally beginning the Harvest celebration, much to the jubilation of the patiently sober.  Anya’s loathing for this place is similar to the loathing the Soviets had for America at the height of the Cold War.  Rhona looks around and sees a bunch of people looking to party and willing to spend coin for the privilege of her company.  Anya looks around and sees nothing but grasshoppers waiting for the ants to bring in the harvest.  Needless to say, the pair try to make their way to the nearest tavern to wash the taste of hte sea out of their mouths.

Now, while Rhona is finding a tavern that will let her drink and play at the same time, Anya is getting some counseling from Skein’s Glow, which can be summed up in four words: suck it up, buttercup.  There is no shame in not taking it easy for a week (or longer) while Anya tries to figure out her next step, even if it’s telling the fat little children of fatter lords with end of the sword goes into the enemy.  Anya is stubborn — she’s not going to be some welfare case for Rhona.  If Rhona is married to a Tarjentian, then she is darn well going to be married to a Daughter of the Mountains.  She just needs to figure out what she wants to do to earn her keep.  Saying that, she gets up to dance with Rhona who is herself singing and plying her trade.

Several hours later, Anya tries to keep her spirits up with booze and good company when the students come in — not wearing their Scholar’s jacket but the uniforms of the Monarch’s body guards — and the bodyguards they are rotating out with dressed in their jackets.  Anya knows the ritual well — the students buy the leaving group’s last drink and the leaving group buys the student’s first round.  As she’s gazing fondly at the group, she recognizes one of the jackets as from her Scholarship.  She’s tempted to get up and approach him to get some old gossip, but she also recognizes one of the incoming students as from her Scholarship.  Anya is fairly certain that she would not be received well in that group: her father no doubt would be tilling the soil with salt as it were and turning her old friends and Scholar-mates against her.  This does absolutely nothing good for her mood, so she turns around and continues to drink.  As she turns around, she notes that one of the other incoming students seems to be taking an undue interest in her.  She shrugs it off as a mixture of contempt, lust and/or jealousy.

…and that’s where we’re going to leave this for the time being.  Thank you for being patient while I work this out here.  Hopefully, I’ll be able to wrap it up by tomorrow and bring you back to your regularly scheduled blathering.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

Hello, everyone — one of the major problems I have been having is getting word count (stop me if you’ve heard this one — ok, got it).  I need to get serious about being consistent.  I need to get at least two thousand words a day.  I’m going to use the same approach I have used in the past when I was working on Nanowrimo.  Break the project down into three manageable chunks of 700-750 words each day: when I get up in the morning, during work and when I get home.  My iPad can log into Windows Online, so there is no hassle of remembering to e-mail myself the work I did at work (y’know, instead of my real job).  I know that consistency is the major hurdle.  The fact that there is almost a year gap in this blog is testament to that issue.  If I can break it down into smaller parts, I can do it.  i did it for Nanowrimo last year and managed to turn it into a 55K novel.  I can do it with this one.  Next January, when I leave my current job and do…something else, I might be able to increase the word count a little and maybe write, then take a thirty minute break.

You could be asking yourself “Why does he keep bringing this up?”  The same reason why you make a shopping list before walking into a grocery store: a reminder.  This is to keep things in the forefront of my mind.  The same reason why I blather on about story ideas — to keep them in my mind and make a record of them in the event that I forget something. Yes, I have forgotten things.  Really good things: The Three Brothers and Three Sisters: (Statescraft, Spycraft and Warcraft are the Three Brothers and the Three Sisters are Evocation, Elementalism and… and… dammit).  Also for all you novice writers and creative types, a bit of advice: write it down.  

With the current project, I am trying to do something different: when I have to make a decision for what’s to happen to a character, I’m going to go the opposite of what I think should happen.  Ehren brings back some vegetables and some lemons for the meal they’re having at the wainwright’s house.  Vimala (The healing spirit attached to him) says that the mother will be grateful for what Ehren has brought in — after all, the boy is starting to suffer from rickets and scurvy). Rather than be grateful, the woman tells Ehren that the lemons don’t belong to them and that they’re going to get an earful from the owner of the tree.  Some of you may recognize as the Constanza method of writing.  I’m hoping that in doing that I can keep the reader guessing.  i did it at one point in the still unfinished Cat, Rabbit and Clover.  it worked in that the main character was able to head off a disaster that would have gotten him fired from the job.

Well, with all of that said, i should go on ahead and get to the 750 I am owed to myself today.  I hope y’all have a good rest of the day.  As always, there are books that my good friends have written — feel free to try a couple of them through the links provided.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy.

Well, I am trying to keep the momentum going with this blog.  I put in about two thousand words on The Marvelous and Malefic Doomsday Medicine Show.  I like how the interplay between Vimala and Ehren (the main protagonists) is shaping up.  I’m also trying to flesh out an idea I had.  Looking back at works like Faust and the old Blues Legends, it’s an evil spirit that attaches itself to someone, promising power and influence in exchange for a deed…and that price goes up until the hapless victim has no choice in the matter.

So I thought to myself: why does it have to be an evil spirit that does this?  What if a good spirit had a similar arrangement? ‘I’ll do this for you, but I want you to promise to eat your vegetables the next time we’re in a good restaurant… and drink your milk.  Since I was writing in the fantasy world I established earlier, I went along with it.  Of course, the relationship between the spirit (Vimala) and the mortal (Ehren) has changed a little bit now that I’m putting it in the novel (they’re comfortably adversarial, but neither of them can really be without the other.  I’m not going to say any more about this right now because I don’t want to give anything away).  I’m still looking forward to finishing this scene and painting the wider world of Ehren and Vimala.  Yeah, I like world building.

Speaking of building: anyone here addicted to Spotify?  I had no idea just how much stuff is on that site.  I’ve gotten two good playlists for when I’m writing.  I’m not sure how to link playlists here, but I’m fighting the urge to drop everything here and fill up another folder of music.  The only downside is that their Bear McCreary station is a little bare.  I really wanted to get “Prelude to War” and “All Along the Watchtower” on my writing playlists.  Oh, well — they have “Truth and Reconciliation Suite” which works for me just fine for now.

Oh — I have had a chance to see a couple of Summer Films: Mad Max: Fury Road and The Avengers: Age of Ultron.  Both come with my highest recommendations, but if you only have time or money for one, my advice is to go see Mad Max: Fury Road.  Yes, I know — I am a Marvel fanboy and I should be toeing the company line…but I got so much info about the movie, the cast, the effects, the writer, the director, the catering…there was very little left to surprise me.  I know they’re setting up the Civil War storyline with this movie and I’m looking forward to it.  With Mad Max — everything was relatively new.  The action was clearly filmed and centered on the frame.  I missed that.  Every action scene now is so jerky and ADHD-like I can’t follow what’s happening at times.  With the cast, there was something new and the approach that was taken was different than what I would have done.  it was just nice to sit down to a movie and be surprised every now and then.  Next up for me is either “Inside Out” or “Spy”.

Well, that’s all the time I have for now.  I need to just give in and fill out a new list.  Hope y’all have a good day.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

ps: I figured out how to share the list.  Here’s my writing music list

S.A.

Hello, everyone!  I woke up this morning to Art Bell.  If you’ve never heard of him, go on down to the website and take a look around.  He’s coming back to the radio (well, the Internet) and I’ve found his show to be entertaining.  His show deals with oddities like UFOs, ghosts and the such.  I started listening to him when I was working third shift at Anthem (a long, long time ago).  Do I believe what he espouses?  Some of it.  I like the EVP/Ghost hunting episodes and some of the more reasonable conspiracy segments.  I bought a subscription when I heard he’s coming back  Give it a listen when he’s back on July 20th.

The new project.  One of the things that I am liking about this one is that I am trying to make the main character as unlikeable as possible without completely alienating him from the readers.  I know that I am going to get a lot of comparisons to the show “House“, in that the character isn’t the likeable sort of person.  They’re right, but “House” is really nothing more than an a re-hashing of Sherlock Holmes (not bashing — I loved the show).  So far, the main character of The Marvelous and Malefic Doomsday Medicine Show (Love that title!) is not a misunderstood genius, but rather an avaricious individual.  If he’s not getting paid, he’s doesn’t give a whit about you.  Of course, we’re going to have flashes of humanity here and there, but not enough for us to look at him differently.  He’s going to change over the course of the book, like the dragon in “Skyrim” says:

"What is better: to be born good, or to overcome your evil nature through great effort?"

Which is the theme of this novel: you can overcome the worse parts of your nature, but it takes an effort.  I’m aiming to get this book finished and out there before Christmas — this year (I feel that I have to qualify that.  I mean…Tyro’s novel has been a project for almost twenty years).  I’m looking forward to revealing the antagonist in the book, since it’s a callback to my first novel (still on sale!).  I still have that fire in my belly for this one.  I am going to try to finish Cat, Rabbit and Clover at some point this year as well, it’s just that the more I write it, the more I want to add and the longer it gets, I just need to focus on the scenes that need to finish and get it off to the editor.  I need to get this done because I finally got the title for the sequel: The Three L’s: Love, Luck and Lumber.  Evan’s series can go on as long as there is interest in it.  Most of the other projects are trilogies (I’ve been told they tend to sell better), and I think the only things that are one-shot works are all my horror projects (which I should get to them at some point) and maybe the one romance idea I have (which takes place at around the same time as the current work — I wonder if they should reference each other?)

Well, speaking of writing — I should get to that for the few minutes I have before I have to get off to work.  I hope y’all have a good day.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy

This is really just a small test to see how my iPad takes to the new interface.  Honestly, I liked it better when I could use my Word to type, cut and paste everything on directly.  Apparently, Microsoft and WordPress have had some sort of falling out.

I doubt it looked this cute

There will be a longer post tomorrow.  Pinky swear.
Sincerely,

Seething Apathy