Author Spotlight: The Hiro Complex with Susan Spann

Dear Bloggolicious! I'm thrilled to bring back my marvelous friend, mystery writer Susan Spann, today to discuss her latest release in the Shinobi Mysteries and writing in general. Before diving in, I must say how much I love her books Claws of the Cat and Blade of the Samurai (read my reviews to know more about them); they're they kinds of stories that transport you, and have enough twists and intrigues that you want to read them more than once. Take it away, Susan!

1. What in the world made you want to write about 15th century Japan and samurai culture?

I’ve loved medieval Japan since I saw the Shogun miniseries in 1980 (the one starring Richard Chamberlain, for those old enough to remember). The following day I went to the library, got the book, and I’ve been hooked on Japanese culture and history ever since.

When it comes to the Shinobi Mysteries specifically, I had a slightly more dramatic experience. While standing in front of the bathroom mirror getting ready for work in 2011, a voice in my head said, “Most ninjas commit murders, but Hiro Hattori solves them.”

I was startled, but I also knew immediately that this was a series I had to write.

2. How much research do you do, and does most of it occur midstory or before you start writing?

Short answer: LOTS of research. And it happens both before and after I start writing.

Each book in the series is set in or around a different aspect of medieval Japanese culture—for example, the murder in Blade of the Samurai takes place in the shogun’s palace. Before I start writing, I usually read at least two books (and lots of articles) on the subjects that form the “sets” for the mystery. In this case, that meant the Ashikaga shogunate and samurai in Kyoto.

While writing, I always come across finer details I need to research—for example, the precise location and layout of the shogun’s palace in 1565. I don’t stop drafting—I’ll usually just insert a note, like ***find location of palace*** and keep on writing. If the scene or detail is still in the story by the time I reach Draft 4, I stop and find the answer through research.

A lot of the background “research” comes from things I already know, because my undergraduate degree is in Asian Studies, with a concentration in Chinese and Japanese history—so fortunately I wasn’t flying blind when I started out!

3. Now that the first two books are released, what's next for the series?

The third Shinobi Mystery, Flask of the Drunken Master, will release in July 2015, and I’m already working on book 4, working title Blood of the Outcast. I’ve got a series outline that continues beyond that, and I’m hoping to have the chance to write more books in the series.

4. Do you have any side projects, either in the Shinobi series setting or extraneous to it?

I do! But if I told you…I’d have to kill you….

Kidding aside, I just finished a new novel in what might become a second mystery series. I can’t say much about it now, except that it’s also set in feudal Japan. Hopefully I’ll be able to say more about it soon.

The Publishing Paradigm

5. You and I do a lot of cross comparison of indie vs. trad. Have you ever considered the indie route? Why or why not?

I considered all of the options before deciding to take the traditional publishing route with my mystery series. I think it’s important for every author to handle his or her writing career like a business (a value you and I share!) and to consider all the options and make the business decision that best fits the author’s business needs.

For me, the decision to pursue traditional publishing relates to my desire for business partners to handle certain aspects of the publishing process, allowing me to split my time between writing/promotion and my other day job, where I’m a publishing lawyer.

Writing, and the author’s side of promotion, take lots of time. Editing, cover design, and distribution are also time-intensive. The best way for me to operate my business was to obtain “partners”—in the form of a traditional publisher—who would take on some of the heavy-lifting for me, without me needing to keep an eye on that part of the process. In that way, I could work both “jobs”—writer and attorney—without sacrificing the quality of either. However, that also required me to finding a publisher I trusted, with a good reputation, so I could have confidence in the other part of my “business team.” (Fortunately, I’ve found a great partner in Minotaur Books.)

6. What are your thoughts on the hybrid model? Relates to the side-project question. In other words, would you ever consider publishing something unrelated to your Shinobi series on your own?

Short answer: I consider all the options for every project on an individual basis. For me, it’s all about what works best for the project and how it fits in my business model.

The hybrid model (some traditionally-published works and others self- or indie-published) offers great opportunities for authors to reach an audience through different channels. Smart authors are always looking for new and effective ways to deliver high-quality content and reach readers, so I’d never shut an option down without considering how it might work for the project at hand and for my career as a whole.

For the moment, I’m focusing on the Shinobi series, and haven’t really had time to think about much else!

7. You do a lot to give back to the writing community, things like PubLaw and legal advice. What's your motivation for this and what can other authors learn from your example? 

My father used to say that every morning, each of us has a choice: we can help make someone’s life a little better, or we can make the decision to make the lives of those we meet a little worse. He also said he hoped I’d always go with option 1.

Dad passed away suddenly in 2009. He never saw my books in print. I like to think that my work with #PubLaw and offering legal advice to authors and editors in need is a way of honoring his life and creating a legacy for those important words. I also hope that people will “pay it forward.”

It really is true that we have that vital choice to make every morning, and also that it doesn’t take a heroic act to improve a life you touch. Sometimes, even little things like a smile or an unexpected kindness makes a far bigger difference than people know.

8. Do you have any upcoming appearances?

I do! Here are my signing dates for the rest of July and August:

Pleasanton, CA: Tuesday, July 29, 2014: 11:00 AM
 Reading & Signing: Towne Center Books
 555 Main Street
Pleasanton, CA 94566

San Diego, CA: Saturday, August 2, 2014: 2:00 PM 
Reading & Signing: Mysterious Galaxy Bookstore
7051 Clairemont Mesa Blvd
San Diego, CA 92111

Citrus Heights, CA: Saturday, August 16, 2014: 1:00 PM
 Reading & Signing: Barnes & Noble, Birdcage
 6111 Sunrise Boulevard
Citrus Heights, CA 95610

I’ll be in Denver, Colorado at the Tattered Cover on September 3, and also at the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Conference the weekend of September 5-7.

Thank you so much for hosting me!

Susan Spann writes the Shinobi Mysteries, featuring ninja detective Hiro Hattori and his Portuguese Jesuit sidekick, Father Mateo. Her debut novel, CLAWS OF THE CAT (Minotaur Books, 2013), was named a Library Journal Mystery Debut of the Month. The second Shinobi Mystery, BLADE OF THE SAMURAI, releases on July 15, 2014. Susan is also a transactional attorney whose practice focuses on publishing law and business. When not writing or practicing law, she raises seahorses and rare corals in her marine aquarium. You can find her online at her website and on Twitter (@SusanSpann).

Book Review: Blade of the Samurai by Susan Spann

Blade of the Samurai by Susan SpannMy rating: 5 of 5 stars

Having only read one or two mysteries prior to beginning Susan Spann's Shinobi series, I had no idea what to expect. Now, I am a huge fan! Masterfully interweaving the deeply textured 16th century Japanese culture with the subtly and intrigue of a murder mystery, Blade of the Samurai draws readers in from page one and holds on relentlessly until the last page is turned. The first book in Susan's series, Claws of the Cat, hooked me instantly with its marvelous characters and rich world, and Blade of the Samurai kept me on the line. With a promise of more to come in next year's release of Flask of the Drunken Master, I am truly a diehard fan.

Exciting news! Susan will be here on Monday to tell us what it's like to be a master of mysterium tremendum and share a little about her Hiro Complex. Don't miss it!

See all my reviews

WAR IS CHEAP!

What’s it like for a writer to finish their latest novel, especially when it’s the last book in a trilogy? Is it an occasion for joy, or is it an occasion to shed tears of sadness and separation, the same kind you feel when you finish reading a great novel? Does it feel like a triumph, or does it bring on more of a sense of being lost and confused, kind of like a puppy that has misplaced her favorite shoe?

I suspect the answer to this is different for every writer. Absurdly, the book I’m releasing today is called Contract of War and is a study of postwar behavior in a formerly oligarchical society. And yet I surreptitiously blinked away a couple of tears in a subdued cathartic expulsion of all of the above when I wrote the final words a few months ago. Then, upon having my little moment, I tapped command-S, followed by command-N, and started a new story. Now if that isn’t a little weird, a little different, a little, I don’t know, disturbing—but that’s what writing is like. All writers, from Huxley to Bacigalupi, from McCaffrey to Lackey, from PKD to Priest and so on, create and destroy on such a continuous basis that redefining the range of normal human emotions becomes an unintended side effect of our profession.

And we love it.

We love the words, we love the process, and we love the long hours spent in a seat or standing at a table pouring our brainmeats into bits on a box so that we can take ourselves, and if we’re very, very lucky, other readers, on journeys so bizarre, so enlightening, so frightening, so fundamentally, heart-stoppingly exciting that we can’t sleep at night because of how much fun we’re all having. We often cackle, we frequently weep, and more than Robert DeNiro in Awakenings, we stare off into space looking like androids with drained batteries while the world spins unnoticed around us. So in a roundabout way, we love what we do because it makes us seem to others a little like drooling idiots.

And we are comfortable with that, because we do it for another reason. We do it for days like today when for once our natural introvertedness gets shaken inside out and we get to tell the world about our latest brainbaby. And today is that day for me. So without further ramblingly obtuse ado, I introduce to you, Contract of War, the final book in my military science fiction/action-adventure series, the Spectras Arise Trilogy.

Contract of War

Unification or tyranny. The only difference is the body count.

In the aftermath of a system-wide war between the Admin and Corp Loyalists and the non-citizen population of the Algols, everything once resembling order has been leveled. Scattered enclaves of survivors dot the worlds, living, however they can, in snarled lawlessness. Aly Erikson and her crew have carved out a niche of relative peace, doing their best to go on with their lives through salvaging, scavenging, and stealing. But with no force left to keep the lid on the pot, the pressures of chaos and discord soon cause conflicts to boil over. As enemies close in from all directions, even, sometimes, from within, the crew once again must fight—not just for survival, not just for their way of life, but this time for a future that can finally lay to rest the system’s bloody and savage past.The Spectras Arise Trilogy

Contract of Defiance, Contract of Betrayal, and Contract of War follow heroine Aly Erikson and her crew of anti-Admin smugglers through an ever-escalating glut of life-and-death adventures and the trials of living on the side of liberty and freedom—whether they agree with the law or not—in the far future of the Algol star system. As former Corps members, most are no strangers to fighting and dissent, but more than anything, they want to spend their lives flying under the radar without control or interference from the system’s central government, The Political and Capital Administration of the Advanced Worlds. But the Admin's greed-drenched dualism of power and corruption has other plans, and throughout the series, Aly and her crew are reminded of one lesson time and again: when all other options run out, never let go of your gun.

Make Opinions, Not War

Hey there Bloggolotticans. The not-so-secret secret that I'm publishing my third novel in the Spectras Arise trilogy imminently (like July 21st, to be imminently exact) is sort of out. I'm putting together the final threads like now, and today is all about taglines. Funnily enough, I had a conversation with a fellow Twitterling  yesterday about how taglines are sometimes rather difficult to come up with. Because thousands of brains are better (or at the least, more entertaining) than one, I thought I'd throw out some ideas for taglines and get your thoughts on them.Here's the blurb for my new release, Contract of War. In the aftermath of a system-wide war between the Admin and Corp Loyalists and the non-citizen population of the Algols, everything once resembling order has been leveled. Scattered enclaves of survivors dot the worlds, living, however they can, in snarled lawlessness. Aly Erikson and her crew have carved out a niche of relative peace, doing their best to go on with their lives through salvaging, scavenging, and stealing. But with no force left to keep the lid on the pot, the pressures of chaos and discord soon cause conflicts to boil over. As enemies close in from all directions, even, sometimes, from within, the crew once again must fight—not just for survival, not just for their way of life, but this time for a future that can finally lay to rest the system’s bloody and savage past.

* * *

Given that, what are your thoughts on any of these taglines? Post comments below, and trust me, I know many of them are seriously cheese-puff. This is what happens when the brain is set to a task too early in the morning. I'm just hoping a couple of them will resonate. Cheers and thanks!Possible Taglines:At the banquet of war, tyranny feasts on power.When the fight is over, tyranny feasts on leftover scraps of power.The monster of tyranny feasts on power.In war, the weeds of tyranny choke the gardens of peace.Tyranny thrives where peace withers.Power is war's feast.Power feasts at war’s table.The cannibals of power feast at war’s table.Tyranny feasts at the table of power.Tyranny gorges at the table of power.Tyranny gorges at the banquet of power.The cannibal of tyranny gorges at the banquet of power.Unification and tyranny. Sometimes the difference isn’t clear.Power is the cannibal of war.War is the cannibal of power.After war, power cannibalizes itself.(After re-reading these, I'm noting I may have some kind of obsession with cannibalism. Ravenous is one of my all-time favorite films, after all. Don't judge.)

Book Guts: What to Send Your Editor and Proofreader

The ebook revolution and evolutionary chart-topper of self-publishing has been around long enough now that many, many independent authors are living the dream. Those who are seeing the most success are treating their books not like a hobby, but like a business, and doing what businesses everywhere do: hire experts to make their books (products) the best they can be. For authors, the hired-out expertise comes in everything from editing and copyediting, to proofreading, to cover design, to ebook formatting, to marketing and promotion, and so on. For example, my niche is editing, but I couldn’t draw a circle that resembled anything but an irregular and sad blob even if I stared at the sun long enough to have its shape burned permanently into my retina. That’s why I’ve commissioned the incredibly talented cover artist and fellow author Jason Gurley to breathe new life into the visual side of my trilogy, the final book of which will release in July! (It’s okay, hold your breath, I know I’m holding mine). Why Jason? Because, well, take a look at his portfolio and you’ll understand the awesome.

I’m lucky enough to have a marvelous and varied cadre of clients in my quiver who are now several books deep into this grand Hemingwayesque-but-without-the-WWII-alkie-burnout-tragic-end-stuff adventure. But for many, this is still new territory. The checklist below is for new authors who’ve chosen the self-publishing route, and lists the items to consider handing off to your copyeditor and proofreader to finalize your manuscript. I’ve worked with a number of new writers who haven’t even started thinking about most of the things on this list until after they’ve sent me their manuscript, but there’s still a considerable learning curve to ride before the manuscript is in publishable shape (and includes things which aren’t intuitive for someone who still thinks of him/herself as a writer, instead of a publisher).

The most important thing to note when you decide to self-publish your writing is that you are no longer just a writer. You’ve become a publisher, which makes you responsible for your book in its entirety, not only for the words between chapter one through the end. And trust me, that is a lot of decisions you’ll get to make. Loid your girns.

Checklist for what you’d like your editor and proofreader to review for ebooks (print is a bit different).

Front Matter:

• Title pageShould include your title, your imprint or publisher (if you would like), and your name

• Copyright pageIMHO, this is the number one item your book needs to contain (besides a well-designed cover) to lend it weight and show the world you’re serious about this writing thing. It should include at minimum your name, the word “copyright” or the symbol, the title of the work, and the year first published. Many other things can also be included (but are not always required), such as your website or contact info, acknowledgment of reprint rights or permissions to borrow from other works*, a disclaimer and/or permissions statement, acknowledgment of your cover designer, ISBN, and colophon (imprint/publisher logo). *As the publisher, if you borrow or print any material that is derived from another work, such as lyrics or lines from poems, it is up to you to get permission from the copyright holder of those works. It’s a good idea to buy yourself a copy of the Chicago Manual of Style, an indispensable and necessary resource, in order to learn more about how to do this, or visit this helpful page from the Book Designer to brush up on copyright basics.

• Introduction, Forward, Preface

• Dedication

• Epigraph

• Prologue

The Meat (aka Content):

• Chapters

Back Matter:

• Epilogue

• Appendices

• Glossary

• Acknowledgments

• About the Author

• Other Books by the Author

• Excerpt from another work

• About the Publisher

• Maps

• Notes

• Chronology/Timeline

Other materials you may want to have your editor and proofreader review:

• Tagline and logline

• Book blurb

• Elevator pitch

• Synopsis

• Query letter

Final thoughts

Most editors and proofreaders charge either by the hour or by word count. For hourly quotes, word count is the primary data point in deciding how many hours a particular project may take to complete. Thus, when you’re deciding on your budget and seeking out your editorial musketeer, be sure to think through all of the components that will be included in your final publication and factor their word count into your project as a whole.

Self-Publishing Paths: Week 6, Marketing & Promotion

Greetings and salutations, Blogoramans! Welcome to the final post in this guest series on self-publishing at mystery author and contracts lawyer Susan Spann's Spann of Time blog. In this final installment, I offer what words of advice I can about the marketing and promotion side of being a self-published author. I hope you glean some valuable information, and I wish you the utmost success in your writing and publishing endeavors!

You’ve done it. You have achieved a dream—maybe one that was lifelong, or perhaps more spur-of-the-moment, but an achievement to be commended for. Take a minute and think about that. Thousands of people want to write a novel. Of those, only hundreds begin, and of those, fewer still ever get beyond crafting a very long, wordy file that pulses in electronic bits on their computer or fades from ink to obscurity in a notebook. But not you—to paraphrase T. S. Elliot, you have turned blood into ink, and now you are ready to hurl it at the ravenous hordes of voracious and inkthirsty readers. Or, you know, sell it. Continue here.

Full Series Posts:Week 1: Research. An overview and comparison of the self- vs. traditional-publishing paradigms.Week 2: Business Plans. What an author needs to know to create and adhere to business plans and deadlines.Week 3: Distributing Your Novel. The general considerations regarding distribution sites.Week 4: Creating eBooks. Details to consider in regard to ebook creation, and why and how to do it.Week 5: Plan ahead to hire an editor, proofreader, and cover designer. At minimum, start looking six months before you plan to publish.

Self-Publishing Paths: Week 5, Editing & Cover Design

G'morning Blogitons! Please join Susan Spann and I on Spann of Time for the continuation of the self-publishing series. This week we look at the second most essential component of publishing a novel, the presentation. This includes editing, proofreading, and cover design. Thanks to all who've commented how much you've enjoyed this series so far. Next week will be the final post and discusses the juggernaut of marketing. Take care!

Sometimes, most of the time even, new authors are consumed by and utterly immersed in their first few writing projects, often to the point of having absolutely no brain cells left over for any other creative or “businessy” endeavors. I’ve been there; I understand it. Nothing is more exciting to a writer than the story you are bringing to life.Somewhere along this creative journey, however, new authors generally come to a decision about whether they will publish or simply allow their novel to be extant. It’s a question of public attention and acknowledgment vs. personal satisfaction and self-acknowledgment. (Here’s a little something I wrote on the subject of why we write that talks more about this public vs. personal dialectic). Once an author makes their choice, it’s time to get serious about carving out the time to include all those ancillary steps to the actual writing that will lead to your finished—and publishable, if that’s your goal—novel. Continue here.

Full Series Posts:Week 1: Research. An overview and comparison of the self- vs. traditional-publishing paradigms.Week 2: Business Plans. What an author needs to know to create and adhere to business plans and deadlines.Week 3: Distributing Your Novel. The general considerations regarding distribution sites.Week 4: Creating eBooks. Details to consider in regard to ebook creation, and why and how to do it.Week 6: Marketing & Promotion.

Self-Publishing Paths: Week 4, Creating eBooks

G'day Blogolicioussians. Please join me today at mystery author Susan Spann's blog where the series on self-publishing continues with week 4. This post goes into more detail about things to consider in regard to ebook creation, and why and how to do it. Enjoy!

For someone unfamiliar with HTML or CSS, creating an ebook may seem like black magic. But that doesn’t have to stop you from making ebooks your main self-published medium. Hundreds and hundreds of ebook creators have their shingle up, and a quick web search will find them for you. Better yet, if you’re part of a group of likeminded writers who’ve already gone through the process of having their novels formatted as ebooks, ask them who they used and if they would or wouldn’t recommend this service. Continue here.

Full Series Posts:Week 1: Research. An overview and comparison of the self- vs. traditional-publishing paradigms.Week 2: Business Plans. What an author needs to know to create and adhere to business plans and deadlines.Week 3: Distributing Your Novel. The general considerations regarding distribution sites.Week 5: Plan ahead to hire an editor, proofreader, and cover designer. At minimum, start looking six months before you plan to publish.Week 6: Marketing and Promotion.

Self-Publishing Paths: Week 3, Distribution

Hello Blogdrodites! Welcome to the third week of my guest post series on the many considerations of self-publishing. Please join me at (world's coolest) mystery author Susan Spann's blog, Spann of Time, to learn about the things to consider when choosing your distribution sites. You may also want to visit this older post of mine that has a more concrete (though dated) look at the many options. Thanks to the many who have stopped by to peruse these posts. I hope you're enjoying them and getting some good tips. Cheers!

There are two kinds of people in the world (outside of those who write and those who don’t), and they are those who obsess about the details and those who think of details as esoteric thought experiments that have little bearing on the obviously more important process of writing the next novel. But here’s the thing, and it bears repeating once again: Treat your writing like a passion, but treat your novel like a business. In a successful business model, the details are what matter the most. Continue here.

Full Series Posts:Week 1: Research. An overview and comparison of the self- vs. traditional-publishing paradigms.Week 2: Business Plans. What an author needs to know to create and adhere to business plans and deadlines.Week 4: Creating eBooks. Details to consider in regard to ebook creation, and why and how to do it.Week 5: Plan ahead to hire an editor, proofreader, and cover designer. At minimum, start looking six months before you plan to publish.Week 6: Marketing and Promotion.

Self-Publishing Paths: Week 2, Business Plans

G'day Bloggorites. Please join me and mystery author Susan Spann at Spann of Time today where I discuss the ins and outs and steps to take for creating a self-published author's business plan. This post is the second in a series on all of the facets of self-publishing. Visit week 1's post on research and identifying your goals and intents here. Here's a short preview:

Being in independently published author is extremely time intensive. Knowing that going in is the first consideration you need to include when evaluating your trajectory and goals. Much as you may outline your novel—with plot arcs, story goals, and finale outcomes—think of your business plan as the outline to your writing career. The following are the three universal steps (as I see them) to accomplish this.1. Set realistic goals.The fact is, brand new unknown authors cannot expect to hit the publish button and sell hundreds of books overnight, even if they hire a publicist. The number one way people sell books is through word of mouth, and if your book hasn't yet been read by anyone, there's no one to spread the word on how fabulous it is. But that's okay, as indie fantasy author K. Scott Lewis describes it, becoming a success is a marathon, not a sprint. Continue.

Full Series Posts:Week 1: Research. An overview and comparison of the self- vs. traditional-publishing paradigms.Week 3: Distributing Your Novel. The general considerations regarding distribution sites.Week 4: Creating eBooks. Details to consider in regard to ebook creation, and why and how to do it.Week 5: Plan ahead to hire an editor, proofreader, and cover designer. At minimum, start looking six months before you plan to publish.Week 6: Marketing and Promotion.

Self-Publishing Paths: Week 1, Research

G'day Blogtasticans. Join myself and fellow author Susan Spann at Spann of Time today where I'm discussing the many nuances of self-publishing. This is a six-week long series, and week one covers the wheretofors and whathaveyous of choosing the self-pubbing path. Thanks, Susan, for having me!A sneak peek:

Isaac Asimov said, “Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is.” And that is the first thing you must do in order to fly your indie flag at its grandest height. Researching and learning the business from both the traditional and the independent or self-publishing perspective is the essential ingredient to making the best choices for your own writing career. Each person must decide for themself what fork in the path they want to take in regard to going trad or indie, but to make a good decision, you must be as informed as possible about what you’re gaining and/or losing in either choice. Continued here.

Full Series Posts:Week 2: Business Plans. What an author needs to know to create and adhere to business plans and deadlines.Week 3: Distributing Your Novel. The general considerations regarding distribution sites.Week 4: Creating eBooks. Details to consider in regard to ebook creation, and why and how to do it.Week 5: Plan ahead to hire an editor, proofreader, and cover designer. At minimum, start looking six months before you plan to publish.Week 6: Marketing and Promotion.

Author Spotlight: Erik Wecks

Blogomites, it is my pleasure to have as a guest today Erik Wecks, author of the Pax Imperium novels and frequent contributor to GeekDad and LitReactor to share his wisdom on being a full-time writer, father, and self-publishing cognoscente.***First things first: tell us about you, why you write, and if it you regard writing generally to be a symptom of genius or insanity.Ha! Definitely insanity. Think about it, we spend all day in our heads imagining and pretending in worlds where we can make things just the way we want them. Worse, we are at our best when torturing the people we created in those worlds. Is it any wonder many writers struggle to deal with the reality? Seriously though, I have definitely come to be a more introverted person since taking up writing. I'm content with that, but it has been an interesting change. I think I would now describe myself as an outgoing introvert. In the past, I would have thought of myself as an extrovert.You have several novels and stories set in the PAX Imperium universe. That name is so intriguing! The layers of conflict within the title and the dichotomy between something that is peaceful and something that is imperious and has absolute dominion is juicy. Can you share what your vision for PAX is, why you’ve created it, and what kinds of stories readers can expect to find set there?I'm glad you like the name. The Pax really developed from the old historian in me. At one time, I was on my way toward a Ph.D. in European history. I didn't finish. This was back in the late nineties when things like the Balkan war and Kosovo were hot topics for discussion. One of the things I learned from a mentor was that dictators aren't always a bad thing. In a multi-ethnic empire, they have a way of sitting on conflict and keeping it from erupting into violence. In European history, the greatest empire was the Holy Roman Empire, which did a lot to keep conflict to a low simmer in Europe for hundreds of years, at least until the thirty years war in the seventeenth century. The Pax developed when I had the idea of taking the HRE and transporting it to a space opera universe.That said, I try to keep the politics in my books to a minimum. So far I've managed to avoid long-winded speeches about trade embargoes and boring diplomatic discussions in throne rooms. It's a concern for me. I don't want to read about Padme sitting around a throne room talking to people, and I assume my audience doesn't either. In my story, you don't even meet the Empress. I'd rather have you out there looking at the universe from the point of view of people within it, some of them important and some of them just average people trying to get by while it all falls apart around them. My tagline as an author is "character-rich science fiction for your Kindle with 'splosions—lots of explosions." I try to stick to that and leave out all the other boring bits.In my series of novels the Pax is definitely falling apart. Even an empire can only keep certain tensions on simmer for so long. There are four novels planned, Aetna Adrift is written and available, On the Far Bank of the Rubicon will come out later this winter or early in the spring. Currently, I am in the midst of writing the first of three big wars, one of which will take place in each book.You and I had a couple exchanges regarding your novel Aetna Adrift’s main character, Jack Halloway, being a womanizing antihero type. One of the things that’s been so interesting in regard to your decision to write this type of character, who some readers have mentioned was hard to connect with because of his somewhat negative ideas on femininity in general, is that you are actually quite an advocate for women’s social and economic parity. Tell us more about why you chose to create this character and what kind of message you hope readers take from your novels.Yeah, I knew that there was a risk that what I wrote would be misunderstood. I'm OK with that, as long as the reviewer doesn't get personal. When they start conflating Jack's views with my own, it gets under the skin. Also, when they assume that I wasn't being thoughtful in my choices and think that I just wrote things this way because I didn't know better, that bothers me. It shows the reviewer hasn't read anything that I wrote for GeekDad, where I have sometimes been called a feminist dad. Its a label, I will take, although I prefer humanist dad. I don't like the idea of equating a strong belief in parity with the feminine. I think its a tactical error in that it forever lets men off the hook from having to do their part to advocate for parity.As far as Jack goes, I guess I would start by saying, I like to write about broken people because I can relate to them. I think we're all imperfect, and I like putting that human imperfection into my stories. In Aetna Adrift, I wanted to write a story in which a misogynist grows up a little, and I wanted to make that character realistic. I didn't want him to have some sort of instant awakening which makes him better all at once, although there are moments which propel him forward. I wanted him to start by letting one woman past his defenses.I think I was only partly successful. One of the things I don't like is that it feels too much like romantic love is what changes Jack, and I am not a big fan of the "woman's sexuality will save a man" narrative. In my head, it's friendship which changes Jack, but I am not sure the came through clearly enough for my tastes. In Aetna Adrift, Jack finds himself looking at a woman as a partner and a person, instead of as a resource to be tapped in some way. To be fair to Jack, at the start of the book, he views everyone as a resource to be used. That's his journey, so it isn't just women, but he certainly reserves a special kind of disregard for women when the book begins.I don't think he's healthy by the end of the book either. If you listen to him carefully, you can see that he's still tends to see women as a means to an end. Jack still has some big blind spots when it comes to relationships in general and intimate relationships in particular. Those will come back to haunt him in book two in a big way. They will also take him a few more steps down the road, but that will take years. I don't think you get over misogyny overnight. I think looking at how do you help a misogynist grow up is an important question, particularly for men who are strong advocates for parity.You’re heavily ensconced in the parenting culture and have written numerous articles for GeekDad and LitReactor, an online writer’s water cooler. As a parent of three daughters, how do you make time to do all this writing?Two years ago I decided that I was never going to write unless I took the leap and started in full time. So writing is my job. I've always been a pretty self-motivated person. I try to write every day. Some days are better than others. I don't enjoy having someone looking over my shoulder and cracking the whip. I do that enough on my own, thank you very much.My wife works outside the home. I play the stay at home dad, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I enjoy raising my three daughters too much to give it up. I incorporate them into my writing as much as I can. I need to write a story for my seven year old yet, but my fourteen year old reads almost everything. She is one of my first line editors. She's pretty good at saying, "That sucks dad." It helps to hear it from someone you know cares.In the last month, I have been really excited to introduce my kids to Pathfinder (a Dungeons-and-Dragons-like game), which I see as a cooperative storytelling game. I started writing a YA-style adventure for them, and it has become a real joy to create simply for the enjoyment of my family. We play together each Friday night.What is your writing process? Are you a dedicated everyday writer, or catch-as-catch can? Do you have any special rituals or activities you do that help you prepare to write?As I said, I try to write every day. As far as rituals, I do have an interesting one. I have found that I write best without the internet available. I get too easily distracted messing with the music on Spotify or checking out how many people followed me on Twitter today. So I have my wife take the cable modem to work with her every day... I know it sounds ridiculous but it works. No internet=No distractions. It does make me a little slow at answering emails, however.Can you give us some insight on why you chose to go the indie publishing route, and what you’d do the same and differently if you were going to start again at the beginning of your writing career?For me being an indie has been purely a business decision. There is a much better opportunity to earn a small sustainable income as an indie than there is in the traditional world. In traditional world you either hit the lottery or make peanuts. I don't need to win the lottery. What I need is an income for my kids. I think the ebook ecosystem, and particularly Amazon, offers me a much better opportunity to earn that income. If the day comes that I am popular enough to command respect from one of the big six, I will listen, but only if I can truly negotiate on some of the more onerous parts of their contracts. Frankly, I don't expect that to happen, and I am content with that. I just want to make a modest living and bring a modest group of people real enjoyment from my work.What’s next on your writing agenda? Any new releases on the near horizon?As I said, I have a novel coming out later this winter, On the Far Bank of the Rubicon. I also have a short story or two in the works and a novella is rumbling around in my head. The novella is cathartic in nature, and I don't know if I am in the emotional place to tackle it right now, but I am thinking about it enough to know that it will come out someday. I also have a non-fiction project, I am cowriting with a couple of experts in the field on managing your HOA well. It's called Getting Beyond Paint Chips. It should be out in a few months.It seems as if you're heavily involved in organizing local writing conferences around your 'hood near Vancouver/Portland. What are your thoughts in general for other authors when it comes to attending writing conferences. Are they worth it? If so, why; and if not, why not?I think you can always learn something at a conference, but take everything you hear with a huge grain of salt. Much of the advice is just plain bad, so you have to sift through and find the truth for yourself. Also, don't use attending conferences as an excuse never to put your stuff out in front of an audience. Sometimes I think writers cling to the traditional publishing model simply because getting rejected means they never have to find out if an audience will like their work. Don't be that writer! With ebook publishing, you don't have an excuse any longer. Put your stuff out there and find your audience. If it's well edited and interesting, you will find readers.Anything else you want to mention or elaborate on?Hmmm... nothing comes to mind, except to tell readers that if they join my friends list, they will often get first crack at reading what I write. Last week I gave them all a copy of my short story "He Dug the Grave Himself," and right now if you sign up, you get a free copy of my Pax novella Brody: Hope Unconquered. You can find a sign up in the upper right corner of my website, www.erikwecks.com***Erik is a full time writer and blogger living in Vancouver, Washington. He writes both nonfiction and fiction and blogs and enjoys writing on a wide range of topics. When not waxing poetic on various aspects of fiscal responsibility, he tends toward the geeky.In the moments he is not poised over the keyboard, he loves to spend time with his family. He is married to an angel, Jaylene, who has taught him more than anyone else about true mercy and compassion. They are the parents of three wonderful girls. As a group they like swimming at the local pool, gardening, reading aloud, playing piano, and beating each other soundly at whatever table top game is handy.***Thank you so much for being here, Erik, and sharing your wide-scale industry knowledge and writerly wisdom. I am particularly inspired by your description of rolling your writing into your family life, and I look forward to reading Aetna Adrift, as well as the release of On the Far Bank of the Rubicon.

Among the Between: Notes from the Preposition War Trenches

Recently I was working on a manuscript in which the author had written a sentence that gave me pause. It contained the word "between" in a use that is less common than what most of us are used to reading, but many of us say when speaking. As an inveterate verbarian, my mind reads words that could just as easily be replaced by another word, as is often the case with prepositions, and does an automatic compare and contrast to see if the usage in the instance involved is correct. NOTE: This is more commonly referred to as overthinking it, and those of you who are also guilty of this habit know just how excruciating it is. (Like when you look at a word for long enough that it suddenly doesn't even look like a word anymore, much less one in your own language, and then you're hit with a case of the cold sweats wondering how many times in your life you've used this impostor word in polite company and sounded like a complete moron, then you take a quick drink of something adult and spirited and finally calm down.)Because in this case I was unable to convince myself whether "among" or "between" was the correct preposition, I decided to consult the two main water coolers for professionals in this area: The Chicago Manual of Style and the Editorial Freelancers Association forums. The ensuing conversations surprised even me and showed one very important thing: language is always in a fluid state; take any dogmatic adherence to any rule, and within a few years to a couple of centuries, it will have become as quaint and dated as your grandmother's View-Master Stereoscope.Read on to see how even the most proficient and specialized minds can still disagree on some of English's particularities.---Me. Hi All,Having a hard time wrapping my brain around the proper preposition for this sentence and wondering if someone can help me figure it out. The offending word here is "between," which part of my brain believes should be "among." What do you think?The author writes: Between the three of them they were able to haul up half of the rope before she swung back.Many thanks!Tammy

Editorial Freelancers Forum:

Response 1. It should be "among". It's my understanding that "between" is used only if there are two people (or things) involved. So it would be "between the two of them", but "among the three of them".Response 2. Seems to me that should be "among" too.Response 3. I’d just say, “The three of them were able …”Response 4. "Among" seems more suitable to me in this case, as Responder 1 and Responder 2 mentioned. Here's what CMS 16 says about the words:between; among; amid. Between indicates one-to-one relationships {between you and me}. Amongindicates undefined or collective relationships {honor among thieves}. Between has long beenrecognized as being perfectly appropriate for more than two objects if multiple one-to-onerelationships are understood from the context {trade between members of the European Union}.Amid is used with mass nouns {amid talk of war}, among with plurals of count nouns {amongthe children}. Avoid amidst and amongst.Response 5. I agree that "among" is appropriate unless any two of the three worked together alternately to haul up half of the rope. Absent any further explanation that might follow, I would definitely change "between" to "among."Me. Doh! Silly me! It's right here in black and white. M-W:be·tween preposition bi-ˈtwēn, bē-1 a : by the common action of : jointly engaging <shared the work between the two of them> <talks between the three —Time>b : in common to : shared by <divided between his four grandchildren>Response 7. One more reason to keep more than one dictionary around. The standard set all take turns falling short it seems to me. I was stunned by M-W on this one, though I am stunned by M-W more often than should be the case, so I checked Oxford. Turns out that Oxford agrees with CMOS here. As for leaving out the word, there is a subtle difference in meaning. But it's hard to offer a view about that without context. Oxford (OAD, which is varies from the OED only for some spellings and Americanisms) offers this:usage: 1 Between is used in speaking of two things, people, etc.: we must choose between two equally unattractive alternatives. Among is used for collective and undefined relations of usually three or more: agreement on landscaping was reached among all the neighbors. But where there are more than two parties involved, between may be used to express one-to-one relationships of pairs within the group or the sense 'shared by': there is close friendship between the members of the club; diplomatic relations between the US, Canada, and Mexico. 2 Between you and I, between you and he, etc., are incorrect; between should be followed only by the objective case: between you and me, between you and him, etc. See also usage at personal pronoun.Response 8. Among.Response 9. Between.Response 10. Web 11 gives as its first definition of 'between': 'by the common action of: jointly engaging <shared the work between the two of them> <talks between the three>CMS 16 has this: between; among; amid. Between indicates one-to-one relationships {between you and me}. Among indicates undefined or collective relationships {honor among thieves}. Between has long been recognized as being perfectly appropriate for more than two objects if multiple one-to-one relationships are understood from the context {trade between members of the European Union}. Amid is used with mass nouns {amid talk of war}, among with plurals of count nouns {among the children}.I'd stay with 'between,' Tammy.

Chicago Forum

Response 1. "Between" does not seem to fit. "Among" is for more than two persons when you're talking about the joint action of the group, as opposed to multiple two-person relationships within a group. So yes, I agree that "among" works better here.Response 2. The meaning in Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary is not the typical application of "between," nor do I think can it be expressed by "among." And we have 5 members to the combination here :-)between: prep.6 : taking together the total effect of (a series of things) <between making beds, washing dishes, sewing, cleaning, and raising her children, she was kept busy>Another angle. In published books at Google Books a carefully crafted search :-) gives:"between the three of them they managed"About 856 results <----- hugely in majority"among the three of them they managed"About 42 resultswhich to me shows that when a group manages to do something by combined efforts, "between" is the correct one.And the OP had "were able to," very similar to "managed."Response 3. In the online MW dictionary I found this meaning under "among":a : through the reciprocal acts of <quarrel among themselves>b : through the joint action of <made a fortune among themselves>6b to me is the very meaning that is meant by the sentence in the original post.Response 4. Chiming in late, but here's what CMOS 5.220 says on the matter:between; among; amid. Between indicates one-to-one relationships {between you and me}. Among indicates undefined or collective relationships {honor among thieves}. Between has long been recognized as being perfectly appropriate for more than two objects if multiple one-to-one relationships are understood from the context {trade between members of the European Union}. Amid is used with mass nouns {amid talk of war}, among with plurals of count nouns {among the children}.As you can see from the above, "among" is the word of choice for your example sentence.Me. Oh boy! Lively discussion. Thanks again for everyone chiming in.Merriam Webster online has as the first definition for "between":a : by the common action of : jointly engaging <shared the work between the two of them> <talks between the three — Time>b : in common to : shared by <divided between his four grandchildren>The way I read this, my original example—"Between the three of them they were able to haul up half of the rope before she swung back."—is actually correct grammar. They are sharing a the task of hauling a rope between two or more people. It is a common action, jointly engaged, and shared by the subject: three people. If you reframed the sentence to make it more specific, it would read: "Between the efforts made by John, Jill, and Jorge, the rope was capable of being hauled." If you wrote, "Among the efforts made by John, Jill, and Jorge, the rope was capable of being hauled" the sentence wouldn't make any sense.What does everyone else think?Response 5. I think if you stare at the sentence long enough, neither word looks like it makes any sense. I've read the explanation in CMOS and the definition in MW, and if you ask me which of the two words is more "correct" I would say "among." If you ask me what I would say, I'd probably just recast the sentence entirely."With all three of them pulling, they were able to..."Response 6. Hmm. Well, you make a good point for using "between" in this fashion. It's interesting that M-W and CMOS disagree on this somewhat (or at least they appear to). Hahaha! I have to agree with you that if you stare at it long enough, neither makes sense. English is so wonky.---The lesson here, dear readers, is that anytime you're slaving away at the keyboard and beating your head against some word or grammar question that you just know you're doing wrong, don't feel bad about it. Sometime, somewhere, a group of people who are supposed to know all this stuff inside and out is flogging the same question to death and as likely as not is coming up with more than one possible correct option. The second big takeaway is: when in doubt, reword.

Outlining In Situ

One of the interesting twists that comes with identifying as a writer is the conflict that is sometimes created when that self-identification clashes with other “facts” one knows about oneself.For instance, I am sickeningly organized. The first words I write in the morning are often the day’s to-do list (even for such mundane items as “catch up on email”). I’m the person who ensures every Christmas card sent has the picture facing the envelope flap so that it’s the first thing friends see when opening the card. I’m the person who can tell you exactly how many books are sold at each distro site each day, and the person who has more spreadsheets than bedsheets.Which should automatically make me a plotter, right? I probably have outlines so detailed it only takes me a few hours a day to flesh out scads of scenes, right? Right? HA! If my life depended on it, I couldn’t outline my way into a child’s picture book, much less an adult fiction novel. It’s an odd dichotomy in this writer’s soul, but one I suspect many others share.Needless to say, my writing style is very chaotic, discovery, unchronological, and nonlinear. And I embrace this. I love being as surprised at what ends up on my pages each day as I hope my readers will be. Yet, in each novel I write, there comes a point when it has overwhelmed my own mental capacity for recalling the specific details of each scene that need to be carried through the entirety (despite the database I maintain for some such things), or I forget the order of scenes, or forget to carry all the characters from the scene’s beginning through to the scene’s end, and so on. And when that happens, it’s time to implement the strategy that I secretly anticipate the way a skydiver anticipates that shock of their parachute opening: the in situ outline.I reached this point with my third novel in the Spectras Arise trilogy last weekend, to my great elation (which also created a slurry of rewriting to reintegrate the aforementioned forgotten characters back into their scene. Which begs the question: If one can get through most of a scene without the characters anyway, how relevant are they? But this is subject for another blog post). This process is what I'll  share in today’s post.

Steps for Outlining In Situ Using MS Word’s Heading Style Feature

Three MS Word features to familiarize yourself with first:StylesSidebar, specifically the document map paneOutline View

1. Step 1. Write in chunks. My stories evolve beginning with multiple files for different pieces that I think up at random times (process name: chaos). I use MS Word, as many of us likely do, and often Evernote when I'm not at my computer, but even those who write using other software applications like Scrivener or Pages likely have several different files to track. The goal, of course, is to eventually merge them all into one bulbous (read: brilliant) mass of narrative. Each file should be named in a way that will help you quickly recall what it contains.

2. Step 2. Merge your chunks and delineate your scene breaks. Once the merging begins and the novel/puzzle begins to form a whole, you’ll need a way of demarcating different scenes and chapters. I tend not to decide on my chapter breaks until the first draft is complete, but where a scene should break is usually pretty obvious. Different authors use different symbols or techniques, but I often use “#” and center it on the page. Whatever you choose, it should be unique enough to be easily found using Command-F (Control-F for PC users).

3. Step 3. Name your chunks and scenes and apply heading styles. Here’s where the real job of outlining, and the fun, begins. Go through your document and label each of your scenes with a bare bones description of its events and germane details. Next thing you know, bada-boom bada-bing, you have OUTLINED. As if you've attained godhood, you have just manifested ORDER! The power! I know—I get a little excited. Meanwhile, as you go through and write your one- or two-line scene descriptions, apply MS Word’s heading style feature and make each of these descriptions a Heading 1 or 2 (or whatever level you want). This allows you to invoke a hugely useful tool that will save you tons of time: the document map pane.

4. Step 4. View in document map pane. You know when you’re writing away, really grooving to your scene, totally entrenched, and then suddenly, whammo, you hit a wall with the sudden realization that there’s a pivotal detail or person or event that you can’t remember clearly, but you really have to know right now in order to get this scene just right? If you’re old school, you might use the scroll-and-pray method of trying to find that tidbit, or you might make an educated guess as to about where it is and hope you can find it before this life-changing moment of being in the zone dissipates like so much anticipation at a Black Friday grand opening as soon as the doors unlock. Or, wisely, you tagged that thing in your scene heading and can click right to it from your document pane. You’re probably already imagining how much time you’re going to save and how much more productive your writing time will be with this nerdgasm tool. Bonus strategy. I will often have ideas while writing for other plot twists or events that I either know need to be written or simply want to remember to explore. I’ll add these ideas to the end of the working document or in place in the scene (usually starting with a tag like SUBPLOT or SCENE at the beginning) formatted with a heading style so I can quickly reference them visually when looking over my outline in the document map. This helps keep idea generation alive and thriving even while working on a specific scene.

5. Step 5. MS Word’s outline view. Working with styles and MS Word’s built-in outline function gives you the glorious option of being able to get a ballpark view of your novel’s scenes and overall development and trajectory. The side benefit is that you can collapse and expand your scenes, even your paragraphs if you prefer working at a more granular level, and move them around seamlessly. So much easier and less anxiety inducing than highlighting, cutting, and pasting chunks of your prose willy nilly.

By the time you're halfway through writing your novel, you should have a pretty good idea about what's to come. Though every writer’s process and approach to writing is as different as every writer, introducing an outline at this point helps me focus on where I've been and develop a next-steps plan for how to get where I'm going. I learned my process through trial and error as much as through asking others how they do it. While there are numerous writing software programs that can do much of what I’ve described above (and even much more), this is a simple, fast, and well-honed process for me. I hope I’ve been able to give some of you an idea or two of new things to try or helped fill in a gap you’ve been wrestling with in terms of how to go about part of your own process. If you have a tip or trick you love to use, feel free to share it below.

What I Know Is…: Reflections on Being a Writer

April 2014 will mark my second year as a published independent author. A huge milestone, really, especially when I didn’t celebrate my first year because I was frantically prepping my third novel for release at the time and barely noticed the anniversary. And a doubly-huge milestone when one considers that I wrote my first several-thousand word story when I was in fifth grade. (It was a horror story about the babysitter getting slashed to ribbons and the children being abducted. Fortunately, my parents and my babysitter never read it). All that to say, this month marks my 1.5 year publication anniversary, and the first time since it all began that I have a moment to give this adventure some (over?)due reflection.The thing about being a writer, as I was discussing with a brilliant writer friend of mine yesterday, Sezin Koehler, is that you never feel quite right unless you’re writing. If a day goes by that words have not spilled from your brainmeats onto a page, you begin to harbor insidious thoughts about the possibility that you’re a failure, that you don’t have what it takes to cut it as an author, that you are just faking it. It may be a scientific fact that the only time writers feels that we qualify as full members of the human race is when we are actually writing. Not when we “have written” or “are planning the next book,” but when our fingers are actually tapping on the keyboard or moving a pen over a page.(Which, incidentally, may also be why so many of us also blog when we’re not working on a creative piece. It’s validation, even if the results are little more than instances of embarrassing oversharing.)Given this subjective fact (get it? subjective fact? haha, um…), I can state with zen-soaked certainty that my experiences in the writing world have proved beyond a doubt that I am a writer. Okay, let me back up and explain that somewhat circular statement.The reasons people write are legion. But for those who write and publish, whether traditionally or nontraditionally (though these definitions will become somewhat more fluid over the next few years, I predict), the reasons may be more limited. There’s the obvious “I want to make tons of dough” and “I feel like this story needs to be heard,” or even more simply “My parents ignored me as a child so now I want ALL the attention.” Then there’s the more subtle “I think this concept can be commercially successful, so I want to give it a go” and “It doesn’t matter if not a lot of people buy it, I’m just having fun.” Yea verily, the common denominator for those who publish is the hope for an audience.And so, as happens to many authors who publish (and more who self-publish), where does that leave us when the audience is either absent or very small, quiet, and/or invisible? I will tell you where that leaves us—at the reflecting pool. You know, the one bubbling with starving piranhas.My reason for publishing my books was somewhere within the “I think this concept can be commercially successful, so I want to give it a go” and “It doesn’t matter if not a lot of people buy it, I’m just having fun” range. And while I have had limited commercial or financial success with my books, I can say without a nanosecond of hesitation that choosing to make my writing public has heaped on me some of the greatest rewards a person like me could experience. The sense of satisfaction one receives from the sincerely meant praise of complete strangers about one’s words is nearly equivalent to being handed the keys to paradise. Really. What more could a writer hope for?So, upon reflecting on the last eighteen months of being published and the few hundred dollars I’ve earned, the thing that brings my arse back to my seat and positions my fingers over the keyboard every morning is not an expectation that I must create the next Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings novels, but, simply, because I love to write. I am a writer.How about you, dear writers, why do you write?PS: You're welcome to read my review of Sezin's first novel, American Monsters, here.

Book Review: Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass

Being a writer is probably 80 percent instinct and 20 percent skill. Most writers have amazing, subversive, expansive imaginations, yet we also seem to have an innate, unharnessable quality that allows us to translate those swirling worlds that exist within our brainmeats to comprehensible, accessible, and (if we're doing it right) entertaining stories for our readers.Despite the innateness of this quality, or perhaps because of it, we do ourselves a favor by taking the occasional class or seminar, or reading the occasional book, that helps us further develop and refine our craft. Writing the Breakout Novel by literary agent Donald Maass is one such book.In WtBN, Maass does a great job of breaking down and describing the many elements that go into writing a novel (premise, theme, conflict , etc.). The real gem of this book though is the well-structured information dump of the differences between fiction that soars above the average and ordinary and fiction that, to readers, may come off as dull and uninspired. Maass includes tons of examples of both mainstream literary and genre fiction to help illustrate his points (and provoke a sense of eye-rolling self-satisfaction depending on how many of the examples you've already read), and if you're the analytical type or an avid reader, you'll identify right off what he's describing. After learning what makes a novel breakout the next step is learning how, and I think Maass has actually created an exercise book as companion to this one.I highly recommend this for writers. Even if you're comfortable and confident in your skills, there is almost a certainty that this book will inspire you to think of your current or future novels in new and exciting ways.***

Self-editing: Viewpoint Characters

Example 1: Clarice saw that Lecter had very yellow teeth. They looked sharp and strong, as if he'd chewed through his share of leathery carcasses. She heard them click while he spoke. The sound made her feel nervous and ready to leave the dungeon Virginia called a prison.Example 2: His yellow teeth gleamed behind lips as leathery and red as the flesh they'd served as a gateway for. Images  of his victims' carcasses flashed through Clarice's mind, and she shuddered. He grinned malevolently at her discomfort, and those stained teeth clicked loudly in the quiet dungeon. Clarice clenched her hands into fists to hide the way the sound made her cringe, but she couldn't get away from the drafty, damp prison fast enough.Let's discuss narration from the viewpoint character's perspective, more commonly called POV. As an avid reader and editor, I have sunk my teeth (teehee) into quite the cross-section of novels, and want to share a few bits of wisdom that can help newer writers make minor tweaks that will breathe life into their writing.The beauty of POV is that, if you've done your job correctly as a writer, you don't need to tell the reader who's seeing/doing what. Which character's perspective the scene is being told from bleeds through in the context, not from statements like "she saw" and "he heard." Let's look at the two opening examples. Though they are inelegant quickies for the sake of this post, they serve to show the gross differences between showing and telling. Forgive my messy prose.In example 1, it's clear who the viewpoint character is because it tells you in neon lights from the first sentence. "Clarice saw…" Further on, readers are triple whammied with phrases like "she heard" and "the sound made her feel." These are classic examples of telling vs showing. The writer (in this case, me) is telling you exactly what the viewpoint character is seeing, hearing, feeling, etc. Yes, writing 101 is very clear that writers need to bring readers into the scene by appealing to the senses, but there's a big difference between appealing to the senses and simply stating what the senses are experiencing.Which brings us to example 2. I'm sure you're already clear on the difference. As a reader, you know exactly what Lecter's teeth look like, the gore, the grit, the grime, and the nasty feelings hearing them click and imagining the things they've done evoke for Clarice. Clarice doesn't have to tell the reader that she's freaked out, as if sharing the story with us over a cup of tea. The reader instead gets to walk in Clarice's shoes and experience things as she is. The difference between showing and telling is distinguishing between phrasing that tells us what she's seeing vs phrases that show what she's seeing as if we're inside her skin (teehee redux).Self-editing Tip:A quick examination of your sentence construction can easily help you identify if your writing is more show-y than tell-y. In the sentence, "Clarice saw that Lecter had very yellow teeth," the subject is Clarice. The problem is, the main focus of the sentence—the thing that is intended to evoke that visceral, sensory response—is Lecter's creepy yellow teeth. Subtly informing readers that Clarice is the POV character early in the scene ensures readers are already informed of whose eyes they're looking through, thus making fixing sentences like this is as easy as changing the subject from Clarice to Lecter's teeth.

A One-Shot Kill – In Half a Million Rounds

Readers, please welcome guest poster and mystery author Susan Spann to the halls of blogdom today. Many of you know Susan as a multi-featured guest here, and the reason is obvious. She's just so darn awesome. Join me in congratulating her on the recent release of her debut novel, Claws of the Cat. And there's two more on the way!

All it takes is fortitude and the will to put enough words on the page.

Top-notch snipers always hit the bulls-eye when it counts.One shot, one kill, one mission accomplished.Watching a sniper in action, it’s easy to think that every shot a sniper fires always strikes the target. The observer doesn’t see the ten thousand rounds that sniper put down range in practice, many of which went wide of the bulls-eye mark. But every good sniper knows the way to make a one-shot kill is half a million rounds of practice time.The same applies to success in the publishing world.My debut Shinobi mystery, Claws of the Cat, required only one conference pitch to land an agent, and sold in a three-book deal two months after that agent sent it on submission. To outside eyes, that looks a lot like a sniper making a thousand-yard kill with a single bullet. It’s almost a miracle—even to me, and even now.But what most people don’t see are the four completed manuscripts (five, if you count the 80,000-word epic fantasy novel I wrote in high school) lurking in my digital “trunk.” They don’t see the seven years of daily writing and polishing craft that it took for me to write those other manuscripts—or the dozens of rejections those novels earned along the way.Today, I’m shining a light on those dark corners of my road.I’ve wanted to be an author since my preschool days—essentially from the moment I learned to read. Stories buzzed incessantly in my head, and by high school, I believed myself “good to go.” In 1986 I penned a full-length novel set in the fantasy world of Terinthia—basically “Generic_Fantasy_001 [With Dragons].” It took two years to write and five to edit, and I never showed it to anyone but my high school English teachers.In retrospect, that’s a good thing—the story sucked like a Dyson.Flash forward to 2004. By then, I’d graduated from law school and spent almost a decade practicing law, but publication remained a distant dream. That year I made a commitment to write “as often as I could.” I attended the Maui Writers Conference, and my historical fiction manuscript was a finalist in the writing competition. I was psyched! My time had come!Or maybe not ...I queried agents about that manuscript and received some requests for reads, but every one of them ended in rejection. I had to face a difficult truth. My writing wasn’t ready.I mourned my beloved novel, and wrote another one. I queried it. Again, I faced rejection.I kept on writing.By 2011, I’d written four more novels—a total of 500,000 words. All four manuscripts were rejected, multiple times, by dozens of agents. Many of those agents wrote me encouraging notes or emails, but at the end of the day, they rejected me, along with my manuscripts, more than once.I kept on writing.Early in 2011, inspiration struck again, this time for a mystery novel about a ninja detective. Writing a mystery sounded hard, but I figured I couldn’t do any worse than I’d already done with historical fiction.I wrote my ninja mystery under the working title SHINOBI (an alternate word for “ninja”). In the process, I fell in love with mystery writing. I finished the novel in record time. That September, I attended the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers’ Colorado Gold conference and pitched SHINOBI to literary agent Sandra Bond. What happened from there it looks a lot like a one-shot kill.Except that it wasn’t really, and now you know that too.Publishing success, like a sniper’s skill, is achieved through and many, many hours of work—which means many words on a page. It took me seven years of focused study to do it right. Some people succeed much faster than I did. Others take longer. But one thing my journey has taught me, without a doubt, is this: I didn’t succeed because I am any brighter or any better than anyone else. I succeeded because I was just too stubborn and too determined to fail.It took me half a million words to learn to write Claws of the Cat (which, if you’re wondering, contains just over 62,000 words), but I did it. I succeeded. And if I can, anyone else can, too. All it takes is fortitude and the will to put enough words on the page.Bio: Susan Spann is a transactional attorney and former law school professor whose practice focuses on publishing law and business. She has a deep interest in Asian culture and has studied Mandarin and Japanese. Her hobbies include Asian cooking, fencing, traditional archery, martial arts, rock climbing, and horseback riding. She keeps a marine aquarium where she raises seahorses and rare corals. You can find Susan online at http://www.susanspann.com, or on Twitter @SusanSpann. Her debut Shinobi mystery, Claws of the Cat (Minotaur Books) released on July 16, 2013.

The Intersection of Obsessions: Finding Time to Write During Life

As writers and (basically) people, we all have weaknesses and distractions. Those things that we love almost as much as creating—and destroying—worlds, that sometimes cannot be ignored, no matter how many times we motivate ourselves through ample application of self-shaming if we fail to accomplish 3,000 words before going to bed. For some, that distraction is yoga or working out; for others, our favorite TV show; and for others, reading a good book sometimes proves more compelling than writing one.Then there's another set of writers whom I'll call "the freakish July crowd." We are the rabble that sit in front of the NBC Sports stream for 4 – 6 hours every single day for three weeks straight in the middle of summer to see the carnival of quads and sods racing around France. Oh, we know we're wrong to waste our time in this fashion, but we can't help it. It's an addiction, an obsession, a geek-cum-athlete-fest so extreme and titillating that our habituated, slavish minds are incapable of resisting it.But we are adults, right? We can control our habits and our actions. We don't require an intervention to ensure we've adequately performed meaningful, if minimal, human functions for the day. We are in control of our actions and emotions, dammit, not the peloton. And not, dear gawd, the General Classification time gaps.Still, there is no denying those distractions tear at us. And if we wish to continue touting ourselves as writers, we must justify our behavior strategize ways to work those distractions to our advantage.For me, it's as simple as using my obsession with cycling, both watching races and spinning my own pedals, as research. Believe me when I tell you there is no better case study for researching deep, primal suffering than the Tour de France, Giro d'Italia, or Vuelta a España. And, yunno, given that my preferred genres all delve deeply into humanity's psychological and physical pain caves (military SF, horror, dark urban fantasy), I write about plenty of suffering. I need to be able to look into those grills of gritted teeth on the Col de Tourmalet, the eyes oozing agony on the team time trials, and the bloody, stripped-to-the-bone flesh on the Alp de Huez to accurately portray the depth of pain and misery people are capable of dropping into. Those hours I'm glued like Honey Stinger gels to teeth to the grand tours are not just to pass the time; they are essential to developing as a writer. Research. No good book can be written without it.What strategies do you employ to manage your distractions and keep your writing momentum?

The Domino's Pizza Approach: Promote Your Book in 30 Minutes or Less

For many indie authors, marketing and self-promotion, I think, can make our guts squirm like too many dyspeptic squid inside a fishbowl. For some it is merely daunting, for others it is a billboard-sized map without a legend or north arrow and written in a language we don’t speak. We all know there is a ton to do, but few of us have a game plan for how to do it, and even fewer of us have much desire to cut into our valuable and hard-fought-for writing time to actually make it happen.Remember when you were a kid and the only way to get through a horrible side dish that your parent prepared was by cutting it into the smallest bites possible so that you could swallow it without it ever touching your tongue? That is the same approach you can take to marketing and self-promotion. Small, digestible chunks that require minimal exposure.Below I have compiled a list of small bites for the discerning and finicky palettes of non-marketing-oriented writers. Putting in a half hour a day to tackle each is an easy and mostly painless strategy for plugging your books. I can’t guarantee you that each will net you the kind of exposure and sales you’re hoping for, but the aggregate of each day’s efforts will certainly get you farther down that path than the familiar comfort of procrastination.

List of Marketing and Promotion Tools for the Indie Author

• Hone your elevator pitch.

• Search for upcoming writer’s conferences to attend. I’ve participated and thoroughly enjoyed both the Willamette Writers Conference and the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers Conference, but there are gads more. Conferences are a superb way of meeting like-minded people, making wonderful friends, and connecting with others in the industry from whom you can learn.

• Write a template for making a book review request. Remember to customize this for each individual person you’ll make a request to. Here’s a good starting place on Stephanie Loree’s blog. And another article on Amazon.

• Search for a book reviewer on Twitter, Wordpress, Blogger, or Amazon, then send them your request. Here are my Twitter lists of reviewers. List one. List two.

• Enter a contest. Here are just a few. (Note: I’m not endorsing any of these as I’m not familiar with all of them. Just food for thought.)

1. The National Indie Excellence Book Awards.

2. The Kindle Book Review Best Indie Book Contest (my favorite because my first novel, Contract of Defiance, was a finalist last year, and my second, Contract of Betrayal, was just announced as a semi-finalist today).

3. A list from the San Francisco Book Review.

4. The Best Indie Book Award.

5. Indie Reader Discovery Award.

• Step one: Join Unbound, Pubslush, or Kickstarter to raise money and hire a PR manager. Unbound and Pubslush are like Kickstarter, but for writers only.

• Step two: Write/develop an Unbound pitch and/or Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for hiring a PR manager.

• Enter your books (if they are science fiction), on ScifiKindle for some free social networking promotion.

• Send a personal tweet on Twitter to fans of your genre. Make requests of your writer friends to tweet your book.

• Create a letter to successful writers in your genre to request a book blurb/endorsement. Remember to customize this for each individual person you’ll send your request to.

• Search for writers in your genre (if you don’t already have a list), and send them your personalized request.

• Update your LinkedIn profile with your publications, and search the site for promotional groups to learn how others are doing it and gain/give support. Here’s my LinkedIn profile.

• Make book cards/coupons to give away whenever the opportunity presents itself. Try Livrada, Greenerside Digital, or review this list at MediaBistro.

• Join message boards of fans in your genre to engage and, when the time is right, introduce your books.

• Update your blog with a new post about what you’re working on.

• Create an email newsletter. Molly Greene has a few excellent posts about this on her blog. And here's another from author Steena Holmes on the Writers in the Storm blog.

• Design a contest or giveaway that focuses on increasing your readership and find a date on your calendar to run it.

• Invite writer friends to join a blog hop.

• Suggest writing a guest post for someone else who's blog you follow or relates to your genre.

• Submit a book to BookBub or StoryBundle.

• Find out how to organize a book reading at your local library, bohemian coffee shop, or bookstore.

• Create bookmarks or business cards to promote your book.

• Search for Facebook groups where authors are free to plug their books, then plug yours. And create a Facebook page.

• Join Goodreads and list your books.

And this is just for starters. Navigating the promo planet is tricky, but not impossible, and every small step forward will eventually lead you to your destination. If you’re also an indie author, please feel free to share your wisdom. What other methods and techniques have you tried? What’s worked and what hasn’t?Here's another great post on the subject over at David Gaughran's blog.