Writer Seeking Writer: A Saccharine Valentine's Day Post

One of the struggles many of my writer friends and I have is an innate and deep-seated misanthropy. I’m sorry, did I say misanthropy? I meant deep-seated introversion that is often wrongly interpreted (okay, and I’ll admit, sometimes rightly interpreted) as misanthropy. When we word-lovers find that special someone who Gets It (with the caps), we sometimes latch onto them with a febrile fervency that could easily be considered obsessive. But that’s okay. We are writers, we’re born to obsess. Sometimes over something as mundane as the right shade of orange when describing a sunset. This is the type of consideration that can consume us for hours. And our SOs, if we’ve found someone who can tolerate us, are cool with it.

Back before 2012 when I found my eternal syntax-mate, if I’d written a list of the things I would have sought in him, it would have looked something like this. I know you all relate ;)

Traits of a Writer’s Perfect Partner

Someone who'll believe in me, even when I have doubts in myself.Someone who shares a knee-jerk loathing for overdone and unnecessary passive voice.Someone who will not judge me if I switch genres.Someone who will not assume my silence is passive aggressive, but will instead understand that I’m merely plotting.Someone who’ll read all reviews on my works first, weed out the bad, and promise to only let me see the good ones. (While simultaneously synthesizing the helpful critical elements of the bad reviews and politely introducing them to me as his own when the timing is right.)Someone who understands how important it is to have a theme in a written work and will not fault me for agonizing about it, especially upon discovery that theme is the new category by which I’ve reorganized our bookshelf instead of simple surface options like genre or author.Someone with whom I can discuss my characters as if they are real people and who will empathize with their trials and tribulations as if they were his own when I talk endlessly about them.Someone who will understand if I’m late to a dinner or other social function if my excuse is “I was in the zone,” and who will likewise both be cool with and expect me to have a good time without him during a social function if he couldn’t make it because he was in his own zone.Someone who promises to beta read my work while they’re still alert, and will switch to someone less important’s (snicker-snicker) when he’s tired.Someone who doesn’t call me crazy if I say something like this while we’re enjoying a peaceful afternoon in the park: “Those children look like they’re having a great time. It just put me in mind of this great scene where a school bus explodes and the protagonist has to choose between saving the injured children or getting to the airport in time to chase down an arms smuggler who might be planning to bomb something bigger next. And the protag’s own kid was on the bus. Honey, we need to go home now, I have to write!”Someone who agrees that character is story!And finally, someone who would much rather curl up to a book and each other at night than go out with friends. Because, after all, writers, and possibly by virtue of association writers’ partners, really are just misanthropes with fabulous vocabularies.Do you have your own list of perfect traits you seek in someone to complement the people-shunning word-obsessive you sometimes are? Feel free to share!

Live Chat Tonight: Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing podcast

UPDATE: It was a great show! Thanks for tuning in. Here's the link if you happen onto this post later.

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Greets Bloggalotics. Tonight I'm joining the cadre of wildly successful indie authors Joseph R. Lallo, Lindsay Buroker, and Jeffrey Poole on their Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing podcast to discuss the sacred power and responsibility that is editing. Live at 6 p.m. PST. Stop by with your questions and to share your thoughts if you can.

What In The Noun Are We?

Greets Blogtasticians and Happy New Year!

Something profound (for a post-New Year’s Eve Marvel movie binge) occurred to me this morning. Did you know there is no collective noun for us writers (as far as I could discern in my extensive and exhaustive five-minute Google search)? Ironic, no? For a group who loves words as much as we do, to have none that is our very own, well…We should change that. Here a few proposals.An Irony of WritersA Pestilence of…A Fantasia of…An Alexandria of…A Delusion of…An Imaginarium of…A Whimsy of…Or how about, A Whedon of…What do you think? Have some ideas to share? Leave a comment below. Because everyone needs a distraction now and again.

The Best I Read In 2014

Bloggdorites! I have been so super busy as the year ends with working and doing this simple little, totally mundane, non-time-consuming thing known as "writing a book or two"—you probably know what I mean—that I haven't had time to do any blogging. I'd love to share all the incredible books I've read this year with you all, but instead, let me just borrow this list from the great speculative fiction author Scott Whitmore. And by the way, his 2014 novella Green Zulu Five One is DEFINITELY one of the best I read this year. Check out my review, and enjoy this list of greats!

Book Review: Green Zulu Five One and other stories from the Vyptellian War

Green Zulu Five One and other stories from the Vyptellian War by Scott WhitmoreMy rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you want the short version of my review, here it is: I loved this story.

Now for more: The first line of Green Zulu 51’s jacket copy is “A war of millions is fought by individuals,” and this gets right to the center of the brilliance that is speculative fiction author and former US Navy officer Scott Whitmore’s military science fiction novella. I enjoy a good space battle—with fighters contesting not only enemies, sometimes aliens, and incredible futuristic weapons, but also the zero-g properties of outer space, the distance scales that ensure rescue from outside could never happen, and the uncertainties and unknowabilities of things like dark matter and wormholes—as much as the next person, but at the end of the day, no story can really keep my imagination occupied for long if the people living that story aren’t interesting, authentic, and "real." Whitmore is a master at painting the stories he tells with vivid clarity and attention to every little detail, as well as bringing the people within them to dramatic life. The characters in GZ51 are all people you'll feel like buying a drink for and spending hours with just listening to their war stories. They are each unique, interesting, surprising, and deeply substantive, which is a pleasant turn for a story that isn’t quite novel length about an intergalactic war.

GZ51 is told in a style that puts readers directly inside the minds and boots of its main characters, a hotshot fighter pilot who isn’t even old enough to drink legally, a grizzled war veteran with more survival instinct in her little finger than most platoons have in their full ranks, and a tired administrative clerk who faces a losing battle that has nothing to do with guns and tactics. Whitmore engages all the senses and brings his battle scenes flying off the page, while skillfully weaving in the psychology and histories of his characters, leaving readers feeling almost as if they’ve been there, done that right beside each of them.

For such a relatively short tale, GZ51 leaves no stone unturned in exposing the intricacies of war from its zoomed-out view of historical, political, and cultural genesis, to the zoomed-in and intimate view of the goals, hopes, and fears of each of its characters, who must fight it in their own ways. Incredibly entertaining and highly recommended. I wish I could give it 10 stars.

Side note: The Devil’s Harvest, the author's alternate steampunk history—with zombies!—of WWI is equally brilliant and a rollicking good read! And bonus, here's an interview I did of Scott talking about writing in steampunk and paranormal genres a while back, too.

View all my reviews

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All content copyright unless otherwise specified © 2014 by Tammy Salyer, writer. All rights reserved.

The New Meta Edda

Confession time. I didn’t read a lot of science fiction growing up. I was a horror geek through and through. Barker, Koontz, King, Rice, McCammon, other books I remember by authors I don’t; I swilled them all down like a gore addict on day three of a two-week bender, voraciously and unstoppably. After I’d read everything by King twice, I branched out into other genres, mainstream and classic literature like Watership Down and everything by Orwell, as well as fantasy, like Tolkien, The Mists of Avalon, A Wizard of Earthsea, everything by Tom Robbins, and numerous others. (My one regret, actually, is that I’ve never read The Dragonriders of Pern. Anyone have a copy they could lend me?) I even went on a Louis L’Amour kick for about a year.

But science fiction itself remained an unturned stone. My favorite movies were all sci-fi based, Terminator, Aliens (ET and The Black Hole before that), but even most of those later childhood favorites had a horror subtheme. So what in the world made me write a space-opera action story for my first full-length published novel, then a full trilogy?

Let me digress for a second before answering that. I’m going to share something about authors that many of us would probably hesitate before admitting publicly, for fear of being locked into the loony bin. We are all possessed. Or maybe you’d call it schizophrenia. The fact is, we are 100 percent inhabited by legions of other people. And they control us to greater and lesser degrees. For me, that possession came in the form of my trilogy’s main character, a Corps-deserter and tougher-than-titanium anti-hero Aly Erikson. To make a long story short, I was out on a run through the Oregon rain one day, and she popped into my head nearly fully formed on a very intense flight from danger of her own aboard a space station in the Algol triple-star system. It was December 2005, and this character was born. Her story was as real in my head as my own life story, and I had to tell it. Hence, science fiction.

In my mind, she is one part Carolyn Fry from Pitch Black, one part Dizzy from the 1997 film adaptation of Starship Troopers, and the rest of her comprises numerous positive and, yes, negative characteristics derived from the heroes from all my favorite books and movies. And after writing her story through three books and one novella (accidentally—I never intended her to span so many words), I think I may be done with her for a while. She had a good ride; she grew, experienced much, and lived through a lot more than she had any right to, and I don’t think she has much story left to tell in her current iteration.

So what’s next? Based on the subjects of my youth, I should be ready to wander the halls of horror, one would think. Strangely, though, that isn’t where my mind is veering these days. In fact, sometime during the writing of Contract of Defiance, I became enthralled by a story from Outside Magazine of a coyote hunting and killing a woman hiking through a park in Nova Scotia, behavior that for this particular animal is completely unheard of. And because, like most writers, bizarre tragedies tend to make my mind spin on surprising new ideas, this unlikely news story spun my brain toward the concoction of a new tale that spanned everything from the cultures of Vikings and Inuits, to ancient history and present times, to Greenland and Wisconsin, to B.A.S.E jumping and academia, to domestic violence and the loyalty of best friends. I spent months researching different facets of the story overtaking my thoughts and wrote several thousand words. Then…it died. The story simply languished as a new book in the Spectras Arise trilogy started to take shape, and I put it aside. When I dusted it off with all intent of resurrecting it, the whole concept had lost its luster. It was not a story I wanted to tell anymore.

But all was not lost (and can never be—if ideas were money, every writer would be captaining her or his own privately financed starship to the moon for a holiday) and the initial characters and bones of that old story squished like Play-Doh into something new. Something that still involves Vikings, but is now dense fantasy with a heavy dose of science fiction. Science fantasy fusion, anyone? Though I’m still in the early stages of writing and development, this new story is an ever-present mouth-breather that I can’t ignore for a second, and I can’t wait to write it!

In a well-timed happenstance, science fiction writer Dylan Hearn invited me to do this fun thing called the 7-7-7 challenge, where you go to the seventh page of your work-in-progress, go down to line seven, then publish the next seven lines. This new novel of mine is as yet untitled and so far from finished that these lines will hardly be the same when it is, but here goes:

If one were to hold a kaleidoscope to their eye and peer through it past reality’s veil to the place where the carnival-colored bits and baubles suspended within become part of the Great Cosmos, they might discover one very unique new reality. The one called Heartovingia. It is a circular belt comprised of a seemingly desolate amalgam of rocks, metals, and ice spinning eternally around the watery, storm-tossed planet called Vann. The light from this asteroid field’s star would be diffuse, bouncing weakly from the multi-elemental belt of particles and giving it a reddish cast, like that of a heart. A heart whose center is chaos and cold sea.

Looking deeper into the kaleidoscope, one would notice that these long-turning stones are not as desolate as one might have thought. In fact, many of these spaceborne satellites appear to be quite large and are encircled by glasslike domes.

As you can see so far, it has a great deal more epic-ocity than my first-person-told trilogy. We’ll see how it goes. You’re welcome and invited to stay tuned and enjoy the lunatic rantings of its progress as my brainmeats suffer through new-series growing pains. And now it’s your turn, all my writer friends. Take the 7-7-7 challenge for yourself and link back here so we can read what you’re up to. Because after all, crazy loves company!

Also, for sci-fi and intrigue fans, be sure to check out Dylan’s new release coming out November 28. Absent Souls (The Transcendence Trilogy: Book 2).

Veterans Day Blowout!

Greets Bloggorites! Forgive the schmaltzy blog post title; I couldn't help myself, but how many businesses are advertising a Veterans Day sale this week? I have to say, though, this announcement-slash-sale is way more thrilling and blow-y out-y than all those others. What better way to celebrate the holiday than to read something by those for whom the holiday was created?

Announcing:

Three New Releases from Three (old) Vets!

(Plus another awesome author!)

That's right. I (former army paratrooper) have a new one out in military science fiction, CONVICTION: A Spectras Arise Novella, as does the fantastic science fiction/steampunk author Scott Whitmore (former naval officer), GREEN ZULU FIVE ONE: and other stories from the Vyptellian War. I have read this novella and promise you, it's amazing.CONVICTIONTRUSTING OTHERS IS YOUR FIRST MISTAKE.If Corps Tech Sergeant Aly Erikson wants to survive another day, she will have to give up everything: her identity, her rank, her attachment to her brothers-in-arms, and most of all, her guilt.After doing her duty as a member of a ground infantry squad tasked with “neutralizing” an insurrection by non-citizens on a mining planet, Erikson realizes that everything she thought the Corps stood for, thought she stood for, is crumbling away. Where is the honor, the justice, the spirit of law? When the enemies are nothing more than outclassed and outgunned dregs of the Algol System’s forgotten people, being part of their execution squad has put her as far from the ideals of justice as Erikson can imagine. Haunted by their ghosts, she struggles to maintain her military bearing until even that is suddenly ripped away in an act of terrorism that sends her, her brother, Tech Sergeant David Erikson, and another Corpsmember, Rebecca Soltznin, on the run on a hostile planet. Forced for the first time in ten years to blend in with a civilian population, the three are faced with a single choice: regroup with their brothers-in-arms or become deserters. For Aly, it’s easy; why go back to being a cog in the death machine the Corps is becoming? But for the other two, the price for making the wrong decision may be higher than they’re willing to pay.On the run, under attack from the scavengers who plague the system, and out of options, the three face conflict from every direction. If they can’t find a way to fight together, their chances for survival are less than zero. And for one of them, the best solution may come down to one simple act: betrayal. In this prequel to the popular Spectras Arise Trilogy, readers get an intimate look into the events that led Aly and David Erikson on their path from decorated and dedicated soldiers to black-market arms smugglers, and ultimately, to rebels against the Political and Capital Administration of the Advanced Worlds.

Get it at AMAZON, B&N, APPLE, or KOBO, or join my newsletter tribe for a free review copy.

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GREEN ZULU FIVE ONE

A war of millions is fought by individuals. For sixteen years humanity and the alien Vyptellians have battled in space and on hundreds of planets in a distant corner of the galaxy.

Tyko is a teenage space fighter pilot who has never known peace; insulated from the horrors of the battlefield, he’ll learn war isn’t a game. Sergeant Siengha is one of a handful to survive the war’s first battle; surrounded and vastly outnumbered by a merciless enemy, it takes everything she knows to keep those around her alive and fighting.

These are just two of the countless stories from the human side of the Vyptellian War. To those on the frontlines and their families at home, why the war began is unimportant, forgotten when the first shot was fired. What matters is the survival of the species.But after years of bloody conflict, the war’s end is closer than anyone realizes.

Get it at AMAZON and visit Scott at his blog for more of his marvelous missives.

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And in science fiction/fantasy, check out these two new releases from David Bruns (another former naval officer):The science fantasy series, The Dream Guild Chronicles, tells a different kind of first contact story—one from the alien’s point of view.IRRADIANCE, Book One, imagines the kind of dystopian world you might get if you paired Big Brother from 1984 with A Wrinkle in Time. Maribel, a scientist, uncovers an ecological disaster that makes her reexamine everything she thought she knew about her Community. In desperation, Maribel flees her home world with her family and a few friendsIn SIGHT, Book Two, the storyline focuses on Sariah, Maribel’s daughter. Her parents are frantic to find her a new home safe from the long arm of the Community. But new worlds are fraught with new dangers, and SIGHT will keep you on the edge of your seat as you follow Sariah trying to navigate the superstitions of hunter-gatherer tribal culture.Imagine Lost in Space crash landing into an ancient Incan civilization and you have SACRIFICE, Book Three of The Dream Guild Chronicles.If crash landing isn’t bad enough, a crew member is taken captive by the natives. A rescue attempt, a firefight and one crewman is left for dead.But he’s very much alive.Alone, light-years from everyone who cares about him, Gideon navigates royal politics, tribal rituals, and ancient prophecies as he struggles to take back the artifact that will let him reconnect with his family.

Get it at AMAZON and visit David at his blog for more on his wordly adventures.

BONUS STORYErik Wecks, author of the sweeping Pax Imperium series, has also released a new serial story in the last couple of weeks that you all will enjoy, and it's free! Gravlander, Episode 1.

Book Review: Self-Publisher's Legal Handbook: The Step-By-Step Guide to the Legal Issues of Self-Publishing

Self-Publisher's Legal Handbook: The Step-By-Step Guide to the Legal Issues of Self-Publishing by Helen SedwickMy rating: 5 of 5 stars

Few books on publishing that I've read have packed this much information into such a succinct and well-laid out guide. If you are indie or even traditionally published, a novelist, memoirist, or blogger, you will undoubtably find hunks of useful, even vital, information in this book. The author is a business lawyer as well as a novelist and has an engaging, easy-to-understand style packed with the authority of her trade. I consider this a must-read for all indies, which will give you a boost up in understanding the legal side of your craft. I found the section on collaboration particularly thought-provoking.

View all my reviews

The Role of Print In Independent Publishing

One of the things I really enjoy about being an indie author and editor who works with a lot of other indie authors is being able to share my experiences and knowledge about the biz with others. Case in point is something that occurred the other day. An old kayaking buddy of mine has written the first in a series of science fiction novels and wasn’t fully sold on which direction he wanted to take them: indie or traditional. We got on Skype and chatted about the gamut of things one needs to know and consider when making this decision, and he asked a question that tickled me pink on several levels. To paraphrase, he wanted to know if an author had more credibility to potential readers if they publish via print format, either in lieu of or along with an ebook.The question caught me completely off guard. Can you guess why?That’s right. Most of us have been book nerds for long enough now that we remember the days before ebooks when independent authors were (considered) the guileless, or worse, narcissistic, writer wannabes who used vanity press and print-on-demand services to publish their books. They were frowned upon and condescended because it was assumed that anyone who couldn’t get an agent or sell their books directly to a publishing house was simply not a good writer. And when they sidestepped the traditional route and printed their books on their own, they were considered delusional and even insufferable ego trippers.We’ve come so far, you know? The thousands upon thousands of talents who are now self-publishing are often no different than those early vanity/POD indies (in that many of us are actually quite good writers, just not easy fits into traditional publishing's mold). A few things have changed, true, such as the advent of ebooks, but the spirit of creativity and talent and skill that make a good writer has been among us all along, and now there is nothing to hold it back. The big picture has flipped, and having your books in print is no longer the route of the delusional but just another of the smart business practices of independent authorpeneurs.Most of the indies I know have achieved their success through publishing ebooks, but that doesn’t mean print books haven’t also contributed. So, back to my friend’s question: Do indie authors with print books also available seem more credible to your average reader? My gut says no, but I don’t know of any studies or anecdotal evidence to support this idea. When ebooks exploded, print quickly became a distant consideration that had little to do with most indies' rise to the top. The idea many of us had was to test the waters to see if there was a market for our books through the ebook channel, and if so, printing them became the next consideration. When I did my research, the overwhelming buzz from other indies I talked with who had achieved any success was that print books were still mostly just a fun thing to have but weren't their main income channel by a long shot. You could extrapolate that to mean that readers aren't even the tiniest bit concerned with/or interested in print books (enough to make them profitable), but again, I just don't know.So I want to throw it out to you all. What do you think? Now that indie publishing is a meaningful and permanent part of the overall publishing paradigm, and readers flock to us with nearly the same enthusiasm that was once only reserved for traditionally published novelists, do our major markets (readers) care about print books? Does it makes us seem more professional or credible if we have them? Leave a comment and let us know what you think.

Book Review: Million Dollar Outlines

Million Dollar Outlines by David FarlandMy rating: 5 of 5 starsWhether you're a casual writer looking for ways to improve your craft, or a more serious writer wanting to strengthen skills you already have, this book is a must.I've been wanting to take a novel writing class from David Farland for years, and wanting to learn to be a more disciplined outliner for even longer than that, so finally reading his Million Dollar Outlines was a perfect synthesis. Not only did the book fit the bill for thinking through and outlining a story, it went far beyond that. David also includes an in-depth and well-explained look into all of the nuts and bolts of a good novel: from characterization, to million dollar plots, to creating winning conflict, to building emotional resonance into your story. All intensely important components of any tale that is meant to have expansive appeal to readers, and laid out in easily groked and understood chunks. Plus, it contains an added highlight: excerpts from a conversation recorded in the late 70s/early 80s between Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan as they hashed out the plot for Raiders of the Lost Ark. Pure gold!I am a heavy highlighter in almost every nonfiction book I read, and here are a few of the myriad great tidbits from Million Dollar Outlines. I'm sure I'll read it at least three more times, it's so full of great advice."Budrys points out: if the hero does not have to make three attempts to resolve a problem, then the problem was not difficult enough in the first place.""Every story should start with promises made—promises that you must keep."(On creating conflicts) "If a person is at the root of his own problem, it hints at secondary problems—internal conflicts.""Look at truly great stories and you will see this pattern emerge: The author often pulls off a complex resolution rather than working toward a simple resolution."View all my reviews

Speculative Fiction and the Curse of Internal Consistency

WARNING: Prepare for a long, rambly post on writing that doesn’t really have a point but to wring out recent writing experiences from my saturated brainmeats.

Building worlds is a job that once fell firmly in the laps of beings like Brahma, Mbombo, Ranginui and Papatuanuku, or even planetary deities, like that scene in Firefly where Saffron explains to Wash the myth of Earth that Was, i.e., the gods and goddesses of the myriad different creator myths of the world. In truth, myths are nothing but best-selling stories with a very long shelf life, right? (So, by extension, since writers are world builders, does that make us gods? Just curious…)

Thanks to their highly active imaginations and the luck of being born or indoctrinated into priest class cultural roles, the original storytellers who dreamt up these fantastical and entertaining origination myths were pretty much free to think big and go long. Granted, the lighting was poorer in those days, which made penning intricate tales late into the night a sure recipe for myopia, and a general lack of hygiene predating written books would have made the oral tradition of storytelling a bit less enjoyable to listeners, but storytellers, being a tenacious and overly wordy bunch, would rarely let much short of death stop them. One thing that is universally true of word nerds is that we all suffer from the same incurable verbarianism.

Yet I can’t help but reflect on the experiences of these storytellers and wonder if they confronted the same issue that I am currently butting my head against. That of building, or creating the myth of, a new world and keeping the facts straight in the process. Nothing sucks more during the writing phase as plunging facefirst into the pestilent seas of incongruences and misremembered facts, where details begin to slither around each other and create a soul-sucking quagmire of internal inconsistencies. We all know that feeling of writing happily along and then BAM! Stopped dead in our tracks when we discover “If this is this way, then that can’t be that way, because, well, physics for one, and…" Rewriting before one is even halfway through takes a lot of the fun out of noveling. It's like turning back after mile 13 of a marathon because you aren't happy with your split times. I think the lesson from most great novelists would be: Don't do that.

Early myth makers had a luxury that those of us who publish books in modern times, which can't be recollected from our readers (and wiped from their memories), didn’t, and that was the ability to change the facts of their stories on the fly when someone pointed out a contradiction. Or, as happens so often in long-lived mythologies, the facts are left to remain contradictory, but the story is shored up by minions of supporters fabricating inarguable arguments like “We must have faith. God works in mysterious ways,” which are supposed to somehow imply that there is no inconsistency, it is simply that our limited human mental and spiritual capacities can’t possibly grok the real truth.

But again, that is a luxury the modern storyteller doesn’t have, and won’t have until we too reach the level of transcendentalism that codifies us as deities in our own right. Walter F. Miller’s 1960 novel A Canticle for Leibowitz explores this theme in a sublime way. Not so much the deification of your average human, but the way in which something relatively inconsequential can become a holy relic through the passage of time because of nothing more than the simple and limited ability of humanity to sustain specific comprehension over epochs. If you haven't read it, the time is now. But I digress.

Early myth makers and their creation stories in a way are a parable for the modern storyteller and our job of creating self-sustaining and internally consistent worlds. Where they’ve had centuries to “get it right,” or at least for fans of their stories to redefine and rewrite problematic points, we, as write-publish-repeat storytellers, only get one shot. It’s a big job to create a workable and believable world, and we don’t even get the satisfaction of knowing someone somewhere may erect a giant statue or church in honor of our books and characters. We are so unloved.

Still, we persevere, because getting it right is more important than getting it done. Right? Right? Which makes it seem as if weare overly analytical, anal retentive organization junkies, and also not really committed to finishing our WIP. But that’s a balance each of us must strike on our own, the balance of knowing when it’s time to stop outlining and noodling to ourselves over various aspects of the work, and when it’s time to start doing the actual writing.

I know I used to shy away from writing even a single scene for fear that it would end up having no place in the final plot. But that’s a baseless fear. Any writing, good or bad, is meaningful writing because you are training your brain for whatever specific story you’re working on, allowing a cerebral exploration just as effective and important as the pre-writing preparation you’ve already spent however many days, weeks, or possibly years, doing. The real danger is not in having to rewrite, but in not having ever reached that point where you start writing. If all one ever does is ponder their stories, it’s just mental masturbation with very little satisfaction.

Maybe I’ll take all those scenes from all those books I’ve written and have had to cut, smush them together into something like an apocrypha, entomb them in a time capsule with a bunch of pretty baubles and important-looking documents, and leave them for the future. Who knows, someday even they could become the genesis of some new myth-based spiritual woo-woo sect, though I really feel for anyone who might get caught up in it. That would be some disturbingly crazy shit. I guess the lesson here, and the thing I’ve been talking myself into, is don’t let yourself get caught too much up in the endless intricacies of worldbuilding before you start writing (unless your name starts with a J and ends with Tolkien). Both are essential to a cohesive and finished novel, but giving yourself the indulgence of doing both simultaneously will get you from masturbation to publication faster than not. What do you all think?

Incidentally, some of my favorite novels that explore myths of creation and deities include Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, Marion Zimmer Bradley’s The Mists of Avalon, Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys, and K. Scott Lewis’s When Dragons Die series.

40 Ways Writers Procrastinate

You know that chapter you should be working on? The one that has some elemental flaw that you just can’t put your finger on, but which you also cannot progress on until you’ve sussed out that niggling annoyance? Yeah, that. What do you do when you know you need to fix something but can’t quite figure it out and therefore decide to passive-aggressively cope with the giant fail moment by procrastinating yourself into a coma? I have ways, oh yes, many ways to procrastinate. Here they are (NOT an exhaustive list). What are yours?

1. Write a blog post about procrastination.

2. Play with Photoshop until my eyes bleed.

3. Research. Anything. Such as find out how quickly things accelerate into the sun the closer they get; it doesn’t matter.

4. YouTube. For hours. And hours. Did you know Cosmos is on there now? Along with the BBC series on the History of Britain written and narrated by Simon Shama. For realz.

5. Watch pro cycling races.

6. Even out how much shoelaces dangle for all of my running shoes.

7. Read blogs about finding inspiration and dealing with procrastination.

8. Proofread lingering unfinished projects AGAIN.

9. Grocery list. Gotta eat, right?

10. Alphabetize items on the grocery list.

11. Proofread the grocery list.

12. Time to rearrange the furniture.

13. What exactly is the etymology of the word pink? I must know, immediately.

14. Check book sales.

15. Check author rank.

16. Recheck book sales.

17. Puzzle out how to get that unidentified stain out of my trousers.

18. Stand in front of the mirror and contemplate bangs.

19. Best double check when the next oil change is due.

20. While I'm at it, the truck's windows and mirrors could use a wash.

21. My collection of business suits, i.e., running shorts and yoga pants, are in need of laundering.

22. Check for any new newsletter subscribers.

23. Read up on best newsletter practices.

24. Sketch out some newsletter ideas (which will likely never get finished, much less sent).

25. Accept (momentary) defeat and listen to an Overtime with Bill Maher podcast.

26. Those dishes won't wash themselves.

27. Think of something better to do than washing dishes.

28. Bike tune up day!

29. Not that I need new rims, but it doesn't hurt to look.

30. There must be a better way to arrange the menu on my blog.

31. Canva.com. So evil.

32. SOCIAL MEDIA.

33. Closet organization, including sorting shirts, pants, and skirts by color.

34. May as well take all these old clothes to the Salvation Army box.

35. Hmmm, now I have room for new clothes! To the Patagucci website I go.

36. Oh look. Bills to pay. Now where is that pen?

37. Yikes, time to rearrange and declutter my desk drawers.

38. Now that this is all out of the drawer, time for filing.

39. SQUIRREL!

40. Okay, I’m exhausted. May as well catch up on reading for five minutes before lights out. I'll write tomorrow, I swear.

Book Review: Rogue Genesis by Ceri London

Rogue Genesis by Ceri LondonMy rating: 4 of 5 stars

Rogue Genesis, the first novel in Ceri London's Shimmer in the Dark series, is an intricate and visionary science fiction novel that resembles a mash-up of notables like David Weber's Honor Harrington series and Peter Hamilton's The Dreaming Void. With a grand scope and intimate storytelling style, Rogue follows one man, a highly decorated and successful US special forces soldier, as he tries to save not only his family from a malevolent secret society of psychics, but also an entire alien civilization from the devastating cosmic forces that are set to destroy their home world.

Weaving political intrigue, scientific exploration, and elements of fantasy into a suspenseful narrative, London's story is highly ambitious in its vision, and she pulls it off with the kind of necessary plausibility that will appeal to many hard SF fans along with a look inside the intimacies of human nature and relationships that will appeal to those who prefer more character-driven novels.

Though the novel's initial pace is leisurely, London enhances long moments of slow narrative with superbly executed and exciting action that will definitely get your heart racing and your fingers turning the page. Rogue is a novel that is best consumed in large chunks, as its meandering and subtle reveals require a high level of concentration to fully grasp. It is the perfect novel for a weekend spent relaxing beachside or for filling time during a long overseas flight.

View all my reviews

New Release: The Far Bank of the Rubicon by Erik Wecks

Bloggolites! It's very exciting to be able to tell you about my friend and fellow science fiction author Erik Weck's newest release today, The Far Bank of the Rubicon. You may recall, Erik was on here a few months ago to talk about his novel Aetna Adrift and his writing inspirations, motivations, and successes. Please welcome him and go and check out this new fast-paced science fiction book ASAP. And congratulations on your new release, Erik!

THE FAR BANK OF THE RUBICON

For three hundred years, the Pax Imperium secured peace throughout the galaxy. Now the empire teeters on the brink of collapse.

As war brews, the House of Athena expects Jonas to enlist. Unable to escape his gilded cage, the young prince accepts his fate. But when the factions come to blows, his secret affair with the daughter of a rival becomes a liability. As territory falls, Athena lays impossible demands on Jonas, and he is forced to choose between love and the ideals his family fights to preserve.

The Far Bank of the Rubicon is super-charged, adult science fiction from Erik Wecks, creator of the Pax Imperium and author of the critically acclaimed Aetna Adrift.

The Far Bank of the Rubicon begins a three-book series that picks up right where Aetna Adrift left off. This military space opera starts with a bang and keeps building tension until it explodes into an action-driven second half that will keep readers glued to their seats. It features Wecks’s trademark action scenes with characters who aren’t simply cardboard cutouts. They make mistakes, and those mistakes have consequences, not only for themselves but for the galaxy as a whole.

Wecks is perhaps most excited that in The Far Bank of the Rubicon he can finally begin to bring readers into the depth and width of the Pax Imperium. “The Pax is a huge sandbox with hundreds of tales waiting to be unearthed,” says Wecks. In conjunction with The Far Bank of the Rubicon, Wecks will release a Pax Imperium short story collection, Unconquered (August 23, 2014). All of the stories in the collection tie in with The Far Bank of the Rubicon in some way. Three of the stories in the collection have been previously released: Brody: Hope Unconquered, He Dug the Grave Himself, and Taylor’s Watch. A fourth, Rena’s Song, will be offered exclusively in the collected book.

Find Erik at all the following.

Amazon

Twitter

Facebook

Website

Speed Post for the Troops

Hey Friends. Many of you know that I was in the army from '96 to '99. Why? Yeah, that's the right question. Long and short of it is that I was/am one of those crazy adrenaline-junkie types, and the 82nd Airborne Division is the world-class example of hard-core adrenaline mainlining freaks. Naturally, I had to be a member. After three years and thirty-some jumps, I decided to hang up my boots and bruises and pursue something a little more grandiose. Like being NOT in the army anymore. I have a thing about authority, but that's another story.

The reason I mention this is because I finally achieved a life-long goal this week and have officially, through Createspace, brought copies of my novels into physical reality. This is momentous, but not because I'm low on reading material. (That was some pretty good snarkasm, am I right?) Really, it's a bigger deal to me because I had them made for my partner, a former Marine, who always wanted to see them in print. And the timing coincided with another event that's equally as important. Task Force Tigershark: a troop-morale-boosting enterprise being organized by a friend in Connecticut. He and The Battle Standard game shop in Manchester are doing a massive care-package collection to send to a group of soldiers in Afghanistan who've recently suffered heavy, heavy casualties. One of the big things these soldiers could use is a mental escape, no matter how light and temporary, from their incredibly cringe-worthy days. So copies of the first print run of my trilogy will be sent to them in hopes it can ease some of the burden of their damn daily drudge.

As many, maybe most, of you have, I've had a number of friends do tours of duty in our country's recent non-holiday international excursions, also known as Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan and Operation Iraqi Freedom. Thanks to politics, some have done more than one. While I was fortunate enough to be a civilian again before either of these operations, and was thus never deployed, the experiences many of my friends have shared of them, and their aftereffects, have left an everlasting impression on me. It is a small thing to send these soldiers books and sundries, yet the truth of it is, being stuck in a hostile foreign country sucks, and any little bit of home or show of appreciation from those of us who get to relax to a hot shower and a soft bed at night goes a long feckin' way. It's pretty easy to box up some Handi Wipes and Clif bars and ship them overseas. I definitely encourage everyone to take a couple hours this weekend and show the troops some love. And if you're an author, let me point out that those stuck on bases in Iraq and Afghanistan, well, they're a pretty captive audience. Just sayin'.

A few organizations that can assist in creating and sending care packages:

Operation GratitudeSoldiers' AngelsMilitary Family VoicesMilitary.com

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.