Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘e-books’

Writing a novel out of order is a mug’s game.

Posted in Australian writers, Bob Ellis, books about cats, Danielle de Valera, e-books, Far North Coast of NSW, Fiction, fiction authors, fiction editors, Fiction writers, Humour, Indie authors, Indie publishing, madness, manucript assessments, manuscript appraisals, new writers, new writing, north coast of nsw, Short stories, struggling writers, the writing process, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 9, 2016| 4 Comments »

 

Worried womanI’ve spent the first three months of this year finishing off the 1st draft of the sequel to the cat book. (See right.) I’m now at around 80,000 words, and I’m embroiled — no other word for it — in arranging the scenes in chronological order. You see, I write novels out of order, just picking one scene from the story line as the mood takes me. I don’t do this with short stories, which I plan out in advance, but I do it with novels, god help me. Now I’m the proud possessor of around 80,000+ words, roughly 85 scenes — all out of order.

To get a book out of this is no mean feat. When I saw the extent of the problem, plus the fact that I still had three critical scenes to write, I thought of lying down on the railway tracks.

Railway tracks

But the train doesn’t run in these parts anymore.

How to proceed from here? My method was to buy a packet of catalogue cards, write the name of each scene plus a brief description on a catalogue card, and then sort the cards into piles representing the main characters. I then sort each character pile into their journey arcs. After that, I shuffle the cards until they’re in what I hope is the right order for the novel, interpolating the main character cards as I go. This takes time. Quite a bit of it, in fact. When that’s done, I take the printout of the novel and put the printed out scenes into the order I obtained via the catalogue cards. Then I read the printout to see if it flows, where bridges need to be added, etc.

It’s madly time consuming, and I’m only at the catalogue card stage at present; I have a fair way to go yet. Unfortunately, it’s the kind of thing that can’t be hurried. Glitches in the plot will always appear at this point, and it takes time to work through them, for something to occur to me that will solve the problem.

Writing a novel out of order is a mug’s game; I don’t recommend it to anyone. But that’s my way with novels; I just take them on, one bite at a time, until eventually they’re done.

So here I am with my catalogue cards wrapped around with a rubber band. I get up in the morning, put on my dressing gown, feed the cat, make a cup of tea, and shuffle the catalogue cards.

Worried woman in dressing gown

I predict it will be a while yet before I have a properly organised printout that I can use to arrange the scenes in the right order in the computer version.

As the late Bob Ellis used to say, “So it goes.”

PS If you’re wanting to catch up on any of my short stories, the easiest way to do it is to go to http://www.amazon.com/Danielle-de-Valera/e/B00H286LXI  There’s a list there of all of them.

Read Full Post »

Shaune Lafferty Webb talks about her latest novel Cold Faith

Posted in anecdotes, Australian authors, Australian writers, Cold Faith, Danielle de Valera, fiction authors, Fiction writers, Indie authors, Indie publishing, new writing, Patrick de Valera Manuscript Development Services, Shaune Lafferty Webb, tagged , , , , , , on November 23, 2015| 2 Comments »

Many thanks, Danielle, for inviting me to say a little about my latest release Cold Faith, the first instalment in a three-part series being published by Hague Publishing.

Cold Faithhttp://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B00VBZQ8FY

 

Cold Faith is set in the aftermath of a protracted volcanic winter that has devastated the planet and left only isolated pockets of survivors. Seeing just one slim chance for survival, the main character Rab decides to set out on a perilous journey north in search of a fabled city rumoured to be one of the many staging areas where spaceships were launched to ferry the people of Earth to a salvation planet; the evacuation plan was known as Safe Harbour. Unfortunately for Rab, he is coerced into taking the last three surviving children of his village with him. After one of the children breaks his leg, they are rescued by a young woman named Sunny, who leads them to her underground city where a large band of survivors are living in comparative luxury. As far as Safe Harbour is concerned, Sunny appears to be a belligerent sceptic, while her old grandfather is a believer like Rab. The two insist on joining Rab as he continues his journey north with only the young girl from his village. It’s then that Rab’s real troubles begin.

Despite its scientific foundation, Cold Faith is a character-driven narrative that follows Rab’s journey of discovery—which ultimately reveals not only the true nature of the planet’s desperate situation but also much about himself. Like Rab, I had a bit of a quest of my own in writing Cold Faith. I wanted to explore the drive behind humans’ unyielding struggle for survival in situations where all seems lost and our capacity to accept that all questions may not necessarily be answered even at journey’s end. Ultimately only the readers will be able to tell me if, as an author, I succeeded in my quest.

My favourite character in Cold Faith is Sunny. She is tough and complex. Some reviewers have been quite taken with the relationship between Rab and the young girl who features prominently in the story. My stories are all heavily character-based, so I’m glad readers are identifying their own personal favourites.

While the opportunity for writers to see their work published has expanded, the fall-out is a flooded market and it’s becoming increasingly difficult for any one emerging writer to be noticed. I’d like to take this opportunity to invite everyone who purchased and enjoyed Cold Faith to keep an eye out for the sequel Faithless, which is due out in 2016. In the meantime, I have two earlier books readers may like to sink their teeth into: Bus Stop on a Strange Loop, a time travel novel, http://www.amazon.com/Stop-Strange-Loop-Shaune-Lafferty/dp/0980749794 and Balanced in an Angel’s Eye, http://www.amazon.com/dp/0987154877 both of which are available from the usual places as well as Amazon. You can find out a bit more about my books on Goodreads, Amazon and on my publishers’ websites.

Thanks, Danielle.

Read Full Post »

And Now for Something Completely Different

Posted in Australian writers, books about prison, Canadian prisons, Canadian writers, Carol Middleton, e-book frmatting, e-books, Ed Griffin, Editing, Far North Coast of NSW, Fiction, fiction authors, Fiction writers, Indie authors, Indie publishing, inmates, jail, Kindle, MagnifiCat the novel, north coast of nsw, prison, prison reform, prisoners, Publishing, Self-publishing, Short stories, social media, the novel, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on May 19, 2014| 7 Comments »

Novel under const'n

 A few days ago I was surprised to receive an email from Carol Middleton, an Australian award-winning writer, and a reviewer for the prestigious Australian Book Review. In the email Carol invited me to join the Writing Process Blog Tour, in which writers are invited to reply to four questions about their writing process and then pass the baton on to another writer/s.

Many thanks to Carol for inviting me to contribute to this tour, which in its construction is like a chain letter but nice. You can see Carol’s Writing-Process Blog published Monday 12th at http://carolmiddleton.com.au/wordpress

Here goes.

 

 

What am I working on?

Having put my first novel out on Amazon and Smashwords last year, I decided to try to get myself a bigger presence on the web by putting up a short story a month in 2014. Being the digital klutz that I am, it took me three months to learn enough to put up my first story Busting God, now available at: www.amazon.com/dp/B00J8ZIE8S. I’m now working on formatting my second story Remains to be Seen, which follows the fortunes of Busting God’s hero as he tries to recover from the post-traumatic stress caused by his participation in the Vietnam War.

I’m a tortoise, very slow at everything I do, and not very comfortable on the web. However, I’ve decided that having a higher profile there will help my novels eventually, so I’m nailed to the cross of formatting these twelve short stories for the remainder of 2014.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

How to answer this question? My short stories were published in such diverse places, ranging from Penthouse to Aurealis to the Australian Women’s Weekly. Each time I adapted my basic writing style to suit the market — I was a single parent and I needed the money. My only novel published so far is MagnifiCat: www.amazon.com/dp/B00H0ORWQY — a strange little animal fantasy about a family of cats who find themselves on the poverty line in a small country town in New South Wales, Australia. In it I aimed to produce a kind of Wind in the Willows for adults. To what extent I succeeded is hard to gauge. The novel’s definitely not satire; it’s more like a fairy tale for adults, with an underlying heavy core that makes it adult fiction, though I plan to release a children’s version of it in 2015, minus the alcohol and the angst.

Why do I write what I do?

In my case there are two answers to this. The short stories were written either for money — publication or competition money — or to add to my literary CV. In the novels, however, I get to please myself. And I notice that what comes though in all of them (I have another four in various stage of development) is a desire to nail down a particular time and place that’s now long gone. You could say I’m obsessed with transience, and writing about these places is my way of trying to keep them alive in people’s memories after they’ve disappeared under the bulldozer of progress. My Queensland novel is set in Brisbane in the early 1960s; MagnifiCat is set in Byron Shire in the mid-1980s, and somewhere in the dim future, should I live that long, I’d like to write a novel set in Brisbane during WWII. It’s as if I’m saying to readers, Remember how it was. Don’t forget this.

How does my writing process work?

I write first draft material in the morning, while I still have some contact with my unconscious. Editing, a completely different process requiring a different part of the brain, I can do any time. I never work after dark unless I have an editing job or a manuscript appraisal for another writer and the deadline is looming.

To me, producing first-draft material is like digging semi-precious stones out of the ground, while editing is like polishing those stones into something people might find beautiful or useful. Basically, I want my writing to entertain, to make people happy. At the risk of sounding overly ambitious (or merely quaint), I’d like it to give people hope. Life can be tough sometimes.

 

The writer I’ve asked to continue the Writing Process Blog Tour on Monday 26th is Ed Griffin, a Canadian novelist and prison reformer. Ed taught creative writing in prisons for many years. He blogs at:

prisonuncensored.wordpress.com

Check him out on Monday 26th.

 

Read Full Post »

More Tips for Writers, Not: Intimations of Mortality

Posted in aging, anecdotes, cats, e-books, family, Humour, Publishing, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on July 17, 2012| 5 Comments »

I had a funny experience the other day: I’d gone to the pathologist for my annual blood test, which required fasting – always a stressful time for me. I’d been fasting for 14 hours by the time I came out of the pathologist’s. As I was maundering, a bit light headed, through the shopping centre afterwards, I noticed the weighing machine.

The machine and I are friends. We have a date, once a fortnight. It was only five days since our last tryst, but there it stood, and I thought: Wot-the-hell, it won’t hurt to weigh myself again. I tend to put on weight in winter. It was mid-winter now, and I like to keep an eye on things.

I fished out a dollar coin and stood on the machine, which informed me that I was four pounds lighter than I’d been five days ago. Four pounds lighter! For an instant, I was jubilant, but then I began to have doubts: Four pounds in five days — in the middle of winter? Not likely. I wandered away, thinking that, with my low blood sugar, perhaps I’d read the numbers wrongly.

I really was feeling a bit strange. I went into the coffee shop and wolfed down a cappucchino and a large piece of banana bread with butter. That should do it, I thought. Then I read the local paper for a while, to give my body time to catch up; but I couldn’t really concentrate on who had just grown the biggest pumpkin in Goonellabah. I was still brooding about the weighing machine, and how I couldn’t possibly have been four pound lighter.

Out with another coin. I returned to the machine. This time it told me I was five pounds lighter. Five pounds! But I’d been four lighter, twenty minutes ago. Dearie me. I began to do the math. One pound in twenty minutes was three pounds an hour.

I was fading away. At this rate, I’d be lucky to last two days.

The banana bread, plus the sugar I’d put in my coffee, still hadn’t kicked in. I made it to a bench in the shopping centre and sat down. Two days. I’d never get my e-book out in that time; I was only up to page 82 of Mark Coker’s Smashwords Guide, and I hadn’t even opened the How To Kindle book. I’d never get the sequel finished, and I’d never get to see my daughter, who was arriving at the end of August.

Biochemistry’s a wonderful thing. After about ten minutes of this, my blood sugar finally decided to get the message, and kicked in. With this came the realisation that there must be something wrong with the weighing machine. I went into the chemist shop and reported it. Bad machine, to have let me down in my hour of need.

Waiting for the bus that would take me home, I was struck by how beautiful everything looked — the trees, the sky, even the shopping centre’s crappy banners flying in the wind. And I thought: Reminders of mortality are a good thing.

Nothing <i>too</i> big, mind you. Just something small that can be fixed with a cup of coffee and a piece of banana bread.

Danielle de Valera
twitter.com#!/de_valera

Read Full Post »

Writing Methods — a guest blog by David Ireland

Posted in e-books, Fiction, Publications, Publishing, Writing, tagged , , , , , on June 18, 2012| 2 Comments »

How time’s flown. I must have been even more knocked around by my trip to NZ than I realised. My change of computers hasn’t helped either – followed by a change from dial up to Broadband. Dial up was cheap (its great attraction, there aren’t many others) but oh so slow. In the end, even I couldn’t stand it. So here I am, somewhat behind the eight ball, but full of good intentions after my break of over two months.

 This week, while I’m finding my feet and getting used to the dizzying speed of Broadband (how can humanity live at this pace?) I’d like to introduce David Ireland, aka Casimir Greenfield, who’s been kind enough to write a guest blog for me on his writing methods.

Over to David.


Having lived a long life, I have a good deal of source material to draw

from. Each day begins at five with a couple of hours writing before the rest

of my world wakes up. We have a very understanding dog.

I always have a number of projects running concurrently and I don’t really

have a problem skipping between crime fiction, young adult fiction,

non-fiction and song writing.

I do plot, but I prefer to let the characters and events unfold themselves

organically, even if that takes me down unexpected paths. I like to think

that my stories have shape, much like an opera or a humble vinyl album.

Beginning, middle and end — with a prologue, coda or false crescendo as the

story requires.

As a radio broadcaster, I value the spoken word, and thus each word of my

writing will have been uttered out loud before the reader sees it. I firmly

believe that much writing can be improved by vocalising before the final

draft is laid down. Dialogue needs to be natural.

I am not a fan of fanciful names, even in my young adult pieces. They can be

quirky, but I will not inflict unpronounceable names upon the poor reader. I

would rather that the ordinary encountered the extraordinary, and I hope that

my work is stronger for that.

An oft asked question: How do I write? Well, I love working digitally, but I

always have a notepad handy to scribble on and a Dictaphone for the car. I

know that if the idea is strong enough one should remember it, no matter

what, but I’m not prepared to take the risk. Everything is saved. I have a

sixty-second backup on the processor. Better saved than sorry.

Dave Ireland or Casimir Greenfield? I use a pen name mainly because my given

name has been around in the literary world for a while. The Australians

already have a David Ireland — they don’t need another. So it’s Casimir

Greenfield who writes the stories, sings the songs. I just take the blame.

I have recently published both my crime novels as ebooks for sale on Amazon,

but these are currently locked down, due to publisher interest. However,

both books can be read for free at the Harper Collins Authonomy site (see links

below).

I am presently completing the novelisation of the screenplay of my Ruby No.

One trilogy, a young adult piece currently under offer. Plus, my recording

career is kicking off again with the release of an album in June 2012 — I

said I had a lot of source material; it goes with a long and varied career …

If this seems like a scattergun approach, it is anything but. Any writer

will tell you that the only way to get anything down on paper is to work at

it. Consistently, each and every day. And if you do, whatever the result is

like, you’ll have a body of work that you may well be able to knock into

shape with some judicious editing. I think it works for me.

Bloodstones and Slow Poison can be found at Authonomy by clicking these

links:

http://www.authonomy.com/books/42590/bloodstones/

http://www.authonomy.com/books/42586/slow-poison/

More information about my work can be found at:

http://www.authonomy.com/writing-community/profile/me/

or at:

http://www.casimirgreenfield.com

Read Full Post »

Range Wars on the E-book Front

Posted in Amazon KDP, Amazon KDP Select, e-books, Publishing, Self-publishing, Writing, tagged , , , , , on February 23, 2012| 7 Comments »

 

A range war is brewing on the e-book front as a result of Amazon’s pre-emptive strike in introducing Amazon KDP Select, a 3-month optional contract operating above and beyond the normal Amazon KDP program available to authors. If an author hits the Select button, for the time their book is enrolled in the Select program, they must agree not to distribute or sell the book ANYWHERE ELSE! This includes their own personal blog or web site. Their title must be 100% exclusive to Amazon.

Before Amazon KDP decided to introduce Select, self-published authors had the opportunity to distribute their books across a large number of platforms — Amazon itself, Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Smashwords, Books a Million and others. This was good for the writers, good for the e-book publishers and distributors. A nice competitive industry.

 To retaliate against Amazon’s pre-emptive strike, Barnes & Noble, the other distribution giant, has decided to withdraw from its lists all titles published by Amazon. It would seem, at this stage, that even if a book is published on some other platform and merely distributed through Amazon, Barnes & Noble will withdraw it. Books a Million and the Canadian Indigo have followed B & N’s lead.

E-books are the new cash cow of book publishing, and indie e-book sales are rising at a phenomenal rate. In the US, in the last three months of 2010, Amazon’s sales of e-books surpassed that of paperbacks for the first time, and self-published e-books are beginning to appear in bestseller lists. But self-published authors are about to lose their freedom of choice and the wide distribution platforms their books enjoyed in the past. Because B&N and Amazon deliver the greatest volumes of sales, a self-published author or a small press will be forced to choose between these two giants. Going with only one distributor, however large, carries potentially huge risks for the user for the distributor can change the conditions at any time.

Range wars never benefit the peons. In this case, it’s the writers and small publishers who are caught in the crossfire. Is Amazon breaking the law with KDP Select? Should some kind of legal safeguards be put in place to prevent monopolistic practices in the young e-book industry?

 For more details on Amazon KDP Select, see my previous post:  Amazon KDP Select – a poisoned apple?

Read Full Post »

Amazon KDP Select — a poisoned apple?

Posted in Amazon KDP, Amazon KDP Select, e-books, Fiction, Publications, Publishers, Publishing, Self-publishing, social media, Writing, tagged , , , , , , on February 6, 2012| 9 Comments »

When online bookstores began to take off, Amazon quickly established itself as the biggest dealer in the field. Sure there were other bookstores, for example, Fishpond, but they paled beside the giant Amazon. We’re talking hard copy here.

When Amazon saw the trend towards e-books, it hopped right in and again established itself as the biggest retailer. Sure, there were other e-book distributors — Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Smashwords and others — but Amazon was the biggest. A huge industry sprang up. Writers could self-publish their books and put them on many different distribution platforms.

Looking good. Good for the writers, good for the e-book publishers and distributors. A nice competitive industry.

Then Amazon produced the Amazon Kindle, a series of e-book readers that enable users to shop for, download, browse and read e-books, newspapers, magazines, blogs and other digital media via wireless networking (source: Wikipedia). Amazon has now launched what it calls Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing  or Amazon KDP. With this, a writer can get his book published by Amazon and have it go directly to Kindle, which is grabbing a large share of the applications market with the introduction of its Kindle software for use on various platforms such as Microsoft Windows, iOS, Blackberry, MacOSX (10.5 onward, Intel only), Android, webOS and Windows Phone (source: Wikipedia).  The most recent refinement of all this is Amazon KDP Select.

Amazon KDP Select. This sounds good — until you read the small print in Amazon’s Terms and Conditions: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=APILE934L348N

To paraphrase this small print: While or the time your book is enrolled in the program, you must agree not to distribute or sell your book ANYWHERE ELSE. This includes your own personal blog or web site. Your title must be 100% exclusive to Amazon.

If you violate this at any point during the 3-month enrolment period, or you remove your book from the program so you can distribute it elsewhere, you risk forfeited earnings, delayed payments, a lien on future earnings – or getting kicked out of the Kindle Direct Publishing program altogether.

After the obligatory 3 months, your enrolment in the KDP Select continues unless you go through the process of opting out. Forget, and you’re up for another 3 months.

This forces the author to remove the book from sale from the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, Smashwords and others, thereby causing the author to lose out on sales from competing retailers.

By withdrawing a title from any retailer, the author destroys any accrued sales ranking in their lists, making their book less visible and less discoverable should they reactivate distribution to competing retailers.

Do authors want to be totally dependent upon Amazon for sales? New writers are desperate; they will do almost anything to sell their books. And they know that with Amazon KDP, more customers are motivated to go straight to Amazon since Amazon has this exclusive content.

It’s a clever ploy on Amazon’s part. As Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords says, The new Amazon KDP Select program look s like a predatory business practice (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-competitive_practices). Pretty soon, Amazon can use the opportunity to leverage their dominance as the world’s largest e-book retailer (and world’s largest payer to indie authors) to attain monopolistic advantage by effectively denying its competing retailers (Apple, B&N, Kobo, Sony, etc) access to the books from indie authors.

Indies are the future of book publishing. In the US, in the last three months of 2010, Amazon’s sales of e-books surpassed that of paperbacks for the first time.

Think about this. It might pay indie authors to recognise that their long term interests are best served by having a competitive global ebook retailing ecosystem. Mark Coker recommends an author distribute their book to as many retailers as possible. Many ebook retailers, all working to attract readers to books, will surely serve indie authors better in the long run than a single retailer who can dictate all the terms.

But whoever thinks of the long run? The long run is everyone’s poor relation, doomed to be steamrollered by the bullies of expediency and money.

The contents of this blog are based on a blog by Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords. The original, more comprehensive article can be found at: blog.smashwords.com/2011/12/amazon-shows-predatory-spots-with-kdp.html

Next Week: A review of Australian author Michael Sala’s debut novel The Last Thread published by Affirm Press.

Read Full Post »

Putting a Face to this Author

Posted in Amazon, Amazon KDP, Australian animals, Australian writers, cat lovers, cats, e-books, Far North Coast of NSW, Fiction, fiction authors, Fiction writers, Indie authors, Indie publishing, Kindle, MagnifiCat the novel, manuscript appraisals, Publishing, Short stories, struggling writers, Writing, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 30, 2011| 20 Comments »

Before we go any further, I suppose it would be a good idea to let you put a face to this writer, let you know who you’re dealing with, as it were.

This is one of the few photographs I have in which I look even halfway presentable. It was taken in Brisbane in 2010 (I know it’s almost seven years ago; I’m harder to photograph than a yeti) at the 50th reunion of agricultural scientists who graduated from Queensland University in years in ’58-’62 approximately.

What’s a person with a B. Agr. Sc. and a major in Plant Physiology doing writing fiction and editing/assessing manuscripts? It’s a l-o-n-g story …

For more, click on the About section above. For information about manuscript assessments or editing, please see: http://patrickdevalera.com

and click on Manuscript Development Services in the menu bar.

Read Full Post »