Thursday, January 19, 2012
"I'm Writing a Novel, Officer!" --Weird Things I've Googled For Something I was Writing
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| http://redriverpak.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/devious.jpg |
- I can’t spell “beaurocracy” (bureaucracy as it turns out), often not even close enough for Google to figure it out.
- A Good portion of my time “writing” is actually spent on Tumblr, Facebook, and Pandora.
- I might be planning to commit some pretty God-damned serious murder.
Friday, January 6, 2012
"Fantasy" is NOT The Same Goddam Thing as "Scifi"
Every time I walk into a bookstore or library, I usually make a brief stop in the section labeled "Science Fiction." Yes, yes, I'm a nerd, but if you'll stop snickering now, I'm going to make a point of literary taxonomy that may just blow your mine; Goddamn dragons and swords and magic and scantily clad amazonian warrior women do not belong in the goddamn "science fiction" section...Wednesday, January 4, 2012
Review: The Demonata By Darren Shan
Darren Shan, best known for his Cirque Du Freak series, finished his ten-piece Epic Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and horror-ridden series The Demonata in 2010.
A friend of mine recommended the story to me, lending me her copies of the first four books. The first, Lord Loss, although possibly slow at times for me, was a delightful read overall, and I was quite curious to continue.
I wasn't let down as the story came to a close. There were many plot points that surprised me, and since it is a fantasy piece primarily (with strong Sci-Fi later on), that is a good thing. I don't like being able to figure out the plot of a story hundreds of pages in advance, and with The Demonata, I was rarely able to guess how things would go until toward the end of the tenth book.
Darren Shan has a wonderful talent for horror, guts, humor, and dialogue. The last two may seem out of place, and that's fine.
One of my biggest points of contention was in the number of books. I don't think it needed to last ten. Given that, the actual events were nearly perfect for the story. I wouldn't remove any of them, again, just the number of books. Books seven and eight could have been merged into two parts of the same book. The same could be said for 9 and 10, but then again not everyone loves to read epically long books.
I find that I want the story to continue. I finished it half an hour ago and I miss many parts of it. Darren Shan reached his goal for me: he entertained me, and taught me some life lessons (or at least reinforced).
To learn more about Darren Shan, please visit his website: http://www.darrenshan.com/demons/index.html
Till next time,
JK
A friend of mine recommended the story to me, lending me her copies of the first four books. The first, Lord Loss, although possibly slow at times for me, was a delightful read overall, and I was quite curious to continue.
I wasn't let down as the story came to a close. There were many plot points that surprised me, and since it is a fantasy piece primarily (with strong Sci-Fi later on), that is a good thing. I don't like being able to figure out the plot of a story hundreds of pages in advance, and with The Demonata, I was rarely able to guess how things would go until toward the end of the tenth book.
Darren Shan has a wonderful talent for horror, guts, humor, and dialogue. The last two may seem out of place, and that's fine.
One of my biggest points of contention was in the number of books. I don't think it needed to last ten. Given that, the actual events were nearly perfect for the story. I wouldn't remove any of them, again, just the number of books. Books seven and eight could have been merged into two parts of the same book. The same could be said for 9 and 10, but then again not everyone loves to read epically long books.
I find that I want the story to continue. I finished it half an hour ago and I miss many parts of it. Darren Shan reached his goal for me: he entertained me, and taught me some life lessons (or at least reinforced).
To learn more about Darren Shan, please visit his website: http://www.darrenshan.com/demons/index.html
Till next time,
JK
Monday, January 2, 2012
One Year, Baby!
Today
at Seven Heroes Books, we are celebrating our one year anniversary.
Quite exciting! And, this event provides us with some sort of
requirement to summarize what we have done in the past year, and what we
may have learned.
Monday, December 26, 2011
Critiquing
I’ve
encountered a lot of advice on writing. The years fly by and it seems
that certain aspects of the art become more crucial and pointed for me,
whilst others seem like non-issues. What have I learned from these
experiences? I was going to make a list, but perhaps just fragments of
thought would be more appropriate (and more for you to criticize!).
(Okay, I’m making a list.)
(Okay, I’m making a list.)
Sunday, December 4, 2011
Self-Publishing and eBook Creation
Hello all. Thank you for visiting this blog once again. Kyle & I appreciate it very much.
It's not easy to "reach the masses" these days, despite ever growing media channels. And, perhaps that makes it even more crucial for bloggers and tweeters to keep up, lest they fall behind. We would hate to fall behind.
The order of business in this post is a discussion and overview of self-publishing, and eBook creation.
You'll say (since you've followed ALL of our posts), "Hey, you two fools, haven't you already done self-publishing posts before? I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS." Well, we say, "That's why you're sitting...and something new has come up, so we feel it a good thing to update the STATE." Applause.
I have The Write Message onto Amazon and Barnes & Noble as an eBook. I am very proud. Exciting.
A few posts back I mentioned how self-publishing (and all publishing for that matter) require more than just writing and selling: you've gotta market. Without putting it out there, you are leaving your fantastic, golden baby to die in the annals of The Internet. The annals are a scary place. You don't want that.
Since I have just put my creation to the world in a digital format (other than in print at the KU Bookstore), I have some words of advice: you'll become the person who people think of as "Oh, here THEY come, shoot. They're going to talk about their BOOK again. I bet you all of the glittering vampires in Twilight. Yeah, that's right -- you're not going to take that bet."
But, it must be done. The odds of your ebook or printed book selling past your family and close friends is low. It's lower than your room temperature, you poor, poor, person.
You'll have to be a bit annoying. And, it will hopefully pay off, assuming you have a worthwhile story.
That being said, publishing your creation on Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble is surprisingly easy and quick. You'll probably want to learn a bit about formatting...seriously. If you spend the time learning how to format either in a word processor, or HTML (that's what epub and mobi use), then you'll be able to nearly obliterate all formatting oddities when you go look at the site previews. I'm not a professional, and I don't have to the time to become one, so I didn't get ALL of the problems out. Just the big ones.
When you've got that ready, for Amazon, go to the bottom of the page for Independently publish through us. Then, assuming you aren't doing print, go to Kindle Direct Publishing (versus print for createspace). And, the rest is straightforward.
For B&N, go to the bottom for Publishers. Then, you'll find information about pubit! That's the service you'll use and in my opinion it's even easier than with Amazon, which is saying something.
You get to set your royalties, the genres (you get 5 with B&N, vs 2 with Amazon), and any information about your book you think the audience would like or needs.
After that, you wait for the processing to go through. Amazon is fast, like Jimmy Johns. B&N is not as fast.
And, that's it for now! You can, of course, check out Smashwords. They also do eBook publishing. I haven't had much experience with them, so my guidance stops here.
And, as always, some useful links to help boost my ego:
The Write Message at B&N
The Write Message at Amazon
-JK
It's not easy to "reach the masses" these days, despite ever growing media channels. And, perhaps that makes it even more crucial for bloggers and tweeters to keep up, lest they fall behind. We would hate to fall behind.
The order of business in this post is a discussion and overview of self-publishing, and eBook creation.
You'll say (since you've followed ALL of our posts), "Hey, you two fools, haven't you already done self-publishing posts before? I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS." Well, we say, "That's why you're sitting...and something new has come up, so we feel it a good thing to update the STATE." Applause.
I have The Write Message onto Amazon and Barnes & Noble as an eBook. I am very proud. Exciting.
A few posts back I mentioned how self-publishing (and all publishing for that matter) require more than just writing and selling: you've gotta market. Without putting it out there, you are leaving your fantastic, golden baby to die in the annals of The Internet. The annals are a scary place. You don't want that.
Since I have just put my creation to the world in a digital format (other than in print at the KU Bookstore), I have some words of advice: you'll become the person who people think of as "Oh, here THEY come, shoot. They're going to talk about their BOOK again. I bet you all of the glittering vampires in Twilight. Yeah, that's right -- you're not going to take that bet."
But, it must be done. The odds of your ebook or printed book selling past your family and close friends is low. It's lower than your room temperature, you poor, poor, person.
You'll have to be a bit annoying. And, it will hopefully pay off, assuming you have a worthwhile story.
That being said, publishing your creation on Amazon and/or Barnes & Noble is surprisingly easy and quick. You'll probably want to learn a bit about formatting...seriously. If you spend the time learning how to format either in a word processor, or HTML (that's what epub and mobi use), then you'll be able to nearly obliterate all formatting oddities when you go look at the site previews. I'm not a professional, and I don't have to the time to become one, so I didn't get ALL of the problems out. Just the big ones.
When you've got that ready, for Amazon, go to the bottom of the page for Independently publish through us. Then, assuming you aren't doing print, go to Kindle Direct Publishing (versus print for createspace). And, the rest is straightforward.
For B&N, go to the bottom for Publishers. Then, you'll find information about pubit! That's the service you'll use and in my opinion it's even easier than with Amazon, which is saying something.
You get to set your royalties, the genres (you get 5 with B&N, vs 2 with Amazon), and any information about your book you think the audience would like or needs.
After that, you wait for the processing to go through. Amazon is fast, like Jimmy Johns. B&N is not as fast.
And, that's it for now! You can, of course, check out Smashwords. They also do eBook publishing. I haven't had much experience with them, so my guidance stops here.
And, as always, some useful links to help boost my ego:
The Write Message at B&N
The Write Message at Amazon
-JK
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