The penguins made me do it

While getting ready to release my next book, a novella titled THE WARLORD, THE WARRIOR, THE WAR, due out this Fall, I got the chance to speak with one of the people who read my first book in the series RISE OF THE PENGUINS today. From what I was told, the biggest hindrance to people actually reading the novel was its size. Now I know 700+ pages seem like a lot, but also I know most people out there read 150,000 words a day in people’s news feeds on Facebook or Twitter or Tumbler or… the list goes on. But the conversation didn’t stop there; she continued to tell me that she was intrigued by the unusual concept and gave it a shot. And wouldn’t you know it; she couldn’t stop reading the book. She told me she read it faster than some 300 page books that endlessly slog on and never get to the point. And then she said she even learned a few things from my book.

Mission accomplished! If a reader can be entertained and take some knowledge from something I created, then I have achieved what 10,000 books about the undead with BDS&M fetishes couldn’t and can’t do. Which is not to say that I am a book snob. Quite the contrary. My books are not for people who enjoy blathering on about the beautiful prose of the latest Pulitzer Prize winner. It’s my personal opinion that a lot of the lauded award winning fiction out there is completely self-absorbed. Yes, my books have an underlying message about the environment and corporate greed and even the military being used for corporate gain, but I assure you that you will rarely find yourself reaching for the thesaurus or dictionary to look up words that nobody will ever use in a sentence in real life.

Buy it here! 

  My books are fun. They are about penguins. They are meant to entertain and if you learn something while you’re reading them, then that’s great. If you don’t like learning while you read, there’s plenty of action and drama and laughs to keep you happy. And my books are engaging and quick reads. In fact, one the best compliments I received was in a review where the reader said he finished the book within 48 hours. I would say that if you finish reading a 700+ page novel in less than 48 hours that is an accomplishment. So if you haven’t had the chance yet, pick up the book from Amazon or on my website and you might pleasantly surprised. If you’re a book snob, then maybe the latest offering from Annie Proulx would be more to your liking. Which is not to say that her and other past winners are not talented, they are, but I write books for people that are not about sexual depravity or falling in love with the undead. If there’s something you do or don’t like about my work, send me a message on the Facebook fan page. Unlike some authors, I listen to my fans and I will answer you. 

Enough of this stuff. Join me next time when I talk about the difference between lumbering and lumbering. Yeah there is a difference

On Writing Stuff Part 4 (Reality, Distractions and Delays)

Welcome to part 4 in my 11,789 part series on writing. Today we have a special treat. I will be doing a Q&A with Lance Dilly. Dilly is the author of the wildly successful children’s novel Don’t Stab the Cat with That Icicle and the heart-warming bestselling collection of adult paranormal poetry Raindrops on Tears.

Lance, thank you for being here.

Call me Mister Dilly.

(Interviewer chortles).

Why is that so amusing, Steven?

I’m sorry, Mr. Dilly… The name sounds like a euphemism. I think of Jim Morrison being arrested in 1969 for introducing Mr. Dilly to the audience in Miami.

Well now that Mister Dilly is gone, I have some space to take up. *note to self—work on interviewing skills. I was going to ask him about what it took to write his books, so instead, I’ll talk about how I wrote my first novel RISE OF THE PENGUINS. 

Let’s take a trip back to 2005 when my teenage daughter was chatting with her friends on World of Warcraft. I jumped in her conversation and typed a few words about penguins. I recalled a short story I had written years before, and I soon began writing out the idea. Because I had never really had much time on the computer and I didn't know that Microsoft Works© was a really shitty, crappy bad word processor thing, I failed to save after every paragraph other word and, of course, I lost the first twenty pages to my book. 
 

Works doesn't.

But I was young and ignorant. Okay I wasn’t really that young. So with me thinking this writing stuff was easy, I pressed on and bought a stack of spiral-bound notebooks and I wrote. I wrote every day, every spare minute I had until, and I’m serious about this next part, I developed carpal tunnel syndrome. Actually the injury was caused by some poorly designed equipment at my job, but it was quite painful, and my writing slowed to a crawl. So two surgeries and eight weeks of physical therapy later I could finally write again.

I spent the spring of 2006 blasting through notebooks. (I wrote the entire novel by hand, not on the computer after my Works experience). I was doing well. I was working a lot of mid-night shifts, which was fine by me because that gave me undisturbed time to write while on my breaks; I had gotten myself in the best shape I had been in since my high-school football days and then the next thing you know, at 38 years old, I found myself getting two coronary stents because two of my arteries were 99% blocked. The doctor said I probably would have died had I not got the appointment when I did. The thing about life-changing events and the whole almost dying thing is it can sometimes cause you to lose your focus. Well wouldn’t you know it, 2007 rolled in and I was still sitting on a book that was 5/8 finished. After another surgery and recovery that year, I got to it and finished the book!

I spent the remainder of ’07 converting the hand written text to digital, editing all along the way. So by the end of that year I had a completed novel and absolutely no idea what to do next. I decided I needed an editor. I found a friend of the family with the credentials, and he spent the next year and a half editing 70% of the book. In the meantime, I had lost my job (actually forced to resign because I sued the company for my injuries caused by their faulty machines. I can’t mention the name of the evil multi-national glass corporation that made my last year working for them a living hell for legal reasons).

2008 came along, my book was still with the editor, I found a new job and then my heart decided to make it’s presence known again. No big deal that time, I had only one artery that was 80% blocked. I got my partially edited book back in 2009. I decided I had to just put it out there and submit it and see what happens. I was rejected. Okay. I brushed it off and found a new editor. Wouldn’t you know it, on January 11th, 2010, I suffered a major heart-attack. Three months later, my second editor passed away of the same thing that almost got me. My doc said no more stress and no more heavy work. So that meant I spent the rest of 2010 headed for a divorce and I went back to school. All the while, there sat my lonely little book.

I joined a writers group, got a Facebook account, met some old friends, one of whom is an author and really showed me a few dozen things (Actually more than a few dozen, and I credit him with more than he probably knows). I met another old friend who encouraged me to get to the living part of life. When she became my wife in 2012, she pushed me past the very real fear of publishing my book. (More on fear in the future). And in spite of all of those little or major roadblocks life put in the way, my book is available for sale to the good people of the world. 

So there it is. The condensed history of a novel and getting past the things that life throws at you and getting your work done. So whether that next heart-attack comes this year or next year or in twenty years and if don’t get lucky again, I can say I have a book in print (and on Kindle and Nook). Yeah it’s not a NY Times best-seller (yet) and there might be a few things in the book I would change now, but the fact is I did it and I’m currently writing another novel in the RISE OF THE PENGUINS Saga.

Well I hope this brief bio gives one or two of my seven or eight readers an insight to the author and maybe even inspire one of you to keep on pushing through whatever life throws at you, because there is a light at the end of the tunnel (Dang it…another tired cliché). Until next time, when I'll talk about my adventures in the Congo and finding Mokele-mbembe, keep on reading (hopefully about my penguins). Feel free to add a comment or talk about what you have (had) to overcome to get where you need to be.

On Writing Stuff Part 36

Welcome to part 36 in my 11,789 part series on writing. In our previous adventure I told you how to make 8 million dollars on your very first independently published book like I did off of my first novel RISE OF THE PENGUINS. Just remember to follow those FIVE very important steps I told you about in parts 33 through 35 of the On Writing Stuff series on this blog. And if you haven’t subscribed, I would suggest that you do, if for no other reason than to appease my vanity. You can also subscribe to the RISE OF THE PENGUINS newsletter on riseofthepenguins.net for news on the second part in the ROTP saga titled THE ROYAL CREED. Due out late 2013/early 2014.

So now that we are all fabulously wealthy and wading around in piles of cash from our novels—hold on, my blog writing is being interrupted by the voice in my head—

What’s that you say? I’m not wealthy? I didn’t make that much money? Really…I only made that much? I can’t afford to breathe on that much money. But what about parts 33 through 35? It was all a dream? But what about the moose antlers, ballet slippers and grape seed oil? Oh. Was she mad? Well that's the last time I take ZQuil with muscle relaxers.

Okay, let’s get back to maximizing our time spent on writing. Time zombies. I was asked why not time vampires? Well it’s been done and because of popular culture, I kinda hate vampires right now. So I chose the next scary monster that is headed to the point of becoming trite: Zombies. Zombies used to terrify me, but now, not so much. I’m gonna say, that while I am happy for the achievement attained by certain television shows, and I love seeing creative people being rewarded with success, I’m at the point where I really don’t care about The Governor or Rick. Zombies are everywhere now; the movies are currently in process of butchering Max Brooks’ World War Z and I even see zombies in car commercials. It's like we live in the movie The Sixth Sense and we are all Cole Sear and we see nothing but dead people. The next thing you know somebody is going to write a zombie love story. What’s that? They have? Well at least the zombies didn’t turn into My Little Pony glitter sparkle fun time zombies.

[BTP] The next biggest time zombie…or better yet, because it can be such a huge time waster, I'll call it Time Cthulhu, is social media. For example: I just did a Google search to make sure I had spelled Cthulhu correctly because spell check was yelling at me with a squiggly red underline. I proved to myself that I was indeed correct, but during the search I got distracted by a message on Facebook and spent twenty minutes doing other stuff when I should have been writing this blog. While social media is a necessary evil (Warning: tired cliché just used) it is also, for me anyways, the biggest Time Cthulhu I have to deal with. While I may post a picture or an update on my RISE OF THE PENGUINS Facebook page every few days, I will also check to see what’s up with my family, fellow writers, my friends (a lot of whom are fellow writers and people I have met on Facebook and I am happy to call genuine friends), and, from time to time I also numb my mind by playing just one game of Bejeweled Blitz. Well one game turns into 28 and before you know it 45 minutes have been devoured by the Time Cthulhu. Add Twitter, Goodreads, Tumbler, Instagram and other things to that equation and you can easily sacrifice 2 or 3 hours to the Cthulhu.

For those of you who don’t know what a Cthulhu is, I’ve created this amazing rendering of a Cthulhu: 

Cthulhu Rising-Crayon on paper-2013

The most difficult part about the Time Cthulhu, (A.K.A social media), is that you need it. You need it to help promote your book and to meet people in our profession, especially if you are an indie publisher like I am. But you have to learn to tame the Cthulhu. (If you are wondering why I keep using Cthulhu when I can easily use another word, it’s because I say the name every time I write it, and it’s fun to say. How many times a day or week or year does someone actually get to say Cthulhu? Say it with me. Cthulhu, Cthulhu, Cthulhu. Fun huh? Though I think we just summoned the Cthulhu from the depths). By taming the Cthulhu, I mean try to allow yourself only one part of the day to use social media. And by part I mean, restrict yourself to an hour or less. There is nothing that you have to do on Facebook or Tumbler that can’t be done in less than an hour. Whether it be six/10 minute intervals or two/30 minute sessions or whatever works, just do it and spend that extra time writing your stories. Nobody is going to write your story for you, especially not Cthulhu.

Join me next time when we discuss how to make 8 million dollars off of your first indie book.