Getting people to be aware of your book by word of mouth is a difficult task. Most of the people that have bought my book have been those that know me either though my day time job, through alumni gatherings, or through my work as a lighting designer with local plays.
To try and get the word out a little more, I have decided to try a little advertising. The current play that I am designing the lighting for is How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying being put on at the Cary Arts Center in Cary, NC by the Cary Players. I am basically giving them back some of the money that they are paying me for my services to have an advertisement for Infused included in their programs that are handed out to their patrons.
This will introduce my book to an expanded audience who will hopefully find it interesting enough to purchase. We'll see how this experiment goes.
Monday, September 17, 2012
Monday, July 16, 2012
Next Project
I have been considering what I should work on writing now that Infused has been published. Before I went to the seminars by local authors (and came away depressed as described in my earlier posting) I had started writing another book. This other book is a fantasy novel with a twist, and I had written the first seven chapters. It has also been suggested by a couple of people that I write a sequel to Infused.
I have the basic story line figured out for an Infused sequel, but I don't know if it would be better to work on that, or on the more mainstream type of fantasy story that I had started. I just can't decide if it would be better to work on extending Infused with a sequel (since it is an unusual type of story) or starting an entirely different series.
If I go with the new fantasy book, one thing that I would need to work on is battle strategies for a small group of people to be able to defeat a larger numbers of enemies (which I have no knowledge of) while taking into account the special abilities that the characters have. The Infused sequel would be about Geoff learning about relationships and growing into a more complete person on a different world (as he plays god).
I have the basic story line figured out for an Infused sequel, but I don't know if it would be better to work on that, or on the more mainstream type of fantasy story that I had started. I just can't decide if it would be better to work on extending Infused with a sequel (since it is an unusual type of story) or starting an entirely different series.
If I go with the new fantasy book, one thing that I would need to work on is battle strategies for a small group of people to be able to defeat a larger numbers of enemies (which I have no knowledge of) while taking into account the special abilities that the characters have. The Infused sequel would be about Geoff learning about relationships and growing into a more complete person on a different world (as he plays god).
Friday, June 22, 2012
After Infused was Published
Once Infused was available for sale, my tasks were to make
sure that people knew it was available and to get as many reviews posted as I
could. I posted information about my book and put links to it on Amazon and
Barnes and Noble on Facebook to let my friends know about it. I also put up a
post asking those friends that had read it to post reviews. I later followed up
with an e-mail out to the friends that had read it asking them to put up a
review.
Since the Amazon author page was setup to be able to read a
feed from a blog, I started writing this blog hoping that it would provide some
more insight into myself and the book for anyone that happened across the
listing. I don’t know how many people have read the entries here, but it has at
least provided me with a chance to get some thoughts and experiences
documented.
After a couple of weeks, I only had one review that had been
posted; it was from my best friend Monique. I then posted another request to my
friends on Facebook – this time saying that they can just put a comment instead
of a review if they like. After this request (and mentioning a couple of friends
in my blog posts), I ended up with a couple more review postings. I was a bit
surprised that it was so difficult to get people to post reviews, especially
since a number of my friends are theatre people and are pretty outgoing and
expressive.
With no advertising helping to get visibility for my book,
it’s up to me and word of mouth for the most part. However, mentioning it to
people at my day job and bringing it up in conversations at parties can only
get me so far.
In an attempt to make more people aware of my book, I
started a post on my high school’s FaceBook page asking for information about
all the different books that had been written by alumni (I knew of a couple
other than mine). Information was posted about several other alumni authors, and
a representative from the school said that they were working on setting up an
alumni author shelf in the school library; it would be cool to have my book
available at my alma mater.
I’ve given a few paperback copies of my book to friends, and
I’ve joked about leaving some copies at various places in hopes that people
would pick them up and read them, but really, I’m just not sure how to get more
people interested in reading Infused.
Friday, June 15, 2012
Self Publishing
About a year and a half after I finished writing Infused, I
finally decided to self publish it. My earlier blog posts shed light on some of
the reasons that I waited so long, but in the beginning, I hesitated because I
had read that agents would not work with people that had self published (either
because the writer had gone outside the system, or because they would have
concerns about rights to characters and stories).
I finally got to the point where I just wanted to complete
the process of producing a book. So, after I spent time finishing up going
through the editing changes that Joyce had suggested, I looked into what I
needed to do to be able to get a printed version of my book created.
My son had been told that Create Space was a good avenue to
get a book published in his teen writing group, so I looked into that site. I
assumed that it must be reasonably priced if teen writers were being guided to it.
There didn’t appear to be much information on the site itself about the costs
involved, but there was an ‘Explore paid services’ button on the front page. I
knew that they would offer editing and design services to make extra money, but
I was not planning on spending anything on those offerings. So I clicked on the
‘Start a title for free’ button to see what would be involved. I had to create
an account and was then given options on the kind of paperback book that I
wanted to produce. I was given options of different sizes, black and white or
color, and type of paper. After that was decided, I was given the chance to
download a template for the interior of the book.
I had thought about wanting to have the book published in a
5 inch by 8 inch format before I went to the site, so I had formatted a copy of
the novel in a Word document to be that size. I had even made a guess at the
margin settings that would be needed – the main ones pertaining to the gutter
settings. The gutter is the part of the paper that is in the middle (where the
left and right pages come together). In a newspaper, the gutter is fairly
small, but in a bound book, there is a wide area of the paper that you cannot
print on (because it will be in the binding). To have a book formatted
correctly to avoid printing in this binding the pages have to be setup with
larger margins on the left side on the odd pages, and a larger margin on the
right side of the even pages. Once I had the template Word file from Create
Space on my computer, I modified the copy of my novel in the 5x8 format so that
it had the same margins. I didn’t want to go through the process of copying
pieces out of my file into the template file, so the formatting of titles and
page numbers are not what was provided in the template. I then uploaded the
interior of the book and it was presented on the screen in a realistic view of
how it would look in a printed book – the shading of the pages and the flipping
of the pages caused excitement to build in me.
Next, was the cover design. The site offered a number of
pre-defined templates where you can put in text and upload a few pictures, but
they were very rigid and they did not offer one that could handle a cover made
up of just an image (which was my plan since I had created a cover image
including the title a while back). So I went for the other option which was to
download a template graphic file would have an outline of the back, front and
binding edge that was the correct size for the number of pages of the book (and
the type of paper I had selected).
Once I had the cover template, I worked to fit my image to
it. I found that the picture I had created was more square than was needed, and
started to trim off the sides to fit, but then I realized that I had enough
extra width to be able to also wrap around and cover the binding. I really
liked the way that it came out. I then had to add the title and my name to the
edge of the image so that they would appear on the binding. I didn’t get them
perfectly lined up, but by this point I was raring to get it submitted and let
it go without inspecting it carefully.
For the back of the book, they suggested that I put an
overview of the story and a picture of myself and information about me as the
author. I quickly typed up an overview and put that on the back, but I knew
that this information would be a lot more important if the book would be
available in retail stores (where people would pick it up and consider
purchasing it) than when the book is only offered on-line, so I didn’t put a
great deal of effort into it. Unfortunately there is a typo that I didn’t
notice at the time that got through. I didn’t have a professionally looking
photo of myself and I did not have any other writing credits, so I didn’t put
any author information on the back.
Once I had the cover finished, I uploaded it. The next day I
was sent an e-mail that the book was ready to be proofed. I had the option of
checking it completely on line or having a copy sent to me. I chose to purchase
a copy and have it sent to me. It arrived a couple of days later. It felt great
to have a real book in my hands that I had created. The cover looked great and
I felt a sense of accomplishment. I did however notice a few typos right away
in the first chapter. When I had started verifying the editing changes many
months earlier, my heart wasn’t in it (because of the depressing talks by local
authors addressed in an earlier blog post), so I had not done a good job of
checking the edits. I went back and fixed the issues in the first four chapters
and then resubmitted the interior file.
I chose to proof these changes on-line (since the exterior
was not changing) and (while I was on the phone chatting with my best friend
Monique) I finished up the paperwork (such as setting prices) to have the book
made available. To get to this point, the only money I had spent at Create
Space was the cost to have the proof copy printed and shipped to me – I was
surprised that there were no other costs. I then used a Kindle tool to make a
version for that ebook reader from the ePub that I had created earlier (after
copying over the editing changes) and signed up on Amazon directly to have that
made available on Amazon. I later discovered that I should have setup the
Kindle version through Create Space because otherwise the Amazon store doesn’t realize
that the Kindle and print versions are the same story. I also put the ePub up on Barnes and Noble’s
site.
The next morning I found out that the Kindle version was
available. Minutes later, Gary, who was managing a project that I was working
on at my day job, bought a copy for his iPhone after I told him that it was
available. The next day, when the printed version was made available, the first
person to order it was Monique. It was wonderful to have friends support me in
this endeavor.
Thursday, June 7, 2012
Final Book Cover
While I was putting off working on the final editing of Infused,
I decided to give the cover design another go.
After looking around the web for space pictures, I quickly
found that NASA provides many photos that can be used by the public and
business sector without any fees. The only stipulation is that if the photos
are used for commercial purposes, a disclaimer should be given stating that
NASA does not endorse the product.
After looking around the NASA site for a while, I found a
nice moonscape picture that didn’t look at blurry as those from the 1960’s, a
star field shot, and a picture of Earth with a hurricane off the North Carolina
coast. The Hurricane was a nice touch because in the story Geoff goes to the
moon after seeing a satellite picture of a similar hurricane on the news.
I initially tried to make the cover picture more proportionally
correct – I made the Earth fairly small. I started with the star field as a
background and then placed the moonscape at the bottom (of course). Next I placed
the smallish Earth near the top. I had not pursued getting a photo of anyone
else, so I used the picture of myself that I had used in my earlier attempt,
and placed it so that it looked like I was standing on the moon. Next, I Put the title “Infused” in red letters
in between the picture of me and the Earth.
Unfortunately there were a couple of issues with this
attempt. My dark hair seemed to dissolve into the star field and several people
that saw it thought that it wasn’t very menacing looking with the Earth being
so small and far away. Also, I realized that I once again forgot to stretch out
the picture of myself to match Geoff’s height.
For the next attempt, I backed up a few steps in putting the
images together and moved the Earth into the center of the image and made it
much larger. This made it so that my hair was clearly visible against the
lighter colors of the Earth (after I stretched the picture of myself the
correct amount to make me appear to be 6’ 3”). I then put the title above the
Earth.
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Final Editing
Joyce, a friend that went to my high school, edits documents
at her work and offered to edit Infused. I gladly accepted her offer since I
knew that I was not a master of punctuation – I like to use hyphens,
parentheses and ellipsis quite a bit. After my experience with the writing
seminars, I was not in a rush to do anything more with my book, but I certainly
was not going to turn down an offer by someone to help.
Since it was a volunteer job, and Joyce had a lot of things
going on in her life, it took her a number of months to edit the book. I think
that it was a bigger project than she had expected (it is after all about
90,000 words long) – she had read the book beforehand, but since she was
conforming to the formatting commonly used for sci-fi/fantasy, she ended up having to
make a great deal of changes. Many of the changes were swapping out my
medium sized hyphens to larger hyphens and removing the spaces before and after
them, and putting spaces between the periods in the ellipsis, but there were
many more changes too of course.
After I received the results of the editing, I let them sit
for a couple of more months because I was still very pessimistic from listening
to other authors. Then I finally started to slowly work through the changes.
I had sent Joyce a Word document with the novel in it and
she returned that file with all of the proposed changes marked in it. Word has
a nice feature that lets me accept or reject each change. Most of the
punctuation changes I accepted easily (although I left some of the parenthesis
as I felt that they worked better than the alternative is several places).
There were also a number of places that she pointed out
awkward phrasing and performed some word-smithing. These I didn’t accept en
masse. I agreed with the fact that the original wording in most of these places
could use improvement, but I very often did not agree with the suggested
changes. A few times I felt that the proposed change did not sound like
something that I would write, so I crafted my own replacement so that the
change would not stick out because it didn’t flow with the rest of the writing.
Other times, the suggested changes were actually changing what was being said.
This surprised me a bit until I thought about the fact that she was editing
sentence by sentence, she was not intimately familiar with the story. An
example of this would be where I have a character use a word that does not
exist, and then a couple of sentences later I make a remark about how he was
able to get away with using the word without anyone noticing. However, since
Joyce was only looking at the individual sentences, she simply replaced the made
up word with a real word.
I was very glad that Joyce had identified the locations of
the awkward sentences, but I felt the need to make the changes with my own
style of writing. Editing never ends – I’ve been informed of a few errors since
the book was published. Don’t blame Joyce for letting any slip by though – I
made changes that she never saw, and it can sometimes be difficult to tell
exactly what the corrected version of the text will be when viewing it in Word
with changes marked. After this experience I won’t be as annoyed when I find a
mistake in a book that I am reading.
I have heard tales of authors rearranging large portions of
their books, or of them re-writing it over several times. I did not do this. My
editing changes were either grammar related, or to add a little more detail.
The story was told (for the most part) in a very logical flow and I can’t think
of any re-arranging that I would be happy with making.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Going to Writing Seminars
After finishing my book and sending out a few letters to
agents, I went to a few talks / seminars given by local writers to try and find
out more about the business.
The first one that I went to was at a local book store and
was about how to make money writing books. The author had a number of books and
eBooks available, but he was basically telling us that he made almost all of
his money by having Google ads on his web site about how to get published. The
only pieces of useful information that I got from him concerning being an
author was that to have people buy your book online, you needed around fifteen
reviews, and that he found the best price to sell an eBook at was $3.99.
The next one that I went to was part of a writing series
hosted at our library. We performed a couple of writing exercises, but there
was very little instruction given and even less about what to make of what you
had done. The author had been writing for years, but caught me completely by
surprise when she told us that she had recently learned in a seminar that she
had attended that antagonists in book often think that they are the good guys.
I couldn’t believe that she could be a writer and had not realized that. The next
piece of information that she provided was that she drove a broken down car and
was not making much money as a writer.
At the third talk that I went to, the writing exercises were
a little better, and the author told us that in addition to writing herself,
she ran a number of writing workshops, but she even with those, was not making
much money. She also talked about how difficult it was to get more than just a
few people to buy your book, even if you have and agent and a publisher.
The last author that I heard speak was the most successful.
He had an agent, had a publisher that produced his series of sci-fi books, and
he sold thousands of copies of his books. But, writing was just a hobby (albeit
a very large part of his life type of hobby). He made sure that we knew that
only a few people actually make any real money as authors – he relied on his IT
job to pay his bills. He told the crowd to write if it was a passion, if not,
just give it up, because they were just going to get disappointment in return
for their hard work. As a side note, when I talked to him after the session, he
was surprised that I had finished writing my book – few of the people that
attend his writing seminars actually get that far.
So, after listening to all of these authors, I was pretty
disheartened. There was no chance of making any money, and there was very
little chance that more than a few people would ever buy my book (and those
probably limited to my friends). Realistically, I knew that very few people
actually are successful in the entertainment industry, but it was depressing to
hear it over and over again. So, I walked away from my finished novel for quite
a while…
Thursday, May 24, 2012
Test Reader’s Opinions of Infused
Over the span of a year, I gave about twenty-five people
copies of Infused (either copies that I had printed at home, in a PDF, or in
an ePub file) before it was published. Out of those people, fifteen of them read it and I received a
very interesting range of feedback.
A few of the responses were not a great deal of help to me
as they were basically just, “It was good.” But I did appreciate them reading
it and liking it. I had one friend who was an English major that had started
taking notes on my grammar issues (before the final editing was done), but
started enjoying the story so much that he didn’t want to be distracted by the
note taking, so he stopped – that was a nice compliment.
It was very interesting to hear the different opinions.
Infused is not a normal hero story, I strove to make Geoff’s actions realistic,
so there was no built in way that the reader was expected to feel. If a social
outcast that felt powerless to react to the world was suddenly given immense
power, I believe that he would most likely abuse that power in some ways.
Luckily, Geoff is hopeful and really does want to do good in the world. But of
course, not everyone’s idea of what is good is the same.
Some of the test reader’s opinions turned against Geoff
early on, while some waited until later in the story, and others were still
rooting for him through the end. However, everyone loved Kevin, well, almost
everyone; one person didn’t like him.
Some of the other things that I heard was that it was “more
of a story for guys”, that there was too much sex in the book, that the writing
was very easy to read, that I should have used more elaborate wording, that the
story really makes you think, that the ending is poignant, and that the ending
is “like you got tired of writing”.
The interesting thing was that all of the criticisms that I
heard were countered by other readers. This story really is a different experience
for each person that reads it because of how they interpret it is based on their
own beliefs and values.
Monday, May 21, 2012
The First Test Reader of Infused
Laura, a long time friend of ours, moved to town a few days after I
finished writing Infused. She had no idea that I had been writing a book, but
once I told her, she gladly agreed to read it and give me feedback. However,
she had given up reading the printed page, and wanted to be able to read it on
her Nook.
I only had my novel in Word and Publisher formats, but some
quick googling provided me with a program that could convert a PDF file to an
ePub (which the Nook could read). I had Word export the story as a PDF and then
used the converter to change it to an ePub file. Once I had that file, I sent
it on to Laura.
After she had a chance to read Infused, Laura and I got
together to discuss her thoughts on it. First off, she told me that she had
reviewed many scientific papers for friends in the past and, since she always
wanted to have something good to say, she would normally start off by
commenting on how nice the document looked and how good the typing was.
However, she was not able to tell me that since the process of converting to a
PDF and then to an ePub file had not gone well, and many of the sentences ended
up with line breaks in the middle of them for no reason. I later found a
program that would let me visually edit ePub documents without having to have
blind faith in a conversion tool, and it looks much better today.
After that was out of the way, she next asked me if I
realized that a lot of people were not going to like Geoff. I told her that
yes, I knew that some people would not like him – the story was not written
with the main character being an epic hero that always did what was right, it
was meant to be a realistic story about an unrealistic subject. We then talked
about the story in depth for a few hours. In addition to her opinions on various parts of the story, she also gave me a few details such as specific hormones
that I should name in one part of the story and the name of a really fast
acting poison to have in another part.
Overall, she liked the story very much, and she found it
very straight forward and easy to follow – except the last paragraph. The
meaning of what Geoff says in that paragraph had not been as apparent as I had
thought it would be, so I added in some additional text to clarify what was being
said.
I appreciated all of Laura’s comments and suggestions; it
was gratifying to have someone read my novel and to have put a great deal of
thought into discussing it with me.
Saturday, May 19, 2012
Infused Cover Design
As I got close to completing the writing of Infused, my mind
started wandering to what the cover of my book should look like. Geoff’s use of
his powers in many cases would be difficult to express in a single picture, and
many of the scenarios that I thought of would not express the extent of his
powers well.
I finally decided that the best scene from the story to use
for the cover would be of Geoff standing on the moon looking back at the Earth.
I also wanted him to be shoeless, even though in the book he was not alone when
he was barefooted on the moon.
In wanting to make a mock-up of the cover I didn’t want to
spend any money or bother anyone else with the attempt, so I ended up playing
Geoff in the picture. I stood in front of a wall looking toward it (barefooted
of course) in a dramatic pose, and my daughter took a picture of me. I later
found out that we didn’t have the flash turned on, but that actually worked out
better as it looked more natural in the final composition with light coming
from the side and mainly lighting the top of half of my body.
Next, I looked around the internet for a picture of Earth
and of the moon. I wasn’t worried about copyright since they would only be for
personal use, so I just grabbed the first things that I thought might work. The
satellite image of Earth that I found looked pretty good, but it was really too
crisp when it was combined with the black and white lunar shot that was taken
by one of the Apollo missions that I was using, so I ended up blurring it a bit.
The image editing software that I have is about ten years
old, so it is fairly limited in what it can do. It took me hours of editing the
picture of myself to remove all of the background so that I could overlay it on
the rest of the scene. I also had to get rid of my beard (since Geoff did not
have one) and I even had to erase part of the bottom of my rib cage since at
the angle the picture was taken my rib was sticking out further than my chest.
Once I had the three images ready to be merged, I created a
starscape by putting colored dots on a black image that was the size of the
desired finished product and then I added the lunar and Earth pictures. Next, I
added the picture of myself on top of that, and put the title of the book
across the Earth.
The final product was not wonderful by any means, but it did
get the idea across pretty well. I also realized at that point that I should
have stretched the image of myself out some since Geoff is supposed to be seven
inches taller than I am, but I knew that the finer details could wait until a better
version could be created in its entirety later on.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Editing While Writing
My method for editing is to do as much as I can while I am
writing, and not wait until the book is finished.
Normally, after I’ve written three chapters or so, I’ll go
back and read them in sequence paying close attention to the content. I’ll
check for flow of the story and make sure that I have not made any continuity
errors. After I have finished that pass, I’ll go back and pay close attention
to each individual sentence making sure that they sound correct by themselves
and I’ll try to fix any spelling and grammar issues that I can. I say try
because I was not an English major and being an engineering major probably put
me at a disadvantage in this area.
After I have repeated the above process for three sets of approximately
chapters, I will go through the process again for all of those chapters in
sequence, checking the flow for a larger section of the book this time. Re-reading
a larger part, and the fact that it would have been a longer time in between
writing and proofing the earlier chapters than before, I tend to be able to
pick out more sentences that can be smoothed out.
Once I have finished writing the entire book, I will go
through with the two pass proofing method for the entire length of it. At that
point, I’ll feel that the writing is good enough for some of my friends to give
it a test read.
Monday, May 14, 2012
Characters and Events in Infused
One thing that you often hear being given as advice from
authors is “Write about what you know.” I obviously don’t know about receiving
super powers, as most other authors of fiction haven’t experienced exactly what
they are writing about, but characteristics and other details come across much
more believably when the author actually knows something about them.
As an example, in the beginning of Infused, Geoff is very
skinny. This came from my own experience; I was extremely skinny as a child,
and I, like Geoff, would sink to the bottom of a pool if I was not constantly
moving. However, unlike Geoff, by the time that I was in college I had put on some muscle and I was not quite as sinkable.
Although I gave my characters some characteristics that I
was familiar with, none of the characters were actually based on real people
that I knew. However, when I was writing about some of the celebrities in the
book, I would sometimes have real life celebrities in mind.
Some of the events in the book were also inspired by actual
events. An example would be when Kevin told Geoff about the dorm mate that had
his nose injured by a drunken student. In real life, I was the one that took
the dorm mate to the hospital to have his nose attended to.
These details help to give the story authenticity, and if
someone were to come up to me and tell me that some of the non-power related
events are too farfetched, I would probably be able to relate a true life
experience to sway their opinion.
Friday, May 11, 2012
The Story Flow of Infused
When I started writing Infused, I knew what was going to happen in the first couple of chapters and I knew what was going to happen at the very end. Other than that, I have a few ideas what would happen in the middle, but nothing solid.
The majority of the story was developed as it was written by my simply asking myself "What would happen next?" I then would think about what Geoff would logically do next, or what someone's reaction would be to what had happened. For the most part, I didn't know where the story was going to lead me.
I did get hung up at one point while writing. This was when I wanted the story to go in a certain direction so that it would lead to the ending that I had planned. Because I was having difficulty figuring out how to steer the story in the direction that I wanted, I ended up skipping ahead and writing a later chapter. This was different for me because for the most part, I was writing everything in order. When I did end up going back and writing the section that I had skipped (by deciding to have a few events happen at the same time to enrage Geoff, instead of just following the logical flow of events) it caused me to have to revise the later section that I had written because cause and effect had made changes that I had not anticipated (such as Geoff no longer living in his house).
I am even more wary of writing out of order since I was reading a book last year where in one chapter, the main character's car had been severely damaged and was undriveable, then in the next chapter she drove the car to a meeting with no mention of any problems with the car. However, in the next chapter, the car was broken again and she had it taken in for repair. These chapters were clearly written out of order, or perhaps the order of the chapters was re-arranged for story flow. Either way, it was a warning to me to make sure that I don't confuse the reader with a mistake brought about by my writing not occurring in the same order that it will be read.
The majority of the story was developed as it was written by my simply asking myself "What would happen next?" I then would think about what Geoff would logically do next, or what someone's reaction would be to what had happened. For the most part, I didn't know where the story was going to lead me.
I did get hung up at one point while writing. This was when I wanted the story to go in a certain direction so that it would lead to the ending that I had planned. Because I was having difficulty figuring out how to steer the story in the direction that I wanted, I ended up skipping ahead and writing a later chapter. This was different for me because for the most part, I was writing everything in order. When I did end up going back and writing the section that I had skipped (by deciding to have a few events happen at the same time to enrage Geoff, instead of just following the logical flow of events) it caused me to have to revise the later section that I had written because cause and effect had made changes that I had not anticipated (such as Geoff no longer living in his house).
I am even more wary of writing out of order since I was reading a book last year where in one chapter, the main character's car had been severely damaged and was undriveable, then in the next chapter she drove the car to a meeting with no mention of any problems with the car. However, in the next chapter, the car was broken again and she had it taken in for repair. These chapters were clearly written out of order, or perhaps the order of the chapters was re-arranged for story flow. Either way, it was a warning to me to make sure that I don't confuse the reader with a mistake brought about by my writing not occurring in the same order that it will be read.
Wednesday, May 9, 2012
The Beginnings of Infused
At one point when I was in college, I saw the "The Man in the Bottle" episode of the old Twilight Zone TV series in which a man finds a genie in a bottle, but soon finds that his wishes lack enough detail in them to prevent them from being ruined - for instance, he asks for a million dollars, but after giving away a little of it, the IRS ends up taking the bulk of it.
Being a studious student, I felt that it would be a good use of my time to come up with the exact wording for the best three wishes I could think of (just in case someone decided to grant them to me). After spending a good bit of time coming up with what I wanted the three wishes to be (I am a very thorough and logical thinker), I then spent even more time working out the wording to make sure that I didn't get shafted.
Years later I decided that I would try to write a story with those three wishes being given to a college student. There was only one problem, I had gotten a degree in Computer Engineering, and was horrible at writing. I ended up writing about one page worth and found that even I didn't want to read it, it was just a bunch of disjointed sentences; this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. So I gave up.
Five years or so passed and then I saw the movie Bedazzled. That story is about another man who did not give enough requirements for his wishes and they were all ruined. This reminded me about my list of wishes and I once again decided to attempt to write my story. However, I found that my writing was still very bad, and gave up after writing two pages or so.
Another five years passed and I tried it again with no better luck. But it was harder to just forget about it though as I have a hard time getting to sleep quite often and many times I would end up thinking about how my story would begin. But, unfortunately, I was visualizing it more as a movie than thinking of the words needed to be able to describe what was going on, so I gained no useful insights.
Finally, after another five years or so, I sat down to try and write the story and wrote the first chapter - and here's the thing; it didn't suck! Apparently all those years of reading in bed had sunk in and I had developed the ability to write.
Being a studious student, I felt that it would be a good use of my time to come up with the exact wording for the best three wishes I could think of (just in case someone decided to grant them to me). After spending a good bit of time coming up with what I wanted the three wishes to be (I am a very thorough and logical thinker), I then spent even more time working out the wording to make sure that I didn't get shafted.
Years later I decided that I would try to write a story with those three wishes being given to a college student. There was only one problem, I had gotten a degree in Computer Engineering, and was horrible at writing. I ended up writing about one page worth and found that even I didn't want to read it, it was just a bunch of disjointed sentences; this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened. So I gave up.
Five years or so passed and then I saw the movie Bedazzled. That story is about another man who did not give enough requirements for his wishes and they were all ruined. This reminded me about my list of wishes and I once again decided to attempt to write my story. However, I found that my writing was still very bad, and gave up after writing two pages or so.
Another five years passed and I tried it again with no better luck. But it was harder to just forget about it though as I have a hard time getting to sleep quite often and many times I would end up thinking about how my story would begin. But, unfortunately, I was visualizing it more as a movie than thinking of the words needed to be able to describe what was going on, so I gained no useful insights.
Finally, after another five years or so, I sat down to try and write the story and wrote the first chapter - and here's the thing; it didn't suck! Apparently all those years of reading in bed had sunk in and I had developed the ability to write.
Infused Has Been Published
My first novel Infused is now available in paperback form and as a Kindle or Nook eBook.
You can find the paperback and Kindle versions on my author's page at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Lefler/e/B0081B4G0U/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?qid=1336602802&sr=1-2
The Nook version can be found at Barnes and Noble's site at:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/infused-michael-lefler/1110619637?ean=2940014359351
The paperback version can also be purchased direct from the publisher CreateSpace at:
https://www.createspace.com/3864577
In the coming weeks I am planning on blogging about my experience writing my first novel, and about finally getting it published.
Thanks for visiting my blog, and I'll be adding more soon!
You can find the paperback and Kindle versions on my author's page at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Lefler/e/B0081B4G0U/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2?qid=1336602802&sr=1-2
The Nook version can be found at Barnes and Noble's site at:
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/infused-michael-lefler/1110619637?ean=2940014359351
The paperback version can also be purchased direct from the publisher CreateSpace at:
https://www.createspace.com/3864577
In the coming weeks I am planning on blogging about my experience writing my first novel, and about finally getting it published.
Thanks for visiting my blog, and I'll be adding more soon!
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