Category Archives: publication

It’s the end of the year! Time to look back at 2015 and see what’s ahead in 2016.

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I can’t believe it’s the end of 2015 already! It feels like this year has gone past me at the speed of light. Whoosh! Gone. So I think it’s a good time to look back and see what I managed to accomplish in the past 12 months, and what I had planned to accomplish but never got around to do. And of course, now is the perfect time to set up goals for 2016 as well! So without further ado, let’s start.

 

What have I managed to accomplish in 2015?

 

  1. Well, I finished The Choices we make, or at least the first draft. This is a personal accomplishment for me because Choices had started as a mess of a draft somewhere in 2012 then had been abandoned after I barely put in about 25k words. This is the first time I pick up a discarded story and run with it to the end. Of course, I threw all of those initial 25k words out of the window and did an actual outline this time, so that might have helped. And as a bonus, while I worked on it, I got the idea for a sequel. So that’s a project for 2016!
  2. I finally finished the chameleon of a story that are Mists of the Crossworlds. It went from a 4k short story to a 20k novella and then to a 50k novel. But at least now the whole story is there. I have nothing else to add to it. And it’s gone through at least 2 rounds of revisions and rewrites. Now I’m just waiting for the final remarks of my beta extraordinaire to put some finishing touches on the draft. After that, it will go to my favorite grammar Nazi ahem editor and will be ready to be put out into the world for everyone to see.
  3. I have outlined two more short stories in the Eye of the Norns cycle, but I never got around to write the drafts. Bad me. I need to do better in 2016.
  4. I have outlined and started writing the first draft of a new novel called Shadow Hunters. It’s over 60k now and I’m still working on it every day, though slooooowly creeping along to the finish line.
  5. I participated at NaNoWriMo again this year and I won, though I must admit that I had a harder time muster the excitement for it this year, maybe because November proved to be one of the busiest months at work as well.
  6. And finally, I got another novel-length idea that I would tentatively call Ghost and the Good Doctor for now. All I did is jot a few notes and character profiles down. I haven’t even started truly mining that world or story yet.

 

Well, now that I look at that list, it doesn’t seem all that shabby, does it? I guess it’s easy not to notice everything you’ve accomplished when you have your nose to the grindstone all the time, so stepping back and taking stock is a good thing.

 

I have also managed to keep my full-time job for another year, read some truly wonderful books (post about the best books I read in 2015 coming soon as well), watch some amazing TV shows and movies, and play a couple good games. So all in all, not such a crappy year after all.

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Now it’s time to make plans for 2016!

 

  1. First of all, I want to finish the first draft of Shadow Hunters and I’m hoping to be done with them by end of January.
  2. Once that’s out of the way, I will put the final touches on Mists and self-publish them on Amazon. This will be my first self-publishing experience, so I foresee lots of research and panic attacks in my future. And blog posts about it of course.
  3. I would also like to sit down and write those three short stories I had outlined for the Eye of the Norns That would bring the story count on this to 5 and it could be published as a standalone volume.
  4. Then I want to start editing Choice. Not sure if I will be able to go through the whole draft next year because I edit at a snail’s pace, but I would like to at least get a head start.
  5. Brainstorm and maybe outline the sequel to Choices.
  6. Brainstorm, outline and start the first draft for Ghost and the Good Doctor.
  7. Make that my NaNoWriMo 2016 project.

 

Pfew, that’s a lot of plans for the next 12 months! Let’s see if I actually manage to get any of that done.

On that note, Merry Christmas to you all and a Happy New Year! Make your plans and don’t forget to dream big.

What makes you put a book down and never pick it back up?

This would be my living room if we didn't have ebooks.
This would be my living room if we didn’t have ebooks.

I’ve always read a lot of books, as you can probably see from the new book reviews coming up on my blog every Friday. Until I started writing myself, I’d never took time to analyze what makes me stop reading though. What makes me groan in frustration, shrug in indifference, or simply close the book and never bother opening it again.

Well, my reading list has skyrocketed since I started getting review requests from self-published authors, so a lot more books pass in front of my eyes. And I think I might have grown a bit less tolerant when it comes to sticking with a book or putting it down. I used to read the first 50 pages to give the book a chance before I decided whether I was going to finish it or toss it. Now I usually stop after Chapter 1. And in the case of several books, I couldn’t get past the first few paragraphs.

So it got me thinking, and I tried to differentiate the few things that will make me stop reading a book every single time. And once I was done with my list, I thought it would be interesting to share it with my readers, because isolating the problems helped me look at my own writing critically as well. Hopefully, you will also find this useful. So here we go. What makes me stop reading a book?

 

  1. The story takes too long to start.

Maybe I’m the product of this age when so many things clamor for my attention that unless a story grabs me from the get go, I will likely put it down and go look for something else. So when a story starts with a long prologue that usually doesn’t have anything to do with the story itself, it’s sure to dampen my enthusiasm. If Chapter 1 starts on a dream or the character reflecting about weather or some mundane things and nothing happens for the first 5 pages – chances are  I won’t bother reading any further.

And I came upon a few books that did exactly that – start with prologue, then a dream, then the character wakes up and makes coffee, reflecting about the nasty storm outside his window… for over 10 pages. I don’t know if the story picks up after that, because I yawned, closed to book and moved on to something else.

I tried to read a book by a fellow indie author who had requested a review, and I just couldn’t get into the story. I felt so bad about it that I stuck for five whole chapters. But during those chapters, absolutely nothing happened that had anything to do with the actual story. The character went to work in his book store, then went to his birthday party, had a weird dream and finally met with a friend for lunch. Yes, the character was doing things and moving around, but after 5 chapters I still had no idea what the story would be about. So I had to pass on that book, even if I felt extremely bad about it.

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  1. The protagonist has no voice or all the narrators sound the same.

Voice is extremely important, because we see the world through the protagonist’s eyes, or through the perspective of several characters if the book is told in alternating POVs. If we are going to stick with this story, we need to like the character telling it, or at least be interested in what he or she has to say.

I can forgive a lot of things, like a slow dragging narrative, if I love the character’s voice. It’s like some real life friends who cannot tell a story without going on tangents all the time, but you can’t help laughing at their words, because of the way they go about telling the story.

But I have noticed that in most of the self-published books I came across the characters have no voice whatsoever. I don’t know if the authors rushed to publish their work without polishing it, or if they didn’t have a very good grasp on their characters, but the result is a dry and lifeless narrative from a protagonist that has less life in him or her than a cardboard cutout.

 

  1. Head hopping or messed up POV.

This one will make me drop the book like it’s on fire. I have no problem with alternating POVs, heck I read the Song of Ice and Fire and there are A LOT of different characters narrating several parallel stories. But for the love of God, the Maker, the Creators, Buddha or any other deity out there, please don’t switch POVs in the same scene. Don’t hop from head to head in the same damn dialogue. Just DON’T.

Head hopping is annoying. It’s confusing as s&^t and it makes my head hurt after a while. It also makes me want to throw my Kindle at the wall or set it on fire just not to have to put up with the story (I don’t do that, because it would get very expensive very fast). Heck, that’s one thing I can’t forgive even fanfiction authors, and I can forgive fanfiction authors a lot of things.

So pick the character who is narrating a particular scene and stick with him or her. If you need to give another character’s perspective on the same events, by all means start another scene for that. But don’t flutter from head to head like a humming bird on crack, unless you want to give your readers motion sickness.

Lost

  1. The book hasn’t been edited.

Notice how I put this point way at the bottom? That’s because if I love the story and the character’s voice, I can forgive poor grammar and some misplaced commas. I can even get over some wonky formatting problems. But if the book looks like the author hadn’t even bothered to run a basic spell check, yet alone hire an editor, chances are that I will quit reading, no matter how good the story is. Because I can’t keep myself immersed in a story if I stumble over misspelled words every other sentence, or if my fingers itch to pick up a red pen and start correcting everything. And I’m not even a native English speaker! I can’t even imagine how painful that would be for those who were born speaking English.

And it’s so sad because unlike the other three points in my list, this last one can easily be remediated if the author hadn’t rushed the publication and took time to find an editor. I know editing services are expensive, but some editors accept fair trade as well instead of money. And not going through this essential step and investing to get it done properly will hurt your book and your credibility in the long run.

 

 

Pfew, that turned out to be longer than I planned! Anyway, those are the four points that turn me off a book every time. What are your pet peeves? What makes you close a book and put it aside?

Writing is a life-long journey

writing - lifelong journey

Let me start this post with a personal anecdote. I have a full-time job and a family, which doesn’t leave much time for writing. In the past year, I had slowly taught myself to write whenever I had a few spare minutes, but I do the bulk of my writing at night before bed and during lunch. So I’m pretty used to showing up at restaurants with a notebook or a printout and a pen, and usually people don’t pay much attention to the crazy lady in the corner boot mumbling to herself and scribbling furiously in a notebook.

But last week I had an interesting encounter which made me think about what I am, what I do and where I go from here.

I had a “writing lunch” at Applebee’s last week when the waitress asked me what I was doing. I told her I was writing a short story. She seemed genuinely interested and asked if I had anything published.

Got anything published

This is when the first shift in perception happened. See, up until May this year, I had been a pre-published or aspiring author. But then my short story, A Small Detour, got accepted and published in this anthology. If you are interested, you can read my post about this exciting event.

So when asked about published work, I could legitimately answer, “Well, yes, I have a short story on amazon,” and give her the name of the anthology. And then something extraordinary happened: the waitress came back with her Kindle and made me input the name of the anthology for her. And then she bought the book!

Of Dragons and Magic

And I realized something important – I was actually a published author, even if all I had published so far was a short story. When I began my writing journey last October, I hadn’t even dreamed to be able to achieve that within a year.

This also made me think about why I do this. I mean, when I started the first draft of my novel Of Broken Things, getting something published had been the sum of my ambition. Ten months into the journey, I realize that for me it’s a life-long commitment. Money is not the end goal (though it would sure be nice to earn some) and neither is fame. My goal is to create compelling stories that people would want to read, because seeing the excitement in the waitress’s eyes when she said she couldn’t wait to read the anthology was the best reward I could ask for. She would spend a few hours blissfully lost in the wonderful worlds the authors have created, and one of them was mine.

So where do I go from here? Well, I continue writing of course, because the more I write, the more ideas pop into my head waiting to be put into stories.

I’m halfway through the first major edit of my novel Of Broken Things. I have the ghost of an idea along with most of the characters for my NaNo 2014 project.

I’m editing a novelette I had written back in May, and I have another unrelated short story to edit as well.

I have finished a new short story set in the same world as A Small Detour and about the same characters, and I have ideas for at least three more stories in this world. Once I finish them all, I am considering self-publishing them as a series. More about that in future posts.

I also want to dust off a project I had started a couple years ago. Back then I was just dabbling in writing; I had no idea that writing was hard work, and that first drafts always sucked, and that you had to push through it all, good day or bad day, to get to the end. I got frustrated because what had seemed so awesome in my head turned out total crap on paper and abandoned the project. But the story had potential and I love the characters, so I want to give it another chance.

Oh, and did I mention the dozens of half-baked ideas clamoring in my head and which might or might not turn into full-fledged stories?

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So all is well in my world: I am a published author, I am still in love with what I do and I have plenty of ideas to last me for a while!