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  • CREATING THE COVER FOR YOUR BOOK AND GETTING IT "PRINT READY" FOR SELF-PUBLISHING ON AMAZON
  • CREATING THE COVER FOR YOUR BOOK AND GETTING IT "PRINT READY" FOR SELF-PUBLISHING ON AMAZON

Writing my first romantic scene

11/23/2014

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Oh crap, did I just say erotica? It’s not what you think, or then again … maybe it is. I guess it depends upon your perspective.
 
When is a typical relationship scene in a Fantasy or Sci-Fi novel considered romance?

Where is that line?

At what point is the romance line crossed to make a story erotica?

What level of romance/erotica do I want to introduce into my stories?

How does any relationship/romantic/erotic scene add to the overall storyline?

There was never a question of adding relationship/romance/erotica into my stories. Since the stories evolved from dreams that I’ve always had from when I was a young boy, adding romance has always been a part of the plan from day one. While this sounds pretty easy to do, when you start to seriously consider the questions I posted above, this suddenly become something quite difficult to decide where these lines should be drawn. I can’t rely on the horny young boy I was growing up to determine that line, instead I need to re-evaluate how I want to address this subject.

To help with the process I’ve been looking over an email that Elliot Kay gave me on writing romance/erotica tips several months ago. One of his main points was that whenever you stop “fading to black” within your story, anything you write beyond that will always be too much or not enough, depending on who’s reading the story. Another very important point he also made, was how does the sexual scene progress the story and help the plot?

I have been thinking a lot about both of these statements and working on how I want to address my story. The four primary authors I’ve been using to determine how I want to address this have been: Elliot Kay (of course), John Conroe, Jim Butcher and Patricia Briggs. They really do cover quite the spectrum on this subject from the simple “fade to black” technique to the full on erotic wonder that still falls within normal Fantasy/Sci-Fi that is Elliot Kay.  

In Destiny, Book two of the Last Paladin Series, I’m introducing the complexity of romantic/sexual relationships with the Main Character, Startüm Ironwolf, and other characters throughout the story. The first thing I had to do when I started to really begin to put this into the story was determine how it helped the plotline. Once I determined how this would help the overall story, I had to work certain building actions within the story itself.

To give out a slight spoiler, this won’t happen until the later part of Book Two, but once I introduce this into the story line, it will be a major part of Books Three and Four.

I’ve spent the last month angling the story to where I want it so that I can have my first romantic/sexual scene, while tweaking other parts of the story to line up some complex relationship issues. Finally I am at the point where I need to put the scene down on paper. This week this aspect of the story will be mainly what I’m writing, with Startüm perspective, which is hard and easy all at the same time. The main problem with Startüm is that presently he is a virgin and a Paladin. So yea, I he’s gonna get his proverbial cherry popped. The scene and the reason why this was going to happen within the story took a lot of work to get everything in place where I wanted it to be. The reasons behind the “why” is very important to me. I guess in this way Elliot Kay has been another good influence to me, but I’m still trying to figure out “how” detailed it will be.

I’ll be writing more on this process as I write it, but thought it was a good topic to address on the blog.

On a personal note work is still crazy as hell. Doing a double HQ move means that, while I’m at work I am so completely overwhelmed there is nothing else I can think about until I’m heading out at the end of the day. I’ve been focusing on leaving “work” at work. I go to the gym for my lunch and then I head home at the end of the day to begin my writing and don’t look back. Mostly I’ve been doing a good job with doing that, but like everything else there is always room for improvement.

Weekends I focus on spending time with the family, cooking, catching up on my shows like: Grimm, Covert Affairs, Forever, The Flash and Arrow. There are a few more that get added to the mix on and off, but for now that’s what I’m watching. Lastly, I like to spend some time with my boys Rowen and Kanchin.
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The difference between telling a story and explaining a story

11/17/2014

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I just finished up “King Henry Series” by Richard Raley and was once again reminded the importance of telling a story instead of explaining it to your readers. I’ve been accused of sometimes falling into the category of “explaining”, so it’s something I try to keep an eye on to improve in my own quality of writing. Reading Richard Raley, I was impressed with how good of a job he does with this; definitely someone to get some great ideas to spice up your own writing style with.

The ability to make the reader aware of the traveling that’s taking place, while not having it overtake the story is an art. Richard does this by staying focused on the character’s thoughts and ideas, or even the interaction of the two characters in the car during the drive to the stories new location. Sounds easy until you try writing doing it with your own story, and then suddenly the difficulty sets in. How much time do you focus on the road, the environment, the characters interaction, the car or even the drive itself … finding that balance can be tough for any writer.

This is the same idea for describing your environments or the places your characters find themselves in during the progression of the story. Too much and you have your readers wanting to gouge their eyes out from the boring monotony of every scene within your story, not enough and no one truly understands what’s happening and there is not enough depth to hold the reader’s interest.

My own writing style follows along the path that I create this movie that is running in my head, and my writing focuses on trying to share that experience with you, the reader, as I try to share my impressions in words as to what I’m seeing. The first good example of this that comes to mind is the movie Avatar. Imagine yourself as being the writer as you try to put the movie’s world into words for someone else as you watch the film. How would you explain the incredible unique details of the world? How would you describe the alienness of the creature and characters, while not having it overwhelm your readers in details?

Let me throw another bone at you … Imagine that you are the writer who has been focused on creating this amazing story and have planned and thought out your world into such incredible detail that it lives in your mind. You have a story to tell, but at the same time you want … almost need to give your readers this incredible vision of your world. Unfortunately, many of the details you have so laboriously created doesn’t actually add anything relevant to the actual plotline of the story.

So the question turns into how do you share this with your readers? You do this by talking about the character’s thoughts and feelings, while sharing bits and pieces about the wonders the character sees and experiences … as long as it is relevant to overall story line. That’s the kicker. You actually need to make it relevant to your characters and the story you’re telling. Sometimes there are small parts that you can fit into the story by switching between the known and unknown. You can talk about how the land or what the character sees makes your character feels that helps you share that character’s internal struggle or growth. You can have them think about how odd or different or familiar it is to where they grew up at. You can even have the environment interact with your character in an important way that adds to the overall plotline. However you end up fitting these details into your story, just make sure it’s not too much of a good thing.

I enjoyed Blade Runner, but that intro of the technical marvel of the future made me want to poke my eyes out before the movie ever started. Once it started I loved the plotline and the message, but you had to make it through that freaking almost ten minute intro to enjoy the movie, way too much camera panning for most of us to enjoy. Another good example of this is JRR Tolkien. I loved the Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings, but sometimes the man could get lost in songs and languages of the different creatures that inhabited his world. Yes I know he was a language professor. Yes I know he actually created fully functional languages for the various species within his world, but honestly I have no desire to learn the languages. Kind of like how I enjoy Star Trek, but have no desire to learn Klingon.

Anyway, things to think about as you’re writing your amazing novels.

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A quick update on book two and stuff, always extra stuff with me

11/11/2014

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For those of you who have been asking, book two is coming along great. I believe I’ll have the story written out before the end of this year, but then we are talking Christmas Holidays, my wife’s family visiting and all that other fun. I’m hoping that the editing will only take a month or two, so that puts release sometime in February or early March. I wish it could be sooner, but sometimes that’s how it goes.

I just realized I’ll be sending an email to Leo Black to see if he can start working on the cover art now for book two. It’s on the complex side, so I want the time to tweak the specifics out with him and hopefully give him enough time to have the cover finished for my production date. The good thing is that I’ve done the whole “Amazon Publishing” before, so that should move along pretty fast. It’s just the editing that is my major concern, since it’s all volunteer help from the English teachers at my job who have offered to help.

One of the things I try to focus on is being centered and present every day. Normally this works out pretty good for me, but sometimes life’s issues can pull you down. At those times I unfortunately bring my “shit” home with me, which is bad all around. Stress is a mind fuck. Luckily, I’m pretty good at getting myself back on track. Work needs to be left at work, no matter how much there is to do.

I’ve been reading the “Foul Mouth” series from Richard Raley, super cool story and incredible writing. Don’t let the horrible cover work throw you off from picking the story up to check it out. It’s really worth the read. My Australian mate, Richard, told me about the series, and although he has great taste in books, the damn covers kept throwing me off. I finally read the series … or I’m reading the series, a new book every day. Yea they are that good.  

I’m not sure if anyone from the blog has joined the Winter Gaming group I posted about earlier. So far it’s been going well. I’ve been playing Tuesday’s and Thursday’s. I have a Paladin, of course, and a Death Knight on the server. Pally’s low level, the DK is mid level … names are Darknovia or Darkdealer, the Server is Hyjal. I’m still not the gamer I was before. I guess I have too much life I’m busy living. I remember how cool it was to explore the digital worlds I would play in and to see the areas many people never made it to and thinking how cool that was, why would I want to travel IRL? Yet now after traveling around the world, I have to say traveling IRL is pretty awesome. Either way I’ve been enjoying hanging out some within the digital world.

For those of you who have it, I hope you enjoy your day off for Veteran’s Day. Although this is an American Holiday, it’s really a day for those of us living to remember the sacrifices of those that laid their lives down so that the world could be a better place. Being ex-military and also with my current job, this day hits close to home for me, but I’m sure most of us have lost a loved one to war. It is a good of day to remember your loved ones and their sacrifice.    

One last thing I wanted to leave with you. My bud sent me this link: Patrick Rothfuss’ response to academic snobbery. For those of you who keep up with my blog you know how much I hate “academic snobbery” overall, just another type of bullying. Hope you enjoy. Now back to writing and listening to my Halo sound tracks =D

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For some of us grammar / editing will always be an issue

11/5/2014

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No matter hard you try there are those of us that are great with catching grammar mistakes, and those of us that suck at catching grammar mistakes. For those of you new to my blog, I’m of the later group. Given enough time and resources I can do okay at corrections. Although practice helps, it doesn’t make those of us without the grammar correction gene perfect.

As a friend of my recently pointed out, I’m especially bad on nights where I wait to the last minute to write out my blog and post just before I crash past my bedtime. That’s just bad juju all around, which is why I’m starting to prepare my post a day early. Being tired and posting on your blog is almost as bad as drunken texting.

It helps to have friends that can go back over and read the stuff you’re writing, but even then things are missed. For my book I use http://ed.grammarly.com/editor/view and lots of friends help. For book two I have a couple English teachers that have offered to give me a hand with the editing. Think about your high school English teacher and her red marker pen. I’ll be thankful but feel like I’m sixteen all over again. I always find it interesting when reviewers question why a professional editor wasn’t used for a new Indy Writer’s work. Not that I don’t understand the question. It seems like an easy enough fix, but the price tag associated with a professional editor for an Indy Writer makes it very difficult to be able to afford in the beginning … or at all if your stories doesn’t attract enough readers.

I should probably use grammarly.com before I post to my blog. There free sample page is easy enough to use, I just need to start making the time to use it. I find myself more motivated to make the time after being called out by my friend yesterday though.

For now it seems like my weak point in my writing. I’ve had enough good reviews to feel confident enough in my writing skills and my general story creation abilities. Book two is coming alone great, and I feel like I have a good plan of action for the editing side. English Teachers red markers for the win =D

For those fellow writers just starting out, you can do the majority of this clean-up on your own with tools like grammarly.com and the blood, sweat and tears of going over your own work again and again with a fine tooth comb. You will re-read your story a good twenty to thirty times just trying to smooth out all of the rough edges and grammar issues, and then do it again after your friends help you with the mistakes that they find. Even then you’ll miss a bunch of stuff, that’s just the way it is. Hell, I’ve seen enough professional works with grammar issues through the novel. It’s just the way it is.

No matter how annoying and aggravating this part of publishing your own novel is, don’t skimp on this part. You’ll hate yourself once the negative grammar reviews start coming in. especially if your story is good, but you’re getting bashed for not having a professionally edited product.    

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The Fun of updating my printed edition with amazon part two

11/3/2014

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So after going through the whole process of making the numerous corrections needed on my printed edition of Flight. I uploaded the new file to Amazon, which is where this current blog post beings. Unlike ebooks, I found out you can’t just update your current printed book copy that’s being distributed on Amazon. Instead you have to relist the new printed revision as if you were doing a newly published book.

After going through this process, in my opinion you might as well consider it a new book, whether or not it’s the same edition or not. The reason I say this is because of these things: First, you have to get a new ISBN or ASIN. Second, you have to completely re-create a new profile for the book as if it was a new novel. Third, the book now shows up on Amazon as a separate book. Fourth, even though the new book edition has the same name as your original book and it’s listed as the next edition, this doesn’t mean Amazon automatically removes the old version and just puts this book in its place. No, you have to ask Amazon to remove the first edition and make it no longer published. Lastly, you have to go through the process of getting all your reviews and listing properly setup once again.

This last part is tricky and much more complicated then I would have initially thought. The reviews for the first edition of your book are actually tied to the book itself. When Amazon unpublished the previous edition, all of the reviews that people left for that version of your novel are removed too. You have to ask Amazon to put back the reviews for your book, relist your new printed edition as the current paperback book and link it back with your ebook and audio book.

I learned this the hard way directly from Amazon when I realized my new edition wasn’t listed. Upon discussing this with their Service Desk the representative explained that I would have to have the first edition unpublished and said they would assist me with this process. Unfortunately this didn’t mean all of these little things were caught by the representative. I would have thought this would have been a built in process for setting up a new edition, but obviously this is not the case. Instead, I learned each of these parts while working with the Service Desk over the next two days.

Even now, four days later, I still only have 31 out of my 44 reviews being listed. I can’t even begin to tell you how frustrating that is. For those of you who don’t know, getting any reviews are hard and getting positive reviews are even harder. Most people who like a story buy the book and then say “Hey that was awesome, can’t wait for book two.” and then go on to the next book. A handful of people say, “Hey that book sucked and write a scathing review.”, while a very small handful say, “Hey that book was great, I’m going to let people know how much I enjoyed reading it.” So for us writers, these reviews, especially the good ones, are priceless. These reviews are not just priceless for the fact that it helps improve our writing and lets us know how we are doing. It also helps more people get interested in our books and encourages more readers to check us out, which in the end means more books get written =D        

While for many of us Indie Writers, the printed edition might not mean much, because we tend to sell so few in comparison to our ebooks and audio books. It does become an issue if we need to share our story with a news paper, professional reviewer or a friend that wants to buy our book as a gift for a friend or family member. Suddenly, that bad grammar edition that you fixed up six months ago is being share out in all of its unfinished and embarrassing glory. I discovered this firsthand when a couple friends said they wanted to buy my book as a gift for their husband or wife. All of a sudden that forgotten printed book takes on a whole new level of importance. Thankfully I had just received my second edition prints when a reporter from the Stars and Stripes asked for a copy of my novel for a story they were working on for local writers that support the troops.

Anyway, it’s very late and way past my bed time. Although before I call it a night I’ll share some pictures my wife took on Sunday.

Picture
Picture
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Interesting research for writing the last quarter of book two, destiny

11/1/2014

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This week I spent a lot of time catching up to speed on military tactics and deployment for the United States and NATO so that the ending of Book 2 would be that much more accurate for the part of the story I’m writing about earth.  I don’t want to list any spoilers here, but I can say that I’ve been studying the make-up and deployment of US carrier strike groups, the make-up and deployment of the US Six Fleet, the various current carriers and other ships being deployed around the world, the carrier wings strike groups and their equipment, Seal Teams organization and deployment and the US Rangers. All of these things will be a part of the final story in book two and will precede through books three and four.

I’ve also have been bending my co-workers ear. Allen is an ex-tanker during the Afghanistan war who has been discussing different military slang and terminology. I have a bunch of this myself from my own time in the service, but it’s always good to catch up on the newest slang. Allen is recently out, while I’ve been out of the Army for quite a while. I need to give one other buddy of mine a call. He is ex-special forces, an incredible man that worked his way up from the lower ranks to retire as a Lieutenant Colonel. Looking at him you would never think he could kill you in fifty different ways and is a walking weapon. I haven’t Okayed it with him, but I’m stealing his character for book two…or at least my made up character that has been spiced up that is using his name. Hopefully he’ll say yes and let me use his name for the character. Otherwise I’ll just come up with another name, but still base it off of him.

I was also looking up some of the different gaming stories for some of the military interaction, but as I was checking out how the various popular video games have done their story lines, I was somewhat disappointed with the quality of the stories based on real military life. I’m shooting for somewhere in-between this idea of what people expect and the reality of military service.

Either way I’ve finally got all of the pieces mentally in place, the unit structures and organizations to make the military aspect sound believable and the main characters ready to go in my mind. All of this part of the Larissa Evan’s story line. One slight spoiler about this part of the story is … think of the movie “Stargate”.

Anyway, I’m really excited about writing this part of the story line and it’s been really interesting going over all of the information in regards to IRL fleet and unit deployments and movements. It just makes me that much more excited to write the story.      

Once again I apologize for the late post. I have a good month left of work hell to deal with the specifics of the move of my organization. The good thing is that I’m gaining two hours back to my day due to not having to drive so long, but it seems like I have no time during the day to think of anything else until I walk out the door to head home.

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