Week 42 - A Glimmer of Hope

 

Can a book like this be published today? I sure hope so...

Update – Not so good, but getting better. After a week-long descent into video game addiction, I finally got my shit together and started writing again. Not much, but I’m building momentum. I actually took the laptop to one of the county libraries and wrote a couple paragraphs in public. It’s a little exercise I came up with to spur creativity and, frankly, get out of the house. If I get stuck, I can pick a book off the shelf and read for a while. Wins all over the place.

November is National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo, so I’m going to attempt what I was going to attempt last month, and write the first draft of a book over the course of the next thirty days. I haven’t fully decided which book, so I picked a contender at random from my list of possibles. If it doesn’t pan out, I’ll try another and maybe another until something sticks. Pity there’s no Start a Book in a Month program. I’d be a whiz at that.

Whichever book I end up on, it’s going to written longhand. This will keep me away from the internet and all its enticing distractions. That’s how I wrote the detective book, and that turned out okay. Anyway, I can’t type with my fingers crossed but I can still hold a pen. I’ll let you know how it worked out next week.

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Meanwhile, back at the writer’s block…

Recap: I wrote a book I had hopes for, until I looked at the markets. At the moment, my target market (SFF) is caught up in the throes of diversity. Straight, white characters, especially men, are anathema right now. So are male authors, and not just in genre. I recently made the mistake of watching a YouTube post about how women have taken over publishing in general and are making the decisions on who and what gets accepted and published, to the point that straight white male authors like Brandon Sanderson, in spite of an impressive sales record, have moved on to self-publishing. The upside for him is, he doesn’t have to share his sales profits with a publisher any more. Other, less popular authors, regardless of skin tone or gender leaning, probably won’t be as fortunate.

I, of course, insisted on writing a book about a straight white male in a straight white male profession, with the added red flag of choosing a male Anglo-Saxon pen name to keep impressionable kids from hunting up the erotic romance books I stupidly signed my real name to. I did manage to work in a Black character, but these days simply being Black isn’t enough, any more than my being simply female will help me get my foot through a publisher’s door. I should have published the sexy romance with the bisexual Hawaiian/Pacific Islander vampire slayer heroine. That was over-the-top when I wrote it; today she’d just be another face in the crowd.

Then, as a finishing touch, I had the only contender for Token Lesbian come out as straight with a vengeance, when she hooked up with a literal caveman. Let’s just pound those nails into the book’s coffin with a sledgehammer, shall we?

With all this going against me, added to my many insecurities, is it any wonder why I went on a writer’s block? (It’s no excuse for the video gaming, though. That’s on me.)

But there is hope. The SFF genre may be out of reach at the moment, but trends do change. Tastes change. The pendulum swings one way, and then it swings the other. In a market glutted with diversity books, some small publisher might be willing to take a chance on something new/old with a twist. It doesn’t have to be SFF anyway; my book can still be classified as mystery, although with a touch of the fantastic. If necessary, I’ll try querying mainstream publishers. As far as I know, they still publish anything and everything. With women running the industry, I may have a shot in spite of the male lead and byline, because at the ultimate heart of the book is a love story. (And how writers of all stripes get shafted by publishers. I'm hoping nobody notices that.) The Bridges of Madison County was written by a man, after all. Is Nicholas Sparks still publishing? I’ll have to check that out.

And if all else fails…I think for Christmas I’ll treat myself to the latest edition of Self-Publishing for Dummies. Maybe ask Brandon Sanderson for marketing tips. You only fail when you stop trying. In the meantime, it’s back to writing smut romance and hope I can garner enough income to offset the drop in my paid job. Failing that, it’s back to my scheme to blackmail the Pope. That one’s a long shot, but whatever happens I can always write about it. See y’all next week.

 

Week 7 - Waste Not, Want Not

 

Week 7 update – slowed down a bit here and there, but now I’m back on track, and back on the romance book. Having paid work and its attendant deadline threw me off for a couple of days, but I fixed it by going back to longhand in the morning. I also got some rewriting/typing done on the detective story before the internet distracted me. Looks like it’ll be the romance for the time being, I can’t say for sure how long. Plans, plots and intentions can change on a dime. Such is the life of a pantser.

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Speaking of distractions, my subconscious lobbed a doozy at me, probably as a last-ditch effort to knock me off my productive course. When the new story ideas didn’t sway me, Mr. Subconscious decided to go for broke and dump the whole shebang on me. Long story short, a long book of short stories. In other words, an anthology.

For years now I’ve made it a point to write some form of fiction every day. Best case, it would be a specific story aimed at a certain genre or market, hopefully with some kind of payment attached. Since depression and writer’s blocks often interfered with that, I decided flash pieces—everything from brief paragraphs to full stories under a thousand words—would also fill the bill. This way I could honestly say I wrote some form of fiction that day, even if I never returned to it. Writing is writing, after all, and one way or another, no writing ever goes to waste.

Some of them did lead to better things. One night I scribbled a bit of fluff about a reporter interviewing a human who’d been raised by vampires. It wasn’t very serious and ended after a couple hundred words with the reporter meeting the parents, with the (off-camera) expected result. I set it aside but didn’t quite forget about it. Over time the premise morphed in my mind into the tale of an orphaned child (female at first, later male after I discovered the TV show Supernatural) who’s taken in by a flock of vampires and grows up to work in a brothel that caters to paranormal beings. That became my erotic M/M romance Belonging, one of my best sellers. The fantasy/detective story I’m currently working on got its start when I mashed two of these random flash bits together. You can read that background info at the October 8, 2022  entry of this very blog.

I’ve got years—decades, even—of these things, scattered around in notebooks and a couple computer files. Some might someday bloom into full-grown stories or even books. The others…well, quite a few were scribbled down before bed, sometimes right before midnight, in a panicked effort to keep my daily writing habit intact. They’re not often coherent. Or clean. (For example, last week I jotted down how leprechauns come by their pots of gold. It has to do with another meaning for “pot” along with the phrase “shit a brick.” And the source of fairy dust? You don’t even want to know.) My sense of humor was shaped in my early years by Mad magazine, later by National Lampoon and Monty Python. This is the type of thing that comes out of my head when I’m tired, or desperate, or both. Most of them are unfit for human consumption, let alone development into a decent story. Or any kind of story, decent or otherwise.

But, Mr. Subconscious whispered seductively, what if you dusted off some of these piles of crap, polished ’em up a bit and passed them off as a self-published ebook of humorous short-shorts? Like Jokes for the John, but for lit majors. Most people don’t have the attention span to deal with a whole book anyway.

And instead of calling him out as a total nutjob, tired, desperate, writer’s-blocked me replied, Y’know, that’s just crazy enough to work.

So now I’ve got another side-side project. I haven’t stopped work on the detective book or the romance. The series is still in the queue somewhere. But now so is this. Any time I get blocked I’ll haul out a random notebook and see what’s in there. The bulk are going to be on a par with the leprechaun thing I alluded to a couple of paragraphs back. But there still might be some gems among the crap. If I can scrape together a hundred of the best of the worst, whip it up into an ebook and sell it for $1.99—hell, that’s less than two cents per story. If you only find one out of the batch you like, you still come out ahead. You can’t beat a deal like that with a stick.

Besides, I’ve been wanting to improve my formatting skills, and I need to learn how to make my own covers because right now I can’t afford to pay for one. This will give me something to practice on. I might even make a little money from it. No writing, or effort, ever goes to waste.

I’ll need to come up with yet another pen name, though. Variations on my real name have already been used, and I want to keep my other pen names for actual serious stuff. Damn you, Mr. Subconscious. You’ll pay for this. See y’all next week.

Week 6 - Inspiration Overload

 

                (Image copyright Walt Disney productions. I'm too small a fish to take chances.)

Week 6 Update – doing well, although things tailed off towards the end of the week. I found another library close to home that has printouts for ten cents a page (the standard these days is 25 cents). I’m still having issues with procrastination; that’s something I’ll need to work on. Even with that, I only had to write flash one day this week. I got the first of two assignments this morning, so I’m now booked for work through the first week of March. The part of me that has to pay expenses is thrilled at the thought of substantial income. The writer is sighing and mentally working out schedules. Fortunately I typed a bit early this morning before the assignment came in, so I can write and post this blog with a clear conscience. And now, on to the blog in question…

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This isn’t the blog I was going to write. It exists thanks to this past weekend, when I had time to write but kept fiddling around. I still got some work done on Saturday; Sunday was the day I wrote flash. In between Saturday evening and Sunday morning something unexpected happened.

Lately my war with insomnia seems to have reached a cease-fire. I only had one instance this week, and it was self-inflicted. After I went to bed Saturday night, I slept okay but had weird dreams. I woke up with an idea for a short story. I looked at the clock—3:17 a.m. Normally I’d just go back to sleep and jot it all down in the morning, but this was a goodie, or at least felt like one. You can’t always trust ideas that hit in the middle of the night.  This time, though, just to play it safe, I went ahead and turned on the bedside lamp, got my glasses and one of the umpteen notebooks I keep by the bedside and scribbled down the basics. Then I shut down and tried to fall back to sleep, knowing it would be difficult.

I certainly got that right. That dream reminded me of another story I’d started and abandoned a while ago. That story reminded me of a flash I’d written that might just serve as the opening to another novel. So much for falling asleep. Which I did, towards morning, and this time had a disturbing dream that threw off both my sleep schedule and my attitude. No wonder I didn’t work on anything worthwhile on Sunday. But that’s a whole other therapy session.

Now, I haven’t written a short story in literally decades. Short stories used to be how SFF writers honed their chops before they tackled a novel. I was reading, and writing, SFF back then. There were plenty of markets back then too—magazines, paperback anthologies, printed fanzines. That’s how Stephen King got started. I’ll be dropping his name again shortly. I got maybe a dozen or so stories published throughout the 1980s and ’90s but couldn’t crack the book market in spite of two attempts. Just as well; those books massively sucked. Meanwhile, I had to support myself, so my output dwindled while I dealt with finding and keeping a job that paid a living wage in a rapidly-shifting economy. Also dwindling were the magazine and paperback short-story markets, most of which weren’t paying much better than they had in the ’60s and ’70s. The money was in novels, and breaking in had gotten even tougher.

Then the Internet happened and digital erotic romance came on the scene (if you’ll pardon the pun) and took the world by spicy, sexy, sizzling storm. And that’s how I found myself writing paranormal erotica, and eventually editing same.

Even that went bust eventually, as everybody hopped on the bandwagon and the market soon became saturated. But the door was open now. If the regular markets—those still around—don’t want your work, you can put it up on Amazon or other venues at whatever length you prefer and for however much you want to charge. Just keep in mind that your success may be long in coming, or may never arrive. There are tens of thousands of writers out there, releasing millions of words into the wild with no publisher’s editorial staff to stop them. That’s some tough competition. However, there’s still Sturgeon’s Law: “Ninety percent of everything is crap.” Don’t write crap and you’ll be fine.

For me, though, this isn’t really about publishing. It’s about my subconscious getting scared I might start making actual progress on my current chosen projects, so it’s throwing bright and shiny new ideas in my path to trip me up. I’ve had this problem before. I end up piling too much on my plate, then get discouraged and end up not doing any of them. That could be how the weekend happened.

Well, suck it up, Mr. Subconscious. I know just how I can turn all those ideas to my advantage.

Remember Stephen King? I mentioned him a little bit ago. At one point in time I considered taking a stab at becoming a horror writer. I had ideas and everything, including a pen name to keep the horror writer separate from the romance and SFF writers. The theory was that, as he aged, Mr. King was no longer writing the type of horror stories that had made him famous. Well, he was older now, and sober. Styles and interests change. Good writers do mature. This left a gaping, King-sized hole (if you’ll pardon another pun) in the horror market, just  waiting for a new writer to come in and fill the void.

I did try. I started a couple of books using my own weird ideas. Nothing ever came of them. Mostly I learned that I am not and will not ever be Stephen King. But I hung on to the pen name, and I finally found a use for it. This particular alter ego is currently second-drafting my fantasy/detective novel, when Other Me isn’t working on the romance book, or doing the dishes or something.

And those short stories? If you’ll remember, last week I bemoaned my lack of presence on the internet, and how that could hinder me when I went to market my books. This could be the answer. I can sub those stories to online markets, under the pen name’s byline. If that doesn’t work, I’ll self-publish. Those stories might get my pen name noticed—in a positive way, I would hope—and smooth the way when I start looking to publish the fantasy detective novel. Also, I did some checking around and Humorous Horror is a legitimate sub-genre. It’s small and niche but that just means less competition. If I can make some cash with this side hustle, so much the better.

On to this week now. I’m going to try for the basic work schedule: work on the romance in the morning (that’s got a publisher lined up already), the paid work in the afternoon, and the other novel in the evening if I have any gas left in the tank. That one’s on second draft right now, and will require a trip to Philadelphia in the spring for some hands-on research anyway, so I’m not that concerned about it. If/when I get either of those two done, I’ll head back to the series. I’ll leave the stories for my experiment of writing in libraries and elsewhere away from the house. Those will be longhand in a five-subject notebook. I’ve got a ton of those lying around.

And once again the schedule leaves no time for doing housework. Oh darn. Well, something’s gotta give somewhere. See you next week.

Gotcha Covered

It's here! The cover for Horsepower, the new release from J. J. Collins! I don't have a release date yet, but it should be some time before the end of the month. I think. It's been removed from the Coming Soon page on the Evernight site. I'm hoping that's just an oversight. I'm sure if there was some kind of problem they would have contacted me.

This is the book I was talking about last week, the one where the publisher and I were wrestling over my use of strange spelling and slang words. Things worked out. I made the changes in the narrative they wanted, and they let me keep my dialogue, and by extension my characterizations, which is what I was ready to fight for. I consider it a win-win.

Some people may want to use this as an example of why self-publishing is the way to go. If that's your thing, fine. For the time being I'm willing to let publishers deal with things like editing, promotion and providing a cover. I would have had to pay $300 or better to get a cover that nice. As far as promotion goes, I tend to not do much. That may or may not be why my sales aren't spectacular. I'm seriously thinking about signing up for Facebook. Start a page for myself and one for J. J. Why not? They do it on Catfish. I wouldn't mind having Nev and Max show up at my door. Although I've established J. J. is blissfully married. That should keep stalkers away.

Anyway, my single foray into self-publishing sank without a trace. Quickly. I don't know if promotion would have helped. From what I'm hearing, the people who are successful in self-publishing are either writing to a specific niche, or already had a loyal (and large) following before they uploaded their opus. Or there was a specific demand from those follows, like with the guy who wrote The Martian (which started as a serial on his blog), or the people who wanted a print copy of what became Fifty Shades of Grey. I don't foresee that happening with any of my books any time soon. For right now, I'll stick with publishers.

And now, back to the hard part, writing the next one. This time I'll write characters who speak correct English. It's August, and too hot to fight.

Watch That Basket

Somebody—either Mark Twain or Andrew Carnegie, the jury’s still out—once gave this questionable financial advice: “Put all your eggs in one basket—and watch that basket.” I doubt if Enron’s employees and investors would appreciate those words of wisdom. Especially if not only the basket, but the whole henhouse happens to tip over. What are you supposed to do then?

What brings on my latest bout of pessimism is the news that Samhain Publishing, one of the first and biggest e-publishers of romance, announced over the weekend it’s throwing in the towel. Reasons are varied, but the bottom line appears to be that old standby, low sales.

When Samhain started, there wasn’t much competition out there. Epublishing was a whole new animal. Ellora’s Cave came up from nothing and cornered the erotica market. Samhain and a whole slew of romance e-publishers soon followed. For the longest time Ellora’s Cave and Samhain were considered the Holy Grail by us striving writers. Get a book accepted by one or the other and you knew you’d finally arrived.

What we didn’t know back then—how could we?—was that the road we were on was destined for a dead end. Without going into the sordid details (readily available through a simple Google search), Ellora’s Cave hit a financial speed bump that included massive layoffs and a growing number of writers claiming they haven’t been paid. They’re still in business, more or less, but appear to be circling the drain. Now Samhain says they’re closing shop. And these two were at the top of the mountain. What does that say for the scads of smaller e-pubbing outfits out there? And what does it mean for us nervous writers who hope to publish with them?

I myself never published any books with either EC or Samhain, but it wasn’t for lack of trying. In fact, my career in romance started when I wrote a story for an open call at Samhain. They rejected it, I sent it elsewhere, it got accepted, and suddenly I was a romance writer. The following year I wrote an M/M story for another Samhain anthology, and again I was rejected. I sent it to the other publisher, they took it, and suddenly I was an M/M writer. So Samhain’s responsible for my success, even though it wasn’t with Samhain. I might have sent them other things, but I sent them to my regular publisher first—loyalty, y’know—and they got accepted there. Samhain started a horror line about a year or so ago, but I never got around to writing for that. Too late now.

A few months back, around October-November, I applied to Samhain for work as a freelance line editor/proofreader. I took the test and waited. And waited. After six weeks and a nudge letter, I was told thanks but no thanks. Fair enough. Then within a month Samhain announced they were firing the editor of their horror line and closing to new submissions of all types while they “regrouped.” When I read the bit about how they planned to cut personnel through attrition I realized why I hadn’t gotten hired. My timing has always been lousy.

And now this. My timing’s not only lousy, it’s fatal. (I killed both TSR/Dungeons and Dragons and a local adult bookstore. Ask me for details sometime.)

What brought about Samhain’s demise? A lot of people seem to want to blame Amazon, the way retailers want to blame WalMart, but I’m with the group that blames the rise of self-publishing. There’s a glut on the ebook market right now, primarily in romance and all its subgenres. Anybody with a computer, ten fingers to type and format, and enough bucks to buy a cover from someone on Fiverr (or download a free stock photo and do it themselves) can now write and publish a book. It may not be good, but it’s there. E-books from publishers can run from $3 to $5 and up. Rhonda Writer from Great Egg Harbor, New Jersey can hit Send and have her magnum opus up on Smashwords or Amazon overnight and charge 99 cents for it. You’re a romance reader on a budget, looking for a cheap fix. Which book are you going to buy?

Like I said, I don’t have any books with Ellora’s Cave or Samhain. I wish the best of luck to the writers who do. They’re going to have to get their rights back now, so they can rework and try to re-sell their books, or else go into self-publishing themselves. Even more competition for dwindling bucks from a dwindling number of readers.

As for me, I’ve got my eggs in two baskets right now, with two different romance e-publishers, and I’m anxiously watching those baskets. I may have to ask my hens to start laying eggs in other genres, like science fiction (my old standby) or young adult. Maybe even horror. Or mystery. Hard-boiled eggs, anyone?

I knew I should have taken art in college. I could have had a career as an illustrator and written books on the side. I could be on Fiverr right now, making up covers for all the self-publishers. What’s in your basket, folks?

The Year in Review

But first, my final words on Obamacare. I did find a cheap plan and signed up for it ... until I discovered none of the major hospitals or doctors in my area accept it. No wonder it was so cheap. I ended up with a slightly better plan that's costing me over $100 a month with the same deductible as the crap plan (about $6500) and no co-pay, but if I get sick a doctor will see me and a hospital will take me in. If I'd been willing, and able, to pay $200 or more a month, then I could have gotten co-pay and a lower deductible. My last plan had all that, but it was discontinued.

I didn't use my insurance last year. Didn't go to a doctor. I may not need it next year, but that's the problem. You never know. It still would have been cheaper to not have insurance at all and pay the fee at tax time -- which, by the by, has doubled again. Even my insurance agent doesn't like this deal. She called it: it's not affordable health care, it's available health care. It's only affordable for a lot of us because our fellow taxpayers are footing the bill.

I'm going to say it again. This was not health care reform. This was a tax, under another name. This was a scam. I'd love to know whose pockets got lined at our expense. I suspect we'll all find out later in 2016 -- specifically, right after the election. I also suspect there will be major changes to the law right after the new President's announced. That's my prediction for next year.

One other prediction: somebody famous will die. See how easy it is to foretell the future?

# # #

As far as the rest of 2015 went for me ... well, it had its ups and downs. The car held up for another year. So did my aging body.  I still had to vacuum the house and mow the lawn. My first venture into self-publishing didn't go so well. On the other hand, I published under a pseudonym and that story did okay. I'm now convinced I can achieve success in publishing, but it won't be under my real name. Hey, that's okay. I'm fine with that. As long as the right name's on the check, I'm a happy camper.

Almost forgot -- I sort of got a job. It's freelance but it's steady, or at least it was until this month. I'm hoping things pick up again in January. Five hundred a month (on average) may not sound like much, but it covers a bunch of expenses. If I could get a second gig like this, I'd be fine. Or two or three, now that I need to pay for "affordable" health insurance.

I'd like to extend my sympathies to Serena for her plight. She sold a story to Ellora's Cave right before all the excrement hit the AC. I know how that is. My work history is strewn with incidents of me getting hired by companies that went belly-up soon afterwards. Most recent example: I applied to Samhain Publishing for freelance work as a proofreader/line editor. They turned me down. That was last month. I just recently learned Samhain has closed to submissions from all but their current authors and is "regrouping." They also fired the editor of their relatively-new horror line. Sounds like a restructuring's going on. No layoffs, but people who leave won't be replaced. Looks like my timing was off in that job application. The doomsday clock's still running on my current freelance job. I'll keep you posted.

So that was my year. Pretty much more of the same, only more expensive. I wish I could blame somebody. Okay, sure, I can blame the current administration for having to buy health insurance. Though if I have a heart attack tomorrow, bet I won't be bitching while I'm dialing 911. The rest of it's on me. You have to actually do something in order for good things to happen. I applied for the freelance job and I got it, and now I can buy gas and groceries. See? It does work out.

Don't worry about bad stuff. You don't have to do anything there. Bad stuff happens all by itself. If more good than bad happens to you in a year's time, consider yourself ahead of the game.

I'm not sure yet if I'm going to make resolutions. Those usually last about 48 hours after the clock strikes midnight. Let's see how I feel next week, with a whole new, fresh year looming ahead. And higher insurance bills. Prediction: I see job hunting in my future. Happy New Year, y'all!