Category Archives: Fifty Thousand Screaming People

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Headshots

Progress on Headshots

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Last week I was in Nashville for most of the week, attending the IECA annual conference and presenting a paper there, “Who Pays the Fine?” It was a great trip, and I’m writing a detailed trip diary about it. It’s not something that I’ll publish, though possibly I might take some of it for a blog post. It’s just something I want to do, something I have to get out of my system before returning to work on Headshots.

And, that’s the subject of this blog post. I last worked on Headshots on February 23. I left for the trip on February 25 and came back just before midnight on the 28th. March 1 was moving day for my mother-in-law, with tiredness overcoming me and having no mind or energy to write, little enough to read.

Today is the day I planned to have a blog post here, but my blog post planning record is at work, and I’m at home on a snow day. Having shoveled the drive this morning, I came down here, uncertain of what to write. I just finished a travel log of my trip to Nashville, running on to seven typed pages. Next is this post, which I have decided will be on Headshots.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m slogging through the sagging middle. The idea came to me to make this mostly about baseball, since I had very little baseball action in the early chapters. The timeframe has moved into during the season, so I’ve written about Ronny’s comeback attempt. This has taken me through Chapter 18, and 56,222 words. Since I’m heading for around 80,000, and I think the ending action will take close to 20,000 words, that means I’m almost through the sagging middle.

But, I have other things to add to it. I have to add that Sarah gets kind of stir-crazy, hiding out at the farm, not being able to go anywhere without Federal protective agents going with her. I need for her to do something stupid to make her situation worse. I also haven’t touched on any Mafia/gang actions for a while. I can’t forget them in the midst of the baseball action. Some ideas have come to me for both of these problems. One is to give back story on the four main mobsters: Mancini, Russo, Cerelli, and Washburn. In both books I’ve said very little about what motivates them. Washburn and Mancini got a paragraph each in FTSP, and I think I gave some of Mancini’s back story earlier in this book.

Once I add those things in to the sagging middle, I suspect I’ll be somewhere around 65,000 words. So either the book will be a little longer than I thought, or perhaps the end game will be shorter. Either way, I’ll try to get back to this in a few days, or perhaps next weekend.

The end is in sight.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, self-publishing, Writing

A Little Publicity

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October has been somewhat of a disaster as far as writing is concerned. The only original writing I’ve done is:

  • Write about 200 words in the next Danny Tompkins story, while waiting for meetings to start. I haven’t typed them yet.
  • Write 1,400 words yesterday in a scene for Headshots, the sequel to In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I typed those during breaks at work and e-mailed them to my personal e-mail address. Then last night I merged them into the Headshots document and updated my diary. The problem is it’s been so long since I looked at this book in progress that I don’t know if this scene is the next one in sequence or not.

As far as other writing/publishing tasks, I’ve managed to get a few done.

  • Have reformatted Doctor Luke’s Assistant with a smaller font, which will allow me to republish it as a slightly less expensive book. I will have at least one sale of this cheaper book, to a man at work. The cover designer redid the cover, so that’s ready to go. I was working on this Tuesday when I discovered a potential glitch concerning the ISBN number. Since then I’ve found out that I’m probably worrying about nothing, and hopefully tonight I’ll complete the publishing tasks on this.
  • A man read a book review I made at Amazon, which led him to my blog and my books. We interacted by e-mail, and he bought a copy of Documenting America. He also wanted a copy of the instructor’s notes, which I gave him. Hopefully he’s a new reader and, dare I say, fan.
  • Somehow (don’t remember exactly) I found a sports book blogger, contacted him, and he agreed to read and review In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. That is complete. He posted the review on Goodreads, Smashwords, Amazon, as well as on his blog. In addition, he’s going to interview me this weekend, which I presume will go up on his blog. I’ll link to it once it’s up.

My October sales stand at 5 so far, with 13 hours to go, Amazon time. Two of those sales came from my direct contacts; the other three are unknowns, though could be from earlier marketing efforts. I’ll report final sales numbers soon. That’s an increase from September, and any increase is gratifying even when the result isn’t bestseller status.

One other thing I did was speak to three different people about my books at an American Society of Civil Engineers state convention in Little Rock two weeks ago. I don’t believe any sales have come of that so far, but I have good hopes for at least one in the future.

All this tells me my writing “career” is still in early infancy. Sales are still one at a time. I need to finish more projects and publish them. I need to find a way to work writing into a work and home schedule have has become more busy of late.

All this I will do. As Emerson said, “There is time enough for all that I must do.”

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Doctor Luke's Assistant, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Headshots, self-publishing, Short Stories, Writing

Writing Time Hard to Come By

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As you might be able to tell, based on the fact that it’s been 20 days since my last post, I haven’t done all that much writing in October. The reasons are many, and some of them I don’t want to get into publicly.

But I haven’t stopped writing, and I haven’t abandoned this blog or my other blog, An Arrow Through The Air. I have been in a very busy time at work. It began back in June and hasn’t stopped. Training events have come one after the other. I was event planner for two multi-day events. I went to a training convention in St. Louis in September. Just last week I went to a state engineering society convention in Little Rock where I taught a class and sat in on many others. Today I teach a noon hour class, and that’s the end of the special events. From then on it’s business as usual.

Things at home have required my attention as well. Some of those are completed, some on-going. It shouldn’t be too long, however, till I can get back to having an hour or two in the evenings to write.

Meanwhile, with serious writing out of the question, I’ve been editing. Yesterday I updated the “Works In Progress” section of this web site, and mentioned that I’m slowly working on aggregating Thomas Carlyle’s encyclopedia articles into a book with the intent of publishing this public domain material. That’s an easy thing to do. All the articles are now in one Word file. I’m down to 63 pages left to proofread, to get rid of the optical scanning errors.

I’m not in any hurry with the Carlyle book. I wouldn’t even be working on it except it’s easy to proofread a page in odd moments between major tasks, or while waiting on the doctor or a meeting, or in that half hour before going to bed when you don’t really want to start something new. So this is progressing slowly. I don’t anticipate completing and publishing that until sometime in 2014, perhaps February or March.

In other odd moments I began work on a new short story in the Danny Tompkins/teenage grief series. I really hadn’t planned on any more stories in this series after finishing “Kicking Stones”. However, a couple of reviewers indicated they would like more. That set my mind to thinking about what else I could write that would follow from the three already written and published. Some things came to mind. While waiting for the doctor a couple of weeks ago I began writing it in manuscript. I have the story in mind, but not all the details or the length.

Headshots, my sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, has languished in the last month. I’ve been pulling chapters out of it and submitting them to the writers critique group. I’ll receive critiques tonight on the third chapter, and from one person who forgot to bring the second chapter with them to the last meeting. I’m very close to restarting work on Headshots.

I probably should have on Sunday last, but instead decided to work on reformatting the print version of Doctor Luke’s Assistant with a smaller font so that I can reduce the size of the book and hence the price. However, I had lots of problems with the headers and with the section breaks. I spent two hours on it. With 37 chapters there’s a lot of running heads to get correct, and MS Word decided it didn’t want them correct.

I started from the back, then from the front. I’d fix one header and chapter pagination and another one decided not to work. It was maddening, and by the end of that time, though I wasn’t finished, I had made progress. I suspect I’ll be ready by next weekend with all things corrected and will be able to give the cover designer the new thickness. She can turn a book cover around quickly, and by this time next week I should be ready to submit to CreateSpace and send off for a proof copy. I have at least one buyer for this.

So I’m completing some writing and publishing work. Thanksgiving is coming, when the family will gather in to our place for a joyous time. We have much preparation to do for it. Writing will suffer, but it will continue.

 

 

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Headshots, Operation Lotus Sunday, Sharon Williams short stories

What to write next?

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Readers of this blog will perhaps remember a time last year when I mused about what I was going to write next. You can see the first of those posts here. I had several follow-up posts over the next weeks.

Well, I’m about there now. Operation Lotus Sunday (previously titled China Tour) is very close to completion. Last night I began what I hope is and expect to be a final read-through. In 30 some-odd pages I found only two minor things to change, which is a good sign that this truly will be the last read. Of course, once the text is complete I’ll be at the work of formatting it for two different e-book sites, and also for a print book. I’m still working with the cover designer, who gave me the first draft but who also had a couple of physical setbacks in the last few days. And, once the book actually launches, I’ll have some promotional activities to do.

But, believing that the best marketing for your published books is to write and publish more books, it’s time for me to plan what will be next. I’m actually pretty sure what the next novel will be: Headshots, the sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. Last October, when I wrote the first chapters of four different books to gauge my interest and energy level, this was definitely in second place. I will be writing some outlines for this soon.

But I’m thinking I may write a couple of short stories first. I have always planned to write a third story in my teenage grief series that began with “Mom’s Letter” and continued with “Too Old To Play“. Once again it will be based on my own experience with that, and will include teenage memories relived in adult years and a poem. I’m thinking this will be next, and it will be titled “Kicking Stones”. The story line has been running through my head for a while. I’m also thinking of another short story in the Sharon Williams series, taking “Whiskey, Zebra, Tango” and turning it into an unconventional CIA agent series. This one will be harder, as a story line is only now coming to me, and I don’t know for sure that I can pull it off. It seems like I have a good character and a good basis for writing a series of stories, but great inspiration hasn’t come yet.

I should probably work on a book to follow-up on Documenting America, on the Civil War, while we are in the Civil War sesquicentennial years. But when I wrote first chapters last October I found this one the most difficult. So maybe that’s to happen in the future, but I think not now.

So, will I soon dive in to Headshots, or are a couple of short stories coming? Stay tuned.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Operation Lotus Sunday, Writing

Next “Writing” Steps

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China Tour is done. As I posted on my Facebook author page, I finished the first draft of the novel on Sunday March 17. The word count is 71,571.

Now I’m letting it sit for a while. Not too long, however. I think about a week. I’m anxious to edit it and publish it. It’s also possible a plot hole or two may need to be filled. Early in the book I may allude to something later in the book, only to find as I wrote that I never added the thing I intended. Those all have to be fixed. My past experience is that the first round of edits will result in more words, as I think of things I need to clarify, or more references to put in, especially in a book in a foreign culture as this is. I suspect I’ll add close to 1,000 words in this edit.

The second round of edits will be for the purpose of trying to reduce the word count. A first draft will almost always be wordy. Too many modifiers, too much passive voice, too many times of not thinking whether a certain word is needed. I don’t know where this will end up. It’s possible I’ll find whole sentences to come out or paragraphs to drastically trim. Those 1,000 words from the first edit may be offset and more in the second edit.

Edits after that will consist more of proof-reading, and incorporating things that beta readers might find. Not that my past experience with beta readers pointing out minor glitches is all that good. Normally I receive, if I’m lucky, general feedback about publishability, though on well over half of the books I’ve given out to beta readers I heard nothing from them at all, not even if they read the book.

So for a week, or two at the most, I’m not writing new material or even editing. I’m going to use this time to do the following.

  • Prepare Doctor Luke’s Assistant and In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People for issue as print books. I finished most of DLA last night, and should finish it tonight.
  • Complete, or at least get well along, on my 2012 income taxes. I’ve made a start, though there’s much more to go.
  • Decide on whether to enter two or three poems in a poetry contest. At $5 per entry it’s probably throwing money away, but….
  • Write a query letter for a magazine article idea I have and sent it to a major Christian magazine.
  • Write and mail a genealogy letter to a cousin. I’ve been putting this off due to busyness.
  • Keep up with blogging.
  • File a bunch of stuff.
  • Work with the cover designer for China Tour.

So the time will be full, just not on new writing.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Operation Lotus Sunday

The Genesis of “China Tour”

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I now have about eight posts on this blog in which I’ve mentioned my novel-in-progress, China Tour. I see, however, that I haven’t really said much about how it is I came to write this, when I first thought of it, what I’ve done about that over the years. On the odd chance that this becomes a bestseller, and hoards of fans of it want to know why I wrote it, I’ll go into that here. I don’t know if I’ll fit it all in one post or not.

In January 2003 I finished the first draft of my first novel, Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I wrote that in a creative slow rush, over two or three years. At the time I had no intentions of becoming a writer. The only other creative writing I was doing was some poetry. DLA was simply a story I wanted to tell.

Knowing nothing about how to be published, or how to write a novel, I set the book aside and began studying the market. Some people would say that was backwards. You should first learn how to write a novel, and study the market extensively, before actually writing the novel. Perhaps so, but in my creative rush I did it the other way. As I would learn later, letting a book sit for a time after completing the first draft and getting into the editing is a good thing. Who knew? I just did it.

Since I attend professional and technical conferences for my engineering profession, I figured I’d have to do the same. So I signed up for a regional writers conference in Oklahoma City, and meanwhile began using the internet to study novel writing and the market. By March 2003, at that conference, I still didn’t know much. I learned a lot at the conference. One of the best parts was a one-on-one appointment with Rene Gutteridge. She told me how my dialog was not what was needed, and in those short fifteen minutes gave me some good pointers. These were reinforced in a class I attended the second day of the conference.

From that I began the long editing process of my long novel, while at the same time beginning the querying process to editors. By the end of 2003 I had made three passes through DLA, and had received some rejections. I learned of a national Christian writing conference in Wheaton, Illinois in May, and signed up to attend. Our son living in nearby Chicago made selecting that conference a no brainer.

The biggest piece of eye-opening information I learned at WTP was that publishers don’t want to publish the book of a writer who has a story to tell. They want to publish the book of a writer who wants to have a writing career. Not one book, but many. Not a book and a sequel. Not a trilogy. No, someone who has the chance to have success with the book under consideration and then be able to produce more better books. [Ah, it does my writing heart good to write that in a grammatically and contextually correct way.]

This was a shocker. I think it was on the first day of the conference I heard that. No one would want to publish DLA unless I had other books coming, but I didn’t have other books coming. I just wanted to get DLA published. But I couldn’t under those circumstances. Self-publish it? No, too much negative stigma attached to self-publishing. I was stuck in author no-man’s-land, unless I could think of other books.

So for the rest of the conference, I sat in classes, workshops and sessions, thinking about what other books I could write. Poetry wasn’t an option, though even then I was thinking about something that eventually would become a book. Two novels came to mind. One came immediately: a baseball novel that eventually became In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People“. The other came to me more slowly, over the three days of the conference. That one is what I’m now writing.

So it took from May 2004 to October 2012 for the idea to actually become words on paper. If it was that long, I sure you all won’t mind waiting another day for a second post for me to tell more of the circumstances of the genesis of that idea.

Stay tuned.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Self-Publishing Surprises

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I’m currently in my 22nd month as a self-publisher. When you figure I was working on it a month before actually publishing something, that makes 23 months. I must say that a number of things have surprised me.

  • How uncomfortable I feel about marketing. I just don’t like it. It pains me to make posts to Facebook saying, “I have a new book for you all to buy.” Or the equivalent post for some FB writers groups I joined. I just don’t want to be a shill for my own books. This may spell doom for me as far as becoming a well-sold and well-read writer.
  • How difficult the technology is, or at least how steep the learning curve is each time something is needed. I’m not stupid about these things, and can probably figure a lot of them out for myself, but the time sink to do so is enormous.
  • How my books just don’t sell without marketing. Dean Wesley Smith and others say you should just keep writing and publishing. I thought he used to say get 10-12 books/titles available before you do any marketing. Now I notice he’s saying 20-25 books. I’m sitting there with 9, so either way I have more work to do. That’s if DWS is right. What if he’s wrong, and I should be spending more time marketing rather than writing. Oh, refer to a previous bullet point.
  • The total lack of response to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I have three sales total. Three, in the four months it’s been out. I made quite a few posts about it, on this blog, my other blog, FB, and in FB writers groups. And nothing. I don’t really see how I can write a much better book than this one. Surely there are people out there who like baseball books. I guess I just don’t know any of them.

I could probably list a few more surprises, but will end it here. Oh, just one more: how there was no elation resulting from holding a printed book with my name on it in my hands. None. It was more of a so-what feeling.

Yeah, I’ll stop there. Maybe all of this will turn around at some point. Maybe I’ll learn to be a shameless self-promoter. Maybe I’ll find an audience. Maybe I’ll learn to write books that people want. Maybe I’ll return to content farm writing. The future is wide open.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Headshots, Operation Lotus Sunday, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

Looks like it’s probably “China Tour”

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I don’t recommend anyone go about their book writing they way I have for the last twelve days. As I reported in a previous post, because I felt no sense of direction of where to go next with my writing. I could write any one of three novels or one non-fiction book. So I decided to write the first chapter in each and see how the work flowed, how it felt to me during the writing, and choose based on the experience.

First up was Headshots, the sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I labored over a Friday-Sunday period, barely getting about 1950 words and the chapter done. I found that picking up the threads of all the people who were involved in the end of FTSP was tedious. In fact, after finishing the chapter I realized I didn’t have all the threads covered: missed one I need to add in.

Next was Preserve The Revelation, the sequel to Doctor Luke’s Assistant. This went better. I did a little work on Augustus ben Adam’s family tree and children before I started the writing, to make sure he could have two sons of the ages I wanted at the time I wanted them. It all worked fine. Then I wrote the chapter in two evenings. Though I had thought much about it over a few years, it still took me in a different direction as I wrote it. The needed scenes for the second chapter ran through my head as I concluded the first, which is a good thing.

Next was China Tour, a sequel to nothing. In fact, it will be a stand-alone novel. This has run through my mind many, many times over the years. I found our trip diary from 1983, read through some of it (the Hong Kong days), and jumped in to the writing. In two evenings I had my 1,500 word first chapter. It went fairly easy; but then I’ve run that chapter over in my mind many times, and had recently explained the book in detail to a colleague.

Then, to this mix I added another volume of Documenting America. This would be a Civil War edition, in recognition that we are now 150 years away from that event, with somewhat heightened interest in the reading public. Unfortunately, I found this heavy going. I enjoyed the research, but the writing went much, much harder than I wanted. This would be the shortest of the four books, and I would certainly enjoy the research, but I think the writing would be most labored.

Based on ease of writing and flow of words, it looks as if China Tour should get the nod to be my next book. Given that, last night I decided to give the second chapter a try, and in two hours knocked out the entire chapter, about 1,050 words. The problem is, this book makes no sense to be the next one. It’s not a sequel to anything, nor is it in a series or will it ever have a sequel. It might not be all that long (I’m thinking 70,000-75,000 words), though for all I know it could run longer.

One of the sequels makes more sense. Those 92 people who bought Doctor Luke’s Assistant, or the 5,000 people who downloaded it for free, might just come looking for something similar. Headshots makes more sense because I most recently wrote FTSP, so the characters are all known commodities and fresh in my mind. I’ve thought though what will happen in considerable detail. The problem? With 3 total sales of FTSP, it’s not like the public is clamoring for this book.

I haven’t committed yet, but it is probable that China Tour will be next. I know at least one of my reader/writer friends who will be happy.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Operation Lotus Sunday, Writing

Waiting on Direction for Next Book

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I’m between books, as I said before. I have three or four ways to go. I could write the sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I could write the next church history book as a follow-up to Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I could move on to my my novel on China, tentatively titled China Tour. Another direction to move in is more articles for Decoded Science. And, I’m not limited to fiction. I have ideas for the next volume of Documenting America. What to do?

On her blog, author and social media expert Kristen Lamb is doing a series on novel writing. In a post this week she talked about “log lines,” by which she means a one sentence summary of the novel. She gave some ideas of the pieces that should be in the log line, what makes it good or not so good.

This got me to thinking, maybe writing log lines for all my fiction could help me sense some direction on what to do next. Here’s what I came up with.

Already published:
The Mafia tries to prevent a phenom pitcher fresh off the Kansas prairies from leading the Cubs to a World Series victory.
In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People

A normal housewife suspected of being a rogue CIA agent who helps a terrorist escape.
“Whiskey, Zebra, Tango”

Luke must overcome opposition of the Jews and Romans, and the errors of a bumbling assistant, to write a massive biography of Jesus.
Doctor Luke’s Assistant

Possible new fiction:
Ronny Thompson juggles rehabilitation from injury, pitching for the Cubs, helping his farm family, and protecting his love from two rival Mafia Families who want her dead.
Headshots, sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People

An American tourist family becomes embroiled in a CIA extraction operation in 1980s China.
China Tour

Augustus of Caesarea and his son must see the original manuscript of the Revelation safely back to Israel.
Preserve The Revelation, sequel to Doctor Luke’s Assistant

Any thoughts?

Fifty Thousand Screaming People

In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People

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It took a lot longer than I expected, but perhaps it’s a better book for the delay. Last October I finished In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, and set it aside for what I thought would be a month, maybe two, before coming back to edit it.

I came back after the couple of months, then pulled off it to put finish touches on and publish Doctor Luke’s Assistant, which I did in March this year. During this time I was also working on The Candy Store Generation, and decided I really needed to get that finished. So I did, and it’s published. Finally I got back to FTSP, and had it edited and done around the first of June. Then a reader said he found a few errors in DLA, so I shifted to that, and with my wife’s help polished it and re-published it. That took up till early July.

I went back to FTSP, re-read it twice, with a round of relatively minor edits each time. One thing I added was some more motivation for the protagonist’s father. And I tweaked the final chapter umpteen times. Finally I considered it done, waiting only on the cover. My wife read it and came up with another fifteen or so typos and as many suggestions for something that wasn’t clear to her. I made those tweaks.

And, I had a cover. My son did it as a first draft. It didn’t quite convey the essence of the book, but it’s quite good. He’s a young professional, with a stressful job and an ancient house and an active social life, all of which keep him busy. So I told him not to worry about tweaking the cover, that when I had enough e-sales to pay for a cover designer I’d get the final cover made, both for the e-book and print book.

So the novel is available on Kindle and Smashwords, and is in the queue for addition to the Smashwords premium catalog.

We’ll see how it goes.