Category Archives: Fifty Thousand Screaming People

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, self-publishing

End of the Legacy Deal Dream?

4 Comments

As I alluded in my last post, I don’t have any submittals out with a traditional publisher right now, nor with any agent. I say that based on information given on an agent’s website.

Back in January I submitted In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People to a literary agent. I had pretty much decided this would be may last attempt at a legacy deal for this work, and probably for any work. I never met this agent, but we’ve interacted some on-line via blogs and e-mails. Based on these contacts and on her statement of what she represents, I felt that she would be the best agent for this work and for my career in general.

Alas, more than sixty days have passed since I submitted my query letter, and I have not received a response. The agent’s website says that no answer within sixty days means “we aren’t interested”. So it appears she isn’t interested. Maybe my query was poorly written. Maybe her representation needs aren’t what I thought they were. Maybe she has a similar book and author she’s already representing. No problem; a tacit no is a no.

I’m not going to send her an e-mail and withdraw my submittal. If I receive an e-mail in a few days saying she’s interested, I won’t stand on a sixty day statement. But I know that’s highly unlikely.

So I’ve made up my mind: I’m not going to submit it again. I’ve submitted it to one editor and five agents, each saying no. The traditional publishing route says I’ve only just started. I should gather a basket full of rejections, continuing to seek an acceptance. After all, many best sellers have had fifty or more rejections (e.g. Harry Potter, the Chicken Soup series). I’ve only just started. Persevere! Don’t give up so quickly.

I’m not giving up. I’ve just decided to seek a different path to success. The traditional path is broken for most writers. Success that way is still possible, but highly improbable. Recent (last two years) events have shown that alternate paths are available. E-books are quickly overwhelming print books, Internet purchasing grows while brick & mortar store sales stagnate. The ease of self-publishing, both e- and print, causes a writer to more carefully consider all options.

I’m rambling. I’ve said all this before, as have many proponents of self-publishing, and you all are tired of it. I hope to have Fifty Thousand Screaming People self-published by May.

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

And So We Watch, Again: “Too Old To Play”

Leave a comment
The second in the series.

Yesterday evening I finally pulled all the elements together to make “Too Old To Play” live at the Kindle store. After I did so, I realized I forgot to put the word count in the description. I like to do that so a potential buyer knows how many words they get for their money, and so there’s no charges of it being a really, really short story for the money. I’ll correct the description tonight. The Kindle instructions say it takes 12 hours for something to go live after submission. That’s down from the 48 hours it used to say. Sure enough, when I looked it up at 7 AM this morning, it was already live, about 11 hours after uploading.

Today I put a notice on my Facebook author page, as well as on my personal Facebook page. I added a promotional post to An Arrow Through the Air. I modified my books available page on this site to list it. With this post I will have completed my internal promotion—that is, those things I can do without going to an outside site. I also added it to my Kindle/Amazon author’s page and to my Author Central page, but have not yet added it to Goodreads. Maybe tonight. I also made announcements at the Ozark Writer’s League and the Christian Authors’ Book Marketing Strategies pages on Facebook. Beyond that, I’m not sure I’ll do a lot for this. In a day or two I’ll mention something that I did a month ago that will give it some publicity.

So now I watch. As of two hours ago I had one sale. Let me check now…still one. I just talked with someone about it at work, and she says she’ll buy it when she gets home and has her Kindle in hands. I’ve had a total of 12 sales of “Mom’s Letter” in the eleven months it’s been out. The “theory of multiple titles” says that the two short stories will feed sales to each other, and that together each one will have better sales than they would have apart. We’ll see if that proves true. Nothing to do but wait and watch, and try not to check the sales board every hour.

Soon, perhaps even tonight, I’ll format it for Smashwords and upload it there. Since it’s a short story that shouldn’t take too much time, and it will then be available in all major e-reader formats. So I do have that small amount of work to do before I will just be waiting and watching.

I’ll still in the waiting period for my query to an agent for In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. On the agency website it says if we don’t contact you within 30 days assume it’s a No, but the individual agent’s web site says to assume that after 60 days. Today is day 16, so there’s still quite a lot of waiting to do on that. Meanwhile, the first round of edits is complete, the mss re-printed, and waiting for one more read-through and perhaps a few more edits.

So I’m waiting and watching on two fronts. That doesn’t mean I’m idle though. My next work, The Candy Store Generation, beckons me. I did an hour of research last night, and hope to do two hours of writing tonight. I hope to present it at the next writers group meeting, which will  be either Jan 30 or Feb 6. I would love to have this done in three months, though I may be over-stating my writing capacity. We’ll see.

Church History Novels, Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Doctor Luke's Assistant, fiction, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Short Stories, Writing

2012 Writing Plan: Fiction

3 Comments

Now, on Jan 4, 2012, looking ahead to what I plan to accomplish this year with my fiction, here’s what the year will look like.

  1. Publish my second short story, titled “Too Old To Play”. The story is written. I’ve  edited it for typos, plot, language usage, etc. It’s ready to publish, in my view. I e-mailed it to my critique group mailing list and to another trusted reviewer, so far with no response. I’m not really worried about  receiving critiques. If I get some, I’ll see what I need to do. If I don’t get any, I’ll publish as is. My schedule is to eSP this in January. Since it’s a sequel to my previously published short story, “Mom’s Letter”, I hope they will feed sales to each other. I’ve already “commissioned” creation of the cover.
  2. Publish my novel Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I finished what I consider the last round of edits a month or so ago. Publishers have told me it’s a good idea, but they won’t publish such a long work in a difficult genre from an unknown author. I figure it won’t have great sales, but what’s the downside in self-publishing it? Only the cost of a cover (already commissioned). If it doesn’t sell much, then the editors will be proved right in their judgment of it. If I make anything on it, that’s more than my prospects through commercial publishers. Right now I’m planning for an e-book. It’s so long I’m afraid a POD print book will be too expensive. I’m targeting this for February, which is very do-able
  3. Publish my novel In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. The book is written, and partially edited. I sent it out to about twelve beta readers in October, and have heard back from three. The copy they read had many typos, as I had not proof-read it. I have a few plot issues to address, and must make a judgment on the amount of dialog vs. narrative. I think I can have all this done by the end of February, making production of an e-book in March fairly firm.
  4. Publish another short story in the Danny Tompkins series. I hadn’t thought of adding another story to this series until recently. Heck, the second one didn’t even come to me until three months ago. I haven’t seen myself as a short story writer. So I’m still testing the waters. A plot for another one (actually two) has run through my mind, so I might as well schedule it to be written and published. I’m guessing this will be somewhere around June, but I’m still in the early stages of this.
  5. Begin work on my third novel. I could go several ways with this. I could work on a sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I hadn’t planned on that, but my friend Gary pointed out to me how the things I left hanging at the end of the book could segue very well into a sequel. I’m thinking my espionage book, China Tour, is most likely to be next, since it has had the longest gestation period. But a series of cozy mysteries has been brewing, and the first of those might be next. Given the uncertainty of what I’ll be working on, I’d say completion of the next novel in 2012 is unlikely, and I’m not putting completion in my plan.

So, there are my fiction writing plans for 2012. In a vacuum (i.e. with no non-fiction), it would be an easy schedule. Covers may be the hold up for maintaining my publication schedule.

Church History Novels, Doctor Luke's Assistant, fiction, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

2011 Writing in Review: Fiction

Leave a comment

In 2011 I spent a lot of time on my fiction. At the beginning of the year I polished and published a short story, “Mom’s Letter”. I wrote this somewhere around 2005-06, first for a contest and then expanded and reworked. I published that at Kindle in February, at Smashwords in July. Sales are brisk, with a total of 9 copies sold (No; that’s not a typo).

When I attended the Write-to-Publish Conference in June, I pitched my second novel, In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People, and an agent was interested. I hadn’t looked at it for a couple of years, and was surprised to see, when I prepared to submit the partial manuscript after the conference, that I had less than 15,000 words written. I thought I was over 20,000.

So I got busy. From mid-July to early October I completed the novel, ending at about 87,000 words. I sent it out to beta readers in October, and have received a trickle of comments back.

At that point in time, after a brief break, I read my first novel, Doctor Luke’s Assistant, which as been “in the drawer” for about three years, looking for “about 60 typos” a beta reader said I had but didn’t identify, and fixing a few minor plot problems or references. My goal is to e-self-publish it around February 2012. I made the typos and think it’s ready to go, cover permitting.

I then decided to work on another short story, to help me get another book on my self-publishing bookshelf. So I dashed off a sequel to “Mom’s Letter”, titled “Too Old To Play”. I’ve distributed that by e-mail to my critique group, but so far have had no responses. In my mind it’s ready to upload to Kindle, though I’m open to edits.

Beyond this, I dreamed a lot. I know which novel I’ll work on after that. I have at three series identified and at least five novels in each (by title). I have only outlined, at least in part, one. So this is work for the rest of my life.

 

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, miscellaneous, Writing

Writing and Christmas

Leave a comment

My writing work continues, though slower than I’d like it to. Last night was a good example. This was my last night before having to devote all my efforts to the Christmas trip we will take. Yet, preparations for that trip were already necessary: making three batches of Chex Mix. This is a task that has lots of down time. Mix the mix, put it in the over, stir it every fifteen minutes, done after an hour. In an hour and ten minutes you have about 55 minutes to do other things. So in three and a half hours that would be 2 hours 45 minutes of “other things” time.

What other things could I do for writing? My novel In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People is begging me to edit it. I’m hoping to e-self-publish it in March, cover permitting. The two items I’m eSP-ing before that are ready to go, waiting only on covers. So I can spend time on FTSP, and have let it sit enough time since writing it to have some fresh eyes on it. This seemed as if it would be the best thing.

I could also have taken a little time to make some minor edits to this website. Several things are needed, some of which I can do myself, some of which I’ll need help with. The things I can do myself I should get going on.

I also have a few publicity/promotion things to do for Documenting America. I’ve let those go this month, doing a little research into places where I want to promote it, but not near enough to decide what to do. I could do that in 15 minute chunks.

But what I decided to do instead was something I wanted to do for some time: try to figure out these indecipherable explanation of benefits forms from Blue Cross/Blue Shield. From the couple of procedures I had from the ehrlichiosis and the rheumatoid outbreak that followed, I have a bunch of medical bills. It seemed like way too many. But I was dreading doing it.

But I used those fifteen minute chunks to do that. I gathered all my EOB statements (well, I might be missing one or two from early in the year) and put them in order. I found the group health insurance policy and any amendments that have been issued since the policy was. I began going through the two. The policy was, as expected, more indecipherable than the EOBs. I think, however, I finally figured out the EOBs, and understand what the policy covers, where the deductibles apply, etc. Looks like I have a bunch of money to pay out.

Over the Christmas holiday we will be with our son in Chicago. He’s going to help me with website corrections, and hopefully we’ll have some time to discuss covers and even for him to do some work on them. Hopefully I’ll have a few hours to edit FTSP. And to read for enjoyment as well as for writing craft. I’m looking forward to it, even to the long drive.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People

The Freeing Feeling of Rejection

Leave a comment

As I mentioned in my last post, the agent has rejected In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. She mentioned that she’d be interested in it if I made some changes. One was too much dialog, not enough narrative. I can fix that, I believe. The other was one of what is or isn’t acceptable within the CBA (Christian Booksellers Association), the trade publishing group for Christian publishers.

But I couldn’t decipher her statement: “addressing the sex, drugs, drinking, and lifestyle at the end of the story is too late for a Christian publisher to accept….” I really don’t know what that means. I asked for clarification, and she responded, but the response didn’t provide any clarification. What does the position of the sex, drugs, drinking, and lifestyle have to do with it? I covered these in the mildest way I know how to do. If even the mild way disqualifies the book for the CBA, so be it. But I wish I knew what the agent meant. I tried to figure it out, and mentioned it in two e-mails, but as I said the clarification didn’t come.

So, after four months of waiting, the book is no longer under consideration by anyone. Rejection is sad, of course, but it is also freeing. I can do anything I want with the book. I can propose it to another agent. I can e-self-publish it. I can publish it as a paper book via CreateSpace. As I mentioned last post, I’m leaning towards e-self-publishing it as quickly as possible, and following through with a paper book soon after.

Right now I’m just waiting on beta readers. I have comments back from three, one of the entire book and two of about 2/3 of the book. I’m making some changes as they come in (typos, not substantive), and will consider substantive changes later. My own re-reading of it is drawing closer.

Rejection is hard to take, but less so with each rejection. To be honest, I expected to be rejected on this, if for no other reason than that rejection is more likely than is acceptance. Why get your hopes up only to have them dashed? Meeting with the agent back at the conference in June, and her wanting to see the partial manuscript, was the inducement I needed to complete the book, so that was good. It had been languishing incomplete for a long time.

So, I won’t say I’m giddy about the rejection, but I’m not unhappy. Whether this was a book that could be acceptable for the Christian market, or whether it’s more for the general market, will be decided by the readers rather than by agents and editors. And the readers can’t be wrong.

So full speed ahead. Let the re-writes begin, and the publishing soon follow.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Writing

Decision Time

Leave a comment

Yesterday was 120 days after the day I submitted the partial manuscript of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People to an agent, send at the agent’s request. Conventional wisdom is that you wait 3 or 4 months after submitting requested material, and if you haven’t heard back then a follow-up e-mail is appropriate. So I sent an e-mail, asking of the book was still under consideration.

The agent replied the same day with a nice e-mail, the gist of which is as follows.

I do really like your unique story concept that involves both professional baseball and the mafia. I’ve been reluctant to dismiss it. But addressing the sex, drugs, drinking, and lifestyle at the end of the story is too late for a Christian publisher to accept…. If these elements and the general market are the track you want to stay on, it isn’t a good fit for [our agency]. 

Here is a bit of feedback I’ll offer on the sample chapters you sent, though. There is too much dialogue at the expense of description and character development. There are some excellent books on writing…that would be beneficial for you in these areas. I hope you find this helpful.

I wish you great success and joy in the process as you continue to work on your writing. Let me know if at some point you decide to change direction on this story.

So, what to do? I sent a follow-up e-mail this morning, thanking her for her time to give me feedback, and asking her to clarify the comment that the sex, drugs, drinking, and lifestyle is “too late” for a Christian publisher. I’m not really sure what that means. It is introduced too late in the book? How does the placement affect acceptability? Plus, what she’s referring to was a disconnected scene, written early on during the writing but coming nearer to the end of the book than to the beginning to get if written while it was fresh on my mind. It dealt with a sexual situation that didn’t involve sex, if that makes sense.

Maybe she was saying that Christian readers, at least those used to reading books that come from the Christian Booksellers Association (CBA) are used to a certain absence of these subjects, except for the redeeming value of being released from one. If those subjects are absent from the beginning of the book, the typical CBA reader will read blissfully on. Then, if 2/3 of the way through they read something they’d rather have not read, they will be offended. Having put so much time into the reading, up to that point, they will be upset. That’s the only way I can interpret it.

So what to do now? Last night I was fixing typos found by my wife, through chapter 27. I’m soon to have an e-mail of some additional typos through the end of the book from my nephew.  Then I have to read the book for typos, for plot consistency and completeness, for line edits, etc. Then, taking the agent’s advice to heart, I have to see if there are places I can cut dialog and add to description/narrative. Plus, I have to wait on all my beta readers to report, and incorporate suggestions they make. At that point the book will be ready…but for what?

My choices are: 1) continue to submit to agents, 2) find some small presses who don’t require agented submittals and submit to them, 3) self-publish it, first as an e-book and soon thereafter as a print book, or 4) put it in a shoe box and let my kids find it when I assume room temperature.

Right now I’m favoring number 3. It will probably cost me $100 for a cover suitable for print and e-book, which I can ill afford right now. The print version will cost me $10 to have a proof copy produced and mailed. Or maybe I could just make up a cheapo cover and call it good. Either way I’ll get it published. The time required to do that will be a whole lot less than would be required to stay on the query-go-round with agents and publishers, leaving me more time for writing.

Simultaneous with that, or perhaps of a slightly higher priority, will be going through the proof copy of Documenting America, finding all the typos, correcting them, and uploading corrected files to Kindle, Smashwords, and CreateSpace. That will put a paper book of this in my hands, releasing me to ramp up the marketing.

After that, I suspect I’ll get Doctor Luke’s Assistant e-self-published, and add one more short story to my list of things for sale. At that time, I’ll re-assess, and make further decisions.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People

Initial beta-reader reports

Leave a comment

In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People is out with the beta readers. Well, maybe not all, as I have at least one more to get it to. I have begun to receive reports.

The first reports had to do with typos. Many typos. I knew that when I sent it out. My wife has read about 2/3 of the book and marked typos as she went along. I took her mark up and made some corrections, but not nearly all. So I knew the version going out to beta readers had typos.

From Nov 3 through Nov 8 my wife and I travelled to Rhode Island via Oklahoma City to attend a funeral. During that time, during gatherings of family and friends, I was able to talk face to face with two of these beta readers. One has finished the book, and gave it good praise (not glowing, but good). Of course, he’s a Yankees fan, so I was expecting him to not like—wait, don’t want to reveal too much of the plot. He has been feeding me e-mails pointing out typos, but I was able to get his take on the whole book.

He said, in answer to my questions, that the scenes in the new Yankees Stadium were believable. I was wondering about that, so that’s good feedback. One of his comments was that, at the beginning of the book, there was nothing to ground the book in time. Since it was talking about the Mafia, he thought it was set some decades ago. However, further into the book I have some references that make it clear the book is contemporary. If I can add some similar references much earlier, then the book will be grounded in time. He also thought I didn’t have enough ethnic names in the book for ball players. I can look at that easily enough.

The other beta reader I met with had read through chapter 26, so about 60 percent into the book. He of course mentioned the typos. He also said that the mob girl in the book, who is playing a role much out of character for her, is not believable. No, that’s not exactly what he said. He said it’s hard to believe she could effectively play the role she’s called upon to play by her gangster boss. I’ll review that, and see if there’s any way I can improve her believability. She undergoes the greatest character arc of all the characters.

So, the feedback begins. I have the book out with four other beta readers, and will send it to one more tonight. I’m looking forward to the wide range of opinions I’m likely to receive.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People

Beta Readers

3 Comments

Last week I put out a call for beta readers for In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. It was already in the hands of two people, one a relative one a friend, in a state of completion a few chapters away from being finished.  I haven’t received any feedback from them yet. But I decided to put out the call anyway and see what happened.

I mentioned this to Lynda and she asked, “What’s a beta reader?” I explained it is the next level of reader after the writer, who is the alpha reader. It is those who act as amateur editors and focus groups, who read the book in a stage somewhere between first draft and near-camera-ready and provide feedback to the author. In this sense a writer’s critique group is a bunch of beta readers for each other.

That feedback notion is what I’ve had trouble with. I’ve buddied up with other writers to read and critique their book-length works, and them mine, only to have it all go one way. I fulfilled my part of it but didn’t receive the promised feedback on my work. Then I had my first, unpublished novel, Doctor Luke’s Assistant, that a relative in my wife’s family wanted to read. As these were older people, I wasn’t expecting feedback. But they passed it on to a younger relative, who did give me some feedback. Part of what she wrote was, “I found some typos, perhaps as many as 50.” To which I asked, “Did you mark them?” To which she answered, “No.” As that was unsolicited feedback, I couldn’t be too upset. But why wouldn’t someone mark typos on a printed copy of a book on which they intend to give the author feedback?

On Documenting America, I sent that out to perhaps six beta readers, or seven including my wife, and received limited feedback from one. The feedback he gave me was valuable, mainly which told me that he wasn’t really my target audience. The feedback that my wife gave me, that she didn’t want to read beyond chapter 1, indicated that she wasn’t my target audience (so I guess I received limited feedback from two betas).

From my call for beta readers for FTSP, I received six responses. The books are all in their hands, or in one case in the mail. My nephew Chris is more than halfway through and is e-mailing me the typos as he encounters them. Since he is a rabid baseball fan (unfortunately for the NY Yankees), I hope he’ll give me feedback on the plot and on the baseball situations. Finding typos is of huge value. Knowing the plot makes (or doesn’t make) sense, knowing the book hits (or doesn’t hit) home, knowing someone would (or wouldn’t) recommend this book to their friends is also huge—just as valuable. I have a ninth person to send it to, a former colleague who asked for it some time ago but who didn’t respond to this particular request. Nine is a good number, especially for a book about baseball.

This time I asked for something specific: feedback of whatever nature the betas wanted to give me within 30 days. I realize this is a gift people are giving me, and no matter what I ask for it is a gift—I can demand nothing. People are busy. Good intentions are often overwhelmed by the necessity of living. Got it.

So we’ll see how this goes. I’m hoping for at least five responses out of nine. I’ll be anxious to see if these people are in my target audience. I’ve always thought I write the type of books I like to read, and if I like to read them there’s got to be a couple of million other people who would like to read them. DA is perhaps changing my opinion about that.

Fifty Thousand Screaming People

The Book is Written

Leave a comment

Last night, about 9:45 PM Central Time, I put the closing words on In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. Well, that’s not quite true. A few minutes later I thought of something I meant to say in the last scene, so I added that in, just one more sentence. The word count is 87,079. That’s 2,000 more than I was shooting for, based on my understanding of what the market will accept for a book like this.

So what’s next? I am tied up with my day job exceedingly between now and Friday evening, so will ignore FTSP. This weekend I hope to do some more wood sawing and splitting, keeping on working and building my muscles, and hopefully driving away the lingering effects of the ehrlichiosis. I have other writing to do: some articles for two different web sites, some non-fiction book stuff, as well as research for those. So I plan to let FTSP sit on the computer (properly backed-up, of course) for a week, maybe two.

When I get back to it, I’ll finish printing it, then read through the whole thing on paper. I’ll be looking for typos, as well as plot inconsistencies and places where the action isn’t adequately described. Also I’ll be looking for problems such as excessive telling rather than showing, head hopping, info dumps, etc. Although, I’m pretty sure I don’t have any info dumps, and that I used a nice mix of showing and telling. Head hopping I don’t really care about, but I’ll be watching for it. I suspect this will take two weeks.

Then, after the plot consistency review, I’ll do my own line and content edit. This will be looking for better ways to say what I wrote, in fewer words, with stronger verbs and fewer adjectives and adverbs. This should take three weeks or even a month. After that will be another proof reading. I will likely include what I call a “software edit”; that is, using MS Word features to search for typically overused words, such as that, there (not referring to place), -ly words, -ing words, forms of “to be”, etc. I’ve somewhat trained myself not to use too many of these as I write the first draft, but they creep in unawares, and must be rooted out.

So that all adds up to two or three months of editing, maybe less if I can find concentrated time to do it, and don’t distract myself too much with other works. Surely by that time I’ll have heard back from the agent, be it pass, accept, or more info. At that point I’ll have to give serious thought of how I want to publish it—especially if the agent passes. Self-publishing will be an option on the table.