Category Archives: Writing

Operation Lotus Sunday, Writing

Four Points of View

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Last night I finished a chapter in China Tour (or, as I might rename it, Smugglers and Spies). It’s the chapter for September 23, 1983, when both couples are in Xian, China, but don’t run into each other.

I don’t want to give away the plot—not that anyone thinking about picking up the book in the future is likely to come here and read a spoiler—so I won’t say too much. The tourist couple and the CIA agent couple find themselves in places of extreme tension, sexual temptation. They are supposed to be working on a plan to get the dissident out through Beijing three days hence, rescuing a botched operation. But instead of sticking fully to business, they are thrust into the sexual temptation.

I’m writing the book in multiple third-person point of view. That is, the narrator is inside one person’s head at a time, one of the four main characters. In one chapter I have one other POV, a Chinese agent’s. Writing in this manner you have to keep track of whose POV you’re in, and limit observations to what they sense and think.

The alternative to this is to write it in third-person omniscient. This is when the narrator has a God-level view. He can be in anyone’s head, see what anyone sees, tell the reader what anyone is thinking. Herman Wouk used this POV in his classics The Winds of War and War and Remembrance, as did James Michener in Centennial.

I like the omniscient POV, but publishing industry insiders say it is less favored by the average reader nowadays. So, I decided for simple third person for China Tour.

The scenes I wrote last night and over this past weekend required careful attention to make sure I didn’t “head hop”—that is, begin a scene in one person’s head and end it in another’s without a good reason to do so and a logical transition. The scenes from last night weren’t that hard. The four main characters were all in different places. But the ones from the weekend were difficult. The two couples were together, and the scenes were short. I was in the agent-husband’s head, then the tourist husband’s, then maybe the agent wife’s, then the tourist wife’s. Back and forth from scene to scene.

I don’t really know if I got it all right. I’ll be re-reading them over the next two weeks and seeing if I kept the POVs pure. It will be an interesting exercise, and the most complicated use of POV I’ve used up to this point in my writing career.

The book is now 61,000 words. I have four days of it yet to write (Sept 24, 25, 26, and 27, 1983). The last day will be the denouement and should be short. The 26th will be the longest. Right now I don’t have a clue what I will write for the 24th and 25th. I think they might be short as well, maybe 1000 words each. So right now it looks as if the book will be close to 70,000 words. I think that’s a good length for a spy novel.

I don’t expect to be writing much new material over the next two to two and a half weeks, and business and pleasure will have a hold on me. But I will have a lot of time to think through these last four days of the book, and plan what to do next.

The book launch? Right now I’m guessing around April 1, 2013, but there’s the finishing and the editing and finding and replying to beta readers and final corrections and formatting and working with a cover designer and uploading. So we’ll see if I can keep to that schedule.

goals, Writing

January 2013 Sales

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January has closed. It’s time to post my book sales. Here’s the table and graph.

As you can see, it’s not a particularly encouraging situation. Since October I’ve had 8 – 7 – 7 – 7 sales per month. True, I’ve not done a lot to promote my books (a FB post here and there; speaking to a few people about them), but it’s still pretty dismal.

With baseball season coming on I need to figure out how to promote In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I also need to have the cover re-done, but not sure I want to spend the money at this time.

Writing

Passing through a dry spell

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It began a week ago today, or maybe even a week ago yesterday. The dry spell, I mean.

It’s not writer’s block. I know exactly what I want to write next on my work-in-progress. And what after that and after that. I think I finally have all the scenes in my mind right up to the end of the book.

So why not write? It’s an overwhelming sense that it doesn’t matter if I write or not.

I could say more, but I think I’ll leave it at that.

goals, Writing

Review of 2012 Publishing Goals

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Back in January 2012 I established some publishing goals for the year. Since I just did the same for 2013, I thought I should go back and see how did on those goals. I wrote them in three posts last January. I’ll summarize them here and tell how I did.

Fiction

Publish my second short story, titled “Too Old To Play”. I did this in January, exactly on schedule. It’s only sold three copies, but it’s there and available.

Publish my novel Doctor Luke’s Assistant. I did this in March, exactly on schedule. It’s been my best selling work so far.

Publish my novel In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I did this in August, a little later than I’d hoped, but I delayed it for consideration by a publisher, and by then I was too engaged with other projects to jump right back in this. It isn’t selling, but baseball season is just around the corner.

Publish another short story in the Danny Tompkins series. I did not do this. Instead I wrote a different short story and published it, and it’s sold 10 copies.

Begin work on my third novel. Okay, I suppose this was a writing goal, not a publishing goal. I did this, beginning China Tour in October.

Non-Fiction: Articles

The no-money one of these is Suite101.com. I did not write any articles for Suite101 this year. As I wrote in January, “The site is soon to go through a major re-vamp. I’m waiting to see what they do, and if anything I want to write on will still be suitable.” The revamp occurred. I’m making a little more residual income there than I thought I would, but I still don’t expect to write any articles for them any time soon, almost certainly not in 2013.

The one for decent money is Buildipedia.com. As planned I wrote for Buildipedia for several months. Then they axed my column. I haven’t had any ideas for feature articles for them, so that prospect is dormant for a while and probably will remain so.

The third gig is a site named Decoded Science. I wrote and published one article with them in 2012. I still like the concept of Decoded Science. I like the owner/editor. I just haven’t had any ideas for articles. I wanted to do a series of articles on low impact development. The owner/editor was favorable, but I haven’t found time or energy to do them. It’s a possibility in 2013, thought not all that likely.

Non-Fiction: Books

The Candy Store Generation. I wrote this and published it in July 2012, more or less on schedule. I liked how it came out. It’s sold about 15 copies, which is a big disappointment.

John Cheney of Newbury, Massachusetts. This was to be a family genealogy book. I found no time to add to the research I’ve already done, so did not write anything on this. Maybe some day.

Articles written about floodplain engineering that would form the basis of a decent book. Yes, they would, but I’ve done nothing on this other than brainstorm a little.

A second book in the Documenting America series: the Civil War years. I wrote the first chapter of this, or most of the first chapter, then abandoned it for the time being. The research was going to be much more than I thought. I read some as research, maybe 10 to 15 hours of reading. I wish I could have written it, and hope to do it in 2013.

So, I didn’t do too badly, did I? I hope I do as well, relative to my goals, in 2013.

Documenting America, Operation Lotus Sunday, Writing

Locking In Ideas, even out of season

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I wrote a blog post some time ago about capturing ideas for writing. Actually, I may have written several posts about that between here and my other blog, An Arrow Through The Air.

Two situations have come up in the last few days where I was able to do this. Actually, I guess it was three.

On my novel in progress, China Tour, I’m in the middle part of the novel now, between the two main plot points. This is the part where a novel often sags, as the protagonist overcomes a series of conflicts, preferably rising in danger/difficulty, before moving into the end game. And it’s the part of this novel I had mostly not thought out. So I’m writing each scene as it comes to mind.

But while driving home from work yesterday an idea for a conflict came to me. It seemed to be a good one, but I didn’t use memory techniques to lock it in. By the time I got in the house not only had I lost the idea but I forget I’d even had an idea. After supper and going through snail mail, I went to The Dungeon and started writing earlier than usual on a week night. I typed a few words, continuing a scene from where I left off Wednesday evening, when the idea came back. I grabbed a piece of paper to write it on, then decided to just put it at the end of the Word document, set off from the rest of the text.

While writing for the next couple of hours, two or three other ideas came to me. They went at the end of the ms. as well. So by the time I knocked off for the evening, around 10:00 p.m., having added over 2,000 words to the novel, I also had good ideas documented for middle-of-the-novel scenes. It was a good evening of writing.

So upstairs I went, intending to do some pleasure reading, but before I left the computer I saw one of the volumes of The Annals of America, the one for the Civil War years. I took it upstairs with me, and instead of reading for pleasure I went through the Table of Contents to find items to include in a future volume of Documenting America. While that book was a stand-alone volume, I have always hoped to make a series of volumes based on the style of the original book. I listed about twelve documents to include, and spot-read in two of them to make sure they are suitable. They are. The book will need about thirty documents all together, or perhaps a few less if I use some documents for two chapters. It’s not much, but it’s a start—and it’s on paper.

The other idea capture event happened on Tuesday. I was at a professional lunch, a PowerPoint presentation made by an Arkansas state official. It was all words, and sitting in the back of the room I couldn’t really see them. Plus, it’s stuff I already know, for the most part. So rather than concentrating on that I took a napkin (I hadn’t brought a note pad with me), and began thinking through books that might eventually go in my future series, The Alfred Cottage Mysteries.

Now, this is really long-range planning, as I don’t expect to be writing any book in this series. But I’ve thought of the series much over the years, had a couple of books in mind, but not the full series. So as the regulator droned on about short-term activity authorizations, I wrote on the napkin. Here’s what I came up with.

  • Alfred Cottage and The Coroner’s Inquest
  • Alfred Cottage and The Lost Love
  • Alfred Cottage and The Lost inheritance
  • Alfred Cottage and The Lost Years
  • Alfred Cottage and The Wife Murderer
  • Alfred Cottage and The Fornicators
  • Alfred Cottage and Stolen Identity
  • Alfred Cottage and The Cherokee Princess
  • Alfred Cottage and The Abolitionist
  • Alfred Cottage and The Cobbler’s Will
  • Alfred Cottage and The Soldier’s Son
  • Alfred Cottage and The Rum Runners

Each of these, except the next-to-last, comes from something in my or my wife’s ancestry. Some will have large pieces of the real family history as a basis, some just a small part. All of them will be fiction, however, with many embellishments and conflict added along the way.

As I’ve told people, when I dream I tend to dream big. Here’s a big dream: 12 books that are years away from being started, yet are already finding their way out of the gray cells and on to paper.

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.

Operation Lotus Sunday, Writing

Into new territory with “China Tour”

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My friend on-line friend and fellow writer Veronica commented on my last post. That spurred me on to post this new update to my work on China Tour.

I’m taking a semi-vacation. Last Saturday we began babysitting our two grandsons. Their parents spent a night here, then went off for three days r&r away from home and kids. I took three days vacation to help my wife, so with the Thursday-Friday holiday I’ll have the whole week off. Their parents just arrived from their trip, my mother-in-law is here, so the house is pretty full.

I decided that I would take the time off from writing: no blog, no novel, no writing resources to study, no research. I would concentrate on the grandsons. However, it occurred to me that I could get up at or near my normal time, 5:45 a.m., and do some writing while the house was quiet. I managed to do that on Monday and Wednesday. I worked on China Tour. On Monday I had a hard time with my computer, due to virus checking and automatic updates and recovery of documents from a power interruption. Then, since it had been a week since I’d written, I had to reread the about ten pages to get back into the plot. Wednesday—today—was better, with no computer problems and being fresh into the plot.

So I began to write this morning. It’s a scene I really hadn’t thought through before, at least not in detail. It’s at the point in the novel after a major switcheroo had taken place. But the words seemed to flow. I typed from about  6:30 to 7:30 a.m., and checked the word total for the day. It was about 1,200 words. Not bad for an hour, in a previously unplanned scene. The total word count is now over 19,000.

I’d like to keep that up. I know I won’t get a chance to write on Thanksgiving Day. I’m the main cook, so I’ll be busy probably from 6:00 a.m. on. Then there’s the traditional Thanksgiving Day long walk, preventing the tryptophan from doing its work. Then rest, leftover, dessert, etc.

The kids got back this afternoon and told us they will have to leave on Friday instead of Saturday. Hate to see them go. It’s been a good time with Ephraim and Ezra so far, and don’t like to see it cut short. But I will also enjoy having time to get back to work on my book. Hitting it hard on Friday-Saturday-Sunday, I’d like to get to somewhere between 25,000 to 30,000 words. Right now it appears the book is running short of my projected word count of 75-80,000. I really want a book that long to fit in with genre expectations. The length required for this next section, which is mostly unplanned, will let me know where I’m going to finish up at.

So stay tuned. We’ll see what the next few days bring.

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.