Here’s the first draft of the cover for “Whiskey, Zebra, Tango”. I’ve already contacted the designer and suggested a couple of changes.
Whatcha’all think?
Plans for writing for “Decoded Science”
Back in 2009, with my writing career kind of stalled, or at least in a state of uncertainty, I decided to follow a path for a while of writing magazine articles. I studied the genealogy magazine market, picked a target mag, pitched an article to the editor, and had it accepted within 20 minutes. Two months later the article was written, two months after that it was in the print magazine, and four months after that I was having to send e-mails to the editor to have them send the payment they promised.
During this time I discovered Suite101.com, an on-line site, sort of a magazine, sort of a wiki, a place for authors to post their 400-800 word articles about almost any subject. Supported only by advertising, the author received a share of the revenue from ads that appeared on their article page. It all happened more or less automatically.
The “promise” made by the editors of Suite101 was that an article typically earns a dollar a month in ad revenue. So put up lots of articles, and eventually it adds up. I decided to do that rather than chase the shrinking number of print mags. As I published articles, my revenue began to trickle in. Eventually I made payout. Then I won $101 in an internal contest. I never made even close to the magical dollar per article per month, but at least revenues were going up.
I was up to 127 published articles, and at a point where I was going to evaluate my continued participation, when Google changed their search algorithms. Page views and revenue plummeted, then recovered, then Google changed again, page views and revenues again plummeted. I’ve lost track of how many times this happened. Now, three years after starting to write there and a year and a half after deciding not to add more articles, my revenues have stabilized at about $5 to $6 per month. That’s 4-5 CENTS per month, or roughly 1/20th what had been advertise.
I don’t regret my time there. Those articles are all in my areas of interest. I could still use some of them for other purposes. And I actually had fun writing them. I did push aside novel and non-fiction book writing for a time, but I don’t really feel that I was hurt by the experience. Still, I’m not planning to write more for Suite.
But I do plan to write more articles for a different on-line site, Decoded Science. Based on the same principles as Suite (writers chose topics and self-upload articles to the site and share in ad revenue), it is a more focused site, as the name implies. My first article for it was an overview of the stormwater problem facing the USA today. This comes mostly from my own experience, with a couple of references to government publications.
Having just published the article a few days ago, I have no idea how well this might pay off in terms of money. I know it has more editorial input than Suite ever did, which I like. I like that it is a focused site, which could be an intentional destination for on-line readers rather than one accessed only after a search engine result.
My plans right now are to write two other articles for DecSci, following up on the stormwater issue. One will address stormwater quantity, and one stormwater quality. This may wind up being three articles, since the issues of quality and quantity have kind of leapfrogged each other in importance over the years.
After that, I plan on writing a few articles on low impact development, which is a primary way the engineering community addresses the stormwater problem. I’m not an expert in that; I’m a learner and a studier. I’m organizing training about that in-house, learning it myself, and trying to bring our industry from treating it as art rather than as the science it should be. Seems the perfect subject for DecSci. Right now I don’t know how many articles that could be. I could easily see it being as many as twenty, though possibly that would be going too deeply into the subjects for the intents of the site. We’ll see.
After that, who knows? I’ll see how well the revenues are coming in. At Suite I seemed to under-perform compared to what other writers were earning. Either my topics didn’t excite people, or my writing didn’t. I was never unhappy with my page views, just with the revenue. And I don’t plan on setting aside other writing to concentrate on DecSci as I stupidly did for Suite. When the urge strikes to write another novel, or short story, or to work on a book-length non-fiction piece, I’ll work on that.
Hopefully I’ll carve out time for DecSci. Over the next week I’m going to plan my series as to topic, but probably not to schedule. It’s a good gig, I think, but I need to approach it more slowly than I did the last one. Stay tuned for updates.
Whiskey, Zebra, Tango
While waiting to decide on my next book-length project, I’m working on some short things. One of these may be a way to tie together my travels in the past with writing.
In reading about other writers, as well as about kings and princes in foreign lands, I learned about The Grand Tour, where the person goes around the world, usually with a trusted friend or relative, not for the purpose of adventure but to learn about the world. Tsar Nicholas 2nd of Russia did this while he was crown prince. Others have done this, though the names escape me right now. Emerson, I guess, was another one when he made his trip to Europe after the death of his first wife. But I prate.
I finally figured out, however, that I actually had my grand tour, but I had it long before I ever figured on being a writer. My time in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait gave us the opportunity for lots of travel. A month in Europe. Two weeks in Egypt. A month in Asia. Weeks in Greece and Turkey. Brief stops in England. My Grand Tour.
But how to work them into my writing? Those trips are ancient history now. I have nothing to offer a travel magazine or book, as anything that happened in China in 1983 would be irrelevant now. China is a special case, however, because I’m still planning on writing a novel based on that trip. Tentatively titled China Tour, it would have this tag line: An American family traveling in China becomes embroiled in a CIA operation.
So as I’m taking some years to think of how to work my travels into my writing, a possible way came to me through Facebook. One night a woman who I knew in junior high, high school, and college, who still lives in our hometown of Cranston, Rhode Island, reported on Facebook that some kind of police action was going on in her neighborhood. I just had to make a smart comment. Here, let me past in the exchange we had.
HER: Wow! Lots of activity in neighborhood. Loaded with cops driving around and walking in large groups with flashlights. Out walking the dog and they told me to get in the house! Going thru back yards and looking under bushes… what is going on?
ME: I didn’t do it. Nobody saw me. You can’t prove anything!
HER: You’re lucky you don’t live around here! You’d be prime suspect! lol
ME: Me! I’m a model citizen.
ME: And what were you doing out so late with the dog? Must have been a drug rendezvous, maybe with your crack deal? Hmmm, maybe I can get a short story out of this: A RI woman who hides her ancestry behind a new name gets caught up in the a drug war. I like it.
HER: Just the nightly bedtime walk………Nothing spectacular
ME: Yeah, like the police haven’t heard that one before.
ME: OK, I’ve been thinking about this plot, and my thoughts are beginning to gel. “How about this plot: [Woman’s Name], by all appearances a simple housewife from Cranston, RI, is caught outside her house when police swarm through her neighborhood, looking for a car chase fugitive who is now on foot. She goes back inside as ordered, but the fugitive escapes. As the police investigate, they learn the woman’s maiden name is really [insert good Italian name here], she was once a CIA operative, and she was the case worker for the fugitive who escaped (or maybe she helped extract him from some foreign country). They then figure she helped the fugitive escape, or might even be hiding in her house.” Not quite sure where to go from there. Sounds like it might need to be a novella rather than a short story.
HER: Can’t believe you put all this thought into it! What were you up all night thinking about this? The “simple” to describe housewife doesn’t sit well with me. 🙁 Can you make me sound a little more interesting? But don’t go overboard! Or leave an adjective out completely……
ME: What, being an ex-CIA operative isn’t interesting enough for you? Actually, I didn’t like the work ‘simple’ either, and thought ‘ordinary’ would be better, or possibly ‘normal’. And an office worker. “[Woman’s Name], by all appearances an ordinary housewife and office worker from Cranston, RI, ….”
That took place in January of this year. I couldn’t let this go; thoughts and plot lines kept running through my head. It occurred to me I could possibly work this into a series of short stories, if not a novel, wherein this housewife and office worker would actually be a CIA agent, traveling to the places I did, doing various espionage operations. Even a title came to me: Whiskey, Zebra, Tango. Code letters, perhaps, in a CIA operation. I could get a whole series of titles like that.
Finally in August I wrote the story. It finished off around 6,800 words, or twenty-six printed pages. I sent it to the namesake in the story, figuring since I’m using her real name I’d better have her permission. Yesterday I heard from her, saying she loved the story. It made her feel like a cross between Stephanie Plum and Nancy Drew. I haven’t read either of those, but I’m glad she liked it.
She asked for one change in the story, which I’m happy to make. Also, as I read through some of it yesterday, I found a couple of things I’d like to tweak—a comma here, an adjective there. I’m afraid I just can’t write to Heinlen’s rules.
So, that’s where I’m at. I will likely finish the tweaking tomorrow evening. Then there’s the problem of a cover. I may try it myself, or maybe I’ll be able to beg another one. Look for this to be published in about a week, if everything goes right.
First Article for Decoded Science
We have just finished the Labor Day weekend in the USA. Three days to be away from the office, to rest and relax, to sleep in a little, to worship on Sunday, to read, and to write. Last Friday I looked forward to it.
And it played out as it should have. Except for having trouble sleeping Sunday night, which I believe was due to a pill I took, it was quite relaxing. As far as writing goes, I didn’t do a whole lot. Friday evening I relaxed, and read in The Art and Craft of Storytelling, by Nancy Lamb. Saturday I devoted to family finances—when I wasn’t reading or napping. Sunday I wrote about at my An Arrow Through the Air blog.
Monday, finally, I set to the task of writing. I’m not quite ready to begin my next book-length project. I was still waiting for my beta reader to respond about publishing my short story, “Whiskey, Zebra, Tango”. So I decided to do something I had put off for a long time, writing an article for the website Decoded Science. I know the editor there from my time at Suite101.com, and had told her I would write for the site. I actually did that back in June, but, alas, I had missed a rules change about what type of articles they would accept, and the article I submitted didn’t comply with the new rules.
Monday morning, between 10:00 a.m. and 12:00 noon I banged out an 800 word article on stormwater quality, and whether the Clean Water Act was meant to cover it. This is a lead-in article to what I hope will be a series of articles on stormwater, perhaps covering everything from flooding to normal conveyance to low impact development to rainwater harvesting.
By yesterday evening I had word from the editor that the article was accepted, pending my adding a few images/photos to it. I added those this morning before starting work at the office, and resubmitted. The article should go live sometime today. When it does I’ll edit this post and perhaps add a screen shot, or at least a link.
Decoded Science pays writers with a share of advertising revenue. I don’t know how much it will amount to. How long will it take for this article to earn $100, which would be a fair payment for on-line publishing based on the total amount of time I have in it? I don’t know, but I’m willing to take this risk.
Edited: The article went live this morning.
August 2012 Book Sales
Here are my book sales for August 2012, along with totals since publishing. Pretty dismal. I don’t have my spreadsheet here at home. I’ll have to add the chart from that on Tuesday when I return to the office. Numbers are August Sales/Total Sales.
“Mom’s Letter” 0/22
Documenting America 0/35
“Too Old To Play” 0/3
Doctor Luke’s Assistant 7/84
Documenting America – Homeschool Edition 0/0
The Candy Store Generation 0/12
In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People 1/1
Editing on 9/5/2012 to add a new graph in three different sizes.
The Laziness of the Self-Published Writer
I’m mostly out of energy today. I’m not sure why, since it’s raining (the remnants of the hurricane) and rain usually perks me up and energizes me. I assume it’s because my diet lately hasn’t been so good. Maybe I’ll eat right this weekend and, with the extra day of rest, will come into the office suitably energized on Tuesday.
I recently left the Yahoo group The Writers View 2 (TWV2) over comments being made, by one individual in particular but echoed by others, concerning how those who opt to self-publish are lazy. They are lazy because they don’t want to go through the process that writer did. Before he left the ministry and went full-time as a writer in 1984, he apparently went through a lengthy break-in period. He wrote magazine articles. He wrote other short pieces, he was a ghost writer or collaborator. He wrote under more than one name. And finally he published some books of his own, and his income rose to the point where he could go full-time. Of course, for many years he supplemented his income by teaching at writers conferences and mentoring other writers for a fee.
At some point about two months ago (unfortunately I didn’t save the e-mail) he said that those who opt to self-publish are lazy, that they don’t want to take the time to learn the art and craft of writing or the business of publishing, i.e. trade publishing. This, however, requires translation: Those who self-publish are trying to short-circuit the route I took, which because I took it that is the only legitimate route to being published.
Then, a couple of weeks ago he wrote this in an e-mail to the group:
if you can’t take criticism–and some people can’t–forget what I said, don’t take advantage of learning opportunities, and spend your money on self-publishing your books. Let your readers tell you how badly you write.
This also requires translation: Those who are self-published can’t take criticism. That’s why they self-publish: so that they don’t have to have editors critique their work. The don’t learn. Their readers will be the ones to critique their work.
Sorry, Mr. Experienced Full-Time Writer. I’m not lazy. Nor have I decided to short-circuit the route to being published. It’s just another route, as legitimate as the one you took. And I can take critique as well as anyone can, I’m sure as well as you can.
I chose to self-publish when it became clear to me that many publishable works were being turned down simply because of a shortage of slots at publishers; that the decision on which 1 or 2 of 10 or 20 publishable works to publish was made on sequential gatekeepers whose criteria was a guesstimate of which book would sell best, and that their track record in making these choices was abysmal.
I chose to self-publish in part because you wrote that you didn’t feel your publishers gave you much in the way of editorial services, which was a change from when you broke in. Several others agreed, and most publishing professionals (writers, agents, editors) now advise that the person who wants to break into trade publishing should hire a freelance editor to go over their manuscript before they submit to an agent or editor. These same insiders advise the writer considering self-publishing to do the same. So what’s the difference?
Anyhow, having been called lazy, having been accused of not being able to take criticism, having been accused of not being willing to learn, I left TWV2. If I want to be abused, better it come from someone who bought my book and left a 1 star review than by a bunch of out of touch publishing insiders. At least I would have a sale.
Today the monthly newsletter of Mr. Experienced Full-Time Writer arrived in my e-inbox. I forgot I was subscribed to it. Another bridge burned, though silently as this writer’s un-subscription service doesn’t ask you for a reason for unsubscribing.
I think I’ll enjoy this holiday weekend.
AWOL from the blog
I have been extra busy this week, mainly with workplace related issues and at-home things to do. I’m working on a post for later today, and if I can find enough time on breaks/lunch I’ll have something posted before the workday is over.
In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People
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.
Three Publishing Items
That’s what I’m waiting on: three publishing items. The first two are within my control, once the proof books get here. Those are the print version of the home school edition of Documenting America, and the print version of The Candy Store Generation. I ordered the proofs Saturday, and they should be here today or tomorrow. Assuming they are good, I’ll pull the trigger right away and get them listed on CreateSpace. Not that hoards of anxious fans are waiting to buy them.
The next is In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. This is only partly in my hands. Well, I could publish it as an e-book immediately. But my wife is proofreading it right now. Last night on the phone she reported she was well into the book, less than a quarter to go. Since she’s finding a few things that need correcting, I’ll wait on her to finish. At the same time I’m waiting on my son to tweak the e-book cover. I don’t know when that will happen. But the cover he sent me would be acceptable as is (though not optimum), and Lynda says the typos are minor, so I could really go ahead and publish immediately. I think, though, I’ll wait.
Oops, there’s actually a fourth item. My short story “Whiskey, Zebra, Tango” is actually ready to be published. I’m sure it can stand another reading or two, and maybe I’ll find a few things to correct or improve, but I think it’s ready to go. I’m waiting on a beta reader to give me her comments. She’s the person the heroine is patterned after—and I even use her name—so I’ll wait for her. But then there’s the issue of a cover. I want to do it myself. I know what I want, and have played around with some graphics software to create it, but so far I’m not happy with the results.
So there you have it. Four items, not three, already in or just about fixing to enter the publishing stage. Next post will be about my current work-in-progress, The Gutter Chronicles, which really is almost complete as a novella.
Stewardship of my writing time
Every now and then I make a post like this, so my loyal fan(s) will know that I’m not a slacker. Well, at least not a big slacker; maybe just a little slacker. Over the last month I have been much engaged in publishing tasks, less so in writing.
As I’ve reported previously, I’ve been working with the graphics in the print version of my book The Candy Store Generation. This took up a lot of my time over the last two weeks. That’s now behind me, however, as our company’s graphic arts gal, Lee Ann Gray, volunteered to do the work needed. I worked with her. She had them all done, until I realized I had given her the wrong size for the book. So she re-did them.
But when I uploaded them, I realized I still had them a half-inch narrower than they could be. I didn’t have the heart to ask her to do them over, so I left them like that. I inserted them in the Word document, uploaded it to CreateSpace, did all the formatting stuff including on-line proofing, and ordered the proof copy. A few graph that were website captures are still at a low resolution, but I don’t care. I just want to get it published.
I also ordered a copy of the home school edition of Documenting America. I actually finished the edits to this a couple of weeks ago, but hadn’t decided if I’d bother with another proof copy or not. This book has also been frustrating in that I can’t seem to contact any local home school people for marketing purposes. I go to the websites of the groups, get contact information, send out e-mails, and either get no response or an auto-response that the e-mail address is invalid. I have no sales of it in electronic format, so have few hopes I can sell it in paper format. Oh, well, it will be available should I ever figure out how to market it.
I had conversations with two different cover designers for In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. My son had said he would do it, but his life as a young professional and new homeowner is incredibly busy. Thinking he wouldn’t come through, I contacted another man. I told my son about it, and he came through with a draft cover. It’s a good start, and actually good enough if I never got another one. But he’s going to tweak it some. So I’m getting very close to publishing this, at least in e-book formatting. I have one mini-scene to add to the text, which I’ll complete today.
I have done some writing this week, on two different thing. I wrote a short story titled “Whiskey, Zebra, Tango”. I began it last Monday and finished it yesterday at about 6,400 words (perhaps 25 printed pages). My intention is to publish this as an e-book only, and attempt to do a simple cover myself. I want to get FTSP out first, then this.
The other thing I worked on is my spoof of the civil engineering industry. Titled The Gutter Chronicles: The Continuing Saga of Norman D. Gutter, E.I., I use situations from my career and put them in the life of the unfortunate Mr. Gutter. I had 11 episodes (i.e. chapters) written as of a few years ago. I never planned on publishing it, but lately I’ve been circulating copies of it to a new batch of CEI employees. That made me realize I had a bunch of words written that could easily be transformed into an e-book. I’m adding four new chapters, one of which is done and another of which is 500 words from being done. The other two are outlined, so completion isn’t far away, maybe three weeks or so.
So that’s where I stand. I hope the next four weeks can be as productive as the last four. If they are, my list of titles for sale will climb from six to nine.