Category Archives: Interacting With Professionals

Collectives Collecting Collectible Creatives

Imagine what life was like for sixteenth-century monks. Toiling away, day after day, illuminating manuscripts and hand-copying texts as directed by their superiors. Hunching over a rickety wooden table, the hapless monk would carefully do his best to either produce miraculous work or, more likely, not screw up so bad that he would be sent, head bowed down in shame, to stand in front of the head monk.

Now, think about a modern-day author. Not much has changed, except perhaps for the persistent presence of Facebook trying to seduce you away from working.

Artists, authors, editors, and designers don’t have to live a solitary life unless it suits them (or they happen to be chained to a wall in a dank dungeon. SEND HELP!) They can band together into a collective and help each other progress. Of course, most creative types hear the same mantra over and over — “Don’t give away your time or work!”
The cool thing about a collective is that everyone has something they can trade. Everyone gets something they need in exchange for something they can provide. You’re not giving away your creative time, effort, and energy for nothing.

Artists

Artists have a tough time. Everyone wants their best work, but most don’t want to pay for it. Their work gets plagiarized or stolen from their website or Deviant Art page on an almost daily basis. Non-artists don’t understand that creating art, let alone crafting a high resolution book cover, takes a huge investment in mental and physical work. I’ve even heard authors low-balling artists at conventions, trying to snag some amazing artwork.

Probably the one statement that makes every artist on the planet cringe is:

“I can’t pay you for your work, but you’ll get a lot of exposure if you give me the copyright so I use it on my E-Book cover.”

Reminder: People often die of exposure, especially when it’s cold out.
Reminder, redux: Never ever EVER give away a copyright on your work UNLESS you’re well-paid up front. Think Disney animators. For everyone else, artists can consider licensing their work.

Everyone needs the artist’s work, from author to publisher to web designer to advertising executive, so there’s a good-sized audience waiting to buy their best work. The question then becomes, “What can you do for me?” Here are some possibilities:

  • Provide cold hard cash.
    Remember that quip about exposure? Artists can still become popsicles if they can’t pay their heating bills.
  • Website Coding.
    Trade some artwork to a website developer or coder. You can get a nice showcase for your art, or if you already have a basic site, you can have additional functionality added (such as a store to sell prints).
  • App Coding.
    Same idea as web coding, except applied to a mobile device.
  • Writing.
    Need some text on your website to go along with those pretty pictures? Are you trying to break into the world of comic books or graphic novels? Pair up and have an author produce a script while you provide the panels.
  • Design an artbook.

If you have a large collection of high-quality artwork, and you have enough of a following to sell enough books to get filthy rich, trade your services with a professional or experienced book designer.

Authors

Yeah, I know. Everyone and their grandmother can write. The difference is you know how to write well. Some authors can produce amazing prose, while others are virtual wizards when it comes to cranking out advertising copy.

As far as working in a collective, the author is the universal receiver. They need something from everyone else in the group. The good news is you can provide positive, effective text in exchange for the services of others. Need someone to properly edit your new novel? Trade some ad copy or blog posts towards your bill. Want to produce a graphic novel? Collaborate with an artist and knock out something to send to Dark Horse, Vertigo, Zenescope, or BOOM! Studios.

Editors

Professional-quality editors can be the odd woman out. Authors and web designers need their skills, but editors don’t necessarily require artwork, writing, or even code work. Of course, should she require those services, she has a trusted team to choose from. Cash for editing can be the standard, but seriously consider offering a discount to the collective members.

Semi-pro and advanced authors can arrange better deals within the collective. They can read each other’s work and point out ways to improve the text. It is important that everyone does as thourough a job as they can. Giving a manuscript a quick scan and announcing it’s just fine and dandy is reserved for the parents of authors. Edit and give constant feedback. Point out errors, don’t comment that you think the author is a bumbling idiot that should be kept away from sharp objects and things that can produce text. The object is to improve, for you as an editor and for them as an author. It’s also important to note that nothing really replaces getting properly edited, especially when self-publishing. A few runs through the collective gauntlet should produce a manuscript that requires less revision when it comes back from the pro editor.

Book Designers, E-Book Coders, Website Wizards, and App Developers

These are specialized skills, and are more technical in nature. I’ve found that many of the folks who can perform these services are also authors, artists, or rich Gatsby-like socialites. Website developers can always use new graphics or blog posts. E-Book coders can always use the services of editors to look for problems with the work they’re producing, especially if someone has a Nook Color or Kobo Aura and the coder only has a Kindle Paperwhite. App developers just scare me with their skills…it’s the equivalent of a magic user in fantasy.

*  *  *

Working together in a collective can help to further every member’s career. Make sure to value each other’s work, and be willing to discuss trading services such that everyone is satisfied with the deal. If you don’t understand why an artist doesn’t want to trade a magnificent digitally painted book cover for two or three blog posts, ask them to walk you through their process so you understand the time and creativity investment. You might learn something in the process.

About the Author:DeMarco_Web-5963

Guy Anthony De Marco is a speculative fiction author; a Graphic Novel Bram Stoker Award®; winner of the HWA Silver Hammer Award; a prolific short story and flash fiction crafter; a novelist; an invisible man with superhero powers; a game writer (Sojourner Tales modules, Interface Zero 2.0 core team, D&D modules); and a coffee addict. One of these is false.
A writer since 1977, Guy is a member of the following organizations: SFWA, WWA, SFPA, IAMTW, ASCAP, RMFW, NCW, HWA. He hopes to collect the rest of the letters of the alphabet one day. Additional information can be found at WikipediaGuyAndTonya.com, and GuyAnthonyDeMarco.com.

Good Omens Gone Bad: Why I Shouldn’t Be Writing

A Guest Post by Aaron Michael Ritchey

I recently read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist, and it’s about dreams, or more precisely, the following of dreams, the wretched path that narrows, and the splendor of the vision. As you follow your dreams, Paulo writes, it’s important to notice omens along the way.

Omens, as in messages from the gods, or God, or the big bright Whatever in the sky. In pursuing my own writerly dreams, I’ve had omens, I guess, maybe. I’m a hugely dramatic man, and the only omens I care about are either engulfed in flames or splattered with the blood of sacrificial virgins.  I want impossible-to-ignore omens, dammit, crows that caw my name, and if I don’t get the cawing, it doesn’t count.

As you can guess, I’m disappointed much of the time. I can easily discount every single omen I’ve been gien on my writer’s journey. And I can point out to you, in exquisite detail, the omens my fellow authors have been given. Sure, the crows caw their name, but not mine.

Let’s talk about my first good omen. My dad had a friend who worked for the Modern Language Associations, you know, the MLA. They were to the English language as the KGB was to communism. Nobody messed with the MLA. My dad gave his friend a story to read, and she loved it and praised my talent. It was an omen. Or was it? She was my dad’s friend. I was sixteen and fragile and she was probably just sparing my feelings. Screw that omen, it doesn’t count.

In high school my stories were chosen to be in the literary magazine. That’s an omen, right? No, I had to vote for my own stories in order to win, and Pat Engelking always beat me. No omen for me!

A year after college, I finished my first novel. I gave it to a friend. He cried reading it. Omen, yeah? No, that first book was so bad that my wife couldn’t read it. And I dedicated it to her! The crows sat in silent scorn in the trees outside my house.

I wrote an epic trilogy after that, and my audience doubled to friends loving my work, but it still doesn’t count. I still wasn’t published.

Then? Eight books later, my lucky thirteenth book I’d written, The Never Prayer, not only was a finalist in a writing contest, but a publisher wanted to publisher it! Omens galore! Hide the virgins, the dagger is thirsty tonight!

I didn’t win the contest, and the publisher went under. As in glug, glug, glug. Going down three times, and coming up twice. No omens.

But my second book, er, fourteenth book, Long Live the Suicide King, found a publisher, and I got a strong Kirkus Review!  Not just strong, glowing, put on your sunglasses. That’s GOT to be an omen. Kirkus, son, they don’t mess around.

But I’ve read other books that got glowing Kirkus Reviews, and those books were iffy. Some downright bad. Not. An. Omen.

Elizabeth's Midnight Final smallBut what about my last book I published, Elizabeth’s Midnight? Omens? Another good Kirkus Review (Indie, so it doesn’t count), more good reviews on Amazon (blah, blah, blah), and even fan mail. Am I rich and famous? Am I hanging out with Lady Gaga? Do editors read my work and say, “Sorry, man, I’d like to edit it, but it’s too damn good.”

No. No omens.

So yeah, that’s me. I’m a small-minded, ungrateful, hateful little man. I’ve never had a literary agent. I’ve never been signed on by the big six, or five, or one. I’ve not been chosen by the elite.

For me, and this is only for me, my omens come in small packages, and I have the freedom to recognize them as omens, or discount them and be the lead kazoo player in my own pity-party band.

For me, I have to work to believe in my omens. Omen #1? My wife loves my books and is willing to spend money on them. That, my friend, is a bush on fire. She’s a frugal, level-headed sort of woman, and if she didn’t think I could make it, we wouldn’t be spending the benjamins.

Omen #2? My daughters read Elizabeth’s Midnight and loved it. If my wife is frugal with our money, my daughters are even cheaper with their literary praise.

Omen #3? I’ve had fan moments, where actual people, who have read my book, looked at me in wonder. I’ve gotten fanmail. Not a lot, but what I have gotten? Astounding.

The last omen? The only omen that really counts? I WANT TO WRITE BOOKS. I want to write a lot of books. If the good Lord didn’t want me writing, he wouldn’t have given me the desire to create stories. That is the crow cawing my name.

I have been chosen because I am choosing, choosing to write books and get them published, by any means necessary.

Omen enough for me.

 

2Author_Pic_AMR_2014 MediumAbout the Author:

Aaron Michael Ritchey is the author of The Never Prayer and Long Live the Suicide King. Kirkus Reviews called his latest novel, Elizabeth’s Midnight, “a transformative tale for those who believe in magic and in a young girl’s heart.” In shorter fiction, his G.I. Joe inspired novella was an Amazon bestseller in Kindle Worlds and his steampunk story, “The Dirges of Percival Lewand” was part of The Best of Penny Dread Tales anthology. He lives in Colorado with his wife and two ancient goddesses of chaos posing as his daughters. Visit his website at www.aaronmritchey.com.

 

My Last Thought

A Guest Post by Darin Calhoun

April 2002, I was driving to work on the 210 Freeway, just passing Irwindale, when I glanced at my rear view mirror and saw a white, Scully, Semi-Truck. My Last thought was, “Wow, he’s going fast.” I have no memory of the collision, only fragmented flashes of the aftermath. One such brief moment, I was staring at the instrument panel of my Geo Metro, and someone was holding a wad of cloth on my head. They placed my hand on it so that I could hold it myself. Someone talked to me, but I don’t remember their words or my own. A flash later, I was in a helicopter on a stretcher freezing my ass off because someone had cut up my clothes, and the doors were open. I yelled at them to close the doors. They ignored me. I remember coming around as they wheeled into the emergency room.

The doctor told me that he was going to put staples into my scalp. The skin made a squishing sound as he inspected it. I chuckled. It was like something from a bad movie. He told me there wouldn’t be much pain because there weren’t a lot of nerves back there.

“So what are your hobbies?” asked the doctor.

“I belong to the Society for Creative Anachronism, and I do medieval combat in armor with rattan weapons.”

“So, like jousting?”

“We have equestrian arts but not with heavy armored fighting. Physics works. If we use horses we would hurt each other, and it’s not cool to break your friends.”

The doctor put in the first staple. Everything faded, and a string of curse words that sounds like my voice comes from somewhere distant.

“Just two more.” said the doctor.

I hear the staple gun click, and my world faded even more. Machines chirped and beeped in alarm.

The doctor shakes me. “Hey, hey buddy. Tell me more about that jousting.”

That pissed me off. “I…to…ld…you, it’s, not jousting!”

The doctor gave me a shot of local anesthetic and stitched up the rest of my scalp. A nice four-inch crescent scar between the parietal and occipital area of my brain, the lowest part was about an inch or so above my brain stem.

After some x-rays to make sure my brains weren’t leaking out, they sent me to the recovery room to fill up my diminished blood with saline. Supposedly, I was two quarts low. Then after making a statement to the police that, I don’t recall the details of, my wife, then girlfriend, took me to her work. I nearly passed out in the car. It seemed that the saline in my blood wasn’t really helping and that I was still a few quarts low. So after twenty-four hours of observation I was clear to start my recovery.

At first, I did not realize how much I had lost. What was bad before became worse. It was a challenge just to remain awake. At first, I’d be awake for an hour or two, and then I would fade out. For two weeks, I struggled to be awake for eight hours, so I could return to work. But I was on autopilot. The hours on the bus and at work were a blur. I changed jobs, and I still don’t remember the details. I was in limbo.

Gulf War One hit and I was laid off. I was without a job for the first time in my life. I was collecting unemployment, and in a bad place, but my girlfriend was there to help me. She took me in and I pitched in with money from my disability check while I waited on my settlement from the trucking company that ran me over.

But I was just existing, a bad place for an artist. After the crash, I lost the ability to draw. I had spent twelve years in developing a career in comics, and now that was suddenly gone. To keep my sanity, I turned to writing. I took out three pages I had written five years before as a challenge, a story about a world that had neither magic nor digital technology. I worked at it. I struggled to write a single page a day. I failed more than I succeeded. I still went to the doctors, but they just wanted to give me pills and I wanted rehabilitation–a purpose for my life.

I went to a social security judge for my federal disability and he said, “Mr. Calhoun, you are impaired not disabled.”

“Yes sir, your honor.” I replied.

“If you apply to five jobs and are fired. Then I’ll reconsider your case.”

I was appalled. “Thank you, your honor, but I can’t do that. I will find another way.”

That is when I decided to become a professional writer.

Life had other plans. I received a panicked call from my ex-wife that my daughter had been taken into protective custody by Child Protective Services. After enduring, a hellish bureaucratic quagmire of jumping through hoops my girlfriend and I got custody of my daughter, and I became a househusband and a PTA dad.

My daughter loved my stories. She just hated it when I was writing. So I wrote when she was at school and when she was asleep. It took me seven years to finish my first book and I was shocked to find out why. I had undiagnosed diabetes for seven years due to the accident.

It was in 2009 when I found out. My energy and focus was crap, and my temper had a hair trigger. Although, most of the time I was angry with myself due to frustration. When I talked about it with my mom, I found out she had hypoglycemia. I never knew that about my mom. She suggested that I eat five small meals a day. I did and I felt worse. I felt that I might be diabetic so I bought a blood sugar tester at a drugstore–467.

Oh, crap!

So now, I knew. After a doctors trip, and a diabetic training session, I found out diabetes is a package deal. You get the bonus of high blood pressure and heart disease.

Triple crap!
But I felt better, and now I made the big jump, perusing a career as a writer. I read a half dozen how-to-write books. I also listened to writing podcasts (Yay, Writing Excuses!), went to writing conventions:   LtUE in Provo, and World Fantasy Con. But most importantly, I took the Superstars Writing Seminar. Which was not about craft and how to write, but giving the writer tools on how to have a successful writing career, how to set yourself up so you’re not just going from failure to failure.

In the years, after I have found out whom I am as a writer. What my voice was, and where I belong in the wild world of publishing. The Superstar members are on the cutting edge of the industry. They were surfing the e-book revolution while the big 6 (now 5) publishers were in denial of the importance of Amazon.

And just when I thought I had learned all that I could from the Superstars, I volunteered to help run the Word Fire Press booth for Wondercon. I have not worked that hard since I was holding a waterlogged, ice cold, eight-inch line during an underway replenishment in the North Atlantic when I was in the Navy. Everyone was an author, who I swear had a secret contest on who could sell the most books. I struggled to keep up with these hard working writers putting themselves out there. I learned the importance of how to set up a booth for maximum exposure, the Feng Shui of stacking books, and the art of the soft sell, and most importantly, how much stories affect our lives. From when a young man brought dog-eared books, his father had passed on to him and how that son thanked the author for the wonderful childhood memories as the author signed with ink and tears. To the veteran thanking the author for helping him through the hell of war and its aftermath–not a dry eye in the house with that one.

That is why I write. I wish to be a ray of hope in a dark world. And that is my last thought.

About the Author:Author
Darin Calhoun is an author adrift on the genre seas, with the island of Action and Adventure as his home. Be warned, as he tends to write about strong women and flawed heroes. You may see him posting on Twitter or Facebook at 3AM but this isn’t unusual. He has an abusive muse. Some writers’ muses give them a gentile tap on the shoulder, his uses a sledgehammer to the head.

Commonalities in our Journey

A Guest Post by Abby Goldsmith

When Nathan Barra asked me to write a guest post about why I write fiction, I hesitated.  It’s a good question, and one that I haven’t pondered in years.  I’ve been stuck in a rut.  Not writer’s block, but paralytic self-doubt, questioning everything about why I chose to pour so much of my life into a career as a novelist.  I’ve watched others rise from amateur to best-seller within less than half the time I’ve been struggling to get my novel series published.  I lag behind most of my peers, editing and rewriting and editing and rewriting.  I’m in danger of becoming a bitter, grizzled veteran.

Self-doubt is a cornerstone of every novelist’s life, I think.  When I talk to other aspiring novelists, I hear commonalities in our journey.  Most of us grew up with a love of reading.  Most of us received praise from readers who adored our stories.  Most of us bashed our heads against the harsh realities of the publishing industry, which seems to be shrinking from corporate mergers.  From there, our paths diverge in two directions.  Either we give up and quit writing novels, or we get published and continue onwards.

My path feels like the most extreme version of that.  Rather than hiking a trail towards success, I’m navigating a storm-tossed sea, hurled about by towering tidal waves.  The praise I receive is enough for a lifetime.  My failures are EPIC.  As for the part where I either get published or quit . . . I’m sailing between those routes, unable to get my novels traditionally published, unable to give up and quit.  I’m preparing to self-publish a completed six-book-series, and I’m nearly paralyzed with the fear that it will all go wrong.

Most people, even committed writers, don’t base every major decision of their life around the dream of becoming a bestselling author.  I suspect that most of my peers would have quit after more than decade of setbacks.  Why am I so driven?

Childhood.  That’s surely where most addictions and personality disorders form, and I suspect it correlates with dysfunctional families.  I won’t detail how troubled my childhood was.  Suffice it to say, I needed an escape.  So I walked for hours, listening to music, inwardly cheering as my characters delivered justice to their enemies, or proved their worth to those who doubted them.  Stories were my only way to feel powerful and in control.  That feeling was better than anything I could get elsewhere.  I was addicted.

By the age of twelve, I’d completed two novels, a series of short stories, and a trilogy of comic books.  A literary agent working with Random House, unaware that I was a child, read my first manuscript and sent a scathing rejection letter, including the phrase, “It sounds like a mentally challenged person wrote this.”  Upon learning my age, she offered to edit my manuscript and promote me as a child author, but I’d already taken her first letter to heart.  I decided that my stories were unfit to be shared with anyone.  They collected dust in shoeboxes.

In college, two of my student films were selected out of hundreds for special recognition, and received high praise in international film festivals.  I began a promising career as an animator.  With my confidence boosted, I dared to share chapters of a potential novel with an online critique group.  Their reactions astounded me.  Everyone in the group wanted to read more.  They tore each other’s work to shreds, and rightfully so, but my work was exceptional.

After years of being ashamed of my writing skill, I reversed direction all at once.  A dam burst.  Within the space of one year, I completed a 520,000 word manuscript, a 59,000 word manuscript between drafts of the big one, and an unfinished 70,000 word novel.  My boyfriend thought they were amazing.

Still worried that my skill was amateur, I asked for readers with trepidation.  Part of me expected scathing rejections.  Instead, I received a flood of support and praise that changed my life, and affects me to this day.

A programmer in New Zealand read all my manuscripts, and said, “SEND MORE!”  A teenager in Norway did the same, telling me that he’d missed classes to read them under his desk at school.  A woman I never met emailed me to say, “Whatever gift for storytelling exists, you have it.”  The artist of my favorite web comic offered to endorse my novels, after reading.  A coworker at my office tentatively agreed to try the big one.  He began reading it in his cubicle.  The next day at work, he said, “I got no sleep.  I stayed up all night turning pages!  You’ll have no trouble getting published, so stop worrying.”

And I did.  From that point forth, I’ve considered myself a talented storyteller, although my prose and craft needed seasoning, and there are always aspects where I can improve.  Literary agencies and publishers rejected those early manuscripts due to the usual bouquet of amateur issues:  Point of view head hopping, passive voice overused, weak verbiage, and other problems that are familiar to career-minded writers.

To improve my craft, I went to the Odyssey Writing Workshop.  George R.R. Martin liked the first chapter of my big novel, Catherine Asaro privately praised my short story, and I felt as if my skill would leap ahead light years after all I learned from editor Jeanne Cavelos.  Encouraged, I scrapped the 520,000 manuscript and rewrote it from scratch, as two separate novels.  They’ve each been whittled down to the 90,000 to 105,000 word range.

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I wish I could say that all that effort led to success.  It hasn’t.  At least, not yet.  The massive rewrite deadened the beginning, and I’ve had a hellish time trying to get it to appeal to the traditional publishing industry.  On top of that, I’m no longer the same person who wrote the original rough draft.  Fifteen years have passed.  I believe I understand why epic saga authors, such as Patrick Rothfuss, struggle to finish.  When a story has the weight of a magnum opus … when it feels too massive to do it justice … when the task requires decades of your personal life … well, I can only speak for myself, but there’s a damned lot of pressure to get it right.  A project that huge only happens once.  Humans don’t live long enough, or have enough energy, to do it twice.

I will write other novels.  I have other big stories to tell, after I publish this series (the first two books are the rewritten rough draft from fifteen years ago).  But this epic will always be more special to me than any others.  It’s the story that began in my teens, and spanned my twenties and thirties.  It’s the one that shaped the course of my life.

I write because I believe in my power to tell stories that amaze people, and leave them to reevaluate their world-views.

 

About the Author:Author
Stories and articles by Abby Goldsmith are published in Escape Pod, Fantasy Magazine, Suddenly Lost in Words, and several anthologies. She’s sitting on six unpublished novels, preparing for an epic debut. http://abbygoldsmith.com