Art can be a pain in the ass, but it must be done. The above background is my morning, and the below background is the rest of my day. It’s a start, and the rest of tonight will be working, and reworking Eona. I can only hope it looks great when I’m done. I did have some areas that tore out, were glued down and touched up. It happens to the best of us.

It's up! The story told in the second person POV. Comments?

Had company, I'll post tomorrow.

Editing is boring, but must be done, and done right. I have a new story ready to post, and will get that up tomorrow. It’s in the second person POV, so don’t miss it.

The Writer Beware Blogs; the link is to the right for a reason. Writers should know who to avoid and why. Who is real, and who isn’t. A lot of changes are now taking place within the publishing landscape, and new scams will pop up as old scams are exposed. Keep an eye out. Protect yourself. I say this because I’m one of those people who tries new things. I stick my neck out, often, and I’ve been stung more than a few times. It hurts. Keep an eye on things. And . . .

　

Reading about author marketing tactics from readers who actually buy books boils down to one thing only, and that’s word of mouth. Giving away books to reviewers and readers, starting the ball rolling; posting the first three chapters for potential readers to devour; old fashioned radio skits (now as podcasts), using sound effects like in radio’s pre-television heyday. Reader reviews for all to see. Interviews on sites where readers flock. These are readers telling me this. Readers who bought books because of the above on-line recommendations. Now I have to make yet another list, and incorporate the above into a marketing plan THAT WORKS!

I try to understand good storytelling. What goes into that story, and why. The why is important, and the what takes thought. The Self-Publishing Review is . . . interesting at its best, annoying at its worst. What happens there is indicative of the entire professional publishing industry as a whole. Magazines, agents, publishers. Basically, she counts fifteen mistakes in however many pages, and she stops reading. If you have fifteen mistakes on your first page, you’re done, and so is she. I’m fairly sure they all do that. Pro magazines, agents and publishers. As much as I enjoy her ruthless honesty, I wouldn’t send anything of mine. In one book alone I’ve made about 200 corrections. Most were punctuation mistakes. I also removed a slew of redundant words, and found twenty new typos. I’m still not done. When I am, I would have to spend about $3,000 (not in this lifetime) to have an editor go over it all one last time; a comprehensive line by line edit, just to be sure. I’m 98.9% percent now, and will be 99.8% when I’m completely done. Will it be enough? Me, alone, with only myself to rely on? Probably not. I have six agent-rejected novels now, but I’m doing this for my future readers. My next six novels will probably be rejected, and one can hope they won’t be, but the reason won’t be me or my writing.

　

BTW, many thumping-great novels will never see print. Agents see them now and again, but if they can’t sell them to a publisher, they send out a form rejection slip. Their words. Their truth. Sucks shit, doesn’t it? LOL

I took today off, but yesterday I worked on editing. Down below is a link to a list of things that can and do go wrong with our words, even with the best of us. That is the list I've been working on, for the last two weeks, using it for six finished novels, and I made a lot of changes to all six novels. I finished the rough drawing for my new cover, have a pen name in mind that nobody else has used, and once I'm done, I'm going to push myself as hard as I can. I'll post everyday, if I can, and for the two people who subscribe, tell me what you want. My knowledge is vast, and I want to know what you think. Sixteen years of this, and I'm still plucking away. I'm going to make it. The last piece of the puzzle is in place. This is the time, the very bottom of new and great things, for you as well as me. I'll put up a new story soon, and will update my third blog when I get something finished. Not things to do, but things done.

I'll be rethinking this blog, so hang tight. See you soon.

While the work proceeds more slowly than I want it to, which happens, akin to shit happens, I want you to think about the truth. Truth is subjective, up to a point. There are dozens of truths by confirmed practitioners, published sources, and the ever popular trade journals. Publisher’s Weekly can tell you all about what is happening right now, and can help you penetrate possible trends. If you can’t break in with something hot, hot, hot, chances are you’re not. Art for art’s sake vanished thirty years ago, was found again briefly by selective, legitimate small publishers, only to die this last year along with the economy. I dressed myself up, and as I pull together my next few novels, I’m proudly prostituting myself. I’m a literary whore. I’m targeting what will give me and my talent the best chance there is at breaking in. The art (for me) is in the storytelling, and I can tell a good story. I’m aiming for what’s hot, hot, hot! That’s my truth, and I earned it.

　

Most of what I read on the Web is the same shit warmed over, served as truth. Only you can decide what is what and why. Agent blogs are good for the truth, but I suggest you boil down a whole lot of them, and most of their posts into a few very simple truths. Because there are only a few simple truths to be found.

　

Know the mechanics.

　

They want hot, hot, hot!

　

Don’t be boring. Get into your phrases and verb strong. New ways to say the same old things, so express yourself. That there is the art, and your voice.

　

Query with strength, making your synopsis count.

　

Follow their guidelines.

　

Concentrate on one genre, and make the big idea behind everything easy to serialize.

Most authors have between five and fifteen books under their belts before they get offers of representation. I expect that to become ten to twenty books, if not more. You might get lucky the first time out, but don’t count on it. However, once you make it you can cash in on all that hard work.

　

The seven above truths are better than gold. They are all that counts, agent and publisher alike. All there is. Put a few years under your belt, continue to read all you can get your hands on, and you will know that these simple to understand seven truths are the literary alpha and omega. See you next week.

What I need is to get things moving on Central Park, in the Fall. I need to make one last pass, another polish edit, and shine it up right. I’ll update my acknowledgments page and order forms to reflect the here and now, plus current prices. Then I need to develop two PDF files. One for the paperback, one for the e-book. I’m not paying anyone for self-publishing. Never again. There are some great services out there, like I said, that seems to be drawing readers, and they don’t cost a damn thing. I need to research the service first, use it, and find out if it works. That’s where marketing comes into play. I need to work on my marketing skills, pointing readers to the right places to purchase my novels. That’s a whole new set of skills, needing to be developed. If I can pull it all together, it should work, but that’s also the rub. It might not work, and I’ll need to decide then if it’s the service, or me. Three times I’ve been ripped off by service providers. Three times too many.

　

Nothing is going to happen for me until I get my novel ready to go. Where am I on that? I did a test PDF file and learned I needed to tweak the formatting. I indent a quarter inch, not the standard half inch. I think the text looks better that way. I’m updating my acknowledgments and the order forms now. Once all this is done, I need to go line by line to see what the formatting does on the finished file, and if I need to, fix things. Once done, making sure my book is up to submission specs, and the fonts used are properly embedded, I’ll self-publish one novel in two formats, using multiple sites.

　

I need to be 100% with my book. It must read as if it was professionally produced, every step of the way. That takes time. I’ll make that time, rather than embarrass myself, again. I have no choice in this, I must be 100% with my book. See you next week.