Boy, you’d think after a book release, I could bother to make some blog posts. Truth be told, I’ve been working on guest posts. Lots of articles about mermaids. Don’t worry, I’ll backtrack them. In the meantime, here’s a special bonus: the Merm-8 soundtrack. I usually do albums for my big stories. You can listen to the playlist on Grooveshark or YouTube. Sting – If I Ever Lose My Faith In You Lifehouse – Halfway Gone Carolina Liar – I’m Not Over Fall Out Boy – This Ain’t a Scene, It’s an Arms Race Closure – Look Out Below Audioslave – Original Fire Basement Jaxx – Rendez-Vu The Pussycat Dolls –…
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Merm-8 Is Released
What’s that? You say you have nothing to read? Well, here’s something that might catch your fancy. Why, yes, this is my book. Merm-8 is a book that you can purchase and also buy. It’s mostly used for entertainment, but if you have some bytes on your flash memory drive that need feeling, then this will absolutely keep them occupied with important ones and zeroes. But say you do want to use it for its intended purpose. What would you find if you open the book? Well, many of the same words and letters you’re used to. Just in a different order. But if you read the words in that order,…
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Two Days to Merm-8 Release!
If I was a smarter man, I would have planned this better. Have some kind of countdown extravaganza to the release of my book. You know, the one that I’ve been working on this whole time? The whole purpose of this eight-year-old blog? You’d think I have a bigger promotion or anticipation around it. Instead I’m playing Netflix spoiler roulette. (I got up to six without regret, and figured I should stop there, since that’s as many bullets as in a revolver). Also, I’m saving up some of my mermaid content for my guest blog articles. And of course, I’ll be posting links to those here, when they come up. I…
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Keeping You Informed On the Real Business of Getting Published
Well, here’s what’s going on lately. The cover got finalized after seven revisions. You know me, I believe there are only two ways to attract a reader to a book — word of mouth and the cover. Especially for small presses. It’s about the only way to advertise what the book is about. Ironic that you have to use an image to promote text (but there’s a reason they say a picture is worth a thousand words). I started getting cover art mockups a few weeks ago. The first was just a simple picture of a mermaid. I said, well this doesn’t illustrate what the book is really about. It…
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Merm-8
Oh, why, what’s this? Oh, and this?
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Final Edits, Cover Art, and a Third Draft Finished
Urge to kill… fading… fading… fadi-RISING! …fading… Today I finished the third draft of Merm-8 Defender (damn, I keep mistaking it for that), which means pretty much the content is set. There’s one sequence of events that still bothers me, maybe because it’s so morphable. I keep thinking it can morph into something better. It used to be another scene but it slowly changed into something different to accommodate characters. But it still fits the template. But at some point, you just have to give up. It’s the novel as a whole that people will remember, not one scene in the back. This looks a little like a ten-year-old boy’s…
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Second Edits on Merm-8
Second edits are back now. I was worried that now that the semantics and punctuation were out of the way, she’d really bring down the hammer and start asking for revisions on scene orders, characterization, big fundamental things. But no, they were actually easier (thanks to the fact that all that stuff was now out of the way). Didn’t get past the contentious POV scene though. Which was fine. I gave it some thought and realized, you know, she does have a point. Stylistically, it just doesn’t work. Story-wise, I think it does. But I’m the author, and there are more readers than authors. As much as I think it…
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The Experience of First Edits
Well, now things are moving on Merm-8. I’ve gotten contacted by my editor and promotions specialist. Weird how nothing for nine months, and now a bunch of stuff is all due at the same time. And meanwhile I’m 75% totally complete with the next novel. Lovely planning. The edits themselves weren’t bad. Mostly changing hyphens to em-dashes, worrying about commas. Interestingly, the editor is choosing to insert “and then” or “then” instead of eliminating them entirely. I thought was bad times. But I guess every publishing house’s style is different. For other things, I deferred to the editor ninety percent of the time. Like not using all caps for emphasis…
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My First Shameless Plug
If you live somewhere in Minnesota, and will be around Chanhassen, I will be reading from Merm-8 at the Author’s Fair on Sunday, Dec. 8 from 2 – 5 PM. I will be one of twelve authors reading and selling works. Except me. I don’t have anything to sell yet. I’m reading from a book that won’t be out for more than a year. All I’ve got is some bookmarks from “Live and Let Undead” and promotional flyers I made myself.
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My Contract for Merm-8
Well, if you don’t know I got offered a contract by a small press publisher for Merm-8. Applause now. It’ll be in print and e-book form, although I don’t think you’ll be seeing it in Barnes & Noble. But without an agent, it’s up to me, myself, and I (and the good people of various writing message boards) to review the contract and make sure they aren’t crossing my i’s and dotting my t’s. And they’re not. To be honest, reviewing a contract is not as scary as I thought. It’s worded in a way that I can understand it. Granted it’s no huge contract with a huge publishing company…
