The Writing Life

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I have to admit, I’m a little torn right now. Been looking at the sales figures for May so far (yeah, I know. It’s early in the month), and naturally there’s been a bit of a drop-off in interest for The Coppersmith. Jefferson’s Road: The Spirit of Resistance continues to plod along in the single digits, as it has been doing for some time now.

Thing is, everytime I release a new book, I get a sales bump. It’s only been a few weeks since I released The Coppersmith, and I am tempted to release Patriots and Tyrants ahead of schedule, if only to kick that sales bump into gear. 

I’ve told myself to wait till the end of the month, but I’m questioning that wisdom. Wouldn’t it be better to release the books I have available a little closer together, say two to three weeks apart instead of four or five?

The downside of that is not having any real feedback yet from some of the people I’ve offered it to. I don’t know how significant that will be, and in all fairness, I have gotten positive reviews on it from my Wednesday Night Writer’s group as it is, so it’s not as though I’m tossing something half-baked out there.

Of course, what I really should be doing is knuckling down on Eye of Darkness. I have been working on it, of course, but I’m nowhere’s near done. Right now I’ve got slightly less than 34K words, so not quite to the halfway mark. But I have to do better if I’m going to have it ready by June.

I dunno. Maybe I should just stop looking at sales figures…

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I’m doing a bit of an experiment. So far, I’m ignoring conventional wisdom that says an author should stick to only one genre, and build his brand accordingly.

At this point, I’m writing Christian action/adventure, political suspense, psychothrillers, and fantasy. And there may be others as I get used to cranking out more words (I have a sci-fi in my file drawer that’s asking for a rewrite. But right now it’ll have to take a number!)

What do they have in common? Simply this: I write the kinds of stories that I like to read. Like most readers, I have divergent tastes. I don’t like just one genre, but a plethora of different stuff. So why shouldn’t a writer produce more than one type of book?

True, when I pick up a John Grisham book, I’m expecting a legal thriller (not something like The Painted House). But that’s because of how Grisham has branded himself.

I don’t want to brand myself as just one kind of author. I’m using my own name here, and I want people to know all the different kind of books I write from the beginning. That’ll be my brand.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if it works or not.

Twenty Days, Twenty Four Thousand Words

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That’s how much I’ve written on this latest novel. It’s called Eye of Darkness, and it’s a fantasy novel. Picture something along the lines of J.R.R. Tolkien meets Thomas Harris.

The story is told of Lucas Veritatus, an ex-Sheriff of the North Country with only one eye (one human eye, that is). He has been asked to investigate a series of  missing children in the Outlands, a no-man’s land of thieves and swindlers outside the jurisdiction of his former province. He doesn’t rely on magick, but he is surrounded by magical creatures (witches, faeries, werewolves, dragons, etc.), and he must use what we would consider normal investigative techniques to solve the abductions and the murders associated with them.

Anyway, I started this story twenty days ago, and I just haven’t been able to stop since. I’m averaging about 1,200 words a day, which isn’t much, but it’s a lot faster than what I’m used to. At this pace, I should have it done by the end of May. June at the latest. It’s an absolute blast to write. I haven’t simply enjoyed writing in a while, but now I’m having fun again.

I read the first chapter to my writer’s group the other day. They loved it. A nice break from the dystopia of Jefferson’s Road.

On that note, I do expect to have Patriots and Tyrants ready to release in May. I have that chapter to rewrite, but I’m satisfied enough with the rest of it, that once I get it done, I’m going to go ahead and put it out there. Look for it at the end of May (and perhaps Eye of Darkness by the end of June?). I’m on such a roll!

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The Coppersmith is finally available through Smashwords, and coming soon to Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Sony, Apple, I-Tunes, Diesel, and any other e-reader I can think of. Also, I’ll have the paperback version available through Createspace just as soon as I can afford the $39 it takes to buy the premium purchase.

Anyway, it feels good to have it out there. I’ve made an update on Mobile reads, and I’ll do the same on Kindleboards just as soon as it appears on Amazon. Still waiting for the final approval on that one, though.

And now, on to bigger and better things!

Oh, here’s the link to find it!

The Coppersmith

And This Is Why I Seek Critiques…

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Real tough critique of Patriots and Tyrants today at my writer’s group. I’m grateful for it. Still reeling, of course, but grateful. Thing is, I knew this going in. I knew this chapter was an info dump, but rather than do something about it, I delayed and chose to let the critique group tear into it.

In all fairness, I’ve received nothing but praise from this group for the last fifty to sixty chapters. I’m deliberately including the chapters from Spirit of Resistance because they were loving the story that far back. So I’m certainly due for a criticism.

Of course, all that previous praise went to my head, and now I’ve got the emotional gunk that comes with a tough review. Not a big problem, though. I’m a big boy. I can handle it (cries into coffee).

The real problem, of course, is figuring out how to fix this chapter. It’s integral to the whole narrative of Jefferson’s Road. Naturally, it’s the chapter on Cultural Marxism, the one that explains the whole justification for the coming war. It’s central to the entire series – if readers don’t understand Cultural Marxism, they won’t understand why the Civil War is necessary (I’m speaking fictionally, of course).  But now I have to find a new way to tell the story of Cultural Marxism without resorting to an annoying info dump.

I’m toying with a prolonged dialogue between Peter Baird and the members of the militia campground he’s just met, which means that not only do I have to rewrite the chapter, I also have to expand  and probably add a new one as well. That’s okay, of course. Patriots and Tyrants feels a little lean right now anyway.

My natural instinct is to cut away what doesn’t work, but this time I genuinely can’t do that. I want this information out there. And the story isn’t quite long enough as it is. So adding is the solution, not cutting. Changing the lecture Peter gives to a dialogue will do that, certainly, but I also have the arduous task of keeping it interesting and active-less cerebral than it is now.

I can do this, but I do feel a little depressed about it right now. Oh well. I’ve got two weeks before the next group. That’s time enough to fix it and print out a new set of chapters.

On a related note, I finished the edits to The Coppersmith yesterday, and I spent the bulk of my morning typing them in. I’d hoped to get the rest of the changes in before the end of today, but it doesn’t look like I’ll make it. Frustrating. Once I finally get all the changes in, I have to find someone willing to give it a read and give me honest feedback. ‘Course, I need the same thing for Patriots and Tyrants, and I can only take two chapters at a time to my crit group. Just not sure who I can go to.

And in my heart, I really just want to spend more time exploring this new world I’ve created and the characters who inhabit it. Editing and rewriting is boring! Oh well. I’ll man up and get it done.

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It’s been awhile since I’ve written fantasy – a couple of decades, to be precise – and I’ve forgotten how much I love it. This new series I’m working on is a bit of a psychological breather for me from the darkness of Jefferson’s Road, which is kinda crazy because it’s got a darkness all its own.

I came up with the idea about a month ago, driving back to the house I work at after dropping off one of my guys at his parents’ house. I took Lake Road back, and was treated to a beautiful full moon glistening on the water. I have to say again how marvelous it is to live where I do. Just being able to see the incredible blues and greens and whitecaps on the water from my front window is a daily blessing. Anyway, as I enjoyed this scenic respite, I began thinking of the different kinds of stories I’d developed over the years. Writing a psychothriller like The Coppersmith is very different from writing fantasies about elves and wizards and dragons, etc.

That’s when it hit me: why not combine the two? Imagine a Sheriff in some fantasy land (think “Sheriff of Nottingham” type Sheriff) who uses a skill set resembling forensics to solve crimes while being surrounded by magical creatures. His forensic skills would be a magic all their own to those used to relying on incantations and spells.

So I’ve started the book – as yet untitled – and my lead character, Lucas, is an ex-Sheriff with one eye. His other eye he keeps hidden behind a patch, because it has been enchanted. He can scry with it, but only if he uses the blood of a victim. Moreover, he is no longer Sheriff because of it, for the king in the land issued an edict banning all sorcery from the realm (for political reasons, etc.). He still serves his king, and has to resist the urge to use an ability others might crave, because of the personal cost to his soul every time he does so.

Now imagine this Sheriff is tasked to finding a serial killer in this magic land, while all around him the townsfolk are blaming the magical creatures, such as faeries or witches or what-not. That’ll give you an idea of what I’m putting together.

I’ll post a suitable excerpt as soon as I come up with one. At the moment, I’m near the end of chapter three and still loving it.

And, of course, I’m still editing Patriots and Tyrants as well as preparing The Coppersmith for release this month. And writing The Tree of Liberty, too. And finishing The Elixir of Life. Yes, I really do intend to get all this done!

Updated March Sales Figures

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So here are the numbers for March, the first month that Spirit of Resistance is available in print: 11 e-books and 12 p-books. Total, so far: 71 books since last July. This is 57 electronic and 14 print, and does not include the 61 sample downloads from Smashwords where people did not pay.

Admittedly, the sales aren’t nearly as good as what I’d hoped for. Broken down by sales channel, this is what it looks like:

Amazon 42 $93.16
Barnes & Noble 1 $1.28
Sony 9 $14.64
Kobo 3 $4.97
Apple 4 $7.24
Smashwords 2 $4.61
e-store 10 $50.12

The Amazon number includes four paperback sales as well. If, however, we look at the aggregate sales since the beginning, we see this:



Plotting this on a trendline gives me this hope:

Still, the solution to earning decent money from this is going to come from more books driving more sales to each other. And I’ve already got the strategies in place to pull that off. In summary, it’s not as good as I’d hoped, but certainly better than it’s been. And it’s going to be a long climb before we reach the tipping point.

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This is going to take a little longer than I thought. Editing The Coppersmith, that is. My big frustration – going as far back as 2006 when I first finished the book, is that my characters just don’t come off strong enough. The main problem is with the main character – Janelle Becker. She’s just not compelling, I’m afraid.

I’ve started giving her a problem – hinting at something dark within her past that gives her panic attacks now, but the problem is that I haven’t fully told her story within the novel – and in order to do so, I’m going to have to radically rewrite these parts of the narrative.

Anyway, based on a dream I had just before waking up this morning (Hey, it’s when I do my best thinking!), I’ve decided to remove her from being an FBI agent, and just have her be an FBI consultant. This will give me the option of removing her from the investigative “heavy lifting,” and allow me to explore the more darker aspects of her personality – which all center around fear of abandonment, etc., something that will hamstring her from really being able to solve this investigation. It will still pivot on being able to identify the killer through the Bible, which is a wonderful device in the story, but her fears need to get worse as she gets closer to catching the killer.

So I’m going to continue with the basic edits I’ve been doing right along, and then I’m going to have to go back through the story, identify all the parts where Janelle is actively interacting or reacting, and rewrite those to reflect her darker character.

This isn’t going to be easy.

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Oh I’ve been busy lately. Last night I found two additional e-book reader forums, and I’ve been actively posting on both, as well as breathing new life into my presence on Kindleboards.com.

The two other forums are mobilereads.com and booksummit.com. Also, I’ve posted a pair of adds on Bookbarista.com for both the e-book and the print book.

In the meantime, I’ve collected a list of some 275 book review blogs that I have to start culling through – ’cause not all of them will read my genres, of course – before contacting them about doing a tour. That’ll be fun! Of course, I’m hoping to have The Coppersmith finished and uploaded before then, and maybe Patriots and Tyrants as well (if possible). I don’t want to wait too long, but I know I have to have more material available.

As of April 1, I will check again to see how the sales of The Spirit of Resistance are coming along, and then we’ll have a better sense how this is all taking off. It’s quite a bit of work though, I gotta tell ya! (Still, I’m loving it!)

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Now that’s a cover! I’ve spent a few hours now tinkering around with various ideas for The Coppersmith‘s cover art, and I think I have a winner. I’ve uploaded it below. Let me know what you think:

Likely cover art for The Coppersmith

Now that I’ve got this out of the way, I can get back to editing the book to have it ready for release, soon. My wife still thinks I should try and release this traditionally. Great to know she still believes in me, but I’m convinced that I need to bring these titles straight to you, my readers, rather than trying to go through a middle man. But if it picks up and starts to sell really well… I guess then we’ll see.

Anyway, this story isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s a gripping, edgy thriller about modern day martyrdom. Like always, I’ve kept it reasonably clean, but it’s still quite violent. Somehow, toning that down feels wrong not only for the story, but for those who suffer as Christians. Anyway, I hope you’ll get a chance to enjoy it, soon.