The Key To a Book Deal? Luck, and Perseverance

I remember years ago when I was still a reporter for a small rag in town that I was asked to interview local author Kate Collins who had just released the 13th book in her ongoing mystery series (Nightshade on Elm Street I believe it was). I was thrilled with the assignment! It was partly because it's always nice to hear a fellow author hold forth about their work and process, but it was also because I wanted to talk to someone who was clearly more successful in the book racket than I was. I had the same burning question that I've heard asked in hundred different panels at a dozen different conventions now.

How did you do it?

Seriously, you got 13 of these, and it's not your only series!

 

The answer Ms. Collins gave was as honest as it was disappointing. All these years later, though, I can vouch for its veracity. None of us like hearing this, and none of us want to believe it, but the sooner you do, the sooner you'll be able to move forward with your career.

It's luck. That's all there is to it. All you have to do is make sure that you, or your manuscript, happen to be in the right place at the right time to close a deal, and you've got it made.

For her, it had simply been putting her manuscript in the right hands by pure chance. She'd submitted a romance novel to Viking more than ten years ago at the time of the interview, and it just so happened to catch the editor's eye while they were looking for the specific flavor she'd penned. It wasn't the font she used, the typeface she wrote in, or some trick of phrasing in her cover letter that made her stand out as more worthy of being read. It was just that she happened to get plucked off the pile that day.

Of all the authors I've spoken with over the years, this is the one commonality that all of us share. When someone asks how we got our books published it was never the culmination of a carefully enacted plan like something out of Ocean's 11. Without fail it's always been because of some random quirk of chance. Someone we talked to at a party, a friend of a friend who heard about what we did, or in my case impressing the right people at a panel.

It's Honestly How I Got My Book Contract

For those of you who haven't seen it yet, my new novel was released at the beginning of the month! It's a mean streets noir story about an alley cat from the Bronx who gets caught up in a pissing contest over turf rights on the south side. At first Leo's just there to help out a church mouse named Charity who's caught up in trouble, but the deeper he digs, the less sense it all makes. When all the twists and turns play out, though, he finds out why a ruined church has suddenly become... Marked Territory!

Come on... you know you wanna check it out!

I finished writing the manuscript for this novel toward the end of last summer, and I was letting it cool for a bit before I went over it and got it ready for submissions. And it was last November that I happened to be on a panel at Windy Con with Joy Ward and Walt Boyes, who in addition to being long-term authors in their own right also happen to work for Eric Flint's Ring of Fire Press. This wasn't our first acquaintance either; I'd met Joy a year before and we'd chatted after a panel I was on, which put us on smiling-and-nodding-in-the-halls terms.

 

Con folks will know exactly what I mean.

All three of us were on a panel talking about how to start your career as a writer. The three of us, along with Richard Knaak (whose books you should check out, by the by) were going back and forth, answering questions, giving advice, etc. We had a surprisingly large audience for a small con, and we did our best to just give them the facts. It was after another panel that I happened to be on with Walt and Joy that we found some time to talk about what we were working on. I casually mentioned that I'd just finished this novel that was, "A traditional noir detective story, with all the violence and intrigue, but the whole cast are street animals in New York City."

I was talking for about 30 seconds, just pleased to have some folks who understood what it was like to work on something that was simultaneously difficult, and sort of silly. I remember Walt just nodded, gave me a smile, and said, "So, when are you going to let me take a look at it?"

That was it. No submitting to a slush pile, no going through channels, no inquiries about an agent or asking to see my previous work. I just happened to mention a project that intrigued him, and both Walt and Joy had heard me talk about my experiences on the same panel they'd been on, and so he decided to take a risk on me. I speed-edited the manuscript in a week or so, and got it into Walt's hands as fast as I could.

The rest, as they say, is history.

 

But You Have To Keep Rolling The Dice

They'll come up boxcars eventually!

So it's all about luck? That's the secret?

Well, yes and no.

As I've said so often on this blog, it takes a lot of work to become an overnight success. It's possible that your very first reading on open mic night, your very first time sitting on a panel at a convention, or the first after party you go to, you're going to make that connection that sparks an opportunity. Like picking up the dice, and rolling double sixes straight out of the gate, it can totally happen.

That's not likely to happen, though. But the upside is that every event you go to, every panel you volunteer for, and every time you sit at a table in a dealer's hall or a signing event, that's one more chance for you to meet people. One more chance for your paths to cross with new nodes on your network, and for an opportunity to present itself.

The one piece of advice I can give, though, is this; don't try to stack the deck in your favor. Don't be nice to someone hoping they can introduce you to their agent, or chat them up just to get them to look at your book. That sort of thing happens all the time, and it's exhausting. There's also no surer way to completely shoot yourself in the foot, and practically guarantee that the person you're hoping will help you is going to slam the door in your face... potentially literally.

Just make connections with people. Be polite, be professional, be respectful, and just enjoy their company. When you take all that pressure off yourself (and more importantly off the people you're talking to), that's when you're much more likely to find an opportunity drops out of the sky, and falls right in your lap.

Want To Get All of My Updates?

At the insistence of several of my readers, I have finally decided to start a newsletter! The current plan is to put out one every Monday to offer a recap of all my articles, blogs, books, supplements, and other projects so that my readers never miss a trick.

You can sign up here, or scroll down to the bottom of the page (if you're on the web version, rather than the mobile version of my blog). Hope to see you there, and make sure to tell your friends! The first issue is coming out next week at time of writing, and I'm hoping to get at least 50 names on the list by the weekend.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

For Morality To Have Meaning, It Has To Show Up On The Page

When we design our characters, we tend to give them at least some basic morals. The more page time a character gets, and the more high-pressure the situations they're put into, the more their morality comes into play. However, a character's morality is kind of like their superpowers... if you don't actually see them at work, then it's kind of tough to take them on faith.

Which is why you need at least one establishing shot before the stakes get raised.

Come on, how many powers is this guy gonna pull out of his ass, huh?

For The Audience, Seeing is Believing

If you're a comic book fan, you could probably name a dozen characters off the top of your head who have some kind of code that dictates their actions. Characters like Batman and Daredevil, for example, make a big deal out of the fact that they don't kill people (in their traditional comics, anyway). But for the audience to really accept that as part of their characters, we've had to see it in action to establish this as part of the characters' canons... and to understand what it means when they look like they might break that rule.

And now, some context for why this is a serious moment.

For those who haven't read the comic, or watched any of the film/TV versions of the character, Matt Murdock was blinded by a strange chemical that enhanced all his other senses to superhuman degrees. Training himself to fight while putting himself through law school, Matt becomes an interesting dichotomy. On the one hand, he is a lawyer who fights for the rights of people in court, while on the other hand he's a vigilante who solves problems with his fists. He's a devout Catholic, but he dresses like the devil. He truly believes people can change, and that they can be better, but there comes a time when a hard line must be drawn in the sand.

The fact that Matt doesn't kill people, even people who have done more than enough to deserve it, is a big deal. It's played up time and time again through his stories, and it's one of his big rules... second only to the fact that he doesn't use guns, even though his enhanced senses would make him an unparalleled marksman with some training.

This is why, when we find Daredevil alone in a hospital room with one of his major villains Bullseye (who is completely helpless), and he's holding a gun, it immediately lets the reader know something has gone deeply wrong.

In the issue in question, Daredevil relates a story about a little boy who admired him for who he was, and what he did. How this boy tried to stand up for himself, and to protect others, but he did it by grabbing his dad's revolver, and killing someone. A death that Daredevil now feels is on his hands. And the gun he's holding is the very one that was used in the shooting earlier. Then, just to drive the point home about how dark the place he's gone is, he keeps randomly putting the barrel against Bullseye's head, and pulling the trigger. Time and again we get nothing but a click.

It's not until the end of the story that we realize the gun was empty that whole time. But watching a man dressed like the devil play Russian roulette with his arch-nemesis isn't what gives that story its impact... it's knowing how utterly outside the bounds of the character's morality this situation seems to be at first glance. And even once the truth is revealed, understanding that Daredevil has tiptoed right up to the line, and may have gone past the limit where he could look in the mirror and honestly say he's doing heroic things when he puts that mask on, leaves the reader a little shaken.

 

But without that context, it would just look like grim for the sake of grim, and it would have zero impact whatsoever.

Give Us An Establishing Shot

In order for a character's moral code to play into the story, you need to let the audience see it in action. Maybe it's the vigilante who stops a murderer from falling to his death because everyone needs to get their day in court. It might be a character who tries to talk someone down who's hurt them, or who is clearly dangerous. Even something small, like being understanding when something goes wrong while the lead is under pressure, gives the audience a glimpse into who this character is when the chips are down.

That way, later on, it informs our feelings about whether or not something is properly dramatic. Is our tough private eye who doesn't carry a gun willing to take the shot when it seems he has no other option to save an innocent bystander? Will our hero forgive someone who's wronged him so deeply, or will he cling to the grudge he's nurtured for so long? How far will the protagonist go, and what lines will they cross, to get what they want?

If we don't have any frame of reference for these questions before we hit that point in the story, then nothing they do is going to be shocking or impactful. It's like telling the punchline of a joke without the setup... confusing, and unlikely to get the reaction you were hoping for.

If You're Looking For An Example...

This is a conversation I had, at least in part, while I was writing Marked Territory. Because out protagonist, the Maine coon heavy Leo, seems like a pretty decent feline. He tries to help where he can, and he isn't afraid to throw down when it's over something that matters. But when he gets pushed, they realize too late that there comes a point where an alley cat is going to do what comes naturally... and that isn't pretty for anyone involved.

Seriously, if you don't have your copy yet, you should get one today!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my short story collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

A Book For Cat Lovers With a Taste For Noir, "Marked Territory" is Finally Out!

I've been sitting on this news for a while, but now that my new book has officially dropped it is time for me to tell you all about it. And if this is the first you're hearing about my novel Marked Territory from Eric Flint's Ring of Fire Press, then settle in for a bit... you're going to want to listen to this pitch!

Got your ears open?

At it's core, Marked Territory is a noir mystery thriller about a back alley heavy getting roped into someone else's problems. And the deeper he digs, the less things start adding up. So far so Bogart, right? The difference is that in this book our protagonist is a Maine coon named Leo. And before you start thinking that this is one of those books about animals solving human crimes, the rest of the cast are New York City street beasts, too. From Charity the church mouse, to Ringo Longtail the current mover and shaker among the south side's raccoons, every member of the cast is an animal of one variety or other.

The humans are still there, it is NYC after all, but they're just background characters. Sort of like how dogs and cats are treated in most other novels; there, but rarely noteworthy to the meat of the narrative.

And for those looking for the specifics, he's the back cover material:

"Leo does his best to keep his whiskers out of other people’s business. He’s perfectly content to spend his days stretched out in the sun, or wandering through his little patch of the Bronx. So when a south side mouse comes to him with a sob story about a pack of hound dogs trying to run her and her friends out of the abandoned church they call home, his first instinct is to walk away.

But why would a mouse be desperate enough to call on an alley cat for help? The raccoons on the south side have their paws in the mix, he discovers, and any deal the raccoons are tied up in is guaranteed to get messy. Add in the fact that the dog pack seems to have come out of nowhere, and Leo’s got more questions than answers.

Curiosity killed the cat, as the saying goes, but Leo isn’t going to stop digging until he figures out exactly why St. Bart’s has become… Marked Territory!"

Wait a Minute... This Sounds Really Familiar...

If you'd a longtime reader of mine, this might sound like a familiar premise to you. You're not imagining things, either. You see, Leo first came onto the scene a few years back in my short story "Stray Cat Strut" in the collection From a Cat's View. In that story an old shelter mate of Leo's named Tigger calls in a favor to get the big bruiser to help an uptown cat find her missing sister. It's not a job he particularly wants to do, but a favor is a favor, so he starts digging... and uncovers something particularly sinister going on in a bad part of town.

For those who've read it, don't you fret... the Persian will be back again in future stories. And if you're not sure what I'm talking about, I'd recommend getting a copy of this anthology as well so you can get the complete history of Leo and his adventures to-date.

You have not heard the last of me...

So... Is This The Start of a Series?

Ideally, I'd like it to be! People who know me as a writer know that I'm not really big on writing series, but I've got plenty of future cases for Leo to take up if a tomcat enforcer with a bottle brush tail and a chip on his shoulder is something the readers out there would like to see.

But, as with anything else, what's really going to decide if that happens is the audience! So if this is the sort of thing you'd like to see me develop and expand on, make sure you get your copy of Marked Territory as soon as you can! Then after you give it a read, drop a rating and a review on it, and don't forget to tell your friends and family to give it a read as well.

Because if the demand is high enough then I'll have no other choice than to give you what you want, will I?

Also, for those who are still on the fence Amanda Lyons has a lovely review up at PetLife!

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

To Help Show Instead of Tell, Nix Your Internal Monologues

One of the oldest pieces of writing advice out there is, "Show, don't tell." If you're a writer you've probably seen this in every style guide, heard it from most of your creative writing teachers, and seen it mentioned in blogs just like this one. The problem is that this writing proverb (because that's really what it is) doesn't offer a lot of concrete ways to actually do what it's suggesting.

As such I thought I'd make a suggestion for this week... cut out your internal monologues. Or, if you can't cut them out entirely, keep them short, simple, and to-the-point.

I remember it was 1917 the first time I heard that name...

Don't Make Your Book Feel Like a Recipe Blog

Since quarantine began I, like everyone else, have been doing far more cooking than I ever actually did before. And since I have a sweet tooth I wanted to find something tasty I could make without causing my waistline to swell, since I'm doing home workouts instead of going to the gym these days. When I put up a recipe in Creamy Yogurt Jello: An Ideal Dessert For Those Looking To Lose Weight, all the commenters who saw it said the same thing.

"This looks really good. Thank you for not putting up some story about your family tradition when all we wanted was the recipe!"

 

My grandmother first taught me this when I was 17 and dating my first girlfriend...

I had seen the memes and jokes about how any time you try to find a simple recipe for homemade cornbread or peach cobbler that you always had to wade through paragraphs of fluff about how the author first learned to make this recipe as a child, or about some traumatic life event that gave birth to a new family tradition. I thought it was exaggerated... for those not used to searching through cooking blogs looking for recipes, there is no exaggeration. Several sites I visited literally had a "Skip To The Recipe" button on top that automatically bypassed 3/4 of the page to get to the part that mattered.

Internal monologues can end up like that; a big, bloated, ponderous read that might be interesting under the right circumstances, but which kills the pace and frustrates the reader.

 

Show Us The Reaction

The key thing about "Show, Don't Tell" is that it's about insinuation. It's when you paint the audience a picture, and lead them to draw conclusions. You do this through atmosphere, tone, and by narrating events that happen, but not by opening up someone's head and just giving the audience a Shakespearian aside.

Give you an example. Take the following exchange:

"Hey Jake," Marjorie said.

Oh God, I thought. She's talking to me... she's really talking to me! Be cool, don't worry, it's fine. Say something smooth. Don't stare! You're staring, shit, open your mouth and get it in gear!

 

"You mind if I get past you, here?" she asked.

"Huh?" I managed. "Oh, yeah, no problem."

That was smooth, guy. Real smooth.

Does this work? Sure, it conveys the sense of nervous panic of our protagonist screwing up a social interaction. It's clumsy, though, and it doesn't offer any nuance or set dressing... it's just telling the audience exactly what the lead is thinking in his own words.

For contrast, try the following.

"Hey Jake," Marjorie said.

My heart hammered, thumping in my ears. I swallowed, hoping it might quiet the noise in my head a bit. I turned, smiling, but when I tried to say something my mouth had gone completely dry. I coughed, trying to clear my throat.

"Sorry," I finally managed. "What do you need?"

"Could I get past you?" she said, pointing with one lacquered nail at the space just down the narrow hall.

"Huh?" I followed where she was pointing. I felt the flush creeping up my neck, and tried not to think about it. That just made it worse. "Oh, yeah, no problem."

This description is a little melodramatic, but it gets the point across. Our protagonist, whoever he is, comes completely undone when Marjorie is near him. But rather than just giving the audience the soundtrack of Jake's panicked mind, we get to see the reaction he has to her presence. We can make the connection easily enough without being told by Jake's own running monologue what he's thinking.

If You Need To Tell, Put It In Dialogue

Not every internal monologue is related to a social situation like this, though. Sometimes these monologues are used as a way to information dump important plot elements. Maybe it's the ghost story behind a particular abandoned house, a traumatic experience a character had as a child, or a complicated relationship they have with another character.

If you absolutely need to say something directly to the audience, try putting it in dialogue between two or more characters. It tends to make things flow a lot more organically, and you usually cut out a lot of needless detail when you force yourself to frame information in the context of speech.

Just have them talk... trust me, it works a lot better.

Take some of the following examples:

- "You're seriously not scared of this place, are you?" Jack asked. He held up his hands, wiggling his fingers and widening his eyes. "Who's that crossing my threshold? Whose blood do I smell?"

- I held up the report, frowning as I read over the pertinent details. "Rachel, they're not serious about this, are they? The suspect had 12 witnesses and a video call showing they were out of town. It's open and shut!"

- "Look, I know you and your dad have had your problems in the past," Jennie said. "But he's really tried to change. Just take the weekend, and give him a chance?"

Each of these gives the reader a clue to the nature of what's going on in the story, without bogging them down with unnecessary details. Because sure, the full ghost story about Bloody Charlie might be important to the narrative overall, but it will be way better if it's told in dialogue around a campfire, or during a power outage in a different scene. The full police report being referenced might have a lot of names, times, and information, but if it's not pertinent right then and there you don't need to have the detective mentally read it for the audience. The character with the rough relationship with their dad might have been abused or neglected, or just had a falling out over differences of opinion... unless it's absolutely necessary to give full details for context in that moment (and it almost never is), just tell the reader the important bit (Jake is scared of a ghost story, the case against a character is very flimsy, there's a bad history at work), and move on.

Think of It Like a Play

If you've never written for stage and screen, it's an activity that can put a fine edge on your craft. Because you have to use set details, lighting, direction, action, and dialogue to put things on display for the audience. Sometimes characters will monologue, but often you need the audience to realize deeper implications by having them witness expressions, tone, emotion, and behavior.

That sort of thing is a crash course in showing, instead of telling.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my short story collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

To Survive in Today's Markets Readers Need To Care About You (Not Just Your Books)

There's this weird habit that almost every writer I've ever met has where we put our work out on center stage while keeping ourselves in the shadows as much as possible. The idea, from what I've managed to gather, is that writers as a whole want to tell a story without ever actually talking to anyone. Unfortunately, that's a good way of shooting yourself in the foot in today's climate.

 

Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain!

Because when people make a purchase, they aren't just in it for your story. They want that, don't get me wrong, but it is equally important to readers and fans these days that they know their money is going to you, personally. And it helps if they like you as a person, before they get into whether they appreciate what it is you're making.

Don't Be Afraid To Step Out of The Shadows

I touched on this back in Your Brand is Just as Important as Your Books, but there's something that got lost in the messaging on that article. Because while it's true that people may choose to stop buying your books because of the positions you take and statements you make as a creator (Rowling, Card, and it's looking like Martin if things keep going the way they're going), what I didn't say is the reverse is also true. People may be drawn to you as a creator first, and then discover they like your books second.

I have found thee worthy of mine patronage, and skilled as well.

Part of this is about people being far more concerned with where their money is going, and what causes it's being used to support these days. However, another part of it is that when you establish a connection with your fans and readers they are more likely to want to invest in you. It sounds counterintuitive, and it goes against the grain for a lot of writers. We want to be rewarded because we wrote a good story, after all, and it feels somehow backwards if readers are supporting us because they like who we are and what we stand for instead of the thing we've created. We want to be paid for the art we made, not just because of who we are.

Something that's worth keeping in mind, though, is that the money is no less real or genuine because it came from someone who wants to support you as a creator. If someone hears about you in an interview and wants to sign up to your Patreon because they liked the vibes you were putting out, you still get that check at the end of the month.

At the end of the day the reason why people choose to support you is less important than the fact that they have chosen to support you in the first place.

Don't Be Shy

In a perfect world we could just write out books, put them on the market, and find our audience through the proper application of key words and hash tags. However, the idea that any author has ever actually gotten successful by just sitting back and letting their books do the talking is a fairy tale. As it's so often said, Dickens was constantly doing public readings to hustle his books. Shakespeare was a workaday pen monkey, rather than some brilliant mind setting the mold for centuries to come. And a majority of the well-known authors we see on the market today? Well, you should ask how large the apparatus is for getting them reviewed, interviewed, and out in front of the public, as well as how much effort goes into creating their social media persona.

Because writing good books is definitely important, but it is far from the only thing you have to do in order to be successful.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Get Weird With Your Aesthetic (And Watch Your World Grow in Style and Uniqueness)

Before we get started, I wanted to let everyone know that this pandemic has been keeping me in the kitchen almost as much as it has at my work desk. I'm contemplating sharing some of my experiences/discoveries, if folks would like to see them. The first in the potential series is Creamy Yogurt Jello: An Ideal Dessert For Those Looking To Lose Weight.

Anyway, onto this week's topic!

How Weird is Your World?

Something I've realized the older I've gotten is that so many settings in sci-fi and fantasy feel like they're conforming to an invisible style guide. It is, quite honestly, one reason I stopped reading high fantasy almost entirely. There are only so many times I can pick up a book where the elves are patient and aloof, the dwarves are heavy-bearded Scotsmen, and everything is set in the same two miles of British countryside that Tolkien staked out so many decades ago. Mainstream science fiction fared better for me as a reader, but the trend still seemed to be to keep everything utilitarian and useful, which lent an air of accuracy to the space age, but which also tended to make everything look and feel... bland.

This might just be me getting old and griping, but I remember when I was first coming into genre fantasy as an eager consumer of stories everything was vibrant. Characters and settings were colorful, bizarre, and at times completely wild, and the sheer, full-throttled nonsense grabbed you by the hair and forced you to pay attention.

And now I'm going to talk about a kids' cartoon.

If you're not familiar with Thundercats as a property, let me sum it up for you. A spaceship full of alien cat people crashland on what is likely a far future, post-apocalyptic Earth, and try to make a new home. They transform their ship into a huge tower which is guarded by space-age weaponry. Their leader carries a magic sword and claw shield, and is counseled by the ghost of their dead patriarch. Their initial enemies are mutants from outer space, who fall under the influence of an undead mummified sorcerer who serves the ancient spirits of evil.

For those of you concerned I was ingesting illicit substances before I wrote that paragraph, I can assure you it is exactly as bat shit as it sounds. And this show was primarily written for children to sell action figures. Despite the occasionally cheesy dialogue, lessons about friendship, and the annoying nursemaid known as Snarf, the aesthetics (and occasionally grim undertones) of the show are absolutely fascinating from a world building perspective.

And it is far from the only example I can call to mind.

Strange Structures Built From Bizarre Blocks

In case you were wondering, Thundercats was not an exception by any stretch of the imagination when it came to unreal settings. Eternia, as a setting, is full of wizardry, laser rifles, beast men, ridable dinosaurs, villains with skulls for faces, and more! Dollar Store paperbacks with trashy sci-fi from the 70s gave us genetically-engineered super soldiers bodyguarding adventuring princesses while they tried to survive war zones on distant moons. The whole concept behind the Herculoids was a barbarian family and their bizarre pets fighting everything from mad scientists, to mutants, to invading robots.

Another example is the grim darkness of the far future, represented by the sprawling Warhammer 40,000 setting. It is filled with every kind of sci-fi and fantasy you could think to tell. It's got robot uprisings, techno-knights, alien empires, psychic wizards, war worlds, mech pilots, living machines from ancient days, giant space bugs, and the list goes on and on.

It only gets weirder the deeper you dig.

In fairness, there is more to the settings and stories I'm describing here than just their wacky worlds and unconventional aesthetics... but those are often the things that immediately arrest a viewer's attention long enough to get them to read the first few pages.

Because, to paraphrase what I once said to a client, "If your world has cyborg sky vikings dog fighting with frost dragons, that should be splashed across the cover instead of buried somewhere around page 298!"

Be Bold, Be Strange, Be Different

All of us reach back to the stories we read when we were younger when we first start writing. We paint in the patterns and colors we're familiar with as we learn the craft and figure out what makes our stories work (or not). But when it comes time to step out of the shadow, don't feel that you need to conform to the limits held by those who came before.

Tradition is just another word from the peer pressure of dead people. And while a lot of our favorite authors may still be among the living, don't let their works take the wheel out of your hands. It's your book, and you should feel to get as weird, wild, and strange with it as you want to!

Even better, if you find yourself asking, "But why would they do that?" then you can get some absolutely wild results that might end up being some of your favorite parts of your setting!

Why does the cowboy have a laser revolver? Perhaps the lens assemblies have a cool down time, so to provide multiple shots (and space out wear and tear) there are six of them in a weapon! Why is the sword the sidearm of choice for Korathan space pirates? Well, when you're taking a merchant ship that isn't built for battle, the last thing you want to do is blast a hole in the side of it and lose your precious cargo, so you've got to do things the old-fashioned way. If you think hard enough about it, you might be surprised at the answers you find.

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Craft of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my short story collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!

Writing a Book is an Investment, as Well as a Gamble

For those who don't follow my social media feeds, I complain about being broke a lot. I'm not currently in debt to my landlord, and I'm managing to hold things together as best I can while the pandemic rages, but I'm still well below the threshold for a lot of public aid programs. And while I'd love to suddenly have the fickle finger of the zeitgeist make me an overnight bestseller, until that happens I just keep chugging away and putting out as much content as I can (books, articles, blogs, and more) in the hopes that something gets traction.

What a lot of folks (particularly aspiring writers) don't seem to get, though, is that books are an investment. Something you write today might not catch on by the end of the month. It might not get popular till next month, next year, or even ever. Worse, the bigger the project is, and the more time and energy that goes into it, the more of a risk it is as an investment.

Smut projections look good... if you've got steampunk, off load it yesterday!

I wanted to talk about that this week. Because I've been getting dozens of ideas for novels while I've been staying home and out of circulation, but I also know that a lot of them are a big risk for me as a creator when it comes to time versus profits. And I want my readers to understand the thought process that determines what comes out next from my work desk.

Writing a Book Isn't Free

When a lot of people think of books, they imagine creating something out of nothing. It's just words on a page, after all, and in today's digital world where ebooks are a huge part of the market it's possible to build a successful career for yourself by making and marketing an entirely ephemeral product. However, even if you do the writing, the editing, the book layout, the cover design, and the marketing on your own, that book still cost you something to produce. It took your time, your energy, and your creativity, along with parts of your sanity in many cases.

Speaking of, go get your copy of my book today!

In exchange for all of that time, that energy, and that sheer mental sweat, this thing you've created has the potential to give you money. That's the nature of work, after all; you perform the task, and in exchange you are given money so that you can cover your expenses while also indulging in the occasional bit of excess.

What a lot of folks don't seem to realize, though, is that the more return on investment you need to make a project break even, the harder it can be to actually justify the project in the first place.

Let's Talk Numbers

So, let's say I wanted to write a novel. For this scenario I'm possessed by the ghost of Robert Louis Stevenson, and so I will be able to complete a manuscript in one month (for those wondering where I'm getting this number, it's the length of time it originally took him to pen The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde). My average expenses throughout the month, for the bare minimum, include:

- $400 for my part of the rent

- $40 for Internet

- $80 for utilities

So discounting food, transportation, and other expenses that can go up and down depending on my household's status, I would need to make at least $520 from spending my month's energy writing that novel for it to really break even.

Yeah, that math checks out.

That is a tall order to ask for one project, working at the level I'm working at. The important thing to remember is that books can continue to sell over time, though. So if your monthly expenses remain relatively stable, and you continue making sales, you actually need less performance from future works to make sure you break even. And in an ideal world you have enough popular material on the market that your cushion will carry you from one month to another regardless of what else you put out.

Let's say I've been at my desk for a few months, and I've kicked out 5 novels in as many months. Now I just need each book to make about $104 every month in sales to cover the expenses I listed. That would be impressive, but far from unreasonable. And if I had 10 books on the market? Well, each one would need to make $50 and change in sales every month (on average) to maintain that cushion.

So on the one hand it's true that the more stuff you put out on the market, the better the chances you'll be able to keep your bills paid. On the other hand, nothing you do as a writer is guaranteed... and that's the rub.

It's All About Time, and Luck

Let's go back to that above scenario. That first book I wrote while I was harboring the spirit of a famous author had to sell a few hundred copies in order to pay my expenses for the month. If it manages to do that, great, I have essentially bought myself time to work on the sequel. And if it really captured the reading public's attention and sold gangbusters? Even better.

But what if it only sold 100 copies? Or a few dozen? What do I do then?

Well, I tried. Guess my luck wasn't good today.

If that happened in that first month, that would be devastating. Now I've got the power company wondering where their money is, a landlord threatening eviction, and on top of that I'm not eating. But what if it happened with the third book? Or the fourth one? It would still be inconvenient, but if the others were doing well enough that they could shoulder the weight then it wouldn't be as much of a problem, and I could probably muddle through to the next month where the next new release would be able to help boost my earnings.

You know the real issue, though? It doesn't take me a month to write a novel. That's an unrealistic turnaround time for most authors out there (for those of you citing Stephen King and other prolifics, the exceptions prove the rule on this one).

Maintaining a solid daily word count, I can write a first draft of a novel somewhere between 7 months and a year. If you want a cleaned up and edited version that I've gone over, and which the beta readers have seen, you're looking at a minimum of 10 months if I had a serious fire under me. If that novel is going to a traditional publishing house, it could be an additional 6 months to a year before it comes out, depending on their release schedule.

So that one novel would need to earn me more than $6,000 in sales just to make up for some of my bills in the time it took me to write it (to say nothing of additional time waiting for the publisher to put it on the market). And that's assuming there are no hiccups, no delays, no re-writes that add onto the time, and that I can immediately turn around to work on the next thing as soon as it's done.

Then, just to add insult to injury, even if the book does do well it's going to take more than a month for earnings to clear and be sent to me. Sometimes I'll only get a check during a particular quarter, depending on the publisher. So even if the book is clocking sales, I need to have the resources on-hand to wait for the money to actually get to me no matter how popular my work was.

If the game sounds rigged, that's a feature, not a flaw.

This is an even bleaker break down of what I talked about back in "You Can Only Be A Writer If You Can Afford It" Tells An Uncomfortable Truth. Because it takes time for you to get good at writing books, and it's unlikely the first one you write is going to get published. It's also unlikely the first book you publish is going to soar onto the bestseller lists. So you have to sink in even more time, more energy, more sweat, and more research to (as many Dark Souls players will say) git gud.

The Audience is What Really Makes The Difference

With all of this said, the important thing to remember is that writers aren't the ones with the power. You, the readers, are the kingmakers in this game. You are the ones with the power to help ensure that we can keep doing what we're doing.

Because it doesn't matter if we've written one book, a dozen, or a hundred... if no one reads them, our checks will all look the same.

Basically the opposite of this.

This is why I stress so much that if you know an author who's struggling, they need your help! And if you're not sure what to do, just follow the 10 Concrete Ways You Can Help The Authors You Like. If you have money, buy their books, contribute to their patron, buy their books as presents for your friends, and so on. If you don't have money, boost their signal, leave reviews, write blogs or make videos about them... spread the word so other people can find out about the creator you want to support.

Because there is only so much we can do from our side of this equation. And if you help open those floodgates, you're going to get a lot more books into your hands a lot faster.

Like, Follow, and Stay Tuned!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! If you'd like to see more of my work, take a look at my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife as well as my recent collection The Rejects!

If you'd like to help support my work, then consider Buying Me A Ko-Fi, or heading over to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page! Lastly, to keep up with my latest, follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, and now on Pinterest as well!