The Beginning of an Adventure

I’ve hit a bit of a crossroads in my writing career (I use the word career loosely).  I’m at a point now, with three novels and over thirty short stories under my belt, where I have to start thinking a bit more about where I want this to go.

I won’t go into the grim details of the traditional publishing world, because there are many blogs out there that say the same thing (check out Dean Wesley Smith’s, for example).  The bottom line is this:  breaking into the traditional publishing market (a book published by Tor, DAW, Penguin, etc) is very, very difficult.  Many people thought (and still do think) that this is the only way to get a book out there, the only way to have your book nationally validated by professionals who give you a stamp of approval when you sell a book to them.  ”This is good,” it says.  ”This is a book that has been ordained by God as something that other people should read.”

I think that’s probably wrong.  And there’s a host of evidence to prove it.

The fact is that seal of approval is only furnished by one man in one company.  One editor, sitting at a desk in New York, liked a book.  He’s probably the only person in the entire company that has read the thing from cover to cover even after it’s hit the shelves.  But what if, instead, a hundred readers find it on Amazon or Smashwords or Wherever.Com and forty percent of them like it.  Well damn – that’s forty times the amount of validation I ever wanted.  If it bombs, so what?  Not every story is for every reader.  Some stories aren’t for any reader.  I really don’t have anything to lose except the time spent doing something that I love: writing.

To date, I’ve cataloged over 750,000 words written in just the last year and change.  The general rule in this business is that most writers have to squeeze out 500,000 to a million words before they hit their stride.  But I realized today that I haven’t been counting anything I’d written before this period.  If I did, I can’t imagine where that number would be.

Now, I’m not saying I’ve hit my stride.  And I certainly am not saying that I don’t have anything left to learn.  On the day I die, face-down on my keyboard, I will still have not learned or mastered everything I want to.  But there’s no reason I should wait until I hit the last key at the ripe old age of 88 to believe that my work is worthy of the publishing world.

(By the way, when I die on my 88th birthday, people will read this post and be chilled to the bone.)

So I’d like to announce my intention to start now.  In the next few months, expect a stream of short stories to start appearing on Amazon and all the other places that I’ll call the Writer Proving Grounds.  They’ll be cheap.  They’ll be short.  Hell, they might even be bad.  But they’ll be there.  And soon after that you’re going to start seeing novels with my name on them, too.

I’ve been saying that I want people to come with me on this crazy journey of writing, and it’s high time that I make it happen.  But not by writing blog posts – by you reading my stuff.

Watch for it.

- Joe

The Curse of the Honorable Mention (And Other Updates)

I received a very exciting piece of news last week:  My story “The Wild Wizard’s Win” was chosen as an Honorable Mention in L. Ron Hubbard’s Writers of the Future Contest

For those of you unfamiliar with the contest, Writers of the Future is the premier contest for budding authors of speculative fiction (science fiction and fantasy).  Winners of this contest include Patrick Rothfuss, Eric James Stone, Eric Flint, David Levine, among other extremely successful authors.  So it was a pretty exciting thing to know that judges like Orson Scott Card, Kevin J Anderson and David Farland thought my story was worthy of recognition.

Regardless of the bit of pride and esteem that brings me, it was a bit of a bitter sweet moment.  I’d been waiting almost 4 months, watching the WOTF forums pile up with people reporting their rejection notifications and wondering if my story would be among them.  With each passing day, I started to look at my phone more and more, waiting for a call that might tell me I was in the final ten.  Alas, my only reward is a certificate and some minute bragging rights.  But I’m still pretty happy about it.

The funny thing about this particular contest was that I submitted the story almost as a joke.  A novelette of over 15,000 words (making it basically unpublishable in any periodical because it’s too long), The Wild Wizard’s Win is a flippant, whimsical tale of a totally inept wizard who enters into a sorcery competition.  His friend, the real protagonist of the story with no magical ability whatsoever, attempts to fix the competition in the wizard’s favor so that he can take some of the prize money.  The story is utterly ridiculous, though it did receive a personal rejection from Fantasy and Science Fiction Magazine –  the holy grail of fantasy periodicals.  I had absolutely, positively no expectations for the story, yet here I sit, an honorable mention to my name.  I’m sure there’s a lesson to be learned here, but I don’t quite understand it yet.

Now that I’ve make my mark on the competition in a small way, I actually hope to never win it.  Why?  WOTF is a competition for amateur authors; once you attain a certain quality of publication credits, you become ineligible as a contestant.  I hope that I can break into the market before I win.  The contest runs every quarter, though, so I’ll be submitting even as I work toward my overarching goal.  We’ll see how it goes.

A trip to Hawaii and some other life events have taken me away from writing and this blog for a while, but life is slowly returning to some semblance of normal.  In the interim, I also got another piece of exciting news.  I’ve been invited to WORLDCON – one of the largest amateur/professional writing conferences in the world – as a panelist.  Unfortunately it has absolutely nothing to do with my accomplishments as an author; they want me to give some presentations and participate in panels as a member of the military, giving authors the opportunity to pick my brain as they attempt to integrate realistic military scenarios into their fiction.  99% of writers have never served (99% of America, really), yet a lot of people want to write about it.  Even the internet doesn’t give you the opportunity to research what it’s like to be in the military, to live that life.  Hopefully my experience and limited expertise can be useful – and hopefully I can do some serious schmoozing while I’m there.

Once I get more details and the clearance from Public Affairs to talk about my work in a public setting, I’ll post them here.  If you’re going to WORLDCON in Chicago this year, feel free to come to a panel!

Aside from that, it’s time to focus on getting back on the horse and galloping my way to a few odd contests, another novel, editing In the Shadow of Legends and trying to land an agent to represent The Last Scion.  It’s a daunting list of tasks, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned about trying to break into this business it’s that I can’t be scared by the amount of work ahead of me.  I just have to keep typing, keep learning, and keep submitting my work to people that might buy it.

I invite you to follow my blog  (or invite others, if you’re already following) if you’re at all interested in my journey.  Writing can be a lonely and discouraging business, and it’s always nice to know that I have some folks cheering for me.

Until next time,

Joe

Somebody Set Up Us The (Book) Bomb

Today, April 19th, we are conducting a Book Bomb for the Writing for Charity Anthology!

Yeah...the BOOK bomb!

If you haven’t read my previous posts, one of my stories (“The Wicker Warrior”) was accepted into the Writing for Charity anthology.  The e-book is now available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Smashwords.  We’re conducting a “book bomb” today in order to try and get mass purchases of the book and boost the book’s Amazon ratings.

This means 2 things for you.

1.  If you want to read some great stories and you want to help a charity that gives school supplies to children, go and buy it!

2.  SPREAD THE WORD!  The whole point of a book bomb is to get the word out to as many people as possible in the shortest amount of time possible.  Post a link to my blog post on facebook, twitter, Google Plus.  Draw it in graffiti on the wall of a port-a-john.  Get a tattoo of the WHOLE AMAZON LINK on your arm.  However you can help spread the word

The book can be found here.  You can also find out more about the organization and the charity here.

Thanks to everyone for your support!  You have no chance for survive – make your time!

It's true. You don't. SPREAD THE WORD!

What Makes Me a Nerd?

Driving 3.5 hours, each way, to go see a concert of video game music.  That’s what makes me a nerd.

Yesterday I traveled to St. Louis, MO, to see Final Fantasy Distant Worlds, a traveling performance that takes the music of Final Fantasy and teaches it to local city symphonies.  This one was performed, obviously, by the St. Louis symphony, and it was amazing.

I don’t expect any of you to understand my impetus behind this.  Well, then again, maybe I do.  With me in the crowd that night were people from as far away as Chicago, Kentucky, and several other states (and probably countries).  The house was packed.  A solid 50% of the crowd cheered when asked if they’d been the the very previous night to see the same show (with a slightly different program).  So, regardless of how lonely we nerds feel sometimes, I knew then that there had to be other people who were bizarrely touched and moved every time they heard the Dream Oath Opera from Final Fantasy VI.

It was a sort of culminating moment for me.  The Final Fantasy games defined storytelling for me at an early age – you can read a bit about it in my Manifesto – and to hear the sheer power of that music, mixed with that nostalgia, mixed with that thrill of being able to hear stories int he language of those notes…it was something I really don’t think I can describe.  I’m not ashamed to say that my cheeks were wet for a good deal of the performance.  I’m getting a little choked up writing about it now.  To an outsider, that must seem ridiculous, crying over video game music.  But I know it’s not, so you can go cast Fire 3 on yourself.

You're the goblin guard.

More than that, the composer of all this music actually made a rare appearance in the audience that night.  Nobuo Uematsu himself, an unassuming Japanese man who did all of this work with the Final Fantasy series without a speck of traditional musical education, waved to the audience and bowed, then proceeded to sit ten seats next to me like an average schmuck.  He went up on stage a few times, but didn’t speak.  The crowd treated him like a god.

At the end of the performance, they played One Winged Angel as an encore – the final boss theme of Final Fantasy VII and one of the defining songs of the entire series.  The conductor and Nobu-san (as he called him) apologized, since they didn’t have the choir that was so integral to the piece.  So they did this:

The sign that Nobu-san is holding up says “SEPHIROTH!” in big black letters.

I can’t say too much more about my experience without gushing.  It was absolutely worth the 7 hours in the car and getting home at 1:30 AM.  So, I’ll leave you all with a game that I like to call Spot the Red Mage.

Can you find him?

Ride on, Chocobo.  Ride on.

Joe

Cooler by Association

I’m getting published in something I’m not getting paid for!  And I’m excited about it!

Writing for Charity is an annual event that started in 2008 in Salt Lake City with the express goal of raising money for – you guessed it – charity by inviting aspiring authors to attend a conference in which professional authors will help them polish their manuscripts.  It’s a wonderful cause – authors typically aren’t on the short list of primary charity contributors, and the fact that professionals are willing to donate their time and efforts for this is nothing short of inspiring.  This year it was hosted by the Rock Canyon Writers of Utah and the Children’s Literature Association of Utah on St. Patrick’s day at the Provo Library in Provo, Utah.

In conjunction with this conference, they put forth an open call for submissions for an anthology which will be sold in e-book format.  The premise sounded so fun that I couldn’t help but write something.  Basically, you had to take the old Three Billy Goats Gruff story and twist it – retell the story, have a spinoff, write a sequel, whatever you could come up with.  So, as with most of my stories, it started with the “what if” question:

What if the goats, after they deposed the guardian under the bridge, established a tyrannical Goat Empire and subjugated the trolls?

You’ll have to donate to charity and buy the book if you want to read the rest of the story, but the editors liked it enough to select it for publication.

I’m excited about this for two reasons.  One, I get to use my skills as a budding author to contribute to something bigger than myself.  That’s a great opportunity, and I’m elated to be part of it.

Two, aside from open submissions, they put out a call to famous authors to contribute as well.  That means my work is going to appear next to Hugo Award-winning author Mary Robinette Kowal and Dan Wells.  I never thought that would happen.  Not that I think I’m in the big leagues, or anything, but it’s nice to be able to say that I’m a bit cooler by association.

I had the opportunity to meet and chat with Mary at Life, the Universe, and Everything.  She’s a wonderful gal, and both she and Dan are part of the team that does Writing Excuses, a great resource that I recommend every author check out (especially those who write speculative fiction).  It’s an honor and a privilege to share a table of contents with them.

Keep an eye out for the anthology!  I’ll post it when it comes out, and you can find out how the Wicker Warrior deals with the evil Nannie Longbeard.

Ciao for now!

In the Shadow of Legends

In the Shadow of Legends.

“A young man goes in search of the truth behind his notorious grandfather’s story, only to discover that unmasking a legend is much more difficult than making one of your own.”

Word #1:  Written on November 1st, 2011.

Word #232,507:  Written on March 7th, 2012.

It feels good completing another novel, making it my third since November of 2010, totaling over 500,000 words and not including any of the shorter works I’ve done in between.  That’s a LOT of typing.

I learned a lot this time around, and I know that my education is really only beginning.  Now it goes away into a drawer for at least a month.  Why?  Because a story to an author when it’s just been written is like a newborn baby.  Other people know it’s ugly, but you can’t see anything but perfection.  Plus, I want to be able to revel in the fact that I finished writing a book the length of a Wheel of Time novel without having to immediately go back and reread it.

I’m a little concerned about the length of this one.  In print it would be something close to 680 pages, I think, and apparently publishers don’t like big novels for their debut authors.  I might be able to trim it down a bit, but it’s an epic through and through.  I can’t apologize for it.

I began writing this post with the idea that I would sort of have a triumphant yet reflective ramble about my book.  But here I am, looking at the empty white board next to my desk, wondering what the next one will look like instead.  The beauty, they say, is in the journey, not the destination.

Thanks to everyone that helped me through this one by being sounding boards and cheerleaders, especially my writing buddy J.D. Lerud and my wife.

We’re a long way off from this yet, but if you are interested in being a test reader for my novel, please do let me know.  I’ll probably be ready for human eyes to see it in about three months.  Feedback is just as important to a writer than the actual writing part, and I’d love to hear your comments.

Well, the white board is calling.

Be good,

Joe

If Edward Was Ugly

As a writer, I fancy myself a bit of a scientist.  I observe things and make judgments, form hypotheses, and come to conclusions based on empirical tests.

For this reason – and this reason only – I undertook the task of reading the first book in the Twilight series.  I admit it was an extremely fast read; I got through the book in only four days.  Will I read the next one?  I’m not sure.  Maybe.  But the reading of the first book has presented me with the following 3 findings, into which I will delve deeper later in the post.

1.  I get it.

2.  That doesn’t mean I have to like it.

3.  Bella has epilepsy.

POINT ONE:  I get it.

One of the startling things about Twilight was the way it surged through the popular domain like the Spanish influenza.  After only a few short months on the shelves, everyone had read this bloody book.  Everyone was talking about it.  Movies were being made.  Teenage girls all over the planet were swooning in their bedrooms, visualizing Edward the vampire as they drifted off to sleep to find them in dreamland.  After reading the book, I think I can understand why it appealed to such a wide audience and why it caught on so quickly.

First, vampires.  Vampires, despite what any literary critic ever says, are not “out”.  People have been writing and telling stories about these creatures for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.  The lore, faces, and perceptions change, but vampires have and always will be a part of storytelling.  Vampires, because of their seductive, dark, mysterious nature, are sexy.  Yet in most vampire stories to date,  with the exception of some of the Anne Rice novels, vampires have largely been inaccessible to mortals.

Not in Twilight, which brings me to my next point.  Bella is your everywoman character, someone that almost every woman can relate to.  Now, don’t think I’m sexist for focusing on women – I’m merely going off my own observations that women read and enjoy the book far more than men.  Why?  Because it’s not a vampire novel.  It’s not an action novel.  It’s a romance.  It stays far away from the books on which overly muscled Mohicans flex, dripping wet, on the cover, but it’s a romance novel all the same.  And placing the main character in a very familiar situation with supernatural elements, Stephanie Myers simply did what we’re all told to do when we write:  create a main character that you can relate to.  LOTS of characters you can relate to.  In a hundred years, this novel will be long, long gone, because society will have moved beyond all of the familiar ground that this novel brings to bear.  If you haven’t lived in the first decade of the second millennium, you simply can’t relate to this novel.  So Twilight functions at the top of the bell curve for sympathy – it’s peaked now, but it’ll probably die down later.

And lastly, the story simply has good pacing that makes you want to turn the pages.  Now, I’m talking about this from a purely romantic perspective.  As an action novel, it’s slower than year-old molasses.  But as a romance novel, you’re instantly thrown into the story, it continues progressing, and it comes to a satisfying, if cliche, climax.

POINT TWO.  I don’t have to like it.

With the above paragraphs behind us, I can definitely say that I understand – and empathize with – the other side of the spectrum.  Frankly, I’m  not interested in a teenage girl mooning over some mythical creature who is obviously way outside her league.  The progression of their relationship is outrageously trite.  Edward likes Bella almost entirely because she smells good.  Bella likes Edward almost entirely because he is good looking.  This changes somewhat throughout the novel; Edward does a few things that increase Bella’s respect for him, Bella does a few things that surprise Edward and make her seem different from all the other women he’s met in his century of life (another thing that’s not really believable).  Other than that, there’s nothing to their relationship.

The writing itself is very amateurish.  Now, I’m not saying that I’m the God of the Keyboard, or anything, but there are a lot of simple mistakes in the novel that any editor should have caught.  Switching tenses, improper punctuation, loads of cliches that make you want to roll your eyes, and an almost barbarous tendency to repeat information over and over again.

Bella’s obsession – and that word is entirely accurate, almost to the clinical definition of insanity – with Edward is nauseating.  She spends most of the novel simply staring at him, looking at him “sparkle” in the sunlight with her jaw hanging open and her eyes popping out.  That’s what the writing mostly consists of.  She dreams about him, fantasizes about him, ogles him, and in general almost instantaneously changes her life so that it revolves around his very presence.  Her thoughts are way over the top.  I can’t vouch for women, but I can’t imagine that any girl very often looks at a boy every day and compares him to gods, legends, perfection, etc.  I won’t bother to quote the text on this, because you can open to any page in the book and see what I mean.

The action – something I expect when I read a vampire novel – just wasn’t there.  On page 380 out of 490, something finally happens that doesn’t involve Bella making googly eyes at Edward.  From there on, it’s merely drummed up tension that, at the climax, doesn’t even really resolve.  The climactic fight between Edward and the vampire James is off-screen, so to speak.  Bella doesn’t even get to see it.  So we spend the whole book with Edward saying how dangerous and amazing he is, and then we don’t even get to see him rip another vampire apart.

There’s more I could go into, but I want to move briefly onto my third observation.

POINT THREE.  Bella has epilepsy.

In the core text of Twilight, Bella shivers, or shudders, or does something similar, well over 60 times.  I used a word search to figure that out – I’m not exaggerating.  Sometimes she does it twice a page.  So, on average, Bella’s body trembles once every 7 pages.  Keep that in mind.

Also in Twilight, Bella’s ridiculous clumsiness causes her to fall and trip roughly once every chapter.  I’ve known a lot of clumsy people in my life, and I’ve never seen or heard of anyone falling down so often while completing simple, meaningless tasks.

Therefore, with a combination of ceaseless shuddering and a penchant for falling on the floor, I can only conclude that Bella has epilepsy.  Poor Bella.

To conclude, I would like to explain a bit about my title.  I’ve already said that the major basis for the relationship for Bella is the fact that Edward is preposterously handsome.

Now, think of it this way:  What if Edward was ugly?

Suddenly, Twilight changes.  A creepy, ugly vampire spends his time smelling a woman and trying not to eat her because she just smells so good.  He follows her to other cities in his car.  He spends every night outside of her window watching her sleep.  When other men look at her, he doesn’t just feel jealousy – he wants to rip them to shreds and drink their blood.

All of a sudden, Twilight is a horror novel about a stalker.

Whoops!

A Couple Of Strange Career Turns

The last couple of weeks seems to be the time when I sort of stare blankly at my computer and say, “Whaaaaa?”

It all started after Save the Date was released.  I was outrageously happy with the way the production turned out, thanks to the folks at Dunesteef, and a few nice comments on their forums gave me the warm fuzzies that every author likes to hear.  I got to listen to it on my way home from the beach during a business trip to California, and it really made the traffic suck much less.

A few days later, I got an email from an unassuming gentleman in Japan.  That’s right, Japan.  A member of the Able School of English had liked my story so much he wanted to use it as a piece of the school curriculum.  I can only assume, therefore, that he wanted to teach his children a.) how to make themselves the outcasts of society, b.) how to enchant a calendar or c.) how to avoid being killed by a hoard of Mayan warriors.  These are the only things I think are educationally valuable about that story.  Needless to say, I am flattered.  It means that not only am I international, but that my strangeness will be talked about in languages I don’t understand.

I got an email from the Dunesteef folks shortly thereafter requesting an unbelievable amount of voice acting talent:  one line in two stories.  Seriously guys, you think my days are 25 hours long?  Thanks to my dear friends Jen and Steve Lerud and Lakeview Studios, I was able to cut the lines in a few minutes and send them away.  The first one, “The Question” is available on the Dunesteef Website – I’m the man who rushes into the bar and shouts about “Doc Z.” being on television. Could this be the first recording in a long career of voice acting?

No.  But it’s fun, and I’d love to do it again.

There are also a few other career moves I’m in the process of making, but I’m not quite ready to talk about them just yet.  Not everything in my life has to do with writing.

Pity, that.  Maybe someday.

My Thoughts After LTUE 2012

I can’t say I ever saw myself going to a convention that didn’t involve trying to figure out ways to blow things up more effectively.  Some could say that, given Larry Correia’s seminar on writing action, that’s exactly what I went to LTUE for, but I prefer to think of it as an enriching experience for me as an author.

For those of you unfamiliar with the conference, Life, the Universe, and Everything is a writers’ conference for speculative fiction authors (sci fi and fantasy).  It’s held every year at BYU/UVU in Orem, Utah, and brings together experienced and budding authors to give panels and lectures about the craft, journey, and business of writing.  I’ve read books on writing, I’ve listened to podcasts on writing, I’ve even meditated for long hours in the woods about writing, but I’ve never been to a conference where I could MEET people who WROTE.

In short, it was pretty fantastic.  Thanks to my good friend Jen Lerud, I was able to be a horrible mooch for a few days and not have to pay for lodging while getting to hang out with her wonderful family.  I’ll probably be posting lessons learned from the conference as I begin to digest them, but right now I’m just still on a high from being around so much writing in such a short, concentrated period of time.

I was able to shake hands and talk briefly with all the members of the Writing Excuses podcast, a fantastic resource for anyone looking to start writing.  I exchanged business cards with people that I never even thought I’d have a chance to talk to (NYT Bestselling authors), had lunch with two pioneers of fiction, pitched books to editors for practice, and learned a LOT about the business of writing.

Above all that I took away from this conference, the one thing that really is whispering somewhere in my mind is this ridiculous, absurd thought:

I can do this.

The idea of “making it” as a writer is no longer a pipe dream.  I have had nine stories published in the same place as people who were leading those panels and giving those lectures in only one year of writing.  In that same year, I have finished the first draft of three novels, and I have at least six more itching at the tips of my fingers.

So, maybe it’s crazy, maybe it’s even a bit vain, but I think I can do this.  I want to write stories that change and inspire people, to weave tales that will help someone get through a tough time because they can relate with my characters, because the story I wrote planted a seed inside them that gave them the tiny push they needed.

I think I can do this.  I want to do this.  And I want you to come with me.  Pass my blog along, join me on Facebook, leave comments.  Tell me what you think of what I do.

Come on and be part of this with me.  This is gonna be fun.

“Save the Date” RELEASED!

After almost 365 days of waiting for the producer to iron out a bunch of problems, Dunesteef has finally released the audiobook version of “Save the Date”!

Check it out at Dunesteef’s website (www.dunesteef.com).  I hope you enjoy!

For those of you traveling here from the Dunesteef website, welcome to my internet home.  Feel free to take a look around or use the contact page to shoot me an email.