The Virtual Slush Pile

            What prompted this Tuesday edition of the Kelswitch? This. Another writer weighing the world of self-publishing, which I just stepped into. So you can bet your behind this matters to me in a huge way. I don’t intend on being solely self-published in my lifetime, but for now, this is how I’m making my way and like he said, the world of self-publishing through Amazon has become a huge slush pile.

            Whether or not I just contributed to the crap for readers to wade through, I’m hoping not. What took me so long to get Shadows Rising out was that I went through the draft twice and then sent it to my Kindle where I went over it with a fine toothed comb, trying to make it as free of errors and coherent as possible without access to an editor.

            Self-publishing is easy but it’s not something that writers should take lightly. We still owe it to ourselves and to our readers to put out the best story possible. If we want any kind of future in publishing, we can’t put out crap and expect people to pay .99 cents or more for it. We’ll get a reputation or worse, just become lost in the slush pile that is publishing through Amazon.

            It is my personal opinion that part of the reason for all the crap being uploaded with a price tag on it is that people have this crazy idea that writers make a lot of money. Even worse, they seem to think that if you self-publish, you are instantaneously making the big bucks, thanks to the rare success stories that have been promoted by mainstream media.

There is at least one person in my circle of loved ones (who shall remain nameless) who thinks that is the norm, that that is what will happen with my stories, if we can only just share the buy link every single day.

            Not only is the idea ludicrous, but that’s a spam machine with flesh. As a reader, I want to interact with writers on Twitter and Facebook who are about more than trying to push buy links on me. If it’s an unknown writer constantly trying to promote his/her stuff to me, that’s off-putting, often earning them an unfollow or an unlike. That’s my thoughts as a reader and it’s informing how I move forward as a writer. That may make the marketing a little more difficult or slow going, but it’s the best way I know how.

            It would be safe to say that my Twitter following has doubled within the last year, if not tripled. The numbers still aren’t that impressive, but it’s a ongoing work in progress and if I have followers on Twitter, that means they may see my buy links, if they enjoy what I tweet enough to pay attention when I do share something underlined in blue.

            For the first time in history, every Joe Blow who has ever had the thought in his head that he could write a book has a platform to see this thought to completion. That’s as amazing as it is scary, because some people get rejected by publishing houses with good reason, I’m sure, and we live in an age where no one wants to hear there is something they are not good at. Lawsuits have been started over less.

            I’m no expert, I’m just a writer calling things as I see them. I’m no more of a writer than anyone else just because I have a BA in English, but I have been at it a long time and I’d like to think I’ve learned a lot.

I’d be happy to talk/respectfully argue the point.

First Comes Reader, Then Comes Fangirl

            Welcome 2014! I hope you all had a wonderful time on New Years Eve and your year has gotten off to a great start. On this edition of Friday Reader Rambles, I’m going to give you something very useful, to help start the year out right. As presented by the Kelswitch, I give you

Ways to Tell You Have a Love Affair with Books.

            1. You stalk your favorite authors on social media

            2. To get a retweet/favorite/actual response from a favorite author is more exciting than it would be coming from a traditional celebrity

            3. You are very particular about how you organize your bookshelves

            4. People who bend their brand new books every way imaginable make you twitch (note to self, never let them borrow one of yours)

            5. When friends do borrow books from you, it’s like sending your young child out on a date and you’re sitting on nails until they’re safely returned to you

            6. E-readers are all kinds of amazing, but nothing beats the feel and smell of a real book

            7. Your TBR (to be read) pile never seems to go down, no matter how much you read (maybe the trips to the bookstore need to stop….naaaaah)

            8. Free e-books are a blessing and a curse – think impossible TBR pile, only digital so no one can see the evidence of your addiction unless they open your Kindle

            9. You have that one book that you would gush about for hours, if only your friends would allow it

            10. Fictional characters can come to mean more to you than your own family

           

            If you found  yourself in any of these traits, do not seek help, but instead go to the nearest bookstore, buy a nice book, and settle down in the café section to sip on your coffee as you read. What better way is there to start 2014?

            Have a good year, peeps. Kelswitch, over and out. 

I wonder if I would write better in an actual dungeon...

            This has got to be my biggest problem as a writer: finishing. You want to know why I never finish anything? Because at some point in the writing process, usually about half way through, I hit a point where it’s dragging and I really don’t like what I’m doing and I realize the storyline needs to change. I cannot tell you how many versions of Elana and Markus I have done. They’ve gone from Piper and Ray to Elana and Markus and from regular people to guardians to witches to changers. And now it appears I’m about to do the same thing to Regan and Cadeyrn.

            A year ago I wrote out the crappiest draft I have ever done, but I finished it. I wrote fast without putting too much thought into the small details, just trying to get it done. I wrote it in about two months I believe and had every plan in the world to go back in since the story was done and add in the meat. That didn’t happen. Instead, I rewrote it. Instead, I changed some fundamentals about the story itself, trying to shape it into something I would love again. So, that advice of just do it, just finish it, it doesn’t matter how shitty it is? Yeah, that doesn’t work for me. I’m still at square one with nothing I would want to present to an agent, let alone a publisher. And one of my goals for 2013 was to write something I would want to publish. It goes without saying that part of that goal is to actually FINISH IT.

            I am so tired of restarting and changing things and I am beginning to feel like one of the things I changed about the current WIP (work in progress) is something that should have never changed, because it was what I loved about it in the first place. It was what made me fall in love with these characters. It was what captured my heart when this idea began to form almost two years ago. Two years…wow. This is the first time I’ve really realized that it’s already been that long. Elana and Markus were under the pen for even longer than that, much longer. And they never saw their ending. Well, not one that I was content with anyway.

            Maybe this is why a lot of the authors I follow are in their thirties and forties. It’s rare to see a great writer in her twenties, because this is the learning stages. As far as I’ve come, as much as I’ve learned, I’ve still got a long road ahead of me as a writer. I’ve still got a lot to learn about what works best for me. Every writer has a different process, a different way of going about the story, and that way is part of what makes them so good. It works for them.

            For some reason lately, I’ve been mulling over the release schedules of some of my favorites. Take Yasmine Galenorn for the first example. She puts out three books a year and would like to up it to four. Her books are smaller but fast paced and lovely reads. J. R. Ward, on the other hand, puts out maybe two books a year to my knowledge. Her books are bigger and they take a little more time to get into things, to dig for depth. There’s nothing wrong with either style, they just are what they are and it works for each author. And then there’s Karen Marie Moning. Iced was released in October, I think it was? Her next book will not come out until January of 2014. That’s more than a year between releases. And Iced was huge. Shadowfever, the one to come out more than a year before, was big as well. A more well known example of this would be George R. R. Martin, the writer of Game of Thrones. I believe a friend said he went six years between releases. And if the series is anything to go by, he has written an absolutely fantastic story.

            These are just four authors out there, and they all go about their work differently. There is no scientific definition of how to do it. Which is nice but sometimes it makes figuring out how you work best a pain.

            I guess the best thing to do is to keep at it. Keep writing. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to go stare at the plot for a bit and review some of the stuff from the old drafts. I am NOT restarting this so urge, quit bothering me.