JC Hutchins’ book 7th Son: Descent is out.

This makes me happy.

Not just because it’s good (it’s superb), not just because he’s got a damn snazzy website (although it is pretty damn snazzy), but because any new author trying to make it in the business should take a look at JC Hutchins’ way of doing things.

Hutchin’s has taken the “give it away free first” model and run with it. On his website you can literally try the novel before you buy it, listen to a prequel written just for 7th Son (which is awesome in its own right) and fill yourself up on all the juicy details your infovorous* minds can handle.

You can do all of that at his site jchutchins.net.

This means you (and by you I mean “me too”) can whip yourself up into a state of frenzy for the story before the book even reaches the shelves. 7th Son: Descent is so good that I think it would have done well even without all of the online attention that JC Hutchins’ media savvy/general awesomeness has generated, but combining its quality** with a genuinely inspired approach to new media and internet marketing will push this book through the roof. It’s not a novel for the faint of heart, but Hutchins’ writing grabs hold of your eyeballs from the very first sentence.

You can try this novel without spending any money. You can avail yourself of delicious details on JC Hutchins’s website, and you can check out Hutchins’ other (spooky) novel Personal Effects: Dark Art while you’re at it.

What are you still doing here?***

* I have Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade Comics to thank for the word infovore, which I’ve twisted into infovorous. Making up words is fun, even if you’re not the first to think of it…

** Yes, no matter how great your marketing/website/interview style is your book still has to be good. JC Hutchins is a very very good writer and he’s platformed the rest of his stuff from that. Bear that in mind.

*** I would consider it a personal favor if you purchased 7th Son: Descent because novels like this should be encouraged and nothing encourages writers more than being paid for their good work.

Tags: 7th Son, advice, JC Hutchins, learn something, Required Reading

I’m running it close to the wire here. Four days to go and I’ve still got 10,000 words to hit my target of 50,000 in one month.

Even to reach this I’ve had to count everything I;ve written this month, including the words I’ve deleted.

It still counts.

Quick Tip:

Stuck for story idas? Look through the Google search terms people used to find your blog. My favorite so far is “freaky mace games.” If that was you, why?

You also inspired a short story, thanks.

But really, mace games?

Tags: advice, silly posts, updates

I’d like you to fast forward yourselves to the end of November.

You, sweaty and stained as if you’ve just emerged from a coal mine, are stared at a pile of printed paper. You choke back some tears and wonder about having another coffee. You silently curse and praise NanoWrimo at the same time.

You’re looking at your novel.

50,000 words in just one month, it’s an incredible achievement, one that you can brag about for months. Your future self reaches out to stuff the first three chapters and a query letter into an envelope. Printed on the front of this envelope is the address of your favorite literary agent*.

I want you step out of the time stream and punch your future self in the back of the head. As your unsuspecting, caffiene ravaged clone falls to the floor for the first rest they’ve had in ages I want you to take all of the envelopes addressed to agents and burn them.

Of course all this flitting about the time stream may bring about the end of the world, but it’ll be worth it to stop your future self from sending those chapters, or worse, whole novels out to agents they respect. Why is that?

You can’t write a saleable novel in thirty days.

You can get a first draft. You might even get a full length first draft but there is no way that you’re going to be able to get a proffesional standard, agent ready draft in thirty days. I know there are rumours of super ninja authors that can do it, but that’s not us. I think  you should do NanoWriMo, but you must keep in mind that if you think, even for  second, that you’re going to be able to get out a full sized novel (80,000 plus words) and make it professionally acceptable in a month you’re kidding yourself.

This goes double if you have any kind of a life outside writing.

So save the universe our potentially damaging trip to the future. Set the idea in your head that your NanoWriMo novel is a first draft, and when you’ve recovered from November’s insanity you’ll keep working to make it good…

Not just finished.

*You researched your agents and have found a favorite that fits with your novel and genre…right?

Tags: advice, nanowrimo

I’ve just finished reviewing Phil Rossi’s awesome novel Crescent. If excellent sci-fi with a horror twist tickles your taste buds then check out the review right here.

Tags: recommended reading, Reviews

I just finished an essay that was due last week.

I’m not proud.

I packed so much into an already overloaded schedule that my synapses just plain cooked themselves into a nutritious (for zombies anyway) grey goo. It felt a lot like porridge sloshing around inside my skull. I knew the particular essay was due, and it wasn’t like it was a tough one to finish. I just didn’t do it.

The problem was that I’d gotten so good at both finding and making time to write I was ignoring the other things that my body and my brain needed to keep me from keeling over sideways. In case you were wondering, if you’re going to keel over, sideways is the worst way to go.

This was going to be a blog about how to find more time in your already super busy life to write, but instead I’m going to give you something a little different. Go get a piece of paper/open word/open a vein.

Write down the top five things in your life right now, the things you do that you simply can’t do without. You get two freebies in eating and sleeping, you don’t have to write them down. My list looks like this:

1.  Family

2. Work

3. Physical health/training

4. Writing

5. University (yes I’m 28 and at university. I was a late starter at this).

Notice anything missing there? I’m willing to bet your list doesn’t have it on there either. These five things sucked up my entire waking life. The thing that’s missing is relaxation time. You need recovery folks. I do a lot of physical training, and for every hour of hard core exercise I do, my body demands some down time before I can punish it again. I have often ignored these demands and paid heavily for it. Last year I nearly died because my beleaguered body just caved in and I woke up in hospital.

Writing puts the same stress on your mind (and sometimes body) that physical training does. Instead of just making time to write, which you can do, I also want you to book yourself in for some downtime. I don’t care if these means going for a walk or playing some Playstation. If you don’t book in that downtime you’re going to keel over, mentally if not physically. Burnout for writers is particularly ugly, as we will keep writing, chasing our dreams until we simply can’t do anything else.

Even though my essay was late I made time to keep going on my novel. I forwent sleep to do this. I don’t learn quickly. So, get that list back and expand it to seven things. You get to keep your top five things that dominate your life, but you’re going to add in another two things that you are going to make time for. One of those things is you time. This doesn’t mean more time looking after the kids, doing laundry or working. This means time that’s just your to do…nothing. You’re not allowed to be productive, or even useful.

You only get away with cooking as down time if cooking really makes you happy. Cooking for your family because you have to counts as work.

The other thing you’re going to add to your list is research time. Time you spend looking at websites or books about writing. I do a lot of this and it’s half work, half downtime. Actively plan it into your day and don’t confuse it with writing time, working time or down time. Make time for research and then leave it alone. Once you’ve done the research you need for your week you should either be writing or relaxing. Spending four hours staring at writing blogs won’t get your book written but it can and will still consume your poor brains precious resources.

My new list looks like this:

1. Family

2. Work

3. Writing

4. Downtime

5. Research/reading time (reading novels counts if you’re researching them)

6. University

7. Physical health/training

Now that you’ve read all that, switch of the computer and go do something just for yourself. Not for the kids, your partner, your boss or even your novel. Go for a walk, eat a cookie, take a bath.

Your brain will thank you.

I’m a little behind.

Right now I’m sitting right on 22,000 words for the month. I’m planning a fairly epic writing day tomorrow to catch up to my target and then keep on going. In that 22,000 I’m counting almost 16,000 words that I wrote…. and then deleted because they were in fact, very bad. I do still have them on my hard drive, but they sit in the darkness alone and unloved.

The write is actually going very well though. I’m doing horrible, terrible things to my main character and that’s the way it should be. If your main character isn’t suffering in some way then you may need to make them suffer more. A great writing quote from screenwriter Martin Roth: “Chase your characters up a tree and throw rocks at him, to see how he responds.”

It’s a great quote and god advice, but personally I recommend also setting the tree on fire.

Not only should your main character be the person with the most to lose, he should also be suffering to keep it. That’s what grabs my interest as a reader, I want to know just how much your protagonist is prepared to give to keep what he loves. Grim anti hero’s with nothing to lose are fine, but they;re only interesting when they are threatened with pain and loss. No one cares about the emotionless killing machine, they can make a good villain (although they’re even better when the villain too has something to lose) but in the end your audience must root for your character to win, you first have to have something to lose.

This turned into a much bigger post than I was intending. Perhaps I need more beer….

Tags: advice, News, update

Serial Agent Pimp Nathan Bransford (I love coming up with titles for people, it’s going to get me in trouble sooner or later) has finished the mammoth task of reading 2,500 plus entries and come up with a short list of ten finalists.

I’m not one of them.

I’m not bitter about this at all, for starters the ten finalists have some up with some excellent first paragraphs, I want to know what happens next in their stories. The other reason I’m not bitter is that if I couldn’t handle losing out in an online blog contest, I’d have no business at all being a writer.

Rejection and failure are all part of this writing business. You will be rejected, your masterpiece will go unappreciated and often unread, you will lose contests, you will be hunted down by pitchfork wielding peasants.

Actually that last one’s just me.

My propensity for attracting lynch mobs aside, every writer goes through both internal and external rejection. Luck plays a huge role in any creative endeavour, especially publishing. Even if you get an agent or a publishing deal, there is no guarantee your book will sell.

There are a few things that can get you through the down times:

Persistence:

Don’t quit. If you stop writing your chance of being published instantly drops to zero. The more you write, the better your writing will get and the better chance you will have of being the person who’s in the right place at the right time. We all know that J K Rowling got rejections before Harry Potter made her one of the richest women in the world.

Flexibility:

You might have to make some changes. None of us really like changing our stuff, after all we’ve written it, edited it (you did edit it didn’t you?*) and loved it, surely it’s golden?

No. Not even a maybe.

It could well be that your book just hasn’t found the right agent yet, but if you’ve hit up every agent that handles your genre and there are still no bites, there could be something that needs changing. You need to be open to the idea that you can change your book, even if it means a re write or even starting a whole new story. be stubborn about keeping writing, not about making changes.

That leads us to…

Objectivity:

Take a week off from your story, take two. The go back and read it like you just paid twenty dollars for it at Borders. You’ll see mistakes there that you never thought you could make. The key at this point is not to ignore those mistakes. You read books, lots of books**, so you know how a good book should feel. If your story doesn’t feel that way, you will need to be honest about that with yourself and make the changes.

Equally valuable is bringing in some outside objectivity. Recently Julie Butcher*** of Wordathon fame took some time out of her ridiculously busy schedule to give me some feedback on my writing. I took the notes she gave me and decided that my second chapter needed a complete re write. If Julie hadn’t been kind enough to give me that feedback I probably wouldn’t have changed it.

Enjoy Yourself Damn It

It’s really easy to get caught up in how hard writing is. It’s really hard, some days are a horrible mockery of a happy existence. It doesn’t matter. I love writing, I’m happiest when I’m tinkering with my stories, and like cold pizza and sex, even when it’s pretty bad, it’s still pretty good.

If writing does nothing but fill you with pain, why are you still doing it? There is no guarantee that you will get published, and even then no guarantee that you will sell enough books to make a decent living, or even a living at all. Obviously we all want to be published and have so much money that Dan brown turns green with envy, but we have to be able to enjoy the process of getting there as much as we dream of fame and fortune.

Fame and fortune may never arrive. I honestly believe that with enough work and a little talent, anyone can get published if they keep at it, but real success is often down to luck. If that fame and fortune never arrives I want you to be able to look back on every minute you spent writing and say “It was worth it anyway.”

* Didn’t you?!

** Your writing will be better for doing more reading.

*** Julie is the busiest person in the world and still cranks out excellent writing, helps with charity events, organises wordathons, raises six kids and plots daring cupcake escapades. If she can find the time to write so can you.

Tags: advice, failing, goal setting, writing

Does your story need violence to make it interesting?

Maybe.

I wish the answer was no, I’ve experienced enough real violence to tell you for sure that it isn’t fun in the least*, but when it comes to stories one of the things readers really respond to is violence.

It doesn’t need to be physical violence though, crippling harm can be dished out verbally by a character who knows how to manipulate someone’s emotions, or ruin their reputations. An emotionally violent character can quickly and easily make their victims wish they’d been punched.

With all that said, the term violence doesn’t really cover what your story needs, perhaps a better question would be “does my story need conflict to be interesting?”

If that’s the question then the answer is definitely yes.

I used to make a distinction between literary and genre fiction, loathing the introspective go nowhere aspect of a lot of literary stories. To be fair this isn’t fair to a lot of literary writers, who have written some really fantastic books, however the books that very nearly put me off literary writing forever were the ones without conflict.

I definitely prefer my fiction with a splash of physical violence, but I’ll read anything that has an intriguing conflict in it. A good example of this type of conflict = interest equation is in Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files books. The protagonist, professional wizard Harry Dresden** is constantly in the middle of multiple conflicts. Not only is he beset on all sides by any number of ghost, goblins, demons and vampires, Harry is also drawn into conflict within his own organisation (The White council of Wizards), and while occasionally violence is threatened, the conflict there is mostly political.

You’d think that’s be enough, but Jim Butcher writes in even more woe for Harry. Dresden is constantly experiencing conflicted feelings for his sometime partner Officer Karin Murphy**. On top of that he’s also dealing with the side effects of being raised by the Dresden File’s equivalent of Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars, emotional attachments to various supernaturally maligned women and a half brother who’s also a life draining succubus.

Dang that’s a lot of conflict, and that’s just one character.

However with all of this multi-level conflict, I have never even once been bored reading one of Jim Butcher’s books. I always want to know what happens next and I’m always hanging out for the next one to be released. Part of that is down to the excellent writing, but a serious part of my interest in the books is down to the total lack of navel gazing.

Bottom Line: You don’t necessarily need violence, you definitely don’t have to have graphic violence, but you must have conflict in your story. No conflict means, for me at least, no sale.

* Violence in the context of sports is fun. I do MMA and it’s a blast. I’m talking about honest to goodness no prior agreement to be gentlemen fight for your life violence.

** To be fair, from Butcher’s description Karin Murphy is smoking hot, and a total badass to boot. I’d be conflicted too.

How do you start a book?

I’ve been thinking a lot about this question since ninja agent/blogger Nathan Bransford began running his “The 3rd Sort-of-Annual Stupendously Ultimate First Paragraph Challenge”.

I put in the first paragraph of my work in progress and forgot about it for a day or so. When I went back there were almost 2000 entries. I read a few, skimmed a few and bailed out of most of the entries I read within a few words. Of the hundred or so I read first, and then the almost five hundred I read after that I found around ten that would have enticed me to keep reading.

That’s not a good way to begin your book.

So how should you do it? I can only give you my personal likes and dislikes, as there are as many ways to start a book and there are words in every language on earth. There are a few things that stood out to me though:

Short and snappy

If your opening paragraph is too long, say more than five sentences, then there is every chance you’ve started your book to soon and are trying to give me too much detail. I don’t need to know the time, weather, clothes your character is wearing or what they had for breakfast. All I really need to know in that first paragraph is that something is happening. You have the rest of the book to describe the scene to me. Of course there are exception, there are some great writers that start out with some direct scene setting details and it still works, but the vast majority of the bad entries to Nathan’s contest* tried to cram too much into a small space.

I don’t need a full name

I’m not saying you can’t have a full name in there, but you need to work it in casually. Personally I prefer it if a writer gives me a first name to start with a works in a surname later.

Death’s Allusion

If you’re going to start with violence or death, allude to it; don’t just dump a corpse on me (figuratively speaking). A friend of mine is writing a forensics type novel and she sets up the first death scene so well that you actually care about the character when the killer gets to them. I can’t care about a character death if it happens in the first line or two.

Voice

This is a little harder to define, but let’s say I’m browsing a book store and I pick up your story. I’ll read the blurb and the first page or so to see if I want to buy it. If I don’t like, or even worse, can’t get a feel for how you write in that first page, then I probably won’t be taking your book to the counter. The best way to impart your voice to a page is to lay off the direct description and let me try and work out what’s going on for myself. A good example of that kind of opener is from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series:

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

How could I not want to read on? King doesn’t burden us with details, but he does establish that the gunslinger is chasing the man in black for some reason, and the gunslinger’s pursuit so bothers the man in black that he’s fled across a desert to get away.

What was my first paragraph? For the current work it’s:

Hunting down one amongst thousands of zombies is never easy. It’s worse when your brother is in your ear telling you what to do.

I tried to keep it short and snappy without dumping anything in anyone’s lap. I’m far too close to my own stuff to be really objective**, but I quite like it.

Of course the rest of your book has to be good, but in order to get a chance to show someone that you’ve got a great story, you need a great opening or there’s every chance the good stuff will end up in the bin/rejection pile/bonfire with the bad.

P.S Special message for Carrie of Heim Binas Fiction: Enter the contest. You’re really good, show the world!

* They’re not all bad. There are some in there that are good enough to restore my faith in mankind.
** A couple of days ago I wrote something so bad it endangered literature.