Category: writing

My novel, Cordell’s Rebellion, has been available for twenty days as an eBook, a little less than that for the paperback. In that time, I’ve sold exactly one copy and given out thirteen. Those aren’t stellar numbers, but I didn’t expect much. I will see what feedback I get from the “promotional” copies I’ve given and, if there isn’t anything embarrassing in them, I will start promoting.

I’m not sure of my promotion plan at this time. There are several things I would like to do that may help, but much will depend on luck. Some of them will depend on money. All of them require time.

The money one is easy; buy some advertising. I could probably afford an ad in the Sunday edition of the state’s largest news paper. I haven’t even looked at the advertising costs for something like the New York Times. I have the money in savings to buy a state-level ad or two and the number of resultant sales to break even is reasonable. However, I’ve just had a cardiac stress test and a colonoscopy and I need to see how much that is going to cost me. If necessary, I may have to wait until my day job kicks in and I use lab differentials to save up my advertising funds.

Another thing I considered was finding notable personages and sending them copies. I know that if a politician or celebrity would discuss my book, for good or bad, word would get around. I’m having trouble thinking of which politicians would be appropriate. Most are busy and probably don’t read random books sent to them. Since I’m an Iowa author, I could try the folks from my state. The book takes place mostly in Missouri, so I could probably send them some too. I’ll give it more thought.

Those are my two main plans, if you can call them that. I still need to look into Google’s AdWords program and maybe a few other affiliate programs. To make matters worse, my day job starts up in a few weeks and it tends to take a lot of my time.

I’ve accepted that I may never be a famous author, but that I still have to keep going through the motions. I will stop writing when I’m dead, maybe. I like the idea of being a storyteller long after that.

This summer has been a killer. Most of my plans died abruptly. I was still able to get some things done. Most important of all, my novel, Cordell’s Rebellion, is now published. It is available in paperback or ebook. You can ask for it at your local Barnes and Noble, or get it online.

The summer started with a case of heat exhaustion. With my heart health, that left be discombobulated for about a week. It was quickly followed with two weeks of upper respiratory infection. The three weeks after that were filled with sinusitis that just would not go away. Each of these things included exhaustion. I spent the month of June in bed.

When July came around, I slowly regained my stamina. The excessive heat didn’t help. People with weak hearts don’t do well with hot weather. Still, I could start on my list of tasks.

I completed some of the things I needed to do for my day job. I wrote some on my next novel (it’s about four-fifths done). I created the cover art for Cordell’s Rebellion and I published the book.

My decision to self-publish was based on the weird feedback I kept getting from agents. The literary fiction people said it sounded too much like action/adventure. The action people said it sounded like literary fiction. Maybe I’ve created something that is either too hard for me to describe or is not really saleable. Either way, I went as far as a I could. Doing the self-publish thing meant that the project was sufficiently complete that I could move on to other things. If I can promote and sell it, great. If I can’t, I’ve at least got copies in existence and can say I finished writing at least one novel, even if it wasn’t popular.

Now the summer winds down. I will have to go back to teaching soon. This time I will no longer have the title of Instructor, but will be an Assistant Professor. Unfortunately, that means I need to make up lost time to preparations for the coming semester. That will limit the time I can spend promoting my book. It will also get in the way of writing. The need to pay bills and have good insurance is a pain.

So, don’t be a “Playtime Peterson”; go buy a copy of Cordell’s Rebellion.

I realized just what a long semester it had been this spring. Classes took all of my time and disrupted my writing quite a bit. Then I noticed that I said the same thing at the end of the previous semester. I’m starting to wonder if teaching full time will be compatible with a writing career. That’s part of the list of things to do this summer. Can I get it done?

Over the semester, I made a couple more passes over my novel. It got to the point where I couldn’t find anything else to change. I think it is as concise as it will get for the foreseeable future. I just need to do a blast to as many potential agents as I can or decide to go another route. The two alternate routes are self publishing and letting the whole thing drop.

I think I’ve gone too far to just drop it. It is more likely that I would spend a little time coming up with possible covers. Then I would use social media to see which cover was more popular and use that to self publish. If it sold anything at all, that would be good. If it didn’t, I would at least have completed a project and be able to move on.

It ultimately comes down to where writing fits into my life. I’m currently split on two major sides: writing and teaching. I’ve always been a teacher, even before that was my official job. In previous jobs, I always did the employee training. In primary and secondary school, I did the tutoring. In Boy Scouts, I trained the younger scouts all the time. When I took the full time teaching gig, I told my friends that I would have to become more teacher like. They all laughed and said I didn’t need any change.

The teaching gig is also a sure bet. My department has strong enrollment and is likely to in the future (I teach computer programming and databases). My students like me and give good reviews. My coworkers seem to like me and respect my opinion. The job pays well enough and I have a state pension slowly stacking up. It would take something significant to make leaving this job a good idea.

Then there is the writing. I still go crazy if I don’t write occasionally. Some story bits will keep me from sleeping if I don’t get them down. Like with the teaching, I’ve always been a storyteller. When my cousins and I gathered around, I was the one who had to keep them entertained with stories. Cooped up when the weather was too cold or too hot to be out, I blathered on about whatever monster would keep them most enthralled. Later, starting in junior high, I started writing the stories. I still have old notebooks from decades before and am only slightly appalled at the quality of my writing back then.

It’s likely that I will have to keep my day job and write as I find time. I may find publishing success or not. There is still some internal debate whether that is okay. There is still a part that wants my stories to change the world, to be sold for movies, and get death threats. The summer is young and the semester just ended. By September, the writer may yet beat the teacher. The idea of losing either of them makes me sad.

With no luck finding an agent, I looked into the possibilities of self publishing. Writer friends have suggested it as a good option. I’ve read a few things saying it was more respectable these days. It wouldn’t hurt to look.

I started with what I thought was a relatively older, well established self publishing service. In the interest of niceness, I won’t mention the name. I went to their website and looked over the options. Some looked suitable for my needs, so I dug further.

Everything on their website required that you give your phone number and have them call you. As a person who actually teaches people to build web applications, that struck me as suspicious. Normally, a business with a web presence will use that technology to facilitate customer interaction. Employees talking on the phone is very expensive but getting the customer’s money upfront through web forms and payment processing is cheap.

This led to more research. I searched for information about the company, particularly complaints about them. There were plenty. Many of the complaints suggested the company would take your money and then not contact you, or would just pass you from employee to employee until you got frustrated. Other complaints said the company stalled your project while pushing you to purchase other, very expensive services from them.

In fairness, there were statements saying they had no trouble with the company. These positive comments were a minority. The impression I got was that the company was more responsive if they thought you could make more money for them. Again, that was just an impression.

A little more looking found even more bad news. People claimed the company was owned by a separate company that is also the owner of many other self publishing avenues. It was stated that even respected traditional publishers would farm out their self publishing branches to this separate company. If the separate company was behind all of them, and they were as bad as the many complaints alluded, self publishing may be more treacherous than I imagined.

For the time being, I will still pursue traditional publishing. I would prefer that route anyway; I don’t have the marketing resources to push my book on my own. My efforts will focus on a more desirable pitch. With any luck, and few thousand more rejections, my novel will be well on its way to the remainders shelf.

Once question I’ve heard over the years is why do I write? There is an assortment of ways to answer the question, some more serious than others. In talking to other writers, it seems there are some common threads. Maybe some of those reasons apply to your writing as well.

The obvious answers are short. Writing is fun. Writing is a cheap hobby. Maybe we have something we want to say to the world and writing lets us do that. If you are skilled, writing can earn money. On top of those, my brain won’t let me get to sleep at night if it is in the mood to write.

Those all make sense, but they don’t discuss the long-term outcomes of our writing. Many of us would like to be professional writers. That would imply that we want enough income from our writing that we don’t need a second source of funds. That would allow us to write full time. Another sign of success is when publishers and agents actively seek us for our writing skill. Once Hollywood starts turning your writing into movies, that’s a good sign as well.

I want other things to show the success of my writing. For example, I want to create a non-obvious phrase that is so good that it becomes part of the language. Not just a short-lived pop culture reference, but I want my phrase to appear in dictionaries throughout the future. I want the phrase be seem so natural that people can’t imagine the language without it.

Similarly, I want at least one character that is so popular that people use the name of the character to reference people with similar characteristics. In the same way that any do-gooder scoundrel could be called a Robin Hood, people should use the name of my character. Honestly, I don’t care if the use is positive, as long as the name lives on as part of culture.

The title of at least one of my writings should be used in the same way. Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet is used as a metaphor for love even centuries later. I want the same impact from what I write, even if it is just as wrongly applied as that one.

Finally, I want English majors in colleges everywhere to curse my name. I want them exhausted with the analysys forced upon them by overzealous professors who have completely misunderstood my work. I want them to cry out, “Why do we have to read this garbage?” and have the faculty reply, “Garbage? You’ve missed the whole point!” The only logic response to that is for the students to put funny hats on the statues and busts of me wherever found.

There is a very good chance that I will not reach all of those goals. Given my publishing history so far, it’s unlikely that even techno-archaeologists will find the remains of my blog in the coming millenia. Still, the picture of those motivators can help me through on the odd occasion that the writing has stalled. Hopefully, you have similar dreams.