All posts by dfndbtdd-ca

Writing

Boo!

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What scares you?

It may well scare your readers too. We’ve discussed dread and being scared before.

I’ve returned to fear, as I’m about to begin writing my sixth Cornish Detective novel Kissing & Killing which will hinge on fear and insecurity. My protagonist Detective Chief Inspector Neil Kettle is a laid-back farmer’s son with a team of detectives who are better trained at violent confrontations than him. One is a judo black belt, another officer is as big as a wardrobe and a Cornish wrestler, while Neil’s deputy is of the Indian Rajput clan and is trained in their scimitar-based martial art of pari-khanda, using dummy swords and shields for lessons. Neil has police force martial arts training, but up to now has preferred to out-talk suspects, rather than overpower them.

He had no choice at the end of Book 5 The Dead Need Nobody, where he was stabbed with a sword, fighting for his and a hostage’s life. He beat his assailant to death, using an extendable baton. Owing to blood loss he was placed in a medically-induced coma to protect his brain. He comes out of it facing an official enquiry into the death of the murderer who attacked him.

Neil seems to be OK, but he’s soon aware that his personality has changed. He’s more combative, relishing violence. He becomes afraid of himself.

The people who wake up from comas with different personalities

He’s also feeling insecure, from falling in love for only the second time in his life, with a woman who may be concealing a criminal past from him.

I’ve known people afraid of the dark, crowds, dogs, cats, snakes, spiders, fish and toadstools. For my part, I’m irrationally intimidated by bears (none of those in Cornwall) and dislike petty officials with too much power—and they’re everywhere!

Some fears are rational. I don’t like great heights or depths, as falling or getting trapped can kill me! I know a man who explores abandoned Cornish mines, going underground without special equipment and not telling anyone where he’s going, which is crazy.

Writing frightening scenes is tricky. I’ve read several crime novels this year which failed to scare me at all, even though awful violence occurred. The main characters weren’t emotionally affected, which left things feeling flat as if the author was relying on his readers having moral outrage.

What scares you?

What scares your characters?

What to do if Your Computer Is Overheating(A common fear of writers!)

Creativity, Writing

Feeling Insignificant? Read this….

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I came upon this quote in the excellent Writers’ Services newsletter: 

‘It does no harm to repeat as often as you can “Without me the literary industry would not exist: the publishers, the agents, the sub-agents, the sub-sub agents, the accountants, the libel lawyers, the departments of literature, the professors, the theses, the books of criticism, the reviewers, the book pages – all this vast and proliferating edifice is because of this small, patronised, put-down and underpaid person.”‘

Doris Lessing

Image result for doris lessing

So, don’t undervalue yourself. Doubt should not make an end of you. It’s only proof that you want to write the best story possible.

Writers are often quiet and self-effacing people, but to succeed these days we have to sell ourselves. There’s no escaping that. It takes effort and self-belief (and probably a website, a blog and social media ‘friends’ and followers). 

At the core of it all is the writing. If you believe in that, then maybe people of influence will too, those who feed off your talent to keep publishing running.

Rachel Carson put it well:

Image result for rachel carson

If you write what you yourself sincerely think and feel and are interested in, the chances are very high that you will interest other people as well.

Image result for girl reading book painting

Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google, Library, Search Engine

Search Engines

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As writers, we spend a lot of time looking for information, so a responsive and accurate search engine is essential.

So far, only one search engine has entered the language as a transitive verb….Google. It proves its dominance, in the same way as hoover is the common term for using a vacuum cleaner.

I’ve become increasingly dissatisfied with Google, mainly for its inaccuracy. Asking a question of Google reminds me of the way that politicians never answer the question posed by the interviewer—they always answer a different question. Google is annoying too, for the way it prioritises stuff for sale. Its personalised search function is more of a hindrance than a help.

As this Wikipedia article notes:

Several concerns have been brought up regarding the feature. It decreases the likelihood of finding new information, since it biases search results towards what the user has already found. It also introduces some privacy problems, since a user may not be aware that their search results are personalized for them, and it affects the search results of other people who use the same computer (unless they are logged in as a different user)

I don’t want to see the same results regurgitated from a month ago.

I usually forget to use Bing, but sometimes turn to DuckDuckGo:

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/duckduckgo-vs-google-search-engine/

An article in Fast Company mentions DuckDuckGo and four other search engines:

https://www.fastcompany.com/90388493/these-5-great-alternative-search-engines-do-what-google-cant?

Which search engine do you rely on?

Creativity, Dreams, Health

How Do You Sleep?

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I came across a couple of articles about sleep which made me contemplate how my sleep patterns have changed with age.

We’ve discussed sleep before:

https://paulpens.cloudaccess.host/creativity-in-sleep/

I used to regularly sleep for eight hours a night. If I managed an extra hour, I felt fantastic and achieving ten hours turbocharged me! These days, at the age of 65, it’s more like six to seven hours of good quality sleep. I don’t feel deprived, but if I do feel drowsy during the day I’ll nap for an hour, sitting up in my chair, which invigorates me. It doesn’t often happen, perhaps four times a year.

Drowsiness can be a clue to health problems and disrupted nocturnal rest. My long-term partner suffered from sleep apnoea, which she was wholly unaware of, but when she stopped breathing, I woke instantly. She lacked energy during the day, frequently dropping off to sleep in the evening while watching television.

https://www.healthline.com/health/daytime-sleepiness/signs-to-see-a-dr#1

Image result for cat nodding off sleep gif

There are a couple of drowsiness tests mentioned in this article:

https://curiosity.com/topics/measure-your-drowsiness-with-the-epworth-sleepiness-scale-curiosity

(I scored 3 in the Epworth Sleepiness Scale)

I think that because I’m so regular in my habits, it helps me to sleep. I’ve done jobs that were the enemy of sleep, such as getting up at 4.00 a.m. to be at the milk depot an hour later, to load an electric milk float and deliver 450 pints. Finishing work by 10.00 a.m., I needed to find ways to wind down before going home to sleep a few hours, waking to greet my partner at six o’clock. I was always in bed by 10.00 p.m. Milkmen soon start to look like the Walking Dead!

This job mimicked the old way of sleeping in two sessions:

https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-used-to-sleep-in-two-shifts-maybe-we-should-again

Nowadays, I work from eight o’clock to 1.00 a.m., retiring to bed to read for an hour, before turning the lights out. Fortunately, I’ve never been bothered by sleeplessness—proof of having a clear conscience?—or, no conscience at all!

Those plagued with insomnia become obsessed with sleep, which probably worsens their plight. A new device tracks a person’s sleep, which an insomniac might view as helpful. To me, it’s proof of how obsessed some people are with measuring everything in the 21st-century:

https://www.yankodesign.com/2019/08/12/the-respio-integrates-an-in-depth-sleep-tracker-right-into-your-bed/

Image result for respio sleep tracker

If you’re constantly monitoring yourself day and night, when do you ever relax and just enjoy being alive?

How do you sleep?

Femme Fatale, Writing

Femme Fatales

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In a previous thread, we discussed Bitch Characters in fiction:

https://paulpens.cloudaccess.host/bitch-characters/

But, a femme fatale isn’t necessarily bitchy, she’s more of a predatory vamp who prowls through the lives of those she captivates, getting what she wants from them and leaving them wrecked. She’s a fatal woman to know.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femme_fatale

My favourite femme fatale from literature is Cora from James M. Cain’s The Postman Always Rings Twice.

A contemporary example of a femme fatale is Amy Dunne, from Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl.

Image result for Amy Dunne, from Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl.

I’m about to start writing Kissing & Killing, my sixth Cornish Detective novel. The protagonist was grieving for his dead wife in the first four stories, but his life was turned around by the unexpected reappearance of a witness from Book 1. They’ve been corresponding since she returned to her homeland in Wyoming. He’s uncertain why she’s come back to Cornwall, but they’re mutually attracted and become lovers.

She’s less innocent than she seems, and may have an ulterior motive for getting involved with a copper. As a rebellious young woman, she acted as a getaway driver for a bank heist, in which people died. The gang was never caught. There’s no statute of limitations on murder.

My naïve country detective slowly realises how much he’s been played by a femme fatale. Does he turn her in? She’s only the second woman he’s ever loved.

Who are your favourite femme fatales from literature and films?

Have you written one?

Amazon, Anger, KDP, Print-on-Demand, Publishing, Self-Publishing, Writing

Amazon KDP: digital and print-on-demand

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Whatever you think of Amazon, as a customer or as a seller, there’s no denying their power and influence. Kindle Direct Publishing is a force that would be foolish to ignore, though I resisted fully committing to them by only using their basic KDP programme, rather than the exclusive Select operation—which pays double the royalties—but is more restrictive of the writer.

As I’ve described in other threads, I was preparing to sign with Select this summer, when a publisher I’d queried asked for a full manuscript. I’ve delayed my plans to self-publish The Cornish Detective series, but have still formatted the books for digital and POD paperback release. More of that later.

This article from The Atlantic is well-researched and worth a read, as it shows how irresistible KDP is as a publisher. It used to be, that one of the supposed stumbling blocks with KDP was that a writer’s books wouldn’t appear in bookshops, other than Amazon’s own, and supermarkets and libraries, but that’s slowly changing.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2019/08/amazons-plan-take-over-world-publishing/595630/

There are best-selling authors on Amazon, who you’ve likely never heard of, who outsell household names and have become millionaires from their books. But, one household name, crime writer Dean Koontz recently signed a five-book deal with Thomas & Mercer, the Crime division of Amazon Publishing. A sign of changing attitudes, surely? If a best-selling author has gone over to what was once seen as the enemy of traditional publishing, then how long before others join him?

Image result for author dean koontz

I’ve decided to join Select with the 45 titles I’ve had on KDP and distributed to other vendors via Smashwords and Draft2Digital for the last six years. They are volumes of poetry and song lyrics, for adults and children, short stories and novellas. This will be as much an experiment to find how Select works, as it is a way of raising income from sales. KDP promote Select books, pretty much ignoring those on KDP.

All of my thinking since 2013 has been geared towards publishing eBooks. I wasn’t driven by seeing my book in printed physical form. But, if I’m going with Select, it makes sense to join their print-on-demand option. This used to be called CreateSpace, but now goes by KDP Print. The transition since 2018 has not been without its problems, as I found when attempting to format my Cornish Detective manuscripts.

I started doing this as an optimistic move, some light relief from attempting to recover access to my WordPress website, which was making me mad, so when I encountered resistance from KDP Print I swore a lot!

The pages describing how to edit your manuscript to conform with requirements about bleed, margins, headers, pagination, trim size, section breaks, front matter, end matter and lots of other things you hadn’t thought of, are helpful.

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G202145400

When I first looked at the templates they provide I was mightily impressed, for with a bit of tinkering, I could adjust blocks of text on the cover to suit and it’s easy to upload the image I designed for the eBook as a cover.

https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201834230

I was encouraged by several instruction videos on YouTube, including this one, which shows how your book could look:

(Cover Creator part from 2.11)

Easy peasy, right? I followed the instructions, replacing the Latin placeholder text with my author bio and blurb, clicking on Save to move to the next step. Except, it didn’t save, it disappeared! I tried several more times, usually getting strange colourful horizontal lines instead of text, though sometimes nothing happened at all. Don’t you just love it, when sites ignore you?

Image result for gif computer rage

Fed up with big companies that promise you the world but shove you in the ditch, I searched KDP help forums, finding that many others were also facing opposition from the templates. One user mentioned having success by switching from Chrome to another browser. I tried the template in Mozilla Firefox and it worked perfectly!

Despite this glitch, Amazon encourages a writer to produce the best-looking paperback possible, by an online preview service, and also, you can order proof copies.

Have any of you published your books on KDP, Select or POD?

How did you get on?

Anger, Publishing, Querying, Quora

Not mincing his words!

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As I languish in limbo, while deciding whether to go ahead with self -publishing, which I’ve been preparing to do for seven months, or to wait for a reply from The Future Bookshelf who are contemplating if my manuscript is worth publishing, I came across an outspoken answer on Quora.

The question posed was What are the hardest aspects an author has to deal with when trying to get their book published?

Michael Davies, an Australian writer, publisher and writing teacher, who answers first, doesn’t pull any punches!

Image result for quora Michael Davies, an Australian writer, publisher and writing teacher

https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-hardest-aspects-an-author-has-to-deal-with-when-trying-to-get-their-book-published

What do you think of his answer?

Censorship, Facebook, YouTube

Offending Mark Zuckerberg!

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I haven’t dated in ten years, so naughtiness has been absent from my life, but I’ve just put my foot in it with Facebook.

To celebrate becoming a pensioner in July, I bought a copy of Nick Cave’s Push The Sky Away album on eBay. I love the title track, which is a song of hope. It kept playing in my mind, as I slogged through building a blog and a website devoted to my crime novel series.

The cover shows him ordering his ex-model wife Susie Bick from the room…she’s totally nude.

Image result for nick cave susie bick

It was an impromptu shot snapped by the photographer between posed sessions, which they preferred for the cover.

I’d played the song on YouTube, so decided to post it on Facebook. I chose a full-length version, not thinking too much about the nudity, for the shot was taken from 30′ away and you can’t see anything much.

It’s a running joke that Mark Zuckerberg is terrified of nipples, as so many innocent pics featuring them have been banned.

https://www.genderit.org/es/node/4851

Apparently, he’s scared of pubic hair too, for though Susie Bick’s minge is barely discernible, it got my post shunted off into the sin bin for contravening Facebook’s Community Standards. A few pixels of pubes made me naughty again!

Now, where did I put my magnifying glass?

https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/nickcavethebadseeds/pushtheskyaway.html

KDP, Page Count, Publishing, Self-Publishing, Word Count

500-Page Novels

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As debut authors, we’re advised to follow the word counts suggested as being acceptable by writing gurus:

https://jerichowriters.com/average-novel-wordcount/

https://hobbylark.com/writing/Word-counts-by-Genres-Market-Size

In writing my crime novels, I’ve brought the last four in at about 80,000 words, though the first story I wrote ballooned to 179,000 words, entirely due to my ignorance of word counts! I’ve lopped 40,000 words off it, and as I prepare to join KDP Select I’m marketing it as a double-length story for the same price as the others. Good value!

The main reason that word counts are crucial is the cost of printing, storing and transporting books. Publishers will risk signing a book of 80,000 words, which amounts to 300-325 pages, depending on font size and formatting, but any bigger than that could see diminishing returns. Such concerns don’t apply to digital books, but an unknown writer needs to be introduced to readers in a digestible size.

I’ve read several very long novels in recent years, including Neal Stephenson’s Reamde at 1,056 pages and 322,080 words. He’s just published a new novel, Fall; or, Dodge in Hell which at only 896 pages and 276,660 words has had some book critics calling it a short story!

Once a writer has established good sales figures, they’re allowed to sprawl. In 2019, I’ve read several crime novels of 500 + pages: John Connolly’s A Book Of Bones was 688 pages and 126,125 words, while Don Winslow’s The Border is 736 pages and 253,460 words.

I’m currently enjoying Knife by Jo Nesbø, which features his protagonist cop Harry Hole, a loose cannon with addiction issues. The plot involves his long-term life partner being murdered by a serial killer he captured who‘s been released from prison after completing his sentence. While he was incarcerated, Harry killed the killer’s son, who’d also become a murderer, so bad dad is after revenge.

Image result for jo nesbo knife

Nesbø devotes many pages to exploring Harry Hole’s thinking. After reading an eight-page chapter in which he ruminates on life, love, faithfulness, the rock music he’s listening to and the alcohol he’s drinking, I considered how much space I’d permit my detective protagonist to do something similar. It wouldn’t be more than half-a-page, as I’m so aware of hitting the 80,000–word count. My hardback copy of Knife is 530 pages long, some 147,465 words, according to the reading length website:

https://www.readinglength.com/

I’d like to do more of the same. I feel constrained by 80,000 words. In writing a series featuring the same characters, I’ve attempted to bond the reader with them, which could be better done with more space.

Of course, should I decide to go ahead with self-publishing on KDP Select, I can write books of whatever length I like, without the interference of a literary agent and publisher. Such temptation requires restraint.

Do you feel like you need more space to tell your stories?