Getting on Board

Hi friends and followers and hopefully soon to be fans,

I'm getting my "pre-Kickstarter" campaign rolling to try to gain some steam and a fan base going into the Kickstarter campaign for my novel, The Last Interrogation, as well the subsequent release of the novel itself.

For those of you who don't know what Kickstarter is, it's a way to help artist and writers and musicians and filmmakers and developers fund cool projects and you can find out more at www.kickstarter.com and I'll explain more about my specific campaign when I'm ready to roll it out.

But that's not really what this post is about, this post is about you and your opinions and having those opinions contribute to the birth of what I hope you'll find is a great novel.

But how can you really know? Well, I put a lot of time and thought into that—and this is what I came up with.

I'm going to post some samples from the book on Facebook—sometimes a couple of words, sometimes a paragraph or two—not only to give you an idea of what the book is about, but so you can see if you like the writing style.

I am asking that if you like it, please feel free to repost it so that other people can see if they like it too. Really, it's all I've got for early stage marketing at this point and your help will be more valuable than you know.

I'll try not to inundate you with waves of quotes, just one every couple of days or so to give you a feel of where the book is going.

Even though the first novel does revolve around the events of a man set on releasing a biological agent  and these characters are forced to make decisions that effect humanity on a global scale. I can tell you up front that it is not your typical spy vs. bad guy novel, it's not James Bond and it's not Jason Bourne—the characters in this novel, both good and bad, are real people in a realistic and horrific situation. Just like you and I, each of them are both good and bad and at its best, the novel forces you to ask yourself what you would do in the same situation.

I hope you'll find something of yourself in each character—well … in their good traits anyway.   :)

So, again, if you like the quotes, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE pass them on and comment and repost and do all of those good things that social networking is supposed to help us do.

All of you are my friends and I would truly appreciate your feedback, so feel free to message me with your thoughts and comments, too.

Thanks again in advance,

—Rob

Once more unto the breach …

It’s been a long … long time since I’ve posted to my own blog, and for this, I apologize.

Over most of the past year, life got the best of me. Did I surrender? No … but I wasn’t exactly fighting for what I should have believed in, either.

And what was that, you may ask?

Well, it was me.

In ways, I gave up on me. I hit a wall. Hell, I hit the Great Wall. I couldn’t see a way around it. I couldn’t see the other side. While it was no one’s fault, I often found myself alone and out of touch.

Like many adults these days, I have my children and I love them more than life itself; but interacting with young children is in no way a substitute for interacting with adult society as a whole. They are apples and duct tape—both valuable parts of one’s day-to-day existence, but hardly interchangeable.

At some point—and it sneaks up on you gradually—you begin to see yourself as a parent, and not a person. It’s not that the two are mutually exclusive, I’m fairly certain that as a rule, they’re not. But when limited funds are added into the equation, limited opportunities to reach out to others as a worthwhile human being soon follow.

Last year I found myself in the middle of editing my second novel, The Data Tsunami. Around this time, I was presented with what seemed to me to be an opportunity I couldn’t pass up, and I also began adapting my first novel, The Last Interrogation, into a screenplay for a potential HBO series.

The side-by-side comparison of the two works left me realizing how good my first novel was.

Concurrently, I was pleased with most of The Data Tsunami; but being pleased with most of the second novel meant a serious rewrite is in order—at least in my worldview. I tend to beat the shit out of my writing, especially when given some time removed from The Process of writing.

I was now in full on editing mode, and the more time that passed between my first draft and first edit, the more I wanted from The Data Tsunami. Initially, my intention for this novel had been to be a short story, but during its first draft, it grew to a novella. Before I knew it, that novella had blossomed into a novel. I cared about the characters more, their development, the world that they lived in.

I read the novel once, then I read it again. There were things I loved about it, but I felt that there were things that I had settled for in my desire for brevity. My efforts were less about being concise, and more about minimizing duration. It’s not that the novel couldn’t have been released at that time; or that is would have been subpar to any of the novels in the genre it touched on. It was, in fact, a hair more of a traditional thriller—albeit darker, and with a more technical theme and emotional tone.

But there were assumptions to one of the pivotal moments of the novel that didn’t sing to me. That I would not stand for.

I also discovered more depth in the character of Steven Chu than I had originally anticipated. I wanted the introspection he shared with the character of Doug Robbins in The Last Interrogation to be reflected as a character trait, rooted in The Data Tsunami. There was certainly growth and character development throughout the novel, and the story took place at an interesting and pivotal point in his life and career, but Steve’s character needed a moral challenge. It wasn’t until the very moment of writing this line, in this blog, that the spark of what I needed presented itself. (For those who will someday read this novel, as of 5 seconds ago, I included my character’s moral dilemma.)

Then October blindsided me. Between new routines with both of my children’s schools, less support on the home front, and my wife working an insane amount of hours, (up to 115 hours in a week), my writing came to a grinding halt.

I tried to continue to write while watching my daughter and taxiing my son; but creating a world in between Nick Jr. commercials, making breakfast, snacks, lunch, and dinner for my family, and various other shopping and parenting duties proved, if not impossible, then at the very least, incoherent. 

Writing—for me at least—requires an immersion in the world of the characters, and that demands an uninterrupted commitment of time be allocated to the purpose. Eventually, I reached a point where it became obvious that I couldn’t make that commitment; my brain could not see the world I needed it to see in 3-to-5 minutes bursts.

The next few months were trying. I was a middle-aged man raising two young children with almost no outside contact and nowhere to focus my creative energies.

I had a TV, and as those of you that know me are probably aware, I’m partial to watching basketball games. Needing something to look forward to, I applied to and was accepted as a writer for The Bleacher Report, an online sports news magazine of sorts with a rapidly growing reputation. I began writing articles for them on my favorite NBA team, the Golden State Warriors. Again, my tendency towards in depth analysis seems to have won me a fair readership on the articles I’ve written, but I haven’t produced the volume I expected. It seems that I enjoy exploring the intricacies of the game in my articles, also. But what I produced, I liked. I was writing again and it seems to have jumpstarted me intellectually, once more.

So in spite of my age, I was giving life another shot. “Once more unto the breach,” as they say—they being Bill. You know, Bill Shakespeare. 

I tied my future aspirations to my New Years resolutions to hopefully lend some weight to them being carried out, the resolutions included: giving up soda—entirely; increasing my literary knowledge by reading as voraciously as I could, (thank you, Kindle); and teaching myself computer programming.

Item 1: Soda is no longer a part of my life. It’s been harder than I ever could have imagined. The simple math is this, 750 calories per day from soda—that’s 3 measly cans and there were days that I had more. What’s 3 cans a day? That’s 22,500 calories per month to you and me. No shit. That’s 270,000 calories per year. Now here comes the scary part. Your average human being is supposed to consume like, 2000 to 2500 calories per day. I am a big, strong guy, so let’s just say that I could be dieting and consume 3000 calories per day, which I really could, by the way. So at 3000 calories per day, just by cutting out soda, I cut out 90 days worth of my proposed total calorie intake. That’s like eating an extra 3 months worth of food. Seriously.

That sad part, I know this is true, and still once or twice a week I almost order a soda, especially at a restaurant.

But I haven’t, yet …

Item 2: My reading more did not take off like I had hoped on January 1st, 2013, so I’ll get back to that below.

Item 3: Getting off of my lazy ass and programming, already!

Now I understand programming and have for more than a decade. I have even helped to troubleshoot code many times over the last decade or more at various establishments for clients and employers alike. But oddly enough, I never had the discipline to force myself to code. I knew I could do it, possibly even wanted to do it, but I hadn’t made myself go through with it. Only I already had.

You see, I already created my robmontraix.com website, and interpretive language or not, it’s still coding.

So I got over it, and got on with it. I’ve learned one language, and I’m on to my second language and my first serious IDE. If you don’t know what that means, that’s ok, you wouldn’t care anyway. 

The bottom line is I’m hitting something of a personal renaissance. I’m writing code. I’m writing my blog. 

And accomplishing these two goals led me to addressing Item 2 on my list; I’m now wolfing down classical literature, at least to the extent that a middling reading speed will allow. 

On top of that, I’m expanding my musical capabilities far beyond any expectation I had for myself. I’m studying philosophy (Plato and Gandhi at the moment). I’m writing sports articles. I’m learning the Kickstarter process for funding my novel’s marketing efforts.

Basically, I’m setting myself up for the next phase of my life.

That phase will include getting back to writing my novel series. I will finish the second novel. I will start selling The Last Interrogation commercially. And I will market it until people have heard of it and it has a reasonable chance to be read by John Q. Public.

To that end, I will be keeping more in touch, with my friends, my followers, and anyone who wants to check out The Process of somebody trying to better themselves.

For those of you that’ve read my blog, The Process , before—as well as for those of you that haven’t—this is my real world experience of what it’s like to make it as a writer. It’s a chronicle of the real world time, struggles, and work you have to put in before the success. I’m not being arrogant here, I have not made it, yet—and there’s no guarantee that I will! 

But to me, the struggle is always the interesting segment of any journey. It’s defines the character of the person fighting to accomplish something. 

It answers the question, “Did this person really go through the shit or was shit just handed to them?”

I’m opening up and inviting you along for the ride through the obstacles and insecurities of what it is to be a writer—or at least what it is to be this writer.

Let’s see how this all works out, together, shall we …

In the Face of Disaster

It has struck me quite often that in my writing, I strive to remain true to what people feel and how they act, perhaps above all else. It’s part of what fascinates me as a member of humanity.

How people talk. How they act. What they are capable of, both good and bad. What they do when the shit hits the fan.

For those of you out there reading this as a fellow new author is living it, the shit has hit the fan in my world.

No, I’m not claiming that I have it worse off than someone in Somalia. But my world, my family’s world, is in a precarious situation as I write this. 

My wife’s company has been struggling for quite some time. It was built on the late 90s/early 2000s ethic of a turn and burn proposition. Build a good tech company, get some big name clients, do some good work, and then sell to the highest bidder.

But in 2008, the bidders stopped bidding, even for good tech companies.

For the owner of my wife’s company, who has successfully executed this strategy in the past, no tech giant has come calling this time.

Microsoft, Apple, Google, and the rest of the cast of regulars to this acquisition strategy have changed their approach. My wife’s company is bearing the brunt of the result of this change.

Add in the fact that a major television network/movie studio that owes my wife’s company 2 years in back pay was acquired by a monolithic cable giant that doesn’t feel like paying the bills of the company it acquired, but would not allow that company to pay it’s bills during a rather lengthy FCC inquiry into potential for antitrust, and her company is dead in the water.

My wife, the sole means of support for our family while I’m getting my shit together as a writer with a writing business that contributes positively to our bottom line, is out of work.

And I’m in a world of shit.

What do I do? If I quit writing when I have one viable product ready for the pipeline, another close, and still one more started, would I be a moron?

If I continue on my present course but don’t finish until it’s too late and we’re out on the street, then it really doesn’t matter what I do at that point. It’s hard to get leverage when you’ve got no fulcrum.

And, I should interject, that it’s no small matter that I have VERY young children.

It’s not much of a stretch to see a circumstance in which we could be fucked. Severely.

Even in this time of personal hell, I KNOW that things could be worse.

My wife is in a field that seems to be in an upturn in demand. My wife has 9 years of experience in an industry where that kind of seniority is something of a rarity. My wife is personable, intelligent, and hard working. That should help. And she’s cute, too. Right or wrong, that should also help.

But, it is amazingly difficult to focus on the tasks at hand (see the list of shit a writer has to work on, here) under the circumstances.

There seems to be both an earthy, grounded work ethic to writing and producing an actual product, and a frivolous, devil-may-care attitude toward writing as a “fantasy” career indulgence.

Normally I can see past the misguided notions of the latter, but it’s hard to push on toward the former under such potentially dire circumstances.

I find myself literally and figuratively pounding myself upside of the head saying “Focus … focus … focus.”

But ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, friends and neighbors—it ain’t easy.

There are some things that I look back on in my life and think, “Why the hell didn’t I stick with that?” The majority of life’s regrets, I find, can be traced back to panic in the face of adversity. Give up and you’ve made the mistake that does you in. Keep your head on straight and don’t panic, don’t freeze into inactivity, and eventually you come through the shit. Most of the time.

It’s that some of the time, though, that just shakes you to your fucking balls, though—or ovaries, as the case may be. Both are legitimate places to avoid shaking, I believe. Nobody likes that heartless ache that accompanies an authentic fear. If you do, you are one strange puppy.

I know my wife will succeed. I know she will.

But what do I do? Now?

The tough question is how do we make the timing work? How do we stay focused with the looming potential of being squashed like a bug? How do we not give up and go running into the arms of relatives ready to embrace us with an “I told you that no matter how good you are, the world is going to fuck you anyway, so quit already,” mentality, eager for the life you aspire to to fade into the past. Perhaps as their’s has.

In the face of disaster, how do you stick to what you know is right?

And is what you know is right always right?

Do we do what we can in this life and keep just doing it?

What else could we do?

Quit?

Taking care of YOUR Business

My short story is now a novella. If I was to be completely accurate about it, it was always a novella, only I didn’t pay enough attention to what differentiated a short story from a novella to have known that up front. Turns out, it’s kind of nebulous and is defined largely on your works word count. Go figure. You live, you learn.

Hopefully.

More about the novella in a later blog. I can’t dwell on that now, I have business to take care of. Actual business. I would much rather be finishing my novella. I’m in a good groove and I’ve got enough worthy plot lines, dialog, and quantum foam floating around my head to finish a first draft of the story—and surprise myself a couple of times along the way—in about a week.

But alas, that’s not what’s happening. Like many of you who may be writers, I’m hitting the writing of the book—aka MY JOB—intermittently. Why? I have kids for one thing, and this year, I’m the one at home with them until my writing career actually earns me some scratch. But equally as demanding, and possibly even more draining on my psyche, until I earn my way out of this position, I am research, pre-production, production, sales, advertising, marketing, information technology, and finance. For “The Last Interrogation,” “The Data Tsunami,” robmontraix.com, facebook.com/RobMontraixOfficial, and robmontraix.blogspot.com, I’m it. I am not complaining, but perhaps I could use a hug.

Sigh … there, that’s better.

I feel beat up from the feet up, as they say.

I should be thankful. Through the wonders of late 20th/early 21st Century self-education, I’ve been able to get a lot done and I’m aware of that. I’ve designed, coded and published my website, robmontraix.com (never miss the opportunity for a relevant plug, or so Marketing Director Rob Montraix tells me); I’ve written, edited and published these blogs, which I am proud of; made an initial attempt at building my Facebook presence as an author, and popped out some tweets here and there, though certainly not enough by the Twitter-verse’s standards, I’m sure. Oh, yeah, I almost forgot, and I wrote, edited, and completed a nearly 500 page novel, began my second novel, and wrote two-thirds of a novella. I’m not bragging about what I have done. To be honest, I’d sell one of my left appendages for some help here. And I did have the great fortune of help from an editor that I really respect on “The Last Interrogation.” 

But there’s so much more to be done before I can breath.

With all of that going on, what else is there?

The business. This is my job, whether my family or in-laws see it as such or not, it really is. And if I want them to understand that, I have to treat it that way. This is my small business, hopefully someday to be a big business. In addition to producing my product—i.e. the books—a business plan, a marketing plan, financials, and technical resources (including databases of contacts, agents, and self-publishing resources) are a must. Perhaps most importantly, I need sales and leadership.

If you’ve done enough business plans, and I have, you may be able to get by with structuring your financials to represent the business plan you have in your head. If you’re new to the world of business, do your business plan once you’ve got a product to sell.

I mean, really, who else is going to do that for you. Your agent? Your publisher? Getting to an agent is a business in-and-of itself, let alone landing one that will do what needs to be done with your baby. Publishers are responsible for marketing and production—end of story. And should you really trust an industry that openly admits that they have “no idea of what sells,” (their justification for paying you only 15% of the income earned on your product), and who takes all of an income they may advance you for production to pay for their marketing, distribution, and physical product? Unless you have accounting, marketing, IT, advertising, and sales people willing to work pro bono for you, well, that leaves you in the same boat I am. She’s a mighty fine vessel, though, but she needs a good captain.

And that can be tough. Relentless, undaunting belief in yourself as a writer and a businessman/businesswoman, and an equal commitment to the quality of your book(s) are the requisite to making it. You have to believe. If you don’t, why should anybody else.

Jaw up, stomach in, chest out; OK, you’ve got the pride. Now you can’t stop, whatever you do, you can not stop. Not this week. Not this year. Not this decade. You have to see this through. Taking care of YOUR business is a major part of that.

Preparing for every contingency seems a common trait amongst those who are successful in any business. Then, when things don’t go the way they planned—because nothing does—they’re able to adjust and succeed in spite of the reasons they shouldn’t have. Those of us in the 2012 literary marketplace will most likely NOT have the business support of a clearly defined industry interested in developing our creative genius so that all parties involved can make a solid living off of providing quality literary entertainment to the masses. If you do, more power to you. I will continue to pursue that option as it would put some semblance of food on the table in the near term, which would be nice. If you and/or I aren’t that fortunate, why leave our fates in the hands of others? Somebody has to run my business.

The bottom line is, like everything else in this process, the responsibility falls to me. I must run my business for me to succeed. If I get the help of others along the way, that would be more than swell.

I think I’ll finish my novella this month. As I said before, I would rather finish it this week, but I have COGS to figure and spreadsheets to create.

How Are Short Stories Supposed To Work?

I’m writing a short story, but what exactly does that mean?

I won’t dwell on Red’s “—I know what you think it means, sonny,” reference from The Shawshank Redemption, but it does have a bearing on the current world of short stories. Red doesn’t believe that the chairman of the parole board has the slightest idea of what “rehabilitation” means to him. And he’s right. 

In the world of short stories, I think we as readers, and even writers, tend to play more the chairman of the parole board role. But begin to live a short story, and its reality does not meet your preconceived notion. Take a 30,000 foot view of how short stories are written these days, I think you’d be surprised. 

Authors, both great and small—of which I’m admittedly in the latter group, while aspiring to be part of the former—are addressing the eBook short story market because it makes a lot of financial sense. It’s also a great option for the casual reader. $2 to $5 for hours of entertainment, and I don’t even have to leave my damn sofa to buy it. 

But I’ve been reading some of the popular short eBooks out there, and while they’re still entertaining, are they a story capable of any level of complexity? In my experience, not so much. As a reader, I have liked the stories: they still have a beginning, a middle, and an end; but more often than not, they feel like a somewhat more satisfying first third of a book.

Is that a bad thing? I have no idea … I really don’t. I don’t even feel qualified to answer the question, but I am interested in what you think. Read an eBook or two that’s 100 to 200 pages, and let me know what you think, I’m sincerely interested.

In part, my personal perspective on this is reflective of my previous blog, “You Want People to Love Your Book …” in which I asked the question, “What do I want from this book?” It’s a question that could, potentially, bite you in the ass earlier in THE PROCESS when you switch genres. I realize that I enjoy writing about the interaction of characters and how that interaction affects characters. I like writing about people fucking with each other, both figuratively and sometimes literally, and the emotional and psychological fallout of man’s great and not-so-great intentions. I enjoy a good misdirection, because in the real world, sometimes even geniuses do stupid shit. (I’ll go into this in greater detail in the next blog, I promise). 

For better or worse, I guess my stories tend to be about the people in the situation, as opposed to the situation itself. I don’t tend to immerse my characters in sensory details of the grain of a well worn hardwood floor that have worn through the varnish, providing an extra micrometer of traction that somebody used to their advantage over somebody else. I tend to be more of a macro scale writer than that. I find the subtle sarcasm and oneupmanship between friends, admirers, coworkers, and lovers to be worth more attention. But that does not make me right, by any means; it just makes me, me.

My approach to this short has been to get the story out there, that’s why I’m writing this book, which in retrospect is very similar to my approach for my first novel. I made the conscious decision to go for plot, thought and emotion first and foremost; I’ll broaden my color choices from the palette only where it helps the story.

Will every reader agree with my approach or find it satisfying? I doubt it. But every reader is different, we all want different things from the stories we read. To some, a story is at its best when it is pure, sensory immersion. To others, it’s a diversion of reality, an escape from our world into somebody else’s world. Others find solace in the gifts of the language itself, and wrap themselves up in a otherworldly articulation of prose. They are all right in seeking what moves them.

I aspire to embrace the best of these traits where my story allows it. For me, though, for where I’m at in my little corner of the literary world, the stories are still writing themselves—and for that I’m grateful. My PROCESS tends to write stories that I’m trying to guide onto the page. For me that works. I hope that you like it, too. If you don’t, I hope you find someone who’s writing does mean something to you.

So my short story is going to be a story. A complete story, not the first third of a novel. I’ll see if that works. I’ll see how long or short it wants to be when it writes itself. Maybe that, the story’s ability to write itself, is its strength. Perhaps my strength as a writer, is being able to stay out of its way.

eBooks are Good. That's why I'm writing my first short story

Electronic Literature … or eBooks, as we’ve come to know the burgeoning business, is the future of literature. Like it, love it, don’t give a shit, or hate it—we all know this to be a fact. The numbers remove any trace of doubt, as does the demise of the brick and mortar book store.

Is this a good thing?

I’ll be honest, I don’t know. What I do know is that the entertainment industry as a whole is not run terribly well, and literature, just like any other form of art, is ultimately entertainment. 

“But does entertainment nurture the soul?” you may ask. Of course it does. And while those of us that participate in literature as consumers or producers may not understand all entertainment as being capable of nurturing, it is. I’m not saying I agree with it, nor do I condemn it, but I guarantee you that somewhere a man in his 50s is sitting in a strip club tonight with tears streaming down his face, in awe of the beauty that unfolds before him. My brother can watch a 20-year-old videotape of a basketball game that brings him to tears, the emotion of that moment overwhelming him still. Personally, I can listen to Freddie Mercury breathlessly deliver a vocal performance that can still “reduce me to tears, with a single sigh,”—bonus points for you if you know that line—or the interaction of Flea and/or John Fruciante and/or Josh Kilnghoffer can just … move me.

The perfect structure of Jhumpa Lahiri’s prose, the magic of an old Elton John song, the abstract creativity of Jackson Pollock, the palpable fluid genius of Jimi Hendrix on guitar, the mathematical precision of Thelonious Monk: they are art—they are entertainment. Entertainment can lift, it can build, it can destroy. It can fill your soul or rob you of your humanity.

Its form, however, is not its function.

Yes, paper is comforting to some of us who have grown to draw pleasure from its tactile nature. Yes, a hardcover book leaves some of us with a feeling of accomplishment at having lived through that writers world, in the universe they provided for our entertainment. We finish their novel and we feel—fulfilled. We put the novel on our bookshelf and it is our trophy. Perhaps we even view it as a testament to our conviction to expand our world, or enhance our knowledge.

Books have been all of these things, and they will continue to be so, even when they’re stored on an electronic device that we can take anywhere.

Fellow writers, fear not; the world is not abandoning you. The fact is, you’ve just become infinitely more convenient.

Convenience is a good thing.

I recently bought a book by Penn Jillette on an eReader that I would not have bought otherwise. And no, I didn’t buy it because he’s the only other French guy out there writing books in English. I bought it on a whim. 

“Ewwwwww, whim purchases,” you say. 

No, “Mmmmm, tasty,” I say.

For a new writer, whim purchases are good. They present us with hope that someone will buy our book on a whim, just for the hell of it. Then they can tell their friends that they freakin’ have to read this book, too.

I haven’t experienced this yet, but I think this is how you become popular, in the literary sense.

Now did I like the book? Yes. Did I love it? Not so much. It’s not that Penn isn’t a fine writer in the same manner that he is a fine conversationalist, he is both. But in my personal view, his stories tend to abandon their intended point, rather than support it. But they’re still great stories, so I got’s me some entertainment value from them after all.

And for all of the readers out there, that is something to be appreciated. A good story, or stories, that you can take wherever you go, all of the time.

That’s why people are buying bucket loads of Kindles, Nooks and iPads. Good stories when you want them.

For all of you writers out there, this is the dream.

You have access to people regardless of the denial letters you’ve received from over 80 agents looking to land the next vampire-oriented teen novel author to add to their prestigious stable of talent.

So am I entering the eBook fray? Damn skippy I am.

I’m an author and I intend to make a living selling stories. I’ve finished my first novel, and started my second. But while I’m shopping for that elusive agent to represent my pride and joy, I’m writing a short story (100 to 140 pages, I’m guestimating), and I’m going to sell that story via the good people at amazon.com, and Apple, and Barnes & Noble.

Why not just land an agent, since they are the gate keepers out of literary obscurity and into the promised land? As I stated in a previous blog, I’m not sure traditional publishing is in my best interest (or any other authors) financially. Then there’s the question of whether they’re going to sign onto a five novel series? If they think it’s well written, one would think so, but one wouldn’t necessarily be correct in that assumption. You and I may see 5 products that said agent would believe in if they believed in the first novel. But agents of all kinds will tell you that they, like publishers, don’t really know why one book sells and another does not. As a member of John Q. Public I will admit that that seems crazy. To us, if something is good, it sells; if it sucks, it doesn’t. But we can all think of a few wildly popular books in the last 15 years that just sucked balls and have sold tens of millions of copies. 

Agents are also steered into signing the hot genre of the day. This year, it’s hormonally challenged teenagers and the vampires they love. I’m sure they believe they’re pissing on their parents virtue with each Robert Pattinson fantasy. Hell, maybe the are, but considering agents see a ton of offerings and sign only a handful of authors, that can be problematic for those of us that don’t troll dark alleys for teenagers at night.

That the majority of agencies an author comes across have no interest in representing commercial literature—i.e. things that you or I would find compelling—is the subject of another blog yet to come.

“So,” you may be asking yourself, “if you’re going to release an eBook, why not release the novel that you’ve spent the last year and half of your life on, first?” 

Glad you asked. Or at least I hope you asked, anyway. Because, and you can call me crazy, or calloused, or whatever, but I want to build a market for my novel series. I know that sounds awfully “business-y” in a literary world we pretend is focused on art alone— and don’t get me wrong, this is my art—it is also my business. I take that seriously. So do those that depend on me for income.

I’m starting a small business, with an inexpensive, quality product that I hope will gain mass appeal. This will require marketing, (another future blog), a healthy dose of business strategy … and luck. Add in a reliance on the interests of strangers to be successful, and it’s a small business opportunity that one has to make all the right moves at to succeed.

There are no formulas anymore, (if there ever where), and there is no “one way” to make the eBook business world work for you.

But it can work. 100 to 140 pages for $1.99, or $2.99, or whatever. That’s hours of entertainment for the price of a plain bagel. I know of authors who are selling 3700 eBooks per week at those prices, though admittedly most have had traditional publishing deals first. But that’s changing, too.

The bottom line is that, as a new author, eBooks are not only the future, but they present a real opportunity for us to make a living at writing without the reliance on landing an agent up to their ears in Roscoe the sullen teen Vampire YA novellas.

So eBooks are no worse that that lovely hardcover book that’s going the way of the dinosaur.

Would I still publish traditionally given the opportunity? Yeah, probably … but only with a marketing guarantee.

For now, I have a rare writing window that’s opened up for me once more, and a great story unfolding on the page, so I’m dipping my toe in the big kids pool—I’m going to try my hand at selling the written word. I’m just going to try to do it in as businesslike a fashion as I can, starting with building a market for my product.

This is my next step in The Process. Time will tell if it’s the right step.

I'm Done!!!!!! Now What?

I FINISHED!!!!!! My first novel is complete!!!! I could have this puppy printed if anyone is interested in selling it. If … anyone … is … interested …

Hmmmmmmmmm.

OK, someone is interested. I’m interested. My wife is definitely interested. Quite a few of my friends are interested, at least in a passing sense. I’m sure my editor would like to get paid. My kids would certainly like to eat.

Holy shit! This is a job! This isn’t just a job, though, it’s my job!

Breath … just breath. Ok. Whew. That was close. Thank God—or the deity of your personal choice—that I realized this while I was writing the book. I have been prepared for this moment, I have been anxiously, eagerly awaiting this moment, AND I have been dreading this moment. Why? I’d be happy to explain.

Can a brother get a breakdown?

Let’s start where we should start, being prepared. I have been prepared, (I was a Boy Scout, after all). I went about “The Process” in a manner that I would consider to be professional from Day 1. From page 1, for that matter. I treated this as a business, because if I want to make a living from writing, this is my business. I’ve been a business man, I’ve been an executive, I’ve been a writer, and I’ve been a publisher. I did not come into this blindfolded. I know that printing costs money. I know that shelf space costs money. But, these are not necessarily factors in the modern literary business landscape. For those of us that are writing in this new, electronic literary landscape, Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and iPhones are the business, moving forward. This is an absolute truism. I should be able to take my electronic content, format it for each device, and sell it to a wide variety of the 26 people on my Facebook author page. And while that number is growing, and I am proud of it, selling 26 copies of my novel won’t pay for more than a stop or two at Chucky Cheese’s, and frankly, I don’t believe that’s why my editor added all of his hard work to mine. This is my business. Whether I’m selling hot dogs, or bowling shoes, or software, I need a marketing plan to expose my product to the marketplace that would be interested in purchasing it. Traditionally, that’s why publishers exist, or so we have been led to believe.

For those of you who are new to “The Process” of selling a novel, I’m going to let you in on some research and some experiences from early in this process. Publishers do not, I repeat, DO NOT, search for new writers. Publishers print books and pay to market said books. Only, they kind of don’t. If this is your first novel, the publisher will advance you some scratch to live on, theoretically anyway, will market your book, and pay to have it printed. 10,000 copies is generally considered the minimum break even point in this business for the publisher. After that, they may begrudgingly admit to making some money, depending on how much they ponied up to you in advance. For all of their help, on a $22 hard cover novel, you the writer will receive $2.20 on your first 10,000 sales, and $3.30 on all of your sales thereafter. 

“Well that hardly seems fair,” you think to yourself, “but hey, on 10,000 sales, that’s like $22,000 that I didn’t have when the novel was just hanging out on my computer.”

Ah-ah-aaaah, (finger wave gesture is implied at this point). Not so fast, mi amigo, or amiga, as the case may be. You received a cash advance of—let’s be generous here—say $15,000. So you’re $22,000 is going to be used to pay the publisher back for advance money, leaving you with $7,000. Right?

Ah-ah-aaaah, (2nd finger wave implied). The publisher has paid something for marketing, or you wouldn’t have sold that first 10,000. Let’s say they paid $20,000. So your measly $7000 is gone, a Dios, muchachos. You’ve sold 10,000 books, and you’re still $13,000 in the hole. OK, OK. So I have to sell, um, carry the 0, uh, another 3,939 books to cover that at the whopping increase to 15% of the take on my book. 

“On book number 13,940, I get some scratch, finally. Whew. I thought that’d never happen,” you say to yourself, cautiously.

Ah-ah-aaaah—(different finger used at his point entirely, and no, you can’t wave that one). The publisher, your publisher, the company that believes in you more than the others, has paid for printing, too. You guessed it, if you sell books, they don’t pay for that either. And then, there’s returns. If the publisher ships 20,000 of your books to Barnes and Noble nationwide, and the good folks at B & N decide that they need more shelf space for the 3012th Edition of the Joy of Cooking—so they’re sending 2,000 copies back to the publisher—you guessed it, you are paying for those, too. Even if B & N keeps 2,000 on their shelves nationwide because you’re still selling fairly well.

You’re probably asking yourself, “What the fuck?” right about now. Or, even if your a more positive person, you may be going, “Hey, I sold 20,000 books at $22, and if the retailer gets, say half, that leaves my friendly publisher with $11, minus the $3.30 he’s supposed to be paying me, that’s $7.70 times 20,000, that’s $154,000. No, it’s more, because they got $8.80 for the first 10,000. So that’s more like, uh, $165,000 … and if I’m successful, I’m paying for everything?”

Yes you are. And what’s worse, you are usually paid only semi-annually when they do pay you. And there’s a six-month “accounting period” where they bogart your money. So you will see your first income from sales about a year after you have sold you 20,000th book. 

How encouraging is that?

Not trying to beat this to death, but, there’s another hitch in your get along that has to be dealt with. First. Publishers DO NOT read material that hasn’t been solicited by a literary agent. No, you can’t say your cousin from Alabama is a literary agent, either. Unless that’s true, in which case you’re more than one up on me at this point.

So I need an agent to represent me to publishers. I knew all of this coming in, too. And an agent gets 10% of what I take in. 

“So, how hard can that be? They are working for me, right? So I sign one up that I trust and have a good vibe with.”

Ah-ah—alright, I know that this is annoying by now, but this is the literary business. To get an agent, you must submit a pro-forma query letter, often with a synopsis, and some chapters. 

“Then, for the love of whoever, am I in?”

No, then you submit a manuscript.

The “hunting for an agent process” is where I am now, and it is not pleasant. Everyone is turned down. The successful writers are turned down dozens upon dozens of times. I saw a biography on Stephen King that said he was turned down 134 times on Carrie, and that book went on to sell a bazillion copies. So 133 business experts said he had no chance of selling a book that sold like crazy.

Happens every day.

I’ll do a whole blog on agents as I get into this more.

So that was just part of being prepared for the “business” end of things.

But being prepared also covers the moment I have dreaded. I dread this part of the process. All of what I’ve stated above is more than enough reason for you to understand why, and there’s more where that came from.

But I am approaching this as a business. I have started databases to track my agent contacts and have my query package pretty tight. I’m confident in the quality and content of my novel and the series. And that, leads me to the eagerness of this moment.

Writing something with so many levels, and emotions, and characters, and twists, and thinking up to five novels ahead on this series has been more gratifying than I can put into words. I’m proud of my novel, not so much as something I created, per se, but of its quality, independent of my involvement.

As I put the final touches on the final edit of THE LAST INTERROGATION, I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t kidding myself before I finished the final chapter.

I read the final two or three chapters of six different novels a few nights ago. They were from vastly different writers, all of which have sold well, many of which are considered classics. I saw patterns in all … all but one.

Still the best book I ever read.

Does THE LAST INTERROGATION stand up to a comparison with a book of that magnitude? I’m going to be open here, and at the risk of sounding arrogant, personally, I felt it was on par with my favorite book. If it hadn’t been, it would have been another rewrite. I owed myself and those who believe in me that much.

What were the other books I compared? I’m not going to go into those, but I felt it was more compelling than they were. It is my sincere hope that you will feel the same, though if you don’t, I still believe you will find it a great read.

I’m enthused and filled with trepidation at the same time.

I have my product, now my job is to sell it.

It’s all part of the process.