Paper, Paper Everywhere

Last Friday, faced with a weekend, and wondering what to do, I weighed my options. Writing was high on the list. I had just taken five days off from writing. Maybe it was time to get back to it. Or, with the weather forecast to be nice, and with my knee somewhat improved, perhaps I should go outside on Saturday and get back to cutting up the wood from the late spring tree topping. That would be both exercise and productivity. It would depend, of course, on how well my knee felt Saturday morning.

Then I thought about the piles and piles of paper I have seemingly everywhere in the house. Most of it is downstairs, in The Dungeon, or perhaps tucked away in file cabinets—out is sight, but in mind as a drawer full of paper. On the floor of The Dungeon were several piles of unfinished projects. In a tray on the work table were months and months of financial papers to be filed. Elsewhere on the work table were lots of writing papers, crying out for attention.

So Friday I made the decision that the weekend would primarily be one of tending to long-neglected papers. A little wood sawing if possible, but mainly papers. Saturday morning dawned with the temperature at 49, and cloudy, but no rain. Perfect for outside work. Except my knee seemed much worse than the last couple of days. I made the command decision to forego outside work. I went to my reading chair and fell asleep. An hour later I woke up when Lynda got up. Before long I was heading downstairs to The Dungeon.

I decided to tackle the bills filing first. I hadn't done much filing at all in 2014, and what I had done was quite random. Enough bills had piled up that I first took an hour to sort them and put them chronologically. Then I began filing. The utilities were easy, so I started with them. I decided that, since this was a major filing effort, I would take the time to make sure everything was in the right order, and to cull through the files to get rid of some of the older items, say more than three years old. From the utilities I went to the mortgage, then to miscellaneous repairs, then to a few oddball items. I was then ready to tackle medical records.

I've never been satisfied with the filing of medical records. It's becoming more critical now that we're older and have more records to keep track of. So I took a little time to brainstorm and think about how to file them. I decided on a way to change them up a bit, and did so for 2014. Whether I go back and reorganize prior years I'm not sure. The medical records took a long time, especially since my file drawer was over-stuffed, and I needed to move some things to archive storage. I did that, and the medical records were complete and back where they belonged. Somewhere along the way I took a quick break for lunch.

That left our stock trading papers, writing papers, and some tax papers of ours and of my mother-in-law. The stock papers were most important. I took a lot of time with those, as they must be sorted into three accounts, and then filed under three or four different tabs. Keeping them in correct chronological order is important. So that all took some time, but I finished it. Well, except for later when I found a few that were in a place I hadn't seen. They are now resting in the filing tray, waiting on my next time. I shifted to the tax papers. I really only had a few of mine, and took care of them quickly. For my m-i-l's, I decided to do a major culling of older ones to free up file drawer space. So anything older than 2009 I threw a lot of stuff out.

By the end of the day, I felt really good about what I had accomplished. My back hurt, probably more than if I'd spent the time sawing logs. The Dungeon didn't look all that much better, because of the writing papers. That would be a Sunday task, I decided, and called it quits.

Sunday, after church, eating with Lynda's mom, and a short nap (not more than 1/2 hour), I get after the writing papers. It was a major task. Some time ago I was in a writing seminar with David Morrell (author of First Blood, creator of Rambo). He said to save all your drafts of you books, box them up along with research papers, correspondence, whatever, and set them aside for eventual donation to wherever you donate your writing papers in the future. I had done this with Doctor Luke's Assistant, my first novel, and had a file drawer full of them. With later books I had been less careful at saving drafts, because I saw exactly how much space DLA drafts had taken.

I made the decision that most likely no institution is going to want my donated papers, and the drafts would have to go. So I got to work with sorting, bagging for recycling, and filing. Three hours later I was amazed at what I had accomplished. Four plastic grocery bags sat on the stairs, full of old office paper, waiting to be carried up and put in the garage for recycling. Forty of fifty pounds of paper. A stack 18 inches high. And almost all other writing papers were in a file somewhere. Some of those may find themselves part of a future culling, but for now they are out of the way.

I don't know that The Dungeon looks a whole lot better. Maybe a little. I still have a couple of piles of things I didn't get to. These are, I think, mostly printouts of books/articles for reference, or maybe something I critiqued for someone. I think half of it is for discards, and half is for filing in a retrievable manner. I also have a pile of file folders and manila envelopes on the floor of the storage room, freed up for other use now that they no longer hold the DLA drafts. Tonight I'll have to sort them and do the discard/storage thing again.

All in all, this was a good effort. A couple of more hours on the last piles, putting the tax forms back in the drawer, and a little rearranging, and I'll have a more efficient and more usable work space. I don't know when I'll get back to writing, but for now, I think the time spent away from it has been well spent.

A Wild Six-Day Ride

Last Wednesday I put Doctor Luke's Assistant on a 5-day free promotion at the Amazon Kindle Store. This benefit was available to me since I enrolled it in the Kindle Select program. After thinking about it for two months, I decided to go with all five days together, rather than use my allowed five days in different batches. Which is the better way? Beats me.

The first day I had what I thought was a decent number of downloads. I don't remember exactly. I could go back and check my various Facebook updates to see. On that day it rose to fifth in its genre free list, and to around 315 in the list for all free fiction. I thought that was pretty good. The next several days saw a slow reduction each day in the number of downloads, with drops in rank in the various lists. By the end of Saturday I think it was 10th in genre list and around 590 in overall list.

Then Sunday it took off. I'm not quite sure why, but as Sunday started I was was wondering if it how hit 2,000 downloads. By the end of the day it had 5,039 downloads. Wow! A friend from Suite101.com, Karen Berger, gave it a nice interim review on the Facebook page for Suite writers. I kept making a few posts on Facebook and on my two blogs, trying not to be a pest about it but wanting to let people know about the free promo.

What caused it to take off? Maybe Sunday is just a better day for downloads—with more people using their work-free day to look for book bargains. I did a Google search for it this morning, and found DLA on many websites, what are called aggregator sites. These look to aggregate news and hope people come to their sites for news, with the views generating ad revenue for the web site owner. It appears several sites aggregate free books available, and DLA appeared in quite a few of them. So maybe that contributed. A friend in North Carolina gave it a plug on his Facebook page, and perhaps that helped also.

The free promo was to go off at 2:00 a.m. Central Time this morning, though Amazon advises resetting back to normal price may not happen immediately. I woke up at 1:47 a.m., and decided to make a quick check. At that time it was #1 on its genre list, and I think #131 overall; my eyes were a bit blurry. When I rose for the day at 5:45 a.m. I checked it. The free promo had been off for almost four hours, but it was still listed in the "bestseller" lists: #1 in genre, #3 in Religious Fiction, and #56 in all fiction. That made my day.

The wild ride has continued today. At my check at home I had no sales of anything this month. By the time I got to work and checked at 7:15 a.m., the Kindle report showed three sales of DLA. Woohoo! That's after one sale in the 2 1/2 months it had been for sale. By 10:30 a.m., it stood at ten sales. I just checked it while writing this post, and it's now 11 sales—except it shows one return, my first return of anything. So ten net sales. I only know where two of these came from.

So what happens next? First, I need to stop compulsively checking sales! The newness of actually selling something will pass, I'm sure, and with it the compulsive checking. I'll monitor reviews on Amazon and see how they are going. At present it has four 5-star reviews. I'm sure I'll get some reviews more critical than that, which comes with the territory. Some readers have asked for background information on how I came to write the book and do the research. I've written some blog posts on that, but from a long time ago. Perhaps I'll take this week and write that information afresh.

And, perhaps I'd better get off my duff and go to work on the print version. I put that off because of the work, and because of how expensive the book will be as a POD book, due to its length. But I have some beta readers to thank by presenting them a print book, so I'll do that work. And, I suppose I should begin thinking about other books in what I'm calling my Church History Novels series. I have the sequel partly programmed, and have brainstormed two or three after that and one prequel. I don't have them in my publishing schedule right now, but need to think about it.

And, I don't plan on quitting my day job. Ten sales a day, even if it continued at that pace (which it probably won't), is not a writing career.

A review of "Doctor Luke's Assistant"

Kristi Birchfield, who is a fellow member of the Christian Authors Book Marketing Stategies page on Facebook offered to read and review Doctor Luke's Assistant. She posted it today, rating it 5-stars. Here's what she said.

As a Jew who had become accustomed to the Roman culture and ways, Augustus was just interested in doing a good job for his new employer, a medical man by the name of Luke. This man had told Augustus that he was writing a book and needed help interviewing people, researching, and compiling the data for the manuscript. How was Augustus to know that this research into the life of the Messiah Jesus Christ and the writing of the work that would bear Luke's name would have life-changing consequences?

Doctor Luke's Assistant by David Todd is a historical fiction book set in the first century as the early Christian church was just starting out and they were looking to preserve the story of Jesus for others to read and know what Jesus had done while here on earth. I thoroughly enjoyed the storytelling as David Todd paints a wonderful and completely believable rendition of how events might have transpired in order to bring us the gospel of Luke. I enjoyed seeing the journey through the eyes of one who did not believe in Jesus as Augustus struggles with the information and first-hand accounts of miracles, which are discussed in detail throughout the book, that Augustus can't completely explain to himself. I found the struggles and the difficulties that Luke and Augustus faced compelling and they kept the intensity of the storyline moving, all the while allowing for the interviews and the stories about the life and works of Jesus to fill the pages of this book so that we could follow along with their research. I found this to be a unique perspective on what might have been and many thanks to David for allowing me to read through this most intriguing book. You will be blessed by reading it.

Kristi Burchfiel, Christian Devotional author and speaker

 

Many thanks, Kristi. That's a good review. I hope to use some of it as back cover copy when I publish the print book.

Watching Myself Watch the Promotion

Doctor Luke's Assistant is now early in the second day of the five day promotion. As of 7:00 a.m. it had been downloaded 990 times between the USA and the UK. That placed it:

- 5th on the Kindle eBooks > Fiction > Religious > Historical free list, and
- 16th on the Kindle e-books > Fiction > Religious free list, and
- 323rd Free in Kindle Store list.

We'll see how this goes. With the Amazon Kindle Select program, you can have your book free for five days in the 90 day enrollment program. While most people do one and two day promotions and spread them out, I decided to go with all five days together. As I said, we'll have to see how this goes.

Yesterday I found myself frequently checking "sales" report for my Kindle books. On first check in the morning DLA had been downloaded 46 times. That quickly went up. In fact, from the time I started writing this post until now three more downloads have been recorded.

Then I saw it begin to show up on the lists. That was kind of a good feeling. At least people are seeing the book. I'm gaining readers if not royalties. Well, maybe some of these 993 people will read it. Some may just collect free downloads with the intent of reading they but never getting to most of them. Who knows?

Soon I should be getting some reviews—from people I don't know. That's going to be interesting. Some of those reviews will not be stellar, as someone will have downloaded the book, read part of it, realized it's not an action book, and be disappointed. How will I react to those 1- and 2-star reviews? In preparation, I've been looking at the negative reviews of some of the other books on these free download lists. Some of them surprised me. The most common negative reviews that I read are:

- book is boring
- book is religious but the description didn't "warn" about that
- characters are not well developed
- the pacing of the book isn't good
- book is too short
- book is too long; could have been told as a novella rather than a full length novel
- too much sex
- too little sex, or not realistically portrayed.

What kind of negative reviews will I get? I tried to work in what I learned of the Middle Eastern culture, translating it back 2,000 years. I could get dinged for too much of that. It's not an action book, so comments like "it's boring" are certainly possible.

The first two reviews of it are from advanced reader copy readers. I have one more of those that should be posted soon, hopefully today. Meanwhile, with two more downloads since the last report DLA has dropped to 6th place on the Religious > Historical free list. I can't keep checking this all day long. And I can't obsess over what place the book is in on what list.

It's going to be a long five days. And so far no sales of my other titles. Here's the link again:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007OP9ZN2

Days of Free Book Promotion on Kindle

Today I began a 5-day free promotion of  Doctor Luke's Assistant at the Amazon Kindle Store. I can do this because I enrolled DLA in the Kindle Select program. That allows five free days in the 90 enrollment term. I decided to do all at once and see what happens.
Before the promo I had sold one copy of DLA, back in April. For the month of June I'd sold no books at all. The promo began at midnight Pacific Time. When I checked this morning, about 7:15 Central Time, there had been 46 free downloads in the US and 2 in the UK. Right now (8:30 Central Time) there have been 110 free downloads in the US and 3 in the UK. No sales of other items yet. It's listed as #15 among free downloads in the category Kindle eBooks>Fiction>Religion>Historical. But, there's only 15 books total listed. I guess that's how many are on a free promo at present.

The whole idea of a free promo is to generate some interest in the promoted book and anything else the author has for sale. Hopefully the free downloads will actually be read, and some people will post a review. Those reviews are what helps drive sales. So far DLA has two 5-star reviews, both from people to whom I gave advanced reader copies.

The jury is still out on whether the Amazon Select program is good for authors. One of my friends has received significant payment from loaned books through that program. So far I no one has borrowed DLA. Maybe someone will after the free promo is over. My thought is I probably won't re-enroll it for another 90 days, but we'll see. Perhaps the promo will change my mind.

At least my first novel is now in the hands of...119 potential readers. I won't make any immediate money on that, but have those potential readers is exciting.

Doctor Luke's Assistant

It went live on Kindle this morning. More info coming.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007OP9ZN2

Editorial Silence

In the seven (almost eight, actually) years I've been trying to be published, I think my biggest gripe against the publishing industry is what I call editorial silence. Let me think, though, if you include submittals to literary magazines I've actually been submitting for about ten years. There's always a time lag between submittal and answer. Magazines, agents, and book acquisitions editors almost all state what their response time is: 6 weeks, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, whatever. It's a little different if you meet an agent or editor at a conference and they ask you to submit something. That's a little less formal, though I suspect their posted response times could be considered to apply.

From my perspective, I don't mind the slow response. What I mind is non-response, or responses so long after the stated response time that it might as well be a non-response. That's the way this business works. A non-response most likely means a no. Most editors say to send them a reminder e-mail once you're a little past their stated response time. When you do you'll get a no.

Some examples. I met with an agent at a conference in Kansas City in November 2007. He asked me to send him the complete manuscript of Doctor Luke's Assistant, as he was planning to represent more fiction in the coming years. I did so about a week later, and heard nothing. The following April I learned this same agent was going to be at a conference I was hoping to attend the next month in North Carolina. I thought we could meet then to discuss my manuscript, if warranted, so I e-mailed him, now five months after he requested the material, and asked for a status report. He said he couldn't find my mss and would I send it again. I did, and talked to him briefly at the next conference. He said, "Your writing is strong, but I don't know if I can sell it. I'm still reading it. Send me a reminder e-mail every week until I respond."

That sounded strange, but I did as he asked. About two weeks later he passed on my book. Looking back, I now suspect he hadn't even looked at the book when I saw him the second time, and he was just giving me "agent-speak".

Another example. At that same North Carolina conference in May 2008, I met with another agent and pitched In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. She asked me to send her a partial (30 or so pages) and a proposal. I did so promptly, and heard nothing for four months. I sent a reminder e-mail, and heard nothing for two months. I sent another reminder e-mail, and she responded, passing on my book because she already represented something similar.

How strange that these two agents, who I met with and who requested me to send them some material, should totally fail to respond. Add to that about thirty magazine submittals where I've either never heard back or heard back up to a year after submittal, and I've concluded that the submittal process is broken across the board. Some writers call it the "query-go-round". Others have a less complimentary term for it.

It's enough to drive an unpublished author to self-publishing. For now, I guess I'll go do something that will make me some money.

Literary Villains: Is the Conventional Wisdom Right?

Attend any class on writing fiction and before long you will hear this mantra: Your heroes must have some faults and your villains must have some good traits. You can't make your heroes so ooey-gooey nice and perfect that they are unbelievable. And you can't make your villains so absolutely awful that there is nothing redeemable in them. Well, you can, but your novel will be the worse for your doing so.

This was news to me when I first heard this in a fiction writing class at a writers conference, but it kind of makes sense. Fictional characters ought to reflect real life to some extent. Few people in real life are totally good or totally bad. Actually, I don't think it's an exaggeration to say no one is totally good or totally bad. Even if a novel is fantasy, and doesn't include humans at all, we human readers judge the novel by our human experience, and the non-human characters must be believable and real based on our human experiences.

But in literature, is this true? Do successful writers always give their heroes faults and their villains virtues? For heroes, I think this is probably true. A big part of any heroes' quest is to overcome obstacles, both those that the world throws at them and those that are within them. But for villains, is this so?

I'm thinking of the Harry Potter series, and of Harry and Voldemort. Now, I must preface this by saying I've not read the books! I intend to, and will be doing so within a year, I think. I'm basing this on the movies. I've seen all seven, and those who have both read the books and seen the movies indicate the movies are fairly faithful to the books. Harry has his faults. We easily see this in his movie portrayal. But does Voldemort have any virtues?

I looked hard for Voldemort virtues in the movies, and haven't found any. I suppose you might say he has a virtue of making an accurate assessment of his chances in a fight against Harry. He says he could not overcome Harry's wand and that Harry has a type of wizardry, provided by Lily Potter, that he, Voldemort, needs something more to overcome. He doesn't pump himself up by ascribing his failure to kill Harry to bad luck. But that's a pretty small virtue, I think.

We might be able to have some sympathy for Voldemort based on the circumstances of his birth and parentage. But sympathy and virtue are not the same.

So, as I write my fiction and flesh out characters, I wonder just how much virtue I should add to the antagonists, the villains. What good characteristics should I give to Tony Mancuso, the Mafia Don who wants to prevent the success of phenom pitcher Ronny Thompson, the hero of my In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People? Should I add a couple of good characteristics to Claudius Aurelius, the corrupt government official who want to stop Luke from writing a biography of Jesus in Doctor Luke's Assistant? I've worked hard to give these villains some redeeming qualities, but I'm wondering if it's a waste of time. Perhaps readers like their villains to be really, really bad—to hate them thoroughly, not to feel a smidgen of sympathy for them. Certainly, if Voldemort's abject villainy contributes to the success of the Harry Potter books, one would think that is the case.

What say you, my few readers? Do you want the villains in the novels you read to have a virtue or two? Do you want to feel some sympathy for the antagonist, and think, "Oh, if only his parents had treated him better he wouldn't have turned out so bad."? Or do you just want to hate the villain and love the hero?

An inquiring novelist wants to know.

The Kicking and Screaming Part

Yesterday I completed my first article for Suite101.com and posted it for editor's review. Your first article after signing on must be approved by an editor before it is viewable on the site. After that you post directly and an editor reviews it after it "goes live". This morning an e-mail was waiting for me, from the editor for this area of the site, saying some changes were recommended.

I checked in at the site and looked at the editor's suggestions. Turns out it's just to add some more white space by breaking things into smaller paragraphs, and maybe making a bulleted list of a couple of items. No change asked for in the text itself. After completing this post I'll make those formatting changes, resubmit, and the article should go live today. I'll come back either today or tomorrow and post a link.

Then I will have to go to PayPal and see if my long-dormant account is still there. That's the only way Suite 101 pays. Not that I expect a windfall any time soon. I have about thirty days to give them payment provisions.

But as I said in my previous post, I'm doing this freelance thing kicking and screaming, holding on to my novels, Bible studies, poetry, and even non-fiction books dream. I'm afraid every writing hour for a while will be devoted to freelancing, both Suite101 and other markets. So I'll have to carve out time for other writing. Doing it while driving doesn't work. I've tried it and I can't seem to concentrate, and I don't really want the distraction. Better to spend driving multi-tasking time with the radio and either music or talk.

My walking time on the noon hour provides opportunites for poetry. I'm usually working on a haiku, or a cinquain, or something else short, something I can remember and write down when I get back in the office. Most of these are not good and I do nothing else with them. although I've got two from the last month that are on Post-it notes on my desk, waiting for me to decide whether they are good enough work on some more.

TV time obviously isn't a good time. Although, I find I can write with the TV on whereas I can't read. But this time is better for editing something rather than writing new stuff.

But the time that has seemed effective at pursuing my "dream" is when I go to bed and turn out the light. I generally fall asleep almost right away. But lately I've been fighting sleep to think through scenes in my novels. I have at most ten minutes before whatever substance my body makes in excess sends me into la la land. Lately I've visualized the last few scenes in Doctor Luke's Assistant. I've played and re-played the scene of In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People where Ronny Thompson learns his girlfriend is a fraud and he hurls his cell phone off the Brooklyn Bridge into the East River. And I've ridden again on the Star Ferry across Hong Kong harbor, where the vanilla American family moves unbeknownst into an espionage adventure in China Tour.

Eventually I'll move on to other scenes. And I won't let this overcome me to the point where I can't fall asleep easily. Perhaps these last thoughts will lead to dreams that will enhance these books, and perhaps I'll begin remembering my dreams.

The Tentacles of Research

I find myself with more time on my hands while abstaining from computer games during Lent. Last night I used that time to return to research on Doctor Luke's Assistant, things that have been nagging me and leaving me fearful that some things might not be historically accurate. So, using the miracle of search engines, I began this task.

In the book, I have the educated farmer, Jacob of Ain Karem, making ink from animal blood and keeping it in a container fashioned from a leg bone of an ox. Is this even possible? Would the blood congeal, even if mixed with something? Would it be absorbed into the bone? Or would it form a film, that maybe would prevent very much from absorbing? This may not be a major item, but I'd like to get it right.

So I searched for "ancient documents" and "ink", and had the usual large number of hits, many of which were not germane. One, however, was to the book Forty Centuries Of Ink, by David N. Carvalho. Who knew such a book existing, or that it was on-line at http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/tech/printing/fortycenturiesofink/toc.html . I haven't yet found the answer to my question, but I have much more of this to read, and other links to pursue.

Then, since I'm preparing the correspondence of Augustus ben Adam, assistant to Doctor Luke, I wanted to research some expert references regarding ancient letters for form and content. I've done some of this already, but not as extensive as I'd like. So I searched for "ancient letters" and had thousands of returns, some amazing documents, either books or articles on-line, or blogs, or professors' web sites. And these sites have hundreds of references to original sources they used. It's a veritable treasure trove of information. When I am at home tonight, I will edit in some of the names of the originally found document and some of the references of interest. How I would love to access and read it all!

But, maybe I don't need to go that far. While perhaps one article or book cannot be considered definitive, maybe two is enough for the purpose at hand. The derivative research, which would be more pleasure than research, will have to wait.