Tag: indie author

Intelligence – Artificial and Otherwise

Published by Crawford on May 22, 2023

So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure

How amazingly unlikely is your birth

And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere up in space

‘Cause there’s bugger-all down here on Earth!
Monty Python, “Galaxy Song”

Hola, amigos! I know it’s been a long time since I’ve rapped with ya, but I’ve been busy reading old editorials from The Onion.

No, actually, I’ve been busy doing things other than writing, alas. April was a bit of a mess, having to make a short-notice cross-country trip to deal with family issues, then getting the RSV virus, which pretty much laid me out for two solid weeks. No fun.

I had honestly thought that I’d been done with the third draft of my new novel, Laughingstock, at this point. Unfortunately, it’s not to be – at least not yet. I know there may be literally dozens of fans out there clamoring to read this. I can’t blame them, as it is shaping up to be pretty good. There are still a few rough patches that need to be smoothed over, but what I can’t take care of in Draft 3, surely the editor will be able to address.

Which brings me to another issue that is delaying the moving forward of the project – I can’t really afford to hire an editor right now, nor shell out for the cover art. It’s a drag, and I hope that I’ll be able to do so in the immediate future. However, one of the unfortunate truths of indie authordom is that the author has to pay for these up-front costs out of pocket, as well as ongoing advertising costs, etc. This is not a business for those looking to get rich quickly.

There are those who would have you believe otherwise. A lot of jibber-jabber in that direction nowadays revolves around artificial intelligence (AI). AI platforms such as BlowHard and SplatGTH have been featured on a daily basis since the end of last year. Most of these platforms are language-based or art-based, and I know a lot of writers and artists who have been having a blast playing with them.

I’m not one of them.

I’m taking a very cautious wait-and-see approach to Artificial Intelligence. Any technology that made Stephen Hawking nervous should be approached with extreme caution, I think. Seeing how much of a shit-show social media turned out to be, I think I’ll just keep my distance for a while. Maybe that makes me a Luddite – I really don’t care. I turned 55 a few months ago. I feel that gives me the right to be cranky and suspicious of new stuff. ‘Scuse me – I gotta go holler at some kids to get off my damn lawn!

Okay, I will admit that I can think of at least one area where I would be willing to entertain the use of AI in my writing process: proofreading. I did not have my manuscripts professionally proofread previously, and I came to regret it. For Fester, I just did it myself. In restrospect, this was silly. Sure, I caught some typos, but certainly not all of them. It’s not going to happen when you read the same 100,000 word MS over and over again. You’re too familiar with the words, and your eyes just sorta slide off of them.

The trouble is that professional proofreading can be expensive – usually a penny a word. That’s a cool grand for a 100K word MS. This was more than my editor charged! So I’m conflicted. On one hand, I’m leery of sinking more money into a project that I will most likely never make back. On the other hand, I’d hate to be contributing to literary people losing income due to the Rise of the Machines. On the third hand, I sure as hell don’t want to try proofreading my own novel again.

It’s a bit of a quandary, fer sure. However, given that I have yet to finish writing the thing, it’s all hypothetical, at least for now. So I’ll just quit bitching and leave you with a little treat: Stephen Hawking singing the Galaxy Song. Enjoy!

Fester — Still available for you purchasing pleasure!

The Brick

Published by Crawford on March 11, 2023

I’m not a fast writer. I have a full-time job, and I’m also pretty lazy. I’d love to be able to crank out two or three full-length novels a year, but that may not be in the offing anytime soon. Consequently, it’s always an amazing feeling when I can see the light at the end of the tunnel for a project I’ve been working on for a long time. I’ve finally reached that point with my latest novel.

The novel is called Laughingstock. It’s about two comedians who grew up together and began doing standup as a duo while in high school. The family of one of the teens moves out of state (to Fester!), but they continue to pursue their comedy careers. Chuck Marshall ends up as a successful standup in L.A., who manages to grab the brass ring and gets his own network TV show. His pal, Wilbert “Duckie” Dunne, manages to escape from Fester, but languishes in a comedy backwater, working crummy jobs and appearing at small venues in the Pacific Northwest. When Chuck disappears at the height of his success, Duckie goes out in search of his childhood friend. Along the way, he encounters a secret comedians’ retreat, a deceased comedy legend who isn’t as dead as everyone thinks, and the sinister machinations of the head of the Wolff TV Network.

I was about three-quarters of the way through the second draft when I realized, “Hey, this might actually be a story that people would enjoy reading.” It was a good feeling. That feeling was tempered somewhat by the final word count: 165,000 words, which was about a 50% increase from the first draft.

I nominally like to aim for a word count of 90,000 words for a completed novel MS. For Fester, I settled for 110,000 – I’ll probably end up landing around there for Laughingstock as well. That’s the problem with “pantsing,” which is my preferred method of writing. Since I usually start with a premise, a handful of characters and a very general notion of the direction I want the story to go, I always end up with huge manuscripts that then need to be brutally pruned to something readable. It’s fun, however, to kind of wind up the characters and just observe what they do. A lot of the time they end up doing or saying things that I had no notion of them doing or saying. It can be kind of spooky, honestly – but also fun, like a Jaycees haunted house.

Now I have a 592-page brick of a manuscript that I need to cut nearly in half to be workable. I thought about just removing all of the even-numbered chapters, and pushing it as an “experimental” story form, but that would probably only appeal to MFA students who do a lot of hippie drugs. Instead, I will now break out a red pen and proceed to “murder my darlings.” The best approach is to treat the whole project like I’m having to pay by the word for having the thing printed. Given that Amazon is my primary sales conduit, this isn’t that far from the truth.

So off I go with a brand new red pen and a ruthless gleam in my eye to get this next novel out in the world. Wish me luck.

Welcome to “Book World” – Enter at Your Own Risk

Published by Crawford on February 11, 2023

In late 2020, fans of indie romance writer Susan Meachen got shocking news: she had recently died. Even worse, she had taken her own life, and it was intimated that online bullying had driven her to do so.

Meachen had been an active member of a number of online communities of indie romance authors. Any number of online author communities exist for different genres, and I can attest that they can get ugly. Just like any other part of the Internet – and especially social media – some people participate in such groups seemingly for the sole purpose of dumping on others.

Not surprisingly, the indie/romance world is especially drama-ridden. Meachen had earlier intimated about her struggles with mental health issues to her 700+ followers on her Facebook page – known as “the Ward,” a reference to a psych ward. Regardless, they were shocked when a post on Meachen’s account by her daughter in September 2020 announced that Meachen had taken her own life, and strongly intimated that online “book world” bullying had been a contributing factor.

Naturally, Meachen’s online fans and friends were devastated. Some pitched in to edit Meachen’s final manuscript for publication. A short story anthology called Bully King Anthology, which was dedicated to Meachen, with the tag “Let’s keep bullying where it belongs – In fiction.” There was also on online auction to help cover the expenses of Meachen’s funeral.

As the months after Meachen’s death rolled on there would be posts on Meachen’s FB page from her daughter, many calling attention to mental health issues. Eventually, a new admin called T.N. Steele began moderating and posting to the Ward. Strangely enough, Steele shared the same birthday and anniversary as did Meachen.

The mystery was solved on January 3 of this year, when the following post hit Meachen’s FB page:

Indeed, the fun did begin. Many people were outraged that Meachen had falsely reported her own suicide, then seemed to try to profit from it as well. One former friend contacted FBI’s cybercrimes unit. There was much recrimination about the anguish caused by the fake death announcement, and similar concerns related to mental health issues.

The media had a fun time with it, although mostly in a superficial, frothy “ha-ha-look-at-the-lengths-these-indie-authors-will-go-to” sort of way, perhaps with a soupcon of concern about mental health issues.

The mainstream “traditional” publishing industry weighed in with an unsurprising level of condescension. “Mainstream” book reviewer Laura Miller wrote the following in Slate:

While Meachen and the other writers who befriended her virtually refer to their community as “the book world,” what they’re talking about has little to do with what most outsiders would associate with that term: the mainstream publishing industry, the professionals who work in it, and the authors whose books fill your local bookstore. Meachen’s “book world” is the community of self-published romance and erotica writers who sell low-cost e-books and print-on-demand paperbacks, primarily through Amazon.

Snotty, yes – but the “book world” for indie writers is just as real – and drama-filled – for indie writers as the traditional publishing industry is for folks like Ms. Miller. The New York Times pointed out in an op-ed that the traditional publishing scene is not without its own scandals and drama. The point being that even if your glass house is a 29-story building on Broadway, you should be careful about chucking stones.

Then the NYT came up with a more nuanced take on the story that cast Meachen in a more sympathetic light. A resident of rural Tennessee, Susan Meachen found herself at loose ends as her husband Troy was away from home for long stretches as a long-haul truck driver. Meachen discovered her “book world” by immersing herself in romance novels, often going through them in less than a day.

Then she began writing them, and entered the singular purgatory of indie authorship. It can be a difficult world, one with a constant need for attention and validation. These, unfortunately, can be achieved for some by slagging other authors in online forums, on Goodreads, on Amazon reviews and elsewhere.

Add genuine mental health issues into this environment, and things can quickly deteriorate. Meachen had been diagnosed and treated for bipolar disorder. The feedback of the indie/romance “book world” was a double-acting whipsaw, elevating the manic highs and depressing the dismal lows. Meachen’s family began to express major concerns about her well-being and possibility of self-harm.

In September 2020, while Troy was on the road, Meachen’s daughter checked in on her and discovered her semi-conscious, after having taken a large quantity of Xanax. Obviously terrified by the effects that “book world” were having on his wife’s mental health, Troy instructed his daughter to post the announcement of Susan Meachen’s death, hoping to sever the connection between his wife and an online community that was harming her.

This was the first of a series of questionable choices made by the Meachen family. Besides the (admittedly small-scale) donations solicited in Meachen’s name, there was also the issue of her apparently lurking amongst her mourners for two years as “TN Steele.” Meachen herself seems surprised at the controversy and attention that her resurrection has garnered. Apparently, the fuss has died an ignoble death, and Susan Meachen has been effectively canceled and cast into the outer darkness of social media nothinghood.

So what’s the point of this? I was actually hoping that something would come to me as I wrote this, but other than being a moderately-interesting but slightly-slimy tale of the intersection of social media and grimier parts of human nature. If anything, it’s an illustration of the uglier part of indie writing and publishing. There’s a lot of dog-eat-dog competition out there, especially in popular genres such as romance. A microcosm of social media in general, there’s a constant need for attention and validation that can be poisonous to even those who beam down to “book world” with relatively good mental health. It can be tough out there. As a wise guy once said, “Life sucks; get a helmet.”¹

¹ Note that this is not to diminish the problems of those struggling with depression or any other form of mental illness. “Helmet” is meant metaphorically to mean any mechanism to help mitigate from external harm, like turning off your computer and going for a walk.

LoNoWriMo

Published by Crawford on December 4, 2022

I’m sitting here enjoying watching an early December snowfall in Portland – and fervently hoping that it ends and melts by tomorrow!

As I mentioned in my last post, I sorta punted on November’s National Novel Writing Month, or NaNoWriMo. The goal of NaNoWriMo is to produce 50K words of a novel during the 30 days of November. This works out to 1,667 words per day. This is not an easy task, at least not for me. I know some professional writers who can crank out three or four thousand words a day without breaking a sweat, but for me this sort of output is aspirational.

Last year, I participated in NaNoWriMo in a limited fashion, with a goal of 15K words for the month, or 500 a day. This wasn’t too odious, so I wanted to double the goal for this year. However, my schedule (and inherent laziness) didn’t allow me to participate last month, which was disappointing. I had really wanted to get 30,000 words further down the road in the second draft of my new MS, a novel called Laughingstock.

In order to make up for this deficit, I’m declaring December to be Local Novel Writing Month, or LoNoWriMo. In this case, the locality is limited to my writing space upstairs, or – if it’s snowing – the kitchen table, so I can look out over the backyard. The goal is to have 30K words by the New Year.

So far, so good. In fact, it’s only the 4th, but I’ve got 5,000 words down, so I’m slightly ahead of the game. If I can keep up this pace, I might be in a position to do the full monty of 50,000 words for next November’s NaNoWriMo. First things, first, though – onward to the New Year!

Time to Drop the Pantsing?

Published by Crawford on June 4, 2022

Hola, amigos! I know it’s been a long time since I rapped at ya, but things have been muy loco here at Sweet Weasel Words.

First, I’ve been spending the last several months posting a serialized version of a novella, called For They Shall Hurt. It’s a chilling story of friendship, misplaced faith and murder. It was an interesting process, although not without criticism. Some readers didn’t like to have to wait a week to read the next chapter. I like to think that I was imitating other authors who serialized their stories. For example, Stephen King’s The Green Mile was originally published in six serial volumes in 1996. In turn, King references Charles Dickens’ novels, many of which were serially published in magazines or as standalone “chapbooks.”

This is where any resemblance between Your Humble Author and the likes of King and Dickens ends. My decision to publish FTSH in serial form had more to do with the feedback I received from my writers’ group. I actually finished the first draft earlier this year, but I didn’t post the chapters until I had received feedback from my writing peeps at each week’s meeting.

Now that the novella is complete, I’ve turned my efforts to my next novel manuscript, tentatively titled Laughingstock. Right now, the MS is topping 115K words, which is about 25,000 more than I’d like to have for the final product. Also, I still haven’t finished the first draft; another 10,000 words is not out of the question.

In a previous post, I discussed the difference between “plotting” and “pantsing” in story construction. I am absolutely a pantser, and have really been pantsing the hell out of this story. Especially as the story approaches its conclusion, I’ve basically been driving all of the characters to the same place and seeing what the heck they end up doing. Now, I think I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can see a clear path to the end of the story.

The question for me is whether I should try to plot or outline that path that I can see through the haze, or just keep pantsing to the end. Doing the former would most likely speed up the writing process, which is a good thing. On the other hand, pantsing has gotten me this far, and I am loathe to abandon it now; similar to the way some baseball players don’t like to change their socks when they’re on a winning streak. (NOTE: I change my socks nearly every day.)

So I guess I’m not going to drop my pantsing for now, seeing as how I’m in the home stretch. I hope to be able to give a definitive report on this approach shortly.

Cover of Jackrabbit, new John Dillinger novel — Still available for your reading enjoyment

The Write Month to Increase Word Count

Published by Crawford on November 7, 2021

In general, I’m not a huge fan of November. The last vestiges of summer are long gone, the tress are bare and here in Portland we can look forward to another eighteen months or so of continuous rain and gloom. (But on the bright side, it’s still better than Buffalo!) Also, there’s the downside of the Holiday Spirit being rammed down our throats like the force-feeding of a paté goose . Bah, humbug.

When I got the opportunity to join a Willamette Writers writing Cohort, I decided to take advantage of it and signed on. In a previous post, I mentioned that I had stumbled on a story that would be an excellent framework for a sequel to Fester, and had be vacillating on whether or not to pursue that, or continue on with a new novel MS with which I had been struggling. I decided to eat my vegetables before going after dessert, and that I would finish the current MS before starting on the Fester sequel. The Cohort seemed like a good way to provide the new story with some momentum.

The Cohort meets several times a week for support and “write-ins.” At the first check-in meeting, I felt a bit intimidated. A lot of the Willamette Writers seem a lot more put together and organized than I am. A couple had whiteboards with outlines of works in progress, plot points, notes etc. (I typically don’t write that way: I just kinda wind up the characters and see what they do, then write it down.) There was also talk of a writing tool called Scrivener which seemed interesting, but since I have an actual legit copy of MS Word, I figured I’d just stick with that.

Immediately on the heels of the Scrivener discussion, a couple of folks started talking about what sounded like “Nano Rhyme-O,” which I figured was some sort of lightweight writing app for poets. Actually, it was shorthand for National Novel Writing Month; i.e. NaNoWriMo, which happens every November.

NaNoWriMo is a nonprofit dedicated to encouraging people to write. The primary goal is to write a 50,000-word novel (or the equivalent beginning of a novel) during the course of November. You “win” NanNoWriMo by reaching this goal; it’s on the honor system – the primary reward is the satisfaction of cranking out a lot of words in a short amount of time. I think you may also get a pumpkin sticker.

To achieve 50,000 words in a 30-day period requires writing an average of 1,667 words per day – no mean feat, especially for someone who is A) employed full-time, and B) fundamentally lazy, like me. I decided to shoot for a more reasonable goal of 500 words a day, which I could pull off in a reasonably focused hour of writing. Unfortunately, I blew that goal on the second day of the month, due to a math error (I prematurely carried the 1). Nonetheless, I’m plugging away and getting the word count up. I’d actually like to be done with the current project this time next year, and take an honest whack at the 2022 NaNoWriMo with the Fester sequel. Ersten dingen zuerst, as the Germans say. So pleases excuse me, I have some storytelling to do.

Unlikely Inspiration

Published by Crawford on September 18, 2021

Sometimes, inspiration for a story can come from unexpected places. This happened to me last weekend. In my case, the inspiration was a “welcome” binder in a rental property.

I am a compulsive reader and all-around nerd, so I always read the guest book whenever we check into a hotel room or whatnot. I want to see the local map, find out what good bars and restaurants are nearby, and know the best way to make a speedy exit if necessary.

When we checked into a 2-bedroom rental for a long weekend in Astoria, Oregon, I immediately thumbed through the binder that had been left on the kitchen table. Tucked in the back pocket of the binder was a number of newspaper pages from the Daily Astorian from 2012. I expected a review of the place we were staying (the “Painted Lady”), or a rehash of a long-past local festival. The first page I saw carried the banner headline “Mary Louise Flavel found.” This piqued my interest right away – who was Mary Louise Flavel and why were people looking for her? As I continued to read through the newspaper articles, it soon became evident as to why, and I soon became amazed at the story that led up to Mary Louise’s discovery.

First, a bit about Astoria. Located at the mouth of the Columbia River, Astoria was the first American settlement west of the Rockies. The town was founded in 1811, by John Jacob Astor’s Pacific Fur Company as a fortress trading post. Given the strategic location as the Pacific connection to one of the continent’s main inland waterways, it soon began to thrive.

Captain George E. Flavel was one of the first licensed sea pilots in Oregon. As the only bar pilot at the mouth of the Columbia, he had a virtual monopoly on sea traffic moving in and out of the river. He charged accordingly, and one contemporary editorial described him as “the bloodsucker at the mouth of the river.”

The Flavel family fortune grew, as Captain George expanded into shipping, banking, coal, commercial real estate and other business ventures. The fortunes of the town grew with the fortunes of the Flavel family. Captain George built a fine house in the Queen Anne style a few blocks from the waterfront. The family eventually donated it to the county historical society, and it is operated as a museum today.

George E. Flavel House, now a museum in Astoria, OR

Flavel’s son, George C., also became a bar pilot, and built himself a grand house a few blocks away from his father’s. After the original house was donated, George C.’s became the family seat.

As I continued to read about the fate of the house and the Flavels that lived there, I was amazed. It was an incredible story of the decline and fall of a prominent family, and a town who turned on them. I read through the newspaper articles twice, then grabbed a notebook and filled four and a half pages with notes. The next day, we went to the Flavel House Museum, and I picked up a book in the gift shop that offered some more details on the rise and fall of the Flavel family.

That evening, as I was watching the ships laying at anchor in the river, I had an epiphany: “Astoria is Fester.” Even the geography is similar (although the Columbia is much wider than the Black River flowing through Fester). With that realization, I began plotting how to fit the story of the Flavels into the context of Fester. I grabbed my notebook again, and soon had the outline for about 75% of the story that may serve as a sequel to Fester.

Which leaves me with a nice conundrum: should I pursue this new inspiration, or should I continue with the story on which I had been working, a story about stand-up comedians, tentatively titled Laughingstock? It’s a nice problem to have, for a writer.

At this point, I’m only a chapter or two away from finishing the equivalent of Act 1 from Laughingstock, so I owe it to the story to get at least that far. Then I’ll take a stab at the Fester followup. We’ll see what inspires after that.

More Gruel, Please!

Published by Crawford on July 28, 2021

“Please, sir, may I have an Amazon review?”

Well, my latest novel, Fester, is as published as it’s going to get. That means that I now have to go out and actually sell the sumbitch.

This, for me, is not fun. Some people love being a sales-entity*, but not me. For me, it’s like pulling teeth. However, as a one-entity operation, I have to be the author, the publisher and the sales-entity. As the philosopher Meatloaf pointed out, two outta three ain’t bad. Regardless, slacking on marketing is not going to get my book in front of readers, which is the object of the exercise.

I have been researching how to maximize book sales for indie authors**, and the bottom line is that you can’t really get anywhere with sales without spending on advertising. OK, I can get behind that; it takes money to make money. But here’s the rub: you shouldn’t really be spending money on ads unless you have a minimum number of Amazon reviews in place (~10). There’s no point in driving people to a point of sale without them seeing a number of (presumably positive) reviews once they get there.

Now I am in the uncomfortable position of trying to wheedle Amazon reviews out of my friends and family. This is, to me, odious – I feel like Oliver Twist asking for more gruel. I had some issues with this when I was promoting the Fester prequel, Powwows. I offered free copies of the eBook ( Powwows was eBook only) in return for an honest Amazon review. This met with limited success. I think the issue in this case was that people downloaded the book and then forgot about it. Or maybe I’m just an impatient asshat. Probably both.

Regardless, I thought I’d try the same thing with Fester. At first, I offered a free digital copy for an Amazon review. Then, when my author copies finally arrived, I began offering a free hard copy for a review. When I made that offer, a relative who has also self-published books via Amazon suggested that I crank it up a notch, in order to make sure these were verified purchase reviews.

To that end, I decided to offer a $10 Amazon gift card to anyone who bought the book on Amazon, left a review and sent a screen shot confirming this. This seemed a little ethically mushy, but it’s a cutthroat environment out there for self-published and indie authors. I figured what was the harm? I’d get my number of reviews up to double digits, discontinue the offer and proceed with my advertising campaign.

The problems started when I unwisely cross-posted the offer to a FB indie author group that I had signed on with. The moderator of this group is a harridan – y’know the type: they’ve got a tiny chunk of the web they control, so they control it with an iron fist. This moderator saw my offer and went ballistic. Soon, I was getting nastygrams about how people like me were why the indie publishing world had a “bad reputation.” (This was news to me.) The moderator and a number of like-minded pedants were stalking my Twitter feed, and leaving nasty comments on unrelated posts on FB, etc. One of them even ratted me out to Amazon, claiming that I was “…abusing [the] system by offering incentivized reviews, incentivized purchases, sales manipulation, ranks manipulation, etc.”

This abuse seemed a little over-the-top for what I regard as a noob mistake. So I deleted the posts that had so offended the indie author pedants. Then, I checked the official rules*** and discovered that “incentivized reviews” used to be kosher, but they changed the rules a few years back. That’s the problem with Amazon: indie authors are pretty much at Amazon’s mercy if they want to sell book one, so they get to change the rules whenever they like. Also, it seems like there are underhanded ways to abuse the system on a large scale, which was a far cry from what I was attempting to do. Certainly, it seemed like overkill for my misguided attempt at book promotion to compel a complete stranger to act as a corporate snitch for Jeff Bezos.

I looked at some of the other rules regarding book promotion and Amazon reviews. They’ve got all sorts of rules, some of which border on the ridiculous. For example, it is OK to offer a free copy in exchange for an unbiased review – which is absolutely what I was doing. However, the reviewer is supposed to divulge that fact in the review.

Other rules regarding submission of Amazon reviews are a little more Orwellian. Technically, you are not supposed to get reviews from any friends or family. OK, I can (barely) understand rejecting reviews from the same household, but the whole friends and family group? Fuck that noise. Are we supposed to submit a list to Amazon or something? Bullshit. That company has too much of our personal information as it is.

So that’s where I’m at now – still pissy and frustrated. I’ll try to be cognizant of Amazon’s ever-shifting rules going forward, and avoid indie author groups in general. Fthang!

* I started to go with “salesman,” but realized that was sexist. I then thought about “salesperson,” but realized that term was prejudicial against non-humans and ghosts. “Sales-entity” seemed like the most inclusive term for this situation. Also, if anyone knows of a ghost who is looking for a sales position, please let me know.

**There are yea number of places that will , for the proper fee, provide instruction on how to maximize indie book sales. In fact, I was all ready to put my cash down on one of the more reputable courses, but then the radiator in the car blew up, so that was that. So it’s just muggins here who gets to work it out on his own.

*** Which, in retrospect, I should have done first. Eh, I’ve always leaned towards the “salt before tasting” philosophy., anyway

The Editorial Ennui

Published by Crawford on March 7, 2021

The good news is that Powwows is now slouching towards publication; the bad news is that I’m stuck in editorial perdition. Actually, as far as authorial mental states go, there are worse ones to be in. Writer’s block, for example.

The editing process is one that isn’t very glamorous, but oh so important. I’m in the process of editing two pieces of writing right now. My first mistake was thinking that once I’d paid a professional editor to edit the MS, that I’d pretty much be done with editing the story. Nope, not really–the editor has pretty much cleared up the low-hanging fruit, so to speak. I usually get a lot of feedback about timeline issues and historical accuracy (“that movie you’re quoting wasn’t released until two years after this story takes place”). Important stuff for sure, because as an author, there is a whole lot of the forest I can’t see due to my face being firmly planted on the treebark.

So I edit the editor’s edits, then I edit my own edits of the editor’s edits. On Saturday, I find myself changing back the things I changed on Friday. It can seem circular and pointless sometimes, and I frequently just want the whole damn thing to be over with, because I have a whole lotta other story ideas that are begging to be put down on paper. Why should I keep polishing and polishing and polishing what I already have.

Well, the answer to that actually starts to emerge after the sixth or seventh go-round. From the regular cycle of incremental editorial change, something really starts to shine out. That diamond-in-the-rough that began as a very basic idea however many yonks ago, is actually starting to shine! I find myself thinking things like, “Wow–this is kinda good! Did I actually write this?”

Yes. Yes, I did.

I wrote this, too – and you can still buy it!

Runs in the Family

Published by Crawford on August 24, 2020

My uncle surprised me by publishing a novel on Amazon. It didn’t surprise me that he had done so; I just wasn’t aware that he had a novel in the works. I can honestly say that my uncle, Hugh Fuller, was a major inspiration to my taking up the pen. I remember reading a number of really funny short stories he had written back in the 70’s, and thinking “Wow – someone I know can write something that’s really good. Maybe I can, too.”

Also, Hugh has released two books already: a memoir of his service in Vietnam, and a memoir about all of the dogs that he has owned and loved. Neither of these, however, was available to the Great Unwashed. His new book, Requiem for a Rat, is available at Amazon – links have been provided above.

I always figured that Hugh would get a book or two out there one day, but I was honestly surprised when my brother, Todd, published a book in 2013. He might have mentioned that he was working on a book, but if so, it hadn’t registered with me. Brother Todd is a self-directed entrepreneur. He always has yea number of irons in the fire, and not all of them pan out. Maybe that’s why I only listened with one ear when he mentioned that he had a book in the works. His book is autobiographical, chronicling his adventures in higher education, world travel and entrepreneurship.

I also have an aunt, Claudia Pattison, who has written a romance novel, as yet unpublished. I encourage her to go ahead and get that puppy into print. It’s really not that hard, and given the book market, it will probably wildly outsell anything that myself, Hugh or Todd has done.

I suppose that writing and self-expression tend to run in my family. We’ve always been a verbose group, which has made for some very memorable family gatherings. As for myself, I’ve got a few more things in the works – but when they’ll see the light of day is still very much up in the air. Keep checking this blog for updates. And buy my uncle’s and brother’s books.

And mine, of course.