Tag: indie author

Limited Omnipotent

Published by Crawford on July 27, 2026

Once again, the sheer joy of pantsing is manifesting itself. The manuscript for my latest project, working title Gemini 13. This is a sequel to Laughingstock, and features good ol’ Duckie Dunne hunting for the tape of a legendary lost rock ‘n’ roll track.

Again, I am amazed at how things never go according to plan – not that there really is any sort of plan – that’s what pantsing is all about. Characters appear out of nowhere – or to serve what is ostensibly a minor role – and suddenly become main characters. Paul Plummer in Fester was like that = and he even made it into Fester Descent. I’ve got a new one like that – her name’s Karen. Originally, she was a random roommate, contrived to give someone a ride to the club. Now she’s shaping up to be a major character. Go figure.

I’ve long since given up trying to figure. The mystery is part of the fun. Writers are sometimes spoken of as having an almost Godlike power over the worlds they create and the characters who inhabit them. That might be true for those plotters, but for us pantsers, it’s another story.

I have come to look at the writing process in this regard as being limited omnipotent. I have created a world (I think), and can open up windows into this world and try to affect the behavior of the people who are running around in there. It’s harder than it sounds, sometimes. Those people definitely have minds of their own – and sometimes it’s really hard to change them! Like I said, however, it’s a lot of fun trying!

Sneak Preview!

A’ight, this post is running pretty short, and I doubt anyone but my Aunt Gail is gonna read it anyway, so I’ll throw in some random crap from the new MS:

Duckie went into a bit that ended with Trump getting a handjob from Jeffrey Epstein in the middle of the Reflecting Pool. From the corner of his eye, he could see Pig Hat passing through a whole Sherwin-Williams sample book of shades of red, going from Medium Rare through Beet to Fire Engine. The guy stood up and pointed at him and shouted, “You show some repsect for the President of the United States, you libtard freak!”

“I bet I’m showing the exact same amount of respect to Trump that you did to Obama, Jethro! Don’t try to tell me that you stood up and saluted and wiped a patriotic tear from your eye whenever President Obama came on the TV. Riddle me this, Fatman – did you ever call Obama the n-word?”

Pig Hat’s mouth dropped open for half a second, then snapped shut. “N-no!” he exclaimed. “Of course not!”

“Yeah, nice little pause there, man. You’re lying! I’m saying that right to your face!” Duckie knew that this was about to spiral out of control unless he did something to cool it down. He wasn’t sure if he could. He saw Candy slide out from behind the sound board and move towards the trouble spot. A couple of other ushers were converging there as well.

Pig Hat was sputtering now. “You … you stupid libtard! Donald Trump is the greatest president in the history of forever, and you’re too stupid to know! He’s made this country great again!”

“Oh yeah?” said Duckie, realizing that the chance of his de-escalating the sitation was rapidly diminishing. He didn’t care. He didn’t hate this guys politics so much as the willful ignorance he showed. “Tell me one thing – one – that bloated orange freak has done to make your life materially better. Just one!”

Pig Hat huffed and puffed, sweat beading on his face. He looked towards his table companions, but they looked away. Finally, Pig Hat said, “He got all of the trans freaks out of women’s sports!”

“Womens’s sports?” said Duckie. The remainder of his self-control slipped away. “Don’t tell me that you’re worried about women’s sports all of a sudden! What, you got big money riding on the field hockey match? Bullshit! You’re just afraid of someone else’s sexuality because you’ve never been able to figure out your own li’l needle dick, you loser!”

With an incoherent bellow of rage, Pig Hat lunged to his feet and charged the stage. His buddies stood up, but looked around, bewildered. They knew the crowd was against him. Duckie t ook a step back, so he could aim a kick at his assailant if he climbed up on stage. Before he could, Candy and an usher grabbed him from behind and pulled him, struggling, to the exit. Two more ushers materialized and grabbed Pig Hat’s companions by the upper arm and moved them along. They went without protest while the crowd hooted and jeered

Cover for Fester Descent — Still on sale! Buy it today!

Failure to Launch (or, Would You Like Some Cheese with that Whine?)

Published by Crawford on May 30, 2026

My latest novel, Fester Descent, has been out for a little over three months now, and the results have been, shall we say, a little underwhelming. One of the reasons was the poor coincidence of the launch date: February 28, the same day that Dear Leader launched the little “excursion” in the Middle East (or whatever he’s calling it today).

So that was a problem – or at least provided me with a convenient excuse. To be honest, there were warning signs before then. With Laughingstock, I discovered a site called BookSirens, which is a service that provides free advance copies to readers, who are then supposed to provide reviews. That was great, as I had a number of positive previews before the book even went on sale. I was hoping for a similar result with the new book, but alas it was not to be. Only one person signed up on BookSirens, and he was a friend (and I don’t think he’s left a review yet, either).

Then the book launched, and the sales were abysmal. I didn’t even have as poor a launch with my very first book, Jackrabbit. Of course, that had a more clear-cut gangster/true crime genre that resulted in an easily-accessed readership. My subsequent novels have been a little murkier in the genre department. Are they crime fiction? Dark humor? Something else entirely? It’s easy to go down a rabbit hole trying to classify books that don’t really have a clear-cut genre.

I also had some problems with my mailing list. I found out – a bit too late – that all of the emails I was sending to my mailing list that had a Gmail account were getting bounced.

And I also began second-guessing myself. Was it the cover? It wasn’t a world-beater, but it seemed OK, I did, however, use a cut-rate cover designer – and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that in America you get what you pay for. If you’re lucky.

Was is the AI-generated blurbs? Perhaps, but I thought they were pretty good. My general attitude towards AI is that it is best used to combat other AI – that is, to develop text that will twig Amazon’s algorithms and lead potential readers to the book. Hm, doesn’t seem to be happening.

Then there’s the inevitable self-doubt (and the accompanying self-pity): maybe I’m just a shitty writer. I’d like to think that I don’t have illusions in this department. I’m not spending my evenings assembling a trophy case for the inevitable Pulitzer. But I’d like to think that I get a little better with every novel I publish. By that (perhaps faulty) logic, Fester Descent should have been at least a little more popular than Laughingstock. But it wasn’t. So maybe I don’t get better each time. If that’s the case, I’m faced with two options: pack it in or keep trudging. I choose the latter – screw it, I have a great idea for a sequel to Laughingstock, and it’s already in process.

My writing is a labor of love. I love seeing the stories unspool in front of my eyes, even when I had no idea what the characters was planning on doing. I love building what I think of as Festerworld, with its wild and wooly cast of characters, pop culture items, publications and places. I sure ain’t in in for the money; I never make up in royalties what I lay out for professional editing, cover artists, u.s.w. I just wanted to tell a story and have people enjoy it. Maybe even enough to read it more than once. That’s my idea of a successful book: one that people keep coming back to. I probably haven’t gotten there yet, but I intend to keep trying.

I’ve almost exhausted my deep well of self-pity, but there’s one more thing I want to whine about: reviews. Book reviews, especially on Amazon, will make or break an indie writer. Amazon jiggers the rankings based on how many reviews a book has. If a book has 25 or more reviews, it gets boosted in the Amazon search algorithms. I’m sure that there are even better boosts for more reviews, but 25 is the only one that seems a realistic goal for the nonce.

Getting some folks to leave a review can be like pulling teeth. Some people don’t like Amazon, and that’s understandable. Some folks don’t realize that you can leave a review on Amazon without having bought the book there. Then there’s the people whom I’ve given a free copy in exchange for a review who punk out and never leave it. Rum show, people, very rum indeed.

OK, I think I’ve blown a sufficient amount of bile from my system to continue on my WIP, working title Gemini 13. I’ll keep plugging, and as always, my sincerest gratitude for your support.

Just a Few More Minor Edits…

Published by Crawford on January 31, 2026

I’m in the home stretch to get Fester Descent edited and proofread ahead of the February 28 release date. It’s always a weird time during the revision of a book – trying to balance the desire to publish the best possible story with the fact that I’m sick unto death of reading it. The image above represents perhaps the fifth or sixth copy I’ve revised since the “final” draft was written.

I’ve also had a lot of good input, including from my wife NancyAnne and my Aunt Claudia who have graciously read the book with a sharp eye for spelling and punctuation errors – of which there is no shortage. I’m stiff finding plenty of errors as well. Most of those tabs are actually cutting the fat – removing excess and repetitive verbiage. Of which there is no shortage.

Now comes the most odious part of preparing the launch of a book – the marketing. Time to dive back into the sewer of algorithm necromancy and keyword conjuration. Also, I’ll be looking for beta readers, so if you’re interested, please drop me a line at crawford@sweetweaselwords.com.

Holiday Greetings and Cover Reveal

Published by Crawford on December 27, 2025

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and all similarly-oriented seasonal greetings. I hope that everyone has had an enjoyable holiday season and can find some time to rest, relax and generally get themselves ready for whatever 2026 is going to throw at us.

One thing coming at us in 2026 is my new novel Fester Descent, which is tentatively slated to be released at the end of February. I finished up the first draft of the MS earlier this year. Some timing miscues resulted in me sitting on it longer than I had intended, mainly because I had waited too long to get on the editor’s schedule. It was worth the wait to work with Paula Guran, though. She had edited the original Fester, and I learned a lot in the process. I was glad to be able to work with her again. I’ve spent most of the holiday so far reviewing her edits and getting the MS typeset. Now, it’s review time, where I read and re-read the novel to the point here I start to hate it.

But enough of that sorry action – here’s something much more interesting: the final cover design! I’ve actually beein sitting on this for over a month, but I wanted to wait until the MS came back from the editor and I had a clear idea of when the book will be available (2/28/26).

Here it is. Simple, but – I hope – intriguing. Who wouldn’t want to know what’s going on in a book with a tank, a monkey and a sexy leg on the cover?

Happy rest of your holidays and a propitious New Year. Hang on to your hat – hang on to your hope!

Fester: the book what for the new book Fester Descent is a sequel of

Prepare to Descend

Published by Crawford on October 25, 2025

Greeting from “war-torn” Portland! I will forgo the tempting political editorializing and get right to the point: I’m done with Fester Descent.

For now.

I finished with the third draft, and was contemplating a fourth. The idea didn’t really appeal – I had been immersed in the story for months, and needed a break. So I decided that three drafts was enough, and I could let the editor deal with the mess as it was.

Unfortunately, I had dragged my feet a bit in getting on the editor’s calendar, so she won’t be able to get started on it for a few more weeks. It’s well worth the wait, I think. Her name is Paula Guran, and she did the editing on the original Fester. I would have loved to have had her on Laughingstock. She hadn’t been available, and I’d had to go with an unknown quantity – with predictable results. However, with the delay, the book will probably not be available until early in 2026.

Things are good and the cover is nearly complete. A teaser is included above. After I’m done procrastinating (any week now), I intend to pick up the thread of Dungeon & Dragon, and see if I can bring that story to some nonsensical conclusion. New chapters soon!

Maybe.

Cover Craft

Published by Crawford on September 1, 2025

Progress is being made on the latest MS; I’ve just completed editing the second draft of Fester Descent. The story’s tight, but could still use plenty of polishing. One polishing, coming up – but it’s also time to think about publishing and (UGH!) marketing the book.

I’ve already reached out to an editor who I’ve worked with before. She’s being cagey, as editors sometimes do. However, she did a bang-up job on Fester, and I’d rather work with her again than take my chances picking one randomly from Reedsy. That worked out very poorly on Laughingstock, and I’m not eager to recreate that experience.

While that drama is playing out, I’m looking at cover art – one of the most fun parts of self-publishing – mainly because I’m the one pointing our errors and demanding changes! No, it’s great to see how a written work will be represented graphically.

I found an organization that claimed that it could produce a professional-looking cover for a hundred bucks. Well, that just about fits my budget, so I thought I’d give it a go. (I’ll let you know the name of this organization once I’m satisfied with the work.) One bit of concern – will they use AI to create the artwork? There is a checkbox on the intake form about whether you want to avoid AI-generated content. It does not, however, specifically state that they won’t use AI if you check that box. I guess we’ll see.

Of course, conveying the intent of the book to the cover artists involved summarizing the book, which is something that many authors struggle with. I know I sure do. It needs to be done, so I got on it. Besides, this is just a clumsy explanation, but it will eventually morph into a reasonably decent back over blurb, and – eventually – a well-crafted Amazon Ads description.

I did submit an idea for a cover, based on some of the more interesting elements in the narrative. I asked the artists to create a cover that incorporates these three elements:

A brothel
An M50A1 tank
Upwards of three (3) monkeys

I’d like to think that a book cover with these elements just screams “great read!” Or maybe it will be something else entirely. We’ll see – stay tuned!

A Knotty Problem of Timing

Published by Crawford on July 27, 2025

After getting off to a slow start, I finally got up a bit of momentum on the second draft of my latest project. After re-writing one of the early chapters, it was pretty much just picking up the redlines I had marked up the Shitty First Draft – easy stuff. Then my timeline came back to haunt me.

I had learned about the importance of having an accurate timeline from Paula Guran, who edited Fester. She was merciless in addressing the timeline, among other things. (Shame she wasn’t available for Laughingstock, which was an editing nightmare.) I hope she’ll be available to edit Fester Descent.

But just in case, I’ve been keeping a tight timeline as I’m working through the second draft. This is where I pay for the sins of the SFD. Timing issues are just one of many sins, but arguably the most problematic. And as I learned with Fester, you don’t want these problems to linger too long or they, um, fester.

So I’m jumping on it right now, at my earliest convenience. (No point in worrying about it during the SFD; that’s all about getting words on paper.) When cranking on the SFD, I was only worried about the sequence, not the timing. I just knew that event A came before event B, and to hell with the details. Now I’m dealing with situations where a character gets shot, but his wife doesn’t visit him in the hospital for five days. Oops! Gotta fix that.

It’s a knot, I think – and it pays to un-knot the story as quickly as possible. You can sometimes shove the knot down the rope a bit, but you sure don’t want to shove it all the way to the end – because it gets begger the further you shove it.

I think I’ve worked the knot metaphor for about as much as I can. Best to call it good right here. More news to follow as I finish up Draft 2 and start to think about showing it to an editor. I can hardly wait.

Now for Round 2

Published by Crawford on June 28, 2025

After nearly two months, I’ve finally gotten through “editing” the Shitty First Draft of my latest MS, working title Fester Descent. Now, when I say “editing,” I really mean reading and redlining the text, and making notes for the next draft.

Frankly, it’s a little embarrassing that it took me so long to read through my own first draft. A nasty part of my mind tells me that a real writer would have gotten through the whole thing in a weekend.

In my defense, I have three good excuses as to the dilatory nature of my review:

I find it difficult reading my own writing, especially for extended periods
I had a whopper of a spring cold in May that sidelined me for nearly three weeks
I am monumentally lazy

However, now I’ve finished my review and now I have to write the Slightly Less Shitty Second Draft (SLSSD). Okay, I merely have to take a big breath and just start doing it.

Easier said than done, of course.

There is one thing that will make it a little easier: for a first draft, it’s not that bad. You never know what you’ll end up with at the end of a first draft, especially if you’re a pantser like I am. Usually, I end up with a large number of loose ends that have to be tied up, sometimes awkwardly. With this draft, that wasn’t so much of a problem. (OK, yeah, so I had to resort to a deux ex machina in the form of an Air National Guard F-16, but other than that…) Maybe it’s luck or maybe some small portion of accumulated skill, but it seems like things came together a lot more easily on this one.

That having been said, there is still a lot of polishing that needs to be done. Time to get down to it. Then sell some plasma so I can hire and editor.

The Thing

Published by Crawford on February 28, 2025

One of the things I’ve done this winter in lieu of writing, was to do something I haven’t done in about 45 years: build a model tank.

However, I wasn’t just acting like a 14-year-old, lurking in the basement, blasting Black Sabbath and gluing together squidgy little plastic parts of a tank replica. No, I was doing research.

This was in aid of the current work-in-progress, a sequel to Fester now using the working title Fester Descent. One of the initial mental images I had for this book was a column of tanks rolling through downtown Fester. (Pretty sure I copped this idea from the Book of the SubGenius, of which you should own several copies.)

Further consideration rendered the idea of a column of tanks too complicated, but a single tank should be much more manageable. And I already had a character to command that tank: Billy Snyder, the disgraced former Chief Constable of Fester. It had already been established that Billy had served with the Marines in Vietnam and that he was adept at procuring classified military hardware.

Then it became a matter of research: what type of tanks did the U.S. Marines use in Vietnam? There weren’t many choices, as that war did not see much in the way of armor battles. Then I hit upon the beauty seen at the top of the page: the M50 Ontos. The Ontos was used in Vietnam, and it was small, so it could conceivably be operated but just one whacked-out ex-cop. Best of all, it was weird.

The Ontos – Greek for thing – isn’t so much a tank as a mobile platform for a half-dozen recoilless rifles, with some sheet metal over top. That made the Ontos maneuverable and powerful – but also very vulnerable. It could go places other armored vehicles couldn’t, but was also vulnerable to any weapon more powerful than an assault rifle.

Of course, I had to also research under which circumstances the M50 was used in that war. It came down primarily to two engagements: the Battle of Khe Sanh and the Battle of Hue. The latter seemed more likely from a dramatic perspective, owing to the brutal building-to-building nature of that fight and the likelihood of using the Ontos to blow up buildings. After all, what do you think Billy Snyder is going to do with this piece of hardware? Hint: he’s not fixing it up for the Fester Veterans’ Day parade.

The research included a detailed investigation into the Battle of Hue in 1969. The research also stumbled across a plastic model of the Ontos. At 1:16 scale, it was large enough to boast a detailed interior. This was important, as I really wanted to know what it was like to ride around and fight in this thing.

The answer: awful. It was cramped, it must have been loud, and with the hatches closed, the only way to see or steer was through periscopes in the hatches. It also had to be difficult knowing that the armor was so paltry, to cut down on weight. One thing became apparent – the driver’s position (the one Billy had in the war) was the safest on the vehicle, since the engine compartment protected the driver’s right side.

It was an aggravatingly detailed model, and it took nearly three months to put together. After it was done, my wife asked if I was going to do any more. I said no way. One could be excused as research, but any more would just make it another pathetic middle-aged white-guy pastime, and I already have enough of those.

Sickness Now, the Hours Dread

Published by Crawford on September 28, 2024

Q: Why did Humpty Dumpty have a great fall?

A: To make up for a lousy summer.

-some kids’ magazine from the 70’s

Well, if I’m to follow in Mr. Dumpty’s footsteps, I’m due for an awesome fall – because this summer was, in fact, rather sucky.

July was okay, just hectic – but in August, things went downhill in a hurry. In early August I had stomach surgery, which is all well and good. At first, the recovery went great. They sent me home with a large bottle of opiated syrup, and that was just fine. However, about a week and a half after the surgery I got hit with a GI bug, and it cleaned my clock. I’ll spare you the gory details, but it was a strong and persistent bug that laid me quite low for five freakin’ weeks. It wasn’t just nasty, it was dag nasty.

I didn’t make a big deal of this on social media, partly because I don’t like sharing personal details online*. Also, I didn’t want to unduly worry my legion of insanely-devoted fans, at least until I felt I was out of the woods. I’m sure I spared many rendings of garments, not to mention much wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Naturally, my writing suffered. I did get some feedback expressing the expectation that I was doing wonderful writing during my recuperation. There are two reasons for this: initially, large bottle of opiated syrup; then, 24-7 vomit-o-rama. Neither is conducive to authorial motivation. Robert Louis Stevenson may have written wonders from his sick bed, but I was either giggling at the cracks in the ceiling or clutching my spasming belly and moaning piteously.

It was a bit of a chore to finally shake the rust of and get back down to writing the sequel to Fester. I managed to fake my way through a few writers’ groups with chapters I had already completed before the surgery. Soon enough, I had to get cranking again. It was tough at first, but pretty soon the thoughts began to outpace the fingers and the word count continued to ratchet up.

I’ve gotten to the point now where I’m developing new characters – or rather, they’re developing themselves. The characters from the original book have already revealed their personalities to me, but these three new Schmidts (Ronald, Ophelia and Thelma Louise) are just starting to become more than cardboard cutouts, which is always fascinating to experience. Of course, there’s plenty of fun in seeing what the old characters are up to. For example, Billy Snyder is working on a restoration project that is really batshit crazy.

Enough for now. I don’t want to give too much away – especially since it might all change by Draft 2. Suffice to say that I’m well on my way to recovery and cranking on the word count.

*I’m only sharing this info here because I’m pretty sure hardly anyone will read it.