Let's Talk About Outlining (or Plotting)

I use Grammarly for english proofreading because nothing is wurser than having yer mistooks found by a reeder.

It's a bit of a hot topic in the writing world, whether or not you must outline your story.  There are hundreds of articles and blogs out there about how and when to outline your story, what the best ways to go about making an outline are, how outlines might be the difference between a good story and a bad one, etc...

The outline is 95 percent of the book. Then I sit down and write, and that’s the easy part. - Jeffrey Deaver

So that's one side of the argument.

Another set of voices is out there saying that they don't, or can't, outline.  That the story and characters come together as they will, and trying to force them into one certain direction, just because you said you would, is a mistake.

Plot is, I think, the good writer’s last resort, and the dullard’s first choice. - Stephen King

Yeesh.

I never understand people trying to force their ways on others, or saying any way that's not your way is wrong.  Art, religion, politics, sexuality, education, diet, raising children, drinking scotch, buying a home, reading a book...  Unfortunately, no matter what you're doing these days, it's very likely that someone out there does is willing to tell the world that you are doing it wrong.

I hate to pull the "Can't we all just get along?" card, but seriously, Can't we all just get along?

I don't plot my stories.  I've tried.  For years I forced outlines and structure and plot onto paper, because my English teachers told me that I had to if I wanted to write something.  I can honestly say that I never finished writing a story that I plotted out first.  I lost interest, grew frustrated, stopped caring about the story.

I wrote To The Bone because I pictured an old, grizzled PI that was trying to find a lost girl, got captured by a cannibal, and wound up having to eat his own feet.

That's not what the story turned out to be.  A lot of my original ideas made it through, but the story itself became another animal entirely.  It's better, I think, and it became that way organically.

But that's only what works for me.  If outlining works for you, for the love of God, outline.  Whatever it takes to make your story better, do it. That's what I'm going to do.  I'm just happy to know there are so many people out there that love writing, I don't care how they do it.

That's all for now,
thanks for reading,
buh bye then

WARNING *Lots of Sh!t* and Some J. A. Konrath Collaboration News

I've been writing most of the day today.  That shouldn't be a big deal, it's what I do.  Right?

Well, yeah.  But I have these days, these awful days, when I just know that every word I put down on paper is shit.  Hell, every word I have ever put down on paper looks like shit on these days.  It's a simple choice to walk away from the keyboard on days like today.

Walk away.  Watch a movie.  Read a book written by someone who isn't shit.  Stare at your half-empty cup of coffee and listen to the Decemberists until you pass out.

Those are all viable options on days like today.  Everything makes sense except for the writing...

Maybe that's why it's so important to write on days like this.  Trudge, stomp, fight, kick, cuss, murder your way through every single word you can squeeze out of your brain meat.  When I accomplish something on a day like today, I know it was worth it.

Speaking of worth it...

About BABYSITTING MONEY

Gavin English isn't in Chicago searching for an unfaithful woman's wedding ring out of the goodness of his heart.  He's doing it for the fifty thousand dollar check the unfaithful woman gave him.  All he has to do is track down the pretty boy who stole it—in one of the biggest cities in the country.

Lucky for Gavin, ex-police Lieutenant Jack Daniels knows her way around the city—her city—and she's agreed to set aside her mommy duties for a few days, so that she can babysit him and his assistant while they're in town.

But somewhere between Gavin's visit to the busted-down crackhouse and their stop at a low-rent donut shop, Jack's peaceful babysitting gig turns deadly and the bullets start flying.

BABYSITTING MONEY brings together Ken Lindsey's heavy drinking, hard-boiled PI (TO THE BONE, ON THE EDGE) and J.A. Konrath's retired hero cop/brand-new mommy (WHISKEY SOUR, SHAKEN) for an intense, laugh-out-loud thriller.

On a brighter note, this is happening any minute!  I've collaborated with J. A. Konrath to write this fun, short thriller, BABYSITTING MONEY.  It's been kind of a dream, because Konrath is one of my favorite writers (who has sold somewhere around two-million ebooks and has an incredibly popular blog about the publishing world) and he just happens to be a lot of fun to work with.

BABYSITTING MONEY should be released on most popular platforms any day now, and it's only going to be $0.99.  Another piece of awesome news on this front is that Joe Konrath and I will be putting out a follow up full-length novel, which will also feature Gavin English, Jack Daniels, and a bunch more characters from each of our worlds.  I have two other manuscripts I'm working on right now that I need to finish up before that happens, but I'm thrilled and can't wait to get started.

I think that's it for now,
thanks for reading,
buh bye then

It's Not My Birthday! (yet)

Surprise!  I'm drinking coffee, and I've decided to pretend that the last few weeks of not blogging never happened.  You cool with that?

Awesome.

I'm writing a prequel to my Gavin English stories right now, because lots of folks have said they want to know more about Gavin and his whiskey chugging, chain smoking, privately investigating ways.  The good news is: the story has always been there.  Gavin English's backstory has been building and filling in for me since the day I started writing To The Bone.  And since people have asked, I'm more than happy to put it out there.

I've also been working on a short story collaboration with one of my absolute favorite indie authors, J.A. Konrath.  I'm not going to say much about it, but I'm hoping it will be released sometime this month, and there might even be a collaborative novel to follow!  I'll let you know more about all that as things develop.

Although my birthday isn't until the middle of Sept, I already know what my amazing girlfriend got for me, and I'm very excited.  For some time now, Joe Hill (author of such awesomeness as NOS4A2, Twentieth Century Ghosts, Heart Shaped Box, and more) has been writing a graphic novel series called Locke and Key.  I haven't read one single page, because I wanted to get the entire collection and just devour it.  And that's what she got me!

There will be days where I'm completely useless as I read these graphic novels.  I'm cool with that.

Also!

Hey, are you listening?

The River Runes is free right now on Amazon for your Kindle.  You should go get it.  Go ahead, I'll wait.

Did you get it?  Good, I hope you enjoy it.

I think that's it for now.

Thanks for reading,
buh bye then

Honor Among... Writers?

First, let me shamelessly promote myself.  To The Bone is free on Amazon for the next several days, and if you don't have it yet, you should go get it!  It has a new cover, a bit more "noir" feeling that I like a lot.  Please feel free to let me know what you think. :)

And now for bloggity stuff.

This isn't my first post about writers and the importance (at least it's important as I see it) of honestly dealing with readers.  Awhile back, there was a big shit-hitting-the-fan kind of explosion as people found out about authors paying for positive reviews of their books.  I talked about it while it was all going down, you can see what I had to say HERE. 

My opinion hasn't really changed.  I think buying positive reviews is shady, and certainly akin to lying to the people you are asking to pay for your work.  If you don't believe in your books, don't publish them.

That's enough about that, I've already said my piece.  However, there is something else going on right now that I find equally shitty, and I wanna talk about it.

I posted on a very popular writers' website that I would love to give some free copies of my books out for honest reviews.  Let's be real here, my "honesty is the best policy" policy isn't magically bringing people in to read and review my stuff, and I'm okay with that.  The road is long and all that, and I'm ready to trudge and toil in obscurity for as long as I need to.  But if I can give out a few books and get some folks to say whether they loved or hated them, I'm gonna give it a shot.

I got a few responses back, and they all pretty much looked like the one I'm going to share.

I'm not going to say the name of the site, or the author who contacted me, but I am going to share what was said in one of the emails I got.

"Dear Ken

I write to you after read you post on (redacted) Also I enter to you blog just1writer and felt in love with your 2 beautiful dogs (my wife and I have a girl/princess/daughter dog that we rescued from the streets 15 years ago! Her name is (redacted)!).

First of all I want to wish the best for your new book TO THE BONE. 

I am an author too and I would enjoy to share with you my new thriller/sci fi  novel, (redacted). 

I am willing to reciprocate with you a positive and great review on Amazon  and want to help you to share my enthusiasm with potencial readers. As I know that maybe you are very busy with your own project to read the full version of the book,  I propose to you if you want, doing the following:

This week I am going to read the Look Inside of TO THE BONE and I write a kind and positive review on your Amazon book's page, and then it would be very valuable and helpful for me if you could do the same. My book's link is (redacted)

When I post the review, I will send to you my user for you to know!!

If you want to know more about me and my work, this is my website where you can see the book trailer (redacted) and also the Look Inside on Amazon too.

Let me know if you accept! Anything that you need, tell me and would be a pleasure to help you!"

 

 

Gee, this guy seems really nice.  He reached out, mentioned my blog and my dogs, shared a little about himself, and offered to review my book.  Well, at least the first two or three pages of my book.  And to be honest, the first few pages are really good...  So, I decided to take a look at what the guy was selling.

The book he asked me to "review" has 22 reviews already, 18 of which are 5 stars.  

I'm a suspicious type.  I can't help it.  I don't wanna begrudge this guy anything, but if he's made this stupendous offer to me, I'm guessing he's made it to someone else as well.  I wonder how many someone elses there have been.  Maybe, his book is fantastic and all of his reviewers are honest and read the entire book and just want to let people know how great it really is.  Or, in a worst case scenario, maybe none of those folks have read the book, and everyone lied in order to get a five star review of their own.

I'm not a moron.  I hope.  I know that sometimes people lie.  Advertisements lie, book sellers lie, publishers and readers lie, my mom lied to me, your mom lied to me, (tehe, mom jokes) and even television and internet news sources lie.  Everybody lies sometimes.  I get that having a dozen fake five star reviews makes your book look better than having one or two real four or five star reviews does.

Those reviews mean the difference in lots of ways.  Sites like BookBub won't let you give them your money if you don't have several good reviews already.  Some people won't read a book that doesn't have X number of reviews when they cruise the page.  And some folks just want to know that someone else thought it was worth their time to read your work.

Plus, when you're unknown, it can take years to build a fanbase, and who's got the time for that?!

But I still stand by what I said last time.  If you don't believe that your work can stand on its own, don't publish it.  Keep working on it, keep meeting people, keep tweeting and tumbling and facebooking, keep editing, and keep writing.  I don't think it's cool to lie to potential readers.

I never will think it's cool.  Asking folks to review your book is one thing.  Asking people to lie is another.  It's shady and shitty and dirty.  

Ok, that's it for this one I guess.  Maybe next week I'll tell you all the ways that I'm a dirtbag, but this week I'm feeling so fresh and so clean clean.

Thanks for reading,

buh bye then

Filler!

I don't have much to say this week, I've been traveling and hanging with my kids and I haven't been near the internet much at all.  But, I didn't want to break my stride this early, so I figured I would drop by and give you folks an eyeful of awesome stuff I've seen around the ol' www.  Hope you're having a great week, I have been!

If you haven't seen Wil Wheaton's Tabletop gaming show yet, go watch it now!  It's a great place for beginners to learn about the gaming world, and it's awesome to get to see nerd culture icons freak out as their characters are devoured by zombies.


Sourcefed is a great place to get news, in an entertaining and fun way.  I don't watch news because it bothers me, but I watch Sourcefed because they make me laugh and have a wide range of opinions and backgrounds.


Rainn Wilson (Dwight from The Office) has put together an awesome channel, full of celebrities and nerd stuff... and it's all positive.  No crazy hatred or meanness, just folks talking about what makes them happy.  And it's pretty funny as well.


Ok, that's it for now, hope you have a great week.

Thanks for reading,
buh bye then

Sacred F*cking Words

*Spoiler: This blog will contain language your mommy told you was bad.*

The other day, I was talking with my fifteen year old daughter about her (cringe) "love life."  It was horrible.  Not because I'm one of those deluded parents who thinks their children will never grow up and fall in love and do awful things to their bodies, but because I know that I will spend the rest of my life watching my kids get their hearts broken.

"He's so good to me, Daddy.  I love him."

And I realized recently that parents have been censoring the wrong words, protecting their kids from words that don't mean anything, and letting the important words slip through without notice.  Here's an example:

Imagine a ten year old girl, hanging from the monkey bars at school.  She has sparkly Disney princess shoes on, and pink and purple bands are rotated along her braces.  Her bright green eyes go wide as she finds a boy standing near the ladder, awaiting his turn to cross.  "Fuck off, Timmy," she says.  "I just got up here."

Do you feel rage picturing that scene?  How could a little girl talk like that?  Didn't her mother teach her better?

Yes, she did.  I know this because I made her up in my mind, and her mother hates the f-bomb almost as much as she hates meatloaf.

Here's a scene (absolutely true, although I still don't really believe what I saw) I witnessed in the grocery store the other day:

A little boy, not more than six or seven years old, is buckled into the child seat of his shopping cart while his mother loads groceries onto the counter.  He has a blue stain around his mouth and a lonely lollipop stick stuck to the front of his tiny Polo shirt.  He sees a picture of the President on the cover of a magazine and points, "Mom, look!  It's Obama!"
The woman sighs as she hefts a sack of potatoes, "I see, honey."
"I hate Obama, right mom?"
"Yes, honey."

What the hell?!  I wanted to scream, "He's five goddamn years old!  The only thing he should hate right now is broccoli!"

But I didn't scream.  I gritted my teeth and fought back the angry bile and squeezed the shit out of my Charmin.  Although, I guess technically it wasn't mine yet, since I hadn't paid for it.

And therein lies the rub (not the toilet paper, the stuff up in italics).  Parents recoil in terror when a little girl says "fuck" or "shit," but we bandy about words like "love" and "hate" without thinking.  Dad hates the bill collectors.  Mom loves Tom Brady's ass in those white pants footballers wear.  Mom hates cop shows.  Dad loves beer.  Timmy hates getting his hair cut.  Little Susie loves her Barbies more than anything in the world.

We teach our kids that any positive or negative feelings we have towards someone or something equate to love and hate.  We don't do it on purpose, but we do it.  Love and Hate are both huge words which carry connotations which affect everyone in the world.  Wars are built on those words.  Murder.  Marriage.  Family.  Children.

"Please don't cuss around my kids," I said.  At least eight million times since I became a father.  I was scared for my babies' ears.  They're all innocent and beautiful and not yet corrupted by the world.  But now I see it differently.  Fuck, shit, ass, bitch, damn, hell, dick, etc... these words are not going to corrupt my babies.  The only power those words have is the power we give them.  They'll learn them and use them on the playground no matter what we do.  They like them so so so much, because we have made them sacred.

Really though, the words that we should be making sacred are words like Love and Hate.  These are the words we should teach our children to use sparingly.  "Fuck" is just an expletive, "Love" is dangerous.

Times... They are a-Changin'

Hey, all you internet people, how the hell is it going?  Good, I hope.

If you're a regular reader of the blog, you may have noticed that I've recently changed some little things.  Just so you know, I plan on changing more.  I'm going to make this thing mine; hopefully I'll turn it into something I can be proud of.  We'll see how it goes.

I've been a horrible blogger for quite some time now.  I'm sorry about that.  I would love to be one of those people who has a new post every week (or even multiple times every week) but whenever I hop on blogger to start writing, I realize I don't have anything to say.

It's my own fault.

Since I published my first book, The River Runes (which is free this week on Amazon until Friday) I've been trying way too hard to make sure that I don't say or do anything that is going to offend or piss off readers (or potential readers or reviewers or other authors or baristas or pizza makers or monkeys or guys in prison or girls in prison or random Presidents or etc...). 

I got scared off when another author, who had several books out already and was doing pretty decent sales, told me that I better not ever offend anyone.  "Other authors might tank your reviews, or start taunting you in forums and stuff" and "I've got cyber bullies after me because I gave a two star review..."  Let me tell you, as a newbie without a single clue, I was well and truly frightened.  So I deleted the low star reviews I had done, and did my best to be all sugar and rainbows for the next two years.

Sugar and rainbows are damn boring.

So I stopped posting, despite high promises.  I didn't have anything nice to say most days, so I didn't say anything at all.  For months.  Again and again and again.

Sorry about that.

Another problem I've run into, as I've tried to figure out what I should post about as a writer, is that most writing topics have been covered ad nauseam by every writer and wannabe on the internet.  And the truth is, as a reader of writing blogs, I don't read multiple blogs on the same topic unless it's controversial.  For most writing topics, (editing, cover art, not making one-dimensional characters, etc...) there are no differing opinions.

No one is saying, "Fuck editing your work.  Just publish your first draft and watch the reviews be awesome anyway."

So it's tough to find something to write about writing that I believe people will want to read.  There are things I want to say, but I have been unsure of how to say them. As I already admitted, I don't want the Angry Authors and Reviewer's Cartel coming after me.

But I've decided I don't care anymore.  I'm going to post what I want to post about, and if it pisses someone off, they are free to not read my blog just as often as they like.  I'll blog about writing when I have something to say about writing.  I might talk about my puppy, Amelia (who is cuter than your puppy, and every other puppy, ever), or my kids, or delicious coffee, or I might review a book, or social issues I care about, or whatever I damn-well feel like blogging about.

So yeah.  I'm not promising a schedule yet, but I'm aiming to start with once a week and we'll see where it goes from there.  I just want to have fun with it, and I hope someone else might enjoy it as well.

Thanks for reading.