Rambling Man

Hey, all! Happy Memorial Day!

Sorry I didn't do a review on Friday, I'm a huge slacker. I will get one done this week, though.

I need a kindle. Reading on the computer is suckish. A lot.

I was contemplating... thinking... wondering really... Do you think puppets mind? I mean come on, it can't be comfortable to have someone's hand so far up your hooha that they can move your jaw... right? I say we all stand for puppet rights and demand that puppeteers use all string puppets instead of rectile mastering... it just seems wrong!!!

Fuddruckers sounds like a bad word, but their burgers are tasty deliciousness. However, I'm now a vegetarian so that's kind of moot.

If you haven't already, you should click on over to the 50 to 100 giveaway page and sign up.


Wow, there's really not a lot to say today. Sorry about that :)

thanks for reading,
buh bye then

Where have all the reviewers gone?

Hello, all.

So, I didn't get raptured this weekend, did you? No, I thought not. Oh well, maybe next time.

I did, however, participate in my final round of the Book Blogger Hop. I think that both features, the Hop and Follow Friday, are great for adding followers to your blog. So, if that's what you're looking for, you should get on the train. I was hoping for more readers, though, and I just don't think that those features are helping in that area. So I'll not be participating any longer.

"But, Ken, that leaves Fridays open and blank and void and hopeless and full of sorrow and misery and darkness, etc..."

I realized that, and I have just the thing to fill in that empty part of my blogging soul.

I will be starting Friday reviews. I've noticed that finding a book reviewer who is willing, and not too busy, to look at an indie title is... well not impossible, but impossible adjacent. Therefore, I will be giving my Friday blogs for just such a feature. I want to do what I can to help other indie authors, as well as help folks find great books that they might not have found on their own.

My reviews will be honest, but I will do my best to review as a reader, rather than a writer who reads.

"What is the difference?" you ask, bewildered.
Well, I think that a lot of writers who read often forget that most readers are not looking for grammatical perfection. They can be blinded by the rules they have learned through their writing. If the world is immersive and the characters are rich... well, that's what most readers are looking for.

There will, however, be a line. I don't know where it is yet, but I know that I can't stand to see obvious spelled with a "d" or there switched with their or they're. We'll see how it goes. :)


That's it for today, I think
thanks for reading,
buh bye then

Book Blogger Hop

The Book Blogger Hop is hosted by Crazy For Books

"If you were given the chance to spend one day in a fictional world (from a book), which book would it be from and what would that place be?"

I would love to go to Narnia, from C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia. The place is magical and amazing, and not nearly as war torn and bitter as Middle Earth. Centaurs, man! I love centaurs.

Thanks for reading,
buh bye then

The River Runes is now live on Kindle!! You can pick it up HERE FOR ONLY $2.99!!

WIP Wedensday: To Squee or Not To Squee...

Yay, it's WIP Wednesday, and I have a word count change to talk about!

So, Clockwork Charlie is doing well, thriving, you might say.
New word count: 24,385 words

To be found in all those new words:
1 man, eating a fat lady
1 robot that thinks he can be a pilot
1 star, turned into a beautiful girl
1 war of the gods
and, 1 broken shower curtain rod...

Phew! I'm having a ton of fun with this book so far, and there is still a long way to go.



The paperback version of The River Runes is officially available as of today, you can Get it here for $12.44!! And of course, The River Runes is still live on Kindle!! You can pick it up HERE FOR ONLY $2.99!!

I got my first paperback copy and almost squeeeed from excitement. (okay, I did squee a little, but there was no one home to hear it, so it's alright)

So, that's it for this week's WIP news.
thanks so much for reading,
buh bye then

"Biting is excellent..." -The Doctor's Wife

Neil Gaiman on WhoSay

First, I have to start today's post by saying, if you have not been watching Dr. Who this season, go watch it. Secondly, Neil Gaiman is a badass. He wrote this week's episode and it was amazing. The plot was killer; funny and scary and creepy all at the same time. My favorite line:

"Biting is excellent. It's like kissing, only there's a winner."- The Doctor's Wife

If, for some ungodly reason, you have not read anything from Mr. Gaiman, go do so now. Some of his great stuff includes, but is not limited to: American Gods, The Anansi Boys, Neverwhere (BBC show, book, graphic novel, etc), Fragile Things (short stories), and so, so much more. And it's all brilliant. I'm not afraid to say that I have a non-sexual, writer man crush on Neil Gaiman.

You should too.

I don't have a lot else to say that would be relevant...

Thanks for reading,
buh bye then

Follow Friday and The Deleted Post

Another Follow Friday!

Today's question:
The Blogger Apocalypse made me a little emotional. What is the most emotional scene in a book that you have read lately?

I'd have to say that the scene from, The Vampire Lestat, where Lestat decides to turn his mother is pretty freakin emotional. (I'm re-reading after like 10 years and it's still awesome.)
******

I'm also going to put yesterday's blog on today's, since it was deleted in the Bloggerocalypse. It's a little longer than most of my posts, but please to read and enjoy:

I can't begin to describe how good it feels to be writing again. I've been editing and revising and talking with beta readers and revising and editing for months. That's part of the gig. I'm okay with it and even happy to do it. Those last bits of writing a novel are hectic and scary and, at times, brutal as all hell. But when you're finished...

What a feeling.

I've been looking around a lot at book reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. Especially, indie book reviews. I've also been looking around at blogs and forums to see what types of things folks are saying. Wow, is it ever polarized out there?!!

A common thread on one side out there, is the belief that all indie authors have self-pubbed because their writing wasn't good enough to get published traditionally. Is there some merit to that? Yeah, of course there is.

When you give everyone the means to put their ideas and opinions out there for the world to see, a lot of what goes out is going to be crap. People who don't know the first thing about world or character building, spelling, punctuation, editing, etc. can now write anything and call it published.

So, yes, of course people will take advantage. Every teenager who writes a poem about how badly his girlfriend hurt him and how no one in the world has ever felt that way before and how the darkness is crushing and the world is fading... They all believe that they are writers. Good writers.

Although, is this true of every indie author? Of course not. Joe Konrath is an amazing writer. Read something from him, I dare you. It's great stuff. He has a general rul, that I think makes a lot of sense. You can't be great at anything, unless you've put 10,000 hours into it. I think he's right.

Writers, real writers, know that it takes time and work to create something worthwhile. There will be failures (oh the failures) and missteps along the way. You will crumple pages full of writing and never look at them again. You will cuss and pound your head on the desk because you have to delete thousands of words that you wrote when you were full of coffee and cable tv. You will finish stories that you spent months on, and then realize that they are garbage.

So, will some indie authors be horrible? Yes. Will they learn from it and get better? Maybe.

On the other hand, do you really believe that agents and other readers of the slush pile the world over will always give every book a fair shake? I don't think so. I do believe that most folks in the writing industry truly love what they do. They have to. Anything to do with writing will swallow time like a fat kid with cake.

But everyone has bad days. Everyone with a job looks at the clock at the end of the day, just wishing they were somewhere else. I know that there are unpublished books out there that would have been great, but were never given a shot.

There are problems with both sides of the issue.

Writers: Write the best book possible, and then get people to read it. Not your family or your friends. Strangers. Find people you don't know that will read your book and tell you the truth. Find lots of them.

Then listen to what they tell you. Revise, edit, do it again. Find new readers. Once you know that your book is at its best, make your decision. I chose to self publish, not because my manuscript was rejected.(I didn't really try the traditional route, other than half a dozen queries I sent out to agents right after I finished my FIRST DRAFT. Don't do that!) I chose this route because I think things are changing, and I want to get in before it's too late.

Could I be wrong? Yes, but I could also be right. I'm happy with my decision and I know that I am going to keep on learning. The day I decide my writing cannot get any better is the day I stop writing.

Thanks for reading through my rambling,
buh bye now

Warning: This is a long one :)

I can't begin to describe how good it feels to be writing again. I've been editing and revising and talking with beta readers and revising and editing for months. That's part of the gig. I'm okay with it and even happy to do it. Those last bits of writing a novel are hectic and scary and, at times, brutal as all hell. But when you're finished...

What a feeling.

I've been looking around a lot at book reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. Especially, indie book reviews. I've also been looking around at blogs and forums to see what types of things folks are saying. Wow, is it ever polarized out there?!!

A common thread on one side out there, is the belief that all indie authors have self-pubbed because their writing wasn't good enough to get published traditionally. Is there some merit to that? Yeah, of course there is.

When you give everyone the means to put their ideas and opinions out there for the world to see, a lot of what goes out is going to be crap. People who don't know the first thing about world or character building, spelling, punctuation, editing, etc. can now write anything and call it published.

So, yes, of course people will take advantage. Every teenager who writes a poem about how badly his girlfriend hurt him and how no one in the world has ever felt that way before and how the darkness is crushing and the world is fading... They all believe that they are writers. Good writers.

Although, is this true of every indie author? Of course not. Joe Konrath is an amazing writer. Read something from him, I dare you. It's great stuff. He has a general rul, that I think makes a lot of sense. You can't be great at anything, unless you've put 10,000 hours into it. I think he's right.

Writers, real writers, know that it takes time and work to create something worthwhile. There will be failures (oh the failures) and missteps along the way. You will crumple pages full of writing and never look at them again. You will cuss and pound your head on the desk because you have to delete thousands of words that you wrote when you were full of coffee and cable tv. You will finish stories that you spent months on, and then realize that they are garbage.

So, will some indie authors be horrible? Yes. Will they learn from it and get better? Maybe.

On the other hand, do you really believe that agents and other readers of the slush pile the world over will always give every book a fair shake? I don't think so. I do believe that most folks in the writing industry truly love what they do. They have to. Anything to do with writing will swallow time like a fat kid with cake.

But everyone has bad days. Everyone with a job looks at the clock at the end of the day, just wishing they were somewhere else. I know that there are unpublished books out there that would have been great, but were never given a shot.

There are problems with both sides of the issue.

Writers: Write the best book possible, and then get people to read it. Not your family or your friends. Strangers. Find people you don't know that will read your book and tell you the truth. Find lots of them.

Then listen to what they tell you. Revise, edit, do it again. Find new readers. Once you know that your book is at its best, make your decision. I chose to self publish, not because my manuscript was rejected.(I didn't really try the traditional route, other than half a dozen queries I sent out to agents right after I finished my FIRST DRAFT. Don't do that!) I chose this route because I think things are changing, and I want to get in before it's too late.

Could I be wrong? Yes, but I could also be right. I'm happy with my decision and I know that I am going to keep on learning. The day I decide my writing cannot get any better is the day I stop writing.

Thanks for reading through my rambling,
buh bye now