Producing My Books, Part 1 - Writing

 

As I said in a previous post, one of the purposes of this blog is to talk about myself, and try to make it interesting. Which is a task. However, buckle in, we've got an thrill packed entry this week. The subject is; how I write my stories.

Disclaimer; For every statement I make, attach an "ideally" to it. I'm going to describe how, ideally, I write my stories. Things can, and do go south, but rather than elaborate in all the ways they can and do, just use your imagination. Today we're writing in an ideal world.

First off, I spend upwards of three months daydreaming story, a minute here, another minute there, throughout the day; imagining scenes, building a plot from opening to the final scene. I may do a little handwaving in the middle, which I then have to invent when I come to it, but generally it is only after I have the story in my head to tell, that I start setting it down in words.

In my more recent books I've been writing down chapters as bullet points and noting them on a calendar in my notes to keep everything straight in my mind. This was not always the case. And even when I do, not all the chapters are set out in advance. 

I write my stories using LibreOffice on a Windows machine. LibreOffice is a free suite of applications similar to MS Word. I can save my files as Word documents when required, and export them as PDFs or ePubs. It offers all I need to both write and produce a book. I write my stories from beginning to end, so I don't need one of those fancy writing programs like Scrivener.

I start by naming the manuscript file with the project name, month and date, and then save it to the "First Draft" folder on both my computer's hard drive and a microSD card. The following morning I open it and immediately save it using that day's date. Thus, every day's work is on a new file saved in two places, ensuring that I'll never lose more than a day's work if I screw something up. Every so often I upload the current copy to my Google Drive as an extra precaution. 

I work to time rather than word count. I write the first thing every morning, every morning until nine, when I have breakfast. This time may be up to two hours, and almost certainly one hour each day. Sometimes, when writing is going well, I return to work in the evening adding another hour or two to the day's total. The great advantage to me is that hours just fly by unnoticed when I'm writing.

LibreOffice underlines misspellings (or what it thinks are misspellings) the extra spaces between words, double words (maybe), and "a"s before words starting with vowels. Pretty basic. A lot of room for errors to go unmarked.

One of the things, of many, I've learned over the years is to add all my invented names and words to LibreOffice's dictionary as I invent them. This prevents them from being underlined in red in the text. This is very helpful when, ten or a hundred pages later, I write Teaf and it gets underlined, letting me know that it should be Taef. I read words as shapes and so these slight variations go unnoticed by me. This simple precaution saves my poor beta readers a lot of grief.

The first draft of a full length novel takes me between three and four months to complete. The happiest day of the whole process is the day I finish the first draft. Putting words on a blank screen is the hardest part of writing for me. Once I have words on screen to tinker with, I'm happy a happy camper. 

At this point, I believe a lot of writers might ship the ms off to their beta readers. But I don't. I'm old fashion. I didn't have access to beta readers back in the '70's. More over I view it as a painting in words, a work of art which I feel should be a personal reflection of my art rather than a product. Some people will like it, others won't. I accept that. A more practical reason is that this version is so riddled with typos, I haven't the heart to make anyone but myself, who is blind to typos, read it. For me, beta readers come at the end of the process to polish up the nearly finished work.

I usually start my second draft the day after I finish the first one. I don't, as some suggest, put it aside for a while. Those first chapters are already three or more months ago; enough time has past to get back to them again. I usually add about 10% more words with the second draft; mostly by fleshing out conversations and scene settings. I rarely do extensive revisions in the second draft. My focus is on making the text read better, by, for example, moving phases from the end of sentences to the beginning, where they belong, I blame my German ancestors for this tendency to tack phrases on at the end, as an after thought. I also try to eliminate as many "and"s as possible, and break up run-on sentences. In general, I try to come up with a more clever way of saying what I've written on the page. But I generally follow what I've written, so I try to be careful to get what I want right in the first draft. This second draft may take only a couple of weeks to complete.

After the second draft, I upload the file to Google Drive for the third draft. Hopefully this involves just minor tweaks to phrases and such. Drive has a grammar checker of sorts, so it finds some of the correctly spelled wrong words, i.e. "its" vs "it's", "where" vs "were", etc., which LibreOffice doesn't. And because the text looks different, it makes reading the third draft different enough to highlight any issues. With the third draft done, I should feel confident enough to say "done." If I have an uneasy feeling that I can't, I'll go over it again until I can.

Every story is a little different, and each had a slightly different path. For example, when I get stuck in the middle, I'll go back to the start and treat it like the second draft, so that the first half of some of my books might have four or five drafts. Because I queried The Girl on the Kerb to agents, I had six months to revisit it before I published it myself, so it is probably the most revised book of mine.

Altogether the second and third draft will take only about a month plus. Next comes the proofing. I hate the proofing process. Such a pain. It is a four step process.

First, I download the Google Doc final version to Libre Office as a word document. 

Second, I then upload it, chapter by chapter, to the free web version of Grammarly. I ignore all the grammar advice - you have to pay for most of it anyway - I just correct all the wrong words it finds that Google Drive overlooked, and put in commas where Grammarly thinks they should be, and maybe, take one or two out where it thinks they shouldn't be. Because I'm writing this not only as a book, but as the script for the auto-narrated audiobook, I will put commas in where I think a narrator might pause when speaking the line, whether or not it's grammatically correct. After making the indicated corrections, I download the corrected chapters to their own folder on my computer.

Third, I then copy and paste these corrected chapters, one by one, into the free online version of Scribbr's grammar app, where I correct the wrong words Google and Grammarly missed, and consider where it thinks commas should go. I then copy and past the corrected version into a single document on my computer, chapter by chapter. 

And finally, I re-format the downloaded chapters into my standard format, a completed story once more. Once done, I print out a paper copy of the story using 1 1/2 spacing for my first human proofreader, my wife, to look over. Between Google, Grammarly, and Scribbr, her job is a whole lot easier these days. Once I've made her corrections, and listen to, and usually act, on her story suggestions, I offer the story to my kind beta readers in their preferred format to find all the remaining errors and offer any suggestions.

And with that, my author's job is done and I have to put on my publisher's hat, to get the story out the door. In the next installment, I'll take you through how I make a book out of the manuscript, and publish it.  I know you can't wait, but it will have to be at least two week because:

THE POISON-PILL AND THE PAWNS' GAME WILL BE RELEASE ON AMAZON ON JUNE 18TH AS AN EBOOK, FOR  $2.99 AND SHORTLY AFTERWORDS AS AN $3.99 AUDIO BOOK.

THE FREE VERSION OF BOTH THE EBOOK AND AUDIOBOOK SHOULD BEGIN TO APPEAR IN YOUR FAVORITE NON-AMAZON ONLINE BOOKSHOP BEGINNING ON JUNE 17TH WHEN I UPLOAD IT TO DRAFT2DIGITAL AND THE GOOGLE PLAY STORE. OTHER RETAILERS WILL ADD IT IN THE DAYS FOLLOWING. I WILL POST LINKS TO THOSE SITES AFTER PUBLICATION.

Stay tuned!

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 188)

 

This week we have a book by an author author/blogger who Audrey Driscoll talked about having read on her blog some time back. She read a large collection of this author's horror stories. I, however, don't do horror, so I chose one of his many other non-horror novels to sample.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below

The Education of Uncle Paul by Algeron Blackwood  C

The story begins with Paul Rivers, age 45, returning home to England after having spent twenty years in America as a "Wood Cruiser," which is to say someone employed by a logging company to survey, judge, mark, and report on the vast lots of timber owned by the company that could be profitably harvested. He traveled and lived year round very close to nature in his almost solitary life within the virgin forests from Minnesota to Hudson's Bay, far removed from civilization. Having inherited some money from an aunt, he is returning to live for a year with his decade younger sister, who he barely knew in his youth. She had married his best friend of his youth, but he died leaving her a widow, with three children, his nieces and nephew, as well as the children of his best friend.

Paul's great fear is that he knows that he never grew up. He never had to, living his life far from the conventions of grownup society. In his heart, he's still very much a child. He fears that people will discover it, and almost certainly his nieces and nephew will sense that he is a kindred spirit. They, of course, do. His other problem is that he has all these deep and impossible yearnings that he, being very shy, he can't express, though they've been building up within him, without a "safety-valve" for years.

Eldest amongst these children in Nixie, and elf-like child wise beyond her years, who with the help of her younger brother, sister, a couple of cats, dogs, and other animals who inhabit his sister's house see through him right off, and eventually, lead him on many "adventures" that unleash all his pent up yearnings.

I have remarked in a previous how strange some of these old books are, and this 1909 book is another example. It is very lyrically written, delving deep into the thoughts of Uncle Paul as he discovers this new life in the country home of his widowed sister and her children. I enjoyed the first third of the book, that covered his introduction to the household, and the household. 

But then the book takes a turn to the lyrical supernatural fantasy, with Uncle Paul being led to these fantasy realms by Nixie. Places like where the winds sleep at night, so that he could see them "awake" in the morning, or "The Crack" through which, when the church clock chimes midnight, you could enter into a timeless land where you meet all the things you might've broken, all the pets that died, all sorts of things. Nothing happens, they are just lyrical descriptions, and it is deliberately unclear if we are to take them as actually happening, just Nixie's children's imagination or dreams. 

I have a problem with fantasy elements that do not seem grounded in reality. When, as in this case, they are untethered to the story or the reality within the story, I find them simply exercises in creative writing. Fine, but.. I want a story. In any event, Uncle Paul is designated to write down these fantasy "adventures" and then read them to the children, eventually writing them as a book that he sells and gets published.

But the book keeps getting more and more lyrically philosophical, and weird, with a ghost, life after death, and exploring the author's ideas of real reality, ties to nature, all of which lost me completely. My eyes glazed over with all the rambling mumbo-jumbo philosophy Blackwood carries on about in the final chapters, burying any semblance of a story. As usual, the fault is mine. I'm just a simple fellow, a clod, with no interest in philosophy, nor the afterlife. And I appreciate distinctness... I graded it as a "C" because I more or less finished it, and it had its points, but unless you are deeply into nature, the supernatural, and philosophy, you can probably give this book a miss. But if you are, pick it up.

A Guide to Lorria

The Map of Lorria

Since most of my recent stories have been set on the world of Cassa 3, specifically on the continent named Lorria and most of those in its capital city of Celora I thought I would collect all my relevant notes and illustrations for those stories into one place. This place.

Above is the map of Lorria, along with the Isle of Camrey. It shows only the cities and locales I've invented for the stories so far. I invent them on a need to basis. In reality, there are, of course, thousand of cities, towns, lakes, and rivers not shown because I haven't needed to invent them, yet. The world's second continent, Eastorria lies, as the name suggests to the east (right) off the edge of  this map. It is connected to Lorria by the polar mountains (grey areas), which are largely impassable, so it is reached by airplanes (in the First Founding Era, AKA The Age of Sorcery) and exclusively by boat in the Second Founding Era. Since no stories to date have taken place there, I've not had to draw a map for Eastorria. The Isle of Camrey is only mentioned in the text as well, but it fits in this map.

Below is my latest generic map of the heart of the city of Celora. It includes only the names of the boroughs mentioned in the stories. All of them have names, I've just not needed to invent all the names, yet. I may have mentioned some, and some suburbs off the map. I've removed the names of the various locales mentioned in the books from this version for clarity, and because each story adds a few more, listing all of them would make the map a mess. Those locales can be found on the map related to the book, in the blog entry for that book in the right column of this page.

The elevated tram lines which provide the mass transport for the city run down the center of all of the indicated grand avenues and boulevards, with multi-level  stations located within the large traffic circles where the avenues and boulevards cross. There is also a stop halfway between the stations. 

Settlement & Founding

Next I need to mention time. In the big picture human culture on Cassa 3 can be divided into three periods. The First is the terraforming era that lasted, perhaps 10,000 years after the arrival of the large two slower than light space ships, New Hope and New Home. The third ship, New Era has so far failed to arrive. Cassa 3 was very Earth-like but devoid of multi-cell life, so the world was developed entirely using a special collection of flora and fauna brought from Earth. After consulting the expedition's human crew, awakened from their quantum state for that purpose, the terraforming was done entirely by machines while all the human crew and humans returned/remained in their quantum suspension chambers. Only after the planet had been rendered Earth-like and safe for humans where the human settlers revived and the human phase of settlement began, with landing in year 0.

Government

The inhabitants consider themselves Lorrians, as the Earth name for the planet is not commonly used. There is only one nation-state on the world, The Commonwealth of Lorria since both Lorria and Eastorria are governed by the central governmental institutions located Celora. The land is  governed by a non-political bureaucracy, much like that of the Solar System wide Government, the remnant of which I write about in The Girl on the Kerb. In the case of the Commonwealth of Lorria, the administration consists of a set of laws informed by the Founding Principles of the expedition which had been agreed to by all the settlers prior to the sailing of the three settlement ships. The day-to-day administration of the commonwealth is done by bureaucrats chosen, in theory, by merit, but in practice, key officials are chosen by intrigues within the families of the leading members of the initial settlement, the so-called "Great Houses" or "Founding Houses." Because of the universally accepted basis of society, and the lack of outside nations/societies to provide conflict, politics is unknown, as such. Contending policies and such largely handled within the administration and between the Great Houses, with the population, largely indifferent, due to the mostly fair and efficiently way society is governed and the equality of life it offers the inhabitants of Lorria and Eastorria, in light of the Founding Principles. 

In the both the First and Second Founding periods everyone is considered a skilled Craftsman or Craftswoman, at whatever skill level/job they can obtain. The Second Founding and the Humanist Manifesto became necessary when the advanced technology brought from Earth could not be produced locally, so that people had to replace machines in manufacturing, but not as flesh and blood machines. For example, assembly line work is not allowed. Everything is assembled by teams in pods. Workers are trained to know all aspects of the product they are producing, and while some specialization is allowed, rote assembly work is not allowed.

Wages levels are assigned by the government to each type of job in 12 levels, level 1 to a level 12. Level 1 full time wages are set at 5,000 centi a year, a very modest, but living wage, up to 60.000 centi in 5,000 centi steps. Time in job incentives increase these standard wages gradually, up to the next step after many decades.

Examples; a maid is a level 1 position, a novelist is a level 2 position along with 25% royalties on the cover price of all books printed, an assistant art director is a level 6 position.

The humans in all these stories are artificially engineered Homo-Stellar, with a designed lifespan of around 200 years, largely disease free, and adopted for many environments, including space travel. 200 years is considered a "generation" and so even 1400 years after the Founding, it was only the seventh generation of the settlement that initiated the "Second Founding." As in all my stories, you can imagine whatever skin color you care to, and sexual orientation is not an issue tens of thousands of years in the future and so is rarely a feature of my characters worth mentioning. 

The Time Line for the Lorrian Novels;

First Founding Era, later known as the Age of Sorcery

1, AF the first year humans arrived on Lorria, after it had been terraformed.

1395 AF Darval-Mers Dossier takes place in

1395/6 AF The Red Wine Dossier stories takes place in

1398 AF Predora Raid (GS) mentioned in Glencrow Summer

Second Founding Era 

1437 AF/ 1AF the year the Second Founding/Humanist Revolution when 113 Great Houses and wealthy families issue the Humanist Manifesto and declare most of the (dying) technology "instrumentality of sorcery" resetting Lorria to a post technological society.

1-500 A2F Post Second Founding Era

500-1000 A2F Fall of the Great Houses Era

1000 A2F- present Modern Era

787 A2F Clare Trust established by Ivor Clare (CC)

1325 A2F Tarashay Clare's The Great Game of the Great Houses published (CC)

1327 A2F Tarashay Clare's The Duplicity of the Great Houses ms goes missing (CC)

1330 A2F  Tarashay Clare moves to the South Shore (CC)

1378 A2F Chateau Clare (CC) 

1380 A2F Glencrow Summer (GC) 

1381 A2F The next Lorrian Novel (SSD) 

The Lorrian year is divided into 12 months of 30 days each, with a solstice week of varying length between the the first and second month of winter. The months are grouped into sets of 3 corresponding to the season, i.e. First Winter, Second Winter, Third Winter, First Spring... etc. 

The standard month and days look like this. (I've changed the names of the days numerous times in my notes. Hopefully, they are consistent. In any event, these are the final names of the days of the week.) The two non-work days are known collectively as Freedays rather than a weekend. I try to use slightly different names/spellings for common things to suggest that the story is set somewhere and sometime else. It annoys me to capitalize our days of the week, so I, they don't do in Lorria.

monoday Work Day	twosday Work Day	thirday Work Day	fourthday Work Day	fifthday Free Day	sixthday Free Day
1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

Other terms used in the text, from my notes:

I don't use the word "car" or "automobile" , see above. Small, 3 wheeled vehicles are called gigs. 4 wheeled ones have various names relating to their size and purpose; a runabout is a general purpose vehicle larger than a gig, a sportier version is a roadster, with a landau as a convertible. A tourer is a lager vehicle than a roadster, with the largest vehicles being coaches and lorries. Taxis are 4 wheeled as well. All vehicles are electric motored with rechargeable power cells.

Remaining technology after the Second Founding include, light-to-electricity panels that provide most of the power for Lorria, power cells to store it, electric motors, lights, heating devices and controls for machinery. Telephone (callers) use wire connections.  However, TV, radio, wireless communications, computers (i.e. "info-systems") are no longer available legally, and most are no longer operational. Though it should be noted, all the advanced tech is still in use in the Red Wine/Hu stories, though many systems are failing.

As mentioned, I try to use different words to describe common elements in order to make the story stand out from our world, as it is not set in it, but does draw from it, since all my stories feature worlds settled from Earth, bringing a lot of Earth things with them. Examples other than the ones cited above include: cafee is coffee, te is tea, a cravat is a tie, red-sauce pie is a pizza, net-ball is tennis, key-writer machine or key-writer is a typewriter, light-to-electricity panels are solar panels, a centi is like a dollar, a vehicle is used for cars or automobiles.

Each book of mine has their own notes document. I start one when I start the novel, and keep it on screen alongside the novel pages as I write, noting all the things I invent as I go along - in theory, anyway. And referring back to it whenever I forget what I invented, which is often. Each of my notes document starts with a "Cast of Characters," divided into main, and supporting listing things like their age, where they work, and things I invent about them etc. Then there's a list of "Places," with names of streets, shops, etc, mentioned in the text, sometimes divided by previous places and new to the story places. And then we have "Things and Such," that includes all the items I invent as I go along, and their usual names. All these list include the things I invented for Chateau Clare, like the names of the remaining Great Houses, the names of the days of the week, and all the data above, and then all the things I invent for each new story. In addition, I have a list of odd words that I use, but can never remember them or how to spell them close enough for the word processor to come up with the word I'm looking for, for example; porte cochere, hors d’Oeuvre, balustrade, and mustache.

For the Lorrian books, I also include a calendar like the sample above, and note on it the chapter number so that I can keep track of just how and how long events take place. I usually don't write a detailed outline, but these days I do write down bullet point descriptions of each chapter on the calendar. Well, each chapter I've thought of before writing it. It is usually not all that complete, but launches the story, anyway. For example, Glencrow Summer's notes run six pages - some of which were just copied from Chateau Clare to keep everything consistent. I will also cut and paste passages from the text that I want to move, before shifting it back, if necessary.

I will link this page in the sidebar of this blog for easy consulting in the future.

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 187)

 

This week we have another book that I've been introduced to by watching various BookTubers on YouTube. This time Roy Reads Anything, and his monthly read-along series of "Forgotten Victorian Bestselling Authors." In his introduction to this author, he sounded like someone whose story I wouldn't mind reading. Was I right?

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below

Lost Sir Massingberd, A Romance of Real Life (Volumes 1 & 2) James Payn  B-

I have already posted a selection from the introduction to this book regarding how everyone the author knew seemed to be a writer of some sort as an illustration that some things never change.

This book was published in 1864, and reflects the type of popular fiction of the period, and yet, I think its writing style is still accessible to modern readers. The story is told by a first person narrator looking back on an incident of his youth. The older persona of the elder narrator is very much present in the narration, which is not my favorite style, but at least the narrator has a sense of humor, which leavens the somewhat gothic melodrama of the story.

The story itself concerns a unapologetically cruel and heartless man, the title character, Sir Massingberd, and his ward and nephew, the young heir to the large country estate they are living in. Since the cruel uncle is the first born, he inherited the estate, which he could then pass on to his son, if he had one, which he doesn't. And so the estate will belong to the son of his younger brother, this nephew of his, aged 17 at the start of the story. But only if he reaches the of age at 21. Fine, except that Sir Massingberd spent all his money in his youth, and because much of the estate  is "entailed" meaning that he can not sell it, he is almost always penny-less, earning what money he can from selling the fruit he grows in an enclosed garden, and what he can more or less steal from the estate that he lives on. As I said he is the guardian of this nephew who, rightfully, lives in terror of his uncle who would want him dead and has likely tried to kill him. In the story he escapes his uncle's clutches after one such failed attempt, only for a time. 

The story also explores the backstory of Sir Massingberd, and the customs of the period in which this story is set, Napoleonic/Regency period. 

I enjoyed the story, though I found it a little more Victorian, i.e. melodramatic, than I had been hoping for, after reading the introduction, while at the same time, less Gothic than its premise promised to be.

My Desk Tour

A little over eleven years and a month ago, I posted my first blog post. My post counter currently sits at 745 posts. A lot of water has flowed over the dam since then. 

Back in the old days of 2015, it was said that every author needed a website or at least a blog. And so, with my first release, A Summer in Amber, I started this blog with a post talking about that book, its settings and origins. You can find this first post Here. 

The idea behind a blog or website was to promote your books, and to demonstrate that there was a human being behind the name on the cover of your books. I've stuck to that purpose over the last eleven years. I announce and talk about my books around the time they are released, talk a bit about myself, and share a few of my opinions mostly on things writing and publishing and a few other innocent topics. Not because I think they are all that important, they are not, but, because that's the purpose of this blog. And nothing more.

So, in that modest spirit, I offer you, dear reader, and all you dear bots, a glimpse of the desk at which all the worlds of C. Litka are brought to words, if not life.

Bottom to top; we start with my green resin chair. Nothing fancy about it at all, indeed, it's back is broken, so that I had to stich it up with wire. You can't be extravagant as an author. You can't see all of them, but I have three old chair cushions on it whose purpose is solely to get me at the proper height for comfortable typing; neither too low, nor too high. This, I believe is important. As is how you type. I learned to type on a manual typewriter where you couldn't use palm rests to support your hands while you typed, you had to hold them in front of you and pressed down with your fingers to type. To this day I continue to do so, with my writs straight while hovering over the keyboard and typing down with my fingers, and after all these years and millions of words, I still haven't experienced carpel tunnel. Knock on wood. I think this is because my wrists remain straight, unlike people who type on keyboards and laptops, while resting their wrists on the desk or top of their laptop's palm rest, i.e.  at the same level or below the keys, which means they have to arch up their hands and fingers to type. But what do I know? These days, I really appreciate that the chair has armrests. They are a great help when it comes time to standing up. All in all, a legendary chair, a highlight of the future museum.

My desk is a cheap pressed board with fake contact paper wood veneer desk dating back to ca 1992. It used to be one of the kid's desks. However, the top of the desk is now made of Brazilian Rosewood which I salvaged from the scraps of the hardwood floor we installed in our old house. I had to add a cushion or two to account for the increase in the height of the desktop this addition caused.   

I like to keep my desk clear of clutter, so you're seeing it in pretty much working condition. I have a drawing table where I keep all my junk.

The keyboard is a Keychrone K3D2 mechanical keyboard with low profile blue keys. I've used several mechanical keyboards over the years, and prior to the mechanical ones, I used a Logitech K810. The present keyboard can be used wirelessly, but I keep it wired, which allows me to wake the computer by just pressing a key whenever I return to it. I don't mind the one wire.

My current computer, seen as the second smaller screen on the right is a 2022 14" Lenovo Yoga 9i with a 12th Generation Intel i7 and 16 gigs of RAM. I purchased it to replace my HP Envy from 2017, but did not actually make the switch until a year or so ago. Only after I did so did I discover that the Envy's battery was bulging, so I removed the battery and now used it plugged in as the computer on my bike-on-a-rack for my explorations of the world, via train videos. Before the Envy I was using a Lenovo IdeaPad 100S, a little red $200 11" laptop with a keyboard and monitor. You don't need much of a computer to write. Prior to my red Lenovo, I was writing with a Mac Mini, and may've wrote the first part of Some Day Days on either an original iMac or a iBook. I wrote my first novel and novella on a manual typewriter, and in the 90 's I wrote my unpublished YA story on a Cambridge Computer Z88, my first useful computer, which I bought when I couldn't afford a Mac. I used to be a Mac guy, but changes for the sake of changes in MacOS began to bug me, plus, I could get a perfectly suitable laptop for my purposes for $200 vs $900 for the smaller Mac Air, so I switched Windows, and have not looked back. When I do have to trouble shoot my wife's iPad, I find that Apple's software drives me crazy. Anyway, I use my laptop with a 360 degree hinge in "presentation mode" so all I see is its touch-screen, which I use mostly to display the YouTube music I have when I am working.

The old 21" Acer monitor dates from 2014. I have it set on a home made stand that keeps it low on the desk, as I like to look slightly down on it rather than crane my head up to see it. In the shadows behind the monitor I have a Tivoli Audio stereo radio from 2001 that I use for my speakers. Sitting on the radio unit on the left is my statue of Popeye "I yam what I yam", an to the left, my little LED desk lamp. You can just see the top of a jar where I keep Bali's Best Tea Candy. And above the desk is my painting of Maig Glen from A Summer in Amber.

I spend at least an hour every morning after I roll out of bed at this desk writing my fiction. At nine, I call the morning session a day, and head up stairs to toast a slice of my home-baked bread, slather it with orange marmalade, and brew a cup of (loose leaf) tea for breakfast while checking in on various websites, starting with a glimpse of London via the Abbey road webcam. In the evening, I will usually spend another hour or two at my desk writing blog posts, book reviews, and when things are going well with the stories, I will also continue the morning's work.

So there you have it. I am blessed with just enough gumption to sit down at my desk every morning to write something, whether I feel like it or not, as often not as otherwise, but once I start typing, words get written, and thus, so, eventually, stories. Given the number of devices I see offered for "distraction-free" writing, I guess I'm also blessed by being too old for social media, so I am never tempted to use my computer during my writing hours for browsing social media or other distractions, which also contributes to stories getting written. And well, I must also mention that I have time to write - no job, no kids around the house, no lawn to mow. That, I am sure, makes a difference, though I did write a fantasy novel, SF novella, a YA novel, over the course of years when I was working. 

The Saturday Morning Post (No. 186)

 

With my KU subscription running out, I decided to return to one of the more successful finds. It proved very delightful.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below.

Untrue till Death by Graham Brack  A

I gave the first book in this series, Death In Deft, a B grade, and as you may've noticed this one earned an A, which I believe is my first A grade book of the year. In my opinion Mr Brack stepped up his game in this time around. 

How so, you ask? By giving his minister/priest lecturer in moral philosophy more of an attitude; kindly, yet with a keen eye and a sarcastic sense of humor. As you no doubt know, I enjoy clever and humorous writing, and I really enjoyed this story for the humor he brought to the story. Now, as I have noted before, just setting a story in the past, and describing the landscape does not necessarily give the story the feel of the past. The use of language is an important element in recreating an impression of a past era. Patrick O'Brian does it so well, as does  Ellis Peters. Both still manage to make their writing feel something of the time the story is set in, while still being very readable for modern readers. In these books, while Brack does a good job of recreating the landscape and customs of Holland in 1670's, he hasn't attempted to write the character and story in a way that evokes the historical period. His first person narrator, Master Mercurius has a very modern viewpoint for a Calvinist minister/Catholic priest of that era, and beyond his use of titles and customs, he writes in a rather breezy, modern style, with, as I said, a lot of humorous observations and asides. To be consistent, I should deduct points for this, but I'm anything but consistent. Give me clever, witty writing and I'll overlook a lot of nitpicks. And he does make the point in his historical notes, that not everyone of the time thinks like most people at any point in history, so it's perfectly realistic to imagine his character having a more tolerant view of people, life, and morality than your typical 17th century Calvinist. Fair enough.

Writing aside, what is the story about? This time around we meet William lll of Orange, who has recently come into power in the Netherlands after defeating a French invasion.  Nevertheless his position is far from secure. At least he feels it is, since he is acting very much like a king in a country that was something of a republic prior to his succession to the role of something like protector of the republic. I haven't delved too deeply into the background history, but he tends to overstep his still iffy position as the head of the government and his enemies within the country are still active. So, Willian, having heard of Mercurius's success in solving the mystery of the three missing girls, summons him and asks (read; commands) him to interview a fellow scholar in a different city to access his usefulness. This scholar has been keeping an eye on the sentiments of the populace and potential trouble makers for William in that city, but he is old, infirmed, and William is looking to find his eventual replacement. In the meantime the unpleasant secretary of the Rector of the University where Mercurius teaches at is found dead... Murdered, in fact. And there seem to be some sort of connection between the murder to William and to Mercurius's mission for William. 

As with all mysteries, I really can't get into too many details without spoilers. All I will say is that these books are not your typical who-done-it stories. I don't think you can expect to discover the mysteries on your own, being both unfamiliar with the settings, and the fact that Mercurius keeps some of his insights to himself. So, as the reader, you're along for the ride. The good thing about the story, is that it's a very entertaining ride.

Disappointment is the Lot of Writers

One might say it's their own fault. They're chasing an (almost) impossible dream; a dream of earning a living while staying home in their pajamas and working at something they love. However, if they had their wits about them, and did even a little research, they would know that it's easier to get to heaven, notwithstanding the odds that many are called, but few are chosen, than getting published and/or making money as a writer. One in a thousand aspiring writers get offered a book deal, and then, only three or four years later, half of them are back on the street, with nine out of ten of them out of the business within a decade. And even with a contract, few of authors ever make a living from their writing. Things may be a little grimmer in indie publishing. Most of the traditionally published authors received some sort of an advance - money for their work - and occasionally, royalties. Indie publishers, on the other hand, need to finance their own books, which, if they are chumps, and sadly, many of them are, this can costs hundreds to thousands of dollars. Dollars they'll never likely to see again.

One could also say that it's the fault of their attitude as well, though I suppose one can't blame them for having it, since that attitude is very pervasive. That attitude being that the distinction between good, professional work, and bad, amateur work, is signaled by the price the product commands. In the case of authors, a professional author not only expects to be paid for their work, but actually expects to sell some books at the price they set. Amateurs, on the other hand are not good enough to charge for their work, so they should not expect to sell it. Thus, those who do not charge for their work, do so because it's not good enough to command anything more. I, of course, do not accept this definition, I have my own definition of being an amateur, so I can live the life of an amateur without misgivings. It has saved me from a lot of disappointment, and more than that, between sales and a lack of concern about sales, I've had fun writing all my life.

In addition, professionalism not withstanding, almost every writer I know believes that they are, in fact, due compensation for all the work, the creativity, and the artistic merit they've put into crafting their stories, as well as for the entertainment their work provides for readers. The flaw in this attitude is that, unless they have a publishing deal with a publisher, no one asked them to write their stories, and thus, no one owes them anything for doing it. If they're chumps enough to believe they can make money writing fiction, they have only themselves to blame if they don't. 

Of course, they can ask for money, and yes, it is fair to ask for some sort of compensation for the entertainment value their book provides. However, it will be total sales, not the price the writer values his work at, which determines the actual value of their effort as a commercial product in the marketplace.

This, the dollars, turns out to be one of the great sources of disappointment for artist of any sort with commercial ambitions. Indie publishing is a rotten business, one with astounding failure rates. Still, hope springs eternal. I've seen a chart that shows from 2020 to 2024 about 100,000 ebooks per month were uploaded to Amazon, but since then, the number has risen to over 300,000 ebooks per month, likely as a result of AI produced books. The readership, however, while avid, is not growing, so clearly, the overwhelming majority of ebooks will simply go unread, or if lucky, barely read, unless one already has a following of some sort. Thus, if an author choses to measure the value of their work in dollars - being a professional and all that - well, they're likely left with the mental gymnastics of convincing themselves that sales, or rather the lack of sales, is not, after all, the only yardstick of worth. There are other factors that can explain the lack of agreement between the professional nature of the product and its lack of sales.

And indeed, there are many, so it may be easy to reconcile commercial failure with artistic merit. Why, if no one ever comes across their book, how can its artistic worth be measured? But nevertheless, there is no denying that as a product it is, at least, a commercial failure, since money is the yardstick they automatically have adopted, as professionals, to measure success by. And so most books turn out to be... disappointments at some level.

For the life of my, I don't know why so many writers who are, with aforethought, producing a product to sell while looking (or not) at their oh, so very likely fate, stubbornly persist in choosing all but certain commercial failure and disappointment when they need not, if they would simply think outside the box.

Now, I should add here, that writing fiction is both an art and a commercial product. As a work of art, I can understand their attitude. As an artist, I felt that my best work was my most impressionist pieces, though even among people who like art enough to visit art galleries, in life and online, maybe only one or two in a hundred appreciated what I was doing. One of the reasons I stopped selling my art was that my more mundane, i.e. realistic, pieces sold better than my best work. It was discouraging that my so-so work was the stuff that was getting out into the world, but, alas, most people like realism. At least I didn't have to part ways with my best pieces. So I too, in a way, understand a writer standing by their work as art, even if it isn't a commercial success. But a book is so much more a commercial work than a painting is - it needs to be published and sold to be appreciated. Paintings can be sold as well, of course, but they just need to be viewed to be appreciated. 

Given all this, the questions I have for self publishing authors is this; does the fact that you ask for money, make you a professional writer? Does it take just one sale to validate this judgement?  Or do you need more? And if so, how many more sales are needed? How distinct is the line between professional and amateur?

I've been able to avoid disappointment as an amateur writer due to a mindset different than most writers. To begin with, I look upon ebooks differently than most. Because they are so ephemeral, merely insubstantial electronic files, I don't consider them really books at all. They're merely a medium that delivers a story. And because they can be endlessly duplicated at no cost, they have no economic value. Only the story they deliver has any value. And since I've been borrowing and reading books from a library all my life, I've never directly connected reading a story to buying a book. So it seems natural for me to offer my stories via a worthless medium for free. It costs me nothing to do so, and well, in my mind, reading a story is one of life's free entertainments.   

And then there is the fact that I like being an amateur writer. Because I enjoy the entire process of writing and publishing my work, I feel no need for anyone to pay me for doing it, so I ask no one to do so. I'm just having fun. By choosing to share, rather than sell my work, wherever possible, my work is much more easily accessible. And as a result, it has been read and enjoyed by a thousand readers, instead of only dozens which would've likely been the case if I had chosen to consider myself a "professional" and put a price on my work. I chose to measure artistic value without a dollar sign, and instead, use readership as my yardstick of success. I've never been disappointed by the results. And, as a bonus, I've enjoyed the freedom to write what I please, how I please. And, every once and a while, readers thank me for sharing my books for free, readers like Attie and Ruth.

"I am 81 years and in an oldage home. enjoyed his light hesrted whit. I live on the other side of earth. I am an Afrikaans speaking person. So there can be some small errors in my writing. Thank you and Bless you. Attie."

"loved all your books...deprecating heroes and wayward ladies! very grateful for free audiobooks as I am s pensioner Ruth gr South Africa.."

Sharing has its own rewards. So if disappointment is the lot of writers, it need not be. As I said, the best things in life are free.