February 23

Experience With Publishing

Interview with the Author (as posted on Smashwords):

Q: What aspects of writing do you find personally challenging?

A: As many writers strive to do, I write complex plot lines that have complex characters. The challenge is to make these complexities seamless and believable to the reader. The complexities should evolve from natural character, setting and plot traits, thus making them streamlined and understandable. The biggest challenge with character complexities is that each character has their own individual histories, and that they share these histories only if it is important to the novel (as is the case in real human behavior).

Another challenge is in writing novels that have lengths of 400 or so pages. These stories are not written in a week’s time but can be Read in that time or shorter. This makes it challenging to keep the complexities of the novel in proper perspective throughout, say, a 9-month (or even 9 year) writing effort that will be consumed in much much less time.


Interview with the Author (as posted on Goodreads):

Q: How do you deal with writer’s block?

A: I don’t believe in it. “Writer’s Block” is an excuse. When I get to the proverbial white page (either one in my many spiral bound notebooks or the one flashing an aggravated cursor on my computer screen), it tells me this one thing…Here is a canvas that must be painted. It’s not a block. It’s a message: “I am at a point in the story that I really haven’t given as much thought as I should.” So, I think about it. Take the time and reread what you have written. Explore possibilities. Just because you stop and think about what will be painted on the page doesn’t mean there is a block. This reflective compositional experience is a part (sometimes THE most important part) of being a writer. If you stop thinking about the story…

Well, that goes beyond “Writer’s Block.” That kind of thinking will only lead to giving up and there are way too many of us that fall down that cliff.

If you are dedicated to the story, you can never have “Writer’s Block.”


Interview with the Author (as posted on Smashwords):

Q: What is your experience with the publishing process?

A: I left fiction writing in the mid-90s after my first four short stories were published in small press horror genre magazines (The Edge of Hell, The Worms Within Us, Blood Barters, and Muldoon’s Nursery). When I returned to the craft in 2003, with the influence of the internet and the crummy economy, the publishing industry was undergoing a transformation. Small press publishing houses were becoming viable options for early authors. The days of processing a novel through traditional models (agents, big houses, big checks) were becoming more problematic. I took advantage of the change and some would even say I was an early adopter of the indie publishing model. I faced a lot of negative feedback from critics who called (and in some cases still call) these efforts Vanity.

Today, as an indie author, I have come to KNOW that authors must accept the idea that book publishing is a business and authors must approach it this way. They must edit diligently, market voraciously and keep writing. Book printing via the internet is much less expensive than traditional publishing models and e-books are resourcefully free which means that there are so many more book options for consumers. To stand out today, the author has to understand that a book is a product and like all products, if it stinks, no one will buy it.