August 26, 2013 · 9:55 am

Madcap Moments of Literary Mayhem

My Coffee Cup © cjjasp 2013This weekend I saw a hilarious post on Facebook, one pointing to an article at NYDaily.com that details the fatal-flaws in the eBook version of George R.R. Martin’s  book,  A Feast for Crows.

Now, I just want to say at the outset, the only book of his I’ve read was the book, A Game of Thrones. But that was a long time ago, when it first came out as a Science Fiction Book Club book of the month. I was not really that impressed with it. I found the book distinctly hard to follow, and nearly quit reading it several times.

But just because I don’t find his work to my taste does not mean I consider him to be a hack! On the contrary, Mr. Martin deserves every one of his many awards and good for him! This is a rough business, and I love it when people succeed as authors. There are many fine, popular authors out there whose books don’t ring my bells. My own work is certainly not to everyone’s taste, although I am sure it should be. (Insert Shameless Plug Here: buy my books, please.) (The buy-links are to the right, clearly labeled.) (Just sayin’.)

Needless to say, Mr. Martin’s publisher is one of the Big Boys (Bantam Books) and one would think  SOMEONE would have caught these wonderful bloopers.  The  author put his faith in the publisher, and the publisher let him down.

George R.R.Martin formatting issue 3 via book blog page views, margaret eby

***

George R.R.Martin formatting issue 1 via book blog page views, margaret eby

There is the remote possibility these moments of literary mayhem could have been caused by a last-minute global change to the manuscript. If so, it is a good example of why we should never click “Replace All” when we discover a particular word we need to change. Instead we should take the time to see each appearance of the word, and determine whether or not to make that change individually.

But in this case, I don’t think that is the problem. There doesn’t seem to be any pattern to the words the blooper replaces.  I think it is an OCR error (see number 5 below.)

George R.R.Martin bormatting issue 2 via book blog page views, margaret eby

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George R.R.Martin bormatting issue 4 via book blog page views, margaret eby

What these images of the book from the NY Daily tell me is that formatting issues are common and are a hurdle the indie must overcome. If the big boys have problems with this, then formatting is a real skill set that we must develop, because we all compete on the same field, only we indies have fewer advantages.

There are a few simple ways we can avoid some of the more common issues:

1. Do not put extra empty spaces between your paragraphs. If it is a section break, make sure to put something there to indicate it:  ***  centered in the empty space will do the task of indicating the section break, and will not look ugly.

2. Make sure your page breaks are “hard” i.e. NOT made by repeatedly hitting the “enter” key. You must limit those empty spaces to less than three, preferably only one. Go to the ribbon at the top of your WORD page and use the “Insert” tab. With the cursor next to your chapter heading, click on “Insert Page Break”.

3. Do Not Use Drop Caps to begin your first paragraph, no matter how pretty they look in the print edition. They screw the heck out of eBook formatting, causing all the paragraph indents to go away, making the book nothing but a WALL of words.

4. Stick to standard serif fonts like Times New Roman, and make it a decent size, like 11 pt. Use NOTHING larger than 16 pt. and use that only for chapter headings.

5. Random inexplicable letter changes can be caused by Optical Character Recognition (OCR) errors when the uploader for Kindle or Smashwords converts the manuscript to PDF format. Converting it to PDF yourself first does not help, because the errors are hidden in the PDF. Thus you may find  all the “p”s converted to ‘bl’s. (people becomes bleople.)  I am not very knowledgeable about the WHY of this, but I have learned how to avoid it:

I always save my eBook ms in Rich Text Format (.rtf) and I NEVER upload a manuscript to eBook  format that contains headers or footers. Remove the headers and footer BEFORE you upload to Kindle, Nook or Smashwords. I think this is what happened to A Feast of Crows. Headers and footers use OCR elements and this confuses the uploader program. My theory is: someone at Bantam forgot to remove the header before it was uploaded. But I could be wrong– this whole formatting thing is magic after all, and magic is an iffy science at best.

6. Comb your eBook ms for extra spaces at the end of paragraphs and remove them. I’ve been told this will eliminate the random “Words     Spread     Across     The    Page”  problem.

7. DO NOT USE THE TAB key to indent your paragraphs!!!  DON’T DO IT!  Go to the ribbon at the top of the page and use the paragraph formatting option. Set the indent to 3 or 5 pt.  But 3 is the optimal for me as a frequent eBook reader.

The bottom line is this:  the indie must spend many long hours combing the ms for the random extra spaces, removing all the possible error producing elements before we upload it. THEN you must use the option Kindle and Nook both provide and spend more time seeing what the book actually looks like BEFORE you hit the publish button.

Unlike George R.R. Martin, you won’t be able to blame the big-name publisher if your book looks like the dog’s dinner when your friends buy their downloads. This is our curse. We indies only have ourselves to blame for our less than perfect efforts.

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August 21, 2013 · 8:13 am

What I’ve learned from Tad Williams and Neil Gaiman

Over the course of my vacation I read two books, besides working on my own. I love to read the works of other authors, immersing myself in the way they handle plot twists and show the mood of a tale.  Oddly enough, both tales are told from the first person point of view, something I usually don’t gravitate to.

the dirty streets of heaven, Tad WilliamsFirst up, I read Tad Williams’s  irreverent thriller, The Dirty Streets of Heaven, Book I of Bobby Dollar.  That was fun, a real trip down the sometimes mean streets of the afterlife.

Tad Williams’s style of writing in the Bobby Dollar series is a non-traditional take on the traditional in-your-face, hard-boiled detective novel. Bobby is an angel, but even angels have their problems.

With the first sentence on page one, Williams establishes the mood of the piece and the society Bobby Dollar lives in, and he remains true to that concept throughout the entire tale.

“I was just stepping out of the elevator on the 43rd floor of the Five Page Mill building when the alarms began going off–those nightmarish, clear the building kind like the screams of tortured robots–and I realized I’d pretty much lost any chance at the subtle approach.”

Tad Williams’s work encompasses an incredibly wide range of styles, from fairy tales, to epic fantasy, to this hard-boiled detective story with his own paranormal twist.  At no point in the manuscript does the author forget where he is, or whose point of view the tale is told from. He never loses control of the many threads interwoven into this plot. The atmosphere is dark and seedy, and the demons Bobby Dollar deals with are some of the nicest people he knows.  Every sentence, every paragraph remains true to the mood established in that first sentence.

The ocean at the end of the lane Neil GaimonThe second book I read this last week was a completely different kind of tale, but it too was told in the first person.  Neil Gaiman’s The Ocean at the End of the Lane.

Neil Gaiman’s prose is astonishingly beautiful. It is told in the style of an old-fashioned fairy-tale, and the protagonist is never named. Ordinarily, the fact the protagonist is never named would have irritated the heck out of me, but the tale captivated me at the first line and held me enthralled to the final page. This is a stunning, harsh tale, frightening and yet comforting in a strange way.

“It was only a duck pond, out back of the farm. It wasn’t very big.

Lettie Hempsteck said it was an ocean, but I knew that was silly. She said they’d come here across the ocean from the old country.”

I didn’t buy this book for the blurb or the cover– the blurb is nonexistent, and the cover is merely okay–I bought it for the title, and for Neil Gaiman.  I knew without a doubt his prose  would more than make up for the cover and I was not wrong. The protagonist is a man of late middle age on his way to the funeral for a loved one. He stops at his childhood home, and also visits the neighbor. While there he is transported in his memories back to a terrible time in his life.  There is magic, and there is mystery here, and he tells this tale from the point of view of a seven-year-old child viewing adult situations he has only a dim grasp of. The mood is dark, and yet magic.

MH900442497We indies must continually strive to produce this kind of variety and excellence in our own work.

Sometimes we are writing in a desert, a place where the words won’t come. We feel that our work is dry and uninspiring.

But I guarantee the most famous and well-loved authors have suffered the same dry-spells, suffered the same feelings of miserable failure we aspiring indies feel.

When I read their beautiful, harsh and diverse work I am inspired to believe I can do this crazy thing. I remind myself that, for me, it’s not about numbers and sales, because it can’t be. My sales are sort of dismal at best, as I don’t really push them through the traditional indie route of obsessively nagging people to death on Facebook and other social media. For me it has to be about improving the quality of my work and the telling of the tales I have locked in my brain, and getting them out there in book form to the best of my ability.

Reading and understanding how the great authors write is one of the keys to unlocking our own potential. We indies have to use every tool we have available in this rough business, and we have to know what we want to achieve. I want to achieve great sales, of course. But more than that I want to write compelling tales that move my readers. I may never achieve the first, but I think I can do the second.

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August 19, 2013 · 8:12 am

The art of procrastination

MH900341616I have mad skills at the fine art of procrastination.  I can conjure the most amazing reasons to avoid doing tasks that would be so much simpler if I just got off my *** and did them.

I was gone all week last week, and still my house is  trashed. A mountain of dirty laundry lurks in the hall by the washer. Every inch of counter-top in the kitchen has some item (non-perishable)  of food waiting to be put away.  Sand from the beach made the journey home in our clothes and now the carpet needs a good vacuuming and perhaps a shampooing, but that’s another story.

We got home late Saturday night, and we did manage to unload the car.

That was about it. Oh yeah, the food that had to be refrigerated got put away, but the rest of it? Not so much.

MH900383000Everything sits where it was dropped, and gradually the detritus of our holiday is finding its way to the proper place.

And I don’t really find myself too bothered by the chaos. That is odd, for me.

Recovering from being sick for most of the summer and not being allowed to lift more than 10 lbs has put a bit of a damper on the cleaning frenzy I usually indulged in following our past years’ vacations.

I sit and write, and then get up and do a bit of putting away, then I sit and write again.  While in Cannon Beach I made serious headway on one of the new sections of Lackland’s tale, and yesterday, instead of cleaning house, I finished it.

Sort of.

Now I just have to flesh-out the chapter I just finished, and then there are two chapters left to write. The problem is, I know what I have to write for those chapters, because I’ve outlined them, and they are really good, action-packed chapters. It will be simple, and for me, it’s a tale that practically writes itself.

MH900399384But I can’t make myself do it.

Some will die.

I will be letting go of people I love, saying goodbye forever.

I will do many crazy things to avoid that, even if it means I actually finally clean my house.

In fact, I probably should make hummus.  Clean the kitchen, do the laundry and make hummus…avoid the whole end of the book problem….

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August 18, 2013 · 11:51 am

The Deconstruction of the Sekuatean Empire, take two

Sorry about the first attempt to reblog Stephen Swartz’s wonderful post on the proper way to think about your last words! Here is the proper working link:

The Deconstruction of the Sekuatean Empire

This time it will work!

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August 15, 2013 · 9:41 am

Stormy Weather

Amaranthus and Savvy at the needles by haystack rock cannon beach Haystack Rock Cannon Beach ©cjjasp 2012

Amaranthus and Savvy at the needles by haystack rock cannon beach Haystack Rock Cannon Beach ©cjjasp 2012

We are on holiday in Oregon, at a little town called Cannon Beach. This is a wonderful place, famous for the rock formations and caves, and the scenery was featured in the film, The Goonies.

Even in August, the northeastern Pacific Ocean on the Oregon Coast is cold and frequently cloudy and rainy. But when the sun shines, it is amazing.

Watching the storms roll in from the safety of the porch of the condo is nothing less than awesome. The beach is uncrowded, and Amaranthus and Savvy can play to their heart’s content, running wild the way cousins have always done since time began.

Amaranthus digs bunkers, and wades waist deep in Ecola Creek where it runs into the ocean. He rides his skim-board along the edge of the ocean like a pro, using his skate-boarding skills to the max. When he steps onto the porch, he is chilled to the bone, and his 6 foot tall, 14 year-old frame is shivering. His lips are blue from the cold, and he doesn’t even have to be told to take a shower–he’s a man now. He knows what to do.

Leah and Christy Cannon Beach 2012 © cjjasp 2012

Leah and Christy Cannon Beach 2012 © cjjasp 2012

Savvy is bright-eyed and deeply interested in creating marvelous sculptures of sand, just like her mother, my daughter Christy and her Aunty Leah. All our children were keen sandcastle engineers! The girl also rides her skim-board and stays out until she is blue from the cold.

It’s a family tradition.

Savannah is 11 and she’s a girl, so she also doesn’t have to be told to warm up. She wants only to sit in the Jacuzzi when she finally has to abandon her sand castles.

Sandcastle Sam 2010

Sandcastle Sam 2010

Nephew Samuel is 16, and is fixated on riding his bike the length of the beach, from Rockaway Point to Ecola Creek as many times as he can fit into the vacation. He is also a sand castle excavator, bringing spades, a pick-axe and many other large implements for proper excavation. No matter how cold, blue and near death from hypothermia Sam is, he won’t take any advice on how to get warmed up, preferring to sit in a corner looking like death-warmed-over. Did I mention Sam is 16?

Rockaway Beach © cjjasp 2013

Rockaway Beach © cjjasp 2013

This year I’m here resting up, recovering from my surgery, and writing intense scenes for the revised version of Julian Lackland’s story. This is the perfect environment for me, and with everyone else checking out the caves on Rockaway Beach and trudging down to Haystack Rock, I have the perfect combination of peace, quiet and beautiful scenery to motivate me. Throughout the rest of the year I live for this week of writer’s paradise.

Local legend says Ursula K. Le Guin spends time writing here in Cannon Beach, which seems right since she lives in Portland, 1 hour and 45 minutes away. I know that this place inspires me more than any other place we go.

The Needles at Cannon Beach ©cjjasp 2013

The Needles at Cannon Beach ©cjjasp 2013

The weather is frequently awful, but we know it, and we plan for it. But there will be two days of glorious skies of a blue impossible to adequately describe.

The moods of the Pacific Ocean are anything but peaceful. It is a wild, beautiful thing, that is never the same two days running.  The waves crashing against the sea stacks and  the cries of the sea birds combine with the wind to clear my mind, and at last I am free to just write.

Haystack_rock_monochrome

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August 12, 2013 · 9:02 am

It’s smart and clickable!

MH900314342As you know I have been working on the nuts-and-bolts end of the indie publishing business for a while now, but not really long in terms of my career. I only dove into this in 2011, and in the last two years of sometimes floundering I’ve picked up a few useful tricks.  One of the most useful in terms of a finished manuscript is how to create a table of contents for your eBook that is “clickable”, a Smart TOC.

When I read an e-book I really like it when I can easily navigate within the ms by using the hyperlinks embedded in the table of contents. This is a “Smart TOC” and is very easy to create when you are formatting your ms for publication.

First make your table of contents. The one I am using for this is an old file for the original version of Billy’s Revenge, so ignore the page numbers. I didn’t know that page numbers are like prisoners—they just weigh you down! 

Your print manuscript will most likely not have a TOC as most novels don’t waste precious pages on such things. Technical manuals and textbooks must include a TOC, but every page you can do without when publishing your novel in paper form will keep the final cost down and make your paperback more affordable for your prospective reader. Very few people will pay $18.99 for a book by an unknown author.

prnt scrn SMART TOC 1

The first thing you want to do is create a bookmark.  First highlight the words  “Table of Contents” and then go to your ‘Insert’ tab.  Click on ‘Bookmark’ in that ribbon. Type in the words ref_TOC

Then click “Add”.  In every ms it is important to name the Table of Contents bookmark exactly that, including the underscore, because that’s what Smashwords looks for and it is simply a good practice to have a uniform system for naming files.  See the next picture for how it will look and ignore the page numbers:

prnt scrn SMART TOC 2

Now it’s time to bookmark  the prologue. Scroll down to your prologue and do it exactly the same way as you bookmarked the TOC, but for this ms let’s name it BR_prologue. You will name yours with your ms initials and the word prologue. If you have no prologue, skip this step.  See the picture below:

prnt scrn SMART TOC 3

As long as you are there, with the chapter title highlighted, click “insert Hyperlink” on the ribbon. On the left, you want to ‘Link to:’  “Place in this Document”.  That will bring up your bookmarks. Select ‘ref_TOC’  and click OK.  This will turn your heading blue, which is called a ‘hyperlinky’. Press control and click on the link. it will take you back to the table of contents. Once you have used the hyperlinky it will turn purple. How cool is that! This is how that screen looks:

prnt scrn SMART TOC 4

Now that you are back at the Table of Contents, highlight “Prologue and click “insert Hyperlink” on the ribbon. On the left, you want to ‘Link to:’  “Place in this Document”. That will bring up your bookmarks. Select ‘BR_prologue’  and click OK.  That will turn it blue. Press control and click on the link. it will take you back to the heading of your prologue.

Do this for the entire table of contents, always remembering to link your chapter heading back to “ref_TOC”, and test each link as you go.  Four more pictures just to help you remember:

prnt scrn SMART TOC 5

prnt scrn SMART TOC 6

prnt scrn SMART TOC 7

prnt scrn SMART TOC 8

I hope this helps you in formatting your eBook manuscript. I just redid all my books so that they have Smart TOCs and will be building the TOC into my future manuscripts as I go.  This is an incredibly useful too to help you navigate within any long manuscript, and although I had used book marks before in the course of my work, I didn’t realize that the fancy TOCs I admired so in other people’s e-books was such a simple thing.

But that’s the way it always goes–things that seem like they should be hard are often the most simple, while something that should be easy turns into a drama of epic proportions.

Here’s to less drama and more simplicity! Learning how to format an e-book isn’t really that hard, and the wonderful people at both Smashwords and at Amazon have a lot of information freely available to you. Remember, as an indie, you are your own publisher, and what you put out there has to be the best you can make it.

Making use of the free information that is out there on the internet can only help you in this regard!

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August 8, 2013 · 7:13 am

Cover reveal,Tales from the Dreamtime

Tales from the Dreamstime jpg 2013Great covers sell books! I love great covers, but haven’t always been that good at creating them.

This is the cover of my soon-to-be-released book, Tales from the Dreamtime, a collection of two short stories and one novella.

The image is The Lily Fairy by Falero Luis Ricardo. The image itself is in the public domain, because the original author or artist passed away over 100 years ago. Thus, instead of crediting the artist with a © symbol, we use a different  method:

 

Luis Ricardo Falero Lily Fairy 1888.

{{PD-Art|PD-old-100}}

The credit line is extremely important, as you must always clearly represent on the copyright page of your book each person with an interest in the work.  You must have on file a license clearly granting you permission to use the image in way you intend to use it.

In the case of public domain artwork, a good source of free artwork with clearly written  creative-commons licenses is Wikimedia Commons.  There is a limited number of works that are suitable for my purposes, and some of the best ones have restrictions clearly stated on them. This picture, however, has the following provenance clearly stated on the bottom half of the page beneath the picture:

Author
[show]Luis Ricardo Falero (1851–1896) Link back to Creator infobox template wikidata:Q2744493
Description
Lily Fairy
Date 1888
Medium oil on canvas
Source/Photographer [1]
Permission
(Reusing this file)		 Author died more than 70 years ago – public domain
This is a faithful photographic reproduction of an original two-dimensional work of art. The work of art itself is in the public domain for the following reason:
Public domain This work is in the public domain in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less.
This file has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.

The way you are to credit the artist is also clearly expressed in a link:

Courtesy credit lines[edit]

Public Domain media do not require credit line or any kind of attribution; however, reusers are encouraged to attribute author (if known) and inform users that the work was released into public domain. Below are suggested creditline formats for the reusers:

License Author Source Credit line
{{PD-self}}
{{PD-author}}
{{PD-heirs}}		 John Doe Own work John Doe / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
{{PD-old}} John Doe publication / self-scanned John Doe / Public Domain
{{PD-self}} [[user:JohnDoe]] Own work user:JohnDoe / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain
{{anonymous-EU}}
{{PD-anon-1923}}
{{anonymous work}}		 anonymous publication Public Domain

582px-Il_Pordenone_001b_detail_sheet_music

I have found many old masters that I use on this blog on Wikimedia Commons.

“Public domain” means nobody claims any rights to the property, either because they gave them up or because time or some other factor ended copyright. Anyone can use it for any purpose. For instance, anyone can publish and sell a copy of “A Christmas Carol” because it is no longer copyright due to age.

“Royalty free” means “I own it, but I am allowing you to use it under specific conditions without paying me royalties for it” A Royalty free license does have qualifications. For instance it might allow you to use the work but not to sell copies. Many times you pay the artist a onetime fee and then you have the rights to use the work within the limits of your contract.

Bedermann dreamstime_14266940Affordable Royalty Free art can be found on Dreamstime.com, and the price ranges from $1.00 to $75.00. There are thousands of images on that website. iStock.com is another great royalty free website.  Their contracts are clear and printable and the credit lines are also clear. You always have a record of your purchases through them, on the website so your provenance is never in doubt.

Being an indie is a lot of work, and you really have to be your own art department. It is a lot of fun, I find. I have even tried making my own cover art, with mixed results, but I really learn a lot from these sorts of experiences.

Being an indie is a s much about the learning the ropes of the publishing business as it is anything else.  I have learned that just owning the rights to use the art is only the first step to a good cover. You must either be able to use Photoshop (mondo expensive) or Gimp (free), both of which are startlingly difficult to learn the ropes of.  Not only that, you must understand how a book cover is laid out. There are YouTube and Amazon walkthroughs, which is a free education but also which is complicated.

My advice? Hire a graphic designer with experience in designing book covers. It is well worth it. My own choice of artwork is dictated by my both my pocketbook and the image’s relevance to the story, but I find that good graphics can really make a great cover.

I have a graphic designer, Ceri Clark, who does the graphics on my book covers, because I don’t have the eye for them. My advice? Hire a graphic designer with experience in designing book covers. I know I already said that, but that is my advice, lol!

So here is the blurb for my new book, Tales from the Dreamtime

Three grownup Tales from the Dreamtime in one novella…

A conversation with Galahad
A prince on a quest and a goddess in mourning
A stolen kingdom and the Fractal Mirror 
Three tales of wonder and great deeds 
Three tales of heroes and villains 

Open the door and enter the Dreamtime, the world of fairytales, the flower of all that is delightful and mysterious, frightening and amazing.

It will be offered for sale as an ebook by Monday August 12,2013 if all goes as planned.It contains three tales:

TABLE    OF    CONTENTS

1     Galahad Hawke (a short story)

2    The Tale of Prince Darién (a short story)

3    Arrabelle and the Prince of Thieves (a novella)

Each tale is written with my own particular brand of let-the-chips-fall -where-they-may take on traditional fairytales.

I may yield to pressure and pick up the story at the end of  Galahad, turning him into a novel during NaNoWriMo this year–he is an Arthurian tale with a Steampunk twist. Nothing is certain yet!

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August 5, 2013 · 8:51 am

Unplanned Obsolescence

220px-Odometer_rolloverI turned sixty in June. The very next day I started falling apart. I am not kidding, my internal organs began failing the next day. Well, at least my gallbladder gave out on me.

Who knew planned obsolescence applied to the human body? At 60,000 miles you need a new timing belt, and possibly a brake-job.

Several expensive tests and a trip to urgent care later, it turned out I didn’t have gallstones. My gallbladder simply was failing, or as the doctor put it, dysfunctional. If you only knew my family, you wouldn’t be surprised.  I’m sure it’s not the only dysfunctional internal organ in the family.

ad_chevy_vega_gt_orange_1974I felt rather like the 1974 Chevy Vega we once owned, the vehicle with the duct-tape interior.  We had proudly bought it new, but at 50,000 miles the armrests fell off, the dashboard began cracking, the seats came apart–the interior was nothing but duct tape; a vast sea of silver. And the car was only three years old.

Duct tape is also known as “hundred-mile-an-hour-tape” in my family. Uncle Jim had a purple 1962  Chrysler station-wagon with both the rear-view mirror and the back bumper duct-taped on and he drove it like that for two years while he worked in the woods, planting trees.

libby-gown-front_01So last Wednesday I had surgery.  It was just a bit of internal housecleaning–out with the debris cluttering up the place. Unlike Dr. Frankenstein’s monster I had nothing new to replace it with, but the gallbladder is apparently an internal organ we can do without.

Today I am hanging around the house, waiting for tomorrow when I will get the staples out.

I know! Staples–almost as classy as duct tape! My Father would have been proud!

300px-Duct-tape

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July 30, 2013 · 6:26 am

Hurricane Hilton

MH900175582Last week I attended a 4 day convention in Seattle where there were several glitches on the dietary front.

The kitchen at the hotel failed miserably on Thursday and Friday, but by Saturday they had figured it out at least for the final dinner.  In the meantime, there were a lot of starving authors sharpening their pens and busily writing culinary reviews that were less than glowing.

When we reserved our place in January, we were asked what dietary requirements we had, and were given many options.  The breakfast buffet was nothing but donuts, muffins and bagels–none of which are vegan or gluten-free – options that were offered to registrants at the time of my original sign-up.

I am not gluten intolerant, but I am vegan, and not for moral reasons. I am vegan for health reasons, as I get horribly ill from eating even small amounts of meat and dairy. So, when I realized there was NOTHING for breakfast or lunch that I could eat, I figured I’d just go to the restaurant and order side dishes off the menu. I have usually found that to be an option that works for me. After all, hash browns and steamed veggies are usually easy for the kitchen to turn out.

MH900400553When faced with a simple request, such as, “Can I have veggies sautéed in olive oil instead of butter please?” or “May I have my toast with no butter, please?” the waiters and waitresses got the deer-in-the-headlights look.  

I know what it’s like to be faced with a horde of prima donnas who think they should have special treatment.  I worked in the food service industry as both a waitress and a dishwasher, and I was a hotel maid for 12 years, actually, during the Reagan and Bush Sr. years. That was one of my 3 jobs. I was also a free-lance bookkeeper and a darkroom technician during those years. Three part-time jobs kept the kids fed and the roof over their heads, right?

Trickle down economics didn’t always trickle down too far.

It’s amazing how many hotels and restaurants are not prepared for guests with strange dietary needs like those weirdo hippy-freak vegans.

I get it, and I understand it.  I left good tips in the VERY expensive coffee shop anyway, because everyone did their best, and why be more of a pain than you have to be? My fried spuds and steamed veg averaged $15.00 to $20.00 per meal for breakfast and lunch for 4 days. Hurricane Hilton blew through my wallet leaving behind a budgetary disaster.

curry and sweet potato soupBut in this case, I was not the only hungry author there.  There was little concession made for any of the other people who’d been offered diet options, including the carnivores.  In fact the first three days were total catering catastrophes, and hardly anyone was pleased with the pathetic offerings.

By Friday, things were looking up for me but the Carnivores were starving. The catering team had gotten the 3 vegans at the convention served, and the plate they put in front of me was lovely.

Yep. There I was alone, surrounded by starving authors, armed only with a plate of grilled asparagus.

The carnivores were all looking at my veggies covetously. Irene Roth Luvaul suffered worse than me. She was told that  A: they had run out of food, and B: they weren’t going to cook any more. 6 people at our table were yet to be served.

Irene is an editor. Did I mention that? Just in case I didn’t, I will just say it’s bad juju to cross an editor. And the room was full of them.

There was blood in the water.

The announcement that no food would be forthcoming didn’t fly well with the comma-Nazi. Irene said, “What do you mean, you aren’t going to cook any more food?” Her clipped Texas tones could have shaved the fur off a cat at fifteen feet, they were so sharp.

This was the voice of the woman who edited briefs for the Texas State Supreme Court. She wrangled lawyers for a living.

The server brought her a plate of cold ravioli in pale tomato sauce.

Faced with a resounding plea-bargain, Irene desperately wished she was a vegan, and eyed my asparagus with longing.

However, by Saturday night the catering staff had redeemed themselves beautifully with a lovely, well-prepared meal that even the gluten-free authors were pleased with, along with copious quantities of decent wine, proving that giddy, well-oiled authors are a bag of fun.

Despite near starvation, it was a fun week, and meeting Greg Bear was awesome. But making new friends and connections with both sides of the industry was the best part of this for me.

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July 26, 2013 · 10:52 am

What I’ve learned from Greg Bear

Wow.  I just made me a new BFF! I’m never going to wash my ears again (insert starry eyes here.)  I am currently at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Conference in Seattle, Washington with my real BFF, Irene Roth Luvaul. We are having the best time and even though we are only on the second day of the event, with two more days to go, this thing has already paid for itself in what we have learned about writing, editing and the publishing industry in general.

Greg Bear - portrait-mediumThe keynote speaker was none other than Greg Bear (cue the angels) and what he had to say was more than entertaining–it was inspirational.

While still in high-school, this man and his gang of sci-fi fanatic friends used to hang out with mentor Ray Bradbury! THAT connection was invaluable to his career as writer and storyteller, working in the less-than-respectable genre of speculative fiction.

Greg’s complete dedication to the craft of writing and his passion for the genre of science fiction and fantasy comes across in his talks. He is very frank and has a sense of the ridiculous that resonates with his audience. He is a humble man, who told me he worked to deadlines because he has to pay the mortgage, and publishers frequently have deadlines.

cover_foundation and chaos, Greg BearGreg spoke about working on the foundation series after Asimov’s death, and how he frequently felt he heard the man’s voice in his head, guiding him as he was writing Foundation and Chaos. 

The best part of the evening for me was meeting the man and getting his signature on my copy of the Mongoliad, book 1. 

Irene is a champ at getting things done.  She got me moving so I was fourth in line to meet him and get his signature. I’m just going to say it–Nothing is more undignified than an old fat woman who has just met god.

cover_hull Greg BearYou will be so proud of me!  I made it all the way out of the room before SQUEEEEEing like a school girl with a front row ticket to see One Direction. I am fully convinced that by virtue of having exchanged pleasantries while he signed my copy of his book, Greg Bear and I are now best chums and will be forever.

Irene managed to get me peeled off the ceiling and back to earth, but it was dicey there, for a while.

What I learned from Greg Bear is this:  to be a writer, you must write. You must have passion for your story and you must be obsessed with your universe and the worlds therein. His passion and obsession for the craft of writing really come across in his speech. He lives in his worlds, he knows his characters and their lives better than he knows his own.

Another thing I have learned from Greg Bear is to attend writers conventions if you can.

mongoliad book 1These forums offer us the tools to advance our careers. With the huge boom in indie publishing, it is even more crucial than ever for those of us who intend to remain indies to have the edge that knowledge of the way the industry works gives us. We have to stand out of the crowd, and to do that we must have a professional product and a real marketing plan. If we intend to compete, we have to know and understand the competition.

For the indie author, the competition is the high quality of the finished product put out by traditional publishing houses who are blessed with talented staffs of editors and cover designers and their long established connections  with literary publicity publications.

We can compete. We have to put out the best, most professional product we are able to create. We have to hire editors, and pay for good covers. We have to write ‘blurbs’ that intrigue our readers. Our personal online presence when we are googled must be consistent and professional.  Attending conventions offers us the opportunity to meet people in the industry and make professional connections. It is so much more than just being an elderly fangirl.

I am inspired to write. More than ever I am driven to live this writing life, inventing improbable plots and eccentric people. And I am empowered to believe I can succeed because great storytellers like Greg Bear have gone before me, and paved the way.

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