I have an idea for a book app. Authors upload an image of their book’s cover, and readers get to go through them. If the reader doesn’t like the cover, they swipe left. But if they find the cover interesting, they swipe right, which opens up a page with the blurb as well as links to buy it.
So
if you know how to make an app, there you go.
Or if this already exists, let me know.
For the last several years, I’ve had a free sale for my ebook of political stories, Political Pies, around the Fourth of July. Normally, I’d just have one ebook free at a time, but last year I started doing big sales with four or five at a time, which seemed to work better. So here are the four ebooks that will be free to download from Thursday July 1st, through Monday July 5th. So grab them before you get too drunk.
Everybody complains about politics, but does anyone do anything about it? My attempt to do something about it is to collect forty of my short stories with a political element into this anthology. The stories are either politically neutral or equally condemning of the national parties. Instead of trying to sway you to one ideology or another, my goal is to just get people thinking about politics in the hopes a rose might grow out of all the political manure.
As a
science fiction writer, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how technology
will change the way we live. I’ve come up with these ten short essays about
science fictional elements that will – almost certainly – one day become
science fact as a way for people to start coming to terms with them. Because
I’ve spent time thinking about clones and AIs, I feel I’ll be okay when they do
finally show up whereas most people will probably freak out. I hope these
essays will get people to start thinking about the future because, no matter
what we do, the future is coming.
Who
cleans up the mess when the time machine malfunctions?
“Rise”
is a standalone story set in my Human Republic Universe. The story follows the
events after the tragic deaths of the colonists on a small colony in a distant
star system.
Towards
the end of last year, I decided to restart posting a quarterly newsletter. I unfortunately completely forgot about doing
it for the first quarter of this year until about a week into April. At first I was going to do one – better late
than never – but then I realized that I didn’t really have anything to talk
about, so there wasn’t much point.
To
be honest, there isn’t much to talk about for the first half of this year. Back in January I posted My writing goals of 2021. One of my goals was to work on
some short stories, and I have finished a rough draft of a story “Being First.”
My plan for it is to wait a few months, then go back with fresh eyes and give
it a heavy revision, and hopefully by the end of the year start sending it
out. So stay tuned for more on that.
And
that’s about it. I am trying to blog
more, but it seems between job work, house work, yard work, garden work, etc.
work, I don’t have the energy to write.
I do have some time, but it seems all I can do is just watch YouTube. Hopefully, I’ll get more done in the next
three months. And I’ll remember to put
up a newsletter.
***
We
all have ideas on politics, or religion, or whatever, and as writers there is
the temptation to use the platform of our writing to spread these ideas, even
if they don’t necessarily fit the story.
This is a broad definition of social commentary. But one person’s social commentary is another
person’s ideological screed. Years ago
there was a show coming out that didn’t really look interesting to me. But then one day Twitter exploded with people
talking about an episode and how brave they were to “go there.” So out of
curiosity, I started watching the show.
It wasn’t really for me and when I got to “the” episode, I couldn’t even
finish it. Because to me the social
commentary felt so ham-fisted that it felt like I was being beat with the whole
pig. Don’t get me wrong, the issue they
brought up is important, but it was like going in to have the oil in your car
changed only for them to start repainting it.
Yes, it needed done, but it wasn’t what I signed up for today.
Social
commentary is great when it works, but it is so easy for it to not work. And I think the easiest way for it to not
work is to try to do too much with it, or to make too big a deal of it. Stories are like meals. While some are fine with plain fare, most
readers/watchers want their stories seasoned with some clever writing. And if the writer wishes to garnish it with a
bit of social commentary, that’s fine, although some will just push it to the
side of the plate. I think the reason
social commentary often has a bit of a negative connotation, is because writers
are afraid of being too subtle and their message being missed by the public, so
they go superliminal.
So
if you feel the need to add some social commentary to your writing, remember,
it’s best as seasoning. Some might miss
it, but if you add too much, you’ll probably annoy more people, which kind of
defeats the purpose.
***
How
often has this happened to you? You’ve
had a long day at work or dealing with your kids or whatever, and you snuggle
down into your blankets, and just as your about to drift off to sleep your
brain finally figures out the last puzzle piece that ties your novel
together. Do you assume that the idea is
so profound you’ll clearly remember it in the morning, or do you get up, find
some paper and a pen, and make a quick note?
I
used to get a lot of story ideas as I was falling asleep or I’d wake up in the
middle of the night from a dream that – in my sleep addled state – I thought
would make a great story. For a while
I’d grab a notepad I kept by my bed and – in the dark – make marks on the page
which I’d hopefully be able to read in the morning. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn’t. But sometimes it worked not because I was
able to read what I had written, but because it would remind me that I had had
an idea, and that would cause me to remember it. So I simplified matters and started using a
Memory Sock. This was just an old sock I’d
leave lying next to my bed. If I had an
idea, I’d just reach down, feel around on the floor until I found the sock, and
just toss it towards the middle of the room.
The next morning I’d get up, find the sock in the middle of the room and
that, usually, would jog the memory of the idea. This whole idea is to use something out of
place to force you to remember something.
My current version of the “Memory Sock” is to take the TV remote that is
on the stand next to my bed and just set it on the floor.
The
Memory Sock may not work for you, and you may lose an idea for the next, great,
American novel, but by not overly disturbing your rest you may get a more
restful sleep. And some days, it’s a
tough call and which you’d want more.
***
Image
from Pixabay.
It
seems that if you want to sell your books – especially if you self-publish –
you need to find and engage with an audience.
That’s great an all, if you’re someone who can hold a conversation. One time in college, I was walking somewhere
with a woman and she said, “So, tell me about yourself.” I thought for a bit
and replied, “I was born.” She laughed, and then started talking about
something else. I’m not an engager. (Not to brag, but years later a different
woman said that, while I was smart and funny, talking with me was “mentally and
emotionally draining.”) Ideally, I’d
publish a book and then just have it be magically found. But we don’t live in a world of magic –
dammit – so if I want to find an audience, I need to do something.
One
of the things I’m trying is publishing more blogs – with titles like Random
Writing Tips – in the hope that someone might stumble upon this and be funneled
to my books. Of course, over the years
I’ve written numerous blogs. While many
of them are comments on – at the time – current events, some of them are still
relevant and I recently went back through my blogs and found all these
posts. Some deal with things I can
expand on, but others I can use as is.
For example, over the years I’ve posted short stories or poems dealing
with some holiday, like Halloween. So
now every October I can just tweet out a link to this story for the
season.
And
that’s the basic idea of blog mining.
You’ve spent hours and hours writing blogs that – in all likelihood –
get swallowed up in the internet quicksand in less than a day. Why let all the work go to waste when all it
takes is a tweet to bring it back to the surface.
***
Image
from Pixabay.
Yesterday I was scrolling through Twitter, or Facebook, I forget which, and I saw a post of someone asking for tips for writing a vampire story. I didn’t read any of the suggestions because I didn’t really care. Vampires have almost been done to death. But the idea of a vampire story fluttered around in my head, and I thought that for a good vampire story there needs to be some twist. As a random example, I thought of a reverse-vampire.
A reverse-vampire was just supposed to be a joke, but I started wondering what that would entail. Like, would that just be a “vampire” that gives blood to the people they bite? Like would royal families keep a reverse-vampire around to treat the hemophiliacs in the family? Or would they be used to give clean blood to doping athletes? I could picture a scene in an ER where someone had a bad accident and the doctor goes, “They’re losing too much blood. Somebody wake up Vlad.” And a nurse grabs a broom and pokes a bat sleeping in the corner, and it would transform into a groggy guy who bites the patient and gives them blood.
I got a chuckle over these ideas, and I’d write them myself, if I didn’t have like, 8,000 other story ideas I want to write. So if you can make anything of these, have at it.
