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Sunday 31 August 2014

FUCK ME HARD: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Sense.
   I saw this.
   In seeing sense, I decided not to call this post FUCK ME HARD. It might have attracted a different style of comment. I'm not saying the comments would have been good or bad.
   Different.
   Is the product as advertised? Recently I blogged about being offered a meal and receiving a different kind of meal. That was one of those writerly moments packed with symbolism. I wasn't offered the wrong meal in an actual place.
   No, I made that up to illustrate a point.
   If I want steak, don't bring me soup unless I asked for soup followed by steak. Is the product, the service, the thing, meant to be that way?
   Okay, mistakes are made in restaurants. But not with spam. Spam is a category of mistake all to itself.
   I'm going to fuck you hard = I'm going to spam you hard.
  The comment means something else uttered under different skies. In a bedroom, or a mocked-up bedroom in Ikea, I'm going to fuck you hard takes on a certain connotation.
   This is true of a scene in a movie, whether comedy, porno, or comedy porno.
   In my in-box, it means spam.
   I'm going to fuck you hard in your in-box.
   Okay, that could still apply in Ikea or at the movies.
   But this business of pumping me hard or offering to ride me hard, fuck me hard, do me hard, by telling me this in multiple e-mails...
   That clutters my in-box. This is not a euphemism.
   Anyway...
   I know this spam doesn't work. Viagra? No thanks. Rolex? No. Does Dr Dre really need the help of spammers to promote his headphones? I think he'll get by just fine without me.
   And advertising?
   I don't run around waving books in faces.
   This is how I used to purchase books...
   In the vast past, I'd walk into a bookshop with a definite idea of what I went there for. I'd heard about a book. So I went looking for the title, or the author. I'd go and look in a category.
   Finding what I wanted to check out, I'd read the blurb on the back cover. Then I'd read the first page. If you didn't disgrace yourself on the first page of your book, you did well.
   I've changed my mind about an essential book on reading that crucial first page. Back on the shelf you go.
   Recently, I was offered a loyalty card in the last bookshop. Accepting killed the shop. It closed. Am I now without a bookshop? No. There's always Amazon.
   I search for a book by title. By author. Perhaps by category. I check out the blurb. And I click to read the free sample. Same procedure as I used in the vast past.
   But now, that's all electronic. There's no bookshop here. The bookshop is everywhere. Was there spam, in the vast past?
   Newspaper book reviews, perhaps. The cosy kind, where who you knew in the writing world outbid what you knew about writing. Hell, that hasn't changed. The devious business just upgraded to a better seat.
   Being offered an unspecified service - admittedly related to being fucked hard...my cynicism suspects financially - turned my thoughts to author spam.
   Spam by authors, rather than spam aimed at authors.
   I write of spam periodically. It grows more devious by the hour, that stuff. Devious...and desperate.
   How often have I bought a book based on receiving an automated Twitter response in my Direct Message in-box, asking me to like the author's Facebook page?
   My (three) regular blog readers already know my views on Facebook. Facebook is for stalkers, cat-obsessives, and cat-obsessed stalkers.
   Sense. I threw sense out of the window and changed this blog post from FUCK ME HARD to SPAM ME HARD. Then I saw sense and changed back. Putting SPAM in the title risks attracting an audience of carnivores.
   Spam, as a meal, is likely to be the best thing to eat in a Zombie Apocalypse. It's the tinned food that comes with its own can-opener.

Saturday 23 August 2014

ADVICE FOR WRITERS: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

This isn't advice for writers. No. This is advice about advice.
   What happened to prompt the blog post? The blank page. That's all I need. But it's true, there is more to it than the desire to fill a blank page this time around.
   Behind the scenes, I offered a warehouse of assistance to a writer. All the goodies. Here's what you should know about publishing for Amazon Kindle...
   I rambled, meandered, and waffled as I talked the talk. All of this painless advice was pain-filled for me when I walked the walk and learned the hard way.
   And I made that plain. This piece of advice comes from making that mistake. And so on.
   If you can help a writer, help that writer. You'll receive help in return. If the writer doesn't help you directly, you'll find all kinds of indirect help comes from giving advice to scribblers.
   Was I thanked for my assistance? Yes. I was also called an encyclopaedia of publishing knowledge, or something like that. The word encyclopaedia was used. I was too busy blushing to take in the exact phrasing.
   I am, without question, a grumpy bastard. At my absolute best, I feel utterly charmless. Yet I am told, repeatedly, that I am charming, helpful, useful, a do-gooder, and all those other insults I won't waste time listing. Writers think I am useful.
   Here's the thing about giving advice. I know enough to know that I need to know much more about publishing. That's the attitude I brought to the task.
   Next thing you know, I have a blog out. And books. I publish old stuff and write new material. Writer contacts are made. Mistakes occur with alarming f-words.
   I'm useful. The damage I've caused is unknowable. I should be glad of that. Insomnia's bad enough, without adding guilt-trips to the nightly fun.
   How useful am I, as a writer? I thought of that...not after helping a scribbler and being told I was an encyclopaedia. No. I thought of that after catching sight of an article on writing.
   Who wrote it? Didn't care. What was the title? Doesn't matter. This writer promised to talk about all the good things related to publishing. Why we shouldn't be in a froth to self-publish.
   It was a rubbish article. Not because it set out a contrary view. It was wishy-washy, that was all. The article came across as pushing self-publishing instead of the traditional method.
   Not as advertised.
   I'd have preferred a solid article with a contrary view. Instead, I was sold mush on the promise of something substantial. I ordered steak. Why did you bring me soup? I like soup, true. But I ordered steak. Didn't like the soup you served, though, and, hell, I told you I like that stuff.
   Damn.
   Advice. Yes, advice always has an agenda. The simplest agenda is to help someone solve a problem. After that, things grow complex. Someone gives advice to push a service.
   Well. That's understandable. You have a service to sell, and must show that you can walk the walk as well as talk the talk.
   Unless you are Midas, hell, even if you are Midas, don't sell me on promises of turning lead into gold. Or baguettes into gold, if you are Midas.
   I'm thinking of an industrial-strength agenda I tripped over recently. Candidate for the worst piece of advice I'd seen on writing. A proofreader pushed an agenda.
   The selling of proofreading services. Nothing wrong in that. The proofreader was so keen to drum up work that this gem came out...
   Don't spellcheck your work.
   I became a cartoon character. Eyeballs bulged across the room. I turned into a flip-lid bin and the top of my head opened so that my brain could yell...
   WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!
   The notion behind this was simple. The electronic checker will let certain words slip through. Are you in sheer pain? That's severe. If you are in shear pain, you've been stabbed with scissors. That kind of agony is also severe, I'd imagine.
   The agenda?
   Don't fuss and bother over that electronic checking. Hire my services, and I'll see to that pesky button on the screen. And charge you money for doing something you can do at the click of a fucking mouse.
   That was a half-arsed way of fishing for customers. Promoting advanced services by offering to take care of the most basic function available. I walked away, not sure if I should double in pain or fold with sarcastic laughter.
   Anyway. Look for the agenda in advice. I picked up a free book on self-publishing. Much of the advice revolved around other services. Available at a premium rate.
   Space was given over to formatting. I looked at this poorly-formatted book and wondered how useful the formatting advice was. Answer. Hard to say. I was put off by broken hyperlinks. And other things. But mostly, the hyperlinks.
   I check my own out-of-book hyperlinks less-often than I should, I know. But I do fucking check them. I've updated the annoying bastards so that readers are not inconvenienced.
   Advice. Is everywhere. If a guy writes a book on how to churn out great novels...where are his great novels on the Amazon listing that only seems to list his how-to book?
   Agenda.
   Must be the shift in the weather. Lately, I've been seeing piss-poor advice everywhere I turn.
   Doesn't mean my advice is great.


*

I took a break to check out that how-to book on publishing. No, I didn't pay for it. Except in terms of the time I mistakenly invested. In attempting to read the damned thing, I was torn away from coffee and cake and international women of mystery.
   It was difficult to navigate this supposedly fantastic tome. The end.
   Okay, I checked the reviews. The negative comments were visceral. Services are plugged to excess. I could have told you that. Wait. I did mention the point earlier in this blog post.
   I should add that one scathing review appeared to be by an author with an agenda to counter the book's agenda. Let us stop up that hole and cease hunting rabbits.


*

So what of my advice on advice? It hasn't changed.
   Advice freely given is free to be ignored.
   The advice I give may change as more information comes in.
   What works for me may not work for you.
   And what works for both of us may not work this time next week.
   Paid-for advice may not be any better than free advice.
   Shares rise as well as fall.
   Eat the yellow snow if you have a craving for it. Don't expect others to join you. All the more for you.
   Everything written on computer must be spellchecked by computer. My spellchecker doesn't like the word spellchecker. I gave up hyphenating the construction.
   That happens to words, from time-to-time. Today we write today, whereas people wrote to-day in yesteryear. They probably wrote yester-year, too.
   Stay flexible. Unless it is important to be inflexible. You know. That one time.


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Formatting advice appeared here on my blog. Based on experience. Rather, based on many many many many bad experiences. Is the advice still relevant? At the time of writing, yes. Viewer results may vary, depending on the time of reading.
   I'd recommend after midnight, some time this century. Failing that, catch me most afternoons in the next century over.


*

Context. The writer who thought my publishing knowledge encyclopaedic? She started talking and soon put forth an argument that ran counter to my views.
   I changed my views.
   True story. This is what happens. I give advice, and receive help in return. Go thou, and do likewise.

Sunday 17 August 2014

THE IN-BOX: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

What should you expect to find in your in-box if you write books?
   Requests for help. These tend to arrive in the form of entreaties from Nigerian Princesses living in France.
   Rolex watch adverts.
   Plugs for earplugs.
   Viagra. Always the female variety.
   Urgent confidential requests for aid that I never open. So I can't tell you how much money these people want from me.
   This week, I was spammed by a mysterious character. Me. WTF?! Yes. I received an e-mail from myself. It was urgent that I answer this and deal with it. Vital that I check the enclosed attachment.
   Hmm.
   I don't recall writing that one. Or, indeed, sending it. Peculiarly, I have no urgent desire to respond. Hmm.
   Was my e-mail account hacked? No. Sooner or later - and in my case it's been later - you may be spammed by someone pretending to be you.
   I suppose this is designed to catch people who e-mail themselves. Do I e-mail myself? Technically, yes.
   This blog is e-mailed to me as an additional form of archiving. It's quite clear what the incoming e-mail is about. No mystery. And no urgent request.
   Almost all junk, spam, is filtered. Either I never see it or I only note its presence in the filtered folder before flushing occurs.


*

Rarely, important e-mail is accidentally filtered out as junk. I believe I've caught it all, so far.


*

And the rest? How important is e-mail? You can reach me at the listed e-mail address. Doesn't mean you want to, and doesn't mean you should.
   I deal with other writers on a regular bassoon. We talk of many things: shoes, ships, sealing-wax, cabbages, kings and desperate men.
   E-mail is important.
   When I update a book by altering the blurb or the price, Amazon e-mails me to say the updated book is now live.
   So far I've dealt with legal issues through e-mail and not the courts.
   Payment is noted via e-mail. This is the digital age, and authors should not be paid twice a year. I don't have a paper publishing company dawdling in the background.
   E-mail is relatively swift, and problems can be set right rapidly. Doesn't mean they will be. But the option is there.
   Writers. Check your in-boxes. Yes. Writers need more than one box. I have at least...oh dear. Let me think. Damn, is it seven boxes now? Yes. All tailored to different levels of e-mail traffic.
   My busiest in-box is the one visible on this blog. It is tied to my Twitter account, and I take loads of incoming waffle. But I think that's important.
   I don't routinely Tweet my book links on the Twitter. My best responses come through talking about coffee or showing pictures of ice cream.
   In other words, I try my best to stay human. Even if the content of my in-box appears generated by robots. I can't act that way.


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This blog post was about being sent spam by my evil clone. I had nothing grand or revelatory to say on the business of e-mail. Keep a lid on it...
  Generate the ability to know, looking at the e-mail's subject, whether that message will be useful or not. Occasionally, I've been caught out by a monitor warning me that my outgoing e-mail title might constitute spam.
   Would I like to alter the title? Yes. That's been surprising. Why is this phrase or that word considered spam?
   Don't mention help in an e-mail subject. Try to avoid saying hello in the title. If you hold a doctorate, make no mention of this in the intro.
   Above all, omit the name Sani Abacha from your scribblings. There's no Swiss legacy waiting to be unlocked.
   Must see to my e-mail.

Sunday 10 August 2014

ILLNESS FOR WRITERS: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

No, I am not promoting illness for writers. Here, have a disease. The disease of writing. There is no cure.
   Recently I took on a job and accepted the money for it. Almost instantly, I keeled over ill. What could I do about that? I was ten pages into the work.
   This is what I did.
   I stopped the work, and started getting better. There was no question of doing anything on autopilot. I'd have done a disservice to the client, myself, writing, and the dark side of the moon. Think of the chilblains, damn it.
   What can you do, when you are ill? As a writer, generally, you are self-employed and work from home. So the sick-bed may be in your office.
   Tempted to keep going through the disease? Here's highly technical medical advice, provided by healthcare professionals...
   Fuck that shit.
   You may want to take note of that advice. Put it on a magnet and stick it to your fridge. Get better. Let the work pile up. And get better.


*

There are many examples of authors who lay in sick-beds. If young as a scribbler, the would-be writer traded shares in illness for those in reading.
   Some books were written in sick-beds. Others were penned from what would become death-beds.
   I've often said that writers are always on the job. This is true. Stumbling back from shopping, I struggled to recall the source of a word.
   As Dorothy Parker was fond of reminding us, just say it was all down to Oscar Wilde. In this case, that happened to be true. The weight of the tins in my bag propelled me to this realisation.


*

As with shopping, so too with illness. The writer is always on the job, even if ague precludes the notion of typing. Looking to write a realistic fever-dream? Simply fall ill and call it research.
   I didn't get much done when I was ill. Why the hell not? I am one of those unusual individuals - I rarely fall ill, and seldom recognise doctors if I must trek to the local surgery. That is, assuming the building hasn't relocated since my last visit.
   People who don't often fall ill often fall hard when we do fall ill. We are ill-prepared for illness as we're propelled into a strange world of arcane surgery opening-times, tests, test-results, and that peculiar thing called medicine.
   Not for me that life, this time out.
   I was borderline: sick enough to lose a week to illness, but not sick enough to require expert treatment. Yes, in a very Scottish way that is designed to thin the herd in time of plenty, I struggled on alone.
   You'll want to hear that in my fever-state I carved out vast empires of the mind, storing away each dew-drop of sweat in a box of stories marked WRITE LATER.
   Hah!

*

Well, okay, as I lay there I worked my way through some story difficulties - that's true. After the worst of it, I hauled myself to the keyboard and wrote far more in a night than I felt I had any right to scribble.
   There is an urge to write that cuts across illness. You must determine, studying the barometer, whether to cut across the illness and keep writing...
   Or just get better.
   At the worst of it, I felt as though I'd been hit by a bag of hammers taped to the end of another massive eff-off hammer. Walking from room to room was a fragile experience. I expected floors to splinter under me. Ow.


*

I know. It's excessively Scottish to seek no help for that. But hey, I managed to scrape a blog post out of the experience without getting killed. That's a result.


*

Was this post meant to be about contingencies and alternative plans? Fuck no. Sometimes lying there sweating it out - yep - sometimes that IS the contingency.
   Fight your battles. Choose the battlegrounds, though. I stopped work at the start of the difficulty. There was no other option. At the far end of the difficulty, I didn't return to the work I'd started on. Instead, I took a sideways move into some old material just to see if the cylinders were all firing.
   They were. And in the right order, too.


*

Obviously, I am still blogging around a week or two ahead, so the flow of the blog was never going to face disruption. Ah well, back to it.

Sunday 3 August 2014

ALTERING YOUR E-BOOK AFTER PUBLICATION: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

Here are some thoughts on this...


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Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!


*

With provision, altering a published work is acceptable. But see the preceding paragraph.


*

Let's set up a few provisions. Take from the pile as needed. Wouldn't want any of you going hungry.


*

I've been working on Neon Gods. It's important that all the sub-plots match. I daren't have anything in book two or book three contradicting material in book one - unless I'm being deliberately devious in order to reveal stunning plot-twists later.
   The work had not been going well. Large cast of characters. Many cults and conspiracies to wade through. And a sticking-point that I only recently ditched.
   For a long time, I stuck to the view that each book in the series would be about the same length. I didn't want to ramble too far from the main path on every new adventure.
   The more I tried to stick to the arbitrary limit of roughly 180,000 words, the more I became a prisoner of the format. I had to break out of a convention that would automatically limit the nature and amount of action in each story.
   Having now ditched the limit, I'll just write the stories I am meant to write. No need to worry about squeezing in so many cast-members.


*

Bearing that in mind, I started writing fresh material for Neon Gods. The scene? A rather plush house in the big city. Our anti-hero arrives by cab.
   In the first book I made it clear that cabbies were all government snitches. Cabmen couldn't be trusted. This new scene involved a tame cabbie, pressured into silence.
   I had to refresh the memory.
   Were these people cabbies, cabmen, or cab-men? Possibly a combination. I searched the original file and found my cabbies easily enough.
   Of the seven uses of cabmen, one was hyphenated. Inconsistency must go. I've updated Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords. Which brings me to this blog post.


*

Just because we have the capacity to constantly update e-books, doesn't mean that we should. I'm on record as saying this...
   If you really want to go back in and make massive changes to the story, write a new story and call it something else. Make sure you are absolutely straight with your readers when you do so.
   You can, and should, alter your e-book with the following in mind...

One. Correct mistakes, formatting glitches, and other typographical inconsistencies.

Two. If you made a potentially defamatory statement in your e-book, go back in and remove it.

Three. Make mechanical changes to improve the reading experience. For example, a Table of Contents with a better layout. Areas in the front matter of an e-book deserve to be clutter-free.
   In the back-matter of an e-book, you might be forced to update also available entries or biographical notes.
   You may still live in Wisconsin with a husband, but if he's your second husband you might want to mention him by name to avoid confusion and dagger-stares. And a second divorce.

Four. Adding bonus material that was unavailable for various reasons. This is okay. Best to leave it in the back matter.

Five. You spot material that needs tidying on the following grounds...the material as written makes a nonsense of the plot and you realise this late in the day...
   New material adds clarity to the work...
   Legal reasons prevent use of the material as written and something must take its place.


*

Time to look at those points. How am I doing?

One. Yes, I spent the better part of a year wrestling with one of Amazon's "known issues" before I found a fix. No one noticed, all the products were updated, and I continued as before.
   Fixing formatting glitches and killing gremlins is inevitable.

Two. No. Haven't defamed anyone yet. Misattributed a contributor, but I managed to put that right.

Three. Yes, I've streamlined Tables of Contents. Periodically, I update the back matter.

Four. I'm considering this, but haven't done it as I blog unto ye. Better, perhaps, to gather additional material in a new collection. Depends on the nature and size of the bonus goodies.

Five. The tricky one, with its three categories. And some of those can be subdivided into other areas. Okay, first part. My plots are all nonsensical anyway, so I have no reason to alter them once published.
   Second part. Adding clarity to the work. I am considering doing this for one story that is already out there. Two areas concern me, both are technical, and, after studying many a YouTube video, I've concluded that a few extra sentences here or there would help the readers out.
   That's not rewriting the story, changing the plot, altering the setting, revamping the characters or anything major. After having published more than a million words, I feel two rough spots could do with flattening. I call that good going.
   If I go ahead with the additional material, providing clarity, I'll talk about that in a blog post. I have no desire to alter the plots of any of my stories.
   The third part. Legal reasons. Haven't faced those yet.


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So what do you need to know about changing your e-book after publication? For the Kindle, you must inform Amazon. Go into the bookshelf, and use the contact us section. Provide as much information as possible. Amazon conducts a review.
   If changes to the work are critical, Amazon will e-mail the people who bought your book. Those readers are entitled to update to the latest version by managing their Kindle.


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What do you really need to know about altering your e-book after publication? My advice is to resist temptation. You write the story you write, and you throw it out there. Let it stay that way.
   If you want to write a better version or take a second stab at it, go for a sequel and show yourself that your writing improved since the Olden Times.
   Don't rewrite your plots. Reach a point at which you cut loose of your story, and let it go. Write another story. Keep going.

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Update on this topic. HERE'S A BLOG POST ABOUT THAT.