FINISHED WITH ENGINES: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

The deal I made with myself was simple. If I blog, I blog knowing I can shut the blog down at any time and for any reason - or no reason, if I so desire.
   This deal kept my blog running. The notion that the blog could go at any moment.

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That time has come. I am finished with engines.

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What does this mean? An end to the blog? All remaining blogging commitments will be fulfilled. If I start the blog up again, I'll let you know. In a blog post.

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Sometimes you have to go and deal with things. I have to go and deal with things. That's all anyone needs to hear.

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Every writer I assisted, in turn, aided me. I'll thank the usual suspects for their help. They know who they are.

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Advice for you, if you want to write? Write. Publish what you write. Just do it, but don't just do it. Do it with brains, with heart, with doubt, with coffee.
   Write in the middle of the night because you can't sleep. Scribble across the darkness because writing until dawn is the right thing to do.
   All authors should write through the night, at least once.
   Don't write romance unless you've had your heart broken. Watch lunatics batter fuck out of each other with swords before you pen a swashbuckler.
   You needn't murder people if you want to write up a serial killer tale, much as you'd like to eliminate victims on an ever-lengthening list.

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Don't forget to write.

TRANSPARENCY IN SELF-PUBLISHING. BLURB. WORD-COUNT. REVISION: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

E-books have advantages and disadvantages. It takes a hardback book to swat a cobra.
   I tell potential purchasers how long my books are. This information goes into the blurb - Amazon's product description. I use snippets of blurb in the back matter.
   What's that? A fancy term for the end of the book. This is where I'll dump my ALSO AVAILABLE section. A home from home, for snatches of blurb.
   Blurb has always been a tough proposition, as a piece of writing - not just as a dollop of reading.
   Give away no twists. Tell the audience nothing and enough. Do this on an imaginary postcard.
   You aren't writing a trilogy, in scribbling blurb. So, yes, pretend you are writing a postcard.
   Dear Readers. Wish you were here.
   Into the mix, I drop a sane dose of transparency. Plots may not be for all tastes, but the word-count is the word-count. Novels or collections run to at least 100,000 words. If I bundle a novel with notes, I'm aiming to write a story that's at least 75,000 words.
   My FICTION FACTORY stories are cheaper than the regular books, with a minimum length of 30,000. (The upper-limit is 50,000.)
   Recently, in reviewing blurb, I realised one book carried word-count info that was ambiguous.
   Always revisit your self-published books. Look at covers, pricing, blurb, content, and in the cupboard under the stairs.
   Read what you've written. Notice what we think you imagined you meant when you wrote that bit there. Realise you meant something else. Revise. Update.
   The blurb lets readers know what's for sale. That book's product description wasn't written on a postcard. The word-count listed in the blurb is straightforward. I wrote what I meant. But, in self-publishing, you must work across all your products. Aim for consistency. Transparency.
   Clarity.
   In one case, I accidentally threw in a note of ambiguity. I had to fix that. And the fix was easy. Add two words. Sorted. But...
   That vague blurb was used in all the other books, in the ALSO AVAILABLE section. Back matter matters. I had to update every book.
   So I did.
   The mass-update was an opporchancity, and I took it. Even though I'd recently updated my products, and thought there wasn't much to go over again...
   I knew the Universal Truth. There's always one more thing to do. I added a request at the end of my books. Nothing grand. I asked people who made it that far to write honest reviews on Amazon.
   Not just for me, but for all authors out there.
   As with letting readers know the word-count, in the name of transparency, it's important to inform the customers of the review-policy.
   In the name of transparency? I want honest reviews. You can read my take on that at the end of any one of my books. In the interests of transparency, that was a plug.
   Write your story. Edit your story. Publish your story.
   And...
   Revisit your published books. Update details. Fix glitches. But do not summon me to your neighbourhood with a rifle. Do not fucking rewrite the fucking plot of your fucking book once it is fucking published.
   I tone the swearing down in these blogs, for the adults in the audience. If you must rewrite something so drastically that it becomes something else, then let it be something else.
   Write another book. With another title. Transparently.

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There's a contact e-mail listed twice on this blog. That's for transparency, too.
   It leads to the receipt of official e-mails about all the fantastic tax rebates and upgrades the government owes me.
   Occupational hazard of being a writer. Having one monolithic government department write to me from half a dozen different e-mail addresses.
   In the interests of transparency, I block spammers and scammers. My policy is as transparent as their fakery. Sani Abacha makes regular appearances in my in-box too. I still don't want to help his relatives unlock the missing squillions. Just sayin'.

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Eventually, I revised this blog post and altered a few others. I decided one book, Mira E., should be exclusive to Amazon. Had to remove a blog post from here and a sample chapter as well. So many loose ends, though. Clarity goes with simplicity. Sometimes it's easier to snip loose ends than to tie them together. Lesson learned.

  
  
  

SELF-HARM WARNING: A REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.

After some mucking around with HTML, I've added a very short warning of a self-harm scene to the Amazon product description for MIRA E. That's the novel featured in my first volume of blog collections, REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.
   Yes, books are named after this blog.
   Amazon's LOOK INSIDE! feature allows potential purchasers to browse e-books. Quite right, too. Readers should be able to do to e-books most of the things they can do to paper books.
   Browse them. Buy them. Read them. Spilling coffee on e-books has a slightly different outcome. Throwing e-books across a room in outrage - likewise.
   My blog report features collected posts at the start of the book. Inside the first ten per cent of volume one, the free sample ends with Darth Biozarre's complaint that painting the DEATH STAR black was, cough, a total giveaway, revealing Darth Sinister's true identity.
   (Cough, splutter. Pardon me while I store this black cloak in a dark cupboard. Cough, cough. Ahem.)
   My point, Young Jedi...
   MIRA E. is the novel bundled with those blog posts. The story starts long after the free sample ends. My blurb mentions the blog posts and then goes into an extended description of the novel.
   An experiment, in product description.
   Knowing the book itself wasn't sampled at the start of the Amazon product-viewing experience, I decided I'd take full advantage of the space available.
   I showcased the novel. A mad experiment. You can tell.
   The other products I sell on Amazon feature blurb sections that run around two to three hundred words. Those descriptions include welcoming phrases that point out roughly what you'll be reading.
   I also list the word-count. And I end with an invocation to use the LOOK INSIDE! feature.
   Dash in, do the job, and rush out. Job done.
   In the MIRA E. blurb, I spend 600 words giving you slices of the book - solely because you can't click LOOK INSIDE! to read any of that text.
   The format runs...TEN PER CENT OF BLOG POSTS FREE, MORE BLOG POSTS, NOVEL.
   I don't believe in using 600 words for every single piece of book blurb.
   Where's the problem? In the first chapter of the novel, I feature a scene involving discussion of self-harm. Okay, I put a lot of nasty stuff in my stories...
   I am not in the habit of warning people about the nasty things. For, in my world, my world is not your world. You may have a problem dealing with clowns.
   #CLOWNS.
   #INSENSITIVE.
   Open spaces. Enclosed spaces. Outer space. The upper reaches of the atmosphere. Foggy days. Dogs. Cats. Lava. I don't know what's going to scare you.
   There's a scene in MIRA E. in which a paedophile faces a peculiar form of revenge. I'm guessing you'd cheer.
   Self-harm is a difficult topic to deal with. I don't want to ambush my readers with it. You know I am going to talk about HTML. I opened this blog post with the term.
   Ambush. I added HTML to my Amazon blurb. HERE'S A BLOG POST ABOUT THAT.
   With HTML, blurb has the power to become blurb. Or blurb. The HTML coding absorbs some of the available space in the Amazon text box. In exchange, bold type appears.
   Normally that's not a problem.
   With 600 words of blurb, it became a problem. I edited the hell out of that description to make it fit. And that wasn't a problem. Until I realised I'd be ambushing readers with description of a self-harm scene.
   Then I knew I had to put in a warning. The longer warning exists on this blog - see the dedicated page for the first chapter of MIRA E. There's your free sample. Just click to read inside. ;)
   The novel itself contains an extended warning in the introductory text. I fought a major battle with HTML to include the briefest warning in the Amazon blurb.
   Gremlin. I was told by the display that I had dozens of characters left. A lie was told there, surely.
   Looked okay when I hit the button to publish. The gremlin choked a sentence off at birth, on publication. No matter. I went back in with a flamethrower.
   That is how I ended up publishing 72 times in 2013. Updating blurb. Adding HTML. Fine-tuning product description - for the products you see in my Amazon carousel.
   Experimenting, as all mad scientists must. They think me mad. For I have exchanged a black cloak for a white coat.

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Review your work. Look afresh at covers and blurbs and prices, oh my! Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain. Follow the digital road.

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Update. I scrapped the collected blog posts. The blogs exist on the internet, but not as collected volumes. HERE'S A BLOG POST ABOUT THAT.

  

  

HALLOWE'EN COMES AROUND AGAIN AND I'M STILL BLOGGING.

How many times did I decide to kill off this blog? I've lost track. Something comes along, and I add the topic to my list of things to waffle about.
   The blog abides.
   Properly, nay, improperly, the blog's official start came on Hallowe'en. I sat in a public place frequented by junkies, jaikies, flakies, druggies, sex-offenders, dog-beaters, people recently-released from jail, and people who had a tenth of a clue about somehow avoiding a return to prison real local characters.
   Most of those people are not judged, except on the matter of noise-level. Some of those people are judged harshly. In and out of court.
   On that night, I merely contended with the infrequent distraction of children playing an interminable computer game. Oh, and I also wrestled with this blogging platform - which eventually decided to play ball.
   Rain fell. Gremlins died. Words were published. The blog began. REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE ran, semi-structured, in themed pulses of six weeks. I blogged ahead of the game and automated publication.
   Now, I publish these posts from home. (I recollect a brief phase in which I blogged from my portable telephone. Not a pleasant experience.)
   Begone, telephone blog. Farewell, public library.
   Many a time, I felt like shouting THIS IS A FUCKING LIBRARY FOR FUCK’S SAKE, AND I DON’T FUCKING CARE THAT I’M FORCED TO UNDERMINE MY FUCKING ARGUMENT BY FUCKING SHOUTING, YOU FUCKING FUCKERS…
   Pardon my nostalgia. I have the internet now.

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The ability to blog at any time didn't destroy my capacity to blog ahead and automate. That method of blogging has fallen by the wayside, though I may pick it up again.
   I have adopted the notion of storing blogs for use as and when, without automating delivery. What's in the blog larder right now? Oh, this and that.
   So far, under the new regime, I've been caught short once. The network went down, and I didn't have an automated blog post to hand. Delaying an item by a few hours...that's no delay.

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I'm blogging and Hallowe'en still comes around again. What to talk about? Writing. I cast my net wide across the digital sea. What do I see?
   Writers who feel they must produce so many books in a given timespan to consider themselves successful, as though an arithmetical formula will wipe away unsuccess.
   Authors who are obsessed with the nature of reviews.
   Scribblers who care far too much about hurting the feelings of an unknowable audience by turning in stories that may just run contrary to unfathomable audience expectations.
   Wordsmiths who think it normal to rewrite books after publication.
   Storytellers who permit the non-concept of Great Literature™ to shackle their ability to write a good tale.

   There's a lot of doubt out there - and that's only right and proper. But you can take things too far. Don't let the idea of writing a story stand in the way of writing a story.

   First. That point about manufacturing umpty books inside a given period. There are only so many tales to write within a lifespan, but, other than that, don't tie yourself to a number. Just write. Don't just write. Read.

   I made a point of getting more reading done this year, at the so-called expense of writing. But all that reading fuelled my writing. The expense was really a trade.

   In the first year of self-publishing, I managed to put out a million words of material. Somewhat a little over that, if I misremember rightly.

   And in this second year of self-publishing I did much more reading. A lot of thinking went into reorganisation. Learning was done. Some of that was even fun.

   Sad to say, so far I've only put out around a quarter of a million words this year. I've written far more than that. Projects are stacking up.

   I steered well-clear of burnout. Yes, I could write and write and write and write. But I need to read, too. And I really must think as I write, otherwise writing becomes mere typing.

   Don't grow fixated over putting out this many books or totting up that many words, or works. It's easy to grind out oceans of shit, if you are caught up in a game of numbers. Play the game of words, instead. Stop counting them. Enjoy writing them.

   Second. Authors and reviews. You mustn't care what people think of your work. As long as you are thinking of your work, that's what matters. SEE THIS BLOG POST.

   Third. On a related point, don't skew your story around to cater to an audience. Just write the piece. Tell the tale. True, you may aim your rocket-ship arrow at a rocket-ship audience.
   That werewolf tale is for the lycanthropists in the crowd. But don't guess, second-guess, double-bluff, or go mad considering what the audience might be thinking. Just write.

   Fourth. Write your story. Edit your story. Cut loose of that story by publishing. And then, in the great thereafter, only fix typos or appalling plot screw-ups.
   Don't alter a tale's essential fabric after publication. If you aren't satisfied with the way things went, shrug and write a new tale.
   Fifth. Great Literature™. I find much difficulty in saying what that is. More importantly, ponder the delusion involved in telling yourself you are writing Great Literature™ as you are writing. If you set out to write Great Literature™, you'll only succeed if you type G-r-e-a...
   Sometimes there's everything and nothing wrong with obvious humour.

   Overview? The more books you write, the easier it is to write another and another and another. With failure comes experience and with experience - especially the experience of failure - comes confidence. Confidence aided by persistence.

   I shredded the first novel I completed, thus sparing the world - on the off-chance that some damn-fool publisher damn-well published that atrocity.

  The more you write, the more you write. You'd like to think that the more you write, the better you write. Who is to judge? Everyone and no one. Perils of the writerly life.

   On pleasing the audience. Well. You shouldn't allow yourself to be caught in that particular tangle. Really, you shouldn't. You really shouldn't. Really, you really shouldn't. How to find a way to emphasise that...hmm...repetition?

   Okay, clarity. It's a good thing to please your readers. Doesn't mean you are doing something right, though. Proof is often less than concrete. It isn't necessarily a good thing to want to please your readers. That's different. Ask yourself. Why do you want to write stories?

   I love writing stories. They are puzzles that I have to solve, as no one else is there writing them with me or for me.
   Eventually, the story is done. And I cut loose of it. I'm aware of the need to make my story readable, but I never set out to please some unknowable audience. The audience is thoroughly unknowable and unfathomable.
   So yes, cliché, it's just me and the blank page - and I am left to get on with it. As for success. Is it about producing X number of tales in Y amount of time?

   Not for me. Success in writing is about feeling I've created a story that works. It's intensely personal. And I'm not saying this to slyly state that an alternative view comes across as impersonal.

   Some writers live by the notion of writing mechanically. If that works for them, I can't wholly condemn...

   That approach is not for me. It feels better, nicer, to hear what reading and writing means to all you scribblers out there in the dark. What fires you up about writing? Something that runs deeper than sales or reviews, I'd hope.
   There are many tangled paths leading through the writer's life. Follow a few. Get lost in the woods, and see how you feel when you are unlost once again.
   Worrying over churning out books? Unworry. Disappointed in the tale you wrote? Pen another. Obsessed when it comes to reviews? What happened to being obsessed when it comes to writing?
   Fail. Spectacularly. Shred that tome. Begin again. Earlier I was looking over another writer's words, with a view to quoting her and providing some sort of authorly inspiration on this here blog.
   The sentiment I spotted wasn't an original one. It is all over the internet, like flies all over a cheap suit all over the waterfront like sailors all over.
   To some of you, writing becomes a mire filled with landmines and diseases. It's easy to slip into the morass, blow up, and come away with the plague. There's a 35% chance of catching cold, too.
   The points I mentioned are all points you should not be caught up on. There are many other points on which you may falter. Keep writing. Get stuck. Learn. Become unstuck.
   In finishing, I'll quote the late, great, Missy Biozarre.

I understand what you mean by stuck. The only advice I can offer you is: writing begets writing.

   She wasn't wrong. I'll go further. Bad writing eventually begets better writing. Better get writing.

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Of course, I really have to finish on the point that gremlins once again attacked the construction of this blog post. Must be a Hallowe'en thing.
   Update. Yes, rain is absolutely pelting down. As though you had to ask.

 

KINDLE FORMATTING. SIZE-CHANGE GLITCH.

This glitch took a little while to spot. I believe authors should know their work front to back and back again. Because I checked my books that way, I found this quirk on Amazon's Kindle platform...
   Sometimes, seemingly for no reason, when going back through a book, the size of text would balloon all by itself.
   Reading a page in a small font...
   I'd find myself staring at a piece of text that was filling the page.
   Then I'd find myself back on the much smaller size I'd originally selected.
   So I adjusted the text itself to see what difference that made. Advice? None. Unless you count...
   Ask Alice.
   The problem is thrown at you when reading text that's broken into blocks. And only then, when reversing through the book by more than four pages.
   THAT is why it took me a little while to fathom. You could track back through three pages. Nothing.
   The problem appears more frequently if adding scripts to a work. Writing some form of movie script or running a section of a play.
   Here's the grief. Regular paragraph returns, employed to show space, don't work one after the other. They only show up on the Word file, and not on the converted file built for the Kindle.
   Multiple manual line breaks do show up, but you don't want to use too many of those. Especially if you are compiling one-line lists of things - in a table of contents, for example.
   A single regular paragraph marker will show up as a space if it is preceded by a manual line break. That can cause complications. Fortunately, the reverse arrangement works. Paragraph marker followed by manual line break.
   Somewhere in all these combinations, you'll uncover awkward quirks. To avoid awkwardness when compiling blocks of text, use manual line breaks for all but the last line of text. As shown here...

   In the block running from VAMPIRES through to chapter THREE, each line ends with a manual line break. (Press shift and return together for that effect.) However, the last line must end with a paragraph marker. (The return key, alone, for the end of the chapter THREE line.)
   My entries for blogs are single sections, and are treated as last lines for purposes of choosing the finishing symbol - a paragraph marker in each case.
   Sticking to that pattern avoids all sorts of quirks and gremlins. With the notion of providing a script caught between sections of text...

   ...the line of dialogue ends with a paragraph marker. And the space between lines is registered using a manual line break. UNTIL the last line of dialogue before the next block of regular text.
   Then the position reverses. The line ends with a manual line break and the space is registered by a paragraph marker. See Moff Larkin's line about integrity in Hull for the shift.
   That change removed a lot of gremlin-based activity from my work. It'll only apply to your work if you provide one-line lists, or slices of text resembling a play.
   Look out for spaces in Kindle formatting. How to apply those spaces between blocks of text. And run through your work, page by page, once you've slapped a prototype copy on the Kindle.
   Back the way, as well as forward.
   Keep experimenting with formatting. Find what works for you, based on the tools you use and misuse.

NEON GODS BROUGHT DOWN BY SWORDS.

The end? A finish, of sorts. We’ve reached the end of regular blogging – for now. Time for irregular blogging. The rest of the zombie story will appear in the fourth volume of REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE.
   I used this blog as a fiction generator, bundling blog posts with stories from way back. And after three volumes, I’d caught up on dishing out arcane material. That fourth volume contains new stuff. Tales based around Doug Chambers.
   (UPDATE. Blog posts are no longer bundled with novels. And Doug's misadventures disappeared from the blog, to meet the exclusivity requirements over at Amazon Kindle.)
   Next? Blogging continues. But not at the level of 1,500 words per week, every week. I’ll check in now and again. There’ll be updates on impending publications. My books. Those of other scribblers.
   This post has a real day’s end feel to it. I’m typing after midnight, listening to Tiny singing his heart out. Check Ultrasound, for all kinds of sonic weirdness.

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What’s next? Experiment. I am now going to plug my own books, one by one – weekly. Why? Experiment. I hope to interrupt that cycle with other news. Let’s see how the cards fall on that particular table.

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I am Sorcha Nic Lir. Kill me, if you dare.

Seven men are fated to be sent into the dark. They mustn’t know that they are going to die. There’s no telling who they’ll bargain with, if they think that they are under threat. If they manage to convert the assassin to their cause, everything will fall apart at the outset.
   Fortunately, there’s a plan for dealing with the assassin. It’s the same plan, with the same element of risk. He, too, must not know that he is marked for death. There’s no telling who he’ll bargain with, if he thinks that he’s under threat.
   Gilach Mac Gilach will bargain with anyone, and possibly anything, if it means staying alive that little bit longer. Sent to the city to extinguish the lives of seven ne’er-do-wells, Gilach falls foul of a sudden change in the political mood.
   Within seconds of arrival, he realises that the rules of the game, and promises of gold, mean nothing to the covert agents pulling his strings. The stakes are ridiculous, the odds beyond reckoning, and the treasure unwinnable. Those factors never stopped him before. They could earn him a spot six feet under, this time round…

From the notes on this story…

Creating a Cold War sword and science setting seems like a mad meeting and eradication of styles. Quiller in Hyboria – The Conan Memorandum – though Gilach lacks Quiller’s analytical ability and morality…

   …Mr Quiller has a duty of care to people. Gilach has more in common with Brian Freemantle’s agent-as-survivor, Charlie Muffin. Try not to call him Charles. Anything, to survive. Betrayal’s just a word.
   As for Sorcha…you’ll have to read the book.

Unless you dive on that HALLOWE’EN INAUGURATION page, where you’ll find a story about the younger Sorcha – before she reaches the city.

NEON GODS BROUGHT DOWN BY SWORDS.

In a change to the way the blog is mismanaged, I’m going to throw posts on here running below the usual minimum 1,500 wordage. I’ll plug books, provide associated blurb, display covers, and throw in updates where applicable.

   This isn’t goodbye to blogging – just a gradual goodbye to the way I’ve been blogging. Bundling blog posts with revamped fiction gave material for three volumes of REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE. The fourth volume will house the complete zombie saga featuring Doug Chambers. (No, Doug stars in his own novel - Eclectic Ed.)

   My plan was to put out two reports a year. Plans change. Regular blogging winds down in July 2013. I have fish to fry, and other fish to fry too.

   Let’s start with a plug for Neon Gods Brought Down by Swords. No sorcery to speak of. Sword and science. A romp through an ancient city. The prospect of war in the air. Strange doings in the cobbled streets. This is part of a series, but the next book will be an offshoot – a short story collection called Neon Gods Adrift in Mist.

I am Sorcha Nic Lir. Kill me, if you dare.

Seven men are fated to be sent into the dark. They mustn’t know that they are going to die. There’s no telling who they’ll bargain with, if they think that they are under threat. If they manage to convert the assassin to their cause, everything will fall apart at the outset.
   Fortunately, there’s a plan for dealing with the assassin. It’s the same plan, with the same element of risk. He, too, must not know that he is marked for death. There’s no telling who he’ll bargain with, if he thinks that he’s under threat.
   Gilach Mac Gilach will bargain with anyone, and possibly anything, if it means staying alive that little bit longer. Sent to the city to extinguish the lives of seven ne’er-do-wells, Gilach falls foul of a sudden change in the political mood.
   Within seconds of arrival, he realises that the rules of the game, and promises of gold, mean nothing to the covert agents pulling his strings. The stakes are ridiculous, the odds beyond reckoning, and the treasure unwinnable. Those factors never stopped him before. They could earn him a spot six feet under, this time round…

From the notes on this story…

Creating a Cold War sword and science setting seems like a mad meeting and eradication of styles. Quiller in Hyboria – The Conan Memorandum – though Gilach lacks Quiller’s analytical ability and morality…

   …Mr Quiller has a duty of care to people. Gilach has more in common with Brian Freemantle’s agent-as-survivor, Charlie Muffin. Try not to call him Charles. Anything, to survive. Betrayal’s just a word.
   As for Sorcha…you’ll have to read the book.

ON THE RUN.

Final blog post in this latest cycle. Now I’m on the run. Foolish in my attempt at optimism, I ended a post by stating the next event would be…

   Whatever that event was. Publication of a particular item.

   When I published to a strict schedule, I made my deadlines. Then my deadlines switched to a looser format and I managed to publish entries in my FICTION FACTORY line with minimal fuss and negligible bother.

   You publish when it is right to. WEREWOLVES was delayed by a week. All these soft deadlines were flexible. Bloody good job, too, as life got in the way. Some days, I may have pushed too hard. But you have to try, to find out what you can do.

   Pacing is important. When I started out with my fixed deadlines, I made sure I could hit those nails on the head. Even if I took a mad detour one night to talk to a fear-filled author in Michigan. I still don’t know what possessed me to do that.

   Helping other authors is an avenue of exploration marked on Google as a two-way street.

   Strict deadlines. Loose ones. Everything came together, roughly or smoothly. This hasn’t quite been the case with collected versions of REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE. I learned, the usual hard way, that I had to set up a different production-line for those. Technical considerations and publishing decisions multiplied, swamping me.

   Yes, I still generated (or reformatted) a million words of material in that first year of self-publishing. But I didn’t publish everything I wanted to. Newsflash. I never will. There’s always going to be something simmering away on every ring of that stove.

   Irons in the fire. Fish to fry. You know the drill. I looked at a list of things I planned to write, expand, edit, and format over summer. Too ambitious. Still, I compiled that list anyway. And I’ll get back to most of that stuff before the end of the century.

   This year, the list is twice as ambitious. After all, the first list still haunts me.

   What now? Or…what next? More of the same. Plans. A few of those will run a-gley. I’ll adapt. Survive. Continue. Never give up writing. That’s code for never give up reading. It’s also code for never give up writing.

   I may write fiction in my next run of blog posts. Short queasy zombie stories. Who knows. I have one Zombie Apocalypse to be getting on with as things stand. Hey. Why not add another, just for the hell of it…

   An experiment. In writing. Maybe I’ll scribble about an incident in a lab. An experiment that goes horribly right and cures heavy traffic – the hard way. For now, I’ll stick to the general format. Blog repeatedly. Bundle the blogs with fiction to create an e-book running at least 100,000 words.

   Which reminds me. I have to put those REPORTS out. Finally. The first volume went over the proposed word-count. That’s no bad thing. I feel as if I’ve been learning how to run faster than the wind. Self-publishing is an event. Even if nothing seems to happen, pots are on stoves. Fish are frying. Irons glow in the fire.

   Optimism. I’ll end this post with the news that another volume of REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE is published. And it will be. Not immediately. But it will be. In a pessimistic world, it’s good to have some optimism in that near-empty cracked glass.

   And any announcement that you’ll publish…

   Must be backed up. Each proclamation serves as a goad. I spent a night mapping out hyperlinks for files. Straightforward stuff. Until I uncovered an unintentional glitch. My REPORT series has to be the most gremlin-infested thing I’ve worked on so far.

   I feel that I learn formatting afresh every time I come to it. That’s okay. I feel the same when I write a story. Anything is possible. Much is plausible. There’s a hefty dose of the downright silly. Hell, that’s no crime. Blank space must be filled.

   Ever see a movie? Watch a play? Catch a show on TV? Listen to dramatic action on the radio? Someone wrote it.

   I write these blog posts for collection alongside fiction. Writing regularly for an unseen audience, I play the sedulous scribe. There’s no way to emulate Alistair Cooke, but I can nod in his general direction.

   So what about you?

   You want to publish. Do it. What’s holding you back? Fear. An illusory fear.

   Write a few stories. Plan a book. Rattle off poetry. Don’t forget to read. Anything. Everything. Fact. Fiction. Opinion. Outright rant. Read.

   Learn what you have to deal with, to publish. Look at the Amazon site and scroll down to that obscure line inviting you to self-publish. Check it out. Hunt for articles on formatting for Kindle. Read copyright law. Be aware of legal obligations to noted libraries, be they the British Library in London or the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. To name but two.

   Think about book covers. If you can design your own, great. And if you can’t, ask yourself if you can. Have a go anyway. Yes, there’s much to learn. That’s the fun of it. Be patient. Long-haul. Invest time. Make mistakes. Learn from them.

   Persist.

   Advance your cause every day. Learn something. Even if all you did that day was tie off a loose end or return from a dead one. Write. Read and write crap. Then read the good stuff. Write better. Make sure that what works for you actually works for you.

   Endure.

   Change plans. Shift goals. Be fluid without being wishy-washy. I feel as though I’m in a martial art movie, dishing out advice. Never turn your back on your opponent. Unless he’s really big and you can run faster than him.

   I don’t mind admitting mistakes in a writing blog. It’s important to fail. To rise again and try a second time. A third time. Countless times. It’s important to let other would-be writers know this. Even if you fail, and doubt as a result, you LEARN. And you can always RECYCLE what you attempted.

   If you chase a medal at the Olympics, you don’t just walk into the stadium and take up position. The crowd never saw all the private failure that led you to that public starting-point.

   Survive.

   I think of all the failed stories I attempted. And every failure shows you something. You learn structure. And learn, sometimes, to dispense with structure. Suddenly, it’s all at your fingertips. You remember the trudging you did to get that far. Progress isn’t always enjoyable. But when it is, progress is effing amazing.

   Research. That is to say, search and search again. Try to get it right. I’m not here to place undue emphasis on mistakes. No. The emphasis is on learning from them.

   You mean there weren’t Daleks in Hitler’s bunker? Pearl Harbour wasn’t a stripper? Ghostbusters are all fictional with the exception of Abraham Lincoln? That man behind the curtain is the Wizard of Oz? What do you mean, George Michael is gay? Not Sir Elton too. He was married. (And will be again.)

   I hated myself every time I spotted an obvious typo. At times I marvelled at how good a short piece of writing was – wondering who the eff wrote it. (Then realised that was me. Can’t have been me.) I could soar as a writer, but I don’t. Gravity claims me, every time.

   Oh, I have my moments.

   You’ll have your moments too.

*

Office routine washes over me. I think my printer is destined to have one book sitting on top. It’s a different book every time I mention this in a blog post. You knew that.

   I was learning how to run faster than the wind. At first, the wind obliged me by moving at five lowly miles per hour. Things picked up. I had to learn how to go on the run.

   There’s always the chance that I’ll pull the pin on the blog and cut dead so that I can write more stuff. I like having that pin there. It’s my unsafety-pin. We should all have one.

   Play safe. Sound advice. Here’s sounder…

   Scrape your knees. Learn the pain of flames. Bleed a little. Note the sharpness of vinegar in that cut. Go on the run. Type like a maniac. Race to the summit with a flaming brand and throw it on the bonfire. No one is there to cheer you on. Only the wind witnesses your quiet gasping triumph.

   Try writing a story. Fail writing a story. Recycle the ideas. Arrange a next time and do better. Listen to advice. Go with your gut. Educate yourself. Help others. Feel numb. Ignore the numbness. Keep moving. Try harder.

   Storm the beach. Take the castle. Invent the cure. Save the day. Blow it all up. Put it back together. Run. Then walk. Crawl. Get back up. Walk. Then run. Win by participating. Enjoy reading.

   Ever read a story?

   Someone wrote it.

   Be that someone.

NEXT EVENT: REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE (VOLUME 3) IS PUBLISHED.

*

Update. I scrapped the collected blog posts. The blogs exist on the internet, but not as collected volumes. HERE'S A BLOG POST ABOUT THAT.

THOUGHTS ON PUBLISHING.

This blog is about whatever the hell I want it to be about. I don’t run a technical or business-based blog detailing the latest industry developments. The woman who inspired my blog, Karen Woodward, does that – and does so well. She often delves into the technical side of things. When not relating horror stories connected to the publishing industry, she relates success stories.

   Plug over.

   So what is this blog about? Time for some tired humour. You were warned. It’s about 1,500 words. Ouch. What is the blog not about? Sex. Politics. Religion. Money. Avoid those four in casual conversation – topics alone or, gulp, together – and your blog will steer clear of the rocks.

   Here’s a word to consider when publishing.

   Wrong.

   Do your best to avoid using the word in talking about how someone else writes. You may know how your story ends before you start writing it. On the other hand, you may only know how your story ends once you reach what you think of as the final scene.

   Different approaches are different approaches. It’s hard to describe much behind writing as wrong. I cling to one exception. Try to avoid blogging in white text on a black background. It’s wrong. For any great length, that is. It’s okay for titles or very short stints.

   Is anything else wrong? Balancing on a seal as you type is likely to lead to the arrest of one of the participants. (Okay. It’s WRONG.)

   I can confirm that no seals were balanced on, or fallen off, during the typing of this entry.

   That word. Wrong. It’s wrong to cheat your readers. How readers might be cheated via storytelling is another topic. It’s wrong to misrepresent the product. Tell potential customers what the word-count is.

   My recent thoughts on publishing took in a few names. Missy Biozarre was a doomed colleague. (Eaten by zombies, I hear.) My jazzy visit to Marjorie Eliot’s was always going to feature in an article. Why not on my blog? And Alistair Cooke served as a major inspiration for blogging itself.

   Does my meandering thought-non-process aid casual readers of this blog? I don’t have time to ponder that as I’m too busy pondering other things. Save your files. Back them up. Preserve your thoughts in type and preserve the files containing those typed thoughts.

   Two melted computers reminded me of that. I was fine. Fuming, but fine.

   We survived the Maya non-apocalypse for this? Hell.

   Quirk of the computing world – I’ve not lost data. And the quirky quirk? Once, hacking and slashing through a file, cutting it to shreds, I regained data. There was a loss of power before I saved my changes – and the autosave routine hadn’t had time to kick in.

   With electricity flowing again, I returned to the file and started over. The jungle had grown back. I regained the data I’d cut. That’s as close as I came to losing a file. Let us hope that’s as close as readers ever come, too.

*

BLOGGERATION.

   Or, if you prefer, BLOGGER RATION. Even though I ration these blogs by unsneakily writing several at once, I think I’ll have to ration posts a bit more. For the blog it is a-changin’. Review.

   What were my options? Kill the blog. Die, you bastard!

   No.

   Put the blog to sleep. That sounds like a euphemism for killing the dog, not the blog.

   No.

   Killing the blog means removing it completely. Deleting all pages. Scrubbing the internet-related bloodstains away. Ghostly fragments linger in cached areas. Sunlight gradually works its magic and the fragments fade.

   Resting the blog means putting up a sign saying that, through semi-seen circumstances, the blog is having a lie down. Feel free to look around anyway. You won’t wake the blog if you tiptoe through.

   Other options.

   Switch to blogging monthly.

   No.

   Not really an option. Blogging quarterly or annually wouldn’t cut it, either. Monthly doesn’t feel right. Forget quarterly. I’d have to put something spectacular out to blog annually.

   So what am I doing? I’m switching the publication rate of the collected editions. It’s been really hard to put those out, as I had far more technical issues than I realised. Every single collection was delayed, conveyor-belt style.

   The idea? To blog eighteen times and bundle the collection with fiction, so the book-version runs to at least 100,000 words. I’ve revised plans. The format will gradually work up to more blogs in the collected editions.

   This is blog fifteen in the current cycle. The end of the next cycle for the fourth volume of REPORT FROM A FUGITIVE coincides with Kacey Vanderkarr’s debut. In that next cycle, I want to say a few words about Kacey’s first book. That calls for a celebratory post. After that cycle is done, I’ll blog until the end of the year.

   If my miscalculations are correct, that’ll provide 23 blog posts for collection. Thereafter, a new year starts and I’ll collect blog posts twice a year. If I’m still blogging.

   Right now, the various collected reports are log-jammed and I want to free that jam as conveniently as I can without rushing or botching delivery. So that’s the story. Everything changes, but stays the same. Instead of being on an eighteen-week cycle, I’ll shift to 24.

   When I do that, I may just run short pieces of fiction for a wee while. Too early to tell. I have regular and irregular books to be getting on with.

*

Let’s talk about losing track of a story. If my mind is still in the right place, the tale that follows in the bundled edition…

   Is a tale recovered from memory. Try as I might, I could not find the original story in my dusty archives. By the time this blog post sees the light of day, I’ll have scoured yellowed paper files once again. I’m looking for two separate pieces of material.

   There’s a reason behind not finding this stuff. Perhaps a piece of cardboard is folded over something that doesn’t resemble the story I’m looking for. There’s a gap a pile of paper slid into. When all the new carpets went in, there was no misplaced material lying pressed flat to the floorboards.

   Where can that story be?

   I found MIRA E. easily enough – and expected my lost story to be in with material from that Jurassic slice of the fossil database. But no. This indicates, to a tired mind, that there’s a solid reason for the misplacing of the file. There’s a gap a pile of paper slid into.

   Not shredding. In all this time, I’ve never once shredded the wrong document. The problem with this missing story is that it was never even typed up. That’s right. It was penned. Scribbled. So I’d know the spiderish manuscript as soon as I saw it. If the tale had been typed up, using the mechanical torturer known as a typewriter, chances are it would later have been typed in.

   But there’s nothing in the electronic record. What to do? The old standby. Recover from memory. The advantage of doing this is that you apply current writing and editing skills to a dusty story clearly created by an individual devoid of said skills back in the day.

   Yes, I get to relive an old story with shiny new words. And I invite the readers to fly along with me. I must invoke Cosmic Law. With the story updated from memory, I am bound to find the original once the reanimated version sees publication. That is inevitable.

*

This blog post was thrown together by periods of disruption. All fiction is.

   The blog faces change with every blog post. This time, the changes to the bundling schedule don’t seem so great. The regular construction of the blog hasn’t altered. I blog a minimum of 1,500 words. Usually, I hit 2,000. Rarely, I’ll open the post with an image. Occasionally, I’ll feature a guest.

   I talk about whatever the hell I want to talk about. That’s a model I use for my fiction. What’s in the literary pipeline? Oh, some more short pieces. Then it’s back to those longer works, with plots and characters and other writerly things spilling out over the edges of the short story into the novel.

   My decision, in self-publishing, was not to clear out all the old material immediately. You get lost in that fiction and find that you aren’t writing anything shiny and new. So I still have a few ancient tales lurking in the vaults.

   New ideas pile up on each other and sometimes merge into newer ideas. Nothing wrong in that. I have many technical issues to overcome – but that’s standard in this line of work. While there’s fun to be had writing, there’s fun to be had writing.

   Though there is drudgery. My computer meltdown led to checking. File after file. You can’t help but create duplicates. Sometimes, those prove very useful. In a near-paperless office, there’s a surprising amount of weeding to be done.

   If that isn’t my cue to leave and see to the weeding of computer files, I don’t know what is. Fire! Martian invasion! Juniper! Any one of those three will usually suffice.

NEXT BLOG: REVISITING AN AUTHOR’S LIBRARY.

BLACK HOLE.

Events intrude. Life. You may be forced to write nothing for a week as you deal with hospitals, maintenance issues, or weird technical stuff that slows your world to the consistency of something that has fossils in it.

   Sound familiar? Go back one blog post. I crawled from a digital BLACK HOLE to write this entry. Not so long ago, I was handed a free computer. It wasn’t a great computer, but it was better than the one I had. Oh, and it was free.

   My office arrangements changed. I’d run two computers now. A whole computer as a back-up for the other. If one engine sputtered, I’d still have the reserve to keep me in the air. Cables and components were moved around. Chairs. Books. Notepaper. All the big things swirled with the little things.

   And, when the dust settled, I was more or less happy. The year 2012 drew to a close. There was no Maya Apocalypse to trouble me. Unbeknownst to me, a microscopic Maya shaman was chanting and dancing atop a peculiar pyramid inside my old computer.

   The great change, dawn of a new era, had come.

   I worked late into the night struggling to copy my archive. For some reason, this straightforward process was anything but. The forces of evil themselves were in deep array, preparing to march against my glorious cause of saving data.

   With back-ups done, I was closing in on the end-of-year sale. There was a temporary archive of the last few months. Now I wanted a full back-up of the latest changes. Putting another year to bed in the vaults.

   Good job I did all that the night before. Next morning, zap. Nothing. The machine wouldn’t start. I ran through the emergency checklist. Was this the result of a loose cable after migrating from office to library? Check the connections.

   Connections seem fine.

   In that case, are you missing something obvious? Perhaps you only think you flipped that switch over at the wall. Highly unlikely. See to socket.

   Socket and switch seem fine.

   The TV is on, so there’s no need to fall back to the electric light to check on failure of mains power.

   Power seems fine.

   Switch everything off and get into the workings of the computer. Check internal connections. You know by this time that you don’t want to. And that you have to.

   Internal connections seem fine.

   After each test, the button is pressed. No go.

   Bonus test. Unhook the umbilical. Atomic batteries to power. Turbines to speed. Disconnect the machine and cast your computer into space. Connect the new computer to the set-up and see what happens.

   New computer works just fine.

   Damn. It’s the old computer’s innards. Something went. You’ll likely never know what. Engage Plan B. That’s Brain Transplant. Shift the old hard drive over to the new machine. Some fiddly work is called for here…

   It’s all a bit too dense and technical for you. I say that as it’s all a bit too dense and technical for me. Things were unplugged. I invoked Cosmic Law. When removing something and placing it out of the way, that item automatically gets in the way of the next thing you move around.

   Repeat as required.

   I experimented with the computer brains. The new machine’s brain was set in charge of the old archive. That worked. For complicated reasons of the plot, I switched the old brain around so that it invaded the new computer and seized power.

   That worked too.

   A crisis was averted.

   Deep in the computing jungle, a digital shaman planned an evisceration. Days passed. I was staring at the near-empty shell of the old computer. There lay an item of equipment. It may have been faulty. Let us suppose it was.

   Something in the old machine had failed. I’m inclined to call this item the KIDNEY. An evil organ. I stared at the kidney. That kidney could have a new home in the working computer. Hey, I’d performed a brain transplant. I could handle a lowly kidney, right?

   My authorial sensibility tells me the audience can see where this story is headed. Into a BLACK HOLE. I moved the old DVD player over to the new computer. Now my machine would have two brains and two kidneys.

   Atop a pyramid hidden in the depths of the DVD jungle, the tiny Maya shaman raised his sacrificial blade and brought an end to civilisation.

   Bastard.

   With everything plugged in, I was raring to go. Nothing happened. As an author, I am prepared to construct a tale from this series of events. A bad thing stopped my computer from working. No big deal. The computer’s mind survived the infection. Nothing nasty passed across the blood-brain barrier.

   I then moved the faulty item of equipment over to the new body and the same shit happened again. BUT I couldn’t say that for certain. Many factors were at play. Anything could have gone wrong. I called in an expert.

   He’d given me the free computer, and remembered exactly how it was wired up to start with. In the process of investigating the problem, we blew a fuse. Something nasty had shorted in there, and the fuse took a bullet for the team.

   A fuse.

   Straight from the lone wall socket to the computer. No go. I had to visit my reserve stash of fuses – which hadn’t even been removed from the packet. That’s because, these days, no one blows a fuse. I can’t remember the last time I had to change one.

   The expert, parachuted in to help save the day, couldn’t remember ever blowing a fuse while running a computer. Ow. The Maya shaman must have been up all night sharpening that sacrificial knife. We concluded that something electrical went for the first computer’s guts.

   And with the transplanted brain working just fine, the culprit – lone suspect – looked like the KIDNEY. Though I stress other items could easily have been at fault. In electrical terms, I’m sure it’s obvious. But I’m going with storytelling terms.

   An evil kidney transplant of a digital Maya pyramid, complete with micro-sized sacrificial shaman, was responsible. I’m going with that.

   There was redundant computing equipment sloshing around, so my expert handed me a laptop to save me from a digital BLACK HOLE. I was in the BLACK HOLE for a while, and caught up on some reading. Aside from that, I wrote a story outline by hand.

   To minimise the risk of a third rat leaving a sunken ship, I reorganised many things. A fuse had blown. Perhaps cabling was damaged. I checked a lot of stuff. Then, in a mad experiment, I cloned the laptop’s screen to my TV via a safe cable.

   My reconstituted office flew along on one engine, again. I’d emerged from the darkness. Yes, my publishing plans were put back. And some plans changed. But I could type in a file once more. This almost affected blogging.

   My store of automated blogs wound down. The blog monster drained its egg-sac and threatened to vanish with little trace. I’d have fixed a temporary sign to the door, letting a few readers know that technical difficulties were to blame.

   Non-technical difficulties are harder to apportion.

   My plans must resume. But what are those plans? I didn’t see far beyond four collected editions of blog posts, truth be told. Allowing for eighteen blog posts in my INCOMPLETE UNCOLLECTED WORKS, that’s 90 blog entries plus the odd emergency blast of the horn.

   With assorted stops and starts to my plans, I’ve still managed to blog weekly. Publication dates for collected editions weren’t fixed in stone. They were fluid. And I’m glad of that. So now, after falling into a BLACK HOLE, I’m sitting here asking myself what happens next…

   Enough blog material gathers for collection in March. That would be the third volume. A fourth carries me through to Kacey Vanderkarr’s publishing launch in the summer of 2013 – which will be plugged here on this blog in some or other fashion.

   Not for the first time, I contemplate halting the blog. Perhaps temporarily, come summer’s end. By then I’ll have a surer picture of what’s coming out next, and where my fiction heads after all that. There’s a writerly duty to warn my 0.75 readers that the blog might wind down for a break.

   Or, who knows. I may keep writing blogs ahead of the game, and automating these reports from a fugitive.

   Today’s lesson, for writers? If you can’t type into a machine, use a pen and a piece of paper. Use a physical paper dictionary to check troublesome words while away from troublesome machines. Always have a back-up. And a back-up for that. If all else fails, be prepared to reconstruct from memory.

   And I thought I had troubles with the computer desk. It, at least, is still functioning more or less as intended. I’d say at the 98% level. Good enough for government work. The chair’s just fine, and that’s the main thing.

NEXT BLOG: KACEY VANDERKARR.