vmwales

Jun

2015

Five Facts About Wish You Were Here

This is the first of a few “behind the pages” looks at my books, sharing some little known facts about the works. This week: Wish You Were Here.

Fact #1 – Yes, the Title is From the Pink Floyd Song

No, there isn’t a scene depicting this in the book.

I’m often asked this, so there’s the official confirmation. The original book, as written, contained the lyrics of five songs worked into the story. These were removed prior to publication because I couldn’t afford to pay for the rights to reproduce them. I’d certainly like to issue an updated edition one day that had the songs worked back in (along with the remainder of the accompanying scenes during which the songs are played in the story). The novel itself is divided into five “books,” each one named after the songs, although there’s no indication that this is the case. For the record (and in order), the songs are:

“What Am I Doing Here?” by The Moody Blues – Not one of their better known songs and only available (as of this writing) on Caught Live + Five (vinyl) or Prelude (CD).
“Night Vision” by Suzanne Vega – I first heard this as the B-side of her 1987 hit, “Luka.” It turned out to be the perfect song for a scene in the book.
“Wish You Were Here” by Pink Floyd – What is there to say?
“Land Ho” by Roger Hodgson – Released on his second solo LP, Hai Hai, this particular song was written back in his Supertramp days.
“Brothers in Arms” by Dire Straits – Another song that just fit the story beautifully.

Oh, and yes, there is in fact a complete soundtrack to the book. The remaining songs that round it out are all instrumental pieces. Perhaps one day I’ll share those with you, too.

Fact #2 – My Cover Artist Saved Me From Embarrassing Myself

When my cover artist was reading the book to get a feel for the sort of cover she was going to do, she caught a boo-boo in the story. There’s a scene where the protagonist is watching someone field dress a rabbit. I got an email from her saying, “That’s not how you do that.”

Uh, no. Wrong kind of rabbit. Wrong kind of dress.

She’d caught me in a moment of lazy writing. I typically am good about researching things. For that book, I learned more about horses and herbology than you’d believe (and have, of course, forgotten most of it, now). But I didn’t look up how to field dress a rabbit. My bad.

Fact #3 – It’s a Damn Long Book

To my amazement, the book clocks in at more than 300,000 words. This makes it a good bit shorter than the complete The Lord of the Rings, but longer than the second and third books of that trilogy combined. Or for the Harry Potter fans, a bit longer than Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire combined.

I should really charge more for this book.

As I said, this amazed me when I realized it, because I believe (and others have told me) that the book reads very quickly.

Fact #4 – The Book Was Published at a Very Bad Time

The original edition of the book (there have been two) was released in August of 2001. Yes, just a month before a rather infamous event in U.S. history. And the simple truth is that consumer spending dropped considerably in the wake of 9-11. No, it didn’t last long, but another truth is that I wasn’t particularly motivated by that time to try to get people to buy the thing.

No words.

The second edition was released after my second book, One Nation Under God, had gained a lot of great reviews. (But again, since I hate marketing, it’s not as well known.)

Fact #5 – It is the First Book of a Planned Trilogy

Yes, I just said the first book was published in August of 2001, which is very nearly 14 years ago, as I write this. And the second book (which is, in fact, begun) probably won’t be published until 2020. With luck, book three in 2023. Those are just guesstimates, of course.

Besides, I’ve got another trilogy to complete, first.

Though, if she continues to piss me off, I may not finish her books.

May

2015

Finding Characters in the Real World

Writers often struggle with character creation, and they should, since it’s a crucial part of writing fiction. Good characters need to be fully developed, not flat and simple things. Part of this development is to give your characters memorable traits.

There’s a danger, here, though. Novice writers often make characters that are nothing but a collection of traits, with one of them to be the character’s “defining” trait, often exaggerated to the point of being a caricature, not a character.

Yes, that’s really me. I used to have hair.

Still, traits are important, and they should be more than the typical likes and dislikes, verbal tics, and so on. And a great way to find these is to be a people watcher. Study the people around you, not just your friends, but strangers, too. You might end up finding characters in the real world. Or at least parts that you can use to flesh out your characters.

For example, my first girlfriend had a number of odd traits, one of which was particularly curious. After she said something she felt was clever, she would say, “Um…” and pause, smiling, as though waiting for the applause to stop or the laugh track to wind down. It was a bit pretentious and a little annoying. But it was memorable.

Or throw money. Whichever.

On the grosser side of things, when I was quite young, I knew a kid who would surreptitiously stick his pinky up his nose, pull out a stringy ol’ boog, and stuff it in his mouth. We were about six years old at the time, and trust me, that was a long time ago. Yet, that image has never left me. I rather wish it would.

Not posting a pic of that.

Who among us has not had a school teacher who was memorable for things he or she said? I can think of three or four of my own, including a math teacher who would say things like, “Balls on toast, kids!” We did our best not to chuckle, and many of us were just at a loss as to why he’d say that in the first place.

In this case, turkey balls.

None of these examples, of course, are anything more than interesting tid-bits. They aren’t characters, but they certainly can be injected into a growing character to help flesh them out.

Being a good writer means being a good observer. The world around you is chock full of fiction fodder. Take it wherever you find it.

May

2015

The First Novel

I’d like to talk a little about my first novel. I don’t mean my first one published, but the first one written. The one I wrote about in this post.

I started writing it right around my eighteenth birthday. And, like many young writers, I didn’t know anything about writing book-length fiction. I’d been writing (bad) short stories for years, had one aborted attempt at something longer when I was a sophomore in high school, but this was the first serious attempt.

Well, I should say that it became the first serious attempt. Because at first, it was just something to pass the time. Next thing I knew, I had a hundred pages. That’s when I knew it was serious.

As an unforgivable curse.

And I was serious about it. As the post I linked to above describes, I had some very lifelike characters on the page. The book was set in New York City, and I did my best to research the place. Given that this was a decade before the World Wide Web, this meant books. It meant talking to people from there. At one point, I even managed to score an interview with a lieutenant of the NYPD. That’s pretty heady stuff for a kid who really didn’t know what he was doing.

Now, that earlier post mentioned that this book is still in the “unpublished” category. What the post didn’t mention is that it’s likely to remain there. It hurts to say that, because I have such wonderful feelings about the book. But the truth of the matter is that I was never quite able to make it work. Not to my satisfaction, anyway.

The entire first draft of the book was written longhand on loose-leaf paper in a three-ring binder. As I recall, it took me a year to finish the first hundred pages, a single month to finish the second hundred, and another year to finish the last hundred.

My second draft was used for my final fiction writing class at Penn State. I’d really progressed as a writer over the previous couple years and this was evident in the first draft. So this new, second draft was basically a total rewrite, in order to have a consistent voice throughout. The problem was, the writing wasn’t very good. My professor told me that it essentially read like a screenplay, rather than a novel. He suggested I take a stab at writing a chapter or two in pure script format, just to get it out of my system.

Instead, I wrote the entire thing as a screenplay. And that really did get the screenplay out of my head. (But since I didn’t know much about screenwriting, the end result wasn’t all that good.) The new third draft was right on target, as far as voice, structure, etc. I was very happy with it.

Yay!

But not happy enough.

Nuts.

There were problems. And I had no idea how to fix them. But it would take several more years before I admitted that to myself.

The long and short of it is that I worked on this first novel for a total of ten years. And by this point, I was actually growing tired of the characters, tired of the plot, tired of the setting… everything. I was burnt out on it.

So I started writing Wish You Were Here. This one was much longer and in a completely different genre. And this one would be the first one published. That was followed by One Nation Under God, a few years later.

And then… well… I didn’t have anything in mind. So I returned to the first novel. And I started from scratch, only rarely referencing the original version. I was a much different writer by this point. It wouldn’t be right to just try to “fix” the work of a much younger version of myself.

But it didn’t take long for the new version to morph into something too similar to the first version. And there was one major issue with the book that was the kicker. I couldn’t fix that problem without having to change my entire concept of the story. And the truth was, not only didn’t I wan’t to do that, I didn’t think it would be a very powerful story if I did.

Ultimately, I put it aside. To this day, it resides only on a CD-ROM, in a sealed envelope, tucked away in a rack somewhere, just so I’m not tempted to waste more time on it. Because the truth I finally had to accept was that, no matter how much I loved the characters and the story, this first novel was my practice novel. It’s the one I cut my writing teeth on. It’s where I found my voice, where I learned pacing and how to write action scenes. I learned so, so much during that time. But what I learned couldn’t save the work itself.

I suspect many beginning writers out there would be much happier in the long run if they approached the first novel as practice. Sure, there are some first books that are fantastic and totally worth publishing and reading. But they’re quite rare. Most are mediocre, some are outright terrible. And unfortunately, a lot of them are being published, anyway, now that self-publishing is so easy.

Being a good writer is not just innate talent. It’s learned skills, practice, and hard work. It might feel wasteful to spend years writing a first novel that’s ultimately only a practice piece. But time spent learning is never wasted.

Especially in the Restricted Section.

May

2015

I Hate Marketing

In the world of independent publishing, there’s a huge focus on marketing and all the tips and tricks to getting the word out about your work. I’m not particularly adept at it and fully admit to hating pretty much anything having to do with marketing. And yes, I realize this is something I need to change, if I ever hope to be financially successful. But one thing I’ve come to realize as a result of reading about marketing techniques is this: virtually none of them would work on me as a buyer of books.

I see recommendation from some “experts” to get reviews, even if you have to pay for them. And while I’m sure there are some paid reviewers out there who really do give honest opinions, I find the whole thing too suspect to try. Yes, I do solicit reviews for my books, but won’t shell out a buck for them. I know some people do care about these things, so they’re nice to have. But as for me, the only reviews I pay any attention to are those from actual readers. Sure, sometimes those reviews are very shallow, but for the most part, I find them helpful enough, especially the negative reviews. I do this for the same reasons I ignore “professional” reviews of restaurants and such. I’d much rather hear from regular people who’ve been there.

NOT looking at a book review site.

In the days before Amazon, my method of discovering new books (aside from recommendations from friends) was typically by browsing the shelves at the local bookstore, and the sole factor affecting my decision to buy the book was the blurbage on the back of the book. Even then, I didn’t go in for reviews. Or advertisements. Try as I might, I can’t think of ever in my life having purchased a book because I saw an ad for it.

But today’s marketing is so much more than reviews and ads. It’s Search Engine Optimization. I may hate this more than anything. Because “good SEO” often gets in the way of creativity. According to SEO, a “good” title for a blog is one that plainly states what the blog is about. Certain key words need to be in the article title, the page title, the URL, the content, the meta description, etc. As a writer, I sometimes like to make intriguing titles that wouldn’t necessarily tell you exactly what the blog was about. “Days of Coffees Past,” for example, is a title that I think is intriguing enough to click on. It’s not SEO-friendly, because it’s not especially about coffee, but it’s a much better title than “Using Nostalgia to Improve Your Writing.” Is that title accurate? Sure, I guess. But, good grief, it’s boring.

Despite my abject hatred of marketing, I’m trying to be better at it. Yes, including SEO crap, even when it leads to boring article titles. Sorry about that. (Ironically, the title of this blog qualifies as a “good” title.)

And don’t be shy about chiming in with your thoughts and comments, here. I enjoy hearing from you all. Plus, it would be nice to see a comment on one of my articles that wasn’t spam. (Prediction: I will received multiple spammy comments on this article from SEO people offering to help me.)

Until next time, SEO later.

May

2015

Characters Based on You

I would imagine that one of the most common questions a writer gets is, “Are any of your characters based on you?” And I imagine most writers will give answers quite similar to mine: “Yes. Almost all of them.” When you consider how complicated any single human being is, it’s not hard to take one aspect of an individual’s personality and use that facet to create any number of characters.

I see bits of myself in each of these guys.

When I was in college, writing The Book That Remains Unpublished, I had four major characters. None of them were much like me, really, but each of them was the result of deliberately taking one part of myself and blowing it up into a complete character.

And in some instances, a writer will make characters often who have a lot of things in common with themselves. How many Maine writers has Stephen King written?

Of course, I realize the questioners really want to know if there’s a character who specifically represents me, i.e., am I a character in any of my books? And the answer to that is yes. For pretty much all of my books.

If you’ve read Wish You Were Here, you know the protagonist is named Vincent. And he is and isn’t me. By that, I mean that he’s representative of who I was at seventeen. But by the end of the book, he’s experienced things I never have, so – while still being essentially the same person – we’re quite different.

In One Nation Under God, there’s a character named Jude who is definitely based on me. Jude is responsible for a website called The Voice of Reason, a secular-centric site that points out the problems with what’s going on in the government and society. This is reflective of a site I ran for many years called The Atheist Attic, which was aimed at pointing out the entanglement of church and state, among other things.

I often joke that Dynamistress is just me in drag. And it’s not that much of a joke, honestly. She’s got an awful lot of my personality traits. Her brother, Dana, is also based on me quite a lot, too.

So this gets us to the question of egotism. In truth, I equivocated for a long time about naming the protagonist of my first book after myself. But as I mentioned in my last blog, the idea for the story came as a result of years of playing Dungeons & Dragons. And after playing a character named Vincent for so many years, it would have been somehow wrong to give him a different name for the book.

So does this make me – or any writer – egotistical? Perhaps it does. I think all writers have a bit of egotism inside them, as do all entertainers and performers. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t put ourselves, or our works, out there.

So if you feel there’s a need to put “yourself” in a story, don’t be afraid to do so. Just make sure there’s a good reason for it.

Apr

2015

Where Do You Get Your Story Ideas?

This is one of the more common questions I’ve gotten from people over the years, so I thought I’d address it, here.

Story ideas, of course, can come from just about anywhere. Writers pretty much play the “what if” game all the time. It’s just how we think. And it doesn’t have to be anything as grandiose as, “What if Germany had won WWII?” It can be something as simple as, “I found a shoe at the side of the road. What if there had been a foot in it?”

Er… okay. That works, too.

We find inspiration for story ideas in our own lives, of course, and that’s been a treasure trove for me. For example, One Nation Under God was directly a result of where I happened to be living at the time, which was Utah. I’ve long been an activist for freethought causes, especially the separation of church and state. And Utah… well… there’s not much separation, there, to put it lightly. I also began writing it around the time when George W. Bush was elected, and I saw a lot of writing on the walls, so to speak. My book was written essentially as a warning against the dangers of mixing government and religion. I’m not happy that some of the things I wrote about actually came to pass.

Story ideas can come not only from life events, but also from our hobbies. For example, people today know George R. R. Martin primarily for his book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, and the HBO Series based on it, Game of Thrones. But I first heard of the man many years ago when he was editing a series of books called Wild Cards. This series of books was inspired by, among other influences, a super-hero role-playing game that Martin and several other writers played together. And I can totally relate to this.

My first novel, Wish You Were Here, was inspired by my college days playing Dungeons & Dragons. At some point in our playing, one of the guys in our group decided it would be fun to create characters based on ourselves. Granted, they were idealized and exaggerated versions of ourselves, but in this way, “we” became adventurers in our games.

It didn’t take long for me to see the potential for a story, here. I’d always been a big fan of the “fish out of water” concept of stories, and one of my favorites was the John Carter of Mars series by Edgar Rice Burroughs. John Carter was a Civil War captain who found himself mystically transported to Barsoom, the planet we call Mars, where he had all sorts of awesome adventures. So, with our D&D characters, I simply wondered what would happen if a teenage boy from Earth was somehow transported to a world of magic and monsters, with no idea how he got there or how to get back. The rest came pretty easily.

But Wish You Were Here isn’t my only game-inspired book. Many years later, I discovered an online MMORPG called City of Heroes. Creating my own hero and play-acting them with a bunch of others doing the same thing was an absolute blast. And the character I first created for the game, Dynamistress, was always my favorite. I played her for six years before the game was canceled. And now, she lives on in a series called The Many Deaths of Dynamistress.

I figure George R. R. Martin would probably dig it.

Oct

2014

No, I Don’t Want to Read Your Traditionally Published Book

A lot of fuss is being made right now about a recent blog over at The Washington Post titled, “No, I don’t want to read your self-published book.” The article was prompted by an open letter to indie authors by a children’s book publisher, maintaining that they will not consider self-published books for a few reasons, foremost among them being the fact that there are just too darn many of them. Past that, a good number of them simply aren’t very good.

The first fact is undeniably true. There are a ridiculous number of books being published, these days, thanks to affordable self-publishing options, especially digital-only publishing. But it’s that second statement that has self-published writers peeved. Because, let’s face it, there are some damn good indie authors publishing damn good books. Still, the fact remains that most self-published books aren’t great, and many are absolutely horrible. I’m comfortable in saying the majority are poor, given the sample of indie books I’ve read (or attempted to read).

But even awful books have redeeming qualities.

Many people hold the attitude that, if a book is any good, it will be published by a conventional (read “reputable”) publisher. They believe that writers self-publish because they aren’t good enough to get a “real” publisher.

Hold that thought for a moment.

Now, this post isn’t actually to talk about the quality of indie books. Rather, it’s to comment on one short excerpt from the Post article. Specifically, the boldfaced, quoted text below (my emphasis).

“At The Post, we’re getting about 150 books a day. A day. And these are books that had to find an agent. And then a publisher. And then were professionally edited. And now are being professionally marketed by people with money on the line. Many of these books, of course, are bad, but many — far more than we can review — are interesting, engaging, informative, moving, timely and/or newsworthy for various reasons.”

Here’s the thing. Many readers view conventional publishers as the judges, the ones who decide that a book is good enough to be read by the public. It’s their job to weed out the crap. But as this excerpt admits, this task is routinely unmet. “Many of these books, of course, are bad…”

My question is: Why?

How is it that bad books are accepted by agents? How do they then find a publisher? How do the editors not point out their inherent badness? How do they make it to the bookstore shelves and into the hands of readers when they “of course, are bad”?

Well, for the same reasons that fast-food restaurants exist. Because people will buy and eat the stuff.

But when I go to a fine dining establishment, I expect something special. I trust the chef and the proprietor to guarantee the quality of what I’m about to eat. I’m going to be pretty upset if I’m served something I can get at dozens of drive-through joints in the city. My trust in them will never be the same.

Cuisine by Chef Jacques La Merde.

When traditional publishers put bad books on the market simply because they sell, it means I can no longer trust them, either. It shows that they are not inherently better than self-publishers. In fact, in some ways, it shows that they’re worse.

Sep

2014

Not Age Appropriate… Honest

Years ago, not long after Wish You Were Here was published, an acquaintance told me that her daughter had read it and really enjoyed it. I knew this woman hadn’t read it, herself, so I asked how old her daughter was.

Twelve.

I groaned inside when she told me that. Unless her daughter was pretty mature for her age, this was not an appropriate book for her to be reading. (As it happened, she was.)

Here’s what I think of your age rating system.

Not long ago, another acquaintance purchased the book and said he was going to read it to his kids, who were considerably younger than twelve.

“That’s really not a good idea,” I said, and told him the book was not even remotely appropriate for children.

“It’s okay,” he said. “I can edit on the fly.”

I continued trying to dissuade him from using this as bedtime story material, telling him that the maturity level had everything to do with subject matter and nothing to do with four-letter words, but he assured me he knew what he was doing. “Okay, then,” I said, mentally adding, “but you’ll be sorry!”

I saw him yesterday. “Wow,” he said, “you weren’t kidding! It was fine, up to a point, but then I just had to stop. You cover some really heavy issues.”

Yes. Yes, I do.

Way to traumatize those kids, Vince. Good job!

“It’s not at all what I was expecting! But it’s really good. I’m gonna read it again.”

Lesson to be learned, people… if the author says a book isn’t age appropriate, you’d best believe it.

Jul

2014

Who’s Writing This Stuff?

One of the more interesting things about fiction writing is when your characters assert themselves, taking your story in a direction you didn’t expect. This has happened to me a few times over the years. Most recently, just this past weekend.

It began simply enough. I’d reached a point in the new book (Redemption, the sequel to Reckoning) where my protagonist was dealing with some difficult decisions and relationship issues. And then, as I was considering them, she said, “Dude, look… if I’m dealing with relationship issues right now, don’t you think there’s a pretty big one hanging over my life?”

Two things stand out about this. The first is that I hate it when she calls me “dude.”

Really? Why, man?

The second is that she was right. This particular relationship (an estrangement) had been casting an ugly shadow for most of her life. It was time to revisit it.

So we did. And… it went okay. Not the way I expected to, but… I liked it. The ugly shadow isn’t gone, but it’s not quite as dark as it was.

But then, while waiting for her flight at the airport, she said, “That went well. Let’s do another.” So there came a random meeting at the airport with a couple important people from her college days.

And that one went well, too. And again, in a way I didn’t expect it to go. For that matter, I never expected to revisit this particular shadow again at all.

It’s fine. We’ll come by soon.

Sometimes I wonder who’s writing this stuff.

Of course, I don’t always do what she says. I may change my mind about one or both of these events. Writing is a process, after all. Once you have an idea down, there are revisions, refinements, re-evalutations, and so on.

But when ideas seem to come to you from your characters, rather than your own conscious decision-making… I’ve found it’s usually worth a serious look.

May

2014

Right from the Start

One of the “complaints” I sometimes hear about my work is that it “starts out slow.” This is usually followed with, “but once I got into it, I couldn’t put it down,” or something along those lines. The presumption here is that a slow start is a negative thing. But is it?

I have NO idea why people think this is bad.

The standard “rule” for beginning a story is that you start in medias res. “In the middle of things.” Meaning, you begin your story just before whatever event sets the plot in motion. Sure, sometimes this event is larger-than-life, filled with explosions and car chases, presented in such a way that your reader has absolutely no choice but to be sucked into the action. Is this effective? Of course. Is it a good idea? Well… sometimes yes, sometimes no. Just because you can start a story with high action doesn’t mean you should.

There are different sorts of stories, and they all benefit from different styles of storytelling. For some, you do want to be yanked right in by action. But other stories, you want to be brought in with intrigue, rather than adrenaline. In fact, sometimes a story begins with action because that’s the only way the story can rope in the reader, since there’s not much there, otherwise.

And now for a word from Michael Bay.

So I don’t consider it an insult when someone complains that my books start off slow. Rather, I wonder why the reader doesn’t seem to understand that this is by design, because it’s fitting. A fast-paced opening, while possible to do, would feel artificial and unnecessary. I like to think that readers don’t need such things to be interested in what’s going on.

But maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

vmwales

Five Facts About Wish You Were Here

Finding Characters in the Real World

The First Novel

I Hate Marketing

Characters Based on You

Where Do You Get Your Story Ideas?

No, I Don’t Want to Read Your Traditionally Published Book

Not Age Appropriate… Honest

Who’s Writing This Stuff?

Right from the Start

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