BookFest

This afternoon I walked into town to check out my county's annual BookFest. The goofy thing is that I totally forgot it was this weekend until yesterday evening when, as I was driving to work, I spied the writers' pavilion being set up in the middle of the street that bisects the park in the town center. 

This year I remembered to bring a tote bag for all the bookmarks, postcards, pens, candy, and other swag my fellow authors were handing out. What I forgot to do, way last winter, was to start a book-buying fund. So frustrating and embarrassing to have all these local writers making their books available for purchase at a discount, and I couldn't afford a single one. 

I collected a lot of author business cards and passed out a few of my own. One writer was kind enough to say she'd be willing to read over my manuscript of The Single Eye once I incorporate the last of my beta readers' suggestions, and she suggested I attend the monthly lectures sponsored by the local chapter of Romance Writers of America, which meets in a town not overly far from me. And on a Saturday, too, so my work schedule wouldn't get in the way.

And, what fun, I got to talk to an ATF agent who'd written a nonfiction book about his career. He had a lot of interesting things to say about the Waco and Ruby Ridge standoffs and about the Atlanta Olympics and Oklahoma City bombings, and he was able to assure me that I'd gotten the events surrounding the explosions, etc., at the end of my novel right. (There's one place where I'm probably stretching reality, but I didn't ask him about that. Sorry, I need it for the plot.)

Unlike last year's BookFest, it did not pour down rain; instead, it was bloody hot and more than once I thought I was going to keel over from heatstroke. Never mind, it's a great event and maybe next year I'll have the funds to take better advantage of it.

Two Steps Back, Three Steps Forward Equals Progress

Thinking how I wanted to get The Single Eye published last winter.  Then by the end of August.  You mind if I fall over myself laughing?

Boy, do I have a lot of rewriting left to do. As much as some of my latest beta reader's comments bug me, three or four of them make me go, "Hmmm, what about it?" Does my villain come on too strong at the beginning? Given that he behaves like a consistent jerk from the get-go, isn't my male protagonist sliding into Too-Stupid-to-Live territory by not immediately seeing through him?  I've gone through a period of insisting that I can't make him more than minimally proactive, given his position in life. But is that really true? Aren't there things he would do to deal with the trash the villain is throwing at him? Then at the end, after the female protag saves the day with her "heroics," would she still feel like an idiot after law enforcement praised her for her bravery?

I've come to the conclusion that all these things call for revision, not because I want the approval of my latest beta reader or because I feel I have to change my work to fit her views, but because I believe that once rewritten, my characters will be more true to who I already claim them to be.

I'm starting at the beginning and working my way through. This past Wednesday I got to the point in Chapter 5 (now Chapter 4) just short of the scene when the antagonist (soon to be villain) makes his pitch. This is progress.

“But That's the Point!" She Exclaimed.

Having received certain feedback on my writing this summer, I was moved to pen the following scenario:

Critic:  I see you have quite a few exclamation points in your work.  For instance, this line here:  "'I didn't hear that!'"

Author:  Oh, yes.  That's the male main character fighting with the female main character over the antagonist's intentions.  I put that exclamation point there to show how upset and annoyed and disbelieving he is.

Critic:  Well, you can't have it.  It's lazy.  Show his mood some other way.

Author:  Oh.  (Thinks).  How about, "'I didn't hear that,' he fulminated"?

Critic:  You can't do that, either.  "Fulminated" is what's known as a "said-bookism."  They're always bad.

Author:  "Shouted"?  "Exclaimed"?  "Scoffed"?

Critic:  No.  Stick with "said" and maybe "asked."  Otherwise the speech tag draws too much attention to itself.

Author:  Really?  Well, okay.  I'll try again.  "'I didn't hear that,' he said defiantly."

Critic:  (Holding head in hands)  Oh, no, no . . .  You just used an adverb.  They're even worse than exclamation points.

Author:  (Nonplussed)  Could I say something like "'I didn't hear that,' he said, his spluttering voice and red face betraying his angry mood"?

Critic:  No way.  You've got adjectives in there.  Three of them.  They're lazy, too.  And three nouns.  Didn't you read that article that said nouns don't do anything?

Author:  I guess I missed it.  And that's too long anyway, especially if I have to do it every time.  I'm way over the word count for my genre as it is.  (Considers.)  So what's left, verbs?  That gets me back to something like, "'I didn't hear that,' he spluttered."

Critic:  (Sighing prodigiously.)  Didn't you hear me?  No said-bookisms!

Author:  But then--- oh, I have an idea!  Oh gosh, sorry, I used an exclamation point there, didn't I?  Anyway, maybe I could get the meaning across by inner monologue?  Like this:  "I didn't hear that.'  How dare she imply I wasn't paying attention?"

Critic:  Oh, my goodness.  Inner monologue is Telling, not Showing.  And I heard those italics in there.  Whatever shall I do with you?

Author:  I'm sorry.  It wouldn't work anyway--- this scene isn't from his point of view.  (Looks frustrated.)  But--- but--- if I can't use exclamation points, or adverbs, or adjectives, or nouns, or inner monologue, or any speech tags but "said" or "asked," how am supposed to communicate how he's saying this?

Critic:  Why do you need to communicate how he's saying it?

Author:  Because if I don't, the reader might think he's admitting he wasn't listening.

Critic:  What's wrong with that?  Don't you want to let the reader bring his own interpretation to the work?  It's the modern thing to do.

Author:  The Post-Modern thing, you mean.  To heck with it!  I'm leaving it with an exclamation point.  It's clean, it's efficient, it does the job I want it to do.

Critic:  (Robotically) You can not do that.  It is bad, lazy writing.  It is immature.  I will have the Writing Police on you, just see if I do not.

Author:  Not very passionate about it, are you?  So why should I be?  See you around!

Critic:  Aaaaaaahhhhgggggghhhhh.

On the Other Hand

I've had time to think, and I've remembered that I can't make my hero too proactive. There must be a time in the middle when he decides things have gone back to normal, even though the reader can pick up evidence that the villain is still active behind the scenes. Why? Because the hero's single-minded focus on his work, in this plot, will be his potential ruin. It has to end up putting him and those he most cares about in danger, because, as he admits at the end, "I just didn't want to know."

Actually, my heroine is the more proactive of the pair. So proactive, in fact, that my latest beta reader accused her of superheroics at the story's point of crisis. No, sorry, that's staying in. Her issue is wanting to be in control and thinking everything is up to her. Yeah, she'd do what I have her do . . . but it worries me that that beta didn't see it that way.

More rethinking, more rewriting!

All Those ISBNs

And something else. Am I trying to do too much in this novel? There's a lot in there about my male protag's resentment against his missionary father . . . and his brother's confronting him about how he's living out the same pattern in his own work . . . Are those really necessary to what's supposed to be a romantic suspense novel?

But wait a minute. Didn't I put those scenes in there to show (not tell) how he came to be prejudiced against a certain ethnicity? That flaw is key to the villain's obsession with him. And didn't his brother's words give him a big push towards being willing to love the heroine and let her into his personal life?

The novella this book grew from was about 40,000 words. It trotted along right smartly and the thriller plot was pretty exciting. But it was full of holes and the love story was a wet wish-fulfillment mess. Do I really want to go back to that? No . . . not really. But . . .

Do you get the feeling I'm having serious doubts about whether I can pull this off? Yeah. Well, too bad. I can't give up now: I have all those ISBNs to use.

Postponed

I really hoped and planned to get this novel onto Kindle and CreateSpace by the end of this month. It isn't going to happen, and not just because I've been too busy renovating my front room to design my cover and format my text.

It's not even that I've heard back from another beta reader, and it's clear that I'll have to make my main characters' basic motivations more convincing. And clean up some typos. And decide how much internal dialogue to put into third person indirect speech, or to cut altogether.

It's rather that, having allowed the manuscript to sit for several weeks, I'm seeing that the first part drags for sure and for real. My hero, especially, needs to be more proactive. It's true that at that stage his primary motivation is not to Defeat the Villain and Bring Down His Evil Plot for National Domination; he doesn't even know the villain has a plot for national domination.  He just wants the creep to go away and let him do his work (architecture) in peace. But as I've written him now, too many times he deliberately ignores acts that all my betas saw as the villain's dirty deeds, regarding them instead as accident or coincidence. I thought this was signalling how dedicated he is to his work. "See what he'll put up with if he can just go on designing!" But it's only making him look like a thickheaded fool.

I've been wrestling with this problem for awhile, and to some extent, this "Hear no evil, see no evil" attitude truly reflects who my MMC is.  For example, he'd definitely go out of his way to convince himself that the threatening note he receives isn't from the villain because he doesn't have time to deal with it. But after his apartment is burned out . . . is he really going to believe it was just a faulty space heater?  All logic dictates that he'll decide the bad guy is behind it after all, and he'll have to try to do something about it and fail.

This will mean some major rewriting in some places. I think I can do it without messing up my story's timeline or major plot points. But it will take more than the next nine days.

An Announcement: I Am Now a Publisher

Last January, I made a resolution to post at least once a week on this blog.  I have no shame about failing to do so during the school year: with three or four jobs demanding my time, I was lucky to get three or four hours of sleep per night, let alone do any blogging.

But now it's summer, and here's what I've accomplished:

No, my novel The Single Eye is not quite ready for publication.  I'm still waiting on my final two beta readers, and I have a one last editing pass to make, myself.

I also need to learn GIMP, so I can put together a cover.  Yes, it would be better if I could hire someone to design it.  But financially, that's out of the question.  I'm going to draw on my graphic arts background and do it myself, and if the cover's no good, that's my fault.

So the book itself is on a kind of tremulous hold.  But that doesn't mean I haven't been busy otherwise.  After months of research and consideration, I've decided to self-publish under my own imprint.  As of this past Thursday the 14th, when I heard from my state's Secretary of State's office, I am in business as a publisher under the name HENDRICK HILL BOOKS.

I'll only be doing my own work, of course.  But I've got my first block of ten ISBNs from Bowker, I've obtained my Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the federal government, I've purchased domain names associated with Hendrick Hill Books and with my pen name, Catrin Lewis, and--- well, it looks like I'm serious about this.

I''m planning to release The Single Eye for Kindle and as an POD paperback by the end of August.  At least, I was.  But I'm hearing that it's never good for a new self-publisher to put out only one book at a time.  Should I hurry up and finish the psychological horror novel I have half-done?  Ought I to make an effort and crank out a sequel to The Single Eye (I have an idea for one, but haven't yet found the key to make the plot work)?

We'll see.  Hendrick Hill Books exists, it's not going away, and I have plenty to do before school starts again.