Self-Publishing my Novel

I have embarked upon a journey of discovery; another one. I wrote previously about publishing on Amazon.com's Kindle Direct Publishing platform. I discovered that, with some effort, it could be done. And it's fine for those satisfied to see their work represented only in the electronic ether. For those for whom a book in the hand is worth more than a potentially infinite number in digital space, self-publishing is becoming the preferred alternative to endless rejections from the brick and mortar world of harried agents and risk averse publishers.

In self-publishing, one may work almost entirely on their own to create his/her book, or use one of many services to do so. I've chosen to use CreateSpace, the publishing engine of Amazon. Although there are other Do It Yourself (DIY) publishing engines, Lulu, for example, I found CreateSpace to be the most intuitively straightforward, with their step-by-step process. In addition, even for those competent enough for an all-in DIY effort, help is available. As an added benefit, the CreateSpace team will make my physical book available on Amazon.com alongside its Kindle cousin. A very detailed rundown on the CreateSpace process can be found here.

I chose CreateSpace's Total Design Freedom Standard package ($728) because I want help formatting and designing the interior of my novel, The Lion and the Sun. I read a great deal, and I know how important the right choice of typeface is, both to facilitate reading and to convey the theme of the story. Whereas your romance novel might look terrific in Emanuela, the same font would look silly in your hard-boiled, noire crime novel.

For the Total Design Freedom Standard process, I submit my manuscript as a Microsoft Word file, with the manuscript written in Times New Roman 12 pt. font. My CreateSpace project team will design the book interior using a font that they feel reflects the genre and general tenor of my novel. I filled out a questionnaire on the CreateSpace web site that provided my input on this.

I had my first consultation with a member of my design team today. Seven days from now I'll be sent a mock-up of the interior of my novel to review and approve. I'll also be sent a cover design. I was given ample opportunity to provide my ideas for the cover (see above), and will have two rounds of review before coming to a decision. After the mock-up and cover concept are settled, it will take the team 10 days to fully format the novel, and I should receive a physical copy of the book 15 days after mock-ups have been approved. After that, I have one more chance to provide feedback.

I'll document my experience using the CreateSpace service here, just in case anyone is interested in self-publishing and would be interested.

Published on Amazon Italia

My writing is now published on Amazon's Italian affiliate, Amazon.it.

State of Wonder, by Ann Patchett

What a wonderful writer is Ann Patchett. I'm about in the middle of her new book, State of Wonder, and am struck by her ability to place the reader smack dab in the jungle city of hot, sticky, buggy Manaus, in the Amazon of Brazil. Patchett combines her skill at atmosphere, with an unerring eye for humanity, creating characters, whether pleasant or unpleasant, that are fully developed and full of all the baggage that forms them as human beings. Patchett adorns her characters with both the physical accouterments of who they are, but also the mannerisms, speech patterns, and utterances of who they've become. Add to these impressive skills her superb story telling, and you have Ann Patchett and her wonderful, State of Wonder.

Writing Contest -- Just in time for Halloween

The NPR-sponsored contest is called, "Three Minute Fiction." The winner will have his/her story read on air. The idea is to keep the story short enough so that it can be read in its entirety in three minutes.

This is an on-going contest. Round Five seems designed for Halloween. The story is to start with the sentence, "Some people swore that the house was haunted," and end with "Nothing was ever the same again after that."

Let's try some openings.

Some people swore that the house was haunted. I was one of them, of course. After all, I was haunting the house. Why? It's a long story, but let's just say I was angry, really angry, and I wasn't going away until I'd had my revenge.

Some people swore that the house was haunted. It was mostly kids, but some adults seemed to believe it, too. If not, why were parents always warning their kids to stay away from the place? That's what Jake was thinking as he approached the ram shackled hulk of a house.

Some people swore that the house was haunted. The stories had been embellished over the years. The prevailing myth was that Mr. Kovalski had murdered his young wife and buried her in the crawl space. The singing that people claimed to have heard was poor Mattie Kovalski lamenting her fate. But there was singing. Jacob heard it now, as he made his way through the overgrown yard towards the house. He'd heard it before. That's why he was here. He needed to know. You see, Mattie had been his mother.

Now to the endings.

And then he saw her. And she came to him, gliding effortlessly across the floor. And he opened his arms. Nothing was ever the same again after that.

He tried not to open his mouth. The great, gray thing looming above him held the pulsating, sickly green blob over his face, pushing it at him. Kostya jerked his head one way and then the other, but the ghastly, rank-smelling horror pinned his head and smashed its rotting paw over his nose and Kostya, his lungs about to burst, gasped for breath. The green blob was pushed into his mouth and he took it deep into his lungs. Nothing was ever the same again after that.

"Don't listen to the singing," his mother warned. "Whatever you do, don't listen." She held his face and stared into his eyes, large now with fright. "Promise me?" He stammered out a promise. A promise he couldn't keep. The singing was so beautiful. A woman's voice, a young woman, perhaps a girl, her lovely voice floated out across the meadow delicately, like butterflies, painting the air with lovely colors. The words were strange, a language he didn't understand, but felt, felt deep, deep inside. He listened. Nothing was ever the same again after that.

If at first you don't succeed

My novel, "The Lion and the Sun," had been rejected by prospective publishers and agents more times than I care to say before I gave up this first attempt to be a published author.

I began my quest with the thought that I'd written and had published many scientific and technical papers; why not fiction? Is there really that much difference?

Yes. There's a reason technical journals have a very limited readership -- the writing is, to put it mildly, dry.

One of the critiques I received of my manuscript, on those few occasions when I received anything more than, "Not for us," told me that it was clear I knew my subject, but I wrote as if I was preparing a report. No! When I tried to add "color," I was criticized for writing a "tour guide." When I wrote action sequences involving hand-to-hand combat, I was told that my description of the battle was "interminable." I was also informed by one cocky agent that he "didn't buy my premise." When an agent with little or no knowledge of the subject you're writing about tells you this, you've chosen the wrong agent. Choosing the right agent is a science and an art in itself.

I postponed my exciting debut. I decided that just as I'd spent more hours, days, and years than I care to mention learning my trade craft, I needed to spend more time (not as much, because I don't have that much) learning the craft of writing readable fiction. And I needed to discover the resources available to aspiring authors. It turns out there are lots and they are available on the web. There are links to some of them on this blog.

I've started writing short stories, flash fiction, and micro fiction and have been successful having some of the efforts published. But I've had a hard time putting my novel out of my mind. So finally, a few days ago I decided to revise and rewrite it; not for the first time -- this will be revision 38. But this is a major rewrite. I'm changing from first person point of view (POV) to 3rd person. I think I was reading a Jack Reacher novel (Reacher is a character invented by the author Lee Child) when I decided to write my first novel in the first person. Child does it so well. Maybe I thought it would be easy. People who are really good at their craft, authors, professional athletes, make things look easy not because they are easy, but because the people are so good at it, whatever it is, hitting a golf ball, writing a scene, imitating a British accent.

I think that when I wrote in the 1st POV, I let too much of who I am slip into the writing, or maybe I tried too hard to not let who I am intrude. I don't know, but on rereading the manuscript I felt that the character came across like a cardboard cutout with someone putting words in its mouth.

So here I am rewriting in the 3rd POV. It isn't easy. Every "I," and "my," and "me," changing to a first or last name, and "his," "him," "himself," all the while watching for dialogue, where the rules don't hold. Universal "find and replace" doesn't work. But I have to reread the manuscript anyway. My goal is to cut out at least 1/3 of the narrative. I want the novel to be under 100,000 words. It's hard. That description of the Italian meal my main character had in the charming little restaurant in Vienna was worthy of a gourmet magazine. "Be brutal," I tell myself. After all, my hero operates in a brutal world. He'll understand.

What if you thought you’d dedicated your life to preserving and protecting your country from its enemies, placing yourself in grave danger in the process, and watching your marriage disintegrate over the years, only to be accused of treason by the masters you serve?

Daniel Conte is a CIA field agent. He’s assigned the mission of tracking the whereabouts of a missing plutonium pit and determining the extent of Iran’s involvement in its disappearance from a Russian weapons lab. Conte has just returned from an overseas assignment, committed to marriage counseling with his wife. Instead, he heads back across the ocean on a quest that takes him first to Vienna, then Istanbul, and then Tehran, where a personal tragedy fifteen years ago still haunts him. Along the way he will come face-to-face with a shadowy group of terrorists that trace their heritage to the Assassins of Alamut. Conte’s mission will uncover repressed memories of past betrayals and lead to new ones that will challenge the very core of his beliefs in his mission, his country, and in himself.

The Lion and the Sun is a story of intrigue, betrayal, and regret set against the threat of nuclear terrorism. The story spans the years 1978 to 2008, although the main action takes place in 1994 during the rise of the Russian Federation from the ashes of the Former Soviet Union. For Daniel Conte, the only thing that changes over those thirty years is his marital status. In the rarified world in which he plies his trade, nothing else really changes. The Lion and the Sun is topical, compelling, and credible, and will appeal to readers who enjoy Alan Furst or Charles McCarry espionage novels.