Ten years ago, book trailers were all the rage, but you rarely see them now unless you go digging in YouTube. And that's a major issue with advertising. You can't make your readers look for your advertising.
There's only one book trailer that ever spurred me to buy the book. And it was shown on a local Houston channel's late night ads--the same place and time the local new age shop and comic book shop aired their ads.
Have any of you seen a good book trailer lately?
Each episode of a serial story needs to be complete in and of itself while advancing the bigger story. My personal favorite would be comics, like the '80's runs of Chris Claremont on Uncanny X-Men and George Perez on Teen Titans and Wonder Woman.
Some folks think the filler episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural break the episodic rules, but most of the time, the episodes in question are meant to lighten the mood after several emotionally intense episodes or to highlight and expand a character who doesn't always get the spotlight.
Or you can look at it as the scenes between commercial breaks. Take the Star Trek: TOS episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles" for example.
The teaser and first scene start with the distress call from Space Station K9. The Enterprise arrives, but there's no real emergency, just a Federation bureaucrat with a stick up his butt. Captain Kirk agrees to post two security guards on the bins of wheat--sorry, quadratritcale--to help the station manager keep the damn bureaucrat happy. Kirk gives the crew shore leave, and everyone's happy.
Then the Klingons arrive.
No, they aren't here to attack, they just want a little shore leave, too. Bureaucrat goes crazy, but according to a treaty, they can't kick the Klingons off K9. So everybody's having a really nice time.
Until one really drunk Klingon picks a fight.
I could keep going, but you guys should get the drift. If not, break down the original Star Wars movie. It's structure is based on the movie serials shown during the '30's and '40's, like Buck Rodgers, Flash Gordon, or Tarzan.
I stumbled across an article that does a very good job of analyzing the large story versus the episodic series a la Marvel shows versus the MCU. I can't comment on the Disney+ Marvel shows since I haven't watched them yet, but I do agree with the author's sentiments as far as Netflix's Luke Cage. Don't get me wrong because I loved that series. However, there was a couple of episodes I would have eliminated because they were neither a complete story in themselves and whatever they added to the overall arch could have been split between their bookend episodes.
If you're a writer planning to write a serial, but you haven't done so before, do a little research. The people that read serial stories are looking for a different experience than those that read novels. Wattpad is a good place to start, as is Radish.
I'm not against serial storytelling. In fact, I love it! All I'm saying is do your research before jumping into the Vella pool.
Apple's already been in trouble for their conspiracy back in 2011 with five of the ten Big Six publishing companies in the U.S. Do you think they or anyone else backed down? Hell, no. Add in the shady shit Facebook was pulling in the last two presidential elections, plus more crap than I can list from the rest, and they've gotten the attention of the American politicians.
And not in the good way.
The following is my opinion, and just my opinion. So take it with a grain of salt, tequila, and a lime wedge.
A lot of my fellow indies believe Amazon is "too big to fail". They've gone exclusive with the company through the Kindle Unlimited program since Amazon has a rough 70% of the e-book market IN THE UNITED STATES. These indies really don't look at the rest of the world. It simply doesn't count.
If the U.S. government forces Amazon and the rest to split up like they did with Ma Bell in the '80's, we have no fucking clue what the outcome will be.
Other indies are seeing the writing on the wall and diversifying--both their genres and their retailers.
I've been diversifying as well. As much as I love urban fantasy stories, the genre was overrun years ago. Plus, a ton of writers jumped into BDSM romances after the success of Fifty Shades of Grey. It's hard to get any eyeballs when all the lemmings are writing the same shit.
But hey, I was told I didn't understand writing to market. Except what my fellow indies were doing was writing to trend. Then there were those indies who grouped together and decided what the new hot subgenre should be and would write it to death. Hell, recently someone suggested I join in and write Paranormal Women's Fiction, the latest "it" subgenre. I smiled politely and said I'd think about it.
I'm not going to. I like my supers and my sword and sorcery stories for now, though I'm dabbling with what is essentially a paranormal domestic comedy with the Soccer Moms of the Apocalypse series.
But does any of this sound familiar? Yep, we indies are repeating the same damn mistakes what is now the Big Five are doing.
That's not a good thing.
Anyway, if you're a writer, keep an eye on these bills. Whether you are trad, indie, or hybrid, they will affect you if they are passed. So start making some preliminary plans, and start saving your pennies.
Hopefully, the plane I'm tossed on is going in the right direction.
In the meantime, I'm alternating between writing A Hand of Father (Justice #7) and doing the print edition editing for Books #4-6. I was definitely flustered last year with the pandemic, so I'm going through them very carefully.
If you bought one of last year's releases, drop me a line and I'll send you an updated copy.
But the idea just wouldn't go away. So I started dabbling. Next thing I knew, I was 40K words into the first book. So I showed the first couple of chapters to a friend.
She pooh-poohed the concept. Said it would never sell. And in all fairness, she was right. It would never have sold to trad publishing.
But she was one of those well-meaning friends. She was trying to help me. She wasn't trying to hurt my feelings. According to her, I needed to write something more marketable, i.e. what she was writing.
Unfortunately, when it comes to art, those kind of friends can do the most damage. I put the story away, and didn't touch it for fourteen years.
Not until I was reorganizing my writing folders last year into what had been published and what hadn't. There were several short stories that have since been published. But that second urban fantasy series was still tucked in the old ideas folder.
I started to read the half-written first novel. And damn, it was pretty freaking good. But it would need some very specific art, not just any old stock photos.
And a month later, I stumbled across an artist who'd be able to pull off the vision in my head. She was already booked solid for the rest of the year. So I begged. A lot. And she finally agreed to do the project, but she couldn't fit me into her schedule for at least a year.
I slapped down my deposit to show I was serious. And she scheduled the first book for this month.
She delivered the ebook cover for the first book this morning. I'm not ready to show it yet. Mainly, because I've got a whole nother series to deliver first. But the artwork tickles me to my toes.
I used to tack covers photos to the bulletin board over my desk. But the new office comes with a multitude of windows. Either I need a stepladder to tack the images over the window or tape them to the window itself.
It doesn't matter though. I'm looking forward to diving back into this world!
My friend Dee pointed out something I'd forgotten in my existential wailing I was doing in my last post.
POPCORN KITTENS was a term coined by Kristine Kathryn Rusch. She uses it to describe her thought process, like when she has a ton of cool ideas and can't decide which one to write next.
And Dee is totally right. I was letting too many ideas scamper through my mind, and I need to focus on one kitten at a time.
Here's the totally adorable video Kris posted with her original essay, and if you want to read her essay, click here.
Do I take the plunge? What happens if it doesn't work? What happens if it does? Can I maintain momentum?
I had a lot of problems with the one book a month Publishing Challenge. A lot of it was trying to sustain my pace of writing and editing when I couldn't get the fuck out of the apartment and away from my family just to think thanks to the fucking pandemic.
Then came a major move when we bought a house. The only saving grace was that the move was only across town.
But now, I'm roughly halfway through 2021. This was supposed to be a write-only month, but I still have a huge pile of prep work to finish for the paperbacks. (I have to pay the POD distributor extra to revise a paperback, so I really try to make sure they're right.) And I'm literally working on four novels at the same time.
So am I using the scut work to shy away from a new distribution idea? Yeah, I am.
Which is stupid. I should be jumping in with both feet. My fear makes it even more important that I try the new thing.
And I need to do it now.
Even better FreeForm was on a roll with my favorite Disney/Pixar movies! Ratatouille, Coco, Moana, and Lilo and Stitch. All of them juggle the question of finding your own way while dealing with family expectations. A theme that shows up a lot in my own work.
I'm still a little nervous about going to our local theater, and I probably won't until after we get back from celebrating Adorable Spawn's birth. I don't want to take any chances of carrying a potentially deadly disease to my newborn grandson.
As for today? I'd meant to get up with my alarm clock, but I was so tired, I turned in off, rolled over, and went back to sleep.
And slept another four hours. I didn't think I'd over exerted myself last week. Maybe it was my subconscious needing to process the new things I noticed in those movies yesterday.
Because you see, I always seem to notice new things in the media I consume each time I watch or read or listen. That's what I mean about refilling the well. Storytellers need to pay attention to the really good stories. Break them down. See what makes them tick.
And use those techniques to build our own worlds in such a way you cannot resist liking, or even loving, them.
(DH no longer does planes. For our honeymoon to Hawaii, he popped a sleeping pill, washed it down with the complimentary champagne, and was out for the entire six-hour trip. The flight attendant was a little worried about him, but I said, "Trust me, you don't want him awake while we're still in the air.")
So the projects I wanted to get done before spending time with the new grandbaby have taken on a new urgency. My morning projects are getting the paperbacks formatted for all the latest three Justice books completed. In the afternoon, I work on A Hand of Father. After dinner, I write Pestilence in Pumpkin Spice. Then after DH goes to bed, I've been reading Loren L. Coleman's Crowdfunding Your Fiction and studying some ongoing fiction Kickstarters. And in between all of that, I'm rewriting Spells and Sleuths.
I've found several pirate sites that have the old versions of the Millersburg Magick Mysteries. All I can do is shake my head. The first half of Spells and Sleuths was salvageable because it was written prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The rest? Well, they definitely show signs of my low-grade depression through May of 2020.
I feel much better now.
Onward. There's many words to add to my works-in-progress
There is invariably, in all our lives, that well-meaning friend. You know the one. The one that wants to protect you from yourself. But the truth is they are afraid of whatever new idea they are faced with.
It's not that they are bad people. Also, evolution gave us fear to protect us. So we don't do something stupid like pet the sabertooth tiger because it's such a pretty kitty.
But some of us emotionally overreact to fear like those of us with allergies overreact to various pollens. What should be a minor irritant turns us into a quivering wreck. And the last thing these friends want is to see someone they care about turn into that same quivering wreck.
So my silence on these new avenues isn't because I'm hiding the golden key from anyone. It's because I don't want the well-meaning advice of "That's a stupid idea."
Despite the efforts in the U.S. to get back to normal, things are moving slowly.
Some people are like rabbits these days. They are poking their heads out of their burrows, noses quivering. Has the doggie danger really passed?
Other folks have been like squirrels this whole time. Cavorting about. Absolutely sure they can outrun any threats.
In the meantime, WMG Publishing is running ONE MORE 1/2 PRICE SALE! If you need to brush up on a technique or explore new genres, now's the time to do it.
I signed up for the Publishing Challenge during their first sale last year. It helped me keep my focus over the craziness of the pandemic. So sign up now if you're interested. The sale ends on June 17th.
Today though...
I'm mopey even though the sun is shining, and DH collected fresh strawberries from the planter this morning. I think part of it is me picking DH's emotions from shit going on at the company he works for. I think the other part is the writing/ publishing treadmill I've been on since 2019. Like I'm really going to catch up on all the time between 2013 and 2019.
So I'm going to spend the weekend refilling the well. Read some books for fun. Watch some TV. Maybe catch a couple of movies on Netflix and Disney+. Get my hair dyed.
And in between, I'll work on getting my office organized so I'll be ready to go on Monday morning.
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