Monday, November 9, 2015

What I Have Learned Through Swordsmaster (and the Vaunted Cats of War I Pre-order Promo Continues)

I’ve finally completed the rough draft of Swordsmaster. It currently stands at just over 57,000 words – by far the longest thing I’ve ever written, and yet not as long as the 70,000 words I had expected. Of course, that count was supposed to be for a COMPLETED manuscript, and Swordsmaster is FAR from completed.
Still, I have reached the END, the DENOUEMENT, and for that I should allow myself to celebrate.
Yay.
I can see why some people NEVER finish their novel. Heck, right now I am SOME people – at least until I complete what needs to be done.
What have I learned?
Every writer has a process that works for them, and although mine might vary slightly due to each story’s needs, by and large my process stays the same. I thought I knew mine pretty well, and that I just had to stretch things a little to go from Short fiction to novel.
I was WRONG.
My internal editor can stall a short story, but it is DEATH to a novel. There is no way I can write every word perfectly to begin with, and the added volume increases the chance that my writing will stall from not being to get the exactly right word in every spot.
There are inconsistencies throughout, some just from my poor memory, complicated by the writing being extended over seven months. I tried to help this with notes. And notes about the notes. And notes about the notes about the… you get the idea. Other ones have to do with tone / voice, which was hard to maintain over all the stops and starts of those months. Or because when I was maybe 20,000 words into this when it occurred to me that this might be a Young Adult novel, and that changed the way I was writing it.
And mostly because I realized partway through this that I could not manage the writing the same way as a short story. You see, in short fiction, it would take almost no time at all to flip back a couple of pages and put in something I forgot, or fix an inconsistency, or add details, and then I could get back to writing and finish the story. With more words came more opportunities to go back even further and fix things, and that becomes its own drug. I realized that if the overall story framework was going to have any hope of working, I would have to leave holes in the details until the foundation was laid in.
There are notes in the margins throughout, reminding me of just SOME of the things it occurred to me I would need to address. I have learned A LOT, but I have a lot left to learn.
There is so much research I still need to do – about medieval commerce, agriculture, weather, sea vessels, weaponry, wildlife, religion, culture (yes, I can go on and on) – so many questions that I didn’t even know to or how to ask until the basic story played out.
So that’s what I have now – a plot that works, with characters that need more fleshing out, settings and a world that need more detail, and all of which needs to be wrapped up in a consistent and appealing voice.
For now, I’m going to take a break from Swordsmaster to write the last two short stories I need to make this year’s goal. And then it’s “once more unto the breach, dear friends!”
Just saying…
<<<>>> 
So in the continuing saga of William’s attempts at marketing… My next ePublication will be Cats of War I - a collection of my first three Herc Tom, Champion of the Empire stories (“Purr-Mission”, “Nipped in the Butt”, and “Cat and Mouse”.) The stories are set in a cat-dominated world and include space adventure, treachery, political intrigue, germ (and other) warfare. And yes, it’s humorous, too.
RELEASE DATE:  November 20th
The collection is available as a pre-order at multiple online retailers for a REDUCED PROMOTIONAL PRICE from now through its release. The price will increase after the release weekend.
IN ADDITION – if you purchase Cats of War I on Smashwords, use coupon code WF25Z at checkout to save an additional 67% off the $2.99 promo price (that makes it only 99-cents – such a deal!) This coupon is only valid from now through the end of the November 20th release day. Here’s the Smashwords link:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/588921?ref=NoTimeToThink
And here’s the Amazon link for pre-ordering Cats of War I: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017E9TPFK?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

<<<>>> 
William Mangieri’s writing (including his latest story collection And Yet Still Even More Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND) can be found in many places, including:
To CONNECT WITH HIM (and LIKE and FOLLOW), go to
His site on Wordpress: https://williammangieri.wordpress.com
 “William Mangieri’s Writing Page” on Facebook at:
 http://www.facebook.com/NoTimeToThink
His Goodreads author page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6893616.William_Mangieri

Or on twitter: @WilliaMangieri
Posted by at No comments:

Monday, November 2, 2015

What I May Never Learn About Self-Promotion (and the Vaunted Cats of War I Preorder Promo)

Tooting my own horn doesn’t come easy for me. I don’t understand why. Aside from the fact that I do have a trumpet, and I can play it (yeah, I know, it’s not the same thing – I’m just stalling…) I’ve never been comfortable with self-promotion.
There are people who know me who will dispute this. I don’t seem to be averse to drawing attention to myself. I speak in stage whispers all the time (that’s when I say something in a tone of voice that sounds like a whisper, but can be heard at the back of whatever room we are in. I have this gift of vocal projection that served me well in my theatre days – maybe it has something to do with the formation of my mouth or jaw – my wife swears I have no table manners and I make too much noise when I eat, but my lips are sealed the whole time. I’m stalling again, aren’t I?)
There’s a difference between drawing attention to myself and promoting myself. The act of writing (and publishing it) is my way of drawing attention. But it is a totally different thing to say “Hey – I have some pretty good stories here, you should read them.” (you should, you know?)
They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Well, I’m old, but I’m not a dog (even my wife hasn’t called me that yet), so maybe there’s hope for me. As uncomfortable as I am about self-promotion, I do understand that publishing without promoting is the equivalent of leaving a book on a park bench and hoping that someone will read it (and how would I know unless I spend the rest of my life hiding in the bushes to watch?).
The first step on the road to recovery is to admit that you have a problem (at least one.) Then you have to learn how to solve the problem.
This would be easier if I didn’t care whether my stories were being read. But I do care. I don’t just want to put words on paper – I want to be successful at this. I must create a plan to promote my work, but the hardest things to plan for are the things we don’t know that we don’t know. So I’m fumbling around with ways to promote my work effectively.
First I just published, but the stories weren’t jumping off the shelf on their own. So I created a facebook writing page. Then Author pages on Goodreads, Smashwords, Amazon. And then I blogged in one – two – three different places. I tried Kindle Select. I tried FREE Promotions. I ran coupons. I tweeted. I created my WordPress “William Mangieri’s Writing Page.”
Baby steps. After all, Rome was not built in a day, and I’m not THAT ambitious (how long did Muleshoe Texas take, anyway?) I’m only coming up on four years of INDIE PUBLISHING, after all.
I can tell from what stats I can see that my page(s) traffic is increasing. If anyone searches for “William Mangieri” on Google or Bing, I now dominate over the other William Mangieri(s) out there (ask yourself why anyone would search my NAME in the first place to see if that’s significant…)
The next tool in the publishing bag (and one of the biggest and most powerful, according to Smashwords’ Mark Coker) is PRE-ORDERS. So I’m doing my first one this month for Cats of War I (my first Herc Tom, Champion of the Empire collection – links are below.)
Of course, doing pre-orders requires more stringent, organized planning than I’ve been doing so far. Prior to this release, I have had a private (only I knew it) ePublishing schedule – dates set 4 weeks apart, at which time I would pick my oldest or most travelled (sent to and returned from the largest number of traditional markets) and usually put together the ePublication in a week.
That won’t work for pre-orders, so to take advantage of the tool, I need to decide which book I’m going to publish at least a month in advance. Well, I can do that – just requires a little more discipline and time to do it properly.
A part (a LARGE part) of me rails against having to take this extra time on the publishing side to do this. I would rather be using my limited time to WRITE, but if I want to succeed as a writer, part of it involves making sure my stories are READ. In the (fairly) new world of Indie-Publishing, you have to do it all. And who knows – if I can get enough people reading, maybe that will create the opportunity for more writing time.
Just saying…
<<<>>> 
So in the spirit of improving my marketing… My next ePublication will be Cats of War I - a collection of my first three Herc Tom, Champion of the Empire stories (“Purr-Mission”, “Nipped in the Butt”, and “Cat and Mouse”.) The stories are set in a cat-dominated world and include space adventure, treachery, political intrigue, germ (and other) warfare.
RELEASE DATE:  November 20th
The collection is available as a pre-order at multiple online retailers for the REDUCED PROMOTIONAL PRICE from now through release. The price will increase after the release weekend.
IN ADDITION – if you purchase Cats of War I on Smashwords, use coupon code WF25Z at checkout to save an additional 67% off the $2.99 promo price (that makes it only 99-cents – such a deal!) This coupon is only valid from now through the end of the November 20th release day. Here’s the Smashwords link:
https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/588921?ref=NoTimeToThink
And here’s the Amazon link for pre-ordering Cats of War I: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B017E9TPFK?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

<<<>>> 
The coupon for my latest collection: And Yet Still Even More Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND (containing the stories “The Red Barrens”, “Dempsey’s Debut”, “Look Both Ways”, “The Final Ending?”, “Close Enough”, and “The Wolves Will Come”) expires today - here’s the smashwords link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/587154?ref=NoTimeToThink  
Use coupon code UA97J to save 80% off the list price at check out on Smashwords (that’s right – all six stories for only $1.00!) The coupon is good through November 2nd. Enjoy!
<<<>>> 
William Mangieri’s writing (including his latest story collection And Yet Still Even More Things I Could Get OUT OF MY MIND) can be found in many places, including:
To CONNECT WITH HIM (and LIKE and FOLLOW), go to
His site on Wordpress: https://williammangieri.wordpress.com
 “William Mangieri’s Writing Page” on Facebook at:
 http://www.facebook.com/NoTimeToThink
His Goodreads author page: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6893616.William_Mangieri

Or on twitter: @WilliaMangieri
Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)