Mars Needs Writers

...or so our son, Matthew, tells us. He recently went to Cambodia to visit marvelous jungle temples and see the sad beauty of the Killing Fields. He took hundreds of photos and these are a couple of 'em.
 
During his vacation, he tried to avoid drinking the water (a suggestion he offers to everyone currently planning a stopover in Cambodia) but he happily munched on the foods he was offered. He's an adventuresome guy. Among his nibbles? Water bugs, tarantula legs and fried cockroaches. He does not recommend the water bug.

 
As it happens, one of our future projects includes a steamy romance set (partially) in modern day Cambodia. We haven't seen too many romances set in Third World countries -- poverty and hunger take the edge off of sensual embrace -- but a fresh setting is always interesting to readers. Plus, we think we've got a spin to the tale that will allow love to bloom even if our heroine is sipping bottled H 2 0.
 
While we were happy to get a little color for our story from someone who's actually traveled to the place, and we were fascinated to discover that bowls of crunchy insects are served on purpose to restaurant guests, neither one of us thought this was the kind of detail to add to our romance. As Renée said, "Lips that touch cockroach will never touch mine"...and Harrell realized he has yet another secret to keep from her.
 
But would we read a Harlequin where the heroine slurps down spider appendages before enjoying a hot roll in the hay? Oh, yes, we would.

...and the reason that's interesting is this: We rarely receive any kind of fan mail.
 
Which isn't to say we don't hear from you and you on occasion. Happily, we do. It's just that, most often, the communication isn't a glowing note of love and appreciation. It's more along the lines of one friend writing to another, offering fresh insights about writing or suggestions to improve sales or the odd expression of curiosity as to why Renée painted herself with an eyeball in her mouth. Every now and again, we hear from a Fencken.
 
But fan letters? Not so much.
 
This particular reader had discovered Something Wicked, had enjoyed it, and took the time to find our website, read several of our posts, and use The Contact Thing (above) to write us. She wanted to know if SW would ever have a sequel. Because she, personally, wanted to read it tomorrow.
 
Her kind comments made us think about Kristine Kathryn Rusch and one of KKR's recent blog posts. She wrote a spank-your-hands piece on self-publishing (here), saying, "You indie writers treat your readers as badly as traditional publishers do. And you do it in the exact same way. You deny your readers the next book."
 
Our next book in the Anne Lippens/Something Wicked series, by the way? Something Evil.
 
Then she said, "Here’s what readers expect: They expect writers to publish one book, then two books, then three books. They expect several books from their favorite writers." Later still, "Is it hard? Of course it’s hard. In the beginning, no writer has a fan base. Writers earn their fan base, one reader and one book at a time. Fans come back. Writers—and traditional publishers—need to remember that."
 
KKR's actual post goes on for pages and it's worth the read. It certainly made an impact on us. This morning, we e-mailed and promised our reader that, yes, there would be a sequel to SW...but, first, we had to complete our sequel to The Atheist's Daughter ('cause, y'know, our other fan asked about that particular novel first).
 
And then, the fates willing? Frankenstein P.I. vs Dracula, M.D. Not the cover above, not by a long shot. The good craftsmen and women of Fiverr.com have provided us with several winners but this particular image isn't one of our favorites. We're on a roll, baby!

...but, it turns out, we should have been trying a little harder.
 
In January, we wrote just under 18,000 words, with a rewrite or two, and we were quite pleased with that particular number. We don't have anything to show you, not yet, but the words are there and things are coming together. (Don't bother checking for a new title at Amazon or Smashwords or any of the usual suspects. We're not done yet.)

It turns out, we shouldn't have felt so good about ourselves. According to our indie guru, Dean Wesley Smith, we truly are slackers. In his post of a year ago (here) (and, yeah, we're slow readers, too), he talks about writing speed and what it means to someone's career.
 
For example, DWS says it takes him an hour to write 1,000 words. At 1,000 words a day, working five days a week, your average novelist can pump out three novels a year. Sadly, we're not your average novelists.
 
On a good day, we manage 500 words in a three hour period. Then the next day, we rewrite those words, lose about 50 of 'em, and we've totaled 450 words for our total output. Oh, and three hours is about all we've got before the mind rebels and we're done.
 
So, yeah, January was a successful month for us, since we saw an average daily number of 580 words for those 31 days. Until we came across our mentor's post (the Magic Bakery, hidden inside The Store Thing, is his idea), we thought we were smokin'.
 
And, then, no longer quite so pleased with ourselves, we did another edit. Our 18,000 words slimmed themselves still further. For January, we knocked out 15,000 turns. So far, the first week of February, we've plotted our next effort. Total word count: Zipadee Zero.
 
If you read the beginning of Dean's post, you'll see this sentence: "The slow writers in this new world of publishing are going to have trouble." He means it. DWS clearly believes that volume is key to an indie writer's career.
 
We're doomed.

...but, wow, was it a struggle. The process started months and months ago but today, huzzah, we can claim success. Our novel, Something Wicked, is finally available at our local library.
 
The town's library is a lovely place and we know most of the staff by sight (to their regret, they know us, too). When SW came out in a paperback edition, we donated a copy for the library's collection. We thought this would be quick and easy process. Boy, were we wrong.
 
The book came out in April of 2011. We called toward the end of the month, spoke to a staff member, and learned we'd need to provide a copy to...well, you wouldn't know her, but the librarian in charge of putting books on the shelves. Once they accept a book, it has to be cataloged, they put some kind of glossy covering on the thing, there's an entire series of steps. This was Step One.
 
We mistakenly thought it was Step One - Done, but no. Since our novel is directed toward a YA audience, it was shipped over to the librarian who specializes in teen/young adult/children books. But, since SW was donated (and didn't carry a Big Name Publisher's imprint), the librarian had to read and approve the novel as Safe for Our Children, too. However....
 
Like many of the government facilities in the nation, the local library has budgetary issues. People haven't been fired but hours were cut and fewer hours meant less time to read a donated novel that probably wasn't very good. (In our recent travels, a librarian told us she'd been trained to believe that s'pubbed = bad. We're sure she was exaggerating. There can't be an entire class devoted to the awfulness of self-published writing. Can there? You'd think you could pass such a belief along in a quick e-mail.) Now, if you love literature and your job involves reading every donated book before putting it before the public...and you've been taught, the book is gonna stink...we'd imagine you aren't all that eager to start the process. So the Youth Librarian didn't. In order to avoid reading our novel, she took a different job in the library system.
 
We're kidding. We hope. The fact is, more weeks passed and the YL didn't read our book and she did take a different job in the system. Which meant, our story now travelled over to the new Youth Librarian. Who was learning her job and had plenty on her plate without having to look at our donation. More weeks passed.

Still, we live in a small town, and there's no way to avoid a pair of your more frequent patrons forever so she did kind of a side move: She gave the novel to her 12-year old daughter to read. She told us her daughter zipped right through, which was presumably a good thing, but her daughter's approval wasn't enough. And, really, what if we'd written a terrible, mind-corrupting book full of awfulness? What would this have done to the mother-daughter relationship? She still had to read the piece herself. And time, it traveled on.

This month, we finally found our book and our pseudonym in the library system. Yay!  Eight months plus after we started everything by giving our book away. When we walked into the main building, looking for our novel...it had been checked out. Yay!
 
All in all, it was worth the wait. But if the library want a copy of The Atheist's Daughter on the shelves, they're gonna have to buy it themselves.

...Renée said, and she's absolutely right. There's no justification for what you're about to see, not for any of it, but there is an explanation so hang with us for a mo', would you?
 
Wandering through fiverr.com, as the male half of this partnership is apt to do, we discovered LaVonnawanna Dahlah, an absolutely phony psychic. Oh, that's not our description: it's hers. She promises to do an "utterly fake reading" for anyone. She opens with her standard spiel, throws in whatever words you'd like to hear -- $5 = 40 words, but you can order multiples of this -- and then wraps the whole thing with her end bit and a couple of closing words that you've requested.
 
We had five dollars. We knew something that was 40 words. And this is what we asked the delightful LaVonnawanna Dahlah to do:

...but we've never actually met anyone who got rich quick. We're kinda doubtful that e-publishing is going to lead most of us into early retirement, either.
 
Yes, we know that it's never been easier to publish your own work. And, yes, we know there's a wealth of information telling people each and every step in the process. Pulling up Google and typing in "How to self-publish an ebook", we found 45,700,000 results. Within seconds, we found some excellent resources. If you, right this very moment, are about to do a little experimental publishing on your own, know there are people eager to help you on your way.
 
Know, too, that there are sharks out there, already circling your wallet and smelling money. It's easy, this self-publishing thing, but it isn't DEAD easy. You'll be tempted when someone else offers to do the heavy lifting and it will cost you if you weaken. Cash up front and, sometimes, royalties forever after.
 
This last week, we e-mailed some fresh faces on the Amazon/Kindle block to ask 'em how their novels were doing. These faces are mostly new to you, not to us. Writers can be a friendly and supportive bunch and we'd drifted across this three-set on different forums, all about to publish their stuff for the first time. We shared some of our stories, they shared some of their own, and we got an idea. We asked each of them to keep track on how long it took them to get their work ready for publication and to give us sales figures after the first three months (subtracting, if possible, the purchases made by family and friends).
 
Mostly, we wanted to know if we were doing something wrong with our novels while everyone else was getting rich. Y'see, we're absolutely ready to make some adjustments if a big bag of money awaits us just around the corner.
 
At the end of the day, none of our new friends managed to pop their work on-line and go about their day. Each of them put multiple hours into getting the work ready for the marketplace. (One of them estimated she'd spent over six hours just trying to find the right cover artist for her mystery.) Once they went to market, none of them were interested in offering their work for free -- we know people can "sell" a bunch of free novels but the royalties suck -- and none of them wanted to offer a Dollar Store Special, either. Two of them priced their novels at $2.99 a pop, the third wanted $4.99 per purchase. All of them did decent to way-more-than-decent work.
 
In three months, total sales for all three authors were underwhelming. The sole male writer sold a single copy in that period (and feels it might fall into the 'friends and family' exclusion clause but isn't positive). Even the best-selling author in this bunch took home under forty bucks -- and her "per hour" rate for the time she'd spent wouldn't dazzle anyone. But what if the authors lived in Azerbaijan?, we hear you ask. Good try but no. Even in Azerbaijan, it's crap wages. We didn't ask about expenses to date (such as cover costs, editor charges, etc) but we assume our friends are all currently in the red.
 
At the end of the day, we learned two things. One, it's tough to build an audience in only three months; and, two, e-publishing just might be the perfect get-poor-quick scheme.

...or it is, at least, as we write this blog. We're in Sin City to celebrate the wedding of Renée's sister-by-another-mother to a really good guy. See, we told you some still existed. But, oops!, now he's gone. So please excuse us if this post is a little light on the writing biz at this time. We're busy drinking champagne and playing baccarat. Actually, it's more like sipping at apple cider while losing at penny slots but you get the idea.
 
Coming into the city, we noticed the sign on your left. It's everywhere. You'll even see versions of it in the Luxor (our hotel for this adventure), where all things sell-able are Egyptian-themed or pyramid-shaped...except for this image. Postcards, t-shirts, key rings, ash trays, and on and on...and we wondered who was the wizard behind the Las Vegas welcome.

It turns out that Betty Willis, graphic designer, is the wizard who came up with the Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign. Created in 1959, it's probably her most famous piece -- and she's got some pretty impressive bits in her portfolio -- but she never copyrighted the LV thing. She knew it was money but she gave the piece away as a gift to the city.
 
To the best of our knowledge, BW is still alive and kicking. We think her gesture was pretty Fabulous....

...'cause when we said we wrote werewolf porn (all those many months ago) -- and when we said we were considering adding a dollop of werewolf sex into everything we wrote (only a few weeks ago) -- we were mostly kidding.
 
Mostly. After all, Wicked Games does have a hero who turns into a werewolf. There is some bed action...handcuffs, too, if that's your particular kink...but it doesn't qualify as "porn" according to true aficionados. We know because we've been doing some research.
 
Nope, not the real cover to WG.We like it, though.
 
Last week, in almost back-to-back phone calls, we heard from a pair of family members who have been following our writing career. One suggested we write faster ah, why didn't we think of that? and the other suggested we start writing the really racy stuff. "Just check how Open Your Legs for Me is doing," she suggested. "It's only like 16 pages long and it's selling buckets. It's in Kindle's top paid 500!" We checked it out and there really is a short story called OYLFM. Hmmm, okay. But, y'see, we don't really --
 
Then, she added, "Aphrodite Hunt wrote a sequel, too, kind of, called Thighs Wide Apart. It's still super short and it has one kinda stinky review...but it's still doing so much better than, uh...."
Than our stuff. Yeah, we know.
 
Or, at least, we know now.
 
Look, when we wrote Wicked Games, we knew we were writing a romance. It had sex in it (because, in grown-up life, sex is frequently intermixed with romance) and, originally, it had a sex scene with our hero in full werewolf-y lust. Doing lusty things. Concerned about even a hint of bestiality, the editorial staff at Cobblestone Press had us pull the scene. We thought then, and we think now, that they were mistaken. If our hero had turned into a poodle, yeah, we'd have been on the same page, but Dravon turned into a handsome, horny wolf MAN. Still, the folks at CP are the hot-and-heavy professionals so we went along with their judgement.
 
At the end of the day, WG is a romance-mystery without any true werewolf sex. Human sex, yes! Creature of the night sex, no! Now, if you'll excuse us, we need to get back to our research....

...and we don't mean all our royalties, either. We bought this little beauty with this month's royalties from one novella, Wicked Games, our steamy story currently being offered by the good folks at Cobblestone Press.
 
You might be wondering how, exactly, we managed to sell enough copies of our story to purchase a handbag that goes out the door, retail, for a couple of thousand dollars. Especially since our last name isn't Patterson, Koontz or King, and WG isn't exactly fresh to the market. We'd be wondering that, too, if we hadn't picked up the collector's item at the local Goodwill. Purchase price was fifteen smackeroos.

Not having much time, we couldn't do a through go-over while in the store. Once we were home, of course, our immediate concern was that this might not be a legitimate Chanel purse. Sure, thrift shops offer some wonderful bargains but still....
 
So we (i.e., Renée) did some investigation. She discovered that a legitimate Chanel handbag comes in only a few color options. One of those combos is black on white. Winner! A real Chanel bag is made from the finest calfskin, so smooth and soft you nearly pass out from the experience of touching the thing. Hmmm. Our bag feels pretty ordinary. Knowing their audience is paying for their name, the manufacturer labels "Chanel" all over the place, from hardware to tags to the interior lining. Winner! Because the Big Bucks Crowd wants the best of the best, the stitching is immaculate. So why is our stitching just a little bit...off?

Two hours into her research, Renée offered her expert opinion: "Fake." While she was working, the purse had somehow, almost magically, developed an unpleasant odor. "We didn't buy a Chanel," Renée said. "We're the proud owners of a Cha-smell."
 
The good news? We had just enough WG royalty money left over for a evening's meal at Taco Bell. Which is rather fitting for people with a limited edition Cha-smell in the back of their closet....

_ …Kate Hawkings caught our attention. She’d posted her emotions on her blog site and it gave us pause enough that we wandered through the site. The crying thing? It was one of those mid-day surges that everyone experiences now and then but the kind everyone pretends they never experience. Then we saw KH doing her very first video blog and it was charmingly awkward. It was exactly the kind of thing we’d try to do except, when she was done, we liked her even better.
 
If we ever do a vlog, when it’s complete, people will want to hunt us for sport.

Turns out, she’s always had a gift for writing (“I was once told that if my chosen career didn’t work out, I could make a living writing sympathy cards. I still don’t know if that was a good or bad thing”) and decided to write the stories she wanted to read. She says, “I love girls with a kick-ass attitude, whether they can actually kick ass or not…although my girls generally can.”

Would a kick-ass girl actually tell other people she felt like crying? We’re guessing, yes, they would, ‘cause Kate is fairly kick-ass herself. “I trained as a strength and conditioning couch,” she tell us, “studying exercise and nutrition at the University. When I decided to pursue self-publishing, I thought it would be the best option for me. I like the idea of doing everything myself and succeeding (or failing) because of my own efforts.”

Succeeding on your own exemplifies kick-assery, even if it’s worlds apart from our philosophy. Frankly, if you and you want to do everything necessary to make us a big success, we’d appreciate it.  We’ll stay at home and watch The Real Housewives.

Half of our writing team wanted to ask a couple of the standard ‘I’m interviewing a writer’ kind of questions, while the other one of us could have cared less but he got overruled. Happily, Kate answered the questions, anyway.  “The best thing about writing is, I finally have an outlet for all the crazy stuff going on in my head,” she said. “The worst thing? No matter how much work you put into it, no matter how many people tell you your work is good, there’s still that nagging voice at the back of your mind that tells you your writing is awful. You have to learn how to block the little gremlins out but sometimes they manage to sneak through.”

Her favorite writers? “I love Ilona Andrews’ Kate Daniels series, Richelle Mead’s Vampire Academy and Black Swan series, Harry Potter, Charlaine Harris’ Sookie Stackhouse novels, Suzanne Collins’ Hunger Games series (although Mockingjay made me want to throw the book across the room) and David Gemmell’s White Wolf.” Any novels that she disliked? “I prefer not to call them out.  If I enjoy reading something I’ll usually mention what I enjoy but, if I don’t like something, I’ll pretend I’ve never read it.”

But what about Frankenstein, P.I.? Did she love our electronic novelette  or did she really, really love our e-novelette? “I really enjoyed Frankenstein,” she told us. No, no, different book, we said.  “What was the title again?” she asked.

It's Frankenstein, P.I., we repeated.“Why…" she said, her voice going all weird and wonky, "I don’t think I’ve ever read it.”
 
Kate Hawkins' The Sphinx Project comes out in February, 2012. The novel's blurb reads like this:Not many people can say their entire existence has been one big lab experiment: poked and prodded by scientists, genetically modified to be the best and endure the worst, subjected to daily tests and trials that would kill a normal human. All Michaela wants is her own life, to be able to go to school, flirt with boys, maybe eat ice cream now and then. So when the chance to escape finally comes, Michaela and her sister grab it, taking their friends with them.

But they weren't the only ones to find their way out of those labs. Following close behind are another breed of creature, one that doesn't know the difference between right and wrong, who exist only to feed their own hunger. The appearance of a strange boy who seems too much like them to be a coincidence makes things even more confusing. But as the world begins to literally fall apart around them, Michaela must accept his help, especially when she could lose the very thing she holds dearest: her sister.