Join My Mailing List!

Based on advice I've received from the podcast The Sell More Books Show and the example of my friend Alex Hughes, I have decided to set up a mailing list. I used MailChimp, something I learned how to use when I worked for Kiss The Limit Productions a few years ago.

Why should you join? Joining this list allows you to keep up with my various pursuits, including my short fiction and novels, the podcast Myopia: Defend Your Childhood, movie and book reviews, and interesting things I find via Twitter. You'll know when my products are available on Amazon or elsewhere for free or at a reduced cost. There will also be free fiction and background material available for subscribers only. If you're interested in science fiction, fantasy, horror, science, writing, or related topics, you'll love being on my mailing list.

And don't worry. I won't spam you with wave after wave of e-mails, I promise. :)

Here's a direct link to sign up. Let me know if you don't get the verification e-mail. I'll send out a test newsletter soon.

Thinking of Starting a Newsletter...

I've been reading some advice on writing and marketing's ones books (like Your First 1,000 Copies) and listening to the Sell More Books Show podcast. Something that's come up a lot is to have an e-mail newsletter. My writing-group cohort Alex Hughes has a newsletter, as does small-press rock star (I didn't come up with that moniker) William Meikle.

I worked with MailChimp for a film-company internship and later for a client not long ago, so I've created an account with them. However, I have not yet sent anything out via said newsletter, in part due to a bunch of real-life obligations.

(I had the first inklings of the idea months if not years ago, but never got around to it. Let this be a life lesson--if there's a period in your life where you've got a lot of free time, don't waste it. I could have had the template set up by now and just plugged in new stuff as I went along.)

So, dear readers, I've got a question. What kind of content would you like to see in a hypothetical e-mail newsletter from me? The only ideas I've got so far are news articles gleaned from Twitter or from my blog (probably lots of movie reviews), and links to the film podcast I'm part of when new episodes appear. Alex has included original short fiction in her newsletter, which is certainly an option. Your First 1,000 Copies recommends I focus on what's in it for the reader, but a lot of the ideas there (like free workout tips) don't seem relevant to the content I can easily produce or the audience I'd like to build.

Let me know. I can take suggestions via comments on this post or via Twitter at @MatthewWQuinn.

October Writing Contest Results

As October ends and November, the National Novel-Writing Month, begins, here's the update on my writing contest with my friend Lauren. I've written 3,180 words.

The single largest amount of text is for a later book in the Wastelands world. My friend Jeff Baker, at writing group, suggested more intrigue in Grendel's harem. Although Grendel's harem is too small for the kind of shenanigans that went on in the Ottoman harems (or the less-severe sort in that of the Sultan of Oman, which you can read about in Memoirs of an Arabian Princess from Zanzibar, one of the books I'm reading now for graduate school), when the patriarch is away, there's still room for plotting and treachery. And so I wrote the beginnings of an alliance between two concubines forming. The memoirs I read will provide some of the basis--graduate school has been a great research opportunity as well as a potential career boon.

The next largest major block of text is for a political project based on some of my earlier blog posts. I'd checked out Foreign Policy Begins at Home and wrote 1,000 words based on the ideas author Richard N. Haass has in the book. His suggestion that China could someday do to the United States what the U.S. did to Britain during the Suez Crisis is reason alone to fear an overly-large national debt.

I also wrote a few hundred words for another project. I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about it because of the uniqueness of the concept, but hopefully it's something I can write fairly quickly. To give away a little bit, it's a faux history rather than a narrative, so it's dominated by world-building (which I'm good at), not characters (where I'm weaker).

However, most of the month's writing time was dedicated to revising Battle for the Wastelands. I spent October cutting it to 100,000 words (without cutting plot, characters, etc--just a matter of things like using "both" instead of "both of them" writ large) to make it easier to sell. Now I've gotten it to 99,000 words and I'm going to try to cut it to 98,000 during the month of November, which my friend Alex Hughes said is a "sweet spot" because some publishers think it can be cut further and others think there's room for expansion.

Matthew W. Quinn's First YouTube Interview

Earlier, I told you, my loyal readers, I would soon be on YouTube. Well, the video is done and ready for your entertainment:



(That's me on the left, with Thomas on the right. Here's the original video on YouTube. You can use that as a base to look at Thomas's other YouTube videos.)

I hope you all like it. I came across Delilah S. Dawson video-blogging earlier this year and thought that would be a good idea, but my lack of a dedicated video camera and editing equipment would make doing that more difficult. Luckily I've got friends with YouTube channels... :)

This interview features my providing some background to my self-published short stories and advice for aspiring writers.

Here are the Amazon pages of James R. Tuck and Alex Hughes. Here's my Amazon page, where you can buy the short stories I'm talking about here. Here's Katherine's blog, which includes a bibliography.

What I'm Working On At The Moment

Projects

*Battle for the Wastelands

*"Coil Gun" Screenplay

Last Thursday, my Kennesaw writing group reviewed the entirety of Battle for the Wastelands.  Got some good critiques (grenade explosions don't throw people, they shred them) and some out-of-left-field critiques (including one suggestion to have the Merrill army destroyed in the climax and have Andrew and friends set out on their own).  Revising accordingly, with the deadline DragonCon. I did get a request from a publisher last year for the full manuscript when it was done and I might send it out earlier.

One suggestion was to cut POVs to reduce overall word count, since the current draft is 105,000 words (the draft they reviewed was 104,000 words) and many novels of its type are much shorter.  I have a rather specific vision for the overall series and much of the material is set up for stuff that happens later.  Radically changing the story at the moment isn't going to fly.  However, fat lot of good plans for later in the series do if one cannot sell the first book.

I've also decided to retitle the later Wastelands novels.  Escape from the Wastelands is now Battle for the Wastelands: Escape, while the planned third novel is Battle for the Wastelands: War.  This is in the vein of my friend Alex's upcoming novel Clean, whose full title is technically Clean: A Mindspace Investigations Novel, as well as my friend James' novella That Thing At The Zoo, which is subtitled A Deacon Chalk Occult Bounty Hunter Novella.  Heck, look at the Pirates of the Caribbean films and how the first one had the subtitled The Curse of the Black Pearl, while the subsequent films had subtitles as well.  A nice, distinctive series name like Mindspace Investigations or Deacon Chalk: Occult Bounty Hunter is good branding.  Although Andrew Sutter is the protagonist, he's not so central to the story that I can label everything "An Andrew Sutter Novel."  Heck, Andrew isn't even in Son of Grendel.

I've also gotten a lot of work done on the "Coil Gun" screenplay.  Current page count is 77.  A friend of mine who is a TV writer out in Los Angeles says that the bare minimum is 90 pages, so I need 13 more pages from somewhere.  I got it to 77 pages by starting the story out much earlier with the Afrikaners capturing some ethnic-Indian Australian commandos assisting Indian rebels and the angry response of the Afrikaner government to that.  I don't think I've adapted all of the material from the short story into the screenplay just yet--for example, there's the Afrikaner spacecraft carrying multiple nuclear warheads deployed against Albuquerque--but I'm probably going to need to come up with some extra stuff.  All I can think of is a new subplot involving a character's wife who is a teacher, but I haven't developed that much.

I haven't been working on a whole lot else at the moment due to the primary revising Battle is taking and various real-life job issues.

Notes From A Book-Signing

Last night I had the fortune of being able to visit the FoxTale Book Shoppe in Woodstock for the premiere party for my friend James R. Tuck's new book Blood and Silver, in which monster-hunter Deacon Chalk gets involved in a civil war in the lycanthropic community.  The event also hosted readings from friends Kalayna Price, Delilah S. Dawson, Janice Hardy, Annabel Joseph, and Alex Hughes.

(Warning: Annabel Joseph's writing is *extremely* risque.)

Also attending was Carol Malcolm, chief moderator of the Horror and Dark Fantasy track at Dragoncon.  When the readings were done, she asked questions.

I was exercising that afternoon and cleaning up took longer than I planned, so I arrived in the middle of Kalayna's reading.  When she finished, it was James' turn.

"Have you all read the first chapter, the sample that was in book one?" he asked.

He decided to pick a chapter at random from Blood and Silver, Ch. 16.  Before he started reading, he explained that although the most common lycanthropes are predators like werewolves, in real life, prey animals grossly outnumber predators.  Thus, you're more likely to encounter a were-possum or were-squirrel or even a were-zebra than a werewolf or were-lion.  He then read from Ch. 16, which is the aftermath of a battle in which Deacon suffers a head injury.

Afterward, Malcolm began her questions.  Here are some of the things I learned from the answers:

*James read an urban fantasy he was told was dark and gritty and was very disappointed.

"I put the book down and said, 'I can write better shit than that,'" he said.  This is how his first novel, Blood and Bullets, came to be.

His favorite authors are Robert E. Howard, author of the Conan stories, and Don Pendleton, who created the character Mack Bolan.  If the Deacon Chalk stories were made into movies, he would like Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson to play Deacon and hoped Robert De Niro could play Father Mulcahey, a Catholic priest who drinks, smokes, and is apparently some kind of Special Forces veteran.  Kevin Bacon could play Larson, a wannabe vampire hunter who becomes a scientist (for Deacon) and wizard (which great upsets Deacon).

*As a child, Delilah's favorite books were Watership Down by Richard Adams and Pet Semetary by Stephen King.  When she read Outlander by Diane Gabaldon, she realized romantic fiction can have really good plots.  She emphasized her novel Wicked As They Come started out as an adventure novel, with the romantic plot added later.  It's a real story--not just people talking. When asked what a film adaptation of her book would look like, she said it would be something directed by Tim Burton.  Someone suggested Johnny Depp play the lead, provoking general laughter.

*Alex first got involved in speculative fiction at 13, when her grandfather gave her one of the Pern books.  When asked about adapting her novel Clean (which comes out September 7) into a film, she suggested Benedict Cumberbatch could play protagonist Adam, if he toned it down a little first.  James suggested Adrian Brody could play Adam as well.

This provoked an intervention from Delilah:

"I spent the whole Predator movie waiting for someone to kill him," she said.  "He was that annoying."

(I actually have Adrian Brody as an actor to play anti-hero Patrick Rassam in my Vasharia novels, along with Oded Fehr.)

*Annabel started writing her fiction for fellow moms-with-kids and it eventually accumulated to the point she had a book.  Given her subject matter, that's a bit shocking.  However, given how popular 50 Shades of Grey is, I really shouldn't be.

*I didn't really get a whole lot from Kaylana.  Sorry.  :)

I also learned about a website called Wordle, in which you can plug in text and see how often a word is used.  It expresses this in the form of a graphic, with words used many times represented by large circles and words used few times represented using small circles.  My friend Nick expressed concerns about the amount of use words like "reckon" and "arroyo" got in Battle for the Wastelands, so I will put Battle and Son of Grendel in the site sometime soon to see if there are any problems.  James said if he put his novels in there, the f-word would predominate.

Possible Change of Plans for "Battle"

My original plan for Battle for the Wastelands was to take it to my Kennesaw writing group's novel enthusiasts after my beta readers are through with it, probably sometime in early June or post-July 4.  I would revise according to their suggestions and then wait until January to submit to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest.  After all, that's how my friend Alex Hughes got a book deal.

However, I am seriously considering a change of plans.  Right now, steampunk and young-adult dystopian fiction are really popular, and Battle can be credibly described as both.  To publish a book takes around a year or so after acceptance (getting the editing, marketing, etc. set up), so waiting an additional few months on top of however long it takes me to find a publisher (which is not guaranteed) risks "missing my moment" so to speak. 

However, Sean C.W. Korsgaard, the first beta reader to finish Battle (he gave it a very good review) warned the trend might last for years, so it's not "now or never."  He said paranormal romance has only started to slow down years after the success of Twilight and I should make the series as good as possible rather than try to cash in on The Hunger Games. 

One must remember the study showing how children who waited for two marshmallows when given the choice of one now or two later ended up doing better in life.  I've never participated in that sort of experiment, but I did take a job at The Griffin Daily News, even though it was in a small town far from my friends and I could have signed on for a DeKalb County weekly, because it was in the long run better for my career.

Either way, I won't change my short-term plan.  I'll still wait for comments from my remaining beta readers, revise Battle accordingly, and then submit to the Kennesaw group.  Things will only diverge once I revise based on the Kennesaw recommendations.  The original plan was to sit tight, work on Escape from the Wastelands (the second book) and Son of Grendel (a prequel e-novella), and wait for January.  The new plan would involve looking for agents soon afterward.

I still might end up entering ABNA anyway if I cannot find an agent by January.  Doing well at ABNA will make a manuscript more marketable, after all, and if I don't get an agent due to poor novel quality, ABNA critiques might help me improve the manuscript enough to get one.  Given how agents can get a writer a much better deal than working with a publisher on my own, I'd only try to market the book myself at utmost need.

The First Draft of "Battle for the Wastelands" Is Done

I took last Friday off in order to have a three-day weekend for writing, as was once suggested by my immediate superior at the Griffin Daily News.  I figured I'd just get a chapter or two done, and then I got ambitious.  I decided I was going to complete the first whole draft Battle for the Wastelands.

(I say "whole draft" because between my own tinkering and cycling it through writing groups, a lot of chapters, particularly the early ones, have changed a lot.)

Two chapters on Friday, two chapters on Saturday, and two chapters on Sunday.  The novel is now done, coming in at just over 102,000 words.

These last couple of days, I've left it alone.  I've heard suggestions to let a newly-completed manuscript "cool" for weeks, months, or even a year.  However, one of my writing groups has seen all but the last six incomplete chapters, so that really isn't an option.  The maximum word count is 10,000 words and the current word count for those last six is around 12,000.  I'm going to try to cut as much as possible without sacrificing action or character and if I can get it 10,000 or below, I'll bring it before the Lawrenceville group in one big block.  If not, two smaller blocks of three chapters each.  The entire manuscript will have been critiqued by them in either mid or late March, since the meetings are two weeks apart.

Once that's done and I make revisions based on group members' comments, I've got a few friends who have agreed to take a look at the entire package.  After they review it and I make further revisions, I'll bring it before the Kennesaw group as a whole package.  At this rate, that will probably be sometime over the summer.

My plan so far is to submit it to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards when they open up again in early January.  If I'd rushed, I could have had it complete in time for this year's contest, but it would not be the best possible product.  Even if one is not the ultimate winner of the contest, one can still get a book deal out of it like my friend Alex Hughes, who was a semi-finalist, did.

However, DragonCon is a good place for networking and I did talk to a publisher last time that seemed interested in Battle.  "Placing" in ABNA is a good set of laurels to attach to a manuscript and worth waiting a few months for, but it's always good to have multiple options and the steampunk craze won't last forever.  Sometimes it's a good idea to strike while the iron is hot.

I'm told publishers prefer first-time writers' manuscripts be fewer than 100K words.  As far as people I know are concerned, James R. Tuck's Blood and Bullets is 81Kwords, while some unpublished novels from Matt Schafer are in the upper-80K to mid-90K range.

So that's my most recent productivity update.  I think my next projects will be to finish a new short story inverting TVTropes' "Doomed Home Town" trope for the next meeting of the Kennesaw group and work more on Escape from the Wastelands (the second book in the series).

Productivity Update, Including Possible Future Anthology

Current projects:

*Battle for the Wastelands

*First story featuring Andrew Patel, tentatively titled "Ubermensch."

*Second story featuring Andrew Patel, tentatively titled "Needs Must."

Awhile back, I sent out a suggestion to members of my writing group that we put together an anthology of short fiction we could sell for our own profit or to make money for a charity.  After a lengthy chain of e-mails and Facebook discussions, we decided to create an anthology of superhero stories.  Yesterday at my writing group, we set a deadline for Nov. 1 for the first drafts to be submitted, with Nov. 15 as the secondary deadline.  The theme is "Southern Superheroes."  The stories thus far (mine and another writer who doesn't have a blog or non-personal Facebook page I can link to) are set in Atlanta and Mobile.

Originally we were going to use Amazon publishing to sell this, since Matt Schafer had attempted to sell a short story entitled "Heroic Times" some years ago and was told superhero stories were impossible to sell.  However, at Saturday's meeting, both James Tuck and Alex Hughes, who have book deals right now, said that this is no longer the case.  We decided to get the anthology as good as we could make it and seek out a "real" publisher for it.

My contribution will be two villain-protagonist stories starring Andrew Patel, a half-Indian biomedical engineer who lives by the creed of the German philosopher Nietzsche.  He seeks to transcend humanity using technological means and funds this by alternatively working for and preying on members of Atlanta's criminal class.  "Ubermensch" is completed; "Needs Must" is perhaps a fifth done.

"Ubermensch" is on draft four now.  I am in the process of incorporating suggestions from this writing group, such as working in more Nietzschean philosophy and emphasizing Patel's struggle with his own envy in his battle with the hero Silverbolt--Nietzsche wrote extensively about how (according to him) the weak envy the strong and seek to tear them down rather than improve themselves.  I should be able to finish this fairly quickly--the most extreme suggestion would involve adding some additional content at the beginning of a scene.

Today has been a very productive day as far as "Needs Must" is concerned.  Last night, I plugged in the title and contact information (per Standard Manuscript Format) and marked off the different sections.  Today I wrote 1,600-odd words, just under half during my aggravating experiment with taking MARTA to do some chores at my church (I ended up missing the chores and there were delays in the northbound train so it took awhile to get home too) and the rest this afternoon.

Due to the November deadline, chances are I'll be focusing on my two stories and additional anthology work rather than Battle for the Wastelands.  However, I have been able to write some material from the points of view of the tyrant Grendel and the rebel chief Alonzo Merrill that takes place later in the story.  Unfortunately, the next unfinished chapter doesn't have a whole lot to it yet, so I won't be taking Battle to the writing group anytime soon.

Good News for My Friend Alex

On Aug. 2, after the novel-focused spinoff of my Kennesaw writing group reviewed the current draft of Amanda Williamson's novel Legacy of the Werewolf, Matt Schafer and I walked Alex Hughes back to her car.  On the way there, we learned the good news that Alex had sold her novel Clean to the publisher Penguin, more specifically its Roc imprint.

Here's the page on Alex's site where she makes the announcement:

A Dream Realized: A Two-Book Deal

Based on this blog post, it seems the pivotal decision that led to the book deal was submitting Clean to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award contest.  Apparently a lot of agents and publishers are interested in stories that do well in the contest and given how the publisher contacted Alex rather than the other way around, I think the publisher found the novel.

Those of you who've got a completed book, it might be a good idea to send it to Amazon.  Of course, you should be absolutely, positively sure it's ready to go when you do that.  After all, Alex went through multiple drafts of Clean before it hit ABNA.  She brought it before the novel group fairly late in the cycle, since she mentioned having gone through several drafts at the meeting.  I recommend joining writing groups, either in-person groups like can be found through meetup.com or all-online groups like Critters.  They've been a big help to me and I credit one of my groups with helping me sell "Coil Gun."

About what's in her novel, I'm not going to go much beyond the blurb on the blog-post to avoid spoiling it nearly a year in advance.  It's not really my cup of tea--my tastes in science-fiction tend to be more technological and more violent--but it's a well-done story.  Alex is a better writer than I am, especially in the field of character development. 

(For the record, she's the one who called Battle for the Wastelands a "boy book" and suggested I send it to Baen.  However, she said if I elaborated on the characterization more, I could send it to a wider variety of markets.  I'll have to work on that, once I actually finish.  70,000 words done, probably 20,000 to 30,000 to go.)

Plus, by setting it in Atlanta, she's writing about a familiar environment and is less likely to make mistakes about street names and the like.