Half Past Midnight » JL Brackett

Mea culpa, mea culpa…

Family, Miscellaneous, Politics, Writing 1 Response »

Feb 132013

Sorry…

So it’s been a month since I posted anything here. Wow! First of all, I apologize. I know I told you I would be posting less frequently, but I honestly never intended for it to be a whole month. Still, it’s been a productive month, so I don’t feel like a complete loser. There have been the usual issues around the house. My dad’s been ill, my wife was ill, I was ill… we’ve just been a sickly bunch. LOL.

But I’ve gotten quite a bit done, too. I think my word count on Streets of Payne has increased by about 10k words since I last posted. Don’t get me wrong, there is still a lot to do on it, but the end is in sight. Yay!!

And I’ve made some decisions with regards to my last post. You know, the one where I threw in the towel and decided I’m going to quit trying to avoid the political infighting? Well, rather than let this blog turn into a long diatribe of politics and bickering, I decided I would dust off my old “Sm1ley’s Musings” page and post my rants there. I’ll link to them from here, but for the most part, this site will continue to be my “business” site, geared specifically to the craft of writing.

And to try to keep on a schedule that lets me write as much as possible, I’m going to try & keep these posts shorter. The majority of my time needs to remain focused on writing. As I’ve said before, if I want this to become a career, then I have to approach it in a businesslike fashion.

So, on that note, let’s see… other writing news….

Streets of Payne 06DEC2012

Streets of Payne – I’ve mentioned before that I was having problems with the artist I hired to do the cover art. I found several months ago that I was far from the only person that was having trouble getting her to respond. There was an entire thread on Kindleboards with various authors complaining about her lack of response (see “Anyone who bought covers from Ana Fagarazzi heard from her lately?“. She initially said she’d lost email service and also been involved in a motorcycle accident. Everyone calmed down, and it appeared for a while that she was getting back into the swing of things. I was happy to wait because the woman is incredibly talented, and I wasn’t in any big hurry. But this long journey with her began back in July, and now it’s mid-February. And once again, she seems to have disappeared. In December, she sent me the cover you see here. I was thrilled! I mean, that is an awesome pice of work. However, there are two minor changes I needed her to make, and I needed her to send me a licensing agreement so I could legally use the cover. I emailed her back, thanked her for the great artwork, and asked for the changes and license agreement. I haven’t heard back from her. Despite repeated emails and PMs in Facebook, she has refused to respond. Additionally, I’ve heard from other authors who contracted with her and she’s not responding to them, either. In one instance, it appears that the cover commissioned by one author was also sold to a second author for use on their book!

So, I can’t use the cover I paid for, I can’t get the artist to respond to any communication, I couldn’t trust her even if she did, and I’m running out of time. So here is the only look anyone is likely to ever get of the cover I was originally going to use. And now I have to step back and punt. I have to find another cover artist and hire them to do a whole new cover from scratch. And because I had my heart set on the one already done, anything else is going to take me some time to wrap my head around. It’s just a really frustrating situation.

Half Past Midnight - Sales have pretty much bottomed out. Last year was a hell of a year for HPM. The novel did so much better than I ever thought it would, and I am so grateful to those
of you who helped me with it. It was my first novel, and I learned a LOT from it. Honestly, if I had it to do over again, there are several things I would do differently. But I figure that’s as
it should be. I will always want to learn more, and I’ll always want to put out the best product I can. So HPM has taught me a lot, and will serve as a launch pad for another book later this year. But that’s for later.

Y12 – The sequel to HPM is still in the planning stages, but it keeps interrupting my flow while writing SoP. I find my conversations with Amber Payne are constantly interrupted by the characters of Y12. The bad thing is, I’m really fascinated by some of what they want to say, and often follow them off on a tangent, leaving poor Amber hanging in the lurch. I think maybe progress on SoP is slower than I would like because she’s pissed at me for ignoring her.

Explorers: Beyond the Horizon - This is the Dead Robots’ Society anthology I was a part of. I wrote a short story called The Burning Land that was accepted for the book, and I am actually quite proud of it. In fact, while I had no input into the creation of the anthology other than that one contribution, I really happy with the book as a whole, and am really proud to have been a part of it. Unfortunately, sales on it have been pretty abysmal. It’s pretty much what we all expected going in – anthologies as a whole simply don’t generally do well. It’s a shame because I think that short story is possibly the best thing I’ve written to date. Enough so that I would like to come back to it in the future to see about further exploring the world in which it takes place. But that’s for another time.

And for writing news, that’s it – except for this one little teaser…

You may recall that I mentioned that I was going to be working on a collaborative novel with Edward Lorn. I had it listed on the books as “EBS”. Well, he and I have decided to table that project indefinitely in favor of another. The main story line is straight from the twisted depths of Ed’s messed up mind (and I say that with love, E.), but the more we discussed it, the more I got drawn into it. By the end of our discussion, Ed had convinced me to try my hand at writing something so dark and disturbing that I honestly think this thing may give me trouble sleeping as we write it. I’ve never written horror before, but this guy has found a story that truly intrigues me. Yes people, Ed Lorn has pulled me over to the dark side. We plan to begin work on the novel this summer, and I think we’re probably going to make a teaser announcement soon, so watch for it.

All right, that’s really it now. For the writing schtuff, anyway. And if you’re interested in the more personal side of what makes me tick (or drives me crazy), keep an eye open for announcements about posts on my other site, “Sm1ley’s Musings“. In the meantime, stay safe everyone!

Happy New Year! (or “How about those resolutions?”)

Prepping, Publishing, Survival, Writing No Responses »

Jan 012013

Well, it appears we survived the dreaded December 21 apocalypse, so I suppose it’s time to get on with life. It’s now the first of a new year, and time for those dreaded resolutions.

Actually, that’s the wrong attitude, isn’t it? It’s time to grab the new year by the horns and take advantage of the opportunities presented. Yeah, it’s resolution time. So, first of all, health – I need to lose weight. I could stand to lose quite a bit, but I’m going to resolve to lose thirty by June and keep it off for the rest of the year. That’s going to be the harder part. I gave it half-hearted lip service a few months ago, lost a couple of pounds, and then entered the holidays with a full appetite. I haven’t gained any, but my weight loss stopped at two pounds. It’s time to change that.

Next – writing. I will finish Streets of Payne, and have it published before the end of the second quarter of next year. Additionally, I will have the first draft of the HPM sequel done, and will do everything within my power to have it published before the end of 2013. I can’t promise to actually have it published, because I’ve found that there are some pieces of the publishing puzzle over which I simply have no control. I don’t know what my editor’s schedule is like that far in advance (and neither will she at this point), just as I don’t know what the cover artist and formatter’s schedule is going to be like. But I can control the writing, so that is where I will concentrate my efforts.

Now for the more esoteric stuff. I’ve made no secret of the fact that I’m something of a survivalist. I simply view it as learning to embrace a self-reliant lifestyle. To that end, I’ve joined a web site called “13 Skills“. The site is an offshoot of “The Survival Podcast” forum, and is designed with the idea that those folks interested in learning to be more self-sufficient should take the opportunity to learn “13 in 13″, or thirteen new skills in 2013. I haven’t yet chosen thirteen skills, but the ones I’ve chosen so far are:

1. Aquaponics — Learn to build a balanced aquaponics system as research for upcoming book.

2. Archery — Acquire an inexpensive bow & arrows. Learn to shoot accurately. (Also useful as research for the upcoming HPM sequel.)

3. Concealed Weapons Permit — Acquire CHL.

4. Soap Making — Learn to make small batch soaps.

5. Sprouting — Sprout seedlings for spring garden.

6. Gardening — Learn and put into practice techniques for small footprint gardening. (Made a stab at this in the late fall, but it was just too late in the season, and everything has pretty much died.)

7. Cordage and Twining— Learn to make paracord items such as rescue belt & explore whether or not same technique can be used for heavier gauge cordage such as climbing rope.

8. Canning — Learn to can & put it into practice.

9. Fitness — Lose at least 30 lbs. & keep it off! (Already covered this one above.)

10. Water Catchment/Filtering — Acquire/build rain catchment system for back yard. Incorporate rainwater runoff for gardening.

That’s all I can think of right now. What about you? What are your plans for 2013?

Another week

Miscellaneous, Writing No Responses »

Dec 162012

First of all, I’m not going to address the terrible tragedy in Connecticut. I’m tired of the sensationalizing and politicizing of such a tragic event before the families of the victims have had a chance to mourn properly, and I refuse to be a part of it. All I will say is that my heart goes out to the victims and their families.

I will also mention that it has caused me to question exactly where my policy on not talking about politics here ends, and my freedom to address current events begins. But again, that’s a topic for another time.

In the meantime, I had the two-day giveaway of The Road to Rejas at the beginning of the week. It was an interesting experiment that has pretty much proven to me that Amazon is no longer interested in promoting that particular marketing strategy. Their algorithms no longer seem to take into account your title ranking before you went into “free mode”, but instead start you over once you come out. When R2R went free, it was ranked just under #17000 on Kindle. Afterwards, it shot off to an abysmal ranking of more than #69000. It is finally coming back down to where it was, but it was a scary few days. It was bad enough that I have to conclude that the ONLY advantage to putting a work out there for free is that it briefly gains a little attention, and gets your work out to a few new readers.

And speaking of which, I seem to be at a quandary here. I’ve gotten a few reviews on R2R, and for the most part, they are good. However, a consistent complaint is that the readers thought they were getting a full length novel, and were bummed to find it was only a novella. I’m not really sure what I can do about that. I put the fact that it is a novella in the book description on Amazon. And I put a subtitle on the cover that says “A Half Past Midnight novella”. I’m not sure what else I can do to let people know. Ideas, anyone?

On the Streets of Payne front, I’ve made some good progress, getting another two thousand words in this weekend. The bad news is that this is turning into another of those stories where the more I write, the larger the story grows. I had originally envisioned it coming in at a bit over eighty thousand words. It is beginning to look like it may be closer to one hundred thousand, instead. And of course, I haven’t heard back from the cover artist since December 8. The work she’s done so far has been phenomenal, but it’s still not completed. (sigh)

Ah! And I’m participating in a giveaway on Goodreads. The “Apocalypse Whenever” group is throwing a Mayan Non-Apocalypse Giveaway, and I have volunteered a signed proof copy of HPM, as well as three kindle copies of R2R.

All right, that’s enough for now. I say it almost every post, but it’s especially apropos this week.

Be safe everyone.

Catching up

Writing No Responses »

Dec 092012

Hello all,

Yeah, it’s been a couple of weeks since I posted anything. Things have been pretty busy at work, and there are the holiday preparations, and I can make all sorts of other excuses. But the fact is that I’ve just been off my game and haven’t been keeping up with my blogging. Sorry guys. But I’m trying to get back into the swing.

Streets of Payne is coming along and it looks like the cover work is almost done. You know, when I published HPM last year, I had the book completed and ready to go for several weeks before it actually published. The hold up was the cover. I was so new to the business that I didn’t fully understand all the various pieces that comprise the publishing puzzle. I concentrated so much of my effort on the writing, editing, and publishing aspects that I didn’t realize I had overlooked overseeing the cover art. So when I got to the end of the “assembly line”, I found there was a key ingredient missing. Talk about your “DOH!” moments.

This time around, I’m going to have the opposite problem (if you can call it a problem). The cover work is almost done. The artwork is pretty freaking awesome, and I can’t wait to do a cover reveal once the finishing touches are in place.

Unfortunately, the book is still at least a couple of months away from being completed. And you don’t want to do a public cover reveal months before the book is ready to publish. Do that, and it’s like a big tease for people. It’s just cruel, isn’t it? Guess I need to think about how to approach the whole thing. If you have any suggestions, please don’t hesitate to tell me. Either comment here, or you can email me privately at jlb.author@gmail.com.

On another front, I’m participating in a Red Adept Select giveaway. Follow the link and enter, or enter on Facebook for the chance to win all ten of the Kindle books listed. Ten books!

Go, enter. And I wish you all the best of luck.

Be safe everyone.

Listening to the iPod again

Writing 2 Responses »

Oct 212012

Streets of Payne – My commute to and from the day job each day gives me approximately forty-five minutes to an hour of down time. Rather than listening to music (which eventually becomes monotonous for me) or talk radio (which almost immediately gets me angry and has me yelling at the radio), I listen to podcasts. In a way, that’s what got me serious about my writing. I was listening to Podiobooks on my iPod and heard a sponsored ad in one of them about a podcast called The Dead Robots’ Society. Their tag line was “for aspiring writers, by aspiring writers”, and I remembered how much I enjoyed writing. I started listening to the Robots and began learning about the new business model that is modern publishing. Since then, I have also become a big fan of Nathan Lowell’s Talking On My Morning Walk (personal tidbits from a fantastic indie writer), and Jack Spirko’s The Survival Podcast (because yes, I am very much a proponent of a self-sufficient lifestyle – call it “prepping” or “survivalism” if you like, but to me it’s just common sense).

My kids like to joke about my listening habits, often lamenting that Dad would rather listen to “the talkie men” than to music. But the thing for me is that between those three regular podcasts, I’ve found a balance between keeping the creative juices flowing, learning more about the crafts in which I am most interested, and allowing my mind to wander just enough to keep the storylines percolating in the back of my head.

But on rare occasions, it stops working. It usually starts with a slightly uneasy feeling that something is off. I find myself unable to concentrate on what Justin and company are discussing on the DRS podcast, or on what Nathan was just talking about on TOMMW. Sometimes I find myself getting too caught up in what Spirko has to say on TSP, and forgetting that I’m also supposed to be letting a plot air out in my hindbrain while I listen. Whatever it is, I’ve learned to recognize the symptoms by now and whenever I spot them in myself, I know what I have to do. The iPod goes off, gets packed into the console, and I refuse to allow myself to listen to any more of my “talkie men” until I figure out what’s bothering me, and what I need to do to fix it.

Just recently, I felt that niggling in my hindbrain… the lack of concentration that let me know something was off. I’d had a decent run of writing, reached the end of a sub-plot arc, and then stalled. Something was wrong and the plot wouldn’t gel for me. In order to force my mind to focus, I decided that my commute time would be better served by concentrating on SoP and the problems I was having with it. So I put the iPod away and began the mental exercise that forced me to openly concentrate on identifying the problem. It took almost a week before I realized that the antagonist in my current work in progress (Streets of Payne) had some conflicting motivations. He was acting against himself, and my subconscious had evidently been screaming to get my attention.

Finally! Step one was completed. I had identified the problem. But that led to another problem. Once I examined the character’s motives, it turned out that he wasn’t really the antagonist after all. So who was? What character had sufficient motivation and strength of character to serve as a worthy antagonist to my protagonists? It took another week and a half before I was satisfied with my conclusions, but I finally figured out who it was. More importantly, they told me how they pulled it off. It’s taken some tedious rewrites to make sure the plot and character changes worked, but I’m pretty excited about the changes.

And I pulled my iPod back out. Once again, my daily commutes are filled with the musings and teachings of my chosen instructors, and SoP is flowing again. I still don’t get much time to write, but I hope to finish the first draft by the end of the year.

12P – What is 12P? It’s the designation I’ve given to the HPM sequel that won’t leave me alone. Part of the reason it took me so long to figure out the problems with SoP is that as I tried to work my way through the problems there, 12P kept intruding. Every time I started my commute with the intent to hammer through my SoP issue, my mind would detour to what needed to happen in 12P. It was both exhilarating and frustrating at the same time.

SoP sequel? – Yes, to top it off, I had an idea for another SoP book. Not sure when I’ll get to it, but there it is. Yet another book for the idea factory.

All right, that’s it for now. Time for bed and I really need that beauty sleep. Stay safe, everyone.

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