All Things From My Brain » author

Guest Post: The Author Platform

Patrick Hester — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 13:00:21 +0000

A little while ago, I put up a post titled ‘I’d like to blog for you’. The concept was simple – I’d write a blog post for your blog, based on a subject or topic of your choosing, and vice versa.

The first person to take me up on this was Brian over at The New Author. I suggested that he write up a little something about the Author Platform, a new concept running around these days. Here’s his guest post.

The Author Platform
By Brian Knight

Congratulations; your book is done. As you sit back and enjoy the euphoria of finishing your very first novel a cruel specter creeps into your mind. How are you going to get noticed?

Wait a minute; I need to get an agent or a publisher first. They will take care of all that business. My work is done; all I need to do is sit back and wait for the royalty checks to come in.

Hang on partner. You’re not even close to done. The easy part is writing the story. Yep, I said it, writing the story is the easy part. Part of the puzzle when looking for an agent or publisher is your ability to identify an audience or platform for your book. They want to know that people are eager and ready to purchase your book right now; as soon as it rolls off the press.

Well, that sounds great, how do I develop an audience or platform? I’m glad you asked. First you need to understand that there are no magical bullets when it comes to getting readers to buy your book. What you can do is target the audience who will enjoy your book the most and focus on them. For example, if you are writing a mystery/thriller novel then you don’t want to introduce yourself or your book to a book group discussing romance novels. You can but it will not produce much in the way of results. If you wrote a Science Fiction novel then look for groups, functions, networks and individuals who enjoy and discuss Science Fiction novels.

Okay, we’ve identified our audience but that is a little different from an author’s platform. Building a platform is the method in which we gain name recognition. How do we do that? In the age of blogging and social networking, building a platform has gained a global reach. We need to remember though that a platform can start right in our own neighborhood. What I’m getting at is this – start a blog, get on Twitter and other social networks but also get involved in book clubs, libraries and functions in your neighborhood. This grass roots effort will pay off in the end.

This begs the question when do I start developing my platform? Unlike targeting your audience, which you do while you are writing or shortly after completion, we should begin building our platform as soon as we decide we want to be an author. It is never too early to start networking and making connections. The bigger your platform is the better.

You now have your book ready but you’ve also started a blog and jumped on Twitter. Hang on for a second here, you don’t have to start a blog or get on Twitter; look around and find networks you are comfortable with and start there. Alright, back to our regularly scheduled post; once you’re on these sites and you’re making the rounds in your neighborhood there are a few important things to remember.

We are making connections not selling a soon to be published book or a newly published book. If people feel as if all you are doing is pushing your book on them then they will turn away and reject you. I know, you’ve seen/heard it before and I’m sure it got on your nerves but it’s amazing how easy it is to fall into this practice.

Be honest. Honesty and sincerity go a long way. Don’t be anything you’re not; just be yourself and everything will work out for the better.

Get to know those you are connecting with. You never know what you’ll learn from these connections.

This is the most important one; have fun. Connecting with people and meeting new people is an enjoyable experience. Have fun; let your personality show through in your blog, tweets and social events.

So what we are looking at when building an author platform is making connections in our neighborhood and on the Internet. Reach out to everyone but as soon as you identify your audience make a focused effort to reach out to them too. Don’t sell your book to them; get to know them and allow them to get to know you as an author and regular person. Be honest at all times. Finally, make sure you have fun. If you’re having fun you’ll want to continue building your platform long after your first book is published.

Promoting your name and book(s) starts with the author’s platform. Building this platform is not a sprint; it’s a marathon that will last as long as your passion for writing does. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and build that platform.

About Brian Knight:

Brian Knight is the creator of ‘The New Author;’ a blog for new writers trying to understand the world of publishing. He is also co-owner of Premium Promotional Services which is geared to provide massive exposure for authors and their books.

Brian has dreams of becoming a published author. His first novel is currently being reviewed by a publisher while his second is in the works. Aside from fiction, Brian is a published poet; having poems in both books and magazine.

You can find him on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/thenewauthor

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/sb.knight1

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Advice for all unpublished writers

Patrick Hester — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:19:36 +0000

I thought I would take a moment to summarize all the advice out there on the web and in books and magazines for us unpublished authors. Hopefully you will find this as insightful and illuminating as I have.

Here it is:

Write.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Meeting a Legend: L.E. Modesitt Jr.

Patrick Hester — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 20:16:06 +0000

(Edit: Mister Modesitt sent me an email asking that I clarify a couple things, which I am more than happy to do – as I said, I was relying on my own memory here. So I have gone through and -fixed- errors, using strikethrough in red so you can see where I messed up and bold italics where he has corrected me. Enjoy! ~P)

Meeting a hero is a curious thing.

My family hails from Chicago, so we are supporters of Chicago sports to this day and no matter where we live. When the Bears won the Superbowl, had the Superbowl Shuffle and were all around celebrities in the ’80’s, we were right there cheering them on despite being 2000 miles away in California.

Fame has a way of changing a person, twisting them. Look at all the tabloids if you need proof.

My Uncle, a brick layer in Chicago back in the day, had the opportunity to work on Walter Payton’s home. Thrilled, he was also very nervous. After all, this was Walter Payton. My Uncle would see him every day (Payton was retired from football when my Uncle worked for him), coming and going. It took him a little while to screw up the courage to say anything other than ‘good morning’ or ‘good evening’ to the Superbowl champ. When he did, he was delighted to find that he was just a guy, and a very nice one at that.

They chatted several times, got an autograph or two – overall a really fantastic experience for a fan.

I had a similar encounter last Saturday at a local Barnes & Noble when I had the chance to chat with one of my favorite authors, L.E. Modesitt Jr.

If you are unfamiliar with his work, check it out on his site. To say that he is prolific is an understatement. An understatement of an understatement. The guy really does write a LOT.

I’ve told the story before and I’ll retell it again here briefly; I took a job that moved me to Tennessee in 1999. Bored, lonely and traveling all the time, I rediscovered fantasy and scifi books and began reading a lot. With an eye to find authors who had multiple books or series of books, I came across Modesitt on a sojourn down to a local Knoxville bookstore. His shelf had a lot of books in it. Me being me, I checked the inside cover to see where I should start. That ended up being ‘The Magic of Recluse’. I read it ravenously and was immediately hooked.

I went back to the bookstore and bought the next couple of books in the ’series’ (Recluse is stretched out over thousands of years and rarely shows the same characters in more than two books) – ‘The Towers of the Sunset’ and ‘The Magic Engineer’. The rest is history, so to speak. I have continued to purchase his books when they come out (he has something like 40 books out there people!), so when I saw a notice that he was coming to town to do a reading and sign books (he has two new ones out in hardcover – ‘Imager‘ and ‘Haze‘), I just had to meet him.

He was older than I imagined him being. I’ve never looked for any photos of him online, so I also wasn’t entirely sure that he was male either (I don’t read the acknowledgements in books most of the time – if I had, I would have known he was a guy).

He sat at a very small table, covered in a green cloth with two piles of his books laid out for people to snag and have him sign. Behind him, arranged on this massive book case/display, were all of his books. There were a lot of them, some paperbacks, some in hardcover. Dressed in a dark shirt with a bright blue tie and floral patterned silk vest, he somehow brought to mind Mr. Myxlplyx from Superman – I don’t know why. Perhaps it was the impish grin and twinkle in his eyes whenever someone asked him a question – which seemed to quite genuinely delight him.

I arrived early, but there was already a crowd. Not a lot of people, not what I expected anyway – just about 20 of us sitting in chairs arranged around the table classroom style. Modesitt was taking questions, preferring that over reading excerpts from his books.

“I’ve heard people read and I’ve heard them read well. I do not read well.”

I’m gonna quote him as best as I can recall but it might be paraphrasing in the end. I apologize folks – it’s the best I can do.

He took a lot of questions and, as I said a second ago, seemed genuinely delighted to do so. He was very warm, intelligent and open. He tells a story as well as he writes them, a tricky thing that, and every question triggered a story. I am not much of a reader myself, so I imagined that this was similar to how one of these things would go were I sitting on the other side of the table, which I probably will be someday. Working without a net, he told a wonderful story regarding J.V. Jones, another favorite author of mine. Said she was absolutely drop dead gorgeous and, at an event where they were billed together to do a signing, most everyone came simply to stare at her.

“They could care less that I was there. They all wanted to see her.”

I was able to ask several questions as the rest of those gathered seemed a bit timid. I always waited, politely, during the lull before putting my hand up – didn’t want it to seem like I was hogging all his time. Luckily, this seemed to illustrate that it really was okay to ask questions as others started to pipe up, which further delighted him. I also liked that my questions elicited nods and “oh yeahs!” from those around me.

When asked about the state of the publishing industry he said he was worried. “I am one of the lucky ones. Thanks to you guys, my fans, my sales have stayed steady. Now, they aren’t increasing but nor are they decreasing, and that’s important. I think technology is catching up to us. Ereaders and the like – these need to settle down and people need to become used to them and then maybe we’ll see some stabilization.”

When asked, “You seem to publish two books a year. How do you do it and still have a life?” This was from me. Smart ass through and through (the ‘life’ comment).

“I write two and a half books a year and have for the past fifteen/twenty years. I have six children. I started writing when the last left the house. That’s important to remember. I wake up every morning when the alarm goes off at 5:45 am. I get up and I walk the dogs. Then I make breakfast for my lovely wife who has an 80 hour week. I go for a quick run (2 1/2 – 4 miles in the hills), then return home and take a shower. I sit down at the computer at 7 am between 8:30 & 9 am and I stay there, writing, until between 7 and 9 pm. Every day.”

When asked about word count, he said, “Around 25,000 words a week Generally around 2,500 words a day. That doesn’t include my blog or the occasional forward or acknowledgment in someone else’s book.”

Wow. Just – wow.

Like me, he doesn’t outline his books beforehand. “I don’t do outlines, no. I have my own style of writing. There’s no wrong way, really, if it works. Before computers, I would write in bursts and not in order. I kept accordion folders and I would write the chapters or pieces that it made sense to write, and then I would stick them in the appropriate order in the folder – this one goes here, this one goes there – so I might write chapter 1 today, 4 tomorrow, 3 the next day. Of course, computers make it much easier now.”

Something he said really stood out in my mind. “I have three books in stages of development at the publisher right now. In this business, you have to stay ahead of the curve unless you want to starve.” Important, that bit. He also mentioned working on another book right now and has plans for another one to come soon.

The guy is a monster!

Every author has stories about the process of getting published. Modesitt could look back on his own stories with amusement now, but I’m pretty sure it was frustrating for him at the time. He said that he started writing short stories and putting them out there to get them published. He did this a lot. He received a positive letter from Jim Baen Ben Bova and doubled and tripled his efforts, which prompted Jim Baen Ben Bova to eventually send him a rejection letter saying, “Stop sending me short stories – I am not going to publish them.” This crushed Modesitt, until he read further. “You are a novelist trying to cram novels into short stories. Go write novels!”

Which he did.

He also was ‘published’ many times before a book hit the stores. According to the story he told, a publisher bought his book, then folded. Another one bought his book, then the scifi/fantasy division was closed down. Then it was bought again and that place stopped all projects unless they were from established authors – so he had a pretty up and down start, which seems to be similar in all the stories I have ever read of authors attempting to get published. This all lead up to his being published at TOR, where he remains to this day.

The question was asked by a teenager: “What advice do you give to young authors today?”

“Read. Read everything you can. I receive so many magazines each month that my postman groans under the weight of them all. Read things out of your comfort zone, stay up on technology and science – especially if you are going to write science fiction. You have to understand what it is you are writing. If you’re going to go to college, don’t major in English Literature – major in something else, have another interest, something else that you can draw from in your writing. Yes, learn how to put a sentence together properly, but you don’t have to major in it.”

He had more to say on that subject, I simply fail at remembering it all and for that, I apologize.

Lastly, he said this: “I am grateful for my fans. I have very intelligent fans who read my books and keep reading my books and I thank you for that.”

Okay – so, what’s my take away here? (This is what my boss always asks me at the end of a meeting or a group meeting – ‘What’s your take away?’ – in other words, what stood out to you?)

First off – if you’re gonna write, then write. Ditch the excuses, ignore all the distractions. Sit down and write. No one can force you to do it except you.

Second – if you say you are a novelist, write a novel. Once it’s done, don’t kick back and think that you’ve made it – write another one. And another – keep writing, keep honing your skills.

Third – Be who and what you are. If you’ve been trying to write a novel and it just isn’t working, then maybe that’s not what you should be doing – try short stories or flash fiction or novellas.

Last, if you do get published and you do have fans – remember that they are the ones who make it all possible. If they aren’t out there, reading your stuff, buying your books, well – you won’t be a published author for long, now will you?

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Got Vocabulary?

Patrick Hester — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:12:37 +0000

I remember the first time I saw the word ‘apoplectic’ and wondering, what in the name of heaven is that?! What does it mean? Where did it come from?!

I was intrigued.

I saw it again, years later, in the Robert Jordan ‘Wheel of Time’ books. A lot. For such an uncommon word (I hadn’t seen it used again until I started WoT) it was used often – I want to say every other book but that is, no doubt, an exaggeration. Still – that’s the way it felt – like it was being used a lot.

Have you ever noticed patterns in the works of your favorite authors? Words that are used often and repeatedly throughout their works, almost as if they found something that they liked, something that rolled off the tongue in a certain, pleasurable way that amused and delighted so much they decided to share?

…what about in your own writing, mister or miss aspiring author?

Apoplectic, by the way, is an adjective. It means ‘of, relating to, or causing stroke’. It doesn’t get used much anymore. Heck, Wikipedia redirect a search for it to ‘apoplexy’, calling it an out-dated medical term (hence the ‘doesn’t get used much anymore’). In the example of Robert Jordan, several characters throughout the series have ‘looked apoplectic’ at one time or another. Which got me thinking of a fun (and terrifying) little exercise for us all to try.

If you go back through your own writing, do you think you’ll see patterns of using the same words repeatedly?

I’m not talking about ‘and’, ‘the’, ‘is’ and the like – I’m talking about adjectives and adverbs. Remember learning about grammar in school? Adjectives and adverbs were part of that. Adjectives modify nouns and pronouns. Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, clauses and sentences. Do you use these too much? Do you use the same ones over and over? Find something ending in ‘ly’ and do a search for it (if you’re using Word, this is fairly easy) – see how many times you use that same ‘ly’ word in the piece. Is it a big number? A small one? Are you surprised?

As I said, it’s both fun and terrifying to consider. We tend to get into patterns; we take the same route to work, we have the same things for lunch, we tell the same amusing stories at parties – the list goes on and on. Do we not falll into patterns in our writing too?

So. I’m proposing that, not only do we go and compare some of our past writing, but that we try and find new and more interesting words to use in the future. If you find yourself using ‘bad’ a lot, get thee a thesaurus! Find another word to use and then only use it once or twice! Look how many there are for ‘poor quality’:

abominable, amiss, atrocious, awful, bad news, beastly, bottom out, bummer, careless, cheap, cheesy, crappy, cruddy, crummy, defective, deficient, diddly, dissatisfactory, downer, dreadful, erroneous, fallacious, faulty, garbage, godawful, grody, gross, grungy, icky, imperfect, inadequate, incorrect, inferior, junky, lousy, not good, off, poor, raunchy, rough, sad, slipshod, stinking, substandard, synthetic, the pits, unacceptable, unsatisfactory.

Is ‘crazy’ a favorite word of yours? CHANGE IT UP! ‘Mentally strange’:

ape, barmy, bats in the belfry, batty, berserk, bonkers, cracked, crazed, cuckoo, daft, delirious, demented, deranged, dingy, dippy, erratic, flaky, flipped, flipped out, freaked out, fruity, idiotic, insane, kooky, lunatic, mad, mad as a March hare, mad as a hatter, maniacal, mental, moonstruck, nuts, nutty, nutty as fruitcake, of unsound mind, out of one’s mind, out of one’s tree, out to lunch, potty, psycho, round the bend, schizo, screw loose, screwball, screwy, silly, touched, unbalanced, unglued, unhinged, unzipped, wacky.

The Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary contains 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words – with so many words to choose from, surely we can find a few ‘new’ ones to shake up our patterns with.

Think of it as a new kind of adventure… A caper… An enterprise… A quest…

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Writing Contests that I’ve found

Patrick Hester — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 17:58:35 +0000

I want to start his post by saying that I have NOT entered any of these contests. Not yet, anyway. But since I was doing some research, I decided that it would be nice of me to share it with all of you.

Having said that, I would like to offer a caveat from sfwa.org on writing contests (worth your read): Writer Beware Contests.

I make no promises that any of these contests are legit. I HOPE they are, but you can never be too careful, so I encourage you to really take a look at the rules of the thing before you send them anything! Okay? Good.

So here we go in order of submission Deadline:

October

Boston Review Short Story Contest

Deadline: 10/12/2009

The winning author will receive $1,500 and have his or her work published in Boston Review, the summer of 2010. Stories should not exceed 4,000 words and must be previously unpublished. Manuscripts should be submitted with a cover note listing the author’s name, address, and phone number; names should not appear on the stories themselves. Note that simultaneous submissions are not eligible.

Click here for more info.

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New Rivers Press MVP Competition

Deadline: 10/15/2009

The Many Voices Project is the distinguished annual competition (since 1981) to find new and emerging writers. (An emerging writer has not published more than two books of creative writing with a commercial, university, or national small press.)

Our 2009 submission period is September 15 – October 15 (postmark), 2009. This year, there is a $20 entry fee to enter this book-length competition. Both the Prose Prize and the Poetry Prize this year are national prizes. The two winning manuscripts will be published in Fall 2011; each author receives a $1,000 honorarium and a standard book contract. All of our books are distributed nationally by Consortium Book Sales & Distribution.

Click here for more info.

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The Bellwether Prize for Fiction

Deadline: 10/2/2009

In order to be eligible to win the Bellwether Prize, you must be a United States citizen, and you must not have previously published a book that sold more than 10,000 copies. Your submission must be an original, previously unpublished novel, written by one person, in English, at least 80,000 words in length. You must have some record of previously published short fiction or nonfiction.

Click here for more info.

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Dogwood Poetry and Fiction Prizes

Deadline: 10/15/2009

Prize of $1,000 and publication. All entrants will be considered for publication.

Submit fiction up to 25 pages or three poems (max ten pages). (You have to PAY them to read it though – $15)

Previously published work is not eligible.

Click here for more info.

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Inkwell Short Fiction Competition

Deadline: 10/30/2009

$1500 prize and publication in Inkwell. Submit up to three short stories for up to 5,000 words to INKWELL, Manhattanville College, 2900 Purchase Street, Purchase, NY 10577. $15.00 reading fee.

Click here for more info.

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November

Writer’s Digest Pop Fiction Awards

Deadline: 11/2/2009

Writer’s Digest is now accepting entries in the Pop Fiction Awards. Submit your entry (or entries!) now for your chance to win $2,500 cash, $100 worth of Writer’s Digest Books and the 2010 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market.

Compete and Win in 5 Categories!

Romance
Mystery/Crime Fiction
Science Fiction/Fantasy
Thriller/Suspense
Horror

Click here for additional information or to enter online!

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Writer’s Journal SciFi & Fantasy Contest

Deadline: 11/30/09

Length must not exceed 2,000 words. Manuscripts must be typed, double-spaced on 8 1/2″ x 11″ paper. Only one copy of each entry required. Only original, previously unpublished stories accepted. Copyrights to manuscripts remain with author. WRITERS’ Journal requires only one-time rights to winning entries.

Prizes: First: $250.00, Second: $100.00, Third: $50.00, Plus Honorable Mentions

First, Second, Third, and selected Honorable Mention winning stories will be published in future issues of the WRITERS’ Journal.

Click here for more info.

All contests from Writer’s Journal are listed here: Writer’s Journal Calender of Contests

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December

Writer’s Digest 10th Annual Short Short Story Writing Competition

Deadline: 12/1/2009

We’re looking for fiction that’s bold, brilliant…but brief.

Send us your best in 1,500 words or fewer. Enter the 10th Annual Short Short Story Competition for your chance to win BIG $$$$ – including the $3000 First Prize!

Click here to enter or for additional information.

Writer’s Digest 9th Annual Short Short Story Writing Competition

Look for the winners of the 9th Annual Short Short Story Competition in the May/June 2009 issue of Writer’s Digest.

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THE W. Y. BOYD LITERARY AWARD

“For Excellence in Military Fiction”

Deadline: 12/1/2009

An annual award consisting of $5,000 and a 24k gold-framed citation of achievement honoring the best fiction set in a period when the United States was at war. It recognizes the service of American veterans and military personnel and encourages the writing and publishing of outstanding war-related fiction for young adults or adults.

Click here for more info.

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Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards Competition

Deadline: 12/15/2009

Enter the 5th Annual Writer’s Digest Poetry Awards Competition – the only Writer’s Digest competition exclusively for poets! Regardless of style – rhyming, free verse, haiku and more – if your poems are 32 lines or fewer, we want them all.

Click for more details or to enter online!

Winners will be notified in March 2010 and will be announced in the August 2010 issue of Writer’s Digest.

PLUS, it is not too late to order the new 2008 Competition Collection. The 1st- through 50th-place poems are printed in this special competition collection, published by Lulu.com.

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Crazyhorse Fiction Prize

Deadline: 12/15/2009

Each year Crazyhorse offers the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize for a single short story and the Lynda Hull Memorial Poetry Prize for a single poem. The competition is open, the prize awards are currently $2000 for each genre, and the winning poem and piece of prose are published in Crazyhorse.

Click here for more info.

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Birmingham-Southern College Hackney Short Story Award

Deadline: 12/31/2009

The Hackney Literary Awards, open to writers nationwide, are presented each year by Birmingham-Southern College. Sponsored since 1969 by the Cecil Hackney family of Birmingham, the competition awards $5,000 in annual prizes for poetry and short fiction ($2,500 national and $2,500 state level distributed as follows: 1st place, $600; 2nd place, $400; and 3rd place, $250), plus a $5,000 prize sponsored by Morris Hackney for an unpublished novel.

Click here for more info.

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Writers of the Future – L. Ron Hubbard’s Contest

An international search for new and amateur writers of new short stories or novelettes of science fiction or fantasy. No entry fee is required. Entrants retain all publication rights.

Deadline is December 31, March 31, June 30 & September 30.

Click here for more info.

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Flash Fiction-SuperHero

Patrick Hester — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 22:46:26 +0000

Tales from The New Universe: SuperHero

The thing about being a superhero is that everyone expects you to save the day all the time, to be on your toes no matter what, to have all the answers.

No one warned me before all of this started that it would be like that. I thought it would be a lark; saving pretty (grateful) women from the bad guys and always coming through in the nick of time to save the city, people cheering me on, giving me keys to the city, having days named after me so kids could get out of school to come see parades in my honor. That sort of thing.

I thought it would be easy. Stupid, right?

I did get the key to the city early on. God, fifteen years ago? Has it really been that long? The years start to blur after a while, bleeding into each other and overlapping so I don’t always remember things in the right order any more. I wonder if any of the others feel that way? There’s a couple dozen of us now, not like in the old days when there were just two or three at most.

Anyway, the rest of it? Got tired real quick. There are only so many women you can save before they all start looking the same. It becomes old hat. I can’t even count how many times the city’s been in danger and I had to save it with only a couple seconds left on a timer – the bad guys? They love their timers. It’s like some bad piece of pulp fiction.

Week after week, the same stuff happening with a new twist and I have to keep up with it and roll with the punches. It’s exhausting. Have you ever tried crisscrossing a city ten times in a night because all the loonies were out in full force and pulling crap at the same time? Believe me – it’s not easy and it’s not fun.

Forget having any semblance of a real life with the secret identity thing. It’s worse than being married to a cop or soldier. Every time you go out the door it’s not just people with guns and knives threatening your life, oh no, it’s freaks with frost guns and magic powers and lasers that shoot out their eyes – FRIGGIN LASERS! Who could sit at home and handle that kind of worry and stress every day? Not my Martha, that’s for sure. Left right after the first major threat to the city I faced, when old ColdFront brought the temperature down to ten below and kept it there for a week, demanding ten million dollars before he’d turn his machine off. Finally found him in the old sewers, the ones they condemned and built right on top of decades ago. I got pretty beat up taking him down, spent days laid up in bed, covered in bruises, delirious with fever and suffering from exposure. Lucky I didn’t lose something to frostbite. That’s when she called it quits. Left a note as soon as I was up and around again and could fend for myself.

I don’t blame her. Still hurts, though.

Seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day – that’s what this gig is all about. No vacation days, no HMO plan, no 401K; just a constant, steady beating on your body and your mind, slowly wearing you down until you have a ‘bad’ day and some freak gets lucky because you’re too slow or too tired or just too damned old. Then it’s ‘game over’ and the city moves onto the next hero to show up and save them from the bad guys.

They have a ‘Fallen Heroes’ museum, you know? It’s downtown. Full of pictures, videos and mementos of all the heroes who got sloppy and kicked it – ain’t no such thing as ‘retirement’ for us. It’s closed three days a week now due to budget cuts and lack of interest. They used to take kids there on school field trips, but the neighborhood has gone down hill so they don’t take the kids there anymore. Too dangerous.

If they don’t close their doors, my costume will probably be in there one day soon. Can feel it in my bones. They’ll rip the mask off my broken body and everybody will stare at my face and say that I look like anybody else, nothing remarkable about me at all – except for the scars. Then they’ll figure out who I was pretty quick. Someone will write up an expose, maybe interview Martha and give her her fifteen minutes of fame. And for a week or two I’ll be the biggest piece of news on the wire. They’ll add me to that museum, probably use my spare costume on a mannequin once they search my place and find it, build a nice little glass encased memorial full of the crap I keep in the basement; my souvenirs. The culmination of my entire crime fighting career reduced to trinkets and knickknacks arranged behind a slab of glass.

It won’t be long until some kid comes along to take my name and run with it, same as happened with the Star Kid when he died two years ago in that embassy bombing. What a mess that was. God.

The costume will be different yet close enough that people will recognize him and think he’s me, but it won’t be. It’ll just be some dumb kid in a mask who never got told what this life would be like if he got into this mess. He’ll do it because it’s fun when you start, because people will look up to him, and because he’ll think he’s making a difference.

Same as me.

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My Writing Projects

Patrick Hester — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 19:57:44 +0000

I decided an update was in order on my various writing projects. Woot, right? I know you were really curious what’s been going on so here it is.

#1 Sam Kane

Synopsis: Sam Kane is a detective with the Denver PD – it’s her first week as a Detective and she’s already screwed up. Her partner’s in intensive care and her Captain is about to rip her a new ass when in walks Jack Mayfair, a mysterious man with transfer papers that will change her life forever…

Learning that you are a latent Wizard is one thing, beginning your training and being tossed head first into a world of supernatural surprises like vampires and werewolves is something altogether different. Sam has to cope with who she thought she was, who she’s becoming, and what’s just around the next corner.

Well, if you follow the blog or the podcast, you know that I finished up the rough draft of ‘Sam Kane’ a while ago. Since then, I’ve been slowly going through and editing. I should probably emphasize slowly.

It’s a little shy of 110k words right now, and I need to cut it down to 100k. That was always my goal with this book and I want to stick to that number. With that in mind, I’ve been doing a lot of tweaking to the book. There were some very weak points that I knew were weak when I wrote them that I am either changing, rewriting or deleting altogether. Has to be done.

There is also a couple of chapters that need to be totally ditched. I wrote them, I felt good about them, but now in hindsight – it’s just too much. Too long, too much crap, too much talking – it all has to go. Sounding cryptic, aren’t I? Okay – let me try to explain and I know it’s hard given that only one person other than me has actually read the entire piece front to back. Still, I’ll try.

I’ve a character that I wanted to do more with, so I did more. I wrote several chapters where it’s him basically telling a story – a long story (keep in mind that my chapters themselves aren’t very long). I wanted to build him up as a stronger supporting character and I did that, but now I am realizing that it just doesn’t work. The story he tells is too long. The book itself is very fast paced and then you hit this section where this old man talks and talks and talks… It doesn’t work. I see that now. So, the whole thing needs to be redone.

My intention with this book was to have it, despite being 100k words, feel like it goes by so fast (and the one person who has read it cover to cover said that it is very fast paced). Everything happens rapidly over the course of a week (then it became two weeks and I need to get it back to being a single week). I need to stick to that, which means I need to make changes and those are slow in coming. My goal is to have the changes done and the manuscript’s 2nd draft/version ‘complete’ by late September.

Fingers crossed!

#2 Flash Fiction

I wanted to bring a new piece of Flash Fiction to the blog every week either on Tuesdays or Thursdays – I still haven’t made up my mind on that yet. As you can probably tell, that hasn’t happened. It’s not for lack of trying.

I’ve written a dozen or more pieces and few of them have found their way onto the blog. The rest, I struggle with them. I read them and I know I can do better, so I don’t publish them. Which is probably stupid. I should just put them out there for folks to read and get some feedback, but I tend to be a bit OCD on the subject. It has to be worth your time! It has to be perfect!

My favorite piece to date has been ‘Welcome to Solar City’. If you haven’t read that yet, please click the link and check it out.

I’ve tried to explain it before and sometimes I do a decent job and sometimes I don’t, but I’ve always had this notion in my head of ‘The New Universe’. This is the place where my stories take place. There is a past, a present and a future to this universe. Most of it is still in my head, but it’s really clear in my head if that makes a difference. The different things I write, they fit into the grand scheme of things. ‘Welcome to Solar City’ is part of the future. I hope to visit there often (I have ideas..). Lots of tales to tell in that city (Oh, yes, I have ideas…).

#3 Short Stories

I’ve found that when I get an idea, I have to put it down on paper (electronic paper). Too many times, I’ve had a fantastic idea that I didn’t write down and then lost it because other things came up and it got pushed out of my brain, which frustrates me to no end.

I have two such ideas at the moment and I’ve put both down on paper, as it were. The first is something with a working title of ‘Stargazing’. It’s set on a world from that future I mentioned above and could be considered a prequel to a novel I have planned at some point.

The second has a working title of ‘Witchcraft & Satrys’. It’s…different. I like my comedy and this has some in it. This is further along than the first idea mentioned above.

The third are my boys, ‘Malachi and Madrighan’. They are almost always my comic relief, sort of a throwback to the old sword and sorcery movies of the 80’s that were just so terrible you had to watch them. They are brothers born of different fathers who have been assured by their mother that they are, in fact, twins. They are better than fair with a sword so they travel the world getting into trouble, selling their swords to whoever can pay which rarely ever works out well for them. But they’re together and having fun, which is all that really matters to them. Well, that and getting paid. And eating.

This story, with a working title of ‘The Business with the Troll’, is the closest to being ready for publication here on the blog.

Any of the short stories that get published will most likely be serialized. Keep an eye out on twitter or here cuz I hope to be publishing ‘The Business with the Troll’ in a week or two.

#4 Podcast

I know, I know – haven’t done one in a couple weeks. Truth told, I’m still pissed at PodBean. I don’t know what I’m going to do yet. As soon as I know, you’ll know.

Well – that’s it for this little update. Hope it whet your appetite for some new fiction coming down the pipe soonish…

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Not everyone is gonna like your writing

Patrick Hester — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 19:19:03 +0000

In tenth grade, college prep English, we did a lot of creative writing. We also did a lot of reading. None of the reading was genre stuff – no fantasy or scifi. It was mostly ‘literature’, which is fine, but I’ve always thought that there are some fantastic pieces out there in the genre world that would be wonderful for use as a class assignment.

But that’s not the point of this post. I want to talk about the writing. I would be willing to say that 99% of what I wrote in high school was ill-received by my teachers. I was in all college prep English classes, by the way. Except for Senior year when there was a mix-up and I ended up being a Teaching Assistant instead – that’s a different story.

My tenth grade English teacher wore blue jeans every day, which I just thought was so cool. He had these over-sized belt buckles too and a bushy mustache. Strange the things you remember. Also, he didn’t care for my writing much. Being a scifi head, not so much fantasy back then, whenever given the chance to write freely, I went home to momma, so to speak. I did well enough, got decent grades, but he never really sparked to my stories as much to my writing, if that makes sense. In other words, I had the use of language down, my sentence structure rocked – I knew what I was doing. He just didn’t like what I was doing.

It sticks out in my brain because there were a couple days when he was out – I want to say he had jury duty, and they brought in a substitute. The Sub stuck to the lesson plan and handed us a creative writing assignment. We had that class to write a quick short story featuring ourselves as the main character, only we had a secret that no one else knew and we had to write about that secret and stay anonymous – no one could sign their papers or use their real names in the piece.

I, of course, took hold of that concept and turned it into the idea of a secret identity/double life – like a superhero. Only that was boring. Now, a super villain… that had a decent twist that I could work with. I scribbled away furiously and came up with this quick little story about how I had this secret identity as a super villain who was out to take over the school through laced cafeteria food and subliminal messages inside the text books. At the end of the hour, I turned in my work and went about my day.

The following day, the Sub was still there and he’d chosen the best of the best from the stories turned in the day before and intended to read them in front of the class. He picked mine as the absolute ‘best’. I was thrilled. Anonymously, of course, but still thrilled. I’d written a lot up to that point, and my regular teacher had never given me such praise as this Sub was doing. Warmed my heart, it did. I left that class feeling much better than usual. Sort of like walking on cloud nine.

The next day, our regular teacher was back and he’d taken a look at the assignment and had some different thoughts. First and foremost, he panned my piece as the absolute WORST! He shredded it (figuratively) in front of everyone. I felt horrible after that class. It really brought me down. Waaaay down.

Sigh.

The point of this story?

Not everyone is going to like what I write, or what you write for that matter. I’ve got a friend who is stressing because literary agents she’s contacted either don’t like what she’s queried them on, or they like aspects of it and want her to change it up to make it ‘better’, or they see some talent and want completely different things from her altogether versus what she actually wants to write.

All it takes, though, is for one person to like it and it makes your day.

This is where all those books and stories from published authors comes into play, folks. It sucks to think that you might get rejected over a hundred times like Stephen King, but all it takes is that one time when you’re not rejected, when the person on the other end of that query really likes what they see.

Then, you’re on your way…

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Original Fiction-Welcome to Solar City

Patrick Hester — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:25:48 +0000

Tales from The New Universe: Solar City

“Welcome to Solar City” says the card in large, bright blue letters. It depicts your classic suburban dream complete with a row of large houses each with neatly trimmed yards and white picket fences all lined up nice and proper the way they can only ever manage in a piece of cheesy art. Each home has a large tree in the yard with a swing made of rope and wood hanging from an extra thick branch that just happens to be the perfect length and height for such a thing, as if it were grown for that purpose and that purpose alone. The sky above is blue and pristine, utterly devoid of clouds and the bright yellow and orange sun with its pointed halo has a smile on its face and sunglasses shading its eyes.

The whole thing makes you want to be there, want to live on that street, have barbecues with the neighbors on cool summer nights when the air feels crisp and the fireflies compete with the local stars to see which can be the better source of amusement and delight for all the little kids you’ll have with your plump wife in the frilly apron and the perfect hair that falls just below her shoulders. It’s all a dream concocted by some corporate stooge who lives in a shimmering glass fortress with an iron skeleton billions of miles away on the edge of an ancient city that can’t even remember what a tree looks like or how grass feels on a cool night between naked toes weary of their cotton and leather day prisons.

The reverse of the card shows a name and an address, neither of which are located in Solar City. Just another wide-eyed dreamer come to make their fortune and thrive in the Utopian splendor of the new frontier, a suburban paradise where work is easy to come by, the pay’s great and there’s two women to every man so your chances of getting laid are spectacular. A genetically engineered chicken in every pot and a house for everyone willing to put in some extra effort, roll up their sleeves and help build a community in the farthest reaches of the universe where such things are not commonplace.

The card doesn’t mention the hundred and thirty degree days because this rock is too close to the sun and the terraforming is still underway, or the fact that water is an expensive commodity and there isn’t enough to keep the average person hydrated let alone to waste on watering a lawn. It doesn’t show you that the jobs are all in the mines where at least it’s cooler by ten degrees if you don’t mind your lungs filling with dust and burning from the gasses or the back breaking labor because the company is too cheap to pay for anything other than hand tools and dynamite and ‘worker safety’ is a myth whispered about in the dead of night like sweet nothings in the ear of your lover. Or how, if you’re a woman, most likely you’ll be spending the majority of your time flat on your back with your legs in the air because the company knows that men who get laid are less likely to revolt and rise up to kill their corporate masters for treating them like a disposable commodity.

The sky isn’t even blue here; it’s a hazy red when it isn’t covered in dark clouds from the great machines pumping gasses into the atmosphere in an attempt to make it all the barest of habitable environments for the human animals thrust upon its surface like so much kindling tossed into the fire. The whole thing is a lie, a cosmic joke, the endless cosmic joke, perpetuated on every fresh faced virgin stumbling straight off the transport with their eyes still full of the wonder and excitement at the thrill of new adventure and the prospect of a better life. None expected what they received, none were ready for it, ready for the kind stranger who offered to guide them or show them a place to stay til they got on their feet or simply said ‘hello’ to them in passing. They didn’t know that he or she intended to murder them; steal that wonder and excitement from them along with their very life while leaving them to bake in the sweltering heat of an unforgiving sun on a god forsaken hellhole.

Nothing else was taken, just their lives; as if that weren’t enough. They still had what little money they’d begged, borrowed or stole for the trip out to the rim; pittance really, and hardly enough to buy a meal here, let alone start a life. Each still had a suitcase or a satchel or a duffel full of their worldly possessions clutched in their hands or lying nearby, wholly untouched and undisturbed, not that they would’ve been worth much, but here, anything that is worth something is worth stealing if it means the difference between eating and not eating. No sign of rape, no sign of anything at all on the bodies except for the smashed in skull, always from behind, always looking like someone lost a fight with a burning rage and pounded the poor soul to death like a miner pounds on a rock until it yields the treasure locked within or crumbles to useless dust carted out like so much offal.

Then there’s the card. The little postcard, four and a quarter by five and a quarter, sold in the giftshop out at the port and a hundred others exactly like it spread out all across the galaxy like cookie-cuttered boxes that could be inserted into prime real estate without any fuss. Printed by the Company in mass quantities, impossible to trace and always right there where we can see it, never a speck of blood or gore or anything on it, not even genetic material that the sniffers could sniff out and track. Addressed to the victim but printed not hand written with no return address and a counterfeit payment barcode that somehow, never, ever raised any flags with anybody when it was scanned by the geniuses at the postal service. Placed for us to find right there in the open. Taunting us. Daring us. Saying ‘look at what I’ve done’.

Seventeen so far. All virgins to this place, to this hell we have to call home because not a one of us can afford to escape it. We eat, we sleep, we fuck – someone else if we can afford it; we find dead bodies on the row. Rinse and repeat with genetically engineered meatloaf on Thursdays. None of them are the same, except they are virgins; different ages, different sexes, colors, height, weight – all seemingly random and all across the board without any pattern. Left for dead. Left for me to find. Left for me to clean up. One after another. An endless, nightmarish stream of broken dreams and bodies baking in the sun.

My job is to find out who’s responsible, bring them to justice, make hell safe again for the virgins, keep the flow of workers to the mines consistent and steady. A Company man through and through, as if I ever had a choice. Yay for me.

Yeah. Like the card says, “Welcome to Solar City”.

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Podcast: Episode 5

Patrick Hester — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 22:59:50 +0000

Episode #5: All Things from My Brain

In the fifth episode of the All Things From My Brain podcast, I talk about the Palm Pre losing it’s iTunes sync functionality, how India plans to issue biometric ID cards to its 1.2 BILLION citizens, how the Kindle and Amazon are once again in the news with BAD PRESS, about Galaga coming to the iPhone in both retro and new forms, how Farragut films is bring Star Trek back to animation, how the family of Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkein are suing New Line Cinema cuz they ain’t been paid, about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Iron Man 2 & Green Lantern: First Flight, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, Buck Rogers in the 25th century, Flash Gordon, and The New Universe book projects currently on my plate.

[podcast]http://www.atfmb.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/AllThingsFromMyBrain005.mp3[/podcast]

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