writing – Page 17

News From the Writing Trenches

Apologies for the infrequency of my postings lately. I’ve been hard at work on the third instalment of the Septimus Series. (Wait, you say – what about the second one? Fear not, stalwart reader, Cat and Mouse has been written quite some time ago, and is with my intrepid editor at this very moment. It should be available for your reading pleasure within a couple of months – I’ll let you know when!)

So, meanwhile, here’s a picture for you of Steve beta-reading yet another one of my stories. He’s not the greatest beta reader, because his comments usually just go along the lines of “There’s not enough bears in here,” or “That bear is not believably written.” However, expert opinion on even just one specialty subject is not unwelcome, either. You can be sure that with his feedback, I’ll at least get the bears in my stories right.

However, speaking of beta readers, I could use a few more. So if you’re up for reading a novel or two and giving me honest feedback on it, give me a shout in the comments or send me a mail to amo@amovitam.ca. That’s especially if you’re an appreciator of fairy tales and/or gentle fantasy (by which I mean that it’s not the epic sword-and-sorcery kind – there’s no swords, and the sorcery is quite mild-mannered; as for eps, well, they generally don’t find enough scope for their epping in my worlds).

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to Catriona – they just hit a cliff hanger which must be resolved in the next chapter.

Life, the Universe, and the Writer’s Life. See you on the other side of the full stop.

NaNoWriMo

Of course I’m doing NaNoWriMo this year – what did you think? It’s mandatory for me. This’ll be my fourth year; in fact, the NaNo 2011 is what became Seventh Son. So I have to keep doing it, right?

Oh, in case you’re wondering what on earth this NaNoWriMo thing is: it’s a form of insanity. A yearly reoccurrence of a particular fit of insanity, in fact. Thousands of people from all over the world sign up to write a novel in one month. That’s right: a Novel. In One Month. To be precise, in the thirty days of November. And it’s got to be 50,000 words long.

Now why, do you ask, would anybody do this? Well, there are a number of reasons. And right off the bat, no, you don’t win anything; it’s not a contest with anyone but yourself. Well, okay, you can get “prizes” – such as a 50% discount coupon for world’s greatest writing software, Scrivener. Or a couple of free print copies of your book from CreateSpace (for a given value of “free” – you’re still paying for shipping & handling, which is considerably more expensive than the printing itself). But really, the only thing you “win” when you “win Nano” (yes, us Wrimos do talk in those terms) is that you’ve mastered a challenge. And you have a book, a whole novel, that you wrote all by yourself. That’s the biggest, most overwhelming reason to participate in this novemberly fit of mass insanity.

There are others: it’s FUN. Honestly, it is. No, I’m not one of those people who think fun consists of poking myself in the eye with a pointed stick; my idea of entertainment isn’t that warped. It really is fun to go on this website, and talk to all those other crazy Wrimos out there who think it’s a good idea to try to hammer out a full-length novel in just thirty days. Also, the NaNoWriMo people, or The Office of Letters and Light, are funny. The Nano Logo is a viking helmet – from all I can gather, just because. I mean, what’s not to like? (No, I don’t have a viking helmet for writing my books. Although I was kind of tempted to get one when we saw an exhibit on Vikings at the Royal BC Museum in the summer. They had real steel ones, only around $300… but they didn’t have the horns, which are apparently not authentic. For those, you’d have to get one of those kiddie plastic ones. Anyway – sorry, where were we?) So, yes, if you’re one of those people who’s “always wanted to write a book” (I wasn’t. But that’s another story for another day), this is the perfect time for it.

So, all that to say: of course I signed up for NaNoWriMo again! I can’t not. But – here’s the snag. It’s the third of November already, and I’ve written, uh, about 600 words. In case you’re wondering, writing 50,000 words in 30 days means you have to get down an average of 1667 words per day (every third day you can slack off, and only do 1666). So, as of right now, I’m about 4400 words behind on my word count. I’ve done other stuff – really, I did! I plotted. And I built characters – I trawled Google Images, and found the perfect pictures of red-headed children and gave them names, so now they look at me from the right side of the split window in Scrivener and inspire me to write about them. And then I looked at the news about the latest Canadian public scandal, and last week’s local violent crime, which probably wasn’t such a good idea as those things really depress me. I went on Facebook (yeah, well…). And I found a hack online to solve the extremely irritating issue of the keyboard layout on my new computer – the tiny left shift key was driving me crazy. It’s fixed now.

You see? I’ve done lots of stuff. Just not cranked out proper NaNoWriMo word count. And I was starting to feel stressed about it, because, well, it’s NaNo! Must Have Word Count! But then, actually – no, I don’t have to have word count. What I must have is fun. And I must do writing. But even choosing names for fictional red-headed toddlers is part of writing. I’m not going to rush through this in the name of NaNo badges, lovely though those are. I think this year, I’ll have “won” NaNo if I’ve written something I like. If I made progress on the latest story about Catriona (yes, there’s sequels). And above all, if I’ve enjoyed myself doing so. Because that’s really what NaNoWriMo is all about – the joy of writing. And if I make my 50k, so much the better; but if not, whatever.

Life, the Universe, and NaNoWriMo. If you sign up, do find me on the site and be my buddy – I’m amo1967.

The Books Are Here!

My books have arrived! One lovely box full of shiny copies of Seventh Son. Aren’t they pretty?

So, anyway, for you paper-book lovers out there, this means that those of you who live close by can buy a copy straight from me for CDN$ 10 (Introductory Offer! Special Deal! yadda yadda and so on). If you’re Canadian, and want an autographed copy by mail, contact me at amo@amovitam.ca, and I’ll let you know the rate; just to warn you, though, it’ll be a minimum of $25 (blame Canada Post; they’re the ones that charge arms, legs, and other appendages for small parcels). If you don’t care about having it authographed (and really, my signature isn’t all that amazing), you’re better off buying it straight from CreateSpace or Amazon.com, at this point; the shipping should only be $7 or $8. And hopefully, eventually there’ll be print copies for sale on Amazon.ca; I hear it can happen.

So there you have it: Life, the Universe, and Lovely Print Copies of Seventh Son. If you read it, let me know what you think!

Humility, Forests and Trees

I pride myself, in certain cases, on my perfectionism. Not always, by any means – there are lots of occasions where I’m not perfectionistic at all. House cleaning, for example. Or yard work. But when it comes to my writing, oh yes, the perfectionist in me is out in full force. As far as content of writing goes, you can’t really make it perfect, you can just make it as good as you can; the rest is a matter of opinion. But form, and formatting – well, there is such a thing as absolutely correct. Spelling, grammar, having everything look right, it matters.

So I released Seventh Son yesterday to great fanfare – drum rolls, fireworks, the lot. There it was, all neat and shiny, on Amazon and Smashwords and CreateSpace. My friends were all patting me on the back, and I felt so proud of myself. And then, in the early afternoon, a friend messaged me on Facebook: “It might just be my ebook reader, but it looks like chapter 3 and 4 are identical.” WHAT?!? I grabbed the hardcopy I had sitting beside me on the kitchen table, flipped to chapter 3, then to chapter 4 – and said some swear words, loudly. Jumped up, clapped my hands to my face, swore again, frantically paced three steps back and forwards again, hyperventilated, clutched at my hair – you get the picture. Full-on panic mode.

I had, right at the base level, dropped out chapter 3, and instead put in a duplicate of chapter 4. Right in the base file, when I exported the text from Scrivener to a Word document – the file that I used to do all my formatting from, for print, Amazon, Smashwords, everything. And I never saw it. I went over those files over and over again. I had even noticed that it said “Chapter 4” twice, so I fixed the first one to say “Chapter 3”. But I never noticed that it was the wrong text in that chapter. I read over that file so many times since I wrote the story, over and over. It was a classic case of not seeing the forest for the trees – so many chapters of text which I was so familiar with and had looked at so many times, I never saw the glaring error. And I blithely uploaded the file to all the ebook vendors, even had a couple of proof copies printed.

So here I put myself out there, telling the world how great I am and what a great thing I accomplished, and it’s got this big fat mistake in it. Talk about a humbling experience. I’m not perfect, not even where it matters, and now the whole world knows it.

My friend Lee Strauss, whose mentorship has been instrumental in getting Seventh Son off the ground, tells me that every self-published writer does something like this at least once. Phew – at least I’m not the only one. I guess you’re not a proper indie writer until you’ve screwed up for the first time; so I’m lucky I did it right on my first release date and got it over with.

And now that you all know I’m not perfect, I have nothing more to lose. I can just carry on being me; write my stories, drivel on in my blog posts, and you won’t expect me to never make mistakes. Which you probably never did anyway – the expectations were all in my own head – but now I know you won’t. And that’s a really freeing thought.

Life, the Universe, and Big Public Bloopers. The freedom of dispensing with illusions.

It’s A Book!

So here it finally is, the big announcement you’ve all been waiting for: IT’S A BOOK! That’s right, this is the birthday of my first novel, the brain child whose arrival I’ve been promising. It’s been three years in the making, and now here it is in all its glory: Seventh Son. Two hundred pages of a story that started when I put fingers to keyboard in November of 2011, and typed out: “It was the blue pottery bowl that started it all…” Started what? Well, here, let me elaborate:

Cat was ordinary—until the day a blue bowl whirled her off to a magical medieval world…

Catriona, ex-librarian, dumped by her boyfriend, is just trying to restart her life when she looks into a blue pottery bowl in a museum, and suddenly finds herself whirled off to a magical medieval world. Who is the injured man flung across the forest path? How is Cat going to cope with that muddy baby watching him? And what do either of them have to do with the disappearance of the town’s most powerful figure, the seventh son of the seventh son? Something is not right in the forest of Ruph… It will take all of Cat’s ingenuity to solve this mystery, and in the process, she needs to find out what her own place in this new world is. Can she make her way back to twenty-first-century America – and what is more, will she want to?

Seventh Son is available on Amazon (.com, .ca, .de, and a number of other .somethings) for Kindle and in print; in most other Ebook formats on Smashwords; in epub on Kobo; and in print only on CreateSpace.

Life, the Universe, and My First Own Book! Do hop on over to the vendors, and get a copy. And then let me know what you think!

Moving House

Welcome to the new home of AMO VITAM!

This is where Steve the Stuffed Bear and I present to the world our unique blend of ~~drivel~~ deep wisdom, random ramblings, the occasional bit of silliness, sometimes a recipe, and occasionally even something that could be construed as profound. So far, we’ve done all this over on a Blogger page, also named Amo Vitam, which is where you will continue to find all our posts from the last four years under its old address. (Have a look around, there’s some interesting stuff [even if we say so ourselves]; and then come back here so you don’t miss anything interesting).

Also on this page you will find, soon, an exciting announcement about a forthcoming event – but I’m not telling you what it is quite yet! Just a couple more weeks though.

And that, for today, is Life, the Universe, and a New Home for Amo Vitam. Glad to have you here!

Steve waving — **Steve welcoming you to our new home**