Selling Myself For Fame And Profit

II - Middleground

Meanwhile, as I was half-assedly selling my kid's book, I was also writing a new novel and trying to finish up one that I'd started before THE WHISPERING FERNS. It wasn't easy for me. I have a lot of ideas and I love to write but I'm an insufferably slow typist, primarily using two fingers and a thumb and along the way, I also managed to shatter my arm in six places and move 3,000 miles East to Maine. So things were going slowly. 

My long-suffering novel GRAVES (Which is just now being finished up...) is a simple zombie survival novel - no gimmicks, no fast zombies or sci-fi explanations for things - People get infected, die, come to life and bite other people. It takes place in one single overnight shift in a drug store in Montana. It should have been a simple book to dash out, but I made the brilliant choice of writing it from the point of view of eight or so of the customers and employees of the drug store, with chapters alternating. I also found that I had to be in a very certain mood to really enjoy writing it. 

Novel number two is a little different. MR. PALE STEPS OUT, to put it simply, is a revenge novel set in a post-apocalyptic version of  Utah in the 1960's. Simple, eh? I'd been reading a lot of old crime pulp and got enamored with the idea of this old-school heavy getting caught up in a heist just as the bombs go off and taking cover in a safe room and not getting out for a few years later. Everyone he knows is dead and he's stuck in the middle of Utah, which he hates, and he doesn't have any nice clothes, a plan or any idea what he's doing. So he latches onto a group that's ravaging the area and does what he does best - kills some people. Mr Pale is in the final edits stage and I dig the world I've created for him to play in - there's mutants and zombies and religious cults a-plenty. Cool old cars, reliable guns, dusty towns and bad, bad men. It also has a pretty sweet cover by Deeply Dapper - 

So I finally have some books to start flogging. I plan to self-pub them - like my Moonstone Bay series (Which I'm writing the second novel now) I think they're fun reads, but not exactly what's selling commerically right now. Zombies are hot, but mine's a pretty specific kind of zombie book and while I'm sure alternative timeline noir is burning up the charts, I've always pictured the Mr. Pale series as fun, short form pulps that I can write in between novels as palate cleansers. 

I conquered the intricacies of E-Pubbing with Whispering Ferns but any real success eluded me and I aim to remedy that this time by doing what I should have done in the first place - make people want to read my books and more importantly, make people aware of the existence of them. How? Well.... I'm not 100% sure. I'm still short on free time and I don't have money to advertise, but I have a few ideas....

Finished my last revision on Mr Pale Steps Out tonight. Just some last edits and spellchecks and my Retro-Post-Apocalyptic-Western-Noir-Revenge Novella will be ready to rock and roll.

Sweet.

There's no Wri in my NaNoWriMo.

I'd planned on writing a novel for National Novel Writing Month, I really had. I have a great story, a couple of thousand words written as a nice, thorough plot, I've even started up with some cover design elements, but last night night I officially decided not to participate.

At least, not in the full spirit and madness of the month. I'll still plug away at Falling Domino when I have the time and the urge, but for me, apart from outside influences and obligations (Inventory and Christmas prep at work, a few other projects) November has become a different acronym:

NeNoFinMo

Neal's Novel Finishing Month!

I have two novels that I'm in the finishing stages of right now; Mr Pale Steps Out, which I wrote last year for NaNoWriMo, and Graves, a zombie novel I started three or four years ago.  Mr. Pale just needs a nice breeze through revision and Graves is about the same. So instead of setting those aside in favor of fresh meat, I'm diving into these seasoned piles of flesh and pounding them into finished dishes in November.

It's hard though. I'm still keeping up with my friends and online acquaintances, tracking their progress and man, I want to join in! I have characters in me dying to get out - to kiss and kill and plot and scheme. But there are those ahead of them that deserve their due first. Writing. What a cool gig.

My New Cover

So, this is a bit premature, as I'm still finishing up a few last revisions, and I don't have a firm release date (it'll be out sometime in the early summer, folks!), but I couldn't resist sharing the cover to Mr. Pale Steps Out.

Ain't she a beaut?

Mr. Pale Steps Out is about a criminal in a slightly alternate version of the sixties. He is trapped in a safe room just before a world altering series of accidents occur that leaves the world barren and crawling with mutated beasts, shambling zombies and violent gangs. He's in a world he doesn't understand, but his bullets still seem to work just fine, and revenge still tastes just as sweet.

I really wanted something that fit the era that the story takes place in, something that looked like a legit paperback novel, and I think my buddies over at Deeply Dapper Designs did a fantastic job. The blurb across the top and the tagline may change, I'm not totally sold on them, and I'm debating on the idea of adding a price or some sort of little detail, but overall, I think it turned out amazing!

And if you're looking for a designer for your novel, drop 'em a line.

I'm a loser at National Novel Writing Month. But that's okay, I'm also a winner.

It's interesting to write this way, with a deadline looming, being urged in odd little emails to write, write, write, without any eye to revisions. I usually start a novel with a fairly tight plotline laid out. For my last novel, I even knew how long each chapter was (roughly) and what would occur in each. 

For this novel, which I'm currently calling Mr. Pale Steps Out, I wrote up a simple plot paragraph -

A criminal, reminiscent of Stark's Parker, is accidentally trapped in a bomb shelter during a heist gone wrong in Utah in the 1950's. When he is released, seven long years later, he finds himself in a post apocalyptic wasteland. A new bomb that was being tested has detonated, releasing a series of deadly plagues, killing many, infecting others with diseases and causing mutations. Mr. Pale, dubbed as such by the large, simple man that frees him, joins a plot to rob a wagon train on the way to Las Vegas, carrying a load of The Sands poker chips that are now the accepted currency for that part of the West.

Since then, my plot has veered pretty wildly. I dropped the entire heist portion, deciding it would be a better story for a future Mr. Pale novel and decided on a simple revenge story. Then I added some flashbacks to the job that lands him in the bunker in the first place. Then a sub-plot with a commune and some madman named The Wizard. Re-reading it, I've decided that part is going away and changed the voice to present tense for the main portion of the book. At one point, I considered adding a third main character.

Needless to say, I've got a LOT of revisions ahead of me when I get done with this book. I'll probably delete well over 5,000 words and add a few more thousand back in. But when it's all said and done, I should have a tight, unique little story that I'm very happy with, and most importantly, I'll have gotten the spirit of writing back into my fingers. So bravo, NaNoWriMo, you've made me feel like a champion, 50,000 words or not.

Every year they do it. Somehow. Authors worldwide spend thirty days, the month of November, writing a book for National Novel Writing Month. Fifty Thousand Words. That's right around 1,700 a day. The oddly worded NaNoWriMo is upon us!

Which isn't too bad when you look at it from a day to day standpoint, but when you suddenly miss a day because you worked a 10 hour shift and drove 70 minutes to and from work and made dinner and by the end of the night you were just too darned tired? Yeah, then you've gotta get in 3,000 words to catch up. 

And November seems like a horrible month to do this, at least for me. I'm dealing with Christmas at home and work, and the weather outside, which means a longer commute and possibly snow shoveling... To say nothing of what a slow typist I am anyway! To me a month like April or February seems like a better one, a month with less going on.

But I'm gonna try it. Mostly because I have a great idea for a Post Apocalyptic Crime Novel, set in the 50's. And because I'm tired of working on my zombie novel for a little while. So far I haven't done too badly, I'm at just below 17,000 words. Of course, I'm supposed to be at over 20k... So keep an eye on that blue box at the top of my post, that's my real-time ticker of where I'm at.

Anyone else here writing their NaNoWriMo project this month? And how in the world do you do it??