The Gray Summer Begins... April 15, 2010

Though I have made a concerted effort to push the Stories from the Forester, it's clear that other story interests have struck my fancy. Perhaps it was overly ambitious on my part to get and a whole six-story Forester series under my belt before anything else. But hey, when the inspiration strikes, eh?

With that said, regardless of my Forester time schedule, other stories take priority. And, in the case, it's the Gray Summer, which I will be debut in April 15, 2010.

When I say debut, it may be the debut of the full novel, but likely not. As my good friend Eddy Webb shown with his Whitechapel Project, publishing through traditional means is negotiable. As such, I'll reveal more details of The Gray Summer later on in the next year.

Until then, everybody have a great New Year!

The Quest Is Dead...Sort Of...

They say a good blog can serve as a good marketing tool...

Yes, I suppose I have really messed that one up.

A great deal has stayed the same since the last Quest post, including zero book sales, little progress on the book-writing front and, of course, not many people really noticing.

So, this must be why people subject themselves to the humiliation of being rejected by dozens of literary agents and publishers. Because getting the word out is tough!

This is especially true when there are other things that are more important, like actually writing or the overbearing need to eat.

You know, trivial stuff.

And then, of course, comes the news that Lulu.com has done away with the Published By You package, where I would have been able to snap up an ISBN of my own. They've replaced it with two distribution packages that I couldn't explain if I lived to be 100.

Normally, this wouldn't have bothered me, seeing as how Stories from the Forester: Volume 1 isn't anywhere near close to publishing stage. However, this does leave Flagrant Foul in a serious state of limbo. Sure, you can still buy it at Amazon (Don't know why I pointed that out. If you haven't bought it yet, I'm doubting you're opening up the wallets now!). But it leaves far too many questions marks, namely the actual process of purchasing their GlobalReach package in the event I choose to do so (Which, after scanning through the site, I see no real help for Published by Lulu customers to do that!).

It's been a big enough pain in the ass to come up with idea for writing that clearly nobody's interested in. But to take the one thing that was quite simple and complicate it unnecessarily? Yes, this will truly inspire people to self-publish in the future.

Make no mistake, I'll never stop writing. But this Quest? It's dead.

For the two of three people who truly care, fear not. This blog may be getting dumped, but I've always got other things up my sleeve. Like a phoenix, something new shall rise from the ashes...

Or perhaps something old...

Friends, Romans, Countrymen...Lend Me a Dollar (Or A Review)!

Well, not exactly lend, but you get the point...

As I have finally made progress is completing Unwritten, so I can finally get Stories from the Forester: Volume One ready for public consumption, I've had to make some tough choices, mostly economic.

That, of course, means, the end of Dilemma being free. The PDF, like the Kindle version, is now 99 cents and in on sale at Lulu.com. That's the bad news. Then again, it may not be if you're one of the people who were good enough to download a copy.

For those people, I have another mission. Please post your reviews on the Dilemma Amazon page and the Lulu.com page. And no, I don't care if you think it was the worst piece of garbage you've ever read. As far as I'm concerned, there's no such thing as bad publicity!

So, go ahead. You know you could use the diversion!

An Old Friend's New Project

I known Eddy Webb since my days at the old Hawthorne Academy, the school for gifted kids in Lorain, and we were good friend over the years. He's the one who got me into role-playing games (Pre-World of Warcraft, pre-computer, actually!), and we shared a great interest in technology.

Then, like most of my childhood friendships, after I went to college, we parted ways and lost touch with each other.

However, about a year ago, I came across some offerings by White Wolf on Lulu, and sure enough, the man behind their efforts? Eddy. So, I decided to drop him a line. And since it's been a while, I had to let him know I wasn't this crazy random person.

In any event, it seems that we both share another interest - writing, though I know Eddy definitely had a head-start on me. And it shows with his newest effort, and I think it's going to be a intriguing marriage of fiction writing and social media.

The Whitechapel Project, as it's been called, is a serialized horror novella slated to begin on August 5th. Not only will it feature regular updates to the fiction text, Eddy plans to also release each episode as a podcast. What's more, he'll get public opinion on how the story should proceed.

While serialized fiction is as old as the medium itself, The Whitechapel Project is probably the most ambitious and innovative idea I've seen in quite a long time. So, with that, I wish my old friend Eddy Webb luck and will definitely be one of those tuned in for each episode!

A Sign of Summer - Flagrant Foul Book Promotion!

You thought I gave up, didn't you?

Of course not. After all, we are talking about Flagrant Foul...

And, as such, in what seems to be the Promotion That Never Ends, it is, like it was last summer, time to start getting out there and putting the word out. This, of course, is the eternal drawback of a book that's not only self-published, but evidently non-selling.

Perhaps a discount can entice you?

How about 10 percent? You'll get it if you buy Flagrant Foul now and use the discount code JULYCONTEST10 at checkout.

Oh, and, of course, all reviews are graciously accepted, which, you can add on the book site.

And no, all proceeds will not go to me. All proceeds will go towards Lulu's Expanded Distribution package, a $49.95 value. Evidently, I'll be needing that to get Flagrant Foul added to the Indiebound, Barnes & Noble, Borders and Books-A-Million databases. That might help me a bit.

A "Bad Review" - Not That Bad

I was reading a recent New York Times article about how author Alice Hoffman, in response to a Boston Globe review of her latest book, hit back through her Twitter account.

Reviewing the book for The Boston Globe on Sunday, Roberta Silman wrote: “This new novel lacks the spark of the earlier work. Its vision, characters, and even the prose seem tired.” In a series of Twitter posts, Ms. Hoffman fired back with her own opinion. “Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron,” she wrote. “How do some people get to review books? And give the plot away.” Ms. Hoffman also lambasted The Globe and went so far as to post Ms. Silman’s phone number and email, inviting fans to “Tell her what u think of snarky critics.”

By Monday, Ms. Hoffman, according to the story, had erased her Twitter account and apologized for the tirade.

What for? Authors, like everyone else, are only human. And if a book critic zips out a poor review, I understand how an author would want to go on and lay the verbal smack-down, in public or otherwise.

HOWEVER, I generally take a more pragmatic approach to it. For example, in the event that somebody review Flagrant Foul and wrote about it being a derivative piece of crap, I'd probably spend a good five minutes being very angry. That said, one thing really needs to be put into perspective:

There's no such thing as a bad review.

I look at it this way: Just because one critic has something negative to say about your book does not mean that everybody on the planet will. Yes, newspaper book reviews from the New York Times and the Boston Globe still hold some weight. But media has evolved so far beyond print media that their influence isn't what it used to be.

So, my fellow Questers, all is not lost. And Ms. Hoffman, if you happen to come upon this, come on back to Twitter. We know these things happen.

Taking a Step Back

Well, let's go ahead and chalk that up to a failed experiment.

It turns out that instead of spurring my creativity by setting a release date for Stories from the Forester: Volume 1, it apparently drove my writer's block to the point where I wasn't even adding blog posts on a regular basis...anywhere!

Well, hopefully, this wave has stopped. I have been adding blog posts for the TOG Solutions site. And with the recent release of the Welcome to Social Media ebook for Social Media Club Cleveland, I think I'm getting out of this non-writing funk.

But it's obvious that Volume 1 won't be coming out on July 25th. Let's just consider it an open-ended.

In the meantime, while I try to figure out how to get back on track with Unwritten, I'm taking a look at some of my other ongoing writing. As the saying goes, you always seem to find something when you stop looking for it.