Get Dusted for Free!

In celebration of the Blue Moon I have decided to make Dusted free for 5 days from September 1st to September 5th!

Now, I'm going to be honest when I say I'm not sure if you can download the entire thing for permanent keeps, or if it's a 5-day entire book preview. Can't argue with the price either way, eh?

This is a one-time only deal so get it while you can!

You can find Dusted using this super-fancy link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008E75YL6

Temporary Hiatus

Whatever "excelsior" means...

Excelsior readers!

I have just started both a new job and a class as of today, so I will not be posting for a while.

Make no mistake, however, as I will be back soon with your regularly-scheduled blogging goodness!

Until then, cheers!

Rules for Editing (Editing)

Okay, so technically it's supposed to be a Publishing advice day, but I don't have anywhere for editing, and both are thinner than the rest of the categories, so why not?

While editing some people's manuscripts, I've started to come up with my own set of rants rules for the writer before it is given to people to read and review. This counts for anyone doing it for free. If you're paying someone, I guess it's your money, and it's their income, so whatever.

Perhaps most importantly is my Number One (No. 1, #1, numero uno, unus, ena, in case I didn't make it clear enough): Review it yourself first.

That bears repeating.

Number 1: Review it yourself first.

I'm reviewing it for plot points and character development, not basic grammar and weird sentence structure. Those are things you're going to catch on your own if you just read it. I'm a Writer, Jim, not an English Teacher. I don't want to spend an hour writing advice to you about hyphens.


And that's why all my friends have scars.



Number 2: Tell me what you want reviewed.

I don't want to spend an hour writing advice to you about hyphens, only to find out that's not what you wanted.

Tell me what you want, Writer, and I will give it to you in my review. There's only so much I can do, I can't rewrite your entire manuscript for you, and there has to be one thing about your manuscript in particular that's bothering you. Even if it is spelling or grammar, I can do that, but you have to tell me. The more detail you give me, the better. If someone says, "I don't feel like Brandon Badguy is evil enough, what can I do to make him better?" By golly I'm going to focus on Brandon Badguy and give you some advice, because that's what you specifically asked me to do. If you say "Review this" and throw me a stack of papers (be they a stack of actual papers or a big .doc file) and tell me nothing, you're going to get a reviewing mess. It's going to be helpful, yes, but it's not going to be the best review that it could be.



Number 3: Expect it to take a while.

I have my own things to do, I have my own life. I'm not going to drop everything I'm doing, no matter how awesome your magical manuscript is. I have goats escaped from a fence running rampant on the road, I have chickens to feed, I have a kitchen to clean, I have a Windows Server 2008 class every Thursday and Friday (Flexible Single Master Operator, y'all!). Those are Real Life things, but those are to be expected from the Writer, what Writer doesn't seem to expect is that Reviewer has other things too: I'm writing my own work, I'm reviewing my own work (because I follow Number 1), I'm reading a book, Minecraft just got updated this week, Steam had a sale on Deus Ex, my kitten just bounced off my face and we are now participating in a Benny Hill-esque scene in the backyard. Anything could be happening, so that it could take weeks and weeks, if not months and months, to review your manuscript.

I don't want to spend all day sitting at my computer, the white background of Microsoft Word as the only source of light strong enough to give me a tan darker than Gollom's, to review your manuscript from start to finish.

I'm not getting paid for reviewing your manuscript, so I'm not likely to be professional about my schedule.



Number 4: First come, first serve.

I'd never had this one happen to me until recently. Someone sent me their 60k manuscript to review, and then another friend sent me their short story. I'm sorry, but I'm going to review the 60k word manuscript first. Why? Because it was sent first. Size doesn't matter, if it did, I'd be reviewing nothing but short stories while my friend's 60k word manuscript would gather dust. He worked pretty hard to write all of that up, rather than crank out short story after short story, it's only fair I review it before getting to those dozens of short stories.

Don't expect me to put the finishing touches on Writer 1's manuscript, and then turn around and pull up Writer 2's manuscript, either. I'll probably take a long break between them.




Number 5: If I bother to read something of yours, you'd better read something of mine.

It's only fair. I'm working for free here. You want something read or reviewed so badly you're asking me to do this for you. You should be able to do the same for me. I've never been more miffed, and therefore slow, to review someone's Manuscript 2 because they didn't read something of mine when I reviewed their Manuscript 1 months ago.



Number 6: Number your chapters.

I never thought I'd ever have to say this, but that 60k manuscript? It didn't have chapters. It had end and beginning chapter points, but not actual chapter numbers. I'm not going to review it in one sitting, so please give me a jump point. The way I have been navigating through this manuscript is by copy-pasting a chunk of random text "growing on the other side of the fence" for non-literal example, and putting it in a different Word file with START REVIEWING AGAIN HERE written next to it so that I can do a Find option and look from there.

I don't want to have to do that.

When I finish, I want to end where it says Chapter 6. To know where I stop, I want to write "On Ch6" on a piece of paper at my desk. When I pick it up again, I want to use the Find function and type "Chapter 6" and instantly bounce there to continue my work. Anything that inconveniences me even just a little bogs me down a lot more than you'd think.



Number 7: Warn me ahead of time.

An old friend of mine asked me to review a story of hers, but she didn't tell me what the fanfiction was based on...or even that it was a fanfiction in the first place. Instead, I had to use what little I knew about the show it was based on to figure out it was a fanfiction based on the show.

Along with your manuscript, provide a quick and dirty synopsis of the story for me, including characters, so I'll know where I am and what to focus on. I don't want to focus on Lilly, only to find out she's just a shopkeeper and only appears in a single scene. I don't want to review an entire manuscript, only to find out your main character is an OC in an I Love Lucy fanfiction. Fanfiction reviews differently, tell me what it is.


This dog is a better editor than me.



Number 8: Don't expect professionalism.

I'm not an editor, I never learned how to edit, and I'm doing this for free. I have no idea what I'm doing.


Number 9: I'm doing this for free.

I can't say this enough. I'm doing this for free. I'm not getting paid for this. You didn't drive a truckload of money up to my house. It's from the goodness of my own black heart. Keep all of that in mind.


Number 10: Review my review.

Like I said before, I have no idea what I'm doing. As a writer, the only way you're going to get better is to keep writing, and for people to point out your strong and weak points. As a reviewer, the only way I'm going to get better is for all of you to leave me alone you to point out my strong and weak points. I've reviewed a lot of stuff, and I don't even know if I'm doing a good job, or making their once beautiful manuscript into a smelly mess because they never told me if it helped or not. So, as far as I know, but I could, potentially, keep ruining people's work because no one told me I was wrong.

Even something as "It helped me" or "That's not what I wanted" can be helpful. With only 2 exceptions, whenever I've reviewed a manuscript and returned it to Writer, I have never heard about the review, or the story, ever again. Tell me if I was able to point out errors in a clear manner, tell me if something I did was confusing, tell me if I reviewed a part weirdly.



Number 11: DO NOT TOUCH

Don't touch the manuscript when I'm editing it. This is almost as important as Number 1. Review it yourself, but once you give it to me? Stop. Nothing is more frustrating to me than to make a huge review of something, and then find out the writer nixed the entire scene, making my hours of reviewing worthless.



These are just my rules, and I'll probably come up with more as time goes on, but if you just keep these in mind, the world of writing and for-free-editing-by-friends will be a much happier place.



I Have An Idea, Mr. Writer (Writing)

I've heard of writers bugging people about stories they should write, but I never thought I'd be one of them. I think the first was when my brother said I was a writer, and a woman started talking to him about me writing a biography of her.

Since then I've had a couple of people either offer me their ideas, or tell me a more general idea that I should write.



I'M A WRITER!

Really, it's like seeing a guy in a straitjacket, in a padded cell, beating his head against the wall and you say to someone, "Hey, that guy doesn't have enough crazy, I think I'll offer him some crazy."

If a writer was short in ideas, they wouldn't be a writer now, would they?

I have so many ideas in my head that they're competing for attention. I can't get 20 pages into a new idea before something else jumps into my head and starts rearranging the mental furniture. I eat and I work and I lay in bed, all the while these ideas are becoming more and more detailed, which really only makes them worse.


Hey that idea sounds like a pretty goo-

As of this very moment I am working on two separate manuscripts, and a massive collaborative-writing project going with at least twelve other people, and I have four other ideas in my head vying for attention. I don't just mean vague ideas either. When I say ideas I mean worlds, characters, plots, scenes, beginnings, endings, dialogue, rules. All of these, for all seven ideas total, are going at the same time.

I don't have room in my head for your ideas.

Even if I did, though, I wouldn't ask for your story.

Don't take it the wrong way, though. I'm not saying because I hate it, quite the contrary, I love hearing about other people's stories, I wouldn't ever ask for it for several reasons. Probably one of the biggest is because I would never make it right. It's your story, you should be the one writing it. You know all the ins and outs of the world and characters and plot. I'm in the dark, stumbling around.


"A blog made us do it!"

That actually makes for a good comparison. Asking someone to write a story for them is like putting them in a dark room in your house that they've never been in before. The light is turned off and you're trying to direct them to the other side of the room because you know it so well. You can't touch them, steer them, or give them a flashlight. All you can do is talk to them. Guess who's going to the hospital?

A writer, no matter how good, can never tell your story for you.

Second, how do writers get started? We certainly don't think to ourselves, "Oh hey, I have this awesome idea, I should tell Benny to write it!" We decide we are going to write it, and we do, and then we all cash it in and jump into our giant swimming pools of money and dance on our solid gold toilets.


You knew I was going to use this picture again.

This all doesn't even take into account money, really. What happens if you do take someone's idea, write it, and it becomes a bestseller? How would that split?

"I wrote it."
"But I came up with it!"
"But I wrote it!"
"But I had the idea for everything!"
"BUT I WROTE IT!"

I honestly don't know how cowriters even get along without strangling each other.

So maybe, instead of asking your writing friend to consider writing this brilliant idea of yours, try it yourself. There's nothing quite like it, and you may find yourself in a straitjacket while people are telling you their ideas before long, too.



Music Without Lyrics (Misc)

The cool thing about music without lyrics is that you can't help but let your mind wander. Give it some time into the song and you might find yourself imagining a setting, or even a whole story, because of it. I do it all the time, and use it for writing or inspiration a lot.

This one is a personal favorite of mine, give it a try, and see what you come up with.

Green Rider (Books)

Hover Horse is hovering.

A lot of older authors seem to vividly recall reading The Lord of the Rings as a kid. I read it in my teens after watching the movie, and actually hated it. The story was incredibly dry and boring, no matter how much I wanted to enjoy it.

Maybe because I read Green Rider by Kristen Britan first.

I'd say Green Rider is an old book, but that's like saying a song from a year ago is old. It's really a matter of comparison. Green Rider was published in late 1998, so I was either 10 or 11 when I first read it.

It was my favorite book from the very start.

The story is about a girl who, after getting kicked out of the medieval equivalent of school, comes across a dying messenger, begging her to take his message to the king. She agrees, and suddenly finds herself swept up in adventure as people are trying to kill her for the mysterious message. She has no training as a fighter, so must rely on her wits and the messenger's golden winged horse brooch, which can make her invisible.

It was the second book I ever had that wasn't your typical kid's book (the first one I will talk about next week), and it wasn't until I had reread it years  later that I realized it was basically a ripoff of The Lord of the Rings. Still, it has graced my bookshelf the entire time.

There have been several sequels to it but it manages to stand on its own. In fact, I recall not particularly liking the others, and the author has taken a long time to get around to writing and/or publishing them. First Rider's Call, book 2, was released in 2003; The High King's Tomb, book 3, was released in 2007; and Blackveil, book 4, was released just last year in 2011.

There's something quite frustrating to wait 5 years, then 4, then another 4, for each book to come out, especially when you're a bright-eyed little girl. There was a particularly fascinating place in the world, too, that the books just barely hinted at, called Blackveil, and when it takes 13 years for the author to finally get it it you're not shouting "Finally!" anymore, you're glancing up from another book saying "Are you still here?"

Still, it was kind of magical to me. It was a story with all of this cool stuff: a smart horse, a plucky young heroine, all kinds of badguys trying to kill her, magic. When I was surrounded by The Boxcar Children, Ramona books, and Hank the Cowdog, Green Rider came along and I was sucked right in because it was Serious Business, and I loved it.

It's not the most original story, but it's a good, solid fantasy book that you can bet you will enjoy and not have to worry about picking up the rest of the series for any unanswered questions. I still see new copies of it in bookstores, so check it out.

My Mentor, Dad (Personal)

When I was a kid I remember our dad used to have us kids line up and spin around, in an example of the planets. If it was just my brother and I, we were the Earth and the moon, or Earth and the sun. If we had friends or family over, we had the potential for a whole solar system of kids. Kids love spinning around. That was how we learned about our solar system.

Our dad read to us a lot too. He's got some really old science fiction books, and my bedtime stories consisted of Red Planet and Have Spacesuit Will Travel by Robert Heinlen, as well as Integral Trees by Larry Niven. He did more than read them, too, he talked about space and what would happen if you were in it, and how you'd survive, and other planets. I knew more about space travel and science fiction at 8 years old than some people do at 30. He read us kid's books too, I remember The Wizard of Oz, and The Trumpet of the Swan, thought not as vividly.

These were the days before Harry Potter, and before the whole revolution of children's books because of it. I wasn't one of those kids who read The Lord of the Rings and fell in love with it. Heck, I didn't even know what it was until I watched the movie at about 13 years old (also courtesy of my dad). So, I had my dad's books to read. I was anywhere from 8 to 16 when I read most of them, because I didn't really have many books of my own.

One of the most prominent in my mind was Jumper, by Steven Gould. I've reread it since and it's always managed to have kind of an awesome impact on me. Other books I read as a kid:

Wildside by Steven Gould
Mockingbird by Walter Tevis
Z for Zachariah by Robert O'Brien
Emergence by David Palmer
The World and Thorinn by Damon Knight
A whole slew of things by Stephen King
Ingathering by Zenna Henderson
Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card
Cuckoo's Egg, by C.J Cherryh
The Stars my Destination, by Alfred Bester


I remember reading something by Hal Clement, I think it was a collection of short stories. I read a couple of Ann McAffery's Pern books, too.

There were nights when I would point a flashlight up into the sky and wonder if there was anything up there that saw it. I didn't become a hard science fiction buff, like he did, but I certainly see the world differently, thanks to him.