It's a weird thing with me and fall. Like the air is charged just right, just enough to get me back into writing mode. So now there are two new projects coming down the pipe, one being editing and the other I won't disclose. Owens Valley may or may not be happening. I worked on that story for a long time after it was published, and frankly I think I'm burnt out on it. there's something that could replace it, but the way things are geared right now it could be a year before I get anywhere near the first act. Anyone in the know or who could pick up on the subtle hints know this is the piece I was working on after the hospital and after a hundred pages in, realized something was wrong with the story. 

August passed by quicker than I thought it would, and we're getting into that season where there's one holiday after another after another. I had intended on having sample chapters of The Things I Left Behind and Souls of Silica up by now, with a preemptive strike from Between the Wires, just to see what it would do for sales. If there really is something to having a sample chapter up before the book actually publishes, I have yet to find out about it. 

Anyway, there's still work to be done, but being muddled in the editing phase, this whole website is basically three steps behind where I'd like it to be. Once Between the Wires is edited, Covered, Copyrighted and so forth, I've got to do basically the same thing for the second rendition of Owens Valley. I get that this is a supposed to be some sort of business, and that it should be treated with the same effort as the actual writing part, but I'm just not a salesman. How To Sell Fiction was written partially on that premise. How can I make this work and stay as far away from it as possible? I'm slowly starting to think you can't. 

So sorry for the lack of insight and promised updates. Stuff is happening, it just has nothing to do with the world wide web. Sample chapters are next on the check list, I'm just not giving the check list much attention. 

Drudging through edits at this point in time, I initially wrote this in present tense and after reviewing decided on past. This caused a whole slew of issues. The long and short of it all, delays. Stupid, small mistakes that affect the pre-publication process. I won't have a repeat of Souls of Silica, the tense issues there were purposeful, meant to drive some thrill and tension. 

Hell, you live and you learn.

As an interesting side note, I heard of this fellow years ago, and what he said made it's way into Between the Wires, which has a touch of physics hidden between the lines. 

The very original version of Between the Wires was called Darker Cross, then the name changed to 60, for reasons you'll understand when you read it. The idea of seeing '60' or 'sixty' on the title page bothered me enough to change it. I thought that 'Between the Wires' had a bit more connection with the characters. 

I rewrote and rewrote sixty over roughly 8 years, and for much of that time it sat on the back burner. Occasionally surfacing when a new piece of information came to light or I felt that something had stewed long enough to make its way in. The version I am publishing lacks 2 characters about perhaps 30,000 words from the original draft, as well as a couple of sub-plots that while I enjoyed writing, were too far from the main story, and thus a distraction. It caused me to completely rewrite one character in particular, one that the story could have done without, but the substance would have suffered from if he'd been absent. 

Anyway, thought it'd be nice to update everyone on the next publication. No time table set yet. I'd like to see a September release, but I can only process so many words in a day. 

As a final thought: We intend to publish Between the Wires in a similar format as 'The Things I Left Behind'. People commented on the size of the book, which I'm happy about. That's why we went smaller than usual. The font, however, will be bigger. We're listening to what people like and don't, and hopefully Between the Wires is a step closer in a convenient little paper back for those doctor office waiting rooms. 

Unable to sleep and unwilling to just lie in bed, I double checked over the last post on this blog and realized how badly I need some professional editor. I don't necessarily mean in the context of grammatical mistakes, I know I'm making those. And when the mind is working and the words are flying I don't feel like looking back at what is written. 

It's not the grammar that gets me, it's the substance, the narrative. I can look back and say " I could have done that ten times better," or even worse, I realize how it should have been written in the first damn place. It's the merit. It's the narration. It's the substance and control over the English language. What's intuitive and what isn't. Can I make the next sentence fall in line with your next thought? I know I can, I've done it a before. Just not on the first draft. That's not for you, it's for me. Sadly it's what you're subjected  to  it here.

This is exactly why there are multiple drafts to any professionally published worked.

As for you, just realize that you're reading the first draft when you're glancing through this blog, and forgive my ignorance. 

There's a website out there, which I won't name here, that I can't stop visiting, no matter how horrible their journalism is. I won't name the site because I have spoken with one of the staff a few years back, before a merger took place, and I don't want to dissuade their audience on whatever their abilities might be. 

But to the point, they have run a handful of articles about various people defining horror. It's finally made its way under my skin, and now I have to explain something. 

Ask somebody to tell you about love. They are likely to give you some verbs, but the conversation ultimately end with something like "You'll understand when you're there." In other words, you have to experience love for yourself, because it transcends what we can do with the English language, as complex as it might be. That's not to say that you wouldn't understand love when it hit you, it's recognizable, and all those verbs that were used to describe it suddenly snap into focus. 

How does a stake taste? I can tell you about it, but not adequately. Same thing happens with wine. I can read all the tasting notes I want, but there's nothing like actually trying it. Only then do the tasting notes make sense. 

So how do you define horror? You don't. Or at least you shouldn't. Lets go back to the analogy about love, what if you give they gave you some expectation when they were describing it to you? Love that two story home with a dog and kid in the yard and a tire swing. Watching the sun set with someone who treats you well, that sort of thing. Then you fall in love, and it's not what you think it is. There are arguments, disagreements. The two story house is actually a ranch home and the dog in the yard turns out to be a cat. I'm being pathetically simple here, but hopefully you see my point. 

Horror works the same way. Just look at the western culture in movies and games. Is there any horror left? Not much, or at least not the distilled form of it. Riddley Scott's Alien was terrifying. The sequel was not. In fact the sequel is a dissolved form, incorporating heavy action to keep the viewer watching, where as the first movie gave you a brief glimpse of the monster. The reason the sequel has to the take the route it takes, going from a strict horror and terror building formula to a more action oriented presentation, is only because we know what the beast looks like. We know what is does. Yes it's a human/insect/mechanical hybrid, we know that already. Trying the same thing again won't work, because now we're jaded by it. 

So that those lines of thought and apply them to the general subject of horror. If you know what it is and how it works, it looses it's luster. Not unlike how describing love does. The first time you rode a roller coaster it was probably terrifying, though you know a great deal of work went into safety. The second time, not quiet so scary. 

Love and horror have some similarities, both are a matter of chemistry. Your brain recognized something it likes (Love) or something it doesn't like (Horror), and reacts to it. The proper concoction of hormones is prepared and injected into your system. 

But once you've gone on the Rollar coaster ride, when you get home that night, look up the fight or flight syndrome. study it for a while. Remind yourself that it's all chemistry. That your body is trying to protect you. That the sunken hallow feeling in your gut is actually the blood leaving your organs to reinforce your extremities. Then go back on that rollar coaster ride, and when it takes off, remind yourself all those things you learned about it. The ride won't be nearly as thrilling.

So if you are going to create horror, don't try to understand it. Don't try to explain it. Just make it happen and subject other people to it. If you want to experience horror, don't research it. 

Some things are best left to being experienced, not understood. 

In my high school days I saw these experiments that create an entire eco-system in a bottle. What is pictured to the left is called Ecosphere, which is a much more commercialized version. Basically you through sand, plants, and some living things into a bottle and watch them thrive. People can regularly get these things to last 3 years without any maintenance. Its completely enclosed and self sustaining. 

I started looking at the 75 gallon tank which houses my overweight pleco and rainbow shark, and wondered how big you could make such as thing, and would it survive. Does size increase the chances of it's sustainability and longevity? Actually, after some research, it doesn't. For reasons I can appreciate but not necessarily grasp, if you double these things in size you can't just double the ingredients. 

The current recipe I'm looking at involves coral, something I've never messed around with before, as well as specific gravity and biological filtration/mechanical filtration (Both of these happen without any current, and I assume gravity brings it to the necessary filter points). I've considered trying a freshwater version, but I know how that works. I have a 20 gallon long that requires vitally nothing other than an occasional water change, and that's only because it's not a sealed system. The fact that there is something as resource heavy as fish in there also throws off the biological balance, it's nicely carpeting with dwarf hair and peacock-fern, but still.

I could get a mid-size tank, add everything in and seal it up with silicon, but if I were to drain 100 dollars into a tank and hood, then silicon it,  would never be able to use it again. Most tanks are held together by silicon, and the only real good way to get through that stuff is acetone. So I'd essentially dissolve the structural integrity of the tank tying to get it apart to re-use it. 

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Marine-Ecosphere

Carl Sagan was fascinated by these things. Anyone with half an interest in biology, ecosystems and sustainability might get a kick of out these pet projects. 

Anyway, back to editing. 

I've often looked down on those who go through minor publishing, Print on demand houses, to get their work in hard copy. I've gone down that road, and perhaps for your first time publishing it's not a bad start, a good introduction to the world of publishing, but eventually you have to grow. Like transitioning from crawling to walking. A time or two I've looked down my nose at those people, but now I want to warn you. It's not that you're not trying, it's that you might get screwed.

Back in 2005, Before the Kindle ever came out, I signed a contract with an unsaid publication house to get Owens Valley out to the market. They made it simple and easy. Years later, it bit me in the ass. Turns out they published Owens Valley, a book I specifically took off the market, into an ebook for anyone to download. They did so without my permission, without any contract, and as of this writing, to the best of my knowledge, without any compensation. I walked away from that book with my head held high, knowing that I'd publish again without anyone's help, only to learn that the people I trusted made it nearly immortal. 

in 2010, I saw this ebook version. To I was infuriated would have been like saying the Apollo one mission had a few technical difficulties. I threatened legal action, and the publishing house, I thought, was sincere enough to bring down the e-book format. Keep in mind, I never signed away any rights to anything, so they had no right to reproduce. 

I learned later that they sent me an e-mail, saying that if I didn't respond Owens Valley would be turned into an e-book. Just like that. Period. No contract. No rights agreement. Nothing. This could have been a lie to cover themselves, which I'll explain later.

I thought that was the end of the misunderstanding. Until this week. I saw Owens Valley was still up for Epublication. It was still available. Ladies and Gentlemen, I could have blown a fuse. Years after the whole ordeal and I'm about to go through this again? No, actually. And if I may, here's the lesson. Turn the seller against the producer if you have it, if that's what it takes. I contacted the seller citing my rights as the author, and they promised to remove it. 

If you are a young author, I'm begging you to not touch automatic publication houses, Print on demand houses or anything like that. Yes, I use one, but believe me when I tell you it's a different beast that almost any other program out there. Hold off for a while, think it through. The chances of you dying tomorrow are relatively slim. All you need to do is the research, figure out who's for real and who isn't. The publishing house that cause me all of this is a major name, and I would have never guessed I was going to deal with all of this from such reputable people. 

By the way, I went back through my in-box. I keep all my e-mails that have to do with business, I mean all of them. I never found the supposed e-mail they sent me about turning Owens Valley into an Ebook. If you're a young writer, guard yourself, people are out to get you in ways you can't currently imagine. 

So in the weird scheme of things I might have been proven wrong.

Being inside the industry, and having a couple of resources not meant for the general public (meaning recommendations, my own research, that sort of thing), I have discovered that yes, there may actually be a viable market for Epub Fiction.

It comes after more than just a couple if people ask about the Kindle/nook/whatever ever versions of the latest publication. Basically, I base the way I promote and the medium which I distribute based on who actually reads what. There's a growing gap between hard copy and electronic format. It's been a nightmare of mine since I started selling books. Where to place money? Do I drop it hard copy contracts? Or take the risk of simple E-publishing?

Frankly the whole thing freaks me out. It runs absolutely counter to what I have been told and shown. People, intelligent, thoughtful people reading my fictitious work on a Kindle? You see, from the numbers I had gathered, as well as some reports, blogs and my own sales figures, the E-publication realm for fiction was all but non-existent. There are two reasons for this:

One, people seem to prefer hard copy. I remember John Stewart making a joke about falling asleep with a Kindle on your chest instead of a paper back, and everything I found concerning the electronic device since then has reinforced that train of thought. There's numerous problems with Electronic publication, the least of which being shelf-life and price tags that are the same as the physical copies. People, especially since Electronic readers are less than a decade old, still prefer to hold a hard copy and manually turn the pages. If there's science behind this, I'm not aware of it, but I tend to agree. 

Second, Social Class. Mid to high end earners tend to read more non fiction. They like their how-to guides and the idiots guide to this or that. They read manuals because their occupation may require them to stay at the top of the game, or else their paycheck goes to somebody younger and more energetic. For instance, medical professionals don't buy physical copies of every journal which they wish to read, which they are almost required to in order to stay aware of the growing technology of the medical community, as well as our understanding of the human body. They tend read those journals online, where they can reference them later with a simple search. That's far more efficient than keeping bookshelves of publications and having to search through them every time somebody comes in with a less than common disorder. Lower wage earners don't often front the 150 or 200 dollars for an electronic device simply to read, so they buy, often at the same price as the electronic format, the physical copy of the book. Not trying to suggest anything or start class warfare, that's just the current trend, subject to change decades from now. 

And that's how I've treated publishing all this time. I'm not out to sell you the secret to life, I just want you to enjoy what I wasted my time filling the blank page up with. Fiction is my preference, and in the one instance I wrote a How-to book, I published strictly on Kindle instead of fronting the contracts and filing copyright and ISBN's and NDA's and so on and so forth. That's just how I thought, and I supposed that many others, thought it would work. 

But now people are asking about electronic formats of my book, enough to give me serious pause and reevaluate my publishing methods. Might 'How to Sell Fiction' ever see a hard copy? Sure, I'd love that, but it's got to work in my favor first. Will 'The things I Left Behind' ever see an e-publication? Sure, when I have the time. And maybe it's that mind set that is costing me readership... Since I'm not a major contributor to the lit world, I'm limited in my marketing capacity, but based on what way too many of you are asking about, I'm reconsidering the whole business structure. The Question is, is it worth another thousand dollars to publish something, in a genre I'm not familiar with, in a way that goes against my established logic, to see if I'm actually wrong?

Your purchases will tell me in December. 

I know there are grizzled, hardened authors and people set up as publishing houses that are looking at this blog out of the corner of their eye. Everything I've written here runs counter to the general view and marketing scheme of e-books. But remember, they had to market the Kindle, the Nook and so forth, they have to make us believe they are the answer to all our reading woes. Once you get past the talking points and dive into the numbers for small self-publishers, I can vouch that physical formats work out better for fiction, at least it looked that way until a year ago, and I have months until I'll have a clear vision of how this year went. So the surprise for me is the sudden change. I'd encourage you, if your a small publisher and you publish both physical and digital copies, to look at your own reports and statements. Hell, come back and tell me about it. Maybe I've just lost the plot.