D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

Success

I Don’t Want to be One of Those

by 2 Comments

I have often thought of myself as the kid in The Emperor’s New Clothes.  You know, the one who points out the emperor’s buck naked?  I look at things that others take for granted and ask WTF.  This does not aid my popularity.  Most people don’t want to be pointed out as fools, no matter how the fairy story goes.  I’m about to open my mouth again, so get ready for the tar-and-ruffled-feathering.

I signed on to Facebook back in December of 2010 for the sole purpose of using it to promote my writing.  I had nothing published at the time, but I figured I’d require some time to adjust to social media.  I adjusted, and not quite a year ago I established a page for my series, Lisen of Solsta.  Dropped like a dead balloon.  An initial rush of 18 likes and then nothing for many moons.  I let the page languish, occasionally posted bits of news and then moved on, remaining active on my personal page.

About a month ago, after posting a comment to Anne Rice’s page, I was contacted by a wonderful man who edits books for a living and who, even after I declined his offer of editing my next book, shared my page with others and invited them to like it.  I got to 30 likes within a couple of days.  This opened up the world of Facebook’s analysis and various data on the activity on my page.

Over the next several weeks, I got to 49, but I’ve been stuck there for a week.  Can’t get one more person to like my page to get me up to 50, and I’ve been somewhat of a pain in the butt about it.  How come all these other writers are crowing about 300 likes, 400 likes, and I can’t even get to 50.  Yeah, how come?  I don’t know the answer, but I do know something and I’m about to dress down the emperor.

Here’s how I likely got most of likes 19 through 49.  Message to my page:  “Hi, just liked your page.  Please like mine.”  With appropriate link to get me there.  Dutifully I would comply.   I was networking, and this was great.  Making friends with other writers.  What a rush!  What I didn’t know was a page cannot like a page, so all those pages liking my page didn’t count towards my quantity of likes.  Nor did my like count if I got there directly from my page.  (Check it out; you don’t even have to like it.)

But I digress, ever so slightly.  My point is this.  Anne Rice has over 700,000 likes.  Her “People of the Page” are readers of her books, fans of her books, hence fans of hers.  They didn’t make a deal with her that if they liked her page, she’d reciprocate by liking theirs.  She earned those likes because she is a writer who has written multiple best sellers and influenced these people’s lives to the point where they wanted to share some little part of her by participating on her page.

Not so with my likes #19 through #49.  I had to barter for their love.  Are any of them actually interested in what I’ve written?  I believe one or two have bought my book, and maybe they’ll read it one day.  But the rest?  A deal struck between two attention-starving artists.  How can that be right?

And more.  Most of these writers with their multiple hundreds of likes pound out one book, seek out little or no counsel on what they’ve written, maybe edit it once, maybe—just maybe—proofread it once, then toss it up onto Amazon for Kindle publication.  Because that’s all there is to writing, right?  Who cares if the grammar and punctuation suck?  Who cares if the sentence structure is shit?  Who cares if the formatting looks entirely unprofessional?  Writing is writing, right?

Wrong.  Writing is a craft, a skill honed over time.  Like a blacksmith with a sword, a real writer pounds the steel once and calls it a first draft, then folds it over on itself, often  many, many times, until  she can offer up a weapon which in its unity is much stronger than its components (in this case, the words, the sentences, the paragraphs, the scenes and the chapters become a work of art known as a book).  She allows others to beat the steel so that her weaknesses get worked out of the metal by the strengths of others.  Writing is a craft, and it is work.  Making up a story isn’t writing; it is merely mental masturbation.  It is in the execution that mastery can shine, but only if one is willing to give over large chunks of her soul.

I know I’ve gone on long enough for a single blog, but here’s the thing.  All those likes for writers (many of whom do not respect the craft) from other writers (many of whom do not respect the craft) are empty.  Just a popularity contest.  Yeah, the more likes you have, the more attention Facebook pays you, but they signify one thing and one thing only—how many asses you had to kiss to get them.  These people aren’t your fans; they’re bartering partners.  I’d rather my likes came from my fans.  And if that number remains at 18, I can live with that.  Because those people can’t wait to read my second book, and I don’t want to disappoint them.

Check out my web site which will connect you with, amongst other things, my Lisen of Solsta Facebook page.

The Prize

by 1 Comment

Months ago I began my first “official” post to this blog by talking about my adventures in self-publishing and why I’d taken on such a daunting task.  It was a multiple-choice question, with “All of the Above” being the correct answer.  One of the answers (answer B, I believe) encompassed in that All of the Above was “I wanted it read, in its entirety, by someone who felt no imperative to like it.  No imperative to hate it either.”

For some reason I can’t fathom, I’ve put off sharing the results of that adventure on my blog.  I’m shameless in shouting it from the rooftops (irritating as well), but I’ve said nothing here.

Cue the drumroll….

I received my review from IndieReader the beginning of this month, and although I didn’t win, I did get a 5-star review from a reviewer who mirrored back everything I’d stuffed into my little 304 page tome.  She GOT it!  Not only did she get it, but I know now that my vision manifests on the page with such clarity that it remains intact once it reaches the reader .

Do you know how amazing to me that is?  I’ve been living with this vision for over 30 years.  Its ultimate fulfillment does, admittedly, remain incomplete until I’ve finished the last book in the trilogy.  (Do people even refer to them as “trilogies” anymore?  Or do they just use “series” to cover all contingencies?  Hmmm.)

There is a key to this reaching, and my reviewer even mentioned it.  A few years back, I made the decision to send Lisen, the hero of the piece, to spend a few years on earth.  Important years, ages 10 through 17.  Now we view a large part of the story and the strange, nonsexist world in which its characters live through the eyes of someone who knows us as her own.  She may be Garlan, but she often steps back to study her world as we as humans would, giving the reader a sense of accessibility that had previously been lacking.

I did it.  I wrote my best.  I rewrote my best.  I formatted for publication my best.  I designed a “professional” cover even though I’m anything but an artist.  I put every bit of best that I possess into Lisen and into Fractured, and it worked.  I hope one day that the borders of Lisen’s niche expand to include many more readers than she currently has nipping at my heals for volume 2 (Tainted, due out late this year).  In the meantime, I take pride in the fact that although I didn’t win a prize from IndieReader, to me I won the whole damn lottery.

Shut up and Write

by Leave a Comment

I made a significant decision today about how I’ve been approaching the writing/rewriting of book 2 (Tainted) in my trilogy (Lisen of Solsta).  I’m going to let the forest be.

As those few who frequent my blog know, I’m writing a trilogy about a young woman named Lisen who believes she was born on Earth but discovers within a few pages of the beginning of book 1 (Fractured) that she is not human, and Earth is not her home.

What are now books 1 and 2 were once book 1 of a slightly different trilogy in which Lisen never spent any time on Earth.  I invested a couple of years into pulling that book together.  A couple of drafts made their way through my writing group.  And then I changed everything.

The short of it is—Lisen went to Earth and then came back, and I broke up the big book into two books with a concluding volume still in the imagining process at the moment (though my notes are quite detailed and I do know how it ends).  I worked on Fractured for a couple more years, continually refining until I was satisfied.  Then I independently published it, both in paper and electronically, and entered it in a couple of contests, the results of which are still pending.

Although I have tackled (and achieved) perfecting the electronic version over the last several months, I’ve also had pressure from my solid block of a dozen or so fans who continue to clamor for Tainted.  So I’ve kept at the reworking of the draft which, when I began, lacked any reference to Lisen’s Earth experiences and contained references to plot points which I chose to eliminate in order to make room for new, more productive twists and turns.

(It is truly amazing how many little tiny changes must be made in order to accommodate one added character.  And the choices I’d made proved more complicated to incorporate than I’d imagined.  Not complaining, mind.  They’re good, and they’re worth it, but here’s where the aforementioned decision comes in.  Are you still with me?)

Part of my process includes what I’ve come to call the read-aloud.  (I recommend that all writers read their work out loud to themselves in a quiet room with no interruptions.  Read it more than once.  And perhaps more importantly—LISTEN as you read.)  For some reason, in this mightily modified draft, I’ve done whatever I can to avoid the read-aloud.  I put off writing for days because I have a scene awaiting that step.

Today I realized that I’m working with a draft that I’ve already vocalized multiple times.  Yeah, I’m adding stuff and taking stuff out, but who cares in this draft.  I’m going to be back to work on it at least once more (two or three times more for the newly added scenes), so why stress over it now?

Because right now I’m clearing my forest of old branches and laying down new seed.  Which means when I’m done, the forest will have altered in ways I can’t see now.  I’ll only be able to see the damn forest once the trees have settled into place.  So tonight, three scenes went to the printer in one day (rather than the usual one scene in three or four days), and now I’m more than two-thirds of the way through.  How’s that for progress.

Sanity—Vastly Overrated

by Leave a Comment

I’m a mental case.  An antisocial, introverted, scared-as-shit-of-everything mental case.  And I find myself wondering if this isn’t a prerequisite for a writer.  Then again, there are some apparently very sane, very together people who write like crazy but aren’t.  Crazy, that is.

It really cuts into my ability to produce.  I’m saner when I’m writing on a regular basis, but getting to writing on a regular basis requires that I believe in myself.  I’m a mental case, for god’s sake; I never believe in myself.  Ah, the ambivalence of it all!

But here’s the thing.  I’m pretty good.  At writing, that is.  (Forget about believing in myself; never gonna happen.)  I write novels; I make short stories long.  I plot and plan and manipulate and finagle until the mix gels and makes magic.  I’ve gotten better over the years to the point where now I believe that my abilities as a novelist are pretty well set.  I’ll seek out critique when I’ve done everything I can on my own, and then I’ll send the second and then third books of my trilogy out into the world.

For you see, I no longer need to seek out validation from a whole group full of writers over multiple rewrites.  I’ve found my mojo, and I know my weaknesses.  Deserted, the second book in the Lisen of Solsta trilogy (see “A Taste of Deserted” below), is far from perfect now, but it will evolve under my hand, my watchful eyes.  I don’t have to stand up and shout, “Pay attention to me!” anymore.

And you know why?  Here’s why.  I sent Fractured, the first volume of Lisen of Solsta, out to two contests, and this week I received a review from one of those contests.  It’s only the first step of many in this particular competition, but Lisen and Fractured are moving on to round two.  I wrote a while back about how I decided to publish independently and then enter these contests so I could get a review from someone who had no reason to like the book.  And amazingly, my reviewer, who, indeed, doesn’t know me, not only gave me five beautiful gold stars (out of five) but also noted that I, D. Hart St. Martin, am her “new favorite author.”

Wow.

It doesn’t get any better than that.

Through the Clockwork Glass

by Leave a Comment

A fellow writer recently blogged about how a nice girl like her could write the bloody, gruesome details of murder and mayhem in her crime novels.  No mystery to me, but I suppose it takes a writer to appreciate the magic which ensues at the death of a character.  Her blog got me thinking about my version of this journey into destruction.  How did a crazy girl like me produce believable scenes of the delusions and delirium of impending madness?

I call it the “Clockwork Orange” scene.  It’s the moment in my YA fantasy, Fractured, when the narrative finally fully explores the degree to which my hero is fractured.  Lisen has recently returned to her native Garla after seven years spent on Earth.  She has just experienced the horrific murder of her only friend in Garla, after which she kills the killer in order to save her own life.  That, coupled with a series of earlier heavy stressors, has weakened her reserves, and she slides into a pseudo-psychotic break, unable to discern the difference between her real life in Garla and her memories of her old life on Earth.

As she sits in a bath, washing away the blood and mud of the disastrous events of the night before, she slips softly into the persona of Little Alex from A Clockwork Orange.  Odd choice, that.  Not really.  A bath scene had occupied that space in the book for quite some time.  As I reworked the current draft to incorporate the earthly visit and its sequelae into the text, I realized as I approached this scene that Lisen’s situation and mental state were not unlike those of the movie version of A Clockwork Orange’s humble narrator  as he lounges in the bath near the end of the story.  Demoralized, demonized, disillusioned and, most importantly, feeling utterly alone, Alex sings “Singin’ in the Rain” to cheer himself up.  What a glorious picture.

This is my most-favorite-ever scene I’ve written.  I crawled out so far on the proverbial limb that my literary nose bled, and I waited for the thinning limb to break.  And in the first version, I did take a tumble.  But the members of the writing workshop I was attending at the time made multiple suggestions for how to engage the un-Clockwork-initiated more fully in Lisen’s plight, and I wrote them all down for later reference when I would return to it on the next pass through the book.

That pass did not come for nearly a year.  I kept dreading facing the scene again.  I’d promised myself I would make it work no matter what.  I loved the potential in that scene for setting the stage for Lisen’s temporary insanity while pointing out the value of both a book and a movie that I loved.  I arrived at the moment of truth only a few weeks after my mother’s death.  I was still numb, and the inner critic had fallen silent.  I feared any attempt I made to revive the potential at that point in time would fail for sure, but I faced it regardless, determined that when my workshop sent me home with renewed criticism, hopefully focused on more specific issues, I could keep reworking it until I got it right.

I followed all of their suggestions.  I started in a different place and then moved on to the old beginning.  I continued through the scene, tweaking here, finessing there.  Then with a pounding heart, I offered it up to my group for their reconsideration.  I read all twelve pages to them, and when I finally finished, I waited. 

Silence. 

Oh, I really fucked up this time, I thought. 

Then one woman spoke up and said, “I get it.  I really get it.”  And the rest went on to join her in their praise.  I had invited them into the heart of madness, and they had joined me.  I’m telling you, it’s the best scene in the book, but you’ll have to read nearly all of it to get there.  Best damn limb crawling I’ve ever done.

For Naught or Not for Naught

by Leave a Comment

Many of my previous blogs have detailed the somewhat tedious task of prepping my book for publication, and at one point I briefly touched on why I decided to independently publish my trilogy.  But now it’s time to own up to the truth in full.  I really want to get read.

I have spent years attempting to convince agents and publishers to look at my book.  I wrote multiple versions of my query letter and synopsis, kept rewriting the book itself as I struggled to get it right, but the “Divinity that shapes our ends” refused to cooperate.  Through the decades the only “positive” rejection letter I ever received was the very first one.  Seems like a sign from the Divinity to me.

So last summer, after several new rejections in response to my latest endeavor at making a sale, I rejected the traditional publishing route in favor of self-publication.  In making this decision, I also committed myself to a singular objective.  I’d become aware of a contest that the online IndieReader was sponsoring, and completing the first book in the trilogy with an eye to the best presentation possible both in print and electronically grew into a necessity.  Lisen of Solsta: Fractured would finally receive a reading by someone with no reason to like it.

Let me be clear here.  I am not looking to win over a publisher or an agent.  I actually like, perhaps even prefer, the independent route to publication.  It has allowed me more control than any traditional publisher would have given me.  And I believe I’ve done a damn fine job of it.  What few readers I’ve reached thus far have blessed me with eight 5-star reviews on Amazon, and much as I believe each and every one of those stars was bestowed upon Fractured in absolute sincerity, they did come from people who know me and do have a reason to like it.

I have just completed a re-do of the Kindle edition of my book.  Although the print version looks fairly professional, the electronic version possessed some serious flaws.  Since (a) the best exposure for an author these days lies in downloadable data and (b) the contest requests a minimum of two manuscript submissions, one print and one Kindle, I had to get that Kindle version up to snuff.  With help from Smashwords.com, I created hyperlinks for chapters and made the text look as good as the best e-books I’ve read, and I’m feeling pretty good about that.

Now I only await the finessed hard copy from the publisher, and then I’ll complete the process by filling out the entry form and transmitting all materials prior to the deadline.  Then comes the wait.  I don’t expect to win.  In the fiction category, some contemporary tale of consequence will come in first, and that’s okay.

But if I can get that 4- or 5-star review from someone who has no reason to care, not only will it provide me with a new platform and, hence, more exposure, but it will also prove to me that all of this—the writing, rewriting, reconfiguring, proofing, reproofing, typesetting, in short, all that stuff I wrote about in earlier blogs—was not for naught.