D. Hart St. Martin

I make female heroes badass AND believable

writing

Craft versus Crap

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Last week I made the mistake of critiquing something online that was written by someone I hardly know.  This person didn’t ask me to critique it; it was only a general call for comment on a small opening paragraph in first draft.  Now, personally, I think sharing a first draft is like sharing an uncooked pie—hard to cut and even harder to get out of the pie tin.  In addition, the person didn’t know me or my work—I don’t have a “name” or reputation—and had no reason to trust a word that I wrote.  And I wrote plenty.  (When will I learn?)

But this is not about my woeful and misbegotten critique.  It’s about respect for the craft.  Any craft—painting, acting, architecture, dancing, singing, writing, whatever—anything that requires experience, practice, time and the input of others who know what they’re talking about.  Shortly after I posted my lengthy critique, encouraging this person to get some more practice in, get input from a writing group, etc., before attempting to publish, I got slapped hard (my name wasn’t mentioned, but unlike my private critique, this was public) for being “mean and vicious.”  Condescending and arrogant I’ll accept, but mean and vicious?

Anyway, I swore off critiquing online where my tone of voice and my facial expressions can’t be included in the picture and where they don’t know me from Eve so who am I to say anything negative.  Then I moved on with my life.

Last night on American Idol, I watched as three very talented, very experienced and very committed judges (Harry Connick, Jr., Jennifer Lopez and Keith Urban) gave magic golden tickets for the next stage of the competition to contestants they felt had a chance and denied the same to those they felt either needed to practice more to try in another year or needed to reconsider their life choices.  They rejected these people (the ones the show followed through the process) in as gentle a way as they could while still being honest.  Most of the rejects came out of the audition room in tears, hugged their friends and family and appeared to pretty much get on with it, some vowing to work on improving and then return to try again.

A couple, however, got pissed.  The following are not direct quotes, but they capture the essence.  “That Harry Connick is stupid.  He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”  “I’m the best American Idol contestant ever.  They’re idiots for turning me down.”  The gist was that these people hadn’t been listening.  They didn’t care about craft; they cared about fame.  And that’s the stupidest way to approach the creative life where fame is rare and fleeting and the work and the process should be the real reward that you seek.

My advice to this person I insulted badly was to learn the craft and then finish the book (with all the hard work that entails, not to mention the writing) and only then to consider getting it published.  I see too many books shot up to the magical place in the sky where electronic books go to live that haven’t been rewritten once, nor have they been proofread or edited by anyone other than the author.  This gives all of us indies a bad reputation.  Yeah, what you, the unwilling-to-trust-the-process author, do is screw it up for those of us who struggle with commas and “just” and “only” and why-would-the-character-do-that-when-they’ve-never-done-it-before dilemmas.

So please, I beg of you, do this one thing when you choose any creative endeavor.  Give a shit.  It matters.

A Cover, A Cover–My Kingdom for a Cover

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When I set out on the journey to share Lisen of Solsta’s journey with anyone who would listen, I really had no idea what I was in for. All I could see was that independent publishing meant I didn’t have to write any more query letters, that no agent or publisher would send me one of those one-size-fits-all rejection letters ever again, and that the control was all in my hands.

Well, not quite.  Self-publication requires a multitude of skills beyond just writing.  Here are a few of them:

  1. More-than-amazing proofreading skills and the patience to do it just one more time.
    Or…the money to pay someone else to proofread it for you, someone you trust or someone a friend knows and trusts.
  2. A knowledge of what Word can do and the willingness to follow the suggestions on your print-on-demand (POD) publisher’s web site in order to make the print copy look professional.
    Or…the money to pay someone else to format it for you, after which you must make sure they formatted it to your specific instructions and it looks the way you expected it to look (unless they have a logical explanation for why they did it differently, of course).
  3. An average intelligence in order to fill out the forms for the POD publisher, making sure the name of the book is correct, you’ve included all pertinent authors and contributors, and have chosen tags that will call others to your book when they search.  (And don’t forget your cover artist as one of those contributors—see #4 below).
  4. The artistic expertise to create a stunning and seductive cover.
    Or…the money to hire someone to collaborate with you, listen to your ideas and then bring them to life.

It is this last item I have opened up Word today to address.

I wrote my first book, Fractured, with a great deal of care. I rewrote it and rewrote it, submitting it over and over to the writing workshop I trust with my life, and when I’d reached the magic moment of READY, I did everything listed above.  Except for the cover.  I used a template from my POD publisher and a painting that was in public domain.  It wasn’t a bad cover; I did a fairly good job at it.  But it wasn’t the sort of cover that attracts young people, and my book was YA fantasy.

And it bombed.  Big time.  Fractured was named an IndieReader.com Best Indie Book of 2013, but I think I sold no more than a dozen copies.  I did get 5-star reviews from everybody who read it, but they were all friends and family, save for that IndieReader.com review (also 5 stars).

There was a disconnect.  Great book, no response from potential readers.  What was the problem?  I’ve written before about how even the larger details of marketing elude me, but I do keep getting myself and my books out there.  No, the disconnect was that adequate-but-uninspiring cover.

So…I hired a cover artist—a good one.  I had her start on book 2 (Tainted) so I could get that one published.  She did a wonderful job.  See?

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A couple of weeks after Tainted’s publication, my artist, Aidana WillowRaven, asked how we were doing in sales.  Nowhere.  I hadn’t wanted to look because I knew it wasn’t doing that well.  Who’s going to buy the second book in a series if they haven’t read the first one, and clearly few people had read the first one.  I came clean with Aidana and said that things might go much better if we got the first cover done and out there.

So now I’m on the line.  The new cover for Fractured is finished and available on Kindle.

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Gorgeous, isn’t it?

The paperback is another story.  Between typos in the back cover copy due in part (only in part) to making modifications too quickly to proof it properly and my dear POD publisher’s digital proofer somehow making the cover look like a printer somewhere had run out of ink, I’ve had to submit the thing, so far, a total of three times.  Aidana remained loyal and committed to getting it right and spent most of an entire day on my project when she could have been moving on to other work.  Heaven and the Goddess bless her.

Here’s my point.  Spend the money on a cover artist.  Find someone you can work with, someone who cares, someone who will put their arm on your shoulder and tell you they are your collaborator and they want it to be perfect as badly as you do.  In the beginning, I couldn’t afford this, and many who read this won’t be able to afford it either.  But spend as much as you possibly can.  Go as high as you can to get the best you can afford.  Look for sales, look for discounts, whatever it takes.  Because a book is like a beloved child, and first impressions do count.  If it’s truly good enough to publish, it deserves the very best you can give it.

Daddy’s Girl

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I learned to drive in a 1965 VW bus, stick shift and all.  I remembered this today as I was reading a list of twenty things a father should teach a daughter.  One was how to drive a stick shift.

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It was quite the adventure, learning to drive from my father in that box of a bus.  I started out in the parking lot of the L.A. County Fairgrounds which was essentially right across the street from our house.  I learned how to let the clutch out, shift gears, put the clutch in with the brake, turn, but all at about 10 miles an hour.  It wasn’t until I got out on the actual streets of Pomona that the fun began.

My dad had a theory.  Distract a driving trainee as much as possible, and the trainee will know how to deal with distractions on the roads of life.  He’d bark at dogs in yards as we passed them.  He’d insist I carry on conversations with him—not a problem since I loved being with him.  He’d whistle and play the drums with his fingers on the almost nonexistent dashboard.

He taught me how to play the clutch and the handbrake on a hill.  I’d stalled the bus at some point on an incline, so he had me get to the base of the hill that led to our house, and then he kept making me stop, set the handbrake, put my foot on the gas, release the clutch slowly, release the handbrake slowly, and eventually I got it.

And then there was the time when I nearly turned the bus over.  We were headed down a street with a very slight slope.  We approached a familiar narrow street with a tighter-than-90-degree corner, and he ordered, “Turn right!”  Now here’s what you need to know.  First, he’d never mentioned—not once—that one should slow down and downshift to turn a corner.  Second, VW buses being light and boxy have a rather high center of gravity.

So at that 60-degree-or-so corner, I turned the wheel, not slowing down, and we swerved into the opposite lane of the target street, the bus tilting at a dangerous angle.  Thank God nobody was sitting waiting at that signal, or the collision probably would have killed or, at the very least, maimed me.  There’s nothing between you and the hood of a VW bus.  My dad grabbed the steering wheel to keep the turn going (my instinct being to just let go and let fate make the decision).  But the trusty bus remained upright, and years later when my sister took her driver’s training from Dad, I asked her about whether he’d warned her about shifting down for a turn while in motion.  He hadn’t, but I had so she was spared the experience.

Tomorrow, December 15, is the fifth anniversary of my father’s passing.  He taught me a lot, some good and some not so great, but I miss him as a constant in my life.  I was a Daddy’s girl.  To all the Daddy’s girls out there who still have their daddies, love them and appreciate them; you’ll miss them when they’re gone.  And to those whose Daddies have left them, remember them with fondness; they deserve it.  And so do you.

Cue the Muse

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Today, I have a guest blogger who needs no introduction on my part.  She’s perfectly capable of introducing herself.

Call me Grace.  I am a muse.  Specifically, I am Hart’s muse.  We bonded when she was ten.  Her fourth grade class’ tarantula died a few days before open house.  Heartbroken, she wrote her first poem which her teacher posted above the abandoned cage.  And that’s how we met.  Though she didn’t actually know me yet.

In seventh grade, she decided to write a book about her adventures at a private girls school from the point of view of a bug.  Don’t mess with me here; I came up with the idea, and it was a good one.  Unfortunately she never got very far with it.  She still hopes to write a memoir about her experiences at the school, but I think the bug didn’t make the cut.

In high school, she and her best friend began writing a screenplay based on a historical incident.  She also fell in love with the Beatles.  I couldn’t compete with the Beatles, and her friend served as her muse for some years.  I retreated, remaining idle for a long time.

This is the way of it for us muses.  Unless the creative one opens her soul up to us, we wither a bit, but we never die.  Some artists—and I’m using the term in its general sense here—believe their muse has deserted them when in reality their fertile field needs to lie fallow for a little while.  Or for those of a more technical bent, their computer needs to reboot.

I reentered Hart’s life when her high-school-and-after friend had moved on, and she opened the door to me once again.  I handed her the third book in a series she’d begun reading many years earlier, and after she reached its end disappointed, I offered my best to her—a story in need of telling, a story she’d ache to tell.

Poor Hart.  It took her years to fully realize what I had given her, but when she finally surrendered to my magical gifts of whimsy and myth, the story took off.  She has now published book 1, Fractured, with book 2, Tainted, to follow within the next couple of weeks.

I have to admit, though, that I can’t wait to dig into the final book, Blooded, as this book hasn’t been written over and over.  Save for the characters, everything about it is new.  Nothing more enticing to a muse such as myself.  I plan on participating fully throughout the entirety of the process of creation on this one.  All I can say is it’s gonna be fun.  And there’s nothing more exciting to a muse as the potential for fun.

Judging a Book by its Cover

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A year ago, I published Fractured, the first book in the Lisen of Solsta trilogy.  At that time, I couldn’t afford to hire anybody to do anything for me, so I edited, proofread and formatted the book for both print and e-book myself (see the 2-part “Beware of Falling Rocks along the Learning Curve” below).  I also designed the cover, using CreateSpace’s template and inserting Waterhouse’s “The Lady of Shalott” for the picture because the subject of the painting appears appropriately “fractured.”  It was a decent cover, considering my good eye for layout but my nonexistent abilities as an artist.

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Here’s the problem, however.  It’s a great cover for a historical novel.  Adults, in the main, tend to appreciate the clean, unflashy lines of a pre-formatted book cover.  On the other hand, YA (young adult) books require something much flashier to grab the attention of teenagers.  You have to dazzle them with color and seduce them with something a little sexier than a painting in the Pre-Raphaelite style, even if that painting is a classic.  In other words, the cover was boring.  Beautifully executed…but boring.

Enter the idea of hiring a cover artist.  I began my search for a cover artist back in March.  My quest began with a woman who designed from stock photos.  She created excellent covers, great for romance novels and the like, but Lisen required a specialized touch because she’s not quite human.  I moved on.  My second potential cover artist used photographs, but what she did with them was incredible.  I loved her work and made an appointment to start working with her a couple of months after our first contact (her first free moment).  I couldn’t wait.  I was all worked up and excited.  The time came, I e-mailed her and asked if she was ready, and she begged off—too busy and my concepts were too complicated.

Sigh.

I tweeted and posted to Facebook the details of the horns of my dilemma.  Aidana WillowRaven tweeted me back and offered her services.  I knew I was about to come into a little extra money, so after we chatted online for nearly an hour, we struck an agreement for all three books.

It took time, more time than I’d anticipated.  But I began to recognize the difference between someone who Photo-shopped stock photos and an actual cover artist and designer.  It was a collaborative effort.  I described Lisen to her, and she created a first draft of what she saw based on my description.  I critiqued that initial effort and requested changes, and in the second draft, Lisen took form.  It’s amazing how I felt looking at her in that draft.  She looked nothing like what I’d pictured for years during the writing, and yet she was Lisen.  My Lisen.

The drafts moved on through clothing, the pouch (eventually eliminated from the first cover completed, the cover for Tainted, the second book in the trilogy), and finally the setting.  This last Sunday morning, Aidana and I both signed off on the picture, and on Monday I had the remainder of the cover for the print version.

I am thrilled.  I’d say thrilled beyond words, but I seem to be having no  difficulty finding them at the moment.  We will start work on book 1 very soon, and I hope to reissue Fractured before the end of the year.  In the meantime, I have begun writing book 3, Blooded, and plan to publish it sometime in 2015.  Have hope, fans.  I’d set a 2014 publication date for Tainted, and I’ve come in early on that one.  Maybe Blooded will write itself and be ready for publication by the end of 2014, but I don’t want to make any promises I may not be able to keep.

So, here it is—the reveal.  Ladies and gents, meet the gorgeous, seductive cover of Tainted, available in both print and electronic editions and due to hit a retailer’s web site near you in early November.

front cover shot - low rez (2)

No Mall Balls Blues

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I went to the mall on Saturday. This may seem like a small adventure to those who frequent these places of commerce, but for me, I might as well have sat at the top of a rocket and felt the breath compressed from my lungs as the thousands of tons of fuel fired up and propelled me out of the atmosphere and on towards the moon. What a rush, and not the fun kind.

Let me explain. I am an introvert. I do not do well in crowds. I have stepped into this mall’s Barnes and Noble on several occasions over the last several years. I have entered Sears, rushed in, found what I needed and rushed back out. But I have not, in a decade or more, come anywhere near actually walking through either of those stores and out into the bustling byway that makes up the heart of any mall.

I made my way first through JCPenney, looking for purses. They had nothing I wanted. I stepped into what seemed like a separate store for Sephora—no actual walls cutting it off from the surrounding Penney’s, but with corners and supporting columns defining the space. Loud music blared from unseen speakers. Clearly a place for young people, I thought. I’m not a young person. What am I doing here? They did, however, carry multiple brands of perfume. Just not my perfume, which has probably slipped into extinction, as all old things do. It likely went quietly, unlike myself. I plan on raging against the night, á la Dylan Thomas.

But not yet. I still stood there transfixed, knowing that there used to be a See’s Candies just across the way from Penney’s. I wanted mint truffles, and theirs are the best. I limped towards the door (my gout was acting up) and out into the Saturday-afternoon-busy court, and the people moving and sitting and walking and talking accosted this poor simple introvert like a tsunami. Mall shopping has not for a long time nor is it now my idea of fun.

But See’s awaited—still present if I could navigate the cross currents of this particular hub of activity. I paused in my pursuit of mint truffles at a cart of cell phone accessories. The woman there asked what kind of cell phone I owned, and before I could protest that I was “only looking,” she’d pulled every cover she had for my brand from the hanger and spread them out to show me. I smiled sweetly, overwhelmed by her generosity and embarrassed that she’d now have to re-place all those covers when I’d had no actual desire to make a purchase.

Finally I made it to See’s. It was half the size I’d remembered it to be. No doubt cutting down on the rent by making room for new lessees for the old mall. And the place was jammed. No mint truffles for me.

I turned to retrace my steps back to Penney’s, stepped through the door, past the Sephora “tent,” and on towards the men’s shop at the end of which stood my goal—the door to sunshine and air. My foot hurt, my back ached, and my soul desired nothing more than freedom from the mass of humanity that frequents all malls on a Saturday.

I doubt I’ll go back any time soon. I may never step into a mall for the remainder of my telescoping-down life. Target is about the limit of my patience with crowds. Won’t even try Wal-Mart. The parking’s impossible. Think I’ll just stick to my blogs and my books, making the occasional foray out into the world to visit with friends. Just not too much, please. We introverts need time alone to re-energize.