Update on Expelled and Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot

Okay, I’m done with my anti-Intelligent Design and Expelled rants for the time being. The good news is that Expelled as a movie phenomenon has fallen on deaf ears with the American public. As of today the take was less than $3,000,000 for two weeks. Now, keep in mind the religious fundamentalists have always proclaimed that if they were given the opportunity they could create the type of entertainment Americans really wanted and not that liberal, sexually perverse humanist crap that is awash in Hollywood.

Sorry, the religious wackos were wrong on several counts. First, most Americans could give a rat’s ass about science even Intelligent Design science unless it can be used to create compelling science fiction or a new iPod. That’s just the way it is, we just want to know we have the best technology available and we don’t care how we get there. After all, we can always hire Indian engineers for that!

Secondly, I think as of the moment Americans are once again focusing on bread and butter, or should I say bread & gas issues as they begin to question the wisdom of having elected an oil and gas man for president for two consecutive terms. As gas exceeds four dollars a gallon and we hear of hedge funds managers getting a $3.5 billion dollar bonus for the year even the most optimistic among us have to feel that something stinks in Denmark or should I say in the U.S.

Americans are just beginning to realize that the past two presidents and a plethora of CEOs have sold this country for some pocket change, just think about their gold parachutes and how they have transfered an entire generation’s future jobs, pensions and pollution to the likes of India and China. In this backdrop it is hard for a debate regarding evolution and Intelligent Design, regardless of the merits of either argument, to catch fire, so expect more escapist crap entertainment in the near future.

Now speaking of escapist crap, I continue my work on the sequel to Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot. The second novel is almost 550 pages but needs a good cleanup before its release. Now that the podcast is complete I am getting significantly more downloads by listeners which is always a good sign. Since the trilogy will be basically my life’s work I am determined to get it right and continue to obsessively revisit my previous writings and the podcasts. I have already re-recorded the first two podcast chapters and I am working on third chapter as I write this. It was a necessary evil since upon my re-listening of the original podcast I have found that I recorded the narrative at the pace of a chipmunk on crack. Also, as you may have noticed the Flores Girl graphics and web site will be getting a significant face lift from me as well.

Now I should point out that this rewriting behavior is not the norm for most writers. Generally, you write your first book and you get away from the wreckage as quickly as possible in much the same fashion you would flee from a toxic waste dump. Writers, and artists in general, have a lot of self-loathing going on. In fact, most agents and publishers encourage this behavior figuring you will start getting right by your third and fourth book.

Fortunately, I can’t do this because I find that the two main characters of the novel, Sarah and Richard, to be so compelling and such great foils for making my worldly observations come to life, I feel I would be doing a disservice to my readers and missing a great opportunity if I didn’t give the trilogy my all. And frankly, I don’t have that many novels in me since I am not one to rehash the same themes over and over again (I actually have one other novel in the works and a series of short stories including an interesting take on Sarah’s life taking a different path other than the one traveled in Flores Girl).

That’s it for now and I will share with you my future marketing plans for Flores Girl in which I may undertake some real hack marketing tactics. You can almost smell the sleaze!  And speaking of sleaze the entire first Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot novel is available as a free download at WWW.A-FREE-EBOOK.COM

Seven Golden Rules for Effective Fiction Podcasting

So have gotten through this podcasting exercise I came up with seven golden rules for podcasting fiction that I have learned from my own speculative fiction podcast, Flores Girl:The Children God Forgot -

1. Do complete your novel before recording the podcast and do not write as you go. Making it up as you go along may have worked for Indiana Jones but for a podcast that is a recipe for certain failure. It very easy to go down a rat hole in a story and with it so go your listeners.
2. Seriously consider culling your written work so as to make the podcast more manageable in overall length. By the way, I did not listen to my own advice.
3. Do invest in the proper audio equipment for your recording. There are some good discussions at the Podiobooks community site about this issue. You will also need the right software to edit your podcast and yes, we do get into the stupid PC-Mac holy wars as well.
4. Practice, listen and then practice some more.
5. And then edit and re-edit your results like a demon. Listen several times and then asks others to listen as well. One of the Podiobooks writers complained that he recorded a flatulent moment during one of his podcasts and unfortunately he doesn’t use side effects. I can’t say I have recorded a sound artifart but I have occasionally recorded a family argument or two by accident. I have also missed an edit and recorded the same sentence several times.
6. Don’t do accents or change sex during a podcast unless you are a marvelous actor or a very talented hermaphrodite.
7. Once completed marketed the hell out of your podcast. Just because you recorded it that doesn’t mean the listeners will automatically flock to it.

By the way I really do enjoy working with the people at Podiobooks, including Evo Terra and Chris Miller but maybe you have had good experiences with other sites and communities. Please share!

Reflections on completing the Flores Girl Podcast.

I have conflicting emotions about the completion of my speculative fiction thriller Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot Podcast at Podiobooks. First, I’m glad to be done with the podcast since it has been hanging over my head for over a year and a half. I was about a third through the podcast when the sirens call of family responsibility took precedence over my writing muse. I assumed a position of responsibility with a large Fortune 100 company and to say that my time has been limited is an understatement. So the podcast was basically relegated to a weekend ritual at the end of my fifty to sixty hour week.

Because I didn’t have the foresight to cull the novel from the start, it is over 550 pages, I ended up recording 26 chapters for the podcast. Reading my novel aloud was an interesting exercise because it made it easy to spot glaring weaknesses in my narrative and prose. Yes, after my readings I did rewrite entire sections of the novel. That was the exception to the rule but tweaks to the story and rewriting were the norm as I recorded the podcast. Monotonous dialog tags that could be skipped as you read became a drone during the spoken narrative of the podcast. I learned a lot as I made way from podcast to podcast. Oh, did I mention that I began writing the sequel to the first novel about the same time? That added another layer of complexity to the process because it did kinda of make sense make the narrative consistent between the two novels. Plus I started the third and final novel as I gathered more ideas to complete the further adventures of the two pains in the butt I called Sarah and Richard.

I dutifully went through this exercise every weekend, taking hours to record the narrative and then I spent hours adding sound effects and music. And of course there was the requisite audio equipment failure that cost me a month of my time as the mike input on my trusted laptop decided to crap out altogether. What a pain in the ass!

Then there was the readers, I mean listeners to deal with. They keep harping about what was taking so long. Jeez, as if a month between podcasts is too long to wait? Well, of course they were right and then came the inevitable criticisms of the podcast. You talk too fast, you have a funny accent (what the hell do you expect, I’m from New Yawk), the volume is too low and so on. At first, you might be inclined to make a comment about you get what you pay for but the listeners are making a considerable investment, that is, in terms of their time. In my case they were listening to over 15 hours of podcast recordings. So think thick skin like a rhinoceros and you will be fine, otherwise watch out.

More to follow on the Podcast Experience.

The Expectations of Genre Definition: Speculative Fiction

Speculative fiction is not fantasy fiction, as it rules out the use of anything as material which violates established scientific fact, laws of nature, call it what you will, i.e., it must [be] possible to the universe as we know it. – Robert A. Heinlein

One of the worst aspects of publishing work in a Web 2.0 world is the myriad tasks the author must undertake. Besides writing the crap the writer must undertake numerous sleazy marketing efforts. In the past that been relegated to the obligatory series of interviews and book signing, assuming that is if the author was lucky enough in his career or her to get to that point.

Today the challenges are different and far more varied. Most of the work still revolves around the writing, editing and marketing of the work. However the marketing piece of the puzzle is a bit of a quandary and requires the greatest flexibility on the part of the fledgling writer. Worse, it is also damn time consuming.

If you go the route of podcasting, which has its myriad appeals and challenges, it requires the author to do production work and possibly the biggest challenge of all: narrating the work. The web work can involve a site or minimally a blog for the author’s various fans to turn into. Besides words, structures these endeavors typically require some type of graphics, Search engine optimization and knowledge of key words; all daunting challenges for the uninitiated. If you have money you could have somebody else do it but you still must manage the ongoing mess.

The biggest marketing challenge could be the designation of your work into one of the existing genres. Why? That’s because the genre designation ultimately determines your readers and finally your choices among agents and publishers.

My problem was what the hell do you call Flores Girl: The Children God Forgot? An adventure story sort of describes it but there were some science fiction elements as well to the story. After all the core of the story is about the survival of Homo floresiensis on a small tropical island and that is speculative at best. In actuality these small three-foot tall hominids died out 12,000 years ago or maybe as recently as 400 years ago based on some early historical accounts. In any case, nobody expects them to be found alive and well today, at least not with the way China is clear cutting the forests of Southeast Asia. To call it science fiction would really disappoint the hardcore science fiction fans; you know not enough hardware and overall fantasy elements to keep them enthralled to quite honest with you. I mean if you can’t have sex with an alien then why bother calling it science fiction?

Then I came across the term speculative fiction and the Robert Heinlein definition. The definition seems appropriate fro my book but its usage and acceptance as part of the vernacular is no where near as universally accepted as science fiction. As a measure of popularity I did a search fro speculative fiction and turned up only a couple of million hits in Google. Compare that with science fiction with nearly 140 million hits and you have yourself a huge disparity in overall acceptance. So which sandbox do you want to play in, the larger one where you won’t get noticed or the smaller one with a much smaller audience? I’ll go with the one that is a better fit, thank you, speculative fiction. It maybe a smaller audience but in the long run hopefully it is the right one. I’ll let you know.

Is the Extinction of Publishers and Agents Near?

Does a new publishing model really exist or is it still in the making? We have all gone through the frustrating efforts of trying to solicit a dialog with a publisher or agent. Notice I said dialog, to hell with getting an actual deal. I went through the exercise briefly and found it perplexing, incredibly stupid and some what amusing because of its inherent inefficiencies. I only sent out ten inquiry letters to a few random agents and got only a few replies. In one case, I actually did get a formal rejection notice that I kept. I won’t mention the agent’s name because they at least had the courtesy of returning a rejection notice but their response was curious in that the agent claimed to be working with an author on a project of a similar nature. Yeah right, more likely the agent never bothered to read my synopsis in its entirety but here is your opportunity to vent your spleen. Oh, yeah, where the hell is that project they were working on anyway? At least I got my project out as podcast.

Slush piles and the like are norm for this industry (?) and I agree with the assertion from Michael Allen, who wrote the depressing “The Truth About Writing”, that there are many more lotto winners than there are financially successful authors. And as form of mea culpa, we are to blame also, or rather I should say the advent of the PC and word processor since any blithering idiot can now post some words and claim to be a writer. I include myself among the league of blithering idiots but I will continue to work to improve my form.

So what about the traditional publishing industry? Is the end near? Well, I’ll tell you a little anecdotal story that might give you a little insight. I have a good friend who works for Doubleday and I met up with her at a friend’s party. She knew of my work and she gave me the name of a head huncho to forward my manuscript to. I dragged my feet for a few months frankly because I felt the manuscript wasn’t ready. Now keep in mind I have my other friend telling me to write another book and move on because nobody cares if you have written one book. However, this book is my obsession and getting it right is more of a priority to me than writing other stories. Anyway a couple of months pass and the word gets back to me that my friend is looking for a job because the entire Doubleday division was laid off! I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry.

So what the hell is going on? I’ll tell you since I am marketing type and I see this all the time. We call it convergence, new technology being disruptive and challenging the established traditional business models. Nothing is more traditional than the present publishing model but the Internet, ebooks, podcasting and blogging are changing the model in so many different ways. It happened to the computer industry and now it is happening to newspapers, television, music and other traditional educational/communication forms. Change is a bitch and it is up to us to separate the noise from the facts.