Heads up! Got a trio of books on sale through this weekend, starting today! Including my newest, the Fantasy-Western Shadow of an Empire! The deal ends when the weekend does, so if you’ve been waiting for a sale, this is your chance!
Shadow of an Empire
$7.99 $3.99 (50% off!)
“… a delightful ride through a new western world …”
Colony
$5.99 $2.99 (50% off!)
“… absolutely fantastic …”
Dead Silver
$2.99 $0.99 (66% off!)
“… a must read …”
When it doesn’t sell anything, clearly.
Okay, this needs a bit of explanation, but it’s an odd one. So things have been going pretty well sales-wise lately. Colony and Shadow of an Empire just keep ticking away copies, finally moving my book income from “Spare change” to “rent payment.” Or at least, they were, save for this last week.
What happened? Well, I went ahead and put Unusual Events: A “Short” Story Collection on a random sale for the week. Starting a 99 cents. Colony and Shadow were both doing well, so I figured that a nice discount on Unusual Events (Still, to date, my only book to not generate a profit and my lowest selling of all time) would maybe allow it to move a few copies alongside its stronger siblings.
Let me tell you, did that backfire. Instead of Events selling a few copies … all other sales stopped dead.
No, I’m not kidding. Fine one day and then wham! Down came the wall. All sales stopped dead. Even Kindle Unlimited reads dried up, going from a steady number of reads per day to almost nothing.
And then on Monday, the sale was over, and what happened? The numbers took a few days to go back up, but now they’re moving back to where they were.
Honestly? I’m as confused as anything about this one. The only theory I’ve got is that people who were looking at getting their hands on a copy of Colony or Shadow saw that Events was on sale and decided to wait until one of them was on sale, maybe?
That’s literally the only theory I have. As I watch the numbers slide back to normal post sale, that’s all I can offer. And even that doesn’t explain the KU numbers dropping into the abyss.
Is it coincidence? If so, it’s one of the strangest coincidences I’ve seen. And like I said, I have no explanation. Maybe Events is even less-appealing than I thought, so much so that it taints all other books based on its price?
I have no idea. Regardless, I thought it was interesting. Guess that’s one mistake I won’t be making the future. Unusual Events goes on sale with everything else, or not at all!
Today’s topic is going to be a bit of a vague one, I’m afraid. At least initially.
No, that wasn’t a deliberate play on words (okay, maybe a little), but more as a starting admission of my own limited experience with this topic. Which makes it sound like I’m admitting a lack of knowledge on it. Which isn’t true. It’s just that I (and my posts) tend to have come at this topic with a different approach than what has been asked after for this one.
What am I talking about? Well, the request for this was “Ambiguous characters and plots” IE characters and stories that are “vague” about what’s actually going on. An ambiguous character, for example, is a character where the reader is unsure of their motivations or objectives, or even facts about the character themselves. Likewise, an ambiguous story is one where the reader is unsure about what’s really happening, even as the story is being told, such as a story told by an untrustworthy or unstable narrator being ambiguous because we don’t know for certain if events happened the way that they’ve claimed, or if the narrator is “fictionalizing” their own account.
There can exist a certain bit of charm to these types of stories and characters (which is both why they’re written and why they’ve been asked after as a topic here). A story in which events or even the characters are ambiguous, when written well, can be exciting and teasing at the same time, constantly keeping the reader guessing and striving to put the clues together on their own to separate fact from fiction to discover the real story.
At the same time however, that’s written well. A poorly written ambiguous story or character, by contrast, will confuse and irritate its audience, often to the point that many of them will put the book down and find something else to read.
The trick, then, is being the former and not the latter. But in truth … it’s really hard to be the former. And unfortunately easy to be the latter. Because ambiguity is more than just cutting out certain details so that the audience doesn’t know what’s going on. Sure, you’ll end up with an ambiguous story … but one that’s also a mess of cut content at best, a disaster of confusing elements at the worst. No, crafting an ambiguous story (or an ambiguous character) involves careful cutting and replacing in such a way as to keep things balanced on the edge of a knife.
Welcome, readers, to a returning feature: Being a Better Writer- Classic Edition!
Yep, that’s right. Given that there are over five years of BaBW posts that have come by, it only makes sense to dig back into the past from time to time to revisit the wisdom of old. Today we’re looking at fights! You want combat? Broken bones? Riveting fight scenes? Here’s how to get started!
Anyway, let’s dive right into today’s topic, since my brain is definitely drawing a blank for welcoming chatter. Today I want to talk about fights. Because this is a popular topic posed by beginning writers just about anywhere. You search the forums of a writing site such as this one? Questions about fights. You go to a creative writing class? Questions about fights. Even a writing convention like LTUE … odds are, if there isn’t a panel about fights—and sometimes even if there is—this is a question that will pop up with regularity.
Because as both readers and writers, we enjoy fights. Fights are fun. They’re exciting! They’re a chance for the protagonist to show off their skills and talents, a chance for the reader to be tugged along by a rapid, dangerous, and exciting narrative. They’re a moment of tension, a moment that can thrill both the author and reader. And writers—even the new ones—understand this. For some of them, this may have been why they wanted to be a writer in the first place. They had some idea, some concept for some really cool scene, and they wanted to let the rest of the world experience it. Then they say down at a keyboard and discovered that writing is hard.
But, never one to give up, they push forward, and before they realize it, they’re sitting in a forum somewhere, their hand raised in the air, waiting to ask the question “How do I write a fight?”
Well, today, I’m going to do my best to answer that. Today, we’re looking at the act of writing and figuring out fights for beginners. If you’ve never written a fight scene before, or have and have felt/realized that it could be better, or even if you’re just looking for a constant reminder of the basics of what you should know for a fight scene—this is the post for you.
Hey readers! Welcome back to the start of another week! I hope you all had a pretty good weekend! Mine went well. In fact, I’ve got some good news for you.
For starters, Frigid-Reviews asked me to do a special spotlight on how I worldbuild. You can find it over on their site, as well as a number of book reviews—including reviews for Shadow of an Empire and Colony!
Second, Unusual Events: A “Short” Story Collection is on sale today for 99 cents! This price will slowly climb back to the original price over the course of the week, so grab it while it’s cheap!
That’s it for news! Plus, there’s a lot for me to do today, so let’s just dive right in to today’s topic. This topic is … well, it’s a bit of a broad one. I’ve noticed that with these request topics things seem to go one of two ways, broad or extremely specific, so in the future I think I’ll scale back the amount of requests a little to hit some more traditional writing topics as well.
But that aside, this topic is a bit broad because the question behind it concerns genres and how to use them. Specifically, how to mix them together. To get even more specific, the initial question wanted to know how to mix genres that didn’t mesh together, but … Well, I disagree with that. Almost. But since I can’t explain that without a whole lot of other context …
Yeah, let’s just dive in.
Weekend post here. A tiny bit of update, but mostly a question for those of you poking around the site.
What are you looking for?
I’ll explain what I mean by that in a second. But first, the news. Hunter/Hunted is coming along, though I did spend a good part of this week (and last weekend) working on another short story for that anthology. I’ll be sending out Alpha invites today to prior alpha readers, but my weekend project now is polishing it up for the book.
And that’s the news. So, the question! What are you looking for? More specifically, what else are you looking to get out of this site? Being a Better Writer is, no surprise, a draw to many, if not most who frequent the site, as is news about my books. But that news isn’t nearly as regular as the Monday Being a Better Writer posts are.
The moment you create something worthwhile, someone out there in the world will start to hate you. I wish this wasn’t the truth. I wish I could say that people were always going to be rational and capable of thought, but that’s not how it is.
Welcome to Being a Better Writer, where this week we’re going to discuss one of the more asked-after topics since I’ve been writing BaBW, one which I only in the last year decided it was time to tackle. This doesn’t have much to do with the act of writing, but it is about dealing with what comes with it. And, I think, all other forms of art and expression.
Haters. It’s a topic many of you wanted to see. Well, today you do. So … let’s talk.
Sorry guys, there’s just not much in the way of news this week! I’ll fill you in on the generals, but there’s not much I can do other than that.
Life continues to assert it’s balance. My book royalties have gone up … so naturally, my job decided to lower hours almost in perfect concert. So I’m slightly better off than I was a few months ago … by only a matter of a few dozen dollars where my budget is concerned. Lovely, but at least I had the royalties to pick up slack.
Colony continues to be my largest seller by far, outselling Shadow of an Empire by a 2 or 3 to 1 ratio. Having them both at regular sales is nice, but it says to me that the market for Sci-Fi Epics is definitely a bit broader than for Fantasy-Western Epics. Granted, I knew that going in, but it’s still fun to compare the sales numbers. Shadow hasn’t matched Colony to a similar degree in numbers of reviews or ratings, sitting at 1-in-4, so it’ll be interesting to see if that levels out as Shadow continues to sell at the current rate, or if the review numbers will end up being different say … three years from now (Amazon’s changes to review policy may affect that as well).
Work on Hunter/Hunted is still paused while I work on this short story for the anthology request. Probably another day or two’s worth of writing to put into it, followed by some aggressive editing before submission. Still, it’s a unique little story. There certainly aren’t many like it. Once it’s done, though, back to Hunter/Hunted.
Outside of that? Life continues pretty much as usual. Working my way forward. It’s what I’ve got. Just have to keep hanging on and typing one word after another.
Being a Better Writer will, of course, be back on Monday.
And with that, I’ve got a story to finish!
It’s Labor Day here in the US, and I’m taking the day off to relax for a little bit.
But while I do that, if you’re looking for writing advice this awesome day, have you looked into attending LTUE? Life, The Universe, and Everything, a writing-con unlike any other?
You should! Authors from all walks of life meet to talk about—what else—writing! Meet with editors, talk with famous authors, attend panels on everything from how to build a realistic medieval town to logistics through the ages, or women’s clothing in the victorian period, or …
Look, they cover a ton of stuff, and more besides! Art, gaming, even sculpture … but writing above all. The three day con is one of the best out there for old writers, young writers, and none-human writers alike. Come meet your favorite authors, get signatures, chat about all aspects of writing … It’s a blast!
And, best of all … it’s in February. Why is that good? Because you have plenty of time to get things squared away and come! Admission is cheap, the venue is awesome, and there’s always someone cool to go see or talk to!
Will I be attending this year? Of course. Panel calls haven’t been sent out yet, so I don’t know which ones I’ll be on yet, if any, but I’ll be there all the same.
Interested? Check it out!
Unusual Things 