Monster hunters, spaceships and comedy of manners by indie author Mel Dunay
I booked a promotional slot for today with Ebookasaurus, another website which keeps its readers informed of all the best sales available on ebooks. This one covers multiple stores, so if your preferred store is Nook, iBooks, Kobo, etc, they have you covered. Feel free to check them out!
In other news: National Noveling Writing Month 2016 has begun! Once more into the breach, my friends….
This is the one thing you absolutely cannot write 50000 words in thirty days without having. You will want to quit, many times. You may even find, if you do this often enough, that there are “discouragement milestones” that pop up regularly. For me, I’ve found that I usually want to quit about halfway through the available time window (two weeks in if I’m working all month, 1.5 weeks in if I’m trying to do it in three weeks), and around the 20000 and 40000 word milestones.
I can’t tell you how to muddle through to the end when you reach those discouragement milestones, partly because I don’t always muddle through. Outside of NaNoWriMo, the 40000 word milestone has defeated me three out of five times: I have tried to write a novel five times outside of NaNoWriMo, and three of those attempts are rough drafts 42000-45000 words long, that tell a more or less complete story.
You need to find a reason to keep putting down one word after another, a reason that matters to you. It might be your love for your characters or your setting or your message. It might be to prove to your friends that yes, really, you are a writer.
It might be sheer annoyance at the idea of failing. When I was younger, I played the Elder Scrolls computer games a lot, especially Daggerfall and Morrowind, and to a lesser extent Oblivion. Whenever they would crash to desktop, I would get so mad that I would relaunch the game immediately, from my last save point, which was usually pretty recent. (Compulsive saving/backup of any computer project on hand was the only major life lesson I learned from the Elder Scrolls franchise.)
I have had at least one NaNoWriMo where that “I won’t let myself be beaten by this” feeling was the main thing keeping me going in between the 40000 and 50000 milestones. The result was not my best work. But it taught me a lot about the kinds of things I enjoy writing and the kinds of things I don’t. And because I finished it, I knew I could finish it, and didn’t have to wonder about it afterwards.
It’s okay to quit NaNoWriMo. There’s not going to be any major consequences, unless your English teacher was requiring you to complete the challenge as a homework assignment, or you were trying to use the challenge to motivate yourself to deliver a book under contract. But you will probably wonder afterwards: “Could I have done it, if I had kept going?” or “What would that novel have been like if I had finished it?”
And about that kind of thing, you’re usually better off knowing for sure, than wondering. Good luck!
Wooo! Lots of scary savings in this cross-genre promotion hosted by David Neth. Nearly 60 authors, including myself, have Halloween-friendly books in a variety of genres on sale for $0.99, from now until Halloween.
We have everything from ghosts to zombies to (a lot of) vampires to a couple of shifters, including Marrying A Monster. (Yes, there is a shifter in Monster, but he is more like the Incredible Hulk than Jacob from the Twilight books or Curran from Magic Bites and its sequels). David has been kind enough to sort the books by creature.
Anyway, with so many different authors and monsters on hand, I’m sure there’s something in there for everyone, so click here to check it out!
A few years back, I discovered a unique writing productivity app called “Write Or Die.” Basically, you would set a timer and a wordcount goal, and type in a browser window. If you stopped typing, the screen would gradually turn red and then the app would start playing annoying sounds.
Write Or Die is not especially your friend when you genuinely have no clue what to write next. For that you are better off turning to this technique of author Rachel Aaron’s, where she sits down and tries to figure out what exactly is going on in the next bit she needs to be writing.
Where Write Or Die shines is overcoming that inertia when you know you need to be writing, you know more or less what you need to be writing, but you just can’t seem to pull the trigger. Give it a try sometime, and see if it works for you.
A very underrated tool in the NanoWriMo toolkit is sleep. If your body does not get enough sleep, your brain will not be able to focus on what you’re writing. You will become grumpy and annoyed with your project. In other words, a lack of sleep is an open invitation to writer’s block. This is usually the point where the blogger starts talking about all-night writing sessions fueled by coffee, tea or the caffeinated beverages of their choice.
I don’t drink caffeine anymore. A couple of years back, I notice that I had trouble focusing on what I was writing during NanoWriMo when I drank even a single can of caffeinated soda. So I stopped drinking it, and since I didn’t like the taste of coffee or tea, I didn’t drink either of those instead. I’m not going to say that you shouldn’t drink caffeine, because I know it works for some people, and it is definitely too close to NanoWriMo to try quitting caffeine, because it’s no fun to trying to write with the “caffeine withdrawal” headache. But please try to remember that it is no substitute for a good night’s sleep.
The most important tool in your toolkit for NaNoWriMo are your arms, wrists and fingers. From about now through the start of November, you should be resting them whenever possible. Of course, you may have a day job just as I do, where there is no way to avoid using a mouse and keyboard. But you can stop playing games on your phone computer or gaming system, avoid unnecessary typing on social media, and adopt the best posture possible. This website has the most complete information I had found on avoiding repetitive stress injury by adopting the right posture, and trying to recover from it once you develop it.
During NaNoWriMo itself, remember to take frequent breaks from the computer to relieve wrist pain, and eyestrain. Ice packs are also helpful, hot packs are less so, because they cause the joints to swell even more while the cold packs reduce the swelling. If you sleep on your side, it is best to not sleep on your dominant hand. You can also try dictating text, as I’m doing right now. The first time I tried Microsoft Office speech functions was around 2006 or 2007. It was practically unusable back then. This version almost seems workable. I hope to dictate at least part of my NaNoWriMo project this year. I guess we’ll see how this experiment goes.
I’ve talked a little bit about music as a productivity tool, particularly in regard to outlining. Today I would like to talk about music to write books to. I personally have trouble listening to music with lyrics when I am writing. I just start thinking about the singer’s words instead of my own. For this reason, I tend to favor movie soundtracks or video game soundtracks.
Modern movie soundtracks tend to have many sedate passages with no clear melody or rhythm so there are usually only one or two tracks that work with my writing play lists. What I had found works the best when it comes to movie music, tends to be soundtracks written between 1965 and 1990. There is usually a main theme catchy and memorable, repeated in several different variations across the soundtrack. There may also be a memorable villain theme or a sweet love theme, which may appear several times.
I usually did not give enough face time to my villains for them to rate their own play list of villain themes, but sometimes a play list of love themes comes in handy. Most of the time, I turn to a game soundtrack that is driven and adventurous, repetitive enough and catchy enough to keep the fingers galloping over the keyboard, sinister enough to include the villain, romantic enough for the love story. This soundtrack is Castlevania: Curse of Darkness, by Michiru Yamane.
I like her soundtracks to Castlevania: Symphony of the Night and Castlevania: Lament of Innocence even more as music than I do Curse of Darkness, but for me they’re too closely associated with my memories of playing the games when I was younger. For some reason I never got around to Curse of Darkness, so the tunes are still fresh for me, and I can associate them with whatever I’m writing. I particularly like these tracks: Baljhet Mountains, Garibaldi Courtyard, Garibaldi Temple, Mortavia Aqueduct, Mortavia Fountain, the Forest of Jigramunt, the Cave of Jigramunt, and Cordova Town. Most of the rest is too sad, too silly, or too harsh and dissonant for my tastes.
I have been giving away an abridged sample chapter of my new Paranormal Romance, Marrying A Monster, on Instafreebie. This is the last day of the giveaway, so grab it while you can. Just click here! Hope you enjoy!
A lot of people listen to music while they work, and I am one of them. I’ve seen all kinds of theories about what kind of music is good for what tasks, but all I know is what works for me. For mindless data entry, I prefer stirring, exciting music that grabs my attention and takes me away to another place, like Jerry Goldsmith’s soundtrack to The Wind and The Lion, or James Horner’s soundtrack to Krull. If it’s the soundtrack to a movie I know really well, like The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, or the Indiana Jones movies, it doesn’t seem to work as well.
But there are tasks that I find stressful or intellectually challenging, that involve math or problem-solving. And then, there’s outlining my novels, which is a little bit of all four. (Less math than some things, but it does come up.) For outlining novels, and for those other tasks, I have a secret weapon: Baroque Favorites by the Jacques Loussier Trio.
Jacques Loussier is a French-born jazz pianist who performs classical music, from the Baroque era to Debussy, in a “cool jazz” style. He’s the leader of the trio that bears his name; the exact lineup has varied over the years but always includes a percussionist and some kind of bass player. A lot of people swear by his take on Bach, which honestly doesn’t do that much for me. Other people like his Debussy; personally I feel that Debussy is already so abstract that “jazzing him up” doesn’t yield interesting results.
I think the reason his interpretation of Baroque music works so well for me is the nature of the source material and the way it interacts with the improvisational qualities of jazz. In the Baroque era, there was an emphasis on making music both emotionally pleasing and intellectually stimulating. Music was intended to command the listener’s attention, in a way that busy working people often do not have time for.
Loussier’s approach makes Baroque music simpler and more approachable in some ways than it was originally intended to be. He arguably makes it calmer as well: the style of jazz he aspires to is all about conservation of emotional energy, because getting excited about things is profoundly “uncool.” The result seems to be music that stimulates the mind without demanding its full attention, and also calms and focuses the mind at the same time. (That being said, do not listen to Loussier when you are tired. You will not get the full effect!)
So, that’s the kind of music I outline novels to. I also find it helpful when I’ve written myself into a corner and am trying to write myself out again. It’s not passionate enough to help me stay in the “zone” when I’m writing the fun parts, but that usually requires a different kind of music all together…and that is a post for another time.
Now that you’ve “met” Marrying A Monster, maybe it’s time for me to share a little more about the rest of the Jaiya series.
The main Jaiya series is currently three books long, and is set in “present day” Jaiya, or at least a timeframe where the technology and social developments are similar to our present day. I have some ideas for short stories or novellas about these characters, and if I come up with any more 50K-length stories in this setting, that grab me, I will write them.
Marrying A Monster is of course the first book in the series. The second book is currently titled Waking the Dreamlost, which was my Summer 2017 writing project. Monster‘s hero, Vipin, has an older brother named Marish, who is the hero of Dreamlost. I will probably spend the rest of October revising Dreamlost, along with some time in November if I finish with NaNoWriMo2016 early, and however much time it takes after that. The hope is to have it ready to go by before December 15.
Loving A Deathseer is the third book in the series in internal chronology, but the first one written. (How that happened is a story for another time.) The heroine is a relative of Vipin’s and Marish’s. This one is going to need a lot more reworking than Dreamlost, so there isn’t a timeframe for release yet.
There is also a Jaiya prequel series in the works. At this point, the only thing written is last year’s NaNoWriMo project, a fantasy romance with a gladiator/MMA fighter angle set 200+ years before Marrying A Monster. I am currently outlining a book about Vipin’s parents, which I hope to do for NaNoWriMo this year.
I also have a very rough idea for a book about Vipin’s grandparents, which I will try to write in the first quarter of next year. And there’s an even sketchier concept for a steampunk-y paranormal romance set about 75 years after the gladiator romance, and about 150 yrs before Marrying A Monster. The steampunk romance and the gladiator romance would both deal with Vipin’s ancestors. The series would start releasing sometime in 2017, barring complications.
Jaglion Press