Unearthly Tales

Mountain of Whispers is PUBLISHED!

2010-07-22T11:59:29-04:00

I bet you never thought I'd get there. Well, ye of little faith, I received the proof copy of the book yesterday and all looks good, so today I hit the "publish" button and ordered some stock copies. Mountain of Whispers is available!

Now, bear in mind that I have to wait for my stock copies to arrive before I can dispatch any to eager readers. A box of them should be here in about a week (a box of books I mean, not a box of eager readers). Also, it may be a week before the book appears on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. But aside from that, it's ready and I'm now accepting orders. Just go to the Buy the Books page.

Don't forget that shipping is a flat rate these days, so it pays to get two or three of the books at once. This applies to both U.S. and overseas customers.

In the past, some have requested PDF versions of the books, and I do offer these, but only by direct email request. Each PDF is $7.95.

Enjoy!

Mountain of Whispers is FINISHED!

2010-07-11T17:04:02-04:00

As the post title suggests, Mountain of Whispers is finished at last. First thing tomorrow morning I'll be submitting the files to Lightning Source. Once approved (normally a day or two), I'll order in a batch for my stock. Then the book will be available for millions of eager fans. :-)

Over the next couple of weeks, the book will show on Amazon and be available for over-the-counter ordering at Barnes & Noble.

As always, proofreading is an interesting experience. I find myself researching the silliest things, such as:

What is the population of the United States and the world?
Is martial law declared in, on, or over a country?
How many eyelids does a human eye have?
Is there such a word as "grimmer"?
Will Americans understand references to "shinning up and down" ropes?

It's a lot of fun. Proofreaders often pick up stuff I never would have considered, and incorrect sentences that I've read "correctly" many times over. For instance, this one:

Nothing ever good came from tunnels, he decided.

Somehow, I transposed good and ever and not once noticed my gaff despite many read-throughs. This is why, fellow writers, you MUST ask others to proofread your work! *Shudder*

Probably my favorite, though, is not so much a gaff as unfortunate wording, when I suggested that a plant had "inexplicably grown three feet overnight." I'm sure the reader would understand that I meant three feet in height rather than three actual feet complete with toes, but I felt obliged to clarify it anyway. This is almost as bad as the classic, "She emerged from the shower wrapped in a towel." As everybody knows, showers tend not to wear towels.

But when it comes to ambiguous statements, nothing beats the word-play of Anthony Buckeridge, the old author who wrote the Jennings books decades ago. I love the shop in the village with the sign over the door that reads, Homemade Cakes And Bicycles Repaired, which could be read a couple of ways. Or when Jennings receives parcels for his birthday:

"Wacko! There's a whole pile of letters for me," Jennings cried excitedly, hopping from one foot to the other. "And three parcels. The big one's my cake and the square fat one's probably Aunt Angela."
Darbishire peered at the parcel through dusty spectacles. "Don't be crazy; she couldn't be that shape unless she'd been cremated."

And then, coming back to the subject of eyelids, there's a bit where the boys are dreaming about becoming famous detectives:

       "It's a pity we couldn't see his boots," Jennings said. "Sherlock Holmes always knew where a chap had come from, just by sitting with half-closed eyelids and seeing what sort of mud he'd got on them."
       "But he wouldn't have any," Darbishire objected, "not unless he'd been playing rugger."
       "Of course he would! You don't go about without boots."
       "No, I mean he wouldn't have any mud on his eyelids."

Anyway, fingers crossed, all typos, gaffs, and generally misleading statements have been eradicated. The book goes to print tomorrow, and I'll let y'all know when the first copies arrive.

Minichapters

2010-07-07T14:44:57-04:00

To all those waiting patiently (or impatiently) for Mountain of Whispers, I promise that it's just about ready! Honestly, I'm reading through one last time and getting feedback from a couple of others, but I'll be uploading the finished book to the printing company this coming weekend no matter what. Full publication should be about a week later. Watch this space!

After the book is published, I'll be starting on minichapters. I'm sure you've heard of webisodes, which are web-based episodes of TV shows, usually 5-15 minutes each.They're designed as extras for die-hard fans, but they're not essential and don't interfere with the running TV series.

In the book world, there are not-so-common terms such as bookisodes and chapisodes (or chaptisodes), which are basically chapters of a running serial posted online. I like bookisode, but chapisode is more accurate. Since I like to live on the edge, I'm going with minichapters.

I have a set of minichapters planned for my Island of Fog trilogy. The three books in the trilogy are written entirely from Hal's POV (point of view); we're inside his head the whole time. This means there are a few keys moments that he misses out on, such as when Abigail, Lauren, Dewey and Fenton transform for the first time. But to write these scenes into the books would have meant an odd switching of POV, not to mention making the books much longer.

My planned minichapters will take care of these scenes. They'll be written from the POV of the character in the scene and will serve as standalone short stories or segments that tie in perfectly with the books but aren't absolutely necessary to read. For instance, the minichapter about Abigail will show her getting an itch on her back and beginning to transform. Maybe you can recall that she lopped off her long hair and cut holes in the backs of her shirts to accommodate her transformations?

In Labyrinth of Fire, there are a few key scenes that I would like to "tell" in the form of a minichapter, such as when Abigail was kidnapped by a dragon. It's not essential, but might be fun. And in Mountain of Whispers there are a couple of non-Hal scenes that I know readers would like to know more about. I couldn't have Hal everywhere because it wouldn't have made sense to the story and the book would have ended up 50% fatter -- but I can write those segments quite effectively as minichapters.

All these minichapters will be free, posted on this website. There are plenty of other areas I could explore, too, such as Miss Simone's background, how the parents arrived on the island, the day disaster struck, and so on. So much to write! Maybe next year, when I have a whole bunch written, I'll print them as a nice fat book with lots of extra segments.

All this is padding for the three books in the trilogy -- as I said, not essential reading, but hopefully interesting for those who would like to delve deeper. Meanwhile, later this year I'll be starting on Book IV...

Mountain of Whispers final book cover!

2010-06-26T18:01:12-04:00

Thanks to all the comments received about the Mountain of Whispers cover, I realized how silly it looked with the original dragon. The smaller dragon looked slightly better but a few people suggested I'd swatted a bug and ruined a perfectly good scene. Sadly, they were right.

So I set about finding a better dragon. There were two problems with this. The first problem was finding a decent dragon that resembled the one used on the cover of Labyrinth of Fire. The second problem was finding a picture in a useful flying pose that I could use on this new cover, and finding one that was a suitably high resolution for printing.

I failed.

But then I came across some free software called Daz 3D Studio. It's available for both Mac and Windows that allows you to manipulate and tweak pre-made models (people, animals, creatures, etc) and create artwork that you can call your own. I bought the Millennium Dragon pack, which is basically a 3D computer model of a dragon -- and not just any dragon, but THE dragon used on Labyrinth of Fire. Now I understand where that image came from!

When loaded into the studio software, you can move the dragon around, reposition his tail, feet, head, wings, as well as fine details like giving him longer or shorter claws, adding spikes, making him thin or fat, and so on. It's amazing! You can even open and close his mouth. THEN, you can turn the model around and view the pose from any angle. Once you get it exactly where you want it, you export the view as a high quality image. Brilliant!

Click for larger view

So I was finally able to create the dragon I wanted, and in a high resolution for printing. The new cover is done! (And if you don't like it, well...)

I still had to do a little jiggery-pokery to soften the edges and so on, and I know it's not photo-real. But I kind of like the effect, so there. And I think younger readers will love it.

In the future, this software will enable me to create other book covers as well as "scenes" from the books. For instance, I plan to add webisodes to this website in the near future, such as a chapter written from Abigail's point of view detailing how she first transformed into... well, you know. It would be great to create a graphic for that. Basically, I'd be illustrating my own novels and stories.

Maybe later I can create a cover for Island of Fog that has a sea serpent or manticore on it, something interesting like that. I've been unable to do this before, because I haven't been able to find good graphics.

Hmm, I may have to give up writing. This 3D studio is way too much fun. I may have to give up working, too. Maybe my wife can support us for the next few months while I play...

Mountain of Whispers cover update

2010-06-18T21:55:49-04:00

Back in October 2009, when I was getting ready to launch Labyrinth of Fire, I decided that a cover depicting a tunnel wasn't exciting enough, so I added a whopping great big dragon to the scene. It proved successful, and is the favored cover of most younger readers (rather than the foggy Island of Fog cover, which is mysterious but necessarily monster-free). With this in mind, I've added another whopping great big dragon to Mountain of Whispers.

Click for Larger View
(Note: this has since been updated)

Whether it looks real or not (and let's face it, dragons are in fact not real), I think it works better and should especially appeal to younger readers. As much as I like nice scenery, I understand that a little extra something is needed to make it look interesting.

When I was looking for a suitable dragon picture back in October, I searched the database at Big Stock Photo. It had to be a dragon picture I could use royalty-free and without copyright issues. There was really only one that I liked and could make use of, and that's the one now gracing the cover of Labyrinth of Fire.

Then, a couple of weeks ago (about eight months later), I went looking for another dragon picture. Big Stock Photo had added to their database so there was more to choose from. This time I was looking for a dragon in flight, and ended up with around ten possibilities that I hadn't seen before. None of them worked. I dug deeper, and finally found the one you see in this picture.

The funny thing is, if you zoom in and look closely, you can see that the detail is almost exactly the same. Both dragons I ended up using were created by the same artist. It's the same dragon.

The same species, anyway, and I never said which dragon appears on the cover of Labyrinth of Fire. It could be any of them. I always saw the labyrinth dragon as a little mean-looking, so I would say it's one of the adults. The one on Mountain of Whispers is a little more boyish-looking, and can be only one character.

I have a lot of fun creating book covers. I'm not saying they're perfect, but I like the process of finding a backdrop and a creature to put on top of it. I not expert enough to make the finished pictures look photo-realistic, but I think they're okay.

As usual I had to do some crafty jiggery-pokery with the original photo. I dropped out the garish computer generated background, mirrored the dragon, added a better tail (taken from another dragon; he won't miss it), and pasted it as a layer on top of the bookcover's mountain scene. Then I faded it a little, feathered the edges to get rid of some of the sharpness, faded his feet even more so they looked a little misty...

Because of the high contrast of the original image, the black shadows around the dragon's legs looked weird when lightened, so I had to "fill in" some of the original scaly skin color.

Anyway, it's all good fun. If I had my druthers, I'd commission a painter to do exactly what I want on all three covers. Funny enough, I met someone just the other day who would do a brilliant job with this – a real live graphic comic book artist by the name of James Lyle (www.jameslyle.net). In my pipe dreams, I would hire James to paint the covers and provide internal black and white illustrations as well. Oh, if only...

Books can be ordered at Barnes & Noble

2010-06-14T16:41:01-04:00

I had a VERY exciting conversation earlier with Adam Anderson, a customer relations manager with Barnes & Noble in the local area. I met him at the recent Summer Reading Kickoff, and when he introduced himself, I immediately gave him copies of Island of Fog and Labyrinth of Fire.

He's now finished reading Island of Fog and says he loved it. He said it "stands apart" from other similar fantasy books and he strongly believes customers will enjoy it if only they can get hold of it. So he's eager to get the books into his local store in Chattanooga, and plans to buy maybe ten copies to start with.

Sales of the book will directly affect whether the book will be restocked locally, and more importantly, whether the store will stock the books across the country. I have some more work to do on that front, by contacting their central Small Press Department and getting "signed up," but in the meantime Adam wants to get things started locally.

To that end, can I beg y'all to help me out here? If you haven't yet got a copy of Island of Fog or Labyrinth of Fire, and you're thinking about it, please do so through a local Barnes & Noble store. Don't go online to their website; that will count as an online sale. Instead, either drop in to your local store and order the book over the counter, or make a phone call and do the same thing. This will count as an in-store sale. Copies take only 2-3 days to arrive.

Just to double-check, I made a phone call to a random Barnes & Noble store and the friendly assistant said the books are indeed available to order. This applies to ALL stores across the U.S.

If there are enough in-store sales (locally or otherwise), the Big Boys at Barnes & Noble will recognize that there's perhaps enough demand to stock copies on their shelves -- or at least enough demand to try it for a while. Once the books are on the shelves, they'll likely sell better, and the ball will start rolling.

If your local Barnes & Noble store is the one at Hamilton Place, Chattanooga, then please go in and ask about the books. Staff are currently waiting for Adam to finish reading them, but hopefully they'll become aware of the books over the next few days and weeks, and copies will appear on the shelves. If you see one, buy it! And if not, demand a copy.

There. I don't normally beg that you buy copies, but this could be a major turning point for a struggling author. :-)

You can ask for the books by author name and title, or quote the following ISBN numbers:

Island of Fog (ISBN 978-0984390601)
Labyrinth of Fire (ISBN 978-0984390618)

To make it easier, you can click here for printable information.

Mountain of Whispers should be available in early July; I'll post about that one separately.

You can't rush a genius...

2010-06-10T22:15:41-04:00

...and you can't rush me either! As I waited for my two proofreaders to do their thang on Mountain of Whispers, I wondered if I could get away with light line edits this time. Alas, no such luck! For the most part there's nothing major to change, but there are a few minor loose ends and seemingly irrelevant ideas to clean up, plus one major scene that will certainly require a rewrite of one complete chapter (something I'll be tackling tomorrow).

This is all good, though. Labyrinth of Fire went through almost the exact same thing in October 2009, and it was all for the best. (Island of Fog was a completely different kettle of fish, with numerous rewrites over many years before it was cobbled together into its present form!)

It's amazing how many errors slip through. Before I sent Mountain of Whispers to my proofreaders, I thought it was a pretty tight, clean version. I almost felt like challenging them to spot the errors. Oh, how wrong I was! Anyone who thinks they can proofread their own manuscript and get away typo-free is a fool.

And there are factual errors to think about, too. While writing the novel, I did a quick bit of research on Stonehenge in Salisbury, England, and read that the inner circle stones weigh four tons each, while the outer stones are more like fifty tons. Wrong! A bit of extra research, as prompted by one of the proofreaders, tells me that the outer stones are actually twenty-five tons, not fifty. Good job he checked, or I would have had egg all over my face.

(Having said that, I could have argued that Robbie, who offered this information about Stonehenge as he climbed a steep hill, just got his facts twisted.)

Anyway, Mountain of Whispers is getting there, slowly but steadily. I'll post the prologue and first two chapters on this website in about a week, as they now seem to be on fairly solid ground. This round of proofreading is fairly tough, involving quite a lot of fixes, but the next round should be a breeze for another two volunteer proofreaders. They'll be reading it "like a book" and just commenting on anything that jumps out, rather than analyzing every line. It'll be like a final overall quality check before it hits the cybershelves.

And speaking of shelves... I've been contacted by a Barnes & Noble representative (the one I met at the recent Summer Reading Kickoff). He seems to be enjoying Island of Fog and has a few store managers interested in reading it next. This bodes well for my Fiendish Plan to get my books onto shelves in stores. More on this in a separate post!

Look, I can't help being British

2010-06-02T23:22:23-04:00

The most time-consuming part of the editing process is done and Mountain of Whispers is well into the final proofreading stage. I've already had the first half returned by one proofer, complete with dozens of little marks and comments. Nothing major, just missing words and commas, an unnecessary exclamation mark or two, a few word repetitions... the sort of thing that takes seconds to fix IF spotted in the first place, hence the need for a second and third pair of eyes.

Don't forget you can check on progress here (it's underneath the book summary).

The aforementioned proofreader is Brian Clopper, a fifth grade teacher at Jones Dairy Elementary School in North Carolina, who you may remember from a previous post. Brian recently finished his own novel, Irving Wishbutton: The Questing Academy, and I had the privilege of proofreading it in a similar fashion. Brian is currently looking for an agent, but in the meantime he sent part of his novel to Piers Anthony, who commented in his June newsletter that "it's fabulous" and the author "deserves to be known." Go, Brian!

Another proofreader for Mountain of Whispers is one of my brothers, Darren, who lives in England and is trained in this type of thing. I'm currently (very slowly) building him a website for a part-time proofreading business, which I think is ideal for him.

But there's a slight snag. When I write, Britishisms tend to sneak in. I may have mentioned before that being a Brit in America means relearning some of the rules. British English is not exactly the same as U.S. English. I'm getting there, and now use toward instead of towards, traveler instead of traveller, realize instead of realise, and so on. But sometimes I'll slip up when it comes to phrasing. In one of my new chapters, Fenton says:

"Get a move on, you big girl's blouse."

Brian scrawled a message next to this on the manuscript, saying, "What? I'm not sure what this means." Oops! Well, I guess I'll change it to make it more American, but basically a big girl's blouse is a "wimpy, emasculated and weak man" who whines and moans a lot -- or, as Americans like to say, a wuss.

There's another side to this British vs. U.S. English thing. When Darren proofreads my text, he picks up things that are glaringly wrong to him but actually correct in America. So I have to deal with two sides -- Brian saying my Britishisms don't make sense, and Darren saying my Americanisms are wrong! But it's all good fun, and in the end my books are probably about 95% American with a smattering of good ol' Blighty thrown in (whether intentional or not).

The funny thing is, the main characters in the books generally speak "all proper like" and in a vaguely American accent (it's all a little mixed up in my head, to be honest). But when I have goblins like Blacknail speaking, then I switch to rough-and-ready English such as, "I don't know nuffin'," and "I'm gonna show 'em what's what." When I write this and read it back, in my head it's definitely a strong London Cockney accent... and it amuses me that American readers most likely read goblin dialog with American accents, which just seems wrong somehow.

There's a guy painting our deck at the moment; he's been coming and going for weeks, doing a bit here and there depending on weather and other jobs. He's reading Harry Potter and keeps asking me what certain phrases mean. As you all know, J. K. Rowling wrote her books in pure British English, complete with Britishisms, and they're enjoyed by readers from all countries... and I like to think that American readers find her Britishisms interesting and funny even if their meanings are not clear. But it's important to remember that Rowling, being British, set out to find a British publisher; her books just happened to end up selling in America and the rest of the world. Likewise, since I live here in the U.S., I set out to find an American publisher and am trying not to confuse potential publisher with phrases like "a big girl's blouse."

One final thought. I recently posted on Facebook congratulating the winner of a recent raffle. I then said, "A big thank you to all 65 entrants!" But originally I had written something different, which my wife told me sounded really bad. I had written, "Bad luck to the other 64 entrants!" Now, in England this is a perfectly ordinary phrase meaning, "Sorry you didn't win." But here in America, apparently it means something like, "May the other 64 entrants suffer terrible luck."

Writing in a non-native version of a language is like walking through a minefield.

Cherokee Regional Summer Reading Kickoff 2010

2010-05-23T11:17:52-04:00

The Cherokee Regional Summer Reading Kickoff was a lot of fun yesterday. It took place in the Agricultural Building behind the Walker County Civic Center in Rock Spring (the "rain location" because the ground at Lee & Gordon's Mills was still a little soggy from the previous day's rain). It was a hot, sunny morning and the place was busy from the moment the doors opened at 10.30am.

For those who don't know, summer reading programs help children maintain reading skills over the summer vacation. The idea is for children to read, read, read! This particular event included storytime with Carmen Agra Deedy, a nationally known storyteller and author.

Hannah with her prize (ie, the books, not me)

I had a table just inside the door where I was offering a free raffle. My clever wife had packaged up a basket with some goodies including Island of Fog and Labyrinth of Fire; entry to the raffle involved supplying a name and email address on a piece of paper and dropping it into a bowl. When the draw finally took place just before 1pm, there were around 65 entrants. The winner, Hannah, seemed very excited and I think I heard her say she had never won anything before. I hope she enjoys the first two books in the trilogy, and I'll also be sending her a free copy of Book 3, Mountain of Whispers, as soon as it's published in June.

For those who didn't win, a quick reminder that signed copies can be bought right here for $11.95 each, and unsigned copies are available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Speaking of which, I was approached by a Community Relations Manager from Barnes & Noble. For those of you in the UK, Australia, India, and so on, Barnes & Noble is the largest chain of bookstores in the U.S. Anyway, the manager asked if I was interested in book talks and signings at the store, to which I interrupted with "Yes!!" and promptly handed him my two books to read and approve. I'll definitely stay in contact with him! My books are already online at Barnes & Noble, and can be ordered over the counter at the stores, but now maybe there's a possibility of having them on the shelves in one or more locations.

Island of Fog
Labyrinth of Fire

My thanks (yet again!) to Brandy Wyatt, the children's specialist at the Rossville Public Library, who set me up with the table and is always putting in a good word for me at local schools. :-)

Readability test

2010-05-18T11:10:11-04:00

Editing of Book 3, Mountain of Whispers, is going well and I'm now slightly over halfway through. I'm working on batches of six chapters and sending these batches to my kind proofreaders. I'm on target for my June release.

Just out of interest, I tested my writing to see what kind of reading level it suits. I've always aimed at readers aged 9-12, and because 12-year-olds may not want to "read down," this means aiming it at age 12 rather than age 9. There's a fairly simple test devised by a man named Rudolf Flesch which takes a passage of text, or the entire manuscript, and analyzes it by counting syllables, number of words in a sentence, number of sentences, and so on. As Wikipedia explains:

The Flesch/Flesch-Kincaid readability tests are designed to indicate comprehension difficulty when reading a passage of contemporary academic English. There are two tests, the Flesch Reading Easiness, and the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level. Although they use the same core measures (word length and sentence length), they have different weighting factors, so the results of the two tests correlate approximately inversely: a text with a comparatively high score on the Reading Ease test should have a lower score on the Grade Level test. Both systems were devised by Rudolf Flesch.

Microsoft Word has this tool built in, but you have to go through the grammar check first. I found an online tool that does the same thing without a grammar check, so I tested it with three paragraphs of text. The first test is Reading Ease:

The first score we calculated was the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease (Wikipedia). The text scored 82.20 on this scale (a higher score indicates easier readability; scores go from 0 to 100).

So that's good to know! The rest of the test is to do with Grade Level. There are a few tests it goes through so it comes up with an average:

The second set of scores all return a "grade level", based on the USA education system. A grade level is equivalent to the number of years of education a person has had. Scores over 22 should generally be taken to mean graduate level text.

And the results are...

Readability Formula	Grade
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level	4.60
Gunning-Fog Score	6.80
Coleman-Liau Index	9.30
SMOG Index	5.30
Automated Readability Index	4.40
Average Grade Level	6.08

The Flesch-Kincaid score is a little lower than I expected at fourth grade level (ages 9-10), but the average 6.08 score is just right for sixth grade (ages 11-12). This also suits adults who are kids at heart! Overall my results are 4th-6th grades with one 9th grade.

If you're a writer, Check Text Readability at Added Bytes for a pretty accurate assessment.

What's funny is that I don't try to aim for this reading level. It's just the way I am. This means I would be a hopeless writer for adults. There are others who would be just as hopeless writing for children, as they are unable to refrain from using big words! I easily refrain from using big words because I don't know any. So what this test does is to prove (at least to myself) that I'm writing at a level that I'm comfortable with.

Review by Publishers Weekly

2010-05-03T17:18:58-04:00

Today the review of Island of Fog by Publishers Weekly was posted to my CreateSpace account. I promised I'd share it here, even though it's not the best review ever! It's not the worst either, but considering the "it's okay" tone I'm not really surprised they dropped me from the contest...

ABNA Publisher Weekly Reviewer
Hal Frankin and Robbie Strickland, both 12, have spent their entire lives on a fog shrouded island imaging how the world "Out There" compares to their gray existence. As supplies on the island dwindle, a mysterious visitor named Miss Simone comes to the island and starts asking the children if they have started developing any strange abilities. After they encounter a manticore in the woods, Hal and his friends discover they have the ability to shape-shift into mythical creatures, such as centaurs, dragons, and faeries. Fast paced with plenty of action, younger readers will enjoy the fantastical adventure elements of the plot. The narrative moves along despite any noticeable character development. There's a non sequitur moment in Hal's aside about Miss Simone, that she is a person who "spent very little time with children... and underestimated their intelligence" that doesn't fit in with overall tone of the novel. Combining precocious tweens with mythical beasts, the author delivers a solid, if rote, fantasy adventure.

I'm okay with the "despite any noticeable character development" comment, which is a fair observation. I'm also okay with the "author delivers a solid, if rote, fantasy adventure," which is at least half positive! Plus I hardly ever see use of the word "rote" and have to admit I like it. (Note to self: use "rote" in conversation more often. And note to Dad: "rote" does NOT mean "ritten.")

The comment about the "non sequitur moment" left me puzzled. The reviewer is talking about a passage on page 112:

Abigail spent much of the time rolling her eyes at Hal, and he had to agree that Miss Simone was making a fool of herself. Did she really think her feeble lies were convincing? Clearly she had spent very little time with children before, and completely underestimated their intelligence.

What exactly is irrelevant about that, and why doesn't it fit in with the overall tone of the novel? Maybe someone can explain this one to me as I'm a little puzzled by it!

But overall I guess it's a reasonably positive review, so I'm sorta-kinda pleased. It's good to have feedback from a tough critic like Publishers Weekly and be told that my novel doesn't completely suck. :-)

PS: I hope this post doesn't seem rote!

Mountain of Whispers first draft completed

2010-05-01T10:50:07-04:00

I had a long writing day yesterday and managed to finish the first draft of Mountain of Whispers. For some reason I struggled with the second-to-last chapter; it was really difficult. The last chapter was much easier though, as I already had a short list of things I wanted to finish with and just went from that. I'm really pleased with the very last scene and think it's a great way to end the trilogy (while leaving it very open for a fourth book later).

I wrote from about 1:15pm to 7:00pm without stopping. The wife and child had gone out to Atlanta for the day, so I rolled up my figurative sleeves and got stuck in. I may have taken a toilet break at some point (although now I think about it there's a funny smell on my chair) but the first time I really noticed the time was around 6pm when my stomach started to rumble. I realized that I hadn't had dinner, but didn't want to stop as I was getting to the conclusion. So I kept going until the end.

In all I wrote about 7400 words (about one and a half chapters) yesterday, which is one of my more mammoth efforts (normally I'll get in 2500-4500). In fact I only remember one other occasion when I wrote 7000+ in one day, so I really must have been in the zone! It staggers me that Enid Blyton wrote 10,000 a day on average. The mind boggles.

So now the editing starts. My first edit is on the computer. There's usually a lot of minor alterations to words and sentences during the first sweep; it's a case of reading and re-writing as I go. Sometimes I might go a whole page without editing anything, but that's rare. I might get through 1-4 chapters a day during the first sweep, depending on time and how much I have to change.

Because time is marching on I'll probably send it out to my proofers after the first edit, and then continue with my second edit on paper -- I'll print and read it all through again, and put little red circles everywhere. The proofers will no doubt be doing the same, so I'll end up with a bunch of corrections to make.

I still intend launching in June. :-)

Farewell to ABNA

2010-04-30T07:59:53-04:00

You may have gathered by now that Island of Fog failed to make it through to the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semifinals. It's a shame, but oh well. Good luck to those who did!

I was waiting for the review from Publisher's Weekly to be posted to my account so I could copy it here. But it could be another few days yet, so I'll just have to post again when it shows up. The semifinals (50 novels in each category) were decided by Publisher's Weekly; they used some kind of point system. So it'll be interesting to see what they say and where I failed.

The good news is that my agent, Whitt Brantley, can now go ahead and talk to publishers directly. While the competition was going on, the book was kind of "tied up" with Penguin (the publishing sponsors of the competition) and Whitt was unable to approach anyone. But now he's free again. There's always a bright side, right?

I miss being "in the running" now that it's over. I'd gotten used to the idea that my book might possibly, conceivably, hopefully win. But there are at least 50 ABNA novels that are better or more appealing than mine, so there you go. That's okay, I'm not bitter. No no no, not at all. Really, I'm not. Am I bothered? Look at my face, do I look bothered? I didn't want to win the stupid competition anyway. I'm glad I didn't win...

Ahem. On a brighter note, I got news from a friend in Australia that my books are being introduced to a school library system there. To quote snippets from Heather's email:

Just heard back from Doris. She ordered the first two books via Amazon just under two weeks ago, and they arrived yesterday. She highly recommended them to the grade 5/6 classes (11-12 year olds) yesterday in their library class, and she also recommended them to [a] teacher to read to the class next term. She couldn't stop raving about them! ... Anyway, she absolutely loved the book and said as soon as she finished Island of Fog she was immediately inspired, which is why she jumped on the website and bought them straight away without even mentioning it to me. She's reading Labyrinth of Fire as we speak.

Thanks, Heather! And closer to home, I delivered 30 copies of Island of Fog to a teacher at the local middle school as requested. 30 copies of Labyrinth of Fire will follow next week.

See? Who needs a publisher anyway? :-p

The naga... and Medusa

2010-04-23T11:04:48-04:00

One of the not-so-well-known creatures in myth and legend is the naga, generally described as a half-human, half-snake person. It's an Indian legend and a pretty cool one at that, hence their inclusion in my Island of Fog trilogy, particularly the second and third books.

The word Naga in the Sanskrit language means snake or serpent. The Naga were also a group of people spread throughout India during the epic Mahabharata. As epics go, this was a really long one, apparently ten times longer than the Iliad and Odyssey combined. That's some heavy reading, with more pages than Stephen King's gargantuan novel Under The Dome. Anyway, the ancient Naga people were most likely a serpent-worshipping group who were later described as serpents themselves in ancient Indian literature.

I find it interesting that the Indian Cobra is still called a naga in Hindi and other languages of India, whereas a female naga is a nagin or nagini. I couldn't help noticing the correlation between "female" and "nagging." *ducks to avoid flying brick*

Most naga creatures are depicted with giant serpent bodies and upper torsos of humans. There are also versions which have no arms, just a human head in place of the snake's head. I like to think that the head-only version dwells underwater, perhaps a more primitive species, while the more common variety live on land and have human-like settlements and so on. In any case, my own version of the naga is able to communicate with any form of serpent, which in the real world is limited to snakes, but in a fantasy setting includes those good old giant-size sea serpents and all other related monsters, perhaps even the Oroborous, which circles the world!

Snakes are generally creepy, sinister and dangerous things. In Greek history, Medusa is a snake-headed woman whose gaze can turn heroes to stone. In the legend she was one of three sisters who was "made hideous" by the goddess Athena for the crime of being too beautiful for her own good. She was turned into a monster and exiled to an island, cursed with a terrible gaze – anyone who looked her way would immediately turn to stone. Maybe this was the origin of the phrase "drop dead gorgeous."

In the classic movie Clash of the Titans (and the new 2010 version too), as well as in a lot of fantasy art, she's depicted with a distinctly monstrous serpentine body. This makes her look very much like a naga, but normally Medusa is classed as a gorgon. Then again, gorgon just means dreadful or terrible. In the early legends, the Gorgon was a single monster of the underworld, but in later legends there were actually three Gorgons – three sisters, two of whom were immortal, and Medusa, who was mortal and eventually slain by Perseus. So what exactly are gorgons, then? Because of Medusa, some authors write about gorgons as an entire species of snake-headed, evil-eyed monsters, with or without snake bodies. But that's not really the case; only Medusa was that way. In other versions of the legend, gorgons are an entire species of creatures with the power to turn people to stone, but only Medusa had snakes on her head; in this legend, her beautiful golden locks were turned into snakes when she was exiled, making her unique.

Look at the harpies; again there were originally only three of these (three sisters) yet many authors treat harpies as an entire species of ugly winged humans. Likewise, the original Gorgon legend altered to become three Gorgon sisters, and then altered further to become a species of gorgon monsters. Whether the gorgons are simply ordinary people with the power to turn people to stone with one glance, or nasty half-snake people that resemble nagas and have snakes instead of hair, is up to the author's imagination.

The naga feature heavily in my Island of Fog books, but a little known fact is that one of Miss Simone's old school friends is a gorgon. We've yet to meet that gorgon, but one day we will...

Abigail doesn't sing!

2010-04-15T19:12:38-04:00

Edit: Excuse the strange title of this post -- I've had to hide some of the text I'd written until further notice! A shame, but hopefully I'll re-post the original text at a later date.

A mixed set of things to report since my last post. Actually, most happened in the last couple of days.

I was about to put in an order for more Island of Fog and Labyrinth of Fire books when I got an email from a 7th grade teacher at Gordon Lee Middle School here in Chickamauga. (My little girl goes to the same school, although she's in Elementary.) He wanted to put in a bulk order of 30 copies of each book, so I gave him a good price and I've now added those to my order. When he receives the books, the whole class will be reading Island of Fog... hopefully finishing just before school does on May 21st. They'll get to the second book when school resumes.

The teacher also wants me to pop in after they've finished and talk to the class, answer questions, etc, which I'm really looking forward to. That should be fun!

Meanwhile, I got a fairly negative ABNA review. This is the first negative review I've received so far, ever! It didn't bother me one bit, at least after I'd digested it. The funny thing is that the reviewer still gave the book four out of five stars, but I suspect that was just out of kindness; an honest review but without damaging the rating. Anyway, the review (by Gypsy) can be read along with three positive ones here. I don't mind negative reviews as long as they're intelligent ones, and this one isn't particularly bad. The book is what it is, and I can't please everyone!

And there's the other thing that I can't talk about yet. This is the problem with legalities -- they get in the way of a ripping good yarn. Well, hopefully I can post the original text again later. Sorry!

Finally, I'm 80% through Mountain of Whispers as I write this post. I hope to finish the first draft in the next week so I can get cracking on edits.

ABNA expert reviewers

2010-03-31T10:36:34-04:00

In my previous post I showed the two Amazon editorial reviews that I received for Island of Fog as part of the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA). Today Amazon made the full versions of those reviews available in my CreateSpace account. You can't see them unless you log in, so again I'll post them here. I don't know why the "public" versions are cropped so short, but anyway, here they are in full:

ABNA Expert Reviewer

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

Interesting from the very start. The author was able to create an aura of mystery from the very first page. The writing was clear and crisp - to the point that you felt that you were in the woods with the two boys.

I also enjoyed how the story was allowed to build upon itself. The plot grabs quickly but it does not feel rushed. Overall, I was very impressed.

What aspect needs the most work?

The first 10,000 words are excellent, and I don't think there is a single word that I would change. However, the key for this novel is to maintain this type of momentum and not to fall into predictable plot devices, or becoming overly outlandish (see the TV show "Lost"), or having a cliche cookie cutter ending.

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

A nice blend of the TV show "Lost" with the movie "The Village." If the author can continue with this level of quality throughout the entire story I feel that they could have a hit novel on their hands. I certainly would be interested in reading the rest of the story!

ABNA Expert Reviewer

What is the strongest aspect of this excerpt?

This YA excerpt starts with a prologue establishing a framework for the story: a group of people are on a fog-shrouded island, where they are being left according to the terms of some "plan." A stranger reassures them and leaves them with a means to signal her if they need help.

The action begins with twelve-year-olds Hal and Robbie exploring deep in the Black Woods. They discover a strange opening in the earth, Robbie has an unexplained spell that leaves his clothes in tatters, and a frightening creature sends them fleeing in terror. What threats are sharing the island with them? Why are they all there?

"Island of Fog" has many strengths but the most notable is the clean, crisp writing. The excerpt is full of physical action and it's very well described, quite visual in its clarity. We don't know what's really going on but we walk (and run) beside Hal and Robbie and feel their fear.

What aspect needs the most work?

The excerpt as it stands is very clean and well-structured. If there is any aspect that seems less strong than the rest, it's the introduction of the talking beast. I would like to see the story crank up the mystery while staying this side of fantasy--but that's just my personal preference and not necessarily the will of the marketplace.

So far we've met only two characters. Can the author develop the rest of the islanders as effectively? I certainly hope so!

What is your overall opinion of this excerpt?

"Island of Fog" is a very strong entry. I appreciate the care the author took in preparing the excerpt for submission, and if the story holds up as well throughout, then this book is going to get noticed. I hope that happens because it appeals to me very much.

So again I'm happy and looking forward (although with trepidation) to April 27th when the semifinalists are announced. Ah well, either I go through or I don't. In the meantime I have Mountain of Whispers to concentrate on!

The ABNA quarterfinalist results are in!

2010-03-24T09:28:33-04:00

After a waiting patiently (or impatiently) for March 23rd to come around, and refreshing the Amazon ABNA page all day long, it wasn't until just before 10pm eastern time that the third round results showed up. I opened the PDF file and scrolled through the list of 250 quarterfinalists in the Young Adult Novels section...

I made it! I'm through to the third round, or quarterfinals, with my novel Island of Fog.

Two "official" Amazon Reviews based on my 4000-word excerpt (the prologue and first chapter) are available on my ABNA page. To save you time, I've posted them here:

Amazon.com Review
"Island of Fog" is a very strong entry. I appreciate the care the author took in preparing the excerpt for submission, and if the story holds up as well throughout, then this book is going to get noticed. I hope that happens because it appeals to me very much.

Amazon.com Review
A nice blend of the TV show "Lost" with the movie "The Village." If the author can continue with this level of quality throughout the entire story I feel that they could have a hit novel on their hands. I certainly would be interested in reading the rest of the story!

These are far more positive than I could have hoped for! I've been following reports from other quarterfinalists and reading some of the reviews they received, and while many are good there are also quite a few that are mixed or offer constructive criticism. So to have two really nice reviews like the ones above... well, I have a spring in my step today. :-)

So Island of Fog is now into the quarterfinals. According to the contest rules, Penguin now have first refusal publishing rights on the novel unless/until I'm eliminated in one of the next rounds.

Over the next month, Publishers Weekly will be reading and reviewing each of the 250 quarterfinalist manuscripts and their "Judging Criteria" point system will determine which 100 novels make it through to the semifinals on April 27th.

More information about the contest (particularly the winning prizes and detailed key dates) can be found here.

As my author buddy Laura Canning would say when excited about something... "Woot!"

Writer's Digest International Self-Published Book Awards

2010-03-08T20:13:18-05:00

Last year I submitted Island of Fog to the Writer's Digest International Self-Published Book Awards. There was a bit of confusion with the post-mark deadline as the website said one thing and the confirmation email said another; there was a day's difference between them. This wouldn't matter except that I found out too late about the competition and posted ON the later of the two deadlines -- so I was never sure if I had made it on time or not.

After I had submitted my novel, I wrote to ask Writer's Digest about the deadline. I received no reply whatsoever. On their website they stated that applicants would find out the results around October 2009. I heard nothing, so assumed I had missed the deadline after all.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, the 2010 competition was officially opened to applicants. I considered trying again, but thought I'd wait a bit first.

Today, on March 8th, I received a letter from Writer's Digest -- notification of how I fared in the 2009 competition. So I had made the deadline after all! But here they are, extremely late in the day, letting me know how I did after the 2010 competition has already got under way. This seems disorganized and generally unprofessional to me, but hey, at least I know for sure one way or another.

So how did Island of Fog fare? Well, I didn't win! If I had, I assume they would have told me a little earlier (although I'm not 100% certain of that). Here's what they said in their covering letter:

Thank you for participating in the 17th (2009) Annual Writer's Digest International Self-Publishing Book Awards. Unfortunately, your book, Island of Fog, was not among the winners. Competition was particularly fierce this year and we could only award one grand prize and ten category prizes...

There's more, but nothing worth repeating here. There was also a "judge's commentary" attached:

Author: Keith Robinson
Title: Island of Fog
Category: Middle Grade / Young Adult
Judge: 3

On a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 meaning "poor" and 5 meaning "excellent," please evaluate the following:

Plot: 5
Grammar: 5
Character development: 4
Cover design: 4

Judge's commentary:

What did you like best about this book?
This was a well written sci-fi novel. I liked the idea behind the story. Mr. Robinson had created a situation, characters and a place that work. There is that "it could happen" quality that you find in Dean Koontz novels. The dialogue feels like real kids talking. The suspense works and doesn't frustrate the reader. It makes you want to read the next installment!

How can the author improve this book?
I don't think Mr. Robinson needs to change a thing!

Heh. This is a positive summary, so I'm not put out or anything. I'm still a little disgruntled, but my gruntles come from the way the competition seems so mismanaged. I would have had better gruntles if I had received this summary last October when they initially said it would be due. Oh well!

Meanwhile, I'm waiting patiently (or impatiently) for the results of the next round of Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award winners. March 23rd is still a long way away...

Letters from Jones Dairy Elementary School

2010-03-02T23:01:44-05:00

This week I received a nice thick package from Brian Clopper, a fifth grade teacher at Jones Dairy Elementary School in Wake Forest, North Carolina. Since he's a teacher, and this post is about his 11-year-old students, I'll refer to him as Mr. Clopper! Anyway, Mr. Clopper has been reading Island of Fog to his class, and the package he sent contained twenty letters (handwritten in pencil) from his students, along with various sketches of creatures from the book.

I've had plenty of reviews about the book, some from middle graders and teens, and many from older readers, but this package of letters from a class of 11-year-olds is by far the best feedback I've had to date. The general consensus is that there's one particular scene that drags a little, but I also know which other scenes are hot favorites, and which creatures are the most popular. One classmate suggested that a scene near the end (involving the parents) was "gruesome," although another liked the way it played out. Miss Simone needs to be nicer and sweeter to the children, and there needs to be more action with the manticore. Favorite characters include Hal, Abigail and Robbie, while Thomas is the creepiest.

But it's best to let you read the words of the fifth graders. I've put together a page containing all the letters, faithfully reproduced without changing anything except where I needed to remove a name. The drawings are brilliant, and I've included these too. Be warned, though -- for those who haven't read the book, you might want to look at these letters with one eye closed and the other squinted to avoid spoilers. See the link at the foot of this post. I'll also be writing directly to the class to answer their questions. I wish I could go visit, but it's an eight hour journey!

As for Mr. Brian Clopper, he's not just a teacher but a writer as well. He kindly sent me a couple of his own self-published works, one being a short Birthday Comic Book Card featuring Marvin the Dragon, and the other a compact 100-page short novel entitled Graham the Gargoyle, complete with superb illustrations by Brian himself -- a man of many talents!

Oddly enough, when I opened the package and the contents fell out, the title Graham the Gargoyle struck me as familiar. For a second I thought Piers Anthony had written about such a character. Then Brian mentioned that he'd been a fan of Piers Anthony while growing up, and when he wrote Graham the Gargoyle he sent the book to Piers in the hope that the author would review it. He did, and favorably so, saying:

"[Graham the Gargoyle is] for young readers, as the little gargoyle struggles through family, school, and tormenting by the local bully to finally win through. I recommend this for ten year olds, who will relate." (April 2001 newsletter)

This was back in 2001, so I'm not sure why I remember the title. Maybe I just think I do. But anyway, Brian has been visiting Piers Anthony's website every month ever since, and this is how he came across my novel, Island of Fog -- because of Piers' review in his July 2009 newsletter. Brian was curious and bought my book via Amazon, and liked it enough that he wanted to read it to his class. He's currently reading Labyrinth of Fire at home and plans to read that to the class as well. He clearly has great taste! :-)

Brian is also writing a new novel about a character named Irving Wishbutton. I love the concept of this, although I'd better not repeat it here for fear of someone else borrowing the idea. The manuscript is written, and Brian plans to start submitting to agents in April. I've read the portion he sent me, and am inspired. I had already planned to write something new after the third "Fog" book, but haven't quite figured out what yet -- but it will be good to start with a clean slate and do something new. (I do plan to write more "Fog" books as well, though, probably in 2011.)

It's been a great week. Selling books is one thing, but having a copy read to an enthralled class... well, it's a far nicer feeling than earning a few bucks here and there!

Ready to read the letters? Okay, let's go: Letters from Jones Dairy Elementary School

ABNA first round winning pitch

2010-02-26T11:03:55-05:00

The first round winners were announced yesterday for ABNA, the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award... and Island of Fog is one of them! :-)

To recap, there are two categories: General Fiction and Young Adult Fiction, initially with around 5000 entries in each. These have now been whittled down to 1000 entries in each. I'm in the Young Adult category. If you're interested you can find out more about the competition, read the rules, keys dates, and read the entire list of first round winners on Amazon's ABNA page. The next round of winners -- 500 in each category -- will be based on the supplied excerpt, which is the first 3000-5000 words of the novel. In my case I supplied the short prologue and first chapter, which is slightly over 4000 words in total. (You can read this on my Island of Fog book page if you're interested.)

In a previous post I asked for opinions about my pitch, and based on those opinions I was able to move things around a little and improve it. Here's the final version:

A lonely, foggy island is home to eight families. Twelve-year-old Hal and his friends have always wondered what happened all those years ago on the mainland, that unseen place Out There beyond the fog, and after an astonishing discovery in the woods the children are more determined than ever to find out what their parents are hiding. But their lives are turned upside down when Abigail reveals her closely guarded secret. According to her, the children are slowly changing into monsters! Are they freaks of nature, or subjects of a sinister experiment?

Each child reacts differently to his or her unique monstrous transformation; after all, one may feel proud to be a dragon, faerie, or centaur, but who in their right mind wants to be a sadistic manticore or cowardly harpy?

ISLAND OF FOG is a story of intrigue and conspiracy. The reader follows Hal Franklin as he struggles to accept that he and his friends are something more than ordinary children, and that their parents have been covering up the truth the whole time. With their trust shaken and the unexpected arrival of a strange woman from Out There, the children hide their frightening shapeshifting abilities and pretend nothing is wrong.

Written by a die-hard reader and collector of children's mystery, adventure and fantasy novels, ISLAND OF FOG is a 95,000 word novel with strong series potential, aimed at young readers but suitable for all ages.

The first round (based on the pitch) is in some ways more difficult than the second round (based on an excerpt of the novel). With a 300-word pitch you can spend days and weeks polishing it, and because it's so short you can ask friends and colleagues to look at it and see if it works. You can hone it until it shines. That's all well and good, but would you lavish that much attention on a 50,000+ word novel? Heck, you can even ask a professional to write your pitch for you -- but that doesn't mean your manuscript is any good, or that your general grammar and style is readable, or that your story works as a whole -- it just means you have a well written pitch.

So in theory there could be thousands of entrants who really can't write at all and have no business entering. On the flip side you could have a New York Times-worthy bestselling novel, with a substandard pitch that is well written but says nothing about the story or otherwise misses the mark. So whether you're a good writer or not, it's all down to that first 300-word pitch. It's pretty brutal, and with a lot of competition.

But the next round is based on a 3000-5000 excerpt and is more likely to separate the wheat from the chaff. This round is based on actual talent and skill. The 500 who make it through to the third round will be writers who can write, and who have a novel that is going to appeal to the masses. I should think the judging will get a lot tougher then.

Will I make it through? Am I wheat... or chaff? Find out on March 23rd!