Tag: novel

Update July 3, 2018

So I know that I haven’t been posting in a while. I am sorry for that. I published my first book, then my posting fell off. So far this year, I have written 200k words. I have two full novels published and two smaller kids books that I did with my kids.

Plus being a dad has taken up much of my time. My son is in piano, and my daughter is a ballerina.

I know. I am creating excuses for why I haven’t been posting. The suns in my eyes… the curling game is on…

No more lame excuses.

I will be moving to post once a week for now, and maybe posting more later.

In other news, my day job was going fine. Until they laid me off. It sucks, but I have written 25k words in the last 2 weeks, and I have published one book. I have another in the editing process and a short story in editing as well. I am not letting the depressiveness get to me. I am getting things done.

I also have an outstanding cover artist. His work is fantastic and has upped the game to my novels. His cover is the image for this post.

His site can be found here: Josh Thornbrugh

So now that you know that I am unemployed and working on my novels full-time cause that is the cards that have been dealt, what’s my future?

Well, the plan is to go back to school. Learn more about the writing and publishing process. It is a scary prospect, but I will make a go of it.

I will close off here, but if you all want to support my family and me, the easiest way will be to buy a book or three. Right not they are only available on Amazon and as e-books. They will be released sometime in the near future.

The full list of my published book can be found here.

My published work. 

Until next time.

Stay Shiny.

 

Creating a Military Sci-Fi Novel

 

So I have decided to change my writing schedule a bit. Nothing official yet. Once I finalize things, I will post them here.

The reason for it,  I have wanted to write a military sci-fi novel for a while. I have decided that I am going to write one.

I have also decided to talk about my methods for creating my world as I build it. Cause why not.

I create a story world there are two basic methodologies. Big to small or small to big. Some people world build in a more discovering writing style and fly at it. They do very little world building before writing ‘Once upon a time.’ It isn’t necessarily bad, it just has a tendency to run into plot holes and re-writes. This is the small to big method.

I prefer the big to small. I will use a smaller and smaller brush to design the world that I am writing in. Most of which will not go into the story, but will help with making the little parts of the story make sense in a macro way.

As such, I first start with the base writing universe.

I have a dislike of creating a new writing world for a new story. Don’t get me wrong, I love world building. If I could get a job where I create worlds for people all day, I would be in heaven. It is just that I have many already and I don’t need more. So I am going to put it in my Shattered Worlds Writing Universe. It will take place after my ‘Inescapable Game Novels.’

That means that anything that I create to this writing universe is more flavor for my current world. Even though my Shattered Worlds Writing Universe only exists in the Sol System. But that shall change.

Using the nations and peoples that I have in my Shattered Worlds, and a time frame of when this story is going to happen, I can brainstorm how it is going to happen. A war still needs to make sense.

I am not going to go into detail on who is fighting who in this story. Not yet. I will. Cause why not. That’ll be in a later blog post.

For now, onto the fun part.

I need to create a military force.

That is the hard part.

For research, one of my main sources of information was this book. It was well written and had lots of information on how military forces work in the current model. It also has some ideas on what future wars may or may not look like. I recommend anyone interested in writing Military Sci-Fi to grab this book.

For the uninitiated, most people think that a military is a bunch of men with no-senses of humor, a drinking habit, and some guns. But a military is much more than that. Don’t get me wrong, it includes all of that, but it is so much more.

A military is a very set, organized organization that is capable of moving thousands of men and material over long distances through hostile, rough terrain. Men and women who are willing to fight to the death for there cause.

On paper, there is a couple way of creating a military organization. Top down, or bottom up.

I am very strategic minded, so I am going to do the top down.

That means that I am going to create the larger structure before I get to the individuals. But take note. A story is about the individuals. Not about the organization or unit.

Now. My story takes place 600 years in the future. Humans have spread across the stars and will be at war. I am thinking other humans, but that is for ease of storytelling and not anything to do with the aliens. I will write other stories where the fighting will be against aliens, but that is not this one.

In order to create the structure for my soldiers to fight in, I need to make some assumptions. The first one is that there will only be two branches of the military. In most current armed forces, there are three.

Airforce, army, and navy.

In the future, there will only be the army and the navy. Sorry Airforce, you go the way of the Doto.

In this story universe, the army has been re-named the Ground Defense Force. The GDF. It is tasked with defending the specific world from threats. The Airforce has been merged with it.

To make the GDF fight harder, a unit based on a planet has there personnel families relocated to the planet. Someone that is defending there home and the family will fight that much harder for it.

The Navy, now named Fleet, is everything outside of the atmosphere. The structure of it stays pretty much the same. Ship personnel, the ‘air power,’ and the marines. It stays the same.

With those assumptions made, I can create a rank structure. For the GDF, I only go up to a Brigadier-General, while the Fleet, I go all the way up. I figure a defensive force will only have so many men in it. I have also decided to use modern ranks instead of creating new ones. The less I have to explain the better. More pages for more explosions and gunfire.

I then created unit structure. This part I was inspired by a video game. Hearts of Iron 4. In it, you create divisions by putting pieces of different companies together. I used that idea and created some base unit types. How many men in squads, platoons, etc. That way if I talk about a full strength platoon of Infantry having 40 men on page one, on page 300 it should have the same.

Also, the specific structure of the platoon? Do they use squads? Do they use fireteams? Are they like the USSR or the US? For clarification, communists use masses of men to win fights. The US use LMG’s and accurate firepower to defeat the enemies.

Do they have some type of fire support? Do they have artillery at the battalion level or the division? Does each company have a mortar unit? Or maybe it is a heavy weapons company that gets split up per platoon as needed.

These are all important pieces of information.

The reasons why comes to one of the basic tenants of storytelling that I follow.

It is more interesting to read about a character overcoming the disadvantages that he has with any specific skill, force, power or technology. In a military sci-fi setting, I can throw them into power armor and with flechet rifles and send them into battle. And that is all fun, but the good war stories, the ones that resonate with the reader/viewer are the ones that even though they are skilled and equipped for war, they still have an enemy to overcome and figure out how to defeat.

It is more interesting to have your men get pinned down by enemy sniper fire and force them to think outside of the box to get the enemy defeated. Or I can make them unstoppable killing machines, but who wants to read a story about that.

Until next time.

And p.s. Sorry for the space of time between posts.

Cheers.

Title changes

Just a short note today.

The Space Courier is no more. So in the light that I have made no sales from the Space Courier Book, I have replaced the name of it.

It is now, “An O’Neal Spy Adventure.”

That is the new cover. I also tweaked the marketing copy, so maybe people will be more interested in it. We shall see.

Now I have to get back to the land of Agersolum. I am working on Felix Book 2.

Cheers.

I’ve been Tardy…

It’s now the eighth of March and this blog post is later than it should have been. I apologize for the lack of blog posts. I have been busy.

Tonight, I should have been in bed hours ago…such, I shall ‘try’ to keep this post short, but knowing me, no promises.

This post is intended to act as an update on my writing process and some of the issues and errors that I have made. Some that I have corrected, some that I have not.

So far I have published two books and a third will be launching next week sometime. My cover artist is busy and it is likely it will be a bit before she gets to it. It’s all good.  As of the end of February, I have made a total of fifty bucks from my books and I have realized I have made some mistakes.

My marketing needs work and I have no sense of cover design. The two book covers that have been posted, I love. I think that they are lovely designs, the issue I have with them is that they’re not drawing people’s attention. No one wants to click on my books. No clicks mean they won’t buy my book.

After that, my marketing copy is bad. Bad marketing copy means that they will not be wanting to buy the book.

I have no data on how many people clicked the covers, or getting to the sale page, or putting it in their shopping carts.

The books are included in the KDP Select program. So people can read the books for free. KDP select is the only place that people will read my Phantom Sorcerer’ books. Most of the revenue made is from having ‘Phantom Sorcerer’ in KDP Select.  So far no one has read a page of the ‘Missile Attack’ book.

I think the problem with the ‘Missile Attack’ book, is that it’s a hard market to get into. And it makes sense. The kids that would enjoy the books don’t read KDP Select and don’t have credit cards to buy it.

That means that I need a new marketing strategy for my middle-grade book before I launch it on Amazon. But what to do? More research time I guess.

But from what I see in the reports that I get from KDP select, people read it. Not a lot, but when they do, its a cluster of times that they read the books. Meaning that I think that people are finishing the books. But I have no sign-ups for my newsletters or reviews on the books.

And that is that. I am currently 90% done on my June release, while I’m working on my July launch. But I haven’t gotten much down.

I have been hit by a wave of stress and a defeatist feeling. The peanut gallery is back. My inner Statler and Waldorf have made their untimely resurrection. Their presence has halted my production down to a crawl. They are an unwanted tumor in my life, and I must again figure out how to get rid of them. They’re halting my writing process and it’s not very good.

Advice would be greatly appreciated for any of the above statements and concerns. Feel free to email me at NAPedde@peddehouse.com, leave a comment, or a Twitter message.

Until next time.

Cheers.

 

 

 

 

Missile Attack: O’Neal Spy Adventure Book 1

In times of war, it is often the youth of the age that must step up and fill adult roles…

Des O’Neal is an ordinary boy that lives an ordinary life with his uncle and older brother. He lived in the Jov 1-H Colony Station that orbits the planet Jupiter. In his free time, he explores his neighborhood. He plays sports and does what most boys his age do.

When a turn of events lurk out of nowhere, Des is ejected from his normal life and thrust into a world filled with spies and turmoil. In order to save himself and those closest to him, he must excel in this new world of espionage. He has to overcome his unknown enemy that lurks in the shadows with the intent of sabotage and destruction.

Will Des succeed in defeating the enemy saboteur?

Or will the station be victim in the Missile Attack?

And this book took a long time to get published, but more installments of it are planned in the near future.

The book can be found here.

Missile Attack: O’Neal Spy Adventure Book 1

 

Thoughts on this Indi-Publishing thing 1.0

As it goes from being January 2018 to February 2018, it is approaching 15 days since I published my first book.

You can find it here. Phantom Sorcerer.

It has not been any type of success. No movie deals offered, or entry onto the New York Times List.

It just hasn’t. It has sold a grand total of four copies. I managed to give away forty-five copies one weekend, but people horde free books and never read them. So I don’t expect any reviews from that bunch.

It happens.

So does that mean that I need to give up? Like all the pessimists out there that tell me all the time?

No.

This is exactly as I expected it to happen.

I am a complete unknown with very little social media presence. I have an email list, but no one on it.

This indie-publishing thing. this experiment. Is not for the faint of heart. It is a long-term game.

Does that mean that after the first books that I should be able to make lots of money?

No.

There is a strategy that is called, “20 books for 50k”. In it, the idea is that you write twenty books you should be able to get successful. If you write twenty books, then the total sales of each book will make enough to be successful.

The traditional model of being able to write a single book a year and being able to live off of the royalties and the advance from that is dead and gone. Traditional Publishing as we know it is an unwieldy, dying beast. The indie-community knows it. The traditional publishers know it. The traditional publishing world is thrashing around to save itself.

Indie-publishing is the way to go. But it is not perfect. In the indie-publishing world, a big argument is the elephant in the room.

Amazon.

There are many publishers that an indie author like myself can go to. There is Direct-to-Digital, Smashwords, Amazon to name a few.

Amazon has 70% of the US market for indie books. It is also the only one to demand exclusivity in being able to sell on Amazon.

But it is only some of its books. It is called, “KDP Select.” In it, you get a range of promotional benefits as well as the ability to put your book into the lending library of Kindle Unlimited.

One side will argue that it is best to go wide. To not leave out the 30% of the market that is not Amazon. That you can still get 70% royalties from any books sold on Amazon and be able to sell it everywhere else.

That Amazon is an evil beast, and you shouldn’t hitch your horse to that wagon. That by saddling yourself with Amazon, you are becoming a dependant author reliant on Amazon for your lively hood. That I am no better than going with traditional publishing.

I, however, have a different opinion.

Scary huh?

While I have sold a grand total of four units, which means that I have a total of approx. $15 Canadian so far. It is approx cause the differences in the values of the currencies.

So far, I have a total of approx. 2000 KENP Reads. That is the number of pages that someone that subscribe to Kindle Unlimited has read. That is, of course, new page reads.

I don’t have any idea on how many people started the book and went to something else, or how many people have actually read the entire thing. They don’t give me the number of users that have read it.

For authors, KENP works by Amazon setting up a fund from the subscribers to Kindle Unlimited. That pot is split up to be paid to all of the authors. It is currently based on the amount of KENP page reads that has been read by a subscriber. Based on the given approximations, it doubles my revenue from that single book.

Now, this is without using any of the promotional abilities that KDP Select allows me to use other than the free days. It does not show the other side of the equation. How much could my book have made by going ‘wide?’

For an entirely accurate number, I can’t tell you. I’d have to pull my book out of KDP Select and put it up on the other markets. I may do that when I can. I may not.

But if Amazon has 70% of the market and I have managed to receive 70% of the sales possible for that book, then I should be able to get another $4.50 from them. That means KDP select is $30 while going wide is $20.

That is only a guess at the moment, based on some rough numbers. It might have gone differently if I had done differently.

Now in regards to the notion that my going exclusive with select, that I am no better than going with traditional publishing. I disagree.

As an indie author, I still hold my rights. I have the audio-books rights, the paperback. The only right that I have given up is the digital rights to the books. And it is easily returnable. I’d only have to wait 90 days. With tradition publishing, you have to wait a pre-selected amount of time that the book is out of print, or spend a boatload of money to get it back.

Those are just my thoughts so far. I plan on posting more of these posts later, once I publish more books.

Nathan’s Amazon Author Page

Phantom Sorcerer

Until Next time.

 

Dealing with Procrastination

I hate that word. I hate it when I fall victim to that word.

So I have been too busy to post much. Phantom Sorcerer was launched I have been writing like mad in an attempt to keep the stories coming. On the weekend, my time to get a massive amount done, I did little.

And today I did little.

And now I feel bad about myself.

But it happens. It is a fact of being a creative that I have to deal with. Putting things off seems like a great idea at the time.

What is one Youtube video, or an hour of a video game?

Simple. It is like eating a single chip out of a bag. I can’t just eat one. It turns into the bag. With Youtube, I can’t just watch one video. It turns into many. And an hour is never just an hour. There is always one more turn.

Then afterward, I am kicking myself. Or at least I am.

But how do I deal with it?

My solution, don’t fight it that day that I had just wasted. If I procrastinated and lost that day, I don’t worry about that day. I pick it up the next and keep going.

That is all that I can do. The day is gone. It can’t come back. There is no point working into the night to try and salvage the day. No point if throwing good time in with the bad. Better to fortify my time for the future and hit it again once I regroup.

Me. I am going to bed. Early. I will not sleep in tomorrow. I will get my writing done.

Phantom Sorcerer

Phantom Sorcerer is ready on Amazon. It has been a long time coming, but it is finally for sale. If it seems interesting, please feel free to take a look. Give it a read.

Felix the Swift, an alias, lived in the land of Agersolum, in the Empire of Aurre. Felix was a thief and a good one at that. He was arguably the best thief in the city. A pimple on the Duke’s rear end.

When his last job, quite possibly his grandest, goes bad it costs his apprentice’s life and the freedom of everyone he has ever loved. His entire family and he are sold into slavery to pay for his crimes.

Felix gets dragged across the globe and thrown into a world of magic, and Gods. He must face High-Princes, assassins, traitorous brothers, Gods, and the scorching heat of the desert. Felix must overcome the obstacles that have been laid against him to become truly free.

Felix must find a way back to his homeland and a way to free his family. Or he fails and the hostile environment will overtake him as it has to so many others.

Plot Holes

I read a lot of books. Well, listen to audio tapes is a better description, but it is the same. I don’t have a lot of funds to spend on books though. So I listen to free audio dramas online.

Which is hard to find good audio dramas. I keep on getting a couple episodes in, and then I can’t listen to them anymore.

And it’s for silly things. I was listening to this one about an economic post-apocalypse. The concept was sound. I listened to it. At the three-quarter mark of the episode, they are in the middle of a gunfight, and one soldier yells to the other, “Throw me a clip.”

What they hell. A clip. They were modern soldiers. Modern soldiers don’t use clips. Clips are used inside rifles. Like they used for the M1 Garand or the Soviet SKS. Modern military rifles don’t use clips.

They use magazines. Magazines are a clip, but it is encased in metal or plastic, and it is attached to the outside of the firearm. Some are attached to the side, while most are attached underneath.

Another one had a lady running down the street with a shirt covered in blood. Not a single person asked her if she was alright. And they didn’t run from her either. Then there were the obvious historical problems when they went to an origin point of a long-lived character. They described the British Empire as it was during the 18th century. There was no British Empire in 1000’s AD.

But that is enough of me whinning.

Until next time.

Time. The enemy.

As a writer, I always meet people that will claim to have a desire to write a novel. They usually hold me in awe and say things like, “You’re an author, I wish  I could write a book.” Or “I used to write when I was younger when I had more time. I’ll write later…” Then they’ll give a vague time frame like, “When the kids are in school.” Or “When I retire.”

I say that’s a bunch of hornswaggle.

They act like writing a novel is something that’s hard. It isn’t all about learning something. Like learning how to ride a bike, play music or rocket science. It just takes time and commitment. If someone wants to write a novel, all it takes is being able to carve out a chunk of time each day, every day to be able to write. A half hour. An hour.

There is a time to start to write that book. That time is now. Not later. And if someone has a desire to write, then they need to do it. Don’t put it off till later. Pick up the pen and do it.

The reason to start now is that life is short. Time is the one precious commodity that we spend so much of that we can’t can’t get enough of. I, personally, don’t want to be old and gray and wishing that I had started to write when I was younger. I do wish that I had done things that I know  I will never get to do. Everyone has them. It happens, but doing something as simple as writing a novel isn’t one of them.

It’s like climbing Everest or fighting in the MMA. It’s something to do when you’re young and too stupid to know any better. But if you have a desire to do any of those things, the time is now, not when you are old and gray.

So how do I find the time to write? It is like climbing Everest. You don’t just wake up one day and hop on a plane to go to Mount Everest. It is something that you must commit to. You must train. Practice on smaller, easier peaks before you try Everest.

Writing is the same. You must spend a huge amount of time practicing, sucking before you get any better. You will write a large amount of ugly, gross words before they start to look golden. That is how you do it.

You need to spend the time to get good at it. NASCAR drivers do it. They practice hours on the track. Pilots do it, they must log hundreds of hours to learn how to fly before they can take a plane out by themselves.

It’s the same with writers. You must practice, practice, practice.

So to all those non-authors that wish or desire to sit down and write something. What are you waiting around for? Get that butt in that chair. Turn that computer on, open that notebook and write.

Stop desiring to write. Write.

In the immortal words of Yoda. “Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try. ”

If you want to write. Do it. Take the dive down the rabbit hole. Follow the white rabbit. You may like what you find. You may want to stay in wonderland.

Until next time.