What about Nooks and iPads?

Today marks the release of Finding Time on the Kindle.

The first question I got was, "What about the Nook or iPad?" My first answer was, "sorry, you have to wait." But my second answer is a lot better.

Amazon has a program they call "KDP Select." The way it works is you promise that you'll only sell your work on Amazon for a period of time, and they'll make it worth your while.

We'll see about that last part, but I signed up for it. And that means the earliest I can put Finding Time in Smashwords, or the Apple store is 90 days from now.

But you want Finding Time NOW. (I hope.)

The good news is that I never put copy-protection on anything I sell. Never. It's a matter of scruples with me. This means the file that Kindle will sell you can be translated between MOBI (Kindle format) and ePUB (Sony, Nook & iPad format), if you have a translator.

Happily, this file conversion is just two clicks in a program called Calibre that you can get for free at http://calibre-ebook.com/. It's a great program to get even if you don't get Finding Time or want to convert any ebooks!

Now, if you don't have a Kindle, you can still buy Finding Time. Below the "Buy it now" button is a drop-down labelled "Deliver to:". Select "Transfer via Computer". Then make your purchase and do what Amazon tells you to get the file. Remember where you put it.

After you download and install Calibre, connect your Nook or iPad or Sony. Wait a bit and Calibre will recognize your device.

Then import Finding Time into Calibre. It will ask you where to find the file. That's why I asked you to remember where you put it. Great, you're almost done.

Right-click on Finding Time from the list in Calibre, and select Convert Books and Convert Individually. A dialog box will appear and in its upper left hand corner, make sure it says MOBI and in the upper right hand corner, make sure it says "EPUB". Then say OK. This will start the file conversion process. Wait a few minutes for it to finish.

Make sure you've still got your Nook or iPad connected. You'll be able to select Finding Time and "Send To Device".

That's it. So simple, a fifth-grader can do it.  

Quick, find me a fifth-grader.

 

Update: I feel rather stupid, because I happen to have the Kindle application running on my iPad right now. So, all those iPad references should be Sony Reader, Kobo or some other platform that lacks a Kindle app running on it. Did I say I feel rather stupid?

The Sorta-Annual Party

The first sign was the flatulence. Really rank.

That's untrue. It was the 2nd sign. The first sign was angina pectoris. The medicos use Latin to sound like they know more than they do. The first sign was chest hurts. But I work in a sedentary profession and most of my avocations are pursued in a seated position. Thus being a bit winded and pained with exertion can be explained by insufficient exercise. So I did nothing.

Or it can be explained by a heart condition. I shared this with my doctor and he scheduled a Stress Test. I flunked this Stress Test, because I got an incomplete. A preliminary blood test indicated that I had iron-poor blood. So, I took iron pills for the anemia and I felt great! But why did I have anemia?

I think the 4-billionth reason why I'll never be a gay porn star is a reticence toward putting stuff up my butt and taking pictures of it. I failed the colonoscopy, too. They found a blockage about half-way up my colon. Took a biopsy and it was cancer.

The cancer was so high in the colon that it had reabsorbed the lost blood so there wasn't any in my stool. A couple weeks later I went under the knife, and they removed a grapefruit sized tumor and found cancer in three lymph nodes. This explained the bowel obstruction and the flatulence and the cramps I had been ignoring.

Denial is more than a river in Egypt. I knew I had a heart problem because my grandfather Poling died at a young age from a sudden-death heart attack. The idea never occurred that my mom had died of cancer and that my father had just 4 years before fought off the disease. I came out of surgery, recovered and started six months of chemotherapy. Mom went through about a year and a half of chemotherapy hell only to die at the end of it. Chemo hit Dad hard, too. It felt like I had the flu with an acute case of diarrhea for six months. I never appreciated scatological humor before or since.

But I got through it, the chemo nurses gave me a little ribbon and I was relieved to have chemo behind me. It messed up my summer, so I decided to have an after-chemo party. I had three. One for friends at church. One my boss threw for me at work. And one for my friends at two local Writers groups. That was the first After-Chemo party.

A few weeks later, I learned that Dad's cancer was back. This time he was a lot weaker and the chemo was a lot more toxic. He spent the next few months on a long, slow coast down the exit ramp. We buried him right around Thanksgiving. Two days later my mother-in-law died of a stroke.

The next January I felt wrong, consulted with my oncologist, got cat-scanned and had a lymph node biopsied. The cancer was back. Time for another round of chemo.

This time everything was different. The nurses were loving and lovely, but I could sense well-hidden fatalism. The first time around I could think, Dad survived this, so can I. This time my thinking was reversed. I started giving away my books. I stopped because this terrified my friends. Instead of two chemo poisons, they gave me three. They fitted my chest with a port for directly infusing poison into me. I got a pump that pushed poison into me every 2.5 minutes.

I also had the elders of my church anoint and pray over me. Baptists don't have "last rites" but we used the same Bible passage the Catholics use for it.

Chemo was much worse the second time. No diarrhea, but my hair thinned out and turned white. I looked like a cancer patient. I was clumsy and slow. Dropping everything made me more patient.

When you have cancer you cannot control what they'll cut out of you. You cannot control what poisons they'll pump into you. Or when. Or how long. You cannot control the course of the disease, but you can control your attitude. I chose to appear to be optimistic despite knowing better. I had everyone fooled.

Chemo ended for the second time about a month later than it did the first time. I wasn't feeling as spry, so I only had one party for my writer friends, and I called it (with mordant humor) the Second-Annual After-Chemo party. I half expected the rest of my summers to be lost to chemo.

Then I didn't die. A year went by and everyone asked about the party I didn't have.

Another year went by and I had my "Sorta-Annual After-Chemo Party." And so it has gone ever since. Except two years ago when I was in England every first-Thursday of August I have a celebration of writing and of surviving another year.

This year I'm combining it with the release of my anthology Finding Time. If you're reading this, and you're a writer, and you can find my house, drop by at 7:00pm. I'll have burgers and chicken patties on the grill for you.

p.s. This is not a Whig Party. That's something else.

Adverbs are not your friends - Writers Mantra 10

This is probably one of the earliest Writers Mantras that ever came to me.


Adverbs are not your friends

Bring up some of your prose in an editor, and search for the letters "ly." You should find adverbs. How are you using them? Can you do without the adverbs? How much are they contributing?

Your adverbs may be masking poor verb choices. Consider the bland verb "ran." It doesn't convey much more than fast moving by foot. Contrast this verb with amble, bound, break, canter, dart, dash, drop, escape, fly, gallop, jog, lope, pace, thrash, rush, scamper, scuttle, spring, sprint, spurt, tear, trot, and whisk.

Each of these words conveys a distinct meaning that evokes something more than fast moving by foot.

Suppose you want your hero to get from Point A to Point B with great haste and urgency. He can't just "run" there. He might "quickly run" there, but is that as dramatic as if he "raced?" Or if it's a short distance, he "sprinted."

Because the drama is in your verbs, you want to choose the one with maximal impact that conveys your intent. Sure, your intent can be conveyed with an adverbial phrase. It will be easier to write, but it will be weaker.

Rack your brain for better verbs.

Think about what you're doing in the scene. Maybe the adverbs are there because you're telling, and not showing. Same for all your modifiers: adjectives and prepositional phrases. But these are mantras for another day.

(If you are wondering about the earlier Writers Mantras, you can start here.)
Update: And the next three mantras are here.

And keep an eye open for a Big Announcement on Friday.

The Curse of Knowledge - Writers Mantra #7

This is my writers' mantra #7. If you are curious about 1 thru 6, I link them below. Oh, and here's a trailer for Finding Time here.

Writers' Mantra #7: A conjunction weakens an utterance.

In the universe of hard-hitting dialog, you will seldom find a laundry list.

I have a friend who doesn't quite trust his readers to get what he's saying. He quite reasonably thinks he can get his point across by coming at the same point from multiple directions. He's a college professor, and this is a good thing for teachers to do in class. That's why he acquired this habit. Some students learn at different rates and their learning styles differ. Writing is not lecturing. The technique that works in the classroom does not work in prose.

Moreover, there are more handicaps that bedevil the college professor who writes. I have another writer-friend who also possesses a PhD. He teaches at a different college, writes in a different genre. My two friends do not know each other. Nevertheless, they have similar writing affectations that I struggle to avoid.

It's part of the curse of knowledge. When you know more, you know the exceptions. This is because truth is complicated. When you know more, you know the little corollaries that tag along with any proposition.

And another thing: academics have to defend their academic writing. They build walls of disclaimers and qualifiers around their assertions

Writing is not lecturing.

Say anything you have to say directly and simply.

No! Say anything you have to say directly and simply.

If you think of many words that contribute to what you or your character is trying to get across, rank them in descending order of importance. If one word stands head-and-shoulders above the rest, use it and lose the rest. If you have two equally important words, pick one.

The many words interfere with one another. The second word diminishes the impact of the first, or vice versa. That last sentence would be stronger without "or vice versa" because I was worried about the case when the first word diminishes the impact of the second. Screw it. This isn't a law with loopholes that must be closed, but prose that must work.

I'm advocating a sort of brutality of composition. Get the job done with maximal effectiveness using the fewest moving parts. This is good design.

Curious about prior writing mantras? Start here. And scope out my book trailer, too.

Update:
You can jump to the next two writers mantras here.

The One Modern Man

I've noticed something while watching Instant Netflix a television show called Murdoch Mysteries. The story is set in the Victorian Toronto and the protagonist is a detective who employs modern forensic techniques to solve crimes. He is surrounded by barbarians who regard him as something of an oddball. We know these people are barbarians because each week some aspect of the Victorian culture we disapprove of is shoved in our face (e.g. racist, sexist, homophobic, environmentally insensitive, anti-papist or Tory).

And the One Modern Man^TM happens to disapprove, too.

He has to reflect OUR biases and preferences, or we won't identify with him. I noticed this some years back when chatting with a friend who writes murder mysteries that are solved by Pliny the Younger and his faithful sidekick Tacitus. I heartily recommend his books.

If you disagree with Victorian mores, how about a society that is built upon slavery? How about a protagonist who owns slaves? A lot of slaves!

This creates a tension between the demands of the reading public and human nature. If you grow up with anything, you'll think it to be the natural state of things.

But the protagonist has to reflect OUR biases and preferences, or we won't identify with him. The hero must be the One Modern Man^TM in the story. Ergo, Pliny manifests modern attitudes toward slavery.

This pattern should be kept in mind if your setting has a society with something, anything your reading audience finds revolting. In such a case, you need to make your protagonist the One Modern Man^TM.

On Poetry - Writers Mantra #8 & 9

With the exception of Senryu where I aspire to not-suck, poetry is one of those things that I know I'm not any good at. Nevertheless, I've been in writers groups where poets have presented their verses. And I've noticed patterns. These patterns led me to make two observations that I added to my list of writers mantras:

    Exile “and” from your poems.


This is an application of Mantra #7 to poetry. If conjunctions weaken an utterance, a poem is the last place where you want that to happen. Besides, I always feel like a poem that uses "and" just seems more prosaic than the identical verse with "and" excised.

Of course, your mileage may vary. But I don't quite feel competent to explore the distinctions.

    Can your poem be rewritten without “I/me/my”? (Universals are not personal).

One of the things I've noticed about the poems that seemed to move me the most was the way the poet became invisible. Sure, it's all good and fine to open a vein and pour out your life-blood in a poem that speaks directly from the core of your being with all the passion in your heart.

So what. What's in that for me?

If you've got something to say that's so profound that it cannot be encoded in prose, then it has a touchstone in the heart of every man and woman. The ancients spoke of "universals" that capture the essence of what a thing is without the distraction of the particular details while encompassing all the details.

What is it to be in love? Does it matter if the lover is a Hottentot or a Hugenot? Does it matter if the beloved is an Austrian or Australian? If you're trying to engage love qua love, you can't fix upon a particular person, especially yourself. Universals are not personal. The poem that crystallizes a universal is written by an invisible wo/man to no-one in particular.

Does this mantra apply to every poem? Certainly not. Only those which attempt to capture the core nature of what it means to be a human or some aspect of life. Not every poem works with this treatment, but take a moment to go over your poems and ask if any can be written without reference to I/me/my.

Trim excess verbiage

Write minimalist prose

Words obscure story

Update:

You can find the next writers mantra here.

Mind The Gap

Ric Locke died and he wasn't as well known as some of the other writers I've loved, but he reminded me of all those who have gone before.

The giants upon whose shoulders we stand. The giants whose shoes were several sizes larger than life. Shoes hard to fill.

My father was not a writer. Though he introduced me to Louis L'Amour, he wasn't much of a reader, either. He  died several years ago and news of other deaths take me back to the funeral home in Sparta, Michigan where we honored Dad.

My step-sister's husband loved my dad as much as any of us, and he spoke to me of what a good man Dad was. All I could think of in response was the challenge this posed to both of us as men. Can we be good men like Dad? We must be good men like Dad, because he's gone and someone else must do what he did.

There is a gap in this world. It is created by the loss of great men and women. It challenges each of us to do and to become their replacements.

Dad's death challenged me to be a better father, neighbor, and friend. When I reflect on the deaths of the writers whose prose I've enjoyed, I'm challenged to be a writer who can fill the gap.

I'm challenging you to do the same.