Welcome New Readers!

So from June 29th until July 3rd, I ran a freebie sale for White Rock over at Amazon. During that time I was picked up by E-reader News Today and Pixel of Ink, and sales, for me at least, skyrocketed. Looking at the numbers, it seems I may have something close to 7,000 new readers. Well, eventually. Far be it of me to assume every download would turn into an immediate read. Still, I'd like to think that the conscious decision to download White Rock will ultimately end up with a fan. So I'm taking the time to post this, because my previous post might seem a bit off putting and I want the first thing new people see to be this here welcome message.

A little bit about myself at this point in time. I'm 34-years-old, married, with two wonderful children, ages 6 and 5 (about a year and a half apart). Currently I lived in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex but that is changing thanks to a job offer given to my wife. Soon enough we will be based out of Western New York. Which is great because that's where the majority of our friends and family live. It's a huge change for us after having lived in DFW for going on 12 years, but it's a welcome one to be sure. When I'm not preparing for a move, I work in the IT industry, largely as technical support. However, I am currently enrolled at Kaplan University Online and working toward a Bachelor's Degree in Mobile Application Development. I hope, soon enough, to be writing apps for people to use.

For the time being, and this is something I cannot stress enough, the writing thing is a hobby. It comes after just about everything else. Some days, I can't find the time to write. Other days, even when I have the time, the desire may not be there. It is something I constantly work on, however, but there may be large gaps between updates and new things for you all to read. I have a lot of ideas and fun stories to tell, and I cannot wait for you all to read them.

Now, about The Eternal War. This is a planned 10 book series with a trilogy to cap it off. In between I have 3 side novels I want to write concerning the setting, and the intention is to bridge the gap between novels with short stories and novelettes to tell other stories that add to the overall setting. This is going to be a rich universe filled with many layers, a few of which have just begun to be revealed. I hope you all will join me as I complete this journey.

I think that's about it. If you are a new reader, I encourage you all to leave your honest reviews at Amazon and Goodreads. Oh, and tell your friends. I am an independent author with an advertising budget of zero dollars. I must rely on word of mouth for people to find me. If you like my stories, and wish to see more, then the best thing you can do is help me get sales. The more sales I get, the better chance I have at eventually turning this into my full time job. So yes, leave your reviews and tell your friends. I really want more time to write for you all.

Have a good day!

Do Blog Reviews Matter?

Let me preface this post by saying that I truly do appreciate every blog reviewer that has taken the time to read my works and give their unbiased opinions of what they contain. While I write primarily for myself so that I can see the stories I wish to read, there really is no greater feeling than to have someone come along and say that they liked, or even loved reading it themselves. However, my experience over the past year and a half of being on the market is that blog reviewers have very little actual influence in direct sales. I'll explain after the jump.

Looking to the Future

So where does The Eternal War go from here? I've mentioned it before in several places but not here so I thought I would elaborate on my overall plans.

One of my pet peeves in regards to a series is if it seems to have no place to go. One of the things that has to happen on a book-to-book basis is that the characters must grow, and the challenges they face have to not only be new, but there has to be a little bit more at stake. I feel as if I accomplished this with the conflict in Spiral X versus the conflict in White Rock. With the former, the conflict was small, limited, and the fallout is contained fairly well. With the latter, it is much larger, and the fallout from the events is similarly large and a bit messier as a result. However, there has to be a point where you really can't top yourself. Otherwise you start to lose focus and it really becomes kind of comical, almost in a morbid sense, to try to work out of the corner you've backed yourself into.

White Rock Now Available!

"Before the end is to come, one shall be infused with the light as a measure against the darkness."

Cheryl Erikson's problems never seem to end. After saving a group of Dallas' social elite from an unusually brazen attempt at robbery by a group of vampires, she discovers it's not an isolated incident. The normally hidden and secretive vampires are in the midst of an extended crime spree, and working toward something big. Exactly what is anyone's guess.

“The one who is infused with the light of others will stand before darkness, and the darkness shall melt away before their presence and writhe at their touch.”

When the vampires finally enact their plan, no one is ready for the lengths they have gone to in order to ensure success. Cheryl and her allies must rally and find a way to prevent the ultimate evil from gaining a foothold in our world. If they can't put a stop to it, then Armageddon will be that much closer to becoming a reality.

"They will be called upon to face the darkness and push it back, lest time end and the balance be toppled for eternity.”

On the shores of White Rock Lake, Heaven’s earthly soldiers will sacrifice everything to combat the darkness before them. But even Cheryl is unprepared for exactly what that entails as she discovers just how important her role in the Eternal War is.

Creating this book has been a bit of a journey. It was the first time I've taken an idea from start to finish in one go. Usually I let things simmer a bit, work on other projects, but throughout this process the only thing I did when I was writing was work on White Rock. I am confident that the results will keep readers coming back for more for many years to come. Enjoy!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007WRUHGQ

Does it Pass the Ear Test?

One of the best editing techniques available to any writer is the Ear Test. What is the Ear Test? Well, the Ear Test is when you read the words you have written out loud and determine if what you're hearing is right. As readers, we tend to do a lot of skimming. It inevitable, and is part of the mental process from which a person can "read" a word that is misspelled and infer what the word was actually supposed to say. As well, people who speed read don't read every single word in a book. No, they have trained their minds to skim through the book and infer what each sentence or paragraph is trying to convey. However, the Ear Test is the exact opposite of speed reading.

Every word must be said aloud. It is only through this method that you can find things that might otherwise be missed, such as dropped words or the presence of a run-on sentence. It's tiring work, and any author who does this needs to keep a glass of water nearby so they can keep things going. Lucky for Kindle users (I'm not sure if the other platforms offer this, so don't feel like I'm leaving you out intentionally), the device has a rudimentary feature that allows it to read the words back to you, albeit in a "computer voice". I can't stress how helpful this is. When we read something we're familiar with, our mind tends to "fill in the blanks", and it's very easy to miss something. With the Kindle reading it to you, it's easier to catch where these blanks exist.

Case in point, I'm currently going through the Ear Test with White Rock. It's the last bit that needs to be done before I upload it to Amazon next week. So far, I have found nearly two dozen instances of "dropped words" that I had missed through at least two rounds of "read editing". As well, it has allowed me to catch a small handful of SCUDs (Spell Check Ugly Ducklings), words that are technically written correctly, but which are the wrong words for the moment. For instance, I had a "string quarter" instead of a "string quartet".

The Ear Test is a vital part of an author's self-publishing repertoire. If you have a Kindle, there is no reason you can't use a program like Calibre to convert a PDF of your manuscript into a Kindle book, upload it to the Kindle, then have it read the manuscript back to you. Beyond that, a couple of days reading it to yourself out loud, with plenty of water on hand, can go a long way to resolving a lot of minor problems to the manuscript before you let it out into the world at large.

On the Importance of Self-Analysis

I recently did a Google search on "J. J. Westendarp", just to see what the results would be. I purposely limited the search to things presented within the last three months, since I've seen most everything that has popped out with the words "J. J. Westendarp" and "Spiral X" in the same setting. Google Alerts is good about that. However, it missed one because a blog poster mistakenly kept naming the book "Spiral" instead of its actual name. The post? A psychological evaluation on a "double-bind", which according to Wikipedia* means:

...an emotionally distressing dilemma in communication in which an individual (or group) receives two or more conflicting messages, in which one message negates the other. This creates a situation in which a successful response to one message results in a failed response to the other (and vice versa), so that the person will be automatically wrong regardless of response.

 The context in which the poster presented the observation resulted from reading the sample for Spiral X, and dealt with what is arguably my biggest failing in my debut novel, that of stamping out rampant passive voice. See, it tended to mix in with bits of active voice, and the blogger felt this created a double bind within themselves. They had conflicting thoughts about the sample, and hence could not see themselves going all in on buying the product. Please note that the sample was merely the catalyst for the post, and that the presence of double bind writing was something they had seen in a lot of indie publications, so it wasn't specific to the sample, just the last example of what they were talking about.

Which leads me to the topic of this blog post. Every writer starts somewhere. A lot of writers have good natural instincts and can write a solid story without much effort. Many writers struggle with the intricacies of the process, of dealing with the idea of having something so large broken down into little things that all must line up correctly in order to make sense. Writing is hard, no matter the skill level, which is why a writer cannot operate in a vacuum. They need people who are willing to take on the burden of reading unfinished manuscripts and providing valuable feedback. They need people they can turn to for advice on what might be wrong with a scene or a character or a plot device. Most importantly, they need people who do none of these things yet still support them in their efforts to become a writer. Even with all of that though, the author still needs the ability to self-evaluate and realize where they need to get better.

Last year I talked with an aspiring author who was looking to self-publish a novel that she had been working hard on for a few years. Like, taking classes and such in order to get better at the art of writing, kind of hard. Given that I had gone through the process of self-publishing, and knew of the pratfalls that came with such a decision, I offered to look over her novel just as one last set of eyes before she took the plunge. Given that she was set to release the novel in a little over a week, I figured it was in as polished a shape as she could get it. She accepted and I got the file and converted it over to my Kindle.

In short, the novel was the exact opposite of ready for release. Numerous mechanical and logical mistakes existed just on the first page and continued to pile up as I kept reading. Even in the context that certain things "would make sense later", many of the things occurring wouldn't have lined up even in the best of situations. I made it less than 10% of the way into the novel before I had to stop. For a novel close to 150,000 words, that's pretty bad. I sent back a note to the aspiring author with as much constructive criticism as I could with the final note of suggesting she put the novel aside for a few years and work on new projects to get better as a writer, then come back to it with her new knowledge in tow. I also took the first page of the book and did an editing pass, offering comments and pointing out the mechanical and logical errors I found. Her response? To find someone else to get a second opinion. She didn't want to believe the things I told her, and went the route of hoping someone else would tell her what she wanted to hear.

Which brings me to the original point of self-evaluation. An author must possess this ability or they will get exactly nowhere with their writing. This is especially true if you ask for and receive feedback. It's okay to take a stance on a plot device or the way a character behaves, I have done so on this very blog in regards to Cheryl's hypocrisy, but when people start pointing out inconsistencies, and logical or mechanical errors, it's time to step back and listen to what they're saying. Then once they are finished look into exactly what they're talking about and work to understand what the error is and correct it. Through this process, you get a bit of knowledge going forward on how to avoid that particular error.

Each new writing experience is just that, experience. My first novel was a wreck. My second, a bit better. My third was a fan fiction piece that was good enough to publish as an episodic novel that was very well received. My fourth, Spiral X, is good enough for people to pay money to read. My ratings on Goodreads and Amazon are proof enough for that. I think White Rock will follow the trend of me getting better, simply based on an ability to self-analyze and make use of the constructive criticism I have received so far.

So writers, never be afraid to self-analyze. Certainly never be afraid to put something to the side and come back to it later. You owe it to yourself and your readers to produce quality products.

* Academically speaking I don't condone the use of Wikipedia for information, but it's a good place to start.

The Blurb for White Rock is...

I went through several overall iterations of the blurb for White Rock. I hate doing blurbs. Trying to distill 96,000 words into less than 250 while still getting across the key aspects of the novel is, quite possibly, the literary form of corporal punishment. I feel the same way about writing a synopsis. That said, after numerous drafts and some tinkering, I think I've settled on the best possible way to express White Rock.

Hit the break to read it...

The Cover for White Rock will look like...

This past Monday I started working with Christine from Flip City Books on creating the cover for White Rock. While this isn't the artist I used for Spiral X, she totally "got" the overall concept and came up with a beautiful cover. Without even realizing it, she also added an element which speaks of something Cheryl goes through during the course of the book. Overall I am very happy.

Hit the break to take a look.

And the Name of Book 2 is...

As part of the lead up to April, which is when I will be releasing the second book of The Eternal War series out into the world, I will be giving you all small tidbits about it through the course of this month. The first of this is the title of the book. Later this month will come the cover, the blurb, and ultimately the release date. Some things in between will appear as I think of them.

So, without further ado, the name of The Eternal War: Book Two is...

Insert Witty Blog Post Here

My propensity to disappear from this blog for extreme lengths of time (it's been four months since my previous post) is something that's going to happen until I can move the writing hobby into a full time gig. I know I've beat this drum before, but between work, school, family, and my own sanity, sometimes it's not possible to find the time to drum up a blog post. Especially since my thought is that blog posts should be somewhat meaningful. Not to mention, there were times when I had the interface open to post something and couldn't come up with anything at all. Not worth posting at any rate. So I stay silent.

With that said, it is time to pick this up again. I'm making an attempt at regimenting my days, insomuch as one can with such a disparate schedule as mine (seriously, I've worked the same job for ten years and my parents still don't understand it, despite numerous attempts at explaining). Plus, I'm staring at the end of the line in regards to Book 2, so it makes sense to start working the blog into my schedule as I build toward the release. This month I am hoping to have a rather set schedule of tidbits for those who read this blog to build anticipation. To that end, I will be releasing the name of the book on Thursday.

Also, this blog post is here to tell people that for the month of March I will be donating 100% of every sale of Spiral X to Child's Play Charity. While those who have read the book know that I already donate 10% toward the cause, for this month (and I'm thinking every March from here on out, we'll see) I will take nothing home from a single sale and will post a screenshot of the Amazon numbers to announce the donation amount when it's all said and done. Please spread the word and help out a great cause.