Blog Post 131

Sales of Sooley Base have again jumped.

Another critique session at Books-A-Million provided the following suggestions:

BAM member –

1. Indent paragraphs - agree

2.  No wrong touches; well written – agree

3.  Suggested minor wording and punctuation changes – agree

4.  Interesting, well written, well phrased – agree

5.  Liked emphasis on Jedi’s versus cousins – agree

6.  Good camaraderie of characters – agree

7.  Increase mystic relevance of ‘cousins’ - agree

BAM member –

1.   Enjoyed story and conversations – agree

2.  Suggested minor wording changes – agree

3.  Surprised wedding occurred so quickly – disagree

4.  Lost on ‘cousins’ – working

BAM member –

                1.  Suggested wording change - agree

                2.  Identify the respective wars of vets – working

                3.  Narrow focus o0f memories to one character – working

                4.  Doesn’t ‘get’ the ‘cousins’ thing – working

                5.  Well written - agree

BAM member –

                1.  Identify speakers to improve dialogue - working

                2.  Suggested wording changes - agree

                3.  Asked what “Arshlock” meant – agree; will include context

                4.  Suggested paragraph change - agree

BAM member –

                1.  Good flow and conversations – agree

                2.  Associates with brother Evan - OK

                3.  Still not clear about the ‘cousins’ – agree; working

                4.  Liked the dialogue – agree

                5.  Suggested changes to clarify about the guards – agree

                6.  A little lost with military jargon – disagree; required in genre

                7.  Suggested making WC Fields quote a part of dialogue - agree

BAM member –

                1.  Reduce telling, increase showing - agree

                2.  Disliked use of cliché ‘until the cows come home’ – disagree

                3.  Suggested a wording change - agree

                4.  ‘Cousins’ thing is weird – disagree; will evolve

                5.  First page showed good camaraderie – agree

                6.  Suggested I sing the chorus better – can’t

                7.  Identify speakers better – agree

                8.  Well written - agree

BAM member –

                1.  Specific market evident (military male) – agree

                2.  Very detailed, enjoyable read - agree

                3.  Good, fast moving dialogue - agree

                4.  Clear, realistic read - agree

Blog Post 130

Tessera Trilogy Blog post 130

The working draft of Kashan Kashmeeri now stands at 144 pages, 73K word count.

The Books A Million (BAM) critique group met on 22 September. The following suggestions were received:

BAM member  –

1. Uncertain if ‘cousins’ are interest or a factor in story – disagree; will evolve

2.  Liked use of asshole and ‘bless his heart’ – agree

3.  Talk between main characters and their emotions good – agree

4.  Well done, good writing – agree

5.  The happiness of Anh and Tooley comes over well – agree

6.  Suggested change ‘expected attendees’ to ‘guests’ - agree

BAM member  –

1. No written comments

2.  Enjoyed story and conversations – agree

3.  “Bro’ used too much – will consider

BAM member  –

                1.  Good dialogue – agree

                2.  Increase the tension, conflict – agree; working (this is a slow part of story)

                3.  Suggested a word change - agree

BAM member  –

                1.  Acknowledged female and male character writing styles – agree

                2.  Good conversations, dialogue between characters – agree

                3.  Wants to know where ‘cousins’ talk is going – disagree; it’ll happen

BAM member  –

                1.  Good flow and conversations – agree

                2.  Did not associate Anh as an immigrant – disagree; covered before

                3.  Enjoyed cultural references and details – agree

                4.  Questioned need to ‘agree to a (cab) fare – disagree; customary when multiple passengers

                                share a cab

                5.  Disagreed with underlining ‘Mutaawah – disagree; emphasis by female character

                6.  Enjoyed use of ‘didn’t even have to train him’ - agree

BAM member  –

                1.  Lots of Arabic culture  - agree

                2.  Misses more action, progression – agree; working

                3.  Too many exclamations used – agree; working

                4.  ‘Cousins’ thing is weird – disagree; will evolve

                5.  Why was ‘Mutaawah’ underlined – disagree; emphasis by female character

                6.  Suggested minor punctuation change - agree

BAM member  –

                1.  Good writing and story – agree

                2.  Moved too slowly – working, but is a slow part of novel

                3.  ‘Cousins’ not clear as to use – disagree; will evolve

                4.  Names mentioned too often – disagree

BAM member  –

                1.  Didn’t ‘get’ cousins discussion – disagree; will evolve

                2.  Wanted to know the setting – disagree; covered earlier (Arabia, Bahrain)

                3.  Good cultural scenes (He was in Arabia one year) – agree

                4.  Well written – agree

                5.  Unbold several abbreviations – agree

                6.  Excellent - agree 

Blog Post 129

While “following” the Fredericksburg Writers Group blog to keep abreast of local writers and ideas, and similarly with the LinkedIn Book Marketing group I found that the former is not of any help, while the latter is informative, but mainly helps other authors selling their novels. I found review of marketing techniques helpful, but of limited use to this writer marketing his eBooks. A local writers group, which advertised an authors’ gathering quickly turned unproductive when the fine print revealed only authors of hard copy works were invited.

Another bit of progress on Kashan Kashmeeri has made its way into the novel. This is rough and I expect it to change over the next several days. As part of DP Tolan’s writing process the author has put together a listing of the characters major, minor and throwaway. Additionally the largest segment of the working draft, which covers the whole novel plus place holders for needed characters dialogue, action and interactions known to be needed but not yet structured in more than concept stage, will be merged with additions which give preliminary form to the missing parts.

As part of the process the needed segments are identified, in both the working draft and the additions segment by headers which are substantially larger in font size, and are bolded and highlighted. This allows a easy search for the headers, insertion of the additions, and rewrite of the combined areas into a better whole product. The progress of these two working segments stands at 74K and 145 pages as merged.

Distraction of a trip to Nova Scotia, where my wife’s maternal ancestors immigrated to.

I approached a librarian at a public library in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to offer free copies of my novels. It appears that Canada uses the same eBook franchisees to host eBooks in their libraries. I could not even give them my novels free of charge.

Lake of the Woods Authors Book Fair was held locally. Eight fellow members of the Riverside Writers Group described their books, offering tips on writing, and a local author Suzi Weinert, a new RWG member, discussed her book. She wrote Garage Sale Stalker, which was made into a Hallmark TV movie that premiered last September.

The September 2014 monthly RWG meeting was well attended and the critique session provided the following suggestions on Kashan Kashmeeri:

RWG member –

1.       Thought a bog improvement over style of previous novels – agree

2.       Suggested better identification of speakers – agree to a degree

3.       Minor sentence changes – agree

4.       Liked description of rugs and cell phones – agree

5.       Questioned validity of range of DNA analysis – disagree; fictional work

6.       Described several paragraphs as ‘good writing’ – agree

7.       Liked use of Tin Man and not being in Kansas - agree

RWG member –

1.       Loved the description of jeweled cell phones – agree

2.        Suggested changing GYN/obstetrics to pre-natal – agree

3.       Confused with who were characters – disagree; covered in previous chapters

4.       Thought the scenes were interesting – agree

5.       Suggested making ‘distant past’ more defined – disagree; part of earlier discussion

6.       Minor punctuation changes – agree

7.       7. Questioned use of very detailed DNA testing – disagree; explained in earlier chapters

RWG member –

1.       Confused with who were characters – disagree; covered in previous chapters

2.       Uncertain of sarcasm of phlebotomist’s remarks – disagree; clear to other reviewers

RWG member –

1.       Liked the color of images - agree

2.       Uncertain as to ‘prescription’ of water vs drinking by phlebotomist  - disagree; clear to other reviewers

3.       No written comments

A marketing scheme under consideration – bundle and sell all three novels of The Tessera Trilogy (Golden Gate, Sooley Base, and Kashan Kashmeeri) together for a lower price.