The Wagner Diary

It seems like it’s been forever, I’ll tell you that much. I wrote The Marsburg Diary, or at least I started writing it, over a year ago. It started off as a Stoker-esque historical horror piece, but through the constructive criticism of my friends, it became far more. Harvey Marsburg was born. He took on the traits of a couple of people I’ve met in my travels, at least in regard to the amount of Dr. Pepper he consumes (one of my LAV school instructors practically survived on the stuff; a 2-liter of it was always with him like it was part of his uniform of the day). I think ol’ Harv is what makes the series great. He’s like a fifty year old male version of Airel: a little eccentric and proud of it, with the occasional amusing bits of inner dialogue.

But Harvey’s also a little bit of my own personal fantasy doppelganger, too. He’s British, and I’m borderline obsessed with British culture. I’ve been digging for tasty bits of slang to use, and I fairly splattered the second installment in the Airel Saga Diary Books with a liberal amount of it.

Some of the criticism I got about The Marsburg Diary was that it was pretty meaty. You know, all that Victorian English stuff (which I love, and tried to make as authentic as possible). So to wit, the second book has lots more of Harvey. I had to integrate new characters and new diary lines, so the flashback diary bits are more of a seasoning than the main course. You’ll see a little bit more of William Marsburg’s personal thoughts, but the main event is Herr Wagner’s diary entries, which feature a little more of the infamous Mr. Rotheram. And I promise, in this book we finally get to the bottom of that haunting line, “I have always hated Falkenhayn.” Taking my cues from Goethe’s Faust, I really quite enjoyed writing the quintessentially evil Falkenhayn, and hope you enjoy reading him.

Want an excerpt? I knew you did:

Deep in the wood, somewhere in Illinois~

I probably needed a change of underwear.

Have you ever woken up to the sunrise after sleeping on a forest floor? Let me put it to you this way: it’s not like an advert for yoghurt and granola on telly, where the sun is gentle and there are woodland fairies to caress one’s cheeks. It’s bleeding awful. I felt like bugs were crawling all over me, I itched profusely, and I had managed to injure my neck and head with what I had decided to use for a pillow the night previous— a rounded stone. I was as stiff as grandmother’s knickers (whom I never met, God rest her soul).

It’s funny about getting older— when I was young, I was superman. Getting hurt was a rare thing that usually required me to do something really stupid. But now that I’m nearing fifty, all I have to do is wake up. I will try to rise to a sitting position and I’ll have sustained an injury.

Cautiously, then, I raised myself from the dirt. Gradually. Sloooowly. Never mind being nearly fifty. I felt dead.

“What happened?” I asked no one. I was half expecting an answer though, and looked around to confirm my solitude. I was greeted by none but the lone piercing sun in the east. I raised a hand to my brow to shield my eyes, the back of my hand brushing against a twig that had stuck itself to my forehead in the night— which scared me. After dancing around in fear for a moment, though, I finally calmed myself enough to gather my things, tend to the morning necessities, and begin walking.

Where? Out.

What else could I do?

My car was dead. I had shot it.

And though my bestial enemy was dead too, or at least I assumed so, I also assumed there were no others like him chasing me round the wilderness. If there were, I reasoned, I wouldn’t have awakened at all. At any rate, I was an expatriate Englishman stuck within one of the islanded wilds of rural Midwestern America, stranded without a car, carrying only my backpack. My life had been whittled to that and its random plebian contents, with an especial consideration for those three books inside.

I checked my Ruger revolver. Empty still, of course. Anything else would have been uninteresting, after all. I shoved it back into my waistband at the small of my back.

I trudged on.

It wasn’t long before the wood began to thin out and brighten up. Trees gave way to scrub and brambles, which I tried to skirt around as best I could, moving toward some kind of exit. Nature doesn’t clearly mark these things.

Offhand I wondered what in the world I was going to do now. I was out in the middle of Illinois, somewhere south of Champaign, about an hour’s drive. That put me at least a hundred miles from my home in Chatham. The last road sign I remembered seeing was one for Tuscola, another anonymous American village utterly surrounded by corn. I knew at least that my wanderings had taken me off the beaten track and that I was far from help, far from home. Being on foot just made it worse.

I finally found a clear path to the edge of the wood, which was itself clearly defined: a gently curving razor’s edge, to one side of which there was unruly nature— brush and forest— and on the other side tall corn in perfect rows, towering at least two feet over my head, tassels waving in the early morning breeze.

That was the first time I felt what I call “the slip.” Like something just wasn’t quite right.

Some part of my brain was asking urgently why there should be a corn field ready for harvest in the middle of May. It was like gazing at an Escher; something was definitely not lining up here…

The Wagner Diary is now available for Kindle. Nook users have to wait until tomorrow. Or the next day. Or the next day.

Apple and the Status Quo in ePublishing

Bad Apple...

Cupertino, we have a problem. The worst part of it is that it’s preventable. One of two things is happening: either the folks at Apple are dull (not likely) or they’re doing this on purpose. Let’s get right to it: if you want to distribute your eBook content through the iBookstore via Apple, you have to own a Mac. Period. Really.

Okay, maybe there are technically some loopholes—one can always go through one of their recommended third party epub converters, but that takes quality control out of the hands of the average indie publisher. Strike that option then, at least for my company, because I like to be able to control my final product (Apple understandably does not guarantee the quality of work from these guys). Another option that’s a little gray market, and would probably be frowned upon by the Apple cognoscenti, is the idea of borrowing a friend’s Mac in order to shoulder one’s way into the iBookstore. But I don’t like that either, because again, I like to do things in-house and I like to run my business with integrity. So there’s no other way than to just buy a Mac.

And I love Macs. I have one that’s too old to matter and doesn’t work. I want a new one, and I plan on buying one soon. It’s just the principle of the thing. Why, when I have a perfectly awesome epub file on my Windows hard drive, a conversion I have performed personally and carefully, does Apple require that it be uploaded to their eStore through iTunes Producer—an application that’s, you guessed it, Mac only. It’s not even available for iPhone or iPad, at least as far as I could find out (though I recall seeing some faint rumors about an iPad version, but I couldn’t find one). Really, Apple? This kind of eTyranny is something I would have expected from Microsoft, not you—if I didn’t know better. But I’m an iPhone user, and I’ve learned a little about how there are some things We the End User are not permitted to question. Or change. Or customize. It’s officially ridiculous as far as I’m concerned.

My experience? I’m glad you asked. First, I’m a bit stupefied as to why iTunes hasn’t had a name change yet, because, hello, iTunes is more like iMedia or iGateway, at least the way Apple uses it. But anyway if you want to publish your work to the iBookstore, you first must have an iTunes account, which seems a little diversionary. You must give them a credit card too, and when they have that information they will charge you a dollar as a nice little thank you. Wow. Mind you, they don’t give you a heads up about it, they just do it. It’s only a buck, but what the hell. I mean, it’s a buck, you know? Anyway, when you have an iTunes account (oh by the way, in order to set that up you have to download and install iTunes), then you can Google around and try to find the link that directs you to Apple’s application to become an affiliate, whereupon you must fill out some blanks and then wait for Apple to approve you from on high. Once that’s done, you must then give them your contact information, banking information, tax information, and then “request” a contract (which also must be approved) and accept the terms and conditions before moving forward as a publisher. Only then, at the end of about a week of back and forth, do you discover to your dismay that if you’re a Windows-based indie publisher, you’re totally screwed. Why? Because in order to upload your epub files to the iBookstore, you must download and install iTunes Producer, an OSX-only app. So you have to have iTunes and you have to have iTunes Producer and you have to have a Mac. But they disclose none of this up front. I’ve also heard tell, on some forum sites, that after all that nonsense the indie publisher must also run the gauntlet of Apple’s “quality assurance” process (whereupon they vet your work for spurious content, probably), which can take a very long time. One user reported that he had been waiting six weeks for Apple to approve his work, without so much as an email to let him know they were still working on it, they apologize for the delay, yadayada. Hey, Apple. I can upload and my eBooks to Amazon and Barnes & Noble with Web-based software that works on any device, and it goes live usually in less than 24 hours. What’s so hard about that?

I can only conclude that Apple is attempting to force the market to do things it does not want to do, which is a bit like China being communistical and yet enjoying all the benefits of capitalism that they learned from the British back when Hong Kong was still the center of wealth in their world. Isn’t it ironic? Don’t you think? A little too ironic. If I buy a Mac, it won’t be because of this publishing issue. It won’t be because I’ve been forced into it by the iTunes Producer snafu; I won’t permit them to force my hand like that. It will be because I need a professional tool, and because Mac is the gold standard of computing, pure and simple. Unfortunately, the fools in the control room continue to place the Cupertino farm in jeopardy by marginalizing its true potential, attempting to strangle the market into doing unnatural things. I think eventually, and ironically, if Apple is going to be a major player in eBooks (like, ahem, Amazon), they’re going to have to do the exact opposite of what they're doing now and acquiesce to We the End Users and get with the program. Until then, we suffer through mild tyranny because of how frankly excellent the other parts of the biz are. But if Apple had to stake its entire biz on its approach to eBooks, you’d better kiss it goodbye.

The Marsburg Diary, Second Edition

One of the things I love most about eBooks, and about being a published eBook author, is that things are easy to change if they need spicing up. I enlisted the help of my friend Joey, who is the man behind the Great Jammy Adventures illustrations, to scribble a little on some ideas I've wanted to incorporate into the cover for Book One of the Airel Saga Diary Series: The Marsburg Diary [the link won't update with the new cover until Friday].

I've made a few little changes in the text, but nothing substantive; mostly it's on the copyright page. I'm very pleased to reveal the new cover art. This format will carry across the Diary Series line. You'll see what I mean when Book Two, The Wagner Diary, reveals next month. There's been a lot of work going on behind the scenes on this, and things are going to start moving quickly as we get closer to fall and Christmas. The best part? My work will gradually be migrating across to all your favorite platforms... like the Barnes & Noble Nook and Nook Color, and the iPad and iPhone iBooks app. It's all coming soon. Stay tuned to this space.

Scene & Structure, by Jack M. Bickham

I found out about this book in the process of reading another eTome; Hooked, by Les Edgerton. Edgerton’s is an instruction manual for the modern author that induces a lot of #facepalm action, to say the least, and Bickham’s Scene & Structure is the same (More on Hooked in another post). In other words, if you’re an author or writer, or even an aspiring wannabe with good intentions and several partial chapter ones lying around, these books ought to be on your reference shelf. Period.

I edit manuscripts. I’m quite good at it, but this book has been a godsend, allowing me to refine my craft. Mostly what I’ve done in the past has been to follow my gut and play devil’s advocate, asking questions the author hasn’t thought of. I drop comments like this into the middle of everything: “If Jack is so smart, how come I figured Jill out three chapters ago? ARGH.” I also have an eye for spelling and grammar, which has served me well. But Scene & Structure goes well beyond all that, and it’s going to help me provide much more value for money to my clientele, as well as an increase in my rates.

On with it, then. Bickham starts small and simple by giving us the big picture. He outlines the structure of modern fiction, tells us how to begin a story and what’s essential—and furthermore, what needs to get deleted from or changed in our manuscripts (which in most cases will be a quite a lot).

What really hooked me, though, was his detailed analysis of the scene.

Scenes are where the action is. We see the characters on the stage of the mind’s eye, which isn’t a stage—it feels real. Edgerton calls it the “fictive dream,” which is apt. That’s why it’s so electric when it’s written well—and so awful when it’s total crap. Bickham’s book will illustrate for you quite profoundly if your work is in one camp or the other, because if you don’t have a story question that the protag has to answer, if you don’t have a scene question he’s also trying to answer, if you don’t have a scene goal he’s trying to attain, and if the scene doesn’t end in some kind of disaster—a setback—for the hero, you’ve got milquetoast on your hard drive. And miles of rewriting before you’re home.

Contrast that with sequel, which is really the antidote to scene, and you’ve got something with a pattern, a pace, an ebb and flow. Scenes drive the story forward. They contain problems and cause-and-effect stimuli. They’ve got guns and daggers and car chases. They goad us into turning the page. But sequel allows the characters to take a step back and internalize. Sequels read slower, so they’re usually more effective when they’re shorter. In a sequel, we get to see more of what the protag (or the villain) is thinking, what makes her tick; we get the backstory. We understand more of the why behind a character’s actions, and the author gets to set up the next scene for us. But in order to do this well, Brave Author needs to write effectively for Dear Reader. As “they” say, if you’re gonna break the rules, first you gotta learn ‘em. I would add that one ought to add a dash of reverence as well, because the greats are great for a reason.

The biggest danger to the indie author, who nine times out of ten is ignorant and uneducated about these things, is that most of us can “feel” our way through what makes a story compelling. But just because we can write by gut feeling doesn’t mean we should. It’s dangerous to guess your way through the disarming of a bomb. Maybe it will be the red wire that needs to be cut, but maybe it won’t. This plays into Booker’s SevenBasic Plots, too, because all of us have a hard wired intuition about story. We may not be aware of the precise nomenclature or structure of what makes a story work, but we know when it rocks and when it’s a dud. Bickham demystifies all that and reveals to the reader (the aspiring author) whether or not he’s been trading on hard-won skill and understanding or just raw talent. Ouch.

I cannot stress to you enough how important this book is. If you’re trying to make a hobby out of writing, it’s a stimulating read. If you’re at all serious about making a career as a published author, this book is required reading. As for me, I’m going to incorporate these lessons into my writing and editing. I’ll soon finish Edgerton’s book, too, and post up my thoughts on that. These two books are changing everything about my writing—and that’s a good thing.

The Writing Shed, Part Five

My brother and I have decided that close not only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, but that it also counts in regard to framing. Especially when it comes to sheds. Granted, lots of guys are precise to about an eighth of an inch. My brother is far more picky, so a job done in the slovenly midlander fashion for him is about par for the rest of the world.

We started in the morning pretty early. I don’t know what it is about Idaho weather, but as soon as one thinks about installing a roof, it will rain. It did that day, but only briefly, as if to say, “Ha ha hurl.” Anyway, the first truss is the most important because everything else depends on it for layout, plumb, and square; and also because of global warming. As such, naturally, you’ll want to consult your guidebook of sailormouth expletives because the first truss will also probably be a cast iron Mongolian cluster flock. It wasn’t so bad. It only took about an hour to fix all the mistakes I had made on the walls that translated quite logically into the roof. See, this is why I have help. And he pays off in cheap beers, which is even better.

It wasn’t long before we had installed two or three of the trusses, and things were going right along. Note the bracing. The tails of the trusses were allowed to run “wild.” We would cut them off later. Twice. Really. You’ll notice at some point in the perusal of these images that the roof has a certain asymmetrical stance to it. This is one hundred percent intentional and not in any way the result of a mistake of any kind by anyone involved on the job. It is also not similar to an episode of ancient history involving two men, one of whom was helping with this roof, who at one point were replacing the starter on my old Euro-Ford whilst drinking beer and then proceeded to catch the car on fire.

Adding to the hilarity and all around enjoyable nature of the day, we had “help” from two small children who happened to be walking by and spontaneously began climbing ladders, brandishing hammers and saws, and mostly saying, “Hey dad! Watch this!” So we had no excuse, therefore, to not build the best damn shed roof you ever saw.

We eventually built ourselves right out of materials and had to run to Home Depot, where we parked in the PRO CUSTOMER parking, which I think is self-explanatory, obviously. We brought home a bag of H clips (which are officially called something else in order to be as confusing as possible), some tiko nails, and lots of sheathing. Either my neighbors love me and prefer generosity, or I have angered them and provoked them to rummaging around in their spare parts bin and giving me various tidbits to hurry the project along. I prefer to think it’s the former, with gifts like this. My Dutch neighbor from across the street gave me this gable end vent, which is precisely what I need in order to make the winter season cigar ventilation device work properly. More on that some other time.

Once all the trusses were set, we had lunch. There was some homemade lasagna from the night before. It tasted even better the next day. The sauce was homemade from Italian sausage, pepperoni, crushed tomatoes, basil, garlic, sun dried tomatoes, sherry, and salt. I never knew they had those oven-ready lasagna noodles; boy howdy. What a time saver. I also found whole milk ricotta and mozzarella. That really made it. But it has almost nothing to do with building a shed, so on with the subject matter. But note the asymmetry. Again, this has nothing to do with beer. The longer eaves on the west side will create a safe place to hang my rakes and shovels while also keeping them handy. It’s intentional. I told my brother, “My wife will hate it. But I love it because it’s just slightly eccentric. Make it so.”

We started nailing the sheathing down after lunch. We let the ends run wild because, after we determined the length of the overhang for the gables (we’re basically freehanding this; there are no plans), we would only have to make one cut. Smart! Even with beer. The H clips install on the top edge of the sheathing in between the trusses, adding strength, and for cheap. They serve to tie the sheathing together top to bottom on their horizontal edge.

After what felt like a wrestling match with a cougar (not the sultry sophisticated kind), we were pretty much done. The incredulous look my brother had given me at the beginning of the day, when he had discovered that I had built the trusses to an 8/12 pitch, was now understandable. My body hurt from fingertip to toenail. As a matter of fact, I can still feel it, and it’s not nice. But we did good work, and I’m proud of it. Now I can fill in my gable ends and complete some of the framing on the inside (for finish work like sheetrock). I can do that all by myself. Which probably means it will be asymmetrical, and that will be intentional. Duh.

The Ongoing Saga of YES!

This is weird, but I was driving home from my AM writing session at my local coffee shop when I saw a car driving erratically on my street. The connection was quickly made that it was the same one I usually see whenever the YES! pink poobag drops on my lawn twice a week. Now, remember: I already called the Idaho Statesman about cancelling my subscription to their direct delivery junkmail paper. I was told that I would be unsusbscribed. But I didn’t hold my breath. Good thing.

I watched as the erratic driver slowed in front of my house. A pink bomb was hurled from the car and the driver moved on to the next “customer”.

“Oh no, you dit-n’t,” I said as I nailed the throttle in hot pursuit of liberty and justice. I tracked my friendly neighborhood carrier down posthaste and politely informed her that I had unsubscribed last week from the product she had just delivered. She told me she’d had a family emergency and hadn’t updated her manifest yet. I said I was sorry for her loss, but again reminded her of my address and asked her for a discontinuance of the service. She thanked me for the reminder and then I drove off.

It was fortuitous that I just happened to be a block or two behind her when the coupons were delivered. I was able to defend my hearth and home against the unsolicited pink menace of the Statesman’s YES! scourge. We’ll see if I get the results I want. If I don’t, I’m open to suggestions from the peanut gallery as to how I ought to solve it—so long as they’re legal, natch.

Why You Need Dun & Bradstreet

Ya know, for all the hype about college degrees out there, one would think they’d provide some kind of real world benefit. In my case, I hold a bachelor of science in Business/e-Business from the University of Phoenix and it’s pretty in its little frame on my wall, but that’s about it. No college is perfect, but most of what I learned from college is how to persevere and complete things, how to work online across big distances and how to reach my goals. Beyond that, the subject material wasn’t very pragmatic, in my opinion.

I wish there was a do-it-all college program out there for entrepreneurs. But then again, I don’t, because the best school for entrepreneurism has been and continues to be the real world. What the small business owner does on a daily basis is so opposite from the ivory tower of academia it’s not even funny. And now that I’m done whining about things, I can move on.

Still, a list of do’s and don’ts would have been nice. I do wish somebody would have told me about Dun & Bradstreet friggin years ago. You can get some info on them from the SBA, which is where my journey started off recently. My business is growing. It’s getting to the point where I have to start thinking differently about how it operates. One of the more important operational building blocks is how my business appears in the eyes of potential clients and creditors. The only way to manage that is to get a DUNS number.

Wikipedia has more: “The Data Universal Numbering System, abbreviated as DUNS® or D-U-N-S®, is a system developed and regulated by Dun & Bradstreet (D&B) that assigns a unique numeric identifier, referred to as a "DUNS number" to a single business entity. It was introduced in 1963 to support D&B's credit reporting practice. It is a common standard worldwide. DUNS users include the European Commission, the United Nations and the United States government. More than 50 global, industry, and trade associations recognize, recommend, or require DUNS. The DUNS database contains over 100 million entries for businesses throughout the world.”

This isn’t about getting credit for my business. It’s mostly about being intentional and proactive about managing what’s there. It would be a pity to lose a client based on false, bad, or missing information from D&B. When I searched my company on their Web site, they popped up an older sole proprietorship that has nothing to do with my current venture, so I knew I needed to take action. I tried changing the info on the Web site, but had difficulty.

That’s the one caveat I have to share with you. The iupdater page on the D&B Web site is a bit clunky and frustrating—at least in my case. I was using Chrome and thought seriously about changing browsers for this task, but eventually I just threw up my hands and called in. The D&B staff were extremely helpful and polite and got me all properly sorted in about fifteen minutes with a few questions as to the details of my biz. I recommend that you look into getting a DUNS number if you’re at all serious about running your own business more seriously.

When I incorporated, I filed with the Idaho Secretary of State and then dutifully popped over to the IRS Web site to get my EIN so I could open a business account at my bank. But as far as business credit was concerned, I wasn’t. Happily, as soon as D&B is finished with my report, I will be able to get the detailed picture (or so they say) on how my little LLC appears to the world at large, inside and outside of my industry. It’s not free, but there’s a cost to doing business. For about thirty bucks a month, I can stay on top of things in regard to this side of my operations.

I’ll have more to report when I get my report, and, naturally, as time goes by. My question to you is this: if you have Lifelock or some other personal credit monitoring service watching out for your personal details, why would you not also be mindful of your business’ credit picture? For me, it’s my livelihood. It’s a no brainer. I’ll let you know soon if it seems like the D&B folks have helped or hindered me.