Productivity!

I'm feeling productive.

But then again, I'm blogging instead of writing, so perhaps it's a Jedi mind trick…

Anyway, from what I've been reading in other writers' blogs, having a writing schedule, or a goal, is the key to being a good writer who has lots of books out there.

So, henceforth, from this moment on, I, Stephen James Adolf Magill, shall write 1000 words every day.

No going back now. It's on the internet. That shit can't be undone. Nope.

I've done my 1k for today, and shall do more tomorrow!

Yours,

S.J.A. Magill

Hammering Away

The draft of my first series is now into its second part.

The Hammer, which will be a three-part series about war, expectations vs reality, inaccuracy in the recording of historical events, and snotty grandchildren, is coming along nicely.

The first part came to a natural end at about 15,000 words. I think that's a fine word count for a story that will be priced at 0.99c, or free if I can get away with it. The second and third parts will be longer, and will be priced slightly higher.

This is all part of my businessman-plan. Because although I love writing for the joy of writing, and would still do it if I knew that there wasn't a penny to be made, I hate my day job. I hate having to get out of bed every morning before the sun rises, and I hate having to defend stupid clients (only a small rant this post, promise!)

I enjoy writing in the evenings so much that I keep thinking about how amazing it would be if I could just spend my whole day doing it instead of my day job. Unfortunately, and it's a first-world problem, my writing isn't very profitable, and my lawyering is somewhat profitable.

Therefore, in order to give up the day job in favour of writing for a living, I have to make money. Barring a lottery-win, that means I'm going to have to work jolly hard in order to do it.

Although, is 'working hard' really the key to success? Of course not. Well, it is, but that's not the whole story. I must also be working smart.

And how do I intend to do that? Well, I believe I've already begun. I was thinking to myself: how can I make more money from the writing? Sell more books of course!

No shit, Batman, but how do I do that?

I believe that I'm on the right track with The Hammer: one of the things that a lot of my favourite authors have in common is that the books they write either continue an already established story, or start a new adventure with the same characters. Adams had the Hitchhikers Guide series, and the Dirk Gently books. Tolkein obviously had LOTR, which was really one long history ('long' being the operative word). Pratchett has many series going at the moment.

The only real exception I could think of, where an author I like doesn't tend to write series, but starts afresh each time, is Stephen King. King's stories tend to be about the monsters though, and not so much about the protagonists. And it wouldn't be a very good monster story if there was no element of surprise. So to an extent there's not much scope for series in his work. But that's besides the point.

Ok, so now I've started a series. Very good. Where do I go from there? Do I start another series from scratch? No! I already have jumping off points for new series in the seven stories I already have.

Roland Erhoff's vampire adventure ended on something of a cliffhanger. Where did he go from there? (I'll tell you: he went to the Vampire Tower, where they did some not nice things to him, but that hasn't been written yet).

The insidious Dwarf culture on Terra, first explored with Pon, has a LOT more to be explored.

Finegold, the alchemist, is always capable of getting himself up to mischief.

And of course, Frank Novak and Thorn Middleton's latest adventures are underway already.

The other three: Mir Jonas Mir, Rhylay Dul, and Vorn the battlemage may, unfortunately, stay retired for now. I don't have any major plans for them, nor do I really see a way of taking their stories forward, as much as I liked them. Someday though.

SO: there you have it. My plan to make money. Given that it's taking me a VERY long time to produce any work, this is going to be a 'long game' plan. Hopefully not TOO long though. I'd like to get all of the above done in the next year or so.

In fact, that's it, I'm making myself a challenge. One year from now, I will at least have drafts of:

The Vampire Horse (The Werechicken Part 2)
Technically a Dragon (The Werechicken Part 3)
The Vampire Tower (The Head Vampire Part 2)
A new Pon story
A new Finegold story
The Hammer Parts 1, 2 and 3.

I'm underway already with some of them, and have ideas for the others. If you're reading this, PLEASE, keep me motivated, and keep me sane.

Warm regards,

Steve

Here's to my Russian Readers.

Through the magic of this website's spying capabilities (no doubt inspired by the NSA's own efforts (bloody Capitalist pig-dogs!)) I have discovered that a lot of my traffic has been coming from the great nation of Russia.

Now, we all know Russia has been in the news recently for playing a TEENSY WEENSY bit too roughly with its neighbours. That's not what I'm here to post about. Anyone in any country can tell you that we're embarrassed by the actions of our politicians on a daily basis, and that we have not a goddamn bit of power to stop them. That goes doubly so in Russia. So, for this post, I shall be posting my favourite things about Russia:

Dmitry Glukhovsky

Probably the most successful Russian writer's story is pretty close to my own heart. His breakthrough novel, Metro 2033, was originally posted online for free, until someone realised how good it was and threw lots of money at Mr Glukhovsky in order to publish it.

The Metro series of books are now popular worldwide, and have been adapted/ formed the inspiration for two fantastic video games.

For those not familiar with the series: some form of disaster has caused the inhabitants of Moscow to seek shelter in the metro system. The survivors of the disaster have learned to adapt to life underground well, and in some cases, life is fairly bearable. However, although some communities have managed to develop systems of peace and order, there are other settlements which are more chaotic. And of course, between the settlements there are long, dark tunnels which one must not venture into alone if one ever wants to be heard from again.

Vodka

What kind of writer would I be if I passed up this opportunity to reiterate my appreciation for alcohol. Vodka has led to some of my worst examples of decision making, but has consequently given me lots of good stories to tell at parties.

English Russia .com

My number-one source of information and culture about Russia. The site is presented without bias (or at least it used to be before they installed the hammer and sickle in the header) and lets outsiders see the Russia that Mr Putin would rather you didn't.

http://englishrussia.com

Mr Putin Himself

Not as a politician, but as a martial artist:

Presumably about to throw those two children?

So there you have it, my favourite things about Russia.

Do svidaniya,

Steve

Publishing at Smashwords

I consider myself to be a writer, and not a salesman.

Does expecting to write some stories, put them up online, and expect everyone to flock to them like JK Rowling has just released Harry Potter 8 make me naive and arrogant? Probably. Okay definitely.

So, in an effort to be more salesman-like, I have registered The Werechicken on Smashwords. As those of you in the self-publishing community know, Smashwords is the biggest Indie-publishing website, and acts as a gateway to sites like the Apple iBookstore, and the stores for Kobo and Nook. It ensures listings on a lot of High-Street (or Main Street if you're in the USA) retailers' websites, which would be seriously challenging to get onto otherwise.

So there you go, I'm being businesslike with my writing. As I said, I'd much rather everyone else made the effort to find me, so I don't have to find them, but I don't see that happening anytime soon.

So what is the Smashwords process? Well, let me tell you:

First, as you would expect, you have to write a book. Smashwords are very good at providing assistance. Unfortunately, there's little they can do to help you with the content of your book. So that part is all down to you.

Next, you register with Smashwords. It's a simple step. If you've ever signed up to anything online before: Amazon/ Reddit/ Porn websites then you already know how to register with a company online.

Next, there is an option to make a profile page. This is recommended. If someone reads something you have written and thinks 'what kind of jerk writes trash like this?', then they can go back to the site, click on your profile and see EXACTLY what kind of jerk you are! Ah, the internet age…

Next there's the hard part. The formatting. Smashwords are on their game here. They know that publishing a book in a format that works great on a Kindle may look like shit on a Nook, so they have the solution: The Smashwords Style Guide. The Guide will ensure that you format your book document in such a way that you can download it on any device, and what comes up on the screen is what you intended.

The Guide is detailed, and uses features of Microsoft Word that you likely have never even heard of.

Oh Essjay, you loveable n00b, I've been using Microsoft Word for years, and I think I know my way around it; my novel - The Great Heffalump - will hardly need any formatting changes at all, I hear you say. WELL YOU'RE WRONG! Unless every time you want something centred on a page you've been assigning a different paragraph style, then you're going to have to do some editing.

That being said, although there are complex steps to follow, they are all explained in a mostly idiot-proof way. Even better, for the REALLY complex bit: creating a chapter-table at the start which links to the chapters in question, there is a video to show you what to do.

So, the end result? Thankfully, once the fourteen-thousand steps in The Guide have been followed, your book will actually look pretty damn professional.

So there you go, that is Smashwords author-handholding process to try and make them a bit of cash.

I'll let you know how it goes.

S.J.

The Werechicken

The trigger has been pulled, the wheels have been set in motion, the dogs have been let out (but by who?), and I have a novel out there in the big bad world for all to see.

It's an odd feeling. I wrote the novel in about six months in 2011, then I sat on it for a long time. I decided to write some more things, shorter pieces, and put those out there first. I did that, then I went back to The Werechicken.

You want to know what happened? I had written a lot of other stuff by the time I came back to my novel, which was my first serious piece of writing. By that time I was a better writer, and what I found was that I had NOT been a good writer when I started writing my novel.

It was awful. My English was terrible, I had TONS of exposition that even I myself got bored reading, and I had a knack for throwing in little sentences that contradicted everything I wrote later. It was not a good feeling.

Editing is a hard, slow task, but re-writing is a different beast altogether. I hate it, and to be honest, The Werechicken is damn lucky it ever saw the light of day, because I gave up on it more than once, thinking that it would just be easier to chalk that one up to experience, and move on.

But I didn't.

I didn't do it, because I believe in the Werechicken. Maybe no-one else gives a flying turd about my novel about a young man 'blessed' with the ability to turn into a small, white chicken at-will, but I do. I think it's a good book. I think it's a solid fantasy story, and most importantly, I think there's bits in there that will give readers a good laugh.

And that's what I set out to do. That's really why I write. The world is a far too serious place, and I wanted to make it a little less serious. The Werechicken is essentially a 'fuck you' to people who insist that life has to be hard, and a struggle, and unpleasant, because those people, while they may be partly right, do not make the world a better place. There is a time and a place for seriousness, but it's not for EVERY time and place.

My main hope for my book is this: that someone will pick it up, read it, switch off from the 'real world' for a few hours, and get lost in the world that I've created, which is most certainly NOT serious.

If you buy it, I hope you enjoy it.

Yours,

Steve.

Amazon UK               Amazon US

Worm

WORM

A demon stood at the foot of my bed.

I sprang to my feet, and illuminated the room with a shower of sparks from my fingertips. The demon had a red face; black, empty pits for eyes; and yellow daggers for teeth.

“Oh, it’s only you,” I said, “I was worried there for a second.”

The monstrosity sighed. “It annoys me that I can’t get a rise out of you anymore. Anyway, you needed me?”

“I did. I’m in trouble Worm.”

“I gathered that. It might surprise you to know that I’m here quite a lot,” he said. We both sat on the bed, which faced the door of the cell. 

“Can you get me out of it?”

“Maybe, what were you thinking?”

“I don’t think I’ve ever needed to ask about the limits of your power before. Can you turn back time?”

“No.”

“Can you bring back the dead?”

“No.”

“Can you erase peoples’ memories?”

“No.”

“Dammit Worm, what exactly can you do?”

“I find that murder is often solved by more murder.”

I couldn’t tell if the demon was joking or not. Comedy does not come naturally to their kind.

“I don’t think that’s a very helpful suggestion. And anyway, it wasn’t murder, it was an accident.”

“Do you think the judge will see it that way?”

“He might. I’ll have to word my defence carefully. It really sounds worse than it was.”

“I can see the headlines now,” said Worm, “student wizard kills instructor’s cat, adds insult to injury by killing instructor.”

“Look, it wasn’t on purpose.”

“I don’t judge people, you know that. They might be more lenient on you if you show remorse.”

“But I’m not sorry. It wasn’t my fault. The instructor wasn’t supposed to be home!”

“That’s it! That’s how I can get you out of this!”

“How?” I asked. I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. For a minute I thought I had wasted my time calling him here. “Can you teleport me out of here?”

“Don’t be silly, boy, the enchantments on this building means you’re not going anywhere. Even I can’t teleport here.”

“Then how did you get in?”

“I slipped the guard fifty bucks. Anyway, here’s the thing: we won’t teleport out, we’ll walk out of this place, together.”

“How? Can you cast a mind-control spell over the guards?”

“I told you my powers are more or less useless here. And stop guessing, it’s not your strong suit.”

“Then how?”

“I’ll be your lawyer.”

THE MORNING OF THE TRIAL

“Your honor,” started Worm, “these charges against my client are ridiculous. I intend to show this court that not only was my client not at the scene of the crime, but he wasn’t even in the same country. However, if your honour is not with me in respect of my primary position, I will show your honour that my client only acted in self-defence-”

“Against an elderly professor and his cat?” The judge interjected.

Worm was silent for a worryingly long time. His red, pointed tail, that stuck out the back of the trousers of his pinstripe suit was wagging nervously.

“Well, it was a very big cat your honour.”

The judge sighed and massaged his temples, “continue.”

“Thank you your honour. If your honour is not persuaded by my averment of self-defence, then my... third-ary position is that he was provoked to the point of using deadly force. The deceased and his cat had both been tormenting my client mentally, physically, and sexually in the months leading up to the incident-”

“Wait a minute, shorthand writer, could you read that last sentence back to me?”

The shorthand writer cleared her throat, and re-read Worm’s last statement, with just a little too much emphasis on and his cat both.

“Are you telling me that the deceased’s cat had been harassing your client?”

“Yes,” Worm said, “mercilessly.”

The judge looked over at the prosecutor, who simply shrugged. 

Unfortunately, Worm continued.

“The deceased and his cat harassed my client to the point where he could no longer control his rage, and he lashed out. And finally, if that position is not accepted either, I shall show the court irrefutable evidence that both the deceased, and his cat, died painless-ish deaths, and that the court should think very long and hard about not imposing a death sentence. Thank you.”

The demon sat next to me. My head was in my hands. He looked pleased with himself for some reason. The prosecutor was giving his own speech to the judge, so I took the opportunity to have a discussion with Worm about tactics.

“What the fuck was that?”

“It was my opening statement. Sorry, this is all a bit technical, you should just trust me.”

“Trust you? I thought we were going with the ‘self defence’ angle. Where did all that other stuff come from?”

“We’ve got to cover all the angles.”

“Worm, I know this is a very late stage to be asking you this question, but were you really a lawyer?”

“Of course I was! I was in practice for twenty years.”

That was something of a relief. I knew that I should have quit while I was ahead, but I kept asking questions.

“What kind of law did you practice?”

“Well, mostly agricultural. But I have court experience.”

“What was your biggest case?”

“Biggest case... let me see, which was my biggest... oh yes! I once defended a case where my client had been spray painting pigeons white and trying to pass them off as chickens. He sold thousands of these things by mail. Made himself a fortune, and the statues in the local town had never been cleaner.”

“Did you get him off?”

“No, he killed himself during my closing statement.  However I think the judge was looking persuaded by what I had to say.”

My head hit the table, hard.

THE KEY WITNESS

The prosecutor had just finished his examination in chief of the deceased’s elderly neighbour, who had just testified that he had come into the house to find me standing in the living room, with the professor dead at my feet, and half a cat in each hand.

Worm was grinning.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” he said to me. Worm had eventually admitted that he perhaps hadn’t given the most favourable opening statement in the world, but he absolutely assured me that cross-examination was his forte.

“Mr Jones, I notice that you’re wearing glasses. Tell the court, if you would: were you wearing your glasses on the night in question?” Worm turned and winked at me.

“Yes, of course I was.”

Worm spun back to the witness, almost losing his balance. “Are you absolutely certain about that? Bearing in mind you are under oath.”

“Yes, absolutely certain. I was out walking my dog. I can’t see where I’m going without my glasses.”

“Hmmm, and do you often walk your dog in the middle of the night? Where were you really? A bar? A whorehou-”

“Objection!” 

“Sustained,” said the judge, “Mr Worm, I’ll thank you to keep your manner professional, and please take a few steps back from the witness, your horns are practically taking his eyes out.”

“Of course, your honour,” he said, stepping back to the middle of the room, and regaining his composure. “Mr Jones, I put it to you that my client is completely innocent of all charges, and that the real murderer is in this very room...”

All at once, the judge, the prosecutor, and I dropped our faces into our hands in anticipation.

“I put it to you, that you are the real murderer, Mr Jones!”

“Mr Worm,” the judge groaned, “this accusation didn’t form part of your opening statement. Do you have anywhere to go with this?”

“Well he hasn’t denied it your honour.”

“I deny it!”

“No further questions.”

MY TESTIMONY

Worm stood in front of me, waiting for the judge to tell him to start. He was rocking on his heels, grinning confidently, and winking at me.

“Alright Mr Worm, you may begin.”

Worm began: “I wonder if you could tell me what happened on the night in question.”

I took a deep breath, and began. “I had broken into the professor’s house. He was compiling our final grades to send to the Archmage. I knew that he was going to fail me, so I wanted to get in and change my grade so that I wouldn’t be expelled.”

“Well, I think we can all sympathise with that. Go on,” said Worm.

“I found the papers in the desk in his study. I was so nervous as I rifled through them. I was extremely jumpy. I heard something behind me moving. I don’t know what I thought. I reacted in the moment, and turned, casting a cutting spell as I did. The thing that was moving was the cat. It had jumped onto an armchair, and I cut it in half. It was then that I noticed that the professor was in the armchair. I hadn’t aimed my spell very well. I ran over to make sure he was okay, but he was already dead.”

“And did you mean to kill him?”

“No, I swear!”

“Your honour. My client may have killed the professor, but-”

“Before you go on Mr Worm, I just have to check something. Mr Prosecutor, I have a copy of the death certificate here. Could you turn to your copy and tell me what was the cause of death?”

“Heart attack, your honour. Most likely caused by the shock of the spell.”

“Heart attack? Not blood loss?”

“No...” The prosecutor said.

“Were there any cuts on the professor at all?”

“No, your honour.”

The judge stared at the prosecutor for a few seconds. “Isn’t it possible that the professor could have died of natural causes before the accused arrived?”

“Well, I suppose it’s possible.”

The judge sighed and turned to me: “Son, if you plead guilty to breaking and entering, and assault. I’ll give you a year of probation and we’ll drop the murder charge. If you keep your nose clean you won’t go to jail.”

“That, I want that.” 

The judge banged his gavel, and I hopped out of the witness box. Worm put his arm around me and he began to walk me to the door at the back of the room.

“Court rise!” Yelled the Bar Officer.

“Actually, just a second,” said the judge, “Mr Worm, could you come back for a moment?”

Worm looked at me, confused, and walked back to the front of the court. 

“Approach the bench, Mr Worm.”

Worm edged towards the judge’s bench, slightly apprehensive.

“Mr Worm, it’s highly unusual for me to ask this, but which law society are you accredited by?”

“The Maverro Law Society, your honour.”

The judge raised an eyebrow. “Maverro?”

“Yes.”

“The same Maverro that was wiped off the face of the planet by giants two hundred years ago?”

“That’s the one.”

“And you haven’t ever joined another?”

“No, your honour.”

“So let me get this straight: the country whose law society which accredited you was destroyed two hundred years ago, and you have never been accredited since then?”

Worm froze for a second. “Well, um, you see, um, we demons are timeless creatures and-”

“Take him to the cells.”

“Ha, I’d like to see you try!” Said Worm.

The demon, in a burst of fire, disappeared, but instantly reappeared with a loud thud at the ceiling. His horns were stuck in the ceiling, and his legs dangled frantically.

With a crack, and a rumble of dislodging plaster, Worm fell to the floor, and groaned loudly.

“Take him to a cell with demon-shielding.”

Worm screamed at me: “If you get me out of here I promise I’ll give you your soul back!”

“Worm, you didn’t ask me for my soul...”

“Crap!” He screamed, as they dragged him out of the room.

Happy Slappy New Year

Happy New Year everyone.

I hope everyone is well. To my fellow amateur authors: I hope you are keeping at it. To all the published and successful authors out there: congratulations, I'm looking forward to reading more of your stuff. And to the good people at Ourmeets.com, who for reasons unknown to myself, keep getting directed to my little writing blog: best of luck finding each other.

Here's where I am:

1. The Werechicken. It's done, completed, wrapped up with a bow, and currently under scrutiny by the robots at Angry Robot publishing. If it turns out that they don't want it, my plan is to self-publish it.

I've got a little bit of experience self-publishing short stories and novellas (see sidebar), but have never published anything as long as a novel yet. The Werechicken will be my first. I've been reading about creating a professional product when self-pubbing and that one of the things that absolutely should not  be done is just to submit a Word document to Amazon and trust their automated system to get everything absolutely correct. Unfortunately, that's exactly what I've been doing thus far. Boo at me.

2. The Vampire Horse and Technically a Dragon.

Parts 2 and 3 of the Werechicken Saga are being written in tandem as 2 parts of a long story. I'm writing each character's story separately (on an experimental basis). I'm currently 82k words deep into the main character's stroryline, which will finish up at about 90k words. In total I'm expecting the whole thing to be over 200k words, which will hopefully split nicely into two novels.

3. Other Ideas.

I have no plans for any shorter works in the near future, I have six so far, which is enough to supplement my bookshelf for now. It will all be novels from here on out - for the time being anyway. So quite apart from The Werechicken Saga, I have a few other ideas.

I think the best idea would be to finish TVH and TAD, leave them for a long while, and in the mean time get a few other ideas down on paper. Once those are done: get redrafting (my least favourite part of the process).


So the year ahead should be exciting. Not just in terms of my writing career, but I also qualify as a fully-fledged lawyer, which certainly won't give me any extra time for writing, but I'm committed to it, so I'll make time :-)

S.J.