Year-end wrap-up

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Somehow it has gotten to be December (how the hell?)  and one of my editors and I have been commiserating about how really freaking glad we both are that this year is drawing to a close. Even if the world does end (or start over) in 2012, it’s just got to be better than this year.  Doesn’t it?

Those of you who read this blog regularly know that I’m not one for the in-depth online personal disclosures.  Authors live a little in the spotlight, if just a minor one, and that’s fine, it’s not that I’m shy– but let’s face it, there are some strange people out there and you never know who’s reading.

So without getting too detailed about it, on the personal level this has been an enormously hard year for me. A lot of loss, as in death. Within six months: my father, a beloved aunt, and my cat of 19 years. My father from Alzheimer’s, and all I can say about that is – Don’t get it.  And I hope to God someone figures out prevention and cure to end that scourge.

All of this was coming down while I was not long out of and certainly not recovered from a devastating and permanent split from my significant other.

While here in New Agey California people are liable to say cheery and optimistic things like “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and “God (the Goddess, the Universe) never gives us more than we can handle,” I’m not so sure about that. I think lots of people get more than they can handle.  Just take a look at all the crime and illness and tragedy in the world. People snap all the time. Does that mean they could have handled it and they just didn’t?  Well, yeah, sometimes, but some, I think, really do get more than anyone could handle.

Anyway, I’m handling it, I guess, but I’m also very aware that I’ve been pretty effectively shut down for most of the year, enough so that sometimes I've wondered if I'd ever really be coming back from it. Surviving is not the same as thriving.

On the other hand, I’d have to be the biggest narcissist on the planet not to know that I have it a lot better than a lot of people, especially in this economic climate.  I’m making a comfortable living at the thing I most love to do (although I admit, sometimes that love looks a lot like—something not so loving.).  E books are a godsend, and I have a lineup of book contracts that sometimes gives me panic attacks, but after a really rough patch there after Dad died, I have been managing my deadlines and doing a book on the side,  too, as well as getting some of my backlist formatted for e-release.  In fact it’s kind of amazing how much I got out there this year:

- I e-published a second Screenwriting Tricks for Authors workbook:  Writing Love, and my first YA thriller: The Space Between.

- I finished the first book in a paranormal trilogy for Harlequin: Twist of Fate. 

- I finished a draft of and am now rewriting a new crime thriller than I’m writing on spec (about which I will say very little because I'm superstitious that way).

- The Unseen came out in the UK.

- I wrote a short story, In Atlantis, for Thriller 3, Stories to Keep You Up at Night, coming out in June 2012.

- I am about 100 pages into Night Shift, my second book in the continuing paranormal series The Keepers, that I’m writing with two of my best friends and favorite authors, Heather Graham and Harley Jane Kozak.

- And this month, I am releasing e versions of The Harrowing, The Price, and Book of Shadows in various countries.

It’s absolutely amazing, really, for me to look at that list, which doesn’t even include the workshops I taught this year, when I feel like all I did sleep and once in a while shuffle around the house running into furniture like some kind of undead thing. And I wanted to put it all on paper (or whatever this is) to prove to myself that I’m haven’t checked out of life completely, no matter how I feel sometimes.

In fact I am actually starting to love writing Night Shift, which is not something I say very often about my writing; finishing is so infinitely superior to the actual process.

And it’s great to be full time in the Hotel California again, except for time on the road, of course...  Both of the books I’m working on now, and my last, The Space Between, are set in California and it’s taken me a while to come around to it, but there aren’t many people more qualified than I am to write about this state. (I know it’s a terrible thing to say but I LOVED those violent winds last week; that was the most fun I’ve had in a long time.) I’m finally far enough out of the Hollywood trauma to write about that, too, and I am truly loving using the movie business as a backdrop to this paranormal thriller.  It’s so easy, in a way; I don’t have to think, I can just have fun.  I can set a scene on Catalina if I want and I don’t have to research it, I don’t have to take a field trip (although I could).

Maybe writing could be this way all the time.

And I may not know where I’m going to live next in any permanent way, but I am starting to have at least the beginning of faith that I will find a direction. Eventually.

Maybe I’ll find the rest of it, too. Eventually.

So, everyone – how was YOUR year?

- Alex

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!!REVIEW COPIES!!

I am giving away 100 review copies of Book of Shadows, The Harrowing and The Price for potential review on Amazon, Goodreads and LibraryThing.

Book of Shadows for UK readers and anyone in France, Germany, Italy or Spain who might want to review it on Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, Amazon.it, or Amazon.es.

The Harrowing and The Price: for US readers and anyone in France, Germany, Italy or Spain who might want to review either or both on Amazon.fr, Amazon.de, Amazon.it, or Amazon.es.

If you’re interested, please e mail me at alex AT AlexandraSokoloff DOT com and I'll get you a copy of your choice.

Thanks, everyone!!

Kindle highlights and best writing advice

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Okay, this has apparently been going on for a year and a half and I’m only now catching on. But I just discovered that the Amazon pages of my books are continually compiling the most highlighted quotes from my books.   

To explain for those of you who might not have an e reader - yet! - you can highlight passages of books that you read on your Kindle, and I'm assuming other reading devices, to refer back to at your leisure.  Whether or not you, the reader, know that this information is being compiled online is a different question.

Well, do you?  Some books you might not want to have those special passages spotlighted, if you see what I mean.

The debate about that aspect happened a year ago, (and here's another) and granted, a year ago was not a very good time for me, to put it mildly, but I certainly didn't know about this little Amazon feature.

Now, I'm not a big fan (also putting it mildly) of the overshare zero privacy aspect of soclal networking in general. Some things I don't mind people knowing. Anyone who wants to know my politics, for example, only has to take one look at my hair. And like most authors I've gotten used to living in a semi-spotlight; I don't mind that. On the other hand, I regularly lie on Facebook so that anyone who tried to put together a profile of personal details on me would have a hard time sorting the wheat from the chaff. The idea of Facebook Timeline horrifies me - I don't even want to be able to look at what I've done in my life in what order, much less have anyone else be able to look at it.  Except that it would be fun to put together an entirely fake timeline. That is, if one had any of this said time to begin with.

And I find it horrifying that you would have to KNOW to opt-out of an e reader highlighting feature. Privacy should be the default, not something you have to opt in to.

But Big Brother aside, for the moment this highlighted quotes feature is actually totally EXCELLENT news for me because it means today, instead of a long blog post on what I think is important advice for those of you in the middle of Nanowrimo, I can just give you a pithy list of what readers think is the best advice in my Screenwriting Tricks books. And you all know how much I love lists.

So here you go:

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Top Ten highlighted quotes from Screenwriting Tricks for Authors:

On LOGLINES/PREMISES:

- The premise sentence should give you a sense of the entire story: the character of the protagonist, the character of the antagonist, the conflict, the setting, the tone, the genre.  
 
- All of these premises contain a defined protagonist, a powerful antagonist, a sense of the setting, conflict and stakes, and a sense of how the action will play out.  

- Write a one-sentence premise that contains all these story elements: protagonist, antagonist, conflict, stakes, setting, atmosphere and genre.  

On a character’s GHOST or WOUND

- We all unconsciously seek out people, events and situations that duplicate our core trauma(s), in the hope of eventually triumphing over the situation that so wounded us.  

On CHARACTER ARC

- The arc of the character is what the character learns during the course of the story, and how s/he changes because of it. It could be said that the arc of a character is almost always about the character realizing that s/he's been obsessed with an outer goal or desire, when what she really needs to be whole, fulfilled, and lovable is _______ (fill in the blank).  

On HOPE and FEAR

- Our fear for the character should be the absolute worst case scenario:  
 
- The lesson here is - spend some quality time figuring out how to bring your hero/ine's greatest nightmare to life: in setting, set decoration, characters involved, actions taken. If you know your hero/ine's ghost and greatest fear, then you should be able to come up with a great setting (for the climax/final battle) that will be unique, resonant, and entirely specific to that protagonist (and often to the villain as well.)  

On PLAN (and ACT II)

- This continual opposition of the protagonist's and antagonist's plans is the main underlying structure of the second act.  

ON CONFLICT/ANTAGONISM

- STACK THE ODDS AGAINST YOUR PROTAGONIST. It's just ingrained in us to love an underdog.  

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Top ten highlighted quotes from Writing Love

- “Every genre has its own game that it’s playing with the audience.”

- The game in the romance genre is often to show, through the hero and heroine, how we are almost always our own worst enemies in love, and how we throw up all kinds of obstacles in our own paths to keep ourselves from getting what we want.   
 
- A great, emotionally effective technique within the final battle is to have the hero/ine LOSE THE BATTLE TO WIN THE WAR.  

- This continual opposition of the protagonist’s and antagonist’s plans is the main underlying structure of the second act.  

- I’m a firm believer that just ASKING the questions will prompt your creative brain to leap into overdrive and come up with the right scenes. Our minds and souls long to be creative, they just need us to stop stalling and get our asses in gear.  

- So once you’ve got your initial plan, you need to be constantly blocking that plan, either with your antagonist, or the hero/ine’s own inner conflict, or outside forces beyond her or his control.  
 
- Very often in the second act we will see a battle before the final battle in which the hero/ine fails because of some weakness, so the suspense is even greater when s/he goes into the final battle (climax) in the third act. 
 
- The final battle (climax) is also a chance to PAY OFF ALL YOUR SETUPS AND PLANTS. Very often you will have set up a weakness for your hero/ine. That weakness that has caused him or her to fail repeatedly in previous tests, and in the final battle (climax) the hero/ine’s great weakness will be tested. 
 
- “Get the hero up a tree. Throw rocks at him. Get him down.”  

- After I’ve finished that grueling, hellish first draft, the fun starts. I do layer after layer after layer: different drafts for suspense, for character; sensory drafts, emotional drafts, each concentrating on a different aspect that I want to hone in the story, until the clock runs out and I have to turn the whole thing in.  

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Now, if I'm remembering my own books correctly - always a big if - these are all quotes from the first few chapters, in both lists. I don't know if that's because all my best material is in the first chapters (JUST KIDDING) or if this is some quirk of the system that because only the top 10 quotes are listed, the quotes tend to be from the first chapters. Maybe someone else who is more familiar with this feature can explain this to us.

But actually, I'm pleased with the quotes that people have pulled. It makes me realize that sometimes short is best.  (It just takes so long to be short...).

So, everyone - have you all known about this highlights-sharing all along?  Whether you did or didn't, what do you think about it? Are we all already doomed on the privacy front? Are we just going to let it all slide?

And those of you who are doing Nano, how's it going?

- Alex

Nanowrimo Prep - narrative structure cheat sheet

by Alexandra Sokoloff

There really is something about fall for me, this huge jolt of energy.   Thank God, because I have a lot to do.   This week I did my taxes and a book proposal at the same time, two activities that should never be performed simultaneously.  (At some point the brain does explode, doesn’t it?)  This week I have to write another book proposal while doing edits for another book, and go to Houston to teach a workshop. 

In the middle of all of this there is another book that I am dying, just dying to get done.  This is why I’m a big fan of Nanowrimo. Even though, truthfully, like every full-time writer I have a Nano-like writing schedule most of the time, there’s something about having a designated month where all kinds of people are putting in this kind of insane writing time with the insane goal of having some rough approximation of a book at the end of it that makes it all feel okay, somehow, even doable.

For the last couple of years I’ve been doing a Nano Prep series on my blog   in October,  because I reel in horror at the idea of people just sitting down on Day 1 and starting to write to see what comes out.  The chances of getting a viable book out of that process seem – slim.

I may finally have gone to the opposite extreme, though.  The more I analyze structure, the more it seems to me that every story has the same underlying structure.   In previous years I’ve come up with a checklist of story elements, and last year I really expanded on that one.  But in the last month of some short workshops and my Nano Prep, I’ve actually tried to put the most important of those story elements into an almost narrative, a cheat sheet for story development.

So I’m running it by you all today, to see if it makes sense to anyone but me.

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Narrative Structure Cheat Sheet

Act I:

We meet the Hero/ine in the Ordinary World.  

S/he has:

   --  a Ghost or Wound

   --  a strong Desire

   --  Special Skills

And an Opponent, or several, which is standing in the way of her getting what s/he wants, and possibly wants exactly the same thing that s/he wants

She gets a Call to Adventure: a phone call, an invitation, a look from a stranger, that invites her to change her life.

That impulse may be blocked by a

    --  Threshold Guardian

    --   And/or the Opponent

    --   And/or she is herself reluctant to take the journey.

But she overcomes whatever opposition,

   -- Gathers Allies and the advice of a Mentor

    -- Formulates a specific PLAN to get what s/he wants

And Crosses the Threshold Into the Special World.

Act II:1

The hero/ine goes after what s/he wants, following the PLAN

The opponent blocks and attacks, following his or her own PLAN to get what s/he wants

The hero/ine may now:

     -- Gather a Team

     -- Train for battle (in a love story this can be shopping or dating)

     -- Investigate the situation.

     -- Pass numerous Tests

All following the Plan, to achieve the Desire.

No matter what genre, we experience scenes that deliver on the Promise of the Premise – magic, flying, sex, mystery, horror, thrills, action.

We also enjoy the hero/ine’s Bonding with Allies or Falling in Love

And usually in this Act the hero/ine is Winning.

Then at the Midpoint, there is a big Reversal, Revelation, Loss or Win that is a Game-Changer.

Act II:2

The hero/ine must Recover and Recalibrate from the game-changer of the Midpoint.

And formulate a New Plan

Neither the Hero/ine nor the Antagonist has gotten what they want, and everyone is tired and pissed.

Therefore they Make Mistakes

And often Cross a Moral Line

And Lose Allies

And the hero/ine, or if not the hero/ine, at least we, are getting the idea (if we didn’t have it before) that the hero/ine might be WRONG about what s/he wants.

Things begin to Spiral Out of Control

And get Darker and Darker (even if it’s funny)

Until everything crashes in a Black Moment, or All is Lost Moment, or Visit to Death.

And then, out of that compete despair comes a New Revelation for the hero/ine

That leads to a New Plan for the Final Battle.

Act III

The Heroine Makes that last New Plan

Possibly Gathers the Team (Allies) again

Possibly briefly Trains again

Then Storms the Opponent’s Castle (or basement)

The Team (if there is one) Attacks the Opponent on his or her own turf, and all their

     --- Skills are tested.

     --- Subplots are resolved,

     --- and secondary Opponents are defeated in a satisfying way.

Then the Hero/ine goes in alone for the final battle with the Antagonist.  Her Character Arc, everything s/he’s learned in the story, helps her win it.

The Hero/ine has come Full Circle

And we see the New Way of Life that s/he will live.

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Let me know if this makes sense, or is at all helpful, and otherwise, who else is doing Nano?  And for the happy, sane, non-writers, do you get that Back to School feeling about fall, too?  What are you doing with that burst of energy?

- Alex 

Love and hurricanes and gladiators

by Alexandra Sokoloff

First of all, I’m sure I speak for all of us here at Murderati when I send out heartfelt wishes for the well being of all those in Irene’s path this weekend.  I hope everyone is prepared or GONE, and I hope it isn’t as bad as some of the kind of surreal projections.  Please, everyone, let us know how you are.

As for me, I feel another kind of pressure bearing down on me in the form of a Wednesday book deadline.  The marathon hours I’m putting in (and it’s nothing like what, for example, Cornelia puts herself through, I’m still getting a full night’s sleep) mean that I have no brain left for the few hours before I fall face-first onto the bed and get up to do it all again the next day.

So I’ve been watching a lot of movies.  A wildly eclectic assortment – The Thief of Baghdad, Lawrence of Arabia, a William Hurt marathon, last night It Should Happen to You.

And Gladiator. 

In fact, I’ve become kind of obsessed with Gladiator. 

Now that’s work, actually, because I know how very happy some of the men who take my writing workshops will be if I can use Gladiator for story elements examples.  I may get marriage proposals out of this.

Those of you who have been reading my craft posts or my writing workbooks for a while know that I am always, always harping on – I mean stressing – the usefulness of working with a master list, a top ten (or more) list of your favorite movies and books in the genre that you’re writing, 

In fact, the bottom line of my Screenwriting Tricks workbooks and workshops is just that: Take ten movies and books that you love in the genre(s) you’re writing in and break down what those storytellers are doing to create the experience of those stories, and then do it in your own stories.

The story structure elements that I’ve broken down here and here are applicable to any genre. 

But there are other story elements that are just as important that are specific to whatever genre or genres you’re writing in, and also elements that are specific to the KIND of story you’re writing. 

I really had that driven home for me as I was writing Writing Love (Screenwriting Tricks II), because I did exactly that: to write the book I made a master list of ten love stories (in this case not always my favorites, because I wanted to have a broad range of romantic stories) and broke them down in depth to find the key story elements specific to that umbrella genre. And oh, man, did it turn the lights on for me. 

Just a few of the elements I found that are used over and over that I never really noticed before: Handcuff the Couple Together, Fate (or the Weather) Intervenes, Mistaken Identity or False Identity, Getting to Know You, The Couple Forced to Share a Room (or Bed), The Bet, The Magical Day (Year, Place, Hour), The Dance, Why Them?, Falling in Love with the Family, Oops Wrong Brother (or Wrong Sister), Ghosts of Girlfriends/Boyfriends Past, The Kiss, The Awful Truth.... 

I could go on and on. Well, actually I do, in the book - that’s sort of the point. 

But after writing that book I am finding that I am much more attuned to key story elements - not just in romantic comedy or romantic suspense, but in any genre I happen to be looking at. 

Which brings me back to Gladiator.   War movies are absolutely not my favorite, and neither, really, are epics.  But sometimes it’s easier to see how a film or book delivers on the promise of its genre when it’s NOT your favorite genre.

Gladiator does all manner of things excellently, and it’s really brilliant in that first battle sequence – watch and see how well it does a number of things that are specific to and EXPECTED by the audience of a war story. 

- First of all, it starts with an epic and spectacular battle SETPIECE, which gives you all the glory (for those who call it that) and gruesomeness of war. It tells the audience: Oh yeah, you’re going to get what you want out of this puppy, just sit back and let us deliver. SPECTACLE is one of the key elements of an epic is and you need it in a majority of your setpieces. 

- The sequence focuses on the internal life of the hero first, with that odd and lyrical and bittersweet vision (the OPENING IMAGE) that Maximus has right up front. We know absolutely this is the hero and that there’s more to him than being a warrior. CREATING A MYSTERY ABOUT YOUR PROTAGONIST from the beginning pulls your audience or reader into the story. 

- The sequence has a RALLYING SPEECH by Maximus to his men. This is a huge tradition of war stories (look at Shakespeare’s Henry V, the St. Crispin Day speech for one of the most famous and emulated examples). 

Here's the Kenneth Branagh version. 

I’ve seen about a dozen productions of Henry V over the years and that speech, and the Prologue, never fail to take the top of my head off. 

The rallying speech is almost an obligatory element in a war story (although the deliberate absence of one could be a powerful statement, too). But it’s also an element that you can steal and use to great effect in different genres, a con story or a heist story or a detective story. 

- It has a BATTLE CRY as well, a variation on a tag line: “At my signal, unleash hell.” And a troop motto that also serves as a tag line: “Strength and honor.” 

- It has a clear BATTLE PLAN. It’s often most effective to spell the plan out before the troops go into battle, so we know what we’re looking at, but in the hands of a master director like Ridley Scott the battle plan is clear in the action (even for someone like me who has to watch a scene like this from under my chair). First, Maximus’s forces use flaming arrows and machines to attack from a distance and kill a great number of the barbarians horribly, right at the beginning. Then the troops move slowly forward in a single unit, protecting themselves from enemy arrows in the front and top by using their huge shields as a wall. And then once a great number of the enemy have been slain or maimed and they are closer, they finish the greatly reduced numbers of them off in hand-to-hand combat. 

A clear BATTLE PLAN is a must for every fight sequence in a war story, but is incredibly useful in other genres too, from comedy (THE HANGOVER – figure out fron the clues in that trashed room what happened last night and where the groom is) to romantic comedy (MEAN GIRLS – the strategy against the Plastics) to capers (INCEPTION: think of how many times they spelled out that plan, with scale models to demonstrate). 

- We are also emotionally manipulated into CARING ABOUT THE OUTCOME of the battle in several ways, but particularly the use of the dog in the battle, which makes the action excruciating (we are much more apt to care about an animal than a person) and also linking Maximus with the dog defines qualities of Maximus’s character (he is loyal and true), and makes us care more about Maxiums surviving the battle, by associating him emotionally with the dog. 

These are just a handful of the war story story elements that just that one sequence in this film does well.

Well, what I’m suggesting is that if you’re writing a war story or a war epic, that you make a list of ten of those stories and watch or read them in a row, looking for those common and pivotal elements that are specific and expected in that genre. I can do this for you until the end of time and it will never be as effective as you doing it for yourself. 

And that holds for any genre of story that you’re writing. 

By the way, I’m just making up a lot of those names for those elements, and I’m encouraging you to do the same. It’s more fun and personal that way, and it will define elements you particularly love and hate. Or love to hate. Make yourself a glossary for your structure notebook, and keep adding examples to it as you see them. I’m not kidding, it really works. 

So of course my craft question of the day is - What are some specific genre elements you’ve noticed – in any genre? 

And otherwise, let’s have some reports on Irene.   Be safe!

- Alex

Looking Back, Looking Forward

by Alexandra Sokoloff

Zoë did a brilliant thing in her post last week – a looking back and looking forward at her career as a writer, and JT said something about all of us maybe doing it.  Which is just like JT, who is so good about one-year plans and five-year plans and that kind of grownup thing.

Well, maybe Steve’s post yesterday scared me into acting a little more like an adult, because I decided to do the career review thing for myself today, and the rest of you can do what you want.

A career is always evolving, I guess, it’s not just a writer’s career that does. And it’s interesting to look back over my career and see how certain patterns emerge. Today I'll be looking at the fairly positive ones, not the horrific soul-crushing mistakes that take years to recover from. That's another post.

So a first really clear pattern is that every 5 to 10 years I have moved from one medium to another, always incorporating what I’ve learned from each previous incarnation.

I started off not as a writer but in theater, at eight or nine, first acting (a lot of it) and dancing, then directing and choreographing. I didn’t start writing until college.  But in theater,  without meaning to,  I was learning all the jobs required to write: acting, directing, set design, lighting design, choreography, musical direction, props….  I also did a stint in video production in there somewhere.

I graduated from college and worked for a couple of years in an improvisational theater ensemble, which was more great training, and a totally fabulous time. But I started getting these– feelings. Whispers, you might say. They weren’t all that coherent really, but I was picking up on a message that sounded suspiciously like: “No one’s ever going to pay you to do political theater in Berkeley.”  It’s a coals to Newcastle kind of thing.

So since I’d already been to New York, and I knew I didn’t want to write for Broadway (or Off-), I decided - not all at once, but in a sort of gradual tipping point from “maybe” to “okay, let’s just do it” – that I’d move down to LA and become a screenwriter. Yes, just like that. You really have to love California; from birth we are completely inundated with T-shirt and bumper sticker messages like “Follow your bliss!” “Do what you love and the money will follow!” “Feel the fear and do it anyway!” 

Even more amusing- we actually believe all that.

So I moved down to LA and became a screenwriter.  Pretty much just like that.  Well, I worked in development for about a year and a half while I was writing my first script, and of course I was working my ass off learning the craft and the town and everything it takes to actually accomplish it all, but it really did happen pretty much like that. 

This is another example of a pattern that established itself early in my life. I’d be subliminally pushed to do something and then I’d power down, one might say obsessively, and make it happen. I directed my first full-length play at 16 by pretty much the same process; I landed an unheard-of gig (for a 17-year old!) in college directing a full-scale musical every year with an actual budget and in fantastic theater venues.  The Universe is very supportive of inspiration, I find.

I won’t go into my Hollywood years, it’s too convoluted a story for one blog and I still have the PTSD issues. I’ll just say I made a good and sometimes great living as a screenwriter for a long time until I started getting those feelings again– this time more like something was going terribly wrong in the industry. A lot of this was coming from being on the Board of Directors of the WGA, the screenwriters’ union, and getting an insider look at changes happening in the film business. I started getting whispers again– something like: This is insane. Save yourself.  Get out.  Or at least, diversify, as they say in the financial business.  And so I wrote a book. At night. Screenwriting became my day job as I sweated over the novel, one page at a time.  Sometimes one paragraph or one sentence at a time.  But that’s how a book gets written.

And that book sold and was nominated for a couple of awards and suddenly I was in another career. Just at the right time, I have to say, given what’s happened in the film business since I wrote that first book.

So now for the last five years I’ve been making my living at books. I have five published novels out, with numerous foreign editions, and a non-fiction workbook of my Screenwriting Tricks workshops. I have contracts for four more books, and every day I am incredibly grateful to be making a living at what I love (or some days, love to hate) in the middle of this terrible recession.

But -  I’m getting that feeling, again.  That – “Time to change” feeling.  “Diversify,” the voice whispers. Sometimes it’s not much of a whisper; sometimes it’s a bolt straight upright in bed with a voice in my head screaming DO IT!!!!  kind of thing. I mean, I have contracts for now, but what’s the business going to look like in a year?

Yes, I am talking about indie publishing.

We’ve been having these backstage discussions at Murderati about where we want the blog to go from here, and my own very strong feeling is that we need to be talking even more about e books and indie publishing. So I am putting my blogging where my mouth is and am going to do a series of posts on how the changes in the publishing business are affecting me and how I personally am dealing with it all.

I already have a toe in the e book business. Screenwriting Tricks For Authors is up on Amazon for Kindle, and I’ve been loving getting that direct deposit to my bank account every month; it really helped back there around Christmas when my advance check was taking about forever to show up. And a few weeks ago I finally buckled down and figured out how to get the book up on Smashwords, in all those formats that Smashwords does, and on B&N for Nook. And once I did, I felt like a complete idiot for not having done it before.  It is instant money that I could have been getting all along.

Back to the portfolio analogy for a moment:  it’s an income stream. As a professional author, I have many income streams. I get advances for my new books, I have a backlist that generates royalties, I have royalties from foreign publishers, and now I have e book income, soon to have much more, if things go as I’m planning - all in concert with my agent, of course.

The thing writers don’t talk about enough, I think, is how we actually manage to make that combine into a real living.  Well, I can tell you for myself, and for most of my friends who have NOT broken into the huge advance category but are still making a full-time living at writing books: how it’s done is by constant, grueling work to get more product out there to create more income streams – on top of writing the best book you can write every single time. It’s not very pleasant, truthfully – it means firing on all four burners 24/7.  But that’s nothing new - it seems to be the job description. Everyone I know does it.

Now, e books are a freaking ton of work that I’ve just added to an already overflowing plate. I am now responsible for lining up all kinds of support people that my publisher has always provided: proofreaders, editors, cover designers, formatters, technical services – and there’s a lot of new technical stuff I’ve had to learn myself, which I must say is not my forte. It’s overwhelming, which is why I haven’t fully done it before now. But I think it’s going to be crucial to have some eggs in that basket, so I’m biting the bullet, for real.  To mix all kinds of metaphors, as you all know I love to do.

And honestly, the control and flexibility you get with indie publishing is exhilarating. One thing I’ve discovered is that you can create your own formats. For Screenwriting Tricks, I have been working on and off for most of the past year on an extensive revision of the first book, incorporating all the things I’ve been learning in my own workshops. And then I realized – Why revise the first one?  At a $2.99 selling price I can put out another book that has a different focus, and people can choose which book is best suited to their needs, or get both – two whole workbooks for the price of one paperback novel! That’s an incredible thing. And I can price it that way and still make money because the royalties are so high.

So, in the next couple of weeks I am going to be releasing two new e books, the second Screenwriting Tricks book and a spooky new original e book novel: The Space Between – plus the Thriller Award-winning short story that I based that novel on: The Edge of Seventeen. And I’m going to write some posts documenting the process I’ve been going through and the resources I’ve discovered that helped me do it all.

It’s a whole new world, but it’s an exciting one, and I hope I can convey it in a way that might open some doors for other people thinking of taking the plunge.

So, a couple of questions.  Do any of you do periodic reviews of your careers to see how far you’ve come and where you want to go from now?  Do you find patterns?

And what about this e book thing?  Have you done it?  Are you thinking of doing it?  It’s coming up on Solstice, time for some serious manifestation.   Follow your bliss!!!

-  Alex