I spend a lot of time writing and talking about electronic publishing. One of the issues that comes up from both writers and readers is this: With everyone publishing out there, how do I know what is good? (The author version of that question is, “With everyone publishing out there, how can I make my stuff stand out?”)

We all agree that we don’t want to have dissatisfied readers running across our stuff and complaining about it. In this day and age they’ll not just tell a friend that an author is bad, they’ll post their insightful and well-reasoned opinion to Facebook and Twitter, then they’ll go onto every retail site available and give the book a single-star review. The difficulty for writers is this. Let’s say someone downloads In Hero Years… I’m Dead because it sounds like it might be a sequel to a romance novel that they sort of remember reading, maybe, on the beach five years ago. So, they snag my book and *pow* they get hit right in the kisser with something they weren’t expecting. They’ll be upset and the second they get near a wifi connection, anyone they can find will know that my book—to use the technical term—sucks.

What prompts me to address this right now?

This morning we got a solicitation from an author to be a guest on Dragonpage Cover to Cover, the books and publishing podcast which I co-host. The author provided a blurb for the book, which I glanced over. In the first paragraph I noticed two grammatical errors and the incorrect use of a word. Not a good sign, but press releases aren’t always proofread closely. The blurb went on to describe the book’s plot which, from what little I read, was extremely implausible and kind of tired. Didn’t mean it wasn’t going to be a good book—I’ve had enough clunker blurbs on my own novels to know better than to judge books based on them—but if forced to make the buy/don’t buy decision on the blurb alone, I was definitely not going to part with money.

So, I went up to Amazon and requested a sample to be downloaded to my iPad. One button, all done, had the sample in about fifteen seconds.

And after about thirty more seconds, I was very pleased I saved my money. (Nope, not going to mention the author or the book or the publisher.) (And if you are the author or publisher and recognize yourself while reading this, please do not embarrass yourself by mounting a defense in the comments below.)

Why did that sample turn me off to buying the book?

1) The ebook’s formatting did not appeal to me. Granted, this is a matter of personal taste, but I prefer things like having a title page, and a copyright page, and the dedication and any acknowledgments all on their own pages. It doesn’t cost the book designer anything to do it that way, and makes the ebook look more like print books. It’s more organized and presentable.

2) I only got four pages into the text. What I found was a manuscript that was internally inconsistent in the way it was edited—which, for just four pages is quite a feat. I found multiple viewpoint characters through which I was supposed to see the action. I got info dumps. I got bad science, like postulating a vacuum within the vacuum of space. (That’s like saying there is water inside a larger body of water—technically correct, but meaningless. The way vacuum was used in that example was also counter to any laws of physics.) The text showed a complete lack of any research or understanding of the specific technology being discussed—compounding doubts I’d gotten from reading the blurb.

Yikes.

And that’s for a book that would have set me back $6.99!

So, readers, before you buy, get a sample. If you buy a book without obtaining and reading a sample, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Authors: provide samples. I have plenty of sample chapters of my work available here on my website. Sampling is the one tried-and-true way of attracting customers. It works for TV and movies, it works for restaurant sampling platters, beer flights, wine tastings and those sausage stores in the malls. Heck, go to any Costco and you see the power of sampling in action every day of the week!

Samples sell. Use them.

When you’re formatting your ebooks, do yourself a huge favor and remember to put a page of hotlinks to other books you’ve written in the front end of your ebook. Sure, print books tend to have them at the end, but print books don’t have a function where a reader can slice the first fifty pages off as a sample. If folks like what they read of your work, they can go to your catalogue page and hit the hotlinks to get more samples. It increases the chances that they’ll find something of yours they will buy.

The digital revolution in publishing is really great. We can get more material faster than ever before, no matter where we are, or the time of day. But we have to protect ourselves. I mean, if you’re willing to buy a book sight unseen, I have a friend who will sell you, very cheaply, a lifetime membership in the “I Hate Money” club.

Every membership comes with a free, randomly chosen download. (Trust me, you’ll get what you pay for.)

Writing up this series of blog posts is cutting into my fiction writing time. If you’re finding these posts useful, and haven’t yet gotten yet snagged my latest novels, please consider purchasing a book. Nice thing about the new age of publishing is that you become a Patron of the Arts, letting writers know what you’d like to see more of simply by voting with a credit card. (Authors charge less when they sell direct, so you save, we make more, and that frees us to write more.)

My latest paper novel, At The Queen’s Command, is available at book retailers everywhere.

My digital original novel, In Hero Years… I’m Dead is available for the Kindle and in the epub format for all the other readers, including the Nook, iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. (Imagine the Batman, Watchmen and Kick-Ass movies all rolled into one, as written by Dashiell Hammett, and you’ve pretty much got the idea of the book. Oh, and with some satire and political commentary slipped in for irony.)

Seriously, sample these books, then buy!

It’s hard to believe it is April already. Things have pretty much been a blur since St. Valentine’s Day, when I flew over to Los Angeles to watch a rough-cut of the new Conan the Barbarian movie. It will be out on August 19th of this year, and the novelization will be available about six weeks earlier. In addition to that I’ve had two trips, have worked on the Phoenix Film Festival, had one book signing, have taught two writing classes and managed to facilitate communications between family members in Japan and my parents in Vermont using a combination of Skype and cell phones and some pretty crazy hours.

As I said, blur.

The biggest news is the novelization for Conan the Barbarian. The basic are this: five and a half years ago I signed the contract to write the novelization. I can’t tell you how many directors or scripts ago that was, mainly because I only saw a few of them. The folks in charge of Conan Properties, Inc., and I share the same love of Robert E. Howard’s original prose. It was an honor and thrill to be tapped for the project. I was fairly lucky because unlike many other movie novelizations, the studio did not have approval on my novel, the folks at CPI did. Because we all recognized that a novel is a different medium than a movie, and that things that work in movies don’t work so well in novels, I was given a fair amount of latitude in how I put the novel together.

For example, in the movie there is a very cool and exciting chase scene and combat sequence that was fun to watch. Trying to do that in a novel, however, would be close to impossible. Sure, some of you might be saying, “But you did that in the X-wing books just fine with space combat.” Well, if Conan and the other characters had mounts that could move a lot faster, were equipped with proton torpedoes and, especially, radios to chatter back and forth, I could have done that here. As it was, the written version wasn’t going to happen the way it does in the film.

One thing I’ve learned in writing movie scripts with Brian Pulido is that you try to get into a scene as quickly as you can, and out just as quickly. In doing the novelization, I got to stretch that procedure out—ease in, finish when you need to. Because the novel doesn’t have actors on the screen conveying their inner lives through a glance or tone of voice, I had to go inside their heads and play around. I got to add extra bits of dialogue that provided more background. In short, I got to put in all the stuff that someone making a script would have left out.

In essence, I got to write the novel from which the script clearly was adapted. (Yeah, I know, a brain bender, but it works.)

Writing the novel was a lot of fun, even though I was working on a tight schedule. I would write a chapter, take a break and read a Howard story, write another chapter and so on. I kept reading Howard’s original work to make sure that I didn’t get too far away from his original rhythms or intent. When you read the Howard stories you realize that Conan is far from stupid; and can be very voluble at the right moments. I let that be my guide, but I also had to be careful.

Howard, for example, has Conan use the word “jam” to indicate trouble. Because he put that word in Conan’s mouth, I could clearly do it and cite the original as an example. The difficulty is that the word “jam” is a bit to slangy and gangsterish (old school gangster) for most modern fantasy readers. So, in the interest of writing to the spirit of the weird-fantasy that Howard was writing, I had to make sure that the work conformed to the general expectations of today’s fantasy audience. Moreover, the material I was able to add to the story provided in the script really let me return to and emphasize themes which Howard addressed—themes that make Conan a joy to read.

One of the goals of any of my tie-in work has been simple: to write a book that the originating author could have written. I want the stories to feel right to the characters and to respect what their creator did. (If I had no respect for the creator or the characters, I wouldn’t take the job.) Howard’s fiction is work I have enjoyed for forty years now. It is work I return to all the time, since I learn a lot from it. In this round of reading I learned even more—a great deal of which will have implications as we move down the line with digital publishing. (In short, Howard and the other pulp writers would have been the Kings of the Jungle in the new environment. What they did then will work very well now.)

I am very happy with the novel, and I hope readers will enjoy it.

Concerning the movie: what I saw was a rough-cut. That means that scenes were still being moved around, over half the special effects shots were not yet in the film, dialogue was being adjusted and I never knew which ending would get used. (Technically speaking, I still don’t know how the movie ends. If it’s not the way I wrote it, I’ll have some very fast rewrites to do.) The actors did a great job, and having their performances in my head made writing so much easier. This is especially true of Ron Perlman, who played Conan’s father.

I’m very much looking forward to seeing the movie in the theatres, with all the scenes in and everything set. And for those who can’t wait, there will be a nifty paperback you can buy to pass the time until the film is released.

I just visited Project Gutenberg looking for books from the American Colonial period and just beyond. The other day I’d found and downloaded an encyclopedia of “useful information” published in 1889, which had fascinating stuff in it. One article, for example, reflected the scientific thought of the day about the origin of oil—and did so without mentioning dinosaurs at all. Books like this are great for getting in to the mindset of folks back then—a critical skill for any writer.

As with any Internet search, clicking one link led to clicking another. I clicked on the category link for Science Fiction. I had page after page of listings for books and short stories by authors whose names I recognized. These were books that I’d seen as fifty-cent paperbacks on racks in bookstores. These were authors I’d actually seen in person. Heck, one was an author I’d spoken to on Wednesday! There had to have been at least 250 novels by authors like Philip K. Dick or H. Beam Piper for which I’d paid good money in print editions and enjoyed thoroughly. Their presence on Project Gutenberg—from which they can be downloaded for free—is a boon to any SF fan who wants to convert his physical library to digital.

These books are even a greater boon to anyone wishing to provide science fiction to younger readers. I was twelve years old when I started devouring the Edgar Rice Burroughs novels. If I remember correctly, there were sixty-some-odd books between the Tarzan, Mars and other series, and I bought every single one. Sure, they’re pulpy, but they’re good reading fun—just the kind of book to take care of rainy summer days, cold winter nights, or those long family car trips. The OZ books by L. Frank Baum are there, too; and a whole bunch of the Tom Swift novels.

Digging around in Project Gutenberg’s archives is like diving into those boxes of books in your grandparents’ attic. You won’t recognize everything, but you’ll find some incredible gems. Whether you want to reread the books out of nostalgia or fill in the gaps with books you missed, they’re there for you. And while material written in the first half of the 20th century might read as dated, lots of it won’t, and the newer material is just as good as it would be if you snagged it in a store or at a garage sale.

It’s this last point that should terrify publishers. Looking at that list of science fiction books, I saw at least a hundred which I would be more than happy to read. I saw many more that I figure I should read, just to bring me up to speed on the history of my genre. I don’t have to pay a single cent for them, and as long as I have them in my reading queue, I don’t need to purchase anything new.

So, let’s do the math. Let’s say parents buy a twelve-year-old an ebook reader. Even if he devours a book a day during the summer, and two books every week (my old reading rate) during the school year, it would still take him over two years to consume everything Project Gutenberg is offering. And Project Gutenberg (as well as other Internet sites) keep increasing their inventory all the time. Add to that the free samples new authors will be making available on the Internet, and this new SF fan might never need to buy a book for the life of his ebook reader. (And gone are the days when you have to snag a paperback of a classic for English class. They’re all in public domain, so you can get them online for free, too!)

The picture actually gets worse for publishers. They have a narrow window of books for which they’ve purchased the ebook rights. Judging by the contracts I have, they didn’t start considering the possibility of needing them until the mid-90s—at least as far as SF/Fantasy is concerned. While they’re making attempts to buy up or claim the rights to much of the backlist they’ve published, their window is closing. Even if an author were to sell the ebook rights to his published work, he still has the option of writing new work and making that available for sale on the Internet. Every sale an author makes directly to a reader, is one less book they need to buy from a publisher.

Publishers, who are basing their projections for the growth of the ebook market on their own sales of ebooks, are missing the free books in public domain, and the direct sales. In short, their numbers are numbers which are valid within their publishing bubble, but do not take into account the economy outside their control. While that external market might not be generating too much pressure yet, I think it will become significant. After all, if someone spends $150 or more on an ebook reader, they’ll want to fill that box with ebooks fast. Getting public domain books is a great way to do this, easing any pressure they feel to amass a library to justify their purchase.

You might think that authors would be threatened by this availability of free work, but we needn’t be. Unlike publishers, who are middle-men, authors are creating content. Our inventory window is not shrinking. As we make work available at reasonable prices, we make the purchase of new material attractive. Without argument, free is better than $2 or $5, but $5 isn’t a whole heck of a lot, especially in the area of an impulse purchase of work by an author you like. As long as authors are willing to make their work available economically, and find ways to market it, they’ll be able to make a living and then some.

I could go on in their vein for a long time. I know I’ll revisit the subject soon. For now, however, I have some reading to do…

Saturday, October 2, in Second Life, I will be reading a selection from Truman Capote’s novel In Cold Blood. This is in conjunction with the American Library Association’s Banned Books week. In Cold Blood, among many other books, has been banned from libraries and schools by people who, to give them the benefit of the doubt, have been well intentioned, albeit misguided.

I chose In Cold Blood for a number of reasons, primary among them the fact that as a freshman in college I got to interview Truman Capote.

It was spring semester 1976 at the University of Vermont. I think it was in March, but I’m not 100% certain. I knew by that time that I want to be a writer, and Truman Capote was coming to speak at the University for free at the gymnasium. I walked up to the gym, getting there early enough that I got my choice of seats, and set up a small cassette tape recorder to record his talk for my mom, who couldn’t make it.

The previous summer I had discovered the Sherlock Holmes stories and had devoured them. I was really enamored of the whole deductive reasoning thing. As I sat there and other people filtered in, I noticed pairs of individuals where one had a camera and the other had a tape recorder. I recognized a reporter for the Burlington Free Press as one member of a pair, and in my best Holmesian manner decided that all such couples must be reporters and photographers.

The young man sat down beside me bearing a camera. I glanced at him and asked, “So, what paper are you with?”

He replied, “I’m not. I’m just taking pictures.” He glanced at my tape recorder. “What paper are you with?”

“I’m not, I’m just recording this for my mom.”

Truman Capote came out to a podium set there on the basketball court. He was a rather small man and, I guess my impression was, fussy. I wasn’t sufficiently experienced in the world to leap to the conclusion that he was gay, but he did seem a little effeminate. And while he was a fun storyteller, the main story he told was a shaggy dog tale he’d made out of a fairly lousy and pretty common joke. I’m not sure if he thought that Vermonters, living in a state which at the time had more cows than human beings, would recognize the joke, or would just be overwhelmed by his presence. He really didn’t seem to care. We were a respectful and polite audience and applauded generously in addition to laughing in all the right places.

When he finished his speech, he left the podium and exited through a side door which led, I knew from experience in the gym, to a small dressing room used by referees. A large young man wearing a varsity sweater stood guard beside it. And in Capote’s wake trailed the reporter and photographer couples.

I turned to the photographer sitting next to me and said, “Want to try it?”

He nodded, and we were off.

About a dozen feet from the door, I hesitated. Good Catholic boy guilt, I think. Well, that and the self-awareness to know that, small as I was, I could easily pass for twelve.

The guard, being helpful, smiled and said, “Reporters can go right through.”

My photographer, never having lost a step, shot through the door before me. As I reached the threshold, the guard’s hand landed on my shoulder. “What paper are you with?” he asked.

My mind raced. The Burlington Free Press was out. Their reporter had already gone in. I searched for a newspaper that would be close enough to make it plausible that they might have sent a reporter, yet far enough away that this guard probably would never check. The likely candidate, the Manchester Union Leader, a well-known newspaper from New Hampshire, popped into my brain.

What popped out of my mouth however was, “Manchester News.”

To the best of my knowledge no such paper exists. I thought certain I was busted. I was thinking cops, explaining to my parents, living down humiliation of having a sidebar story in the paper about my attempted fraud. It wasn’t good.

The guard said, “Go ahead.”

I was in.

Truman Capote stood there in a circle of reporters. Photographers circulated snapping pictures as he turned to face each reporter in sequence. The reporters would ask questions and he would give them answers with the practiced air of someone who had heard all of those questions a million times before. Now, with a certain amount of perspective, I understand that he probably had heard all of those questions a million times before.

I took my place in the circle with my tape recorder ready, the microphone extended. The man had a very, very quiet voice, soft as kitten fur. I had the gain all the way up, yet his answers would barely made the needle flicker. Later, to listen to his answers, I’d have to pump the volume.

The questions he was fielding were pretty basic. The reporter from the Free Press asked, “What do you use to write with?” Capote sighed and explained that he used yellow pads and pencils. I kinda thought it was a trivial question myself but there I was eighteen-and-a-half years old in a gathering of reporters and it was my turn.

So I asked, “Writing In Cold Blood took you five years. That’s a long time. Was there ever a point you wanted to just give it up?”

Capote clasped his hands together and gave a nice long answer. He said that he had indeed want to quit but he couldn’t. The murderers in the book couldn’t quit, so he had to keep going. The expression on his face and enthusiasm in his voice was probably the first time I’d ever encountered the sort of transcendent joy writers reveal when they think about their writing process and are actually pleased with the result.

And so it continued, around and around, question after question. I was amazed, both with Capote’s answers and with the fact that the reporters were treating me like a peer. They jotted down my questions, then hastily scribbled his answers. In fact, the next morning, the Free Press’s coverage of the press conference consisted largely of replies to my questions. I gone into the room thinking that my deception certainly would be discovered, and yet here were trained observers—reporters, and Truman Capote himself—and they didn’t realize I was a fraud.

The press conference ended and Truman Capote left the room. As I tucked my tape recorder back into my backpack, my photographer shared a grin and said so long. The reporters packed up their gear and filtered out, but I barely noticed, because something utterly sinister was running through my mind.

I had stood with reporters and with a world famous writer and I had fooled them all! I had bluffed my way past the guard. I joined the reporters as if I belonged there. The knowledge of how to do that meant I could do anything. I could make a fortune. I could sell people the Brooklyn Bridge!

Day dreams of avarice and riches beyond imagining filled my mind.

And then a young woman spoke from behind me. “You’re not a reporter, are you?”

My heart sank. I’d been busted. I’d gone from euphoria to despair in less time than it had taken her to ask her question.

I turned toward her, eyes glancing downward, penitent. “No, no I’m not.”

Instead of seeing anger gather on her face, I watched relief blossom. “Oh, thank God! I was supposed to record this interview for a class. My tape recorder wouldn’t work. Do you mind if I duplicate your tape?”

Despair gave way to enlightenment. I figured, in that moment, I had a message from God. Sure, I had this wonderful ability to make people believe things that weren’t true, but I must only use it for good.

I smiled at her. “Sure,” I said, and went with her to the student radio station where we made the duplicate.

The heart and soul of being a writer is, after all, making people believe things that aren’t true. While my career has not been as lucrative as the one I might have had selling bridges I did not own, I haven’t risked jail time and I certainly sleep very well at night. And I came to realize, as Truman Capote certainly knew, that being a storyteller is the best job one could possibly ever have.

Stieg Larsson’s novel The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has taken the world by storm. Amazon.com declared it the best-selling e-book ever for the Kindle. In Sweden the novel won awards, and wherever it’s gone on sale it seems to dominate the bestseller lists.

Publishing’s reaction to Larsson’s success is indicative of everything that is wrong with the publishing industry in America.

I want to be clear from the outset that I’ve read the book, found it intriguing, and probably will buy the other two and read them. I certainly enjoyed the book and read it rather quickly. It wasn’t the best book I’ve ever read, but it wasn’t even close to the worst book I’ve ever read. I’ve had no problem recommending the book to others. (Including you.)

What disturbs me about Stieg Larsson’s success is the publishers’ strategy for duplicating it. A Wall Street Journal article from July 1, 2010, titled Fiction’s Global Crime Wave, details how American publishers are looking for foreign bestsellers to translate and offer to the American market. They’re looking very heavily in the area of crime fiction. In their minds this makes perfect sense. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo was a crime novel which was translated into English from Swedish. To publishers then, the formula for success is to take any best-selling crime novel, translate it, package it for the American market, and print it and rake in the cash.

The problem is that Stieg Larsson’s book didn’t sell because it was a Swedish bestseller translated for the American market. It was first translated for the British market, and then Americanized for publication on this side of the Atlantic. The copy editor who Americanized the book missed a few Britishisms—tyre instead of tire, for example—revealing that part of the story.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo has something else going for it: the author’s story. That’s how it first popped on my radar. Stieg Larsson, a well-known journalist, wrote the first two novels and sold them, then finished the third. Before the first could be published to great acclaim and win awards, Larsson died. The irony and the tragedy makes the story irresistible—much in the same way that J. K. Rowling being a mom on the dole and then having such great success catches people’s attention. The author’s story provides an angle that adds something fresh to the story of the book, thereby making it newsworthy and helping to promote awareness and sales.

That doesn’t make a book perfect, mind you, it just makes it very marketable.

Based on my experience of having had 40 novels published, and having worked with editors on countless projects, one thing is readily apparent about The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Had the book—especially with its original title Men Who Hate Women—been offered to an American publisher in this translation, it would have been rejected out of hand. Why is that? The answer is simple. The book has a prologue which offers nothing to the story, the problem which appears in chapter 1 is little more than a frame which binds the book together, but the resolution of the frame story has nothing to do with the resolution of the core mystery. (Were they separated and published as novellas, neither would miss the other.) The book introduces several viewpoint characters who have no substantive role in the story, and the title character is not introduced as a viewpoint character until well past the story’s beginning. The author also switches point of view between characters within chapters, with no warning. There’s also numerous instances of narrator interjection in the tale. These are practices that editors generally frown upon and even see as the mark of an amateur. The translation is simply not brilliant enough to prompt editors to let such little mistakes go by. Moreover, they’re very easy to fix and are the kind of things which get adjusted in the normal editing process.

The book, quite simply, gets a pass because it did very well in Sweden, and publishers thought it would make them some money elsewhere. I’m not at all opposed to publishers making money. Frankly, I wish they’d make it on a greater percentage of their product lines. It would provide them with vitally needed stability and more predictability in cash-flow.

What Book publishers have failed to do is to sit down and consider why the Stieg Larsson books are so successful. Larsson’s book lives and dies on the character Lisbeth Salander. She’s the title character, is very intriguing, and something of a wish-fulfillment, empowerment fantasy for people who hate injustice and apathy in the modern world. Lisbeth can do things that no other mortal can, which is why so many readers love her.

It would seem then, that the formula which makes Stieg Larsson popular is that he’s created a character who’s able to tap into our need to deal with the complications of our technologically involved life. But this is what’s been true about all wonderfully memorable books: they have characters that speak to the readers. It doesn’t matter what language they’re written in, the point is that they, their plight, and their solution to their problems, all resonate positively with readers. Finding books with such characters is where editors need to focus their attentions, not on the bestseller lists in faraway countries.

I’d like to think that the process they’re going through, and the mistakes they’re making, is new and isolated. I’d like to think it’s an aberration. But it isn’t. They are doing with Stieg Larsson what they did with J. K. Rowling and the Harry Potter books. They looked for new books that they could slap into that same market niche regardless of the books’ merits. Some publishers went so far as to take fantasy novels which were not written for young adult audiences and repackage them so they would sell to the younger demographic. Similarly, the explosion of paranormal romances is a reaction to the success of Jim Butcher, Laurel K Hamilton, Charlene Harris, and Stephanie Meyer.

Because publishing is dependent upon the mega-bestseller, they leave themselves consistently vulnerable to flawed thinking and inept strategies. Instead of looking at methods to increase the appeal of books to their core audience, and how to expand the audience of readers to create more consumers, they tap into fads with no true understanding of the appeal of those books. They create their own bubble, then have to scramble when it bursts.

As long as both booksellers and publishers think of books as cans of corn, to be consumed and repurchased on a regular basis, they will continue to distance themselves from the romance of the story. Readers want the magic. They want fascinating characters that they can love to hate, or would love to pal around with. They want entertainment, they want escape, and they want pleasure. Provide them those things and they will be incredibly loyal. Fail in that regard, and you learn the harsh lesson that entertainment dollars can and will flow into other venues and other pockets.

A Twisted Faith by Gregg Olsen is a great true-crime book which also provides a wonderful look inside an American subculture that we all know exists, but seldom get to explore. I got the book in preparation to interview Gregg on Dragonpage Cover to Cover podcast. A Twisted Faith delves into the story of Nick Hacheney, the youth minister for the Christ Community Church on Bainbridge Island, Washington. Though a chubby and less-than-dynamic man, Nick managed to seduce at least four women in the Church—including his mother-in-law—and elude police for years. And why were the cops interested in him?

To pursue his multiple conquests, Nick murdered his wife in the wee hours of December 26, 1997. He smothered her, then set a fire in the house, while he went hunting with friends to create an alibi. Lest you think he was totally heartless, I would note that he made sure neither of the family dogs were inside when the house went up.

From that point forward Nick Hacheney used sympathy and the womens’ steadfast belief in God and prophecy to seduce them and escape justice. It wasn’t until one brave woman, who had removed herself from Bainbridge Island in an attempt to salvage her marriage, admitted what had happened to her, breaking a dam of silence.

It would be very easy to suggest that this was a crime of clergy against believers because, in fact, it was. But to suggest that religion and a small, tightly-knit church community is the only place such a thing could happen is nonsense. Gregg Olsen, as a result of exhaustive interviews, is able to paint a vivid portrait of Nick as a sociopath who used a variety of techniques to worm his way into womens’ sympathies and lives. While their original connection was born of religion—and Nick used it to reinforce behaviors—his techniques could have been dressed up in many different ways for different venues, and would have been just as successful.

The book also delves into the world of Christ Community Church. The community was blessed by a number of people who would get a “Word from God”—a prophecy which would circulate through the congregation and be accepted as completely true. Quoting from page 15: “Whatever the message, it was heeded as if the Almightly had sent a telegram.” The church’s internal politics and tensions are also brilliantly explained as ambition and devotion collide. Even without the murder and seduction, the church’s story would have been fascinating.

The book is just a great read and kept me up nights. I cannot recommend the book highly enough, or the interview which, I believe, goes live on 12 April.

It has been one of those weeks.

For reasons I cannot share publicly, I’ve been decidedly stressed. Nope, nothing to do with health or writing, save that part of the frustration is that I’ve not been able to get as much writing done as I wanted this week. Certain events and forces beyond my control have demanded my attention and, as often happens, things resolve themselves in a way that all the prep-work (which generates stress) and urgency (which mulitiplies stress) go for naught. To be fair, that’s not exactly true, since, if nothing else, you prove to yourself that you can deal with such a thing.

And it reminds you why you don’t like dealing with them; and why you wish that stupidity was a capital crime. Or at least a flogging offense. I know, that’s vicious and savage and barbaric, but, really, aren’t there times when a good public horsewhipping would tune some people up? If not that, how about forcing folks to wear a Scarlet M for Moron? I mean, we should at least have a Euro-sticker for their cars, so we can avoid them.

Okay, venting off, because some cool stuff happened in the week which did make it bearable.

For Christmas my parents bought me a Keurig Single-cup coffeemaker. If you hit the link, you can see the model that arrived in the mail on Tuesday. This thing is spectactular. Living alone I’d brew a pot and toss half of it. Now I do one cup at a time, no mess and fast. And the coffee taste is consistent. Plus you can buy a filter basket to use coffee you grind yourself, which also works very well. This thing is simply brilliant.

Two disclosures: My mom and her investment group own stock in Green Mountain Coffee, which owns Keurig. Also, in keeping with FCC regulations, I should note that no one at Green Mountain Coffee has rewarded me in any way for saying nice things about their product.

Many stores sell the K-cups that are designed to work with the machine—K-cup meaning the little containers full of coffee that brew up a cup. Depending on the store, these can seem a bit pricey, though buying direct does get the price down. Still, the little filter basket lets me use grocery-store coffee and saves money, since while the same amount of coffee brews up the same amount of fluid, I’m not pouring half of it down the drain.

Some of you know that, in researching tea for the Merlin Bloodstone stories, I’ve become rather particular about tea and brewing times. While the filter basket would let me brew tea, I don’t like what the machine does with high-end, loose leaf tea. So I just draw hot water out of it (which comes out just right for oolong tea) and steep normally. Doing normal black tea through the machine works out fine, but I didn’t like the taste on oolongs or green teas that have a delicate flavor.

But, being able to brew a cup of decaf coffee at night, toss in some Baileys, and relax, has made the week passable.

I also took some time off on Friday to read one of my favorite authors: Bart D. Ehrman. I’m reading his book Jesus, Interrupted, which is a fascinating look at the Bible and Biblical scholarship. This follows his book Misquoting Jesus, which chronicled changes in the Bible’s text down through the eons due to transcription errors and editorial adjustments. Jesus, Interrupted covers the contradictions in the Bible—the numerous places where various books directly contradict each other or where blatant errors have survived in the text.

While I’ve seen much of this stuff before in Biblical critiques and on atheist websites, Ehrman points these problems out not to destroy the Bible; but to examine which audiences the books were written for and why, therefore, details and emphasis pointed in one direction in one book, but a book written a generation later needed a different focus. This book, and his others (especially Lost Christianities) bring the human element back into the Bible. He’s pointed out repeatedly that the current New Testament’s books were deliberately chosen from among many more scriptures in circulation at the time to, in part, delegitimate rival Christian sects; and that various mainline Christian churches include books in their New Testament that European Christianity does not.

I find all of this absolutely fascinating. Inserting human factors back into the history of the Bible makes a lot of things far more understandable. It gives us a window into early Christian history, revealing a far more dynamic and chaotic spiritual world. It is not hard to imagine that save for a trick of luck here or there, our view of Christianity—a philosophy which has been the foundation of western culture—could have been entirely different. Contemplating how the world would have developed had that happened is a lot of fun and could well be fodder for many stories.

All in all it has been an interesting week.

And I’m hoping next week won’t be nearly so interesting—at least, not in that way.

Just a reminder, I will be at StellarCon next weekend, in North Carolina. Timothy Zahn and Aaron Allston will be there as well, so we will all have great fun. If you make it to the show, please say hello. I’ll be doing my 21 Days to a Novel seminar there, and will have copies of the book with me. If you do plan to take the seminar, bring a notebook and pencil or pen. There’s lots of notes to take.

I mentioned before that I’d loaded my Sony E-reader up with a bunch of books from Project Gutenberg. Since 1971 volunteers have scanned and proofed uncounted volumes of fiction and non-fiction. That proofing part of the process is very important. The few books I’ve pulled from Google Books tend to have a bunch of OCR errors, like the word “clear” being made out of the word “dear.” The computer spell check does not flag clear as wrong.

The Iron Heel by Jack London is an interesting offering that’s classed as science fiction. It’s a story of a dystopian future in which the Oligarchy—known as The Iron Heel—takes over North America (including Canada and Mexico) and crushes the laboring classes. The story written first person from the point of view of Avis Everhard, wife of Ernest Everhard. They are both socialist heroes who are killed by the Iron Heel. The book is a manuscript of her memoirs which has been discovered by a future historian and annotated by him to explain fine details. The book was published in 1908.

It’s got two very interesting aspects to it. First, the whole artifice of having a future historian annotating the document is wonderful. It allows some wry observations and jabs to be taken at contemporary characters, since the historian knows how they will be “remembered” by the future. This is a technique I’d like to play with, I think. I’ve approached it obliquely in The Dark Glory War and used footnotes similarly in Wolf and Raven, but never quite with the calculated effect London achieves in this book.

Second, while the book is clearly science fiction in the broadest sense, it avoids the whole reliance on technology which usually classifies a work as science fiction. It is clearly predictive, and as it was published in 1908, London makes some fairly good guesses about where attacks will come against America. He predicts, for example, a strike at Pearl Harbor, albeit 40 years early. He also does a spectacular job of explaining socialist philosophy, and predicts a successful socialist revolution to save humanity.

But, then, he didn’t foresee the rise of modern mass media, nor the creation of the service society; both of which completely undermine the means by which his socialists would eventually have their victory. The descent into the Oligarchy, however, is frighteningly familiar; and close enough that I may have to start buying bullets in bulk.

The best thing about this book, and one that makes me happy to classify it as science fiction, is that it does make one think. I’m sure there are scholars who will be critical of the lectures that get delivered in the text; but given that the book is a memoir by the woman who loved Ernest Everhard, it’s entirely likely and believable that she would record his great rhetorical triumphs so faithfully. While I was aware I was being lectured, I also had to think about the things I was reading. This ability to turn another person’s brain on is the greatest gift a writer can possess; and watching a century-old novel promoting socialism, and having to figure out how that message applies to today, was great fun.

The link above will take you to the Project Gutenberg edition of the book. I read it in e-pub and it’s quite clean. Interesting read, and a fascinating way to start the New Year!

Not writing doesn’t mean I didn’t get work done. I did a lot of maintenance stuff—email, etc.. I also managed to adapt an origami design for a CD envelope into something that makes wrapping paper into a perfect little envelope for gift cards. That was the first time I’d ever adapted an origami design, but the author of this book I was working from has the annoying habit of challenging the reader to figure out new ways to do things. That tweaks my competition-gene. After all, it’s just folding paper for crying out loud. How tough can it be?

The main work I got done today was to sit down and line out all the things I need to be doing starting in the first four months of 2010. I’ve been reading yet another book, Crush It! by Gary Vanyerchuk. Vanyerchuk has successfully used new media to build himself a couple of businesses. His book is about how your build your own brand. I highly recommend the book. I’ve done half the stuff he’s mentioned already, and the rest of it makes perfect sense. In short, being creative, innovative, passionate and full of hustle will give you success.

Or, in “old school parlance,” it’s elbow-grease and vision.

So I laid out the things I must be writing (since those are the things I’m getting directly paid for) and then all the other ancillary projects I want to take on. It’s a fairly comprehensive and long list, but not one that’s impossible to get done. It’s just going to take a lot of long hours. I know the popular image of writers is that we’re urbane and live lives of leisure; but really we’re word-farmers. Farming is a lot of work, and what we turn out are products that need to serve three purposes:

1) They must entertain.
2) They must promote my skill, building my audience and brand.
3) They must create income in some way or another.

And, to enable things to do all of the above, I also have to make sure I have the infrastructure in place, like a reliable website, social networking sites, web servers for podcasts, distribution channels, mastery of new publishing formats and a raft of things that don’t even exist yet.

I’ll discuss branding more at another time, because it’s important but not as easy to identify as a buzzword might suggest. What’s important about what I did today is that now I know what I’m doing. I don’t ever have to stop and wonder. I have a list. I can knock these things off, and revise the schedule to include things in May and June and July. Without a plan, without a goal (and a goal beyond your immediate goal), it’s really easy to get lost.

Lost is not good.

Lost is pretty much of a dead end, at least as far as careers are concerned.

So, with this plan in hand, I knock off two chapters tomorrow, and begin to knock other things off the list.

I usually read something for a bit to wind down as I’m heading to bed. Recently I have been reading Paizo.com’s Planet Stories publication Robots Have No Tails by Henry Kuttner. It has a wonderful introduction by F. Paul Wilson that provides a comprehensive bio of the author and some background details on the five Gallegher short stories that make up this collection. (Full disclosure: I got this collection in my freebie bag at the World Fantasy Convention; but I also have done work in the past for Paizo, and will do more in the future for them; and am friends with the owner and members of the staff. I am not being compensated for what follows.)

These stories are pure pulp wonderfulness. Gallegher is an inventor who does his best work when he is blackout drunk. The stories revolve around his sober self having to figure out what he did drunk to get him out of very complicated situations. For example, in one story, the police are looking at him as a suspect in his own murder. The stories are fun and funny; sometimes downright zany—and yet have heart and are heartwarming in some cases. It’s good solid science fiction puzzle stories with tons of character and character development. I am just loving reading the stories and wish there were more than five of them. I cannot recommend this collection highly enough as an entertaining and inspiring read.

And I do sincerely mean inspiring. Kuttner manages to push his stories to the limit with characters who always remain in character and, thereby, serve as more than just pawns to be shoved around through the tale. It’s an aspect of stories that I manage to hit sometimes, but not often enough, especially in shorter work. While anthologies do give a writer some freedom (since the stories are all but guaranteed to be taken if they are at all on point), it’s not an easy thing to let characters range around and define themselves without appearing to be wasting words. Kuttner does it, however, and I’ll be going back over these stories to figure out exactly how he does it.

Then I’ll figure out how I can do something similar in my work.

One of the things I’m really looking forward to with the freedom of digital publishing is getting to play more. It is clearly evident that Henry Kuttner was having a blast writing these stories. I do know that feeling. I’ve been lucky enough to have several characters: Corran Horn, Nolan, Neal, Trick Molloy, Farrell Holmes who have all made writing their stories effortless. (The same is true for Nathaniel, Owen and Vlad in the current novel, by the way.)

When you are looking for good work to enjoy, and work you can learn a lot from, take a look at Robots Have No Tails. Definitely stories that will put a smile on your face.