Trey Parker and Matt Stone of South Park Talk About Storytelling

NYU teaches a class in storytelling the Tisch School of the Arts. On the first day of class, Professor Liotti invited Trey Parker and Matt Stone to discuss their take on storytelling. In this short video, there are a couple of nuggets of great advice, which helps explain the 20 year success of the animated television series. I found it interesting that they basically said writer's block is not an option. If they can't come up with a show idea, seventy people are idled. This reminded me of William Shakespeare, who had forty people depending on him to come up with a new play that would draw a large enough paying audience to feed themselves and their families. Nothing drives creativity like hunger.

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By the way, kudos to NYU for teaching storytelling. Many universities think creative writing is solely about crafting wonderful sentences. Not true. Storytelling is at the heart of anything still read or viewed that was written over twenty years ago.

Storytelling is the art, good writing is the craft that brings it to life.

Final Episode of Justified

I watched the final episode of Justified last night. A little tardy you might think. Not to my way of thinking. I never watch any TV until the entire season is available on DVD or streaming.  That way I can binge-watch the series without ugly commercials or intervening days of holding my breath for the next episode. I get it all, and I get it the way I want.

Except … the sixth season of Justified has been available for nearly a year, so you might ask what took me so long. Justified is my favorite television program. (Elmore Leonard is one of my favorite authors.) I was heartsick when I heard the series had come to an end. As long as I never watched the last season, it was not really over. It was always there to look forward to.

Here is what I wrote about Justified in a previous post:

Justified, starring Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins, and a host of other fine actors, is a character-driven modern day western based on a short story by Elmore Leonard. I believe bad guys and gals make heroes heroic, and Justified has a bevy of really bad characters. Our hero has sidekicks of course, but basically, it’s Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens against this cast of misfits, hoodlums, and felonious masterminds. Good actors portraying interesting characters in a tightly written drama presented with masterful storytelling. Who could ask for more?

But good things can’t be put off forever, so I watched the last season of thirteen episodes in four nights. The final episode did not disappoint. It echoed the pilot in a well-crafted conclusion that sets a high standard for future finales. Good writing starts with good plot decisions and Graham Yost and crew did a masterful job. It’s hard to imagine a different ending that would leave viewers as satisfied.

Here is an excellent Entertainment Weekly explanation of the final episode

Here is Variety’s description of the finale

And for fun, here Entertainment Weekly links to the Top Ten best Show Downs

For the impatient, here is the #1 Showdown!

A genuine Westerner?

I believe Mark Twain is the greatest western writer of all time. Not only did Tom and Huck live on the frontier, but Roughing It describes his own adventures in the Wild West, including his stint as a reporter in Virginia City when it was wilder than any cow town on Saturday night. Twain thought the West was a hoot, so he kept traveling in that direction until he reached the Hawaiian Islands. In 1866, he spent four months in paradise as a reporter for the Sacramento Union.

Here is a New York Times slide show about Twain in Hawaii

Here are a couple of things Mark Twain said about Hawaii.

This is the most magnificent, balmy atmosphere in the world--ought to take dead men out of grave.

The missionaries braved a thousand privations to come and make them permanently miserable by telling them how beautiful and how blissful a place heaven is, and how nearly impossible it is to get there.

Wanted: A Western Story Collection

Snake in the Grass

A Steve Dancy Tale

A lone wrangler with a fine herd of horses goes berserk in the middle of nowhere. 

Steve Dancy and Joseph McAllen must decide—help the crazed boy or ride off.

Wanted: A Western Story Collection ebook edition is available for pre-order at Amazon. The paperback edition will come along in a few weeks. The anthology includes a Steve Dancy short story. Since this was my first short story in the series, I decided to have a little fun and wrote it from Joseph McAllen's point of view.

From the Backcover

Seven bestselling western authors join forces in the time-honored tradition of the old West to deliver a collection of short stories featuring their most popular and beloved characters. Read about the adventures of Steve Dancy, Gideon Johann, Shad Cain, Lee Mattingly, the McCabes, Hunt-U.S. Marshal, and Jess Williams. Enjoy your favorite authors and discover new friends along the trail.

My Second Short Story

I write novels. Seven and counting. (Plus six nonfiction books, if I include my ghost writing assignments.) I’ve previously written only one short story, for which I received an Honorable Mention as a finalist. Maybe that didn’t count. It was a newspaper contest for a one hundred word novel. In the beginning, I thought anyone could string together one hundred words, but it took me a week to create a draft fit for submittal. Short is hard.

All of this is preface to telling you that I have written my first real short story. “Snake in The Grass” is a Steve Dancy Tale with a twist. I won’t tell you the twist. You have to read it for yourself. Where? First, you’ll need to wait a few months. The book is an anthology written by seven top selling Western authors.

Wanted, A Western Story Collection includes stories by Brad Dennison, Lou Bradshaw, Tell Cotten, Robert J. Thomas, WL Cox, James D. Best, and Duane Boehm.

I’ll let you know when it becomes available. In the meantime, I’ll leave with a few of my favorite quotes about short stories.

A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it. Edgar Allan Poe

A short story is a different thing all together - a short story is like a kiss in the dark from a stranger. Stephen King

The great thing about a short story is that it doesn’t have to trawl through someone’s whole life; it can come in glancingly from the side. Emma Donoghue

I used to write things for friends. There was this girl I had a crush on, and she had a teacher she didn’t like at school. I had a real crush on her, so almost every day I would write her a little short story where she would kill him in a different way. Stephen Colbert

Literature vs. Popular Fiction

I bounce around the internet each morning after checking email. I scan a lot of articles, but rarely get by the first few paragraphs. My time is precious and there is just so much stuff out there. If I tried to read it all, I’d never have time to write.

An exception was “Literature vs genre is a battle where both sides lose” by David Mitchell, published at The Guardian blog. I don’t enjoy dissertations on writing as an art form. I’m a storyteller whose medium is the written word, so I prefer articles about how to improve my craft. But Mitchell grabbed my attention with his first sentence.

“Literary fiction is an artificial luxury brand but it doesn’t sell.”

There is an audience for literary fiction, but Mitchell points out that the demand for genre fiction dwarfs the high-tone variety. He claims, “fancy reading habits don’t make you cool any longer. The people who actually buy books, in thumpingly large numbers, are genre readers.”

I think the difference is how a writer approaches a project. If a writer starts off to tell a story, a good craftsman will focus on writing the novel properly to keep the reader engaged. If a writer starts with the goal to write a literary masterpiece, then the focus becomes assembling sentences so clever they stop the reader to admire the prose. A good storyteller never takes the reader out of a story, so fancy writing is counterproductive.

Here’s the dirty little secret of fiction writing: if it doesn’t sell, it’s soon forgotten. Mark Twain, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Owen Wister, Raymond Chandler, Louisa May Alcott and many other “Great Writers” understood this truism. 

“It might reasonably be said that all art at some time and in some manner becomes mass entertainment, and that if it does not it dies and is forgotten.”  Raymond Chandler

Honest westerns filled with dishonest characters

Henry Miller's Commandments

Henry Miller, circa 1930

As someone who admires storytelling skills, I’m not a fan of Henry Miller. He wrote stop-and-read-again sentences, but stringing sentences together with coherency seemed beyond his capabilities. I suspect he injected sex into his writing because deep in his heart, he knew he was boring. Miller reminds me of the comment by Steve Martin’s character in Planes,Trains, and Automobiles, "And by the way, you know, when you're telling these little stories? Here's a good idea - have a POINT. It makes it SO much more interesting for the listener!"

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Die-hard Miller fans will say he had a point, but it's something along the lines of "all the world is crazy except me." Only the first part of that phrase may be true, and I expressed the point in five words.

My opinion of Miller might be biased because I think he was a jerk. Miller constantly harangued friends and acquaintances to supply his needs, and then heaped scorn on them if they complied. (This was especially true for women.) In his view, a worthy human would never kowtow to his entreaties. Much like Grocho, he didn’t want, “to belong to any club that would accept me as one of its members.”

Despite my reservations, I’ll include his writing advice because many believe that Henry Miller was a literary giant. In typical Miller fashion, he called these commandments.

• Work on one thing at a time until finished.
• Don’t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.
• Work according to Program and not according to mood. Stop at the appointed time!
• When you can’t create you can work.
• Cement a little every day, rather than add new fertilizers.
• Keep human! See people, go places, drink if you feel like it.
• Don’t be a draught-horse! Work with pleasure only.
• Discard the Program when you feel like it—but go back to it next day. Concentrate. Narrow down. Exclude.
• Forget the books you want to write. Think only of the book you are writing.
• Write first and always. Painting, music, friends, cinema, all these come afterwards.

Writing Tips from Ernest Hemingway

Hemingway never published advice for aspiring writers, but he spoke or wrote enough about writing that Larry W. Phillips was able to edit a collection of his reflections on the craft. (Ernest Hemingway on Writing)

In the preface, Phillips writes, “Throughout Hemingway’s career as a writer, he maintained that it was bad luck to talk about writing—that it takes off ‘whatever butterflies have on their wings and the arrangement of hawk’s feathers if you show it or talk about it.’ Despite this belief, by the end of his life he had done just what he intended not to do. In his novels and stories, in letters to editors, friends, fellow artists, and critics, in interviews and in commissioned articles on the subject, Hemingway wrote often about writing.”

Here’s one piece of advice I like:

Hemingway said to F. Scott Fitzgerald that, “I write one page of masterpiece to ninety-one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket.”

This nugget reminds me of a photography course I took many years ago with my wife. (She got an A while I received only a B. Darn. And we took pictures of the same subjects.) Anyway, the teacher told us if we wanted to build a reputation as good photographer, we should take lots and lots of pictures and throw all of the bad ones away. Simple … but expensive in the age of film photography. In the digital age, this advice has become cost free. If adhered to religiously, this technique allows a visual dufus like me to catch up with my wife.

Here are some more tips gleaned from Hemingway lifelong musings about writing.

• Use short sentences.
• Use short first paragraphs.
• Use vigorous English.
• Be positive, not negative.
• To get started, write one true sentence.
• Always stop for the day while you still know what will happen next.
• Never think about the story when you’re not working.
• Don’t describe an emotion–make it.
• Be Brief.
• The first draft of everything is shit.
• Prose is architecture, not interior decoration.
• Write drunk, edit sober.

If you’re inclined, there’s even an app that will measure your writing clarity against Hemingway. I’m not one for machine assisted writing tools, but at $9.99, this one seems inexpensive. I bought it and tried it out on this post. It received a “good” score. Ironically, the quote from Larry W. Phillips was highlighted as the least comprehensible.  

FX’s Justified Lives on …

My favorite television program is Justified.  I don’t lament its demise because I watch TV programs on Netflix or Amazon Prime. I don’t need to be first on my block with an Apple watch, I don’t care about the Kardashians, and I never banter with co-workers. I’m retired and way past the age of needing to be hip, cool, with it, or whatever. (Thank goodness I write historical novels.)

Being out of fashion is liberating. I can wear clothes without an emblazoned logo, drive a 2000 model car, shun Instagram, and watch my favorite television shows whenever and however I want. My way is after the season’s over. I can binge-watch or spread them out, and I’m not even bothered with a need to fast-forward through commercials. Life is grand without a remote in hand.

All of this is to note that I’m in the middle of season 5.  So please, no spoilers.

Justified, starring Timothy Olyphant, Walton Goggins, and a host of other fine actors, is a character-driven modern day western based on a short story by Elmore Leonard. I believe bad guys and gals make heroes heroic, and Justified has a bevy of really bad characters. Our hero has sidekicks of course, but basically, it’s Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens against this cast of misfits, hoodlums, and felonious masterminds. Good actors portraying interesting characters in a tightly written drama presented with masterful storytelling. Who could ask for more?

If you haven’t watched Justified, you should. Here are a few links to articles about the program. The first consolidates all the professional reviews of the final episode. I glanced at it, but quickly closed my browser window before I happened upon a spoiler.

Episode Review: Justified Series Finale by Jason Dietz at Metacritic

Trigger-Happy by Emily Nussbaum in The New Yorker

What ‘Justified’ Reveals About Manhood by Rachel Lu at The Federalist

What ‘Justified’ Really Says About Modern Manhood And Westerns by John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist

The Literary Genius Of ‘Justified’ by John Daniel Davidson at The Federalist

John Daniel Davidson wrote some lines that seem apropos to Justified and westerns in general.

“an extended meditation on grand themes: the price of sin and violence, the ties of blood and kin, the difference between justice and vengeance.”

“the western is at heart about the tension between civilization and barbarism—and the interplay between the two.”

“Ford’s films, like the Greek epics from which they’re drawn, portray civilization as a fragile thing, always under threat and always in need of protection—a task that often falls to those willing to step outside of civilization and into a state of nature. Hence, heroes like Ethan.”

Writing Advice from George Orwell

Orwell's Rules

35 cents for a Masterpiece

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word where a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, scientific word, or jargon if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

Orwell's Questions

1. What am I trying to say?
2. What words will express it?
3. What image or idiom will make it clearer?
4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?
5. Could I put it more shortly?
6. Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

I’m in Good Company

Thomas Sowell also recommends giving books for Christmas. Here is an excerpt from today's column.

Christmas Books, by Thomas Sowell

Perhaps more than in other years, shopping malls can become shopping mauls. One of the ways to make Christmas shopping less stressful is to give books as presents -- after ordering them on the Internet. There is a good crop of new books to choose from this year, as well as some old favorites that can make good gifts...

For some people, a subscription to a high quality magazine would be a better gift than a book.

If you'd like to review his list of recommended books, follow the link above.

Fox & Sons Books—Revenge at Last

Fictional Bookstore From You've Got Mail

We just returned from New York City. My son’s family lives on the Upper West side with his wife and three of my grandchildren. Our daughter, her husband, and our other three grandchildren joined us to make this a family get-together and special Thanksgiving celebration. We did it all … or at least some of us did it all. Others, like myself, sometimes hung back watching televised football.

I did join everyone on a jaunt to Times Square on Monday, but declined to return on Black Friday. 

Toys R Us Times Square

On Monday, the weather was perfect, which meant that Toy R Us and other stores were sweltering without air conditioning. It didn't help that the shops were packed tighter than a sardine can. Jack Frost made a visit on Black Friday, so stale air and heat were less of an issue. The crush of the crowds, however, overwhelmed all other sensations. There are over eight million people in New York City. Half went to Macy’s and the other half traipsed down to Times Square … and they brought all of their relatives visiting for the holiday. All this is hearsay, of course. I stayed at my son’s apartment to watch Nebraska barely beat Iowa.

Ice Skating in Central Park

I also declined an ice skating excursion in Central Park. These days I’m not about to get on the ice, and stomping my feet on the sidelines to keep warm didn’t sound like much fun. My son texted live video of my grandkids skating, which gave me a rare appreciation for modern gadgetry.

I did do many other things, however. I watched my grandson score several touchdowns in the Yorksvilles Turkey Bowl on Randall’s Island, attended Mass at my granddaughter’s school, enjoyed my granddaughter’s performance in the Nutcracker Suite, celebrated my twin grandsons’ birthday, viewed balloons staged for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, watched the parade from a precarious perch on a Central Park wall, consumed a traditional Thanksgiving dinner surrounded by family, and even found time to write.

bookculture Bookstore in NYC

Shop Around the Corner from You've Got Mail

One of my favorite experiences was a new bookstore on Columbus and 82^nd. The opening, rather than a closing, of an independent bookstore warranted a piece in the New York Times. The newness lured me in, but after my initial visit, I’m sure bookculture will be one of my regular haunts when I visit the city.

Borders is gone and Barnes & Noble closed several of their NYC stores. The Shop Around The Corner in the movie You’ve Got Mail was located close to the bookculture location. Perhaps the Fox & Sons Books model is growing thin. It’s ironic to see the behemoth boxes run out of business by Amazon, only to make room once again for intimate bookstores with a bookish atmosphere. In the end, I bet knowledgeable and friendly staff who understand local tastes will elbow themselves enough room to prosper.I hope so. 

When I visited bookculture, it was packed with people, many of them buying armloads of books. Granted, it was Black Friday, but sale pricing seemed limited. It was hard to tell if shoppers were buying for themselves or for Christmas. Whichever, I hope the store remains busy … and I hope books become the favorite gift for the coming holidays.

Suggested Gifts for Friends and Loved Ones

The Real Wild West

An Editor on the Comstock Lode by Wells Drury

Previously, I wrote that Mark Twain is my favorite Western writer. Twain actually experienced the West at its rowdiest and Roughing It describes his experiences with humor and a touch of the storyteller’s art. Owen Wister is another author who experienced the real Wild West, which gave The Virginian its authentic feel. Wells Drury’s An Editor on the Comstock Lode is yet another great source for Western lore. In fact, its organization and humorous writing makes it an indispensable reference source for Western writers. Drury’s time as a newspaper editor in Virginia City gave him a front row seat to the goings on in that raucous town. His book covers:

• Everyday life in the West, including entertainment, food, and city services
• Practical jokes galore and lots of Yarns
• Saloon life and etiquette
• Gambling
• Bad-men and bandits, gunfights, and stage robberies
• Mining
• Financial history and shenanigans
• Journalism, including Mark Twain
• Politics
• Western Terminology
• And sketches of the prominent people of the Comstock Lode and Nevada politics.

My favorite, of course, is the chapter he dedicates to Candelaria and its suburb of Pickhandle Gulch. This mining camp figures prominently in my Steve Dancy Tales, but I chose to call the main town Pickhandle Gulch because I liked the name. Fiction writers get to bend history to suit their story. It’s one of the fun parts about being a novelist. I suspect Twain, Wister, and Drury did a bit of bending themselves.

Honest Westerns filled with dishonest characters.

Word of Mouth Revisited

I’ve contended that word of mouth is the greatest marketing tool available to authors. Word of mouth includes book clubs, online recommendations at sites like Goodreads and LibraryThing, reader reviews, and good ol’ fashioned face-to-face conversation. Word of mouth does not include anything the author says, including social media leavings that come from gallivanting around cyberspace. Potent word of mouth comes unexpectedly from a trusted source. Every author’s marketing strategy must focus on generating positive word of mouth.

Recently, I had confirmation of this axiom. In the first of August, I ran a discount promotion for a couple of days for the e-book version of The Shopkeeper. I don’t believe in offering free e-books because there is no lasting effect beyond a couple days. Many people gather up free books and never bother to read them. I’ve discovered that there is an entirely different dynamic for 99¢ e-books. Evidently this tiny fee motivates people to read the book.

 I decided to use a brief 99¢ price for the first novel in the Steve Dancy Tales to give a boost to the entire series. It worked far better than I expected. Not only did The Shopkeeper sell almost two thousand copies, all the other books in the series showed accelerated sales. Actually, it has been over a month since the promotion and all five books in the series still sell at more than double the pace of sales prior to the promotion. Free e-books have no legs, but 99¢ e-books seem to have a long tail.

None of this was news to me. But I did make an observation about this promotion that had previously eluded me. If a promotion goes well and readers like the book, then word of mouth accelerates sales in other formats and for other books by the same author. I never track audio sales because they’re small compared to other formats. I kept an eye on them this time, and I noticed a major surge in sales about a week or so after the promotion. Print sales also surprisingly increased, and sales of my other books grew significantly. The additional sales could only come from word of mouth because none of these other books or formats were discounted or promoted beyond my normal feeble efforts. People who liked The Shopkeeper told other people about my books. Some marketing gurus tell you to make fans out of your readers. Good advice, but if you really want to sell lots of books, turn your readers into your own personal sales force.

How? Write an engaging story that never jerks your reader out of the story. This means you need to keep the story moving forward, avoid unnecessary plot detours, and have it all professionally packaged. If you enthrall your readers, they’ll tell their friends, family, and neighbors about this great new author they found. After you have a large and growing sales force, you can concentrate on what you really love to do—write.

Life without laptop

Last week I wrote about living without my handy Kindle. I relearned how to buy a paperback at the airport and life went on. Something far worse happened. My laptop went belly-up. Now, that shouldn’t have been a big problem, except my desktop computer is a massive-screen Macintosh that I use to edit home movies and my wife uses for everything I can’t do. That means the machine is loaded up with graphical, video, and photographic software. No Microsoft Office. Since Microsoft no longer allows the Office suite to be installed on three machines with a single license, we live without it on our Macintosh. The absence of this ubiquitous app occasionally irritates me, my wife almost never notices. And it’s her machine after all.

I use my trusty portable computer four to eight hours every day, so this appendage is a life necessity. I immediately ran to a couple of stores and eventually decided on a new machine. Being clever, I decided to go home and buy it on Amazon to save a few bucks. I get free shipping and I could read hard copy books I had bought for research on my next Steve Dancy Tale. Except … it was just ahead of the Labor Day weekend. Not only did the machine not get delivered, the holiday weekend backed up deliveries so much they didn’t get it to me until Thursday. Evidently, 2-day shipping is a highly elastic term.

Normally, I’m relegated to the basement with my laptop. During this hiatus, I was regularly upstairs asking my wife when she would be done with the computer. I paced around with a heavy footfall until she relented and let me use her machine. I wanted to try Open Office, check email, see how many of my books had sold, visit social sites, and generally get my computer fix. (I found Open Office to be wonderful substitute for the MS variety, but misgivings about compatibility with the next release kept me from working heavily on my next book.)

Then the big day arrived—my brandy new computer sat on my front porch. Now I can get back to writing … just as soon as I get everything reloaded and organized to my liking.

Life without Kindle

I carry my Kindle with me almost everywhere I go. Now, instead of fuming at airport security, I read or shop for my next book. If my wife asks to run into a store, I wait in the car and read. I even read in the interminable lines at Starbucks where no one seems to know how to order a cup of coffee with less than fourteen words. I cheered when the FAA finally ruled that my Kindle wouldn’t cause a fiery crash if I forgot to turn it off. Now I can read during that bouncy ride down the tarmac while the aluminum behemoth decides whether it wants to fly that day.

In other words, my Kindle became an appendage. Until I forgot it in San Diego. When I got to Lindbergh Field, I discovered I had left my trusty device in our condo. Darn. I couldn’t figure out what to do. Then I remembered the good ol’ days when I used to read words on paper. In short order, I bought the Jack Reacher novel Never Go Back by Lee Child.

The first surprise was the paperback price of $9.99. No wonder I liked my Kindle. The second surprise was how much I enjoyed reading a real book. It instantly brought back memories of sand chairs beside Bass Lake or the Pacific Ocean, reading in bed, and getting lost in a story on an airplane. Really lost. Once, I didn't notice that we had aborted two attempts to land until the pilot interrupted my trance to tell us lowly passengers that if he couldn’t land this time he was diverting to another airport. What? Where had I been during all of this? Reading a paperback.

That got me thinking. I have never been that lost while reading a Kindle. There is something about the mechanical nature that interferes with total absorption. In a real book, I never think about flipping a page; I never stop to look up the definition of a word; I never adjust the little light bulb thingy; and I never glance down to see how far I am from the end. I wondered: are real books superior?

Then I thought about my son. I thought about how hard it is to tear his attention away from an electronic device. I thought about how automatically he jets around content, moves between reading different devices and even effortlessly switches between text and audio books. For me, reading a paperback was nostalgic, for him it would be foreign. Did I look back on good times with paperbacks the way my mother insisted that screenwriting was better when television broadcast in black and white.

I’d think some more about this, but I’m lost in a Jack Reacher novel I picked up at an airport.

The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend

When I attended the Tucson Festival of Books as a panelist, I also joined the audience in a number of other sessions. One of the best sessions was a panel discussion of the book, The Searchers: The Making of an American Legend. This is a fantastic book that every Western enthusiast should read.  It’s really three stories, perfectly interweaved. A factual description of the abduction of Cynthia Parker; A historical critique of the novel, The Searchers by LeMay Alan; and an intimate look at the John Ford classic film The Searchers, starring John Wayne. The theme used to unite the stories is how history turns into legend until myth is stronger than facts. A fascinating read on many levels.   

"This is the West,sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

From Bestselling Indie-Novelist to Also-Ran

I self-published The Shopkeeper in 2007. It seems like a lifetime ago, but in indie-publishing terms, it was an eon. I stumbled into indie-publishing by accident. At the time, I had a New York agent with a major firm, but he declined to represent my Western because he said the advance would be less than a decent down payment on a small Korean car. He explained that his 15% wouldn’t be worth his time.  Okay, I decided to self-publish the novel. The Shopkeeper found an instant audience and it was consistently in the Top 20 bestselling books in the Western genre, and at Christmas it often ranked as the #1 Western.

In 2007, most indie-books were nonfiction. In fact, self-published novels were so rare; I pretty much had the field to myself. For a couple of years I was the bestselling indie-novelist in America.

Alas, good things never last. Today I hear there are 30,000 indie-books published each and every month, with most of them being fiction. My lonely world suddenly became very crowded. What happened? The Kindle. It was also introduced in 2007, but it took a few years to get rolling. Those were my years, when print dominated genre fiction.

I would lament the good ol’ days, but I sell more books than I used to. It’s just I can no longer claim bestselling status. I’ve published seven novels and two nonfiction books, five of them Steve Dancy Tales. As of this writing, all five Steve Dancy novels are ranked at less than 30,000, with the nine year old The Shopkeeper ranked at #75 in Kindle Westerns. My novels for the Barnes and Noble Nook are doing better than I expected as well. (The Shopkeeper is ranked at under 4,000 overall.) More important, actual sales are better than they have ever been.

The moral to the story is that progress isn’t necessarily scary or harmful—just different. e-books brought indie-authors vast numbers of new readers. Yeah, the ubiquitous device also brought competition, but with an expanding market, there’s room for everyone. Besides, savvy readers weed out the charlatans that crank out a book after book that they price at less than a cup of coffee. It seems newbie indie-authors flame-out more frequently than want-to-be actors in Hollywood. There’s some great stuff out there in the indie world, but to compete in this crowded market requires study, effort, and a love of writing. Good novels don’t just happen. Authors write and rewrite them until readers want to flip the pages all the way to the end.

So here’s a piece of advice from an ol’ fogey—if you want to sell a lot of books … write a darn good one.

Vacation over—Darn

I’ve returned home after an extended vacation in Pacific Beach, California. I made good progress on Jenny’s Revenge, but I keep forgetting how much work it is to bring a novel to the bookshelves. Lots more work to do. While I was gone, Steve did pretty well on his own.  After a couple day promotion for The Shopkeeper, August is turning out to be one of the best months ever for the Steve Dancy Tales. At one point, The Shopkeeper reached the 80^th best selling e-book in the paid Amazon store. Pretty good for a 7 year old novel. Maybe I should go on vacation more often.

Now I have two big projects. Finish Jenny’s Revenge and do my 2013 income taxes. I was in the middle of a move last April with my records stored deep in a cave known only to the moving company. Taxes! I hate paperwork. I hate little pieces of paper. I think my phobia comes from my early years in management. I never went home until the In Box was empty. Paper, paper, paper. I thought man’s worst invention was the copier machine. It destroyed productivity. When carbon paper dictated the number of people to received memos, distribution was highly selective. Copiers were bad enough, but with email, at the tap of a key anyone can send copies to as many people as they want—at nearly the speed of light! I think I’m beginning to like texting.

Is there a point to this posting? Nope. Just grousing as I return from vacation to contemplate an disagreeable task. Soon, I’ll be wading through boxes of little pieces of paper so I can catch up with the rest of the world in almsgiving to the 16^th Amendment. I’d rather be writing. 

Working Vacation?

Yours Truly on an overhead wave.(Who're ya gonna believe, me or yer lyin' eyes.)

Writing and surfing and sun and good food and better friends. How could I have a better vacation? (Is it a vacation if you're already retired?) Jenny's Revenge is going well, the surfing so so. All the rest of it is perfect. The peacefulness of our getaway is about to expire. My daughter and her grandkids arrive tonight. Then it will be kinetic, noisy, and loads more fun. The energy level in our condo will leap 200%. Okay, that's a gross understatement. Anyway, I better get to writing, because starting tomorrow I'll only have snatches of time for the following week. Then we'll return home to Omaha, where I have vowed to focus on the next Steve Dancy Tale.

  

Three novels for $9.99