#amwriting

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6 Things I Learned From Beta-readers

Beta-readers are the people who read your manuscript before it’s published to give you advice about how to make it better.

Sort of like “beta players” in the gaming industry are the lucky dogs who get to see Destiny 2 before the rest of us players who test the game while it’s still in “beta” and not ready to be released for the masses.

So what have they taught me?

  1. I have a coy writing style, frequently sacrificing “communicative” for “cute”.
  2. When you tack a beginning onto the front of your book…people can tell that you just tacked a beginning onto the front of your book.
  3. Layman beta-reader: “I like it.”
    Author beta-reader: *3 pages later…*
  4. Not everyone has lived in my pretend world for years the way I have.
  5. REWRITE REWRITE REWRITE and don’t stress it, ’cause you won’t please everyone.
  6. High-quality beta-readers = worth their weight in gold.

Thank you for reading this week’s stand-in blog post; now I’m off to rework that tacky beginning 😉

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SOLDIER—A Friend in Need

The brutal truth: I procrastinated too much and didn’t get a post together for today.

The glossed-over story: Hooray! You get a special look at the first chapter of my latest release, Soldier (White Mesa Chronicles Book 1)!

(I checked, and the Amazon preview doesn’t go all the way to the end of the chapter, partly because of my little prologue thing.)

Anyway, enjoy! And if your curiosity is piqued, check out the book on Amazon (.mobi), Smashwords (most digital formats), Kobo.com, or Barnes & Noble (.epub)!

A Friend in Need

1330 hours

Tommy eased the motorcycle to a stop, his teeth clattering as they jolted over one last pothole.

He flicked a look over his shoulder, bracing as his “partner” jumped down and swung his rifle up and down the street.

“Clear,” called Ricco Dobson.

Tommy eased forward to be more in the lee of the torched cop car, and engaged the kickstand. Below the smashed roof lights and burned-out interior of the vehicle, the door still bore the peeling words Chicago Police. It had to be five decades since that had meant anything to anyone except history geeks like Tommy.

Creaking to a standing position, he also scanned their surroundings, tugging off his driving gloves. The road looked deserted except for the dog corpse they’d passed a dozen yards back, its mangey skin stretched tight over its skeleton. Three or four crows stared down at the two young men from tree branches or power poles, waiting ’til the coast was clear to return to their meal. Continue reading →

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Character Meet—White Mesa Chronicles

The publication date of White Mesa Chronicles Book 1: Soldier is upon us! To celebrate, I’d like you to meet some of the principal players!

White Mesa has one of the largest casts I’ve written (necessarily, being a series) and it took me quite a few drafts to get all their personalities nailed down. It was fun getting to know them, though!

In the effort to refine the characters’ essence, and make them not identical to myself 😊, I’ve used a number of character types and writer tricks. See what you think!

Capt. Lasky; Image credit: TVTropes.org

Thomas “Tommy” Thaxton

  • Family: General Michael Thaxton (member of the WM security council) and Dr. Joanna Thaxton (missing, presumed dead). No siblings.
  • Glass is 🍵 half-full or half-empty?: Half a cup only comes to a quarter-cup of water for each of us, but you can have my share because…you know…that’s the right thing to do…
  • Temperament: Melancholic
  • Favorite book/movie/TV show: That Hideous Strength, C.S. Lewis; Columbo
  • Destiny Class: Sun-singer Warlock (Knowledge) [New Monarchy]
  • D&D/WoW Class: Paladin [DPS]  Alignment: Lawful Good
  • StarCraft race: Terran
  • Strengths: Sniping, Charisma, Compassion;  Fears: Heights, Failure
  • Favorite means of transportation: truck or bicycle

Continue reading →

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Eris: The Tale of the Story

Let me tell you a story. It’s a story about a story.

July 6, 2009, is the date I have recorded that the story first emerged as recognizably itself:

Eris: the Tale of the Story — Kimia Wood — story

How we did story-boarding in the dark ages.

A human prince – Eris – is banished and branded, but accompanied on his wanderings by his elf and dwarf best friends.

As I usually do, I took the seed to my dad, who is an expert in taking my infantile premises and giving them plots. Continue reading →

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Author’s Guild Rails at Amazon’s Buy-Box

(This post might be more interesting to the authors among us, but readers and buyers-of-books are also affected by the dynamics of this issue.)

Amazon is Changing – Everybody Panic!

Author’sGuild.org recently posted an article discussing a change in Amazon’s algorithms regarding who gets top billing in what is called the “buy box” of books – apparently the display at the top that lists all available formats and the relative prices. As you might know, a little farther down appear links to other retailers offering “used” or “new” copies of the books.Author's Guild Rails at Amazon's Buy-Box — Kimia Wood

Currently, Amazon places itself in the prime “buy box” spot, as the first buy-option people see, but according to the article Amazon intends to use metrics to allow third-party retailers the chance to get in that prize spot. (Amazon gets its stock from the publishers, but acts as the distributor itself.)

Author’s Guild (AG) is incensed at the suggested change, but on reading their article I find their arguments less than compelling. Continue reading →

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Writing Post Round-up 2016

I enjoy Twitter – and what I enjoy most is sharing and finding new blog posts or resources to help me in my writing journey. I realize not all of us are writers as well as readers, but for those who enjoy both, here are the articles/posts I’ve found most helpful or interesting this past year.

(I read 99% of the articles I tweet out, but not all of them are worth going back to later. The ones below are worth the effort!)Writing Post Round-Up 2016 — Kimia Wood

The Authoring Landscape

The Man Behind the Mask: On the Creation of Batman—and Rewriting Authorship Itself,

by Sean P. Carlin (@SeanPCarlin):
A long and thought-provoking post about assigning authorship to intellectual property, the hazards of mob rule, “correcting for history”, and the baffling fact that someone has published a collection of Shakespeare’s works with Christopher Marlowe as co-author. Important read with telling worldview implications. Continue reading →

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Top 5 Namesakes

Five Reused Names

The Top Ten Tuesday subject for today is “Ten Characters I’d Name A Child/Dog/Cat/Car/Etc. After”. Fictional characters frequently have cool or memorable names, don’t you think? I’ve only been able to think of five examples of fictional namesakes – and yet it’s curious how many names we’ve snitched over the years.

1. On April 27, 2006, I created a ranger character for a D&D campaign my dad was game-mastering. I named this character “Elwin“, after Elwin Ransom in C.S. Lewis’s space trilogy. Continue reading →

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All About Audio #TopTenTuesday

I don’t know about you, but I like to listen to music while I write, and frequently the words or mood of a song will inspire a story or connect to one of my stories in a special way.
For this week’s Top Ten Tuesday post I’ve chosen to share ten examples of the music that has spoken to me the most.

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Image credit: Amazon

1. “Glory to God” – Matthew Ward, Armed and Dangerous
This song begins with a lilting descent that ends on a trill, a fascinating draft that repeats (with musical variation) for the opening chorus — this sequence is one of White Mesa’s recognition signals 😉.

Paired with this energetic yet flowery melody, the lyrics are a beautiful prayer for praising God. Continue reading →

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3 Reasons to Do #TopTenTuesday

This meme was started by the bloggers at The Broke and the Bookish, but anyone’s welcome. They provide a book-related topic for each Tuesday, and it’s up to bloggers to come up with 10 (more or less) selections! (See the link for official procedures and the list of topics.)

Why should you take part?

  1. It gives you ideas of what to blog about.
    Some people do better at this; I need help figuring out what would interest my audience.
  2. It lets you talk about your likes and favorites without being egocentric – hey, everyone’s talking about their likes and favorites!
  3. You can share about your favorite books/TV shows, latest reads, bookish dreams, etc.! And once again, it’s not egocentric: the blogosphere asked about your favorites!

BONUS: Their topic for Tuesday, Sept. 13, is “Top Ten ALL TIME Favorite Books Of X Genre”. Carte blanche to go fan-girl about the best of the best (but only 10 of them)! Don’t worry about making a Best of the Century list — talk about your favorites right now. See you there!

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“Loglines in the Wild” by Jordan Smith

Conversational, Accessible Tip-sheet

51i10MFRoJL Jordan Smith’s previous work Finding The Core Of Your Story was a step-by-step guide to composing a logline – a one sentence summary of the “through-line” of a book’s plot. This is especially useful for authors trying to clarify and market their own works, but a logline can also be fun for readers eager to share their favorite reads with others.

For those (like me) who love to see things in action and so love examples, Loglines In The Wild provides eight case studies of real independent authors crafting loglines to help them with writing and marketing their ideas. Continue reading →