Current status of the cover, in 200 x 300 pixels

There’s a reason why a lot of books have short, one-word titles, with simple covers. They need to look great as teensy thumbnails. (Check out the thumbnails at the bottom of this semi-randomly chosen page.) With this in mind, my designer has kindly been tweaking his cover to provide something that looks good when scaled down. Here’s 200 x 305 pixels:

Gator & Shark Save the World

And at half that size,

Gator & Shark Save the World

Even in this tiny format, the author by-line and titles are all clear. Can’t make out much of the detail of the figures, unfortunately. Live and learn: I asked for a group tableau, and that’s what I got. I like my cover, though, and I really do think something like this would have been much more dull.

Yes, the graphic is relevant. You’ll have to read the book if you want to know why.

D.

Fictional characters adrift in the uncanny valley

Think about the times you’ve wanted to scream at a character in a book or movie, “No, that’s all wrong!” I’m not talking about characters who, in the interest of the plot, seem to have had their brains replaced with tapioca. I’m referring to those times when a character who felt so real to you a moment ago now . . . doesn’t. The former situation is all too common, because lazy writing is everywhere. Author Staci McLaughlin at The Ladykillers suggested two reasons for The Stupid Move: the author may want to heighten the suspense (as in Alien, when the crew insists on splitting up), or she could be stubbornly wedded to her writing. Laziness either way, really.

It's not like they teach you these things in school, after all.

The latter situation may be a unique problem of good writers. How can you leave a reader or viewer in open-mouthed shock at your* criminal lapse of judgment if you haven’t created a convincing character in the first place? You can’t. You have to have the skills to create a living, breathing, fictional being before you can make the error of turning that being into something not quite human. If you make that slip, if your character says something he’d never say, or does something he’d never do, or fails to say or do something the reader expects him to say or do, then he has just fallen into the uncanny valley.

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Makes it that much more real

Working with 99designs has been a fun experience. I didn’t get a huge number of designers, possibly because my brief called for several character models. That had to have been a lot of work. But I did attract some great talent, and I am very, very happy with the finished product from designer Soheil Toosi:

Let me know what you think, but remember, I love it and will bite to the bone anyone who disagrees with me. (But do let me know if this does not display well on your browser. I have a wide screen, so I tend to max things out quite a bit.)

For those of you who have an earlier version of the manuscript: if this cover art encourages you to get readin’, let me know, and I’ll email you the most recent version.

Back to editing! Eventually, I’ll have to stop fussing.

D.

The Twitter

Don’t laugh . . . I don’t think I owned a cell phone until 2004.

Since this blog is my auxiliary memory, I’m going to catalog useful Twitter links in this post. Feel free to add useful links in the comments, and if you want to “follow” me (isn’t that what the kids say? I don’t know. Perhaps I shouldn’t have chased them off my lawn), I’m dshoffman. That’s what I’ve decided to use as a by-line, too: D. S. Hoffman. Sex-neutral, so I can pub the romance!

On second thought, maybe I don’t want that romance traceable back to me.

How to find the best Twitter hashtags (includes link to “how to use hashtags“).

Another “best hashtags” link.

And yet another, this one aimed for writers.

Google search on using Twitter to promote your book. Because you know how easy it is to forget to Google.

More to come, I suspect.

D.

What I’ve learned

A few times along the way, I’ve felt it necessary to write down what I thought was going to happen.

Once was at the beginning — first in August 2011, and again on 9/1/11, just before I started writing. I’ve reviewed those docs and the only thing that has any correspondence to the finished product: the names of the protagonist and her grandfather, and the basic setting (America, near future, highest level of the government). The current plot is a distant cousin to the original.

A doc I wrote six weeks before finishing, when I was trying to get a better handle on the ending? Still has little resemblance to the true ending.

What I’ve learned from this: it’s all well and good to write notes, but it’s no substitute for writing the novel.

For my readers, here’s an example of something from a year ago that has no connection with the finished story.

the US elects a president who is a progressive, and who is interesting in many ways: he is the youngest president ever, he is Jewish, single (his wife died perhaps 18 mos prior to his election to the presidency), brash and honest to a fault, quite apolitical. His candidacy was deemed DOA but when the front-runner flames out in a homosexual sex scandal and the second-to-the-front-runner is assassinated (he is black, and the racist elements don’t want to see another black president), our Jewish candidate manages to win the nomination.

That was my protagonist one year ago. He’s long gone.

D.

Done!

Sorry I haven’t been writing, but I’ve been writing. I’m DONE. I love this novel. I love the story, I love the characters, and I absolutely love the ending.

Based on my post here, this novel has taken a little under one year to write.

The final manuscript is just over 139K words, which is probably a little longish. I’d like to cut it back to 120K words if I can, but I’m not going to be a slave to numbers. I’m going to edit the last three chapters, then start over from the beginning.

Once I’ve done the final edit, I’ll send it out to those of you who’ve expressed an interest. And after I get your comments back and made changes, I’ll have to decide what the hell I’m going to do next.

D.

slave to the rhythm

To the list of writers’ phenomena (characters that won’t say or act the way you want them to; plots that decide for themselves where they want to go), add pacing. I was certain I had two chapters left to write. One chapter later, I am still sure I have two chapters left.

I was over 9000 words into the present chapter when I realized (A) I hadn’t reached that chapter’s “big scene” yet, (B) the chapter stood very well on its own, and (C) I had just written a great chapter-ending one-liner.

So why fight it? If I had stubbornly insisted on fitting the “big scene” into this chapter, I’m sure I would have rushed it — not good for one of the story’s two biggest payoff scenes. Instead, I’ve pushed it forward. I’ll take my time and do it right.

Have I mentioned yet how much I’m enjoying this?

D.

about the blog . . .

The bad news is, I haven’t been updating a lot lately. But you knew that.

The other bad news is, I haven’t been updating at least in part because of a lot of rocky stuff going on here, but fortunately it’s all stuff that’s either fixable with money or not as serious as first suspected.

The good news is, the main reason I haven’t been updating a lot is because the writing is going well. Just passed the 80K word mark, and it looks to be a 90K to 100K-word novel before all is said and done. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

And thus (like that, Dean?) this is a call for readers. Some time down the road, after I’ve finished the story and had a chance to edit it, I would love to have a couple of folks read through and give me their impressions. This will no doubt be several weeks from now. Let me know if you’re interested; perhaps I could even figure out how to convert to a pdf or other format, if it would make it easier for people to read.

Opening paragraphs below the fold, if you’d like a teaser.

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