Dana King Asks an Important Question
On his blog this week, author Dana King asks the questions we all ask: why don't my books sell better? It's not meant to be a "whine" as he states, but a clear-eyed observation. He makes many points, but this one struck me hard:
"A few years ago I realized both my current series read like novels based on 70s crime movies. I love 70s crime movies, so to me this is not a bad thing. Of course, 70s crime movies were popular forty to fifty years ago, so having that as my wheelhouse is a distinctly limiting factor."
You see, I'm the same way...but my reading wheelhouse is old pulp fiction. So some of my writing is for tastes now 80 years old. Like Dana, I'm fine with that, but I've also come to realize the audience for the kinds of books I've, to date, written, are older.
Read his post and comment.
JA Konrath Ponders a Certain Type of Book
JA Konrath's lengthy post on Wednesday is how he may have come to revisit the old adage about writing things people want to read: "Don't write shit."
It is a fascinating deep-dive exploration into our reading habits, review numbers, and writing. Read his post and comment. Be sure to read the comments and JA's responses.
These two posts pose honest questions about the life of a writer, what we produce, and how the public reads.
A Back to the Future Post
While Dana and JA were asking serious questions, I was aglow having watched the entire Back to the Future trilogy. It was a suggestion my boy made on Memorial Day weekend and I happily took him up on it.
I got to thinking about George McFly and when he knew his son was a time traveler. Maybe it'll make you think differently about the series. And I'd love to hear your thoughts.
Calvin Carter Paperbacks
I took a few hours over the holiday weekend to revise and fix up my paperback files for both HELL DRAGON and AZTEC SWORD. This is one of the more tedious aspects of doing covers. A few of my text pieces were not inside the approved borders (not according to my graphics files, BTW), but not according to the folks at Amazon and Ingram Spark. It was lots of backs and forths, tweaking this and that, resaving, re-uploading, resubmitting, and waiting for the review cycle to finish. It was off and on all week long. But, in the end, the paperbacks are now live at Amazon. I'm still in the review process with Ingram, but it'll be over soon. Then, I'll be able to order copies of those books for sale.
The Summer Writing Session: End of Week 1
Fourteen weeks of summer. Fourteen weeks to get writing project(s) done. I'm in end-of-school mode this week and proofing the next Carter book, BRIDES OF DEATH, so I didn't get any new writing done. But today starts a new month. New fiction is on the horizon.
How about y'all? Got any cool writing projects for the summer?
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