Holidays and all...

So, the holidays put a bit of a quash on blogging so I'll get back into more of how I went about creating the book tomorrow. However, last week I came back from a trip to Kentucky to find that my proof of The Solstice Treaty was here! I used Lightning Source to print it and while the experience of laying out the book and the cover was not nearly as fun as I had hoped, the final product was pretty exciting to see. I did spend time finding some typos and a few friends gave me some comments on a few plot points but other than that it looked fine (except the cover which is too dark. Sometimes going from RGB colors to CMYK colors can make the art look dark.)

So, I've lightened it up, made my edits and submitted the changes to the printer. Why do I need physical books you ask? Good question. It's because I plan on sending them to reviewers who only accept hardcopies. I also am planning on attending and selling the novel at the VA festival of the book which happens here every year.

Anyway, here's a pic and I'll do some more posting this weekend.

"Book 1"

Well, now that I had secured my editor, I took to the serious task for writing the book. I had already completed the rough draft for "book 1" which contained the first 5 chapters. In these chapters I really wanted to show that five events took place that were all somehow intertwined. I knew that jumping back and forth between 1940's Europe and modern day might be a little jarring but I wanted to introduce them as quickly as possible so I could get into the backstory of Mark and Tess and then spend most of "book 2" building them up. It's funny. I thought that I would never have to go back and touch these chapters. I thought they were perfect. Hahaha. I ended up later pulling a lot of bits out of Chapter 2 simply because it became unwieldy. Anyway, I made book 1 (which is really just part 1) shorter because I loved how it ended with the phone call from Tess. It seemed like a great stopping point.

Anywhere, Anytime

I am posting this from a bus filled with football fans. The fact that I can post from my phone reminds me that inspiration can strike at any time. I've mentioned it before but keep something close to you at all times- whether it's your phone (send yourself an email with an idea, make a note, record it) or a pad of paper. Trust me, if you have a great idea for a chapter or maybe even a single word you want to use and you think you are going to remember it when you wake up, you're in trouble. You're welcome :)

Early Editing part 2

Okay, back from the turkey coma...

So the best thing that came out of having an objective editor early was the honesty and affirmation. Chris would let me know if something didn't make sense or if the writing was weak. But he would also encourage me, finding good things in each chapter. Many times, this is what kept me on pace and energized.

There was a con for using him too early, however. I had given myself an editing budget and used it early. Since I continued to edit on and off for years, I wasn't able to use him for the final version. Now, I'll go into that more later when I talk about what happened after I finished my first draft.

But, right now, I think dessert is waiting for me.

Early Editing

After I had written my first five chapters, I decided to hire an editor. I know, that sounds crazy. You see, as a new author, I wanted to find out early if what I thought was good writing was actually good. So I hired my friend Chris Brasted. Chris had worked at a newspaper and has good discernment in general. I think I paid him $100 per 10,000 words and I am definitely glad I did it. Basically I sent him new chapters as I finished them and he edited them (tracking changes in Word).

Here's what I found - pros and cons. Having him on board early helped me a ton as he pointed out both common sentence mistakes and bad patterns I was falling into. I also had a habit of writing a little 'cute' so he nixed those quickly. Chris also gave me a ton of feedback on the plot and where he thought there were holes (I also loved when he got angry that I killed off a character) Ultimately, his greatest contribution was...

Oh hey. Friends just showed up for Thanksgiving dinner. I'll finish this later :)

Interlude

I need to do a quick post. I uploaded my ebook last night. Sooo much fun. I consumed Zoe Winter's book called Smart Self Publishing: Becoming An Indie Author. So well written, encouraging and has step by step for preparing, publishing and marketing your book.

Anyway, sold my first book within an hour of publishing it on Smashwords :)

Research and the first chapters

Now that I had my outline done and secured my domain names, I decided to do two things at once. First, I started writing my prologue and first five chapters that made up book one (the novel is divided into four books). Since I had spent the most time thinking about these chapters, they were fairly easy to write. The biggest challenge I had was making sure that they flowed well as I bounced between modern day and the 1940s. The information on strip mining was easy enough to find via Google and I had driven enough through West Virginia to have an idea of how Beaver Hollow would look. Writing for Fritz von Ehrlichmann came easy enough as did Okahara and the gaming industry (as I have been making casino games for some time.) But understanding how Captain Roberts would get to Italy required more extensive research. I spent a good amount of time with a few friends who served in the Army (in Korea) and got a much better understanding of how these parachute regiments worked. In general research was a lot more enjoyable than I thought.

It took me a few weeks to write these first chapters (nights and weekends of course) and I didn't spend a lot of time making it perfect. I just wrote as quickly as it came into my head, knowing I would come back later and edit (boy, did I edit!)

Second, I continued to add more detail to the other chapters in the book. Sometimes it was just a sentence or two and sometimes entire paragraphs or pages. BTW, I also jotted down questions that needed to be answered in each chapters - especially ones where I felt a hole in the plot did/could appear.

Once I had the first draft of the chapters, I decided to find an editor. I'll discuss why I did this so early in the process in the next post :)

To me, size matters

My wife loves to read and when I told her that I had finished the outline and was ready to start writing, I asked what kind of books she liked to read. Of course I know the GENRE of book she likes. I really wanted to know more about the STRUCTURE of the book. Since my wife gets tired easily when reading, the length of each chapter was important to her. With that in mind I decided to write shorter chapters (but not as short as someone like James Patterson). I also am not a big fan of massive paragraphs so I wrote appropriately. Finally I tried to make each chapter end in an interesting way.

What's in a name?

I had spent some time deliberating with myself on whether I would have a pen name or not. After reading a few blogs that encouraged it, I made up my mind to create one. TBH, while the idea of seeing my actual name in print was tantalizing, a few concrete reasons sealed the deal.

1. I wanted to make sure that if I ever got published and my book showed up at Barnes & Noble, it would be at eye-level. That meant my last name needed to start with an A, B or C. Since my daughter sometimes went by Belle, I decided on Belltower. Really, no other reason than that.

2. I wanted to make sure that I was able to get a .com domain to help promote the book. As a web developer, I always believed that the .net domain was the little, red-headed step child of the domain world. Since I was able to secure both www.davidbelltower.com and www.welcometotheshade.com, I was a happy camper.

Is this something that all authors should do? I have no clue. It just felt right to me and I wanted to make sure that I was doing everything I could to be successful.

Of sleepless nights and outlines

My next step was to create an outline. This was an easy decision for me to make. You see, I have been creating/designing/illustrating/producing games since 1984 and you document EVERYTHING you are going to develop. In this case, I wanted to make sure that as new ideas came into my noggin, I was at least getting a sentence or two down. So, I started with who I thought my main protagonists, villains and supporting cast would be. I gave them names and wrote a little bio on each of them (no more than a paragraph.) I did this so that I would make sure that whatever was happening in the story would be true to who the character was. I knew that some characters would emerge later as I needed them and found, to my great joy, that some minor characters ended up being quite major. It's fun when that happens!

After I created my list of characters, I took the few chapter ideas I had and created a paragraph for each one. I didn't worry about the prose, I just wrote what would happen in general. I continued to do this over the course of about two months. I had two things with me at all times - a pad of paper and my iPhone. If I was driving or sleeping, I had my iPhone near by and used the recorder app to take notes on (I also used the notepad occasionally). The pad of paper was handy if I wanted to sketch something out which I did quite often.

As I continued to come up with new chapters, I generally put them in some sort of order in Word, knowing that each chapter may get moved. It was at this time I was also looking at plot holes and asking myself why this person was doing this, how they were able to do it, why they couldn't be stopped, etc. I've read fantasy for 30 years and I always hated that the main protagonist couldn't do something because some wizard says that "it is forbidden for them to interfere" or some such nonsense. Like a good adventure game, I wanted to make sure that I didn't take a cheap way out.

Once I had a paragraph for each chapter, I decided to take a quick break before diving in and actually start writing. Not a long break. Just enough to create a pen name :)

How it all began

I decided to write my first novel in December of 2008. After listening to Twilight on a trip back to Chicago, I thought it was high time I made my literary mark on the world. THB, I wasn’t as taken with Ms. Meyer’s books like the either my wife’s or daughter’s friends were. However, I was intrigued with the idea of taking a single idea, fleshing it out and getting it published. So, I needed that idea and it came to me while sitting at church.

You see, I have this friend (we’ll call him James) who works for the department of forestry in Virginia. James’ job is multi-faceting and involves everything from planting seedlings (“The green side goes up!”) to repairing fences. So, one day James said that Monday he will host a Chinese Delegation. I had no idea what this meant other than the idea of James entertaining a delegation from China made me howl.

So, I sat down and wrote the first chapter for a book that would be called “James Maupley and the Chinese Delegation.” That particular project lasted all of 4 days. I had an interesting idea of James finding a bomb in the forests of West Virginia but that was about it. Although this book idea didn’t stick, certain aspects of it did and the first line of the novel that would become The Solstice Treaty tumbled out of my head.

“Mark Steele shielded his eyes as the people of West Virginia died.”

Obviously there was a detonation in WV. But how did it happen? And if it did happen, was there something that this Mark Steele guy could have done to stop it? And how do I combine this with my other interests like accessible fantasy (You know, fantasy with character names you can actually pronounce!), European folklore (these stories are really great) and WWII.

Some part of my brain told me that if I REALLY wanted to be published, I should write something about vampires or some teen LIT thing. I actually considered it but ultimately I decided to write stuff I knew about and I would want to read. I mean, isn’t that what they say? Write what you know not what is popular?

So that’s what I did. My next post will talk about the process of writing and after that my ridiculous assumptions about getting published :)