Let’s Get Digital? Quite Possibly…

On May 15, 2012May 15, 2012 By Dan HarrisIn Self-Publishing, Writing2 Comments

I just downloaded Let’s Get Digital by David Gaughran. This week David has made it available for free on both Amazon UK and US, so there’s no excuse not to pick it up. You can also get the PDF version for free on David’s marvellous site here (and in my blogroll on the right).

I’ve just finished reading the first part of the book, which deals with why authors should self-publish. David makes a very compelling case for doing so, and I’m surprised to say that I’ve quickly gone from planning to go the agent-legacy publisher route once my novel is ready to pitch, with self-publishing as a backup if that didn’t work out, to being (almost) completely decided that self-pub is the best primary option.

A Quick Edit Update

On May 15, 2012 By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, WritingLeave a comment

I’m now four chapters into the first-pass edit of my novel, the goal of which is cutting out any obviously unnecessary text and just getting an initial feel for if the plot and character arcs hang together and make sense. I’ve been a bit surprised by how familiar these first few chapters are, and how little I’ve actually managed to cut – I can only guess that I reworked them quite a lot last year, before I moved to my later approach of just hammering out the scenes and not even reading them afterwards.

I’m expecting that’ll change soon: I’ve got my eye on chapter seven, which I think is about 3,000 words of nothing relevant to the plot happening, just some slow-burn character development. Pretty sure I’ll be able to tighten that up to about 1,500 and merge it with chapter six.

Editing’s fun!

The Avengers, and Shared Fictional Universes

On May 14, 2012May 14, 2012 By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, WritingLeave a comment

Saw The Avengers over the weekend. I was a little worried it wouldn’t live up to the massive amount of hype, but happily it did.

BEST. MOVIE. EVER.

For anyone who hasn’t been following what Marvel did to build up to The Avengers there’s a great summary of the Marvel Cinematic Universe on Wikipedia. This kind of cross-pollination of characters across multiple storylines to place them in the same universe hadn’t been done in cinema before, despite being very common in SF and fantasy. (That I’m aware of at least. Correct me in the comments!)

King and Gaiman Talk About Writing

On May 12, 2012 By Dan HarrisIn Reading, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, WritingLeave a comment

Neil Gaiman interviewed Stephen King a couple of months back. You can – and absolutely should – read about it on Neil’s site here.

That’s all.

A Proud Day for Sailing the Void

On May 11, 2012 By Dan HarrisIn WritingLeave a comment

Yesterday was indeed a banner day for this blog-o-mine.

STAT ATTACK:

110 views – new record!
11 new followers – new record! (Hi everyone!)
24 likes – new record!

Meanwhile, somewhere in Connecticut, Suzanne Collins’ deputy personal assistant is insulating her loft with this afternoon’s fan mail.

Aaaaaand . . . back down to earth.

From Hackery to Publication: Edit is Go

On May 11, 2012May 11, 2012 By Dan HarrisIn WritingLeave a comment

So my resolution to wait two months before editing lasted . . . 43 hours. Oh well.

First up was running through my scene synopses from start to finish, checking for flaws or holes in the main plot arc.

(A note on synopses: as I’ve been drafting, I’ve written a one-sentence summary of every scene as I finish it. The index cards on the Scrivener corkboard – see here for previous on this – make this an absolute doddle. But I digress.)

Link Dump: Resources

On May 10, 2012May 11, 2012 By Dan HarrisIn Useful Links, Writing8 Comments

Time for another link dump, methinks. Lots to share.

And finally, for any newly-published authors saying goodbye to the day job:

29 Creative Ways To Quit

Worlds Without End – Legends of SF

On May 10, 2012May 11, 2012 By Dan HarrisIn Reading, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, WritingLeave a comment

If you’ve not checked out Worlds Without End in my blogroll on the right, take a peek now. It’s OK, I’ll wait.

The site is an incredible resource, and ‘brings together the complete listings of novels, authors and publishers for 12 major awards in Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror‘. I’ve mentioned ‘my inevitable Hugo Award’ enough times that you won’t be surprised that was the first place I went. And after spinning through the shortlists for the last 20 years I was awestruck by how many legendary names appear consistently, year on year.

The First of Many Awards? Versatile Blogger

On May 10, 2012May 10, 2012 By Dan HarrisIn Sci-Fi and Fantasy, Writing8 Comments

I’ll be honest, at first I thought this was one of those annoying chain-letter-type things. You know, the sort you see on YouTube comment threads, where someone says ‘If you read this and don’t forward it to 50 people then your cat will die in a plane crash!’

But after a little bit of poking around, there seems to be no harm in it. No-one’s eventually being asked to forward their bank details to the Crown Prince of Nigeria, so setting cynicism firmly aside… Read more…