This, too, is really cool.

Click here to buy it.

Also unrelated. This is some guy who needs to win an Academy Award.

What’s so great about this is that all of the following might be true:

• He’s an evil minion sent by a witch
• He just dropped an anvil on his foot
• This is twenty minutes after he downed six spoonfuls of equine laxative
• He struggles to say words
• He’s at an Iron Maiden concert and something bitchen happened

This has very little to do with anything on this blog, but it has everything to do with life.

In case of any confusion, this is John Rambo using a very powerful weapon to explode a guy a foot and a half in front of him.

This is also cool.

 

You can download it here.

 

This is cool.

You can download it here.

I probably have a weird process, but I like to create two potential covers for my books even as I’m writing them. Usually, I do this about midway through (although, in the case of my third book, I’ve done it much earlier).

The final cover for Dead Weight is shown somewhere on the blog below, but this is another stab it from an equally gifted artist.

I love audiobooks.

I know there are some people out there who have taken a somewhat elitist attitude toward this medium. They are quick to say, “You listen to your books? That’s not really reading.” That’s true. It’s not reading. It’s listening. But the story comes through all the same. In many ways, it comes through louder, and clearer, and better. This, coming from an author — someone sworn to protect the written word.

Too many of my friends and my family haven’t gotten around to reading my first novel because they’re waiting for the audiobook. Which, of course, means I need to make the audiobook.

Turns out, audiobooks are an investment. If you’ve got a great voice, and you’re a dramatic reader, by all means record your own audiobook. You’ll save a good chunk of money. If you’re like me, though, you possess neither of these, so you’ll need to look elsewhere. This means you have to contract a voice artist to read your novel. And guess what? Not so cheap.

A good voice artist will set you back between $200 and $400 per finished hour. Per finished hour means, simply, that regardless of how much time the voice artist spends recording and editing your work, you only pay for the finished hours of recording. Thank all the gods, too. Otherwise, you would have to spend an exorbitant amount for editing work, too.

Dead Weight is 95,000 words, which equates to about 11 hours as an audiobook. The rate for my recording is $280 per finished hour, so the math is simple.

$280 x 11 hours = $3,080.  Yup, three grand. That’s a lot of dough for the average person to throw down. There are options. They aren’t, however, any better.

The leader in audiobooks is Audible, which is an Amazon joint. Honestly, If you don’t put your audiobook on Audible, you may as well not put it anywhere.

All of this to say, at $3,000 for Dead Weight, I figure this is going to be throwing money to the wind. But, you know, it’s pretty cool to hear your book read by a professional.

Here — listen to a sample for yourself.

Real talk. The writing is the easy part.

I finished my debut novel, Dead Weight, sometime in 2015. I can’t remember when, and I can’t be bothered to look, but it was during those early months and not the later ones. It’s December 2016 as I write this, and the book still isn’t out. Nearly two years have passed.

In all of that time, I’ve written the majority of my second book — more than 70,000 words — and I’m well into my third. I contracted covers for all of these works. I auditioned audiobook recordings. And I edited. And edited. And edited.

My experience with traditional publishing — an industry largely based out of New York, as I sit on the opposite end of the country — is that it’s slow. Not just snail slow, but the formation-of-the-Grand-Canyon slow. It seems to take forever to do anything, even converse, with anybody evenly remotely related to the publishing process.

Here’s what I’ve learned.

First, if you’re going to self-publish, very little of this applies, and go with God. You’re going to need him. There are literally tens of thousands of people on a weekly basis who are writing the next big thing, or so they believe, and they’re all about to flood iBooks and Kindle.

If, like me, you’re clinging to the notion that the old way is the best way, well, prepare for a reality check. You need an agent or publishers won’t even look your way. Not an agent you pay so that they’ll represent you — run from those criminals. No, you want real representation from a reputable agent, all of whom won’t accept a dime until you’ve landed a contract.

Occasionally, I read these wonderful stories about first-time authors who barely lifted a finger for wonderful six-figure deals, and that’s usually the point where I sweep my computer and monitor from my desk and go into a rage dance. (Three or four times a week.) I’m not envious. I’m seething with jealousy, for they are obviously in possession of talent and good fortune beyond my grasp.

My story is one filled with reedits. When I first approached an agency, Dead Weight was 135,000 words. Then, after a back and forth, it was 125,000. Then 115,000. Then 110,000. Then 100,000. And now, 95,000. And that’s still 15,000 words shy of where it should be, by some accounts. Prepare to kill your darlings, as they say. When you’re Stephen King, you won’t need to make those sacrifices, but in the meantime, you have to be marketable, and 80,000 words is easier to sell than 135,000. At least, it sure has been for me.

There is an upside to all of this, which is that as you snip and cut away paragraphs from your novel and down shots of bourbon, holding back tears, you will eventually realize that the exercise isn’t futile, but productive. Dead Weight is, in many ways, a better novel at 95,000 words than it was at 135,000. It’s tighter. And I have an agency to thank for that.

That being true, it’s been two years, and the process is only now nearing completion. You will query agents and you won’t even get responses. You will query others and get rejections. Some will read your novel and say it’s “not the right fit.” Just remember that the people who succeed — not just as authors, but in life — are those who refuse to admit defeat; those who press forward even when the path is totally obscured.

I’ve been done with Dead Weight, my first book, for a dumb amount of time. I’ll write about all of that in a future post. Until then, I thought I’d provide the pitch that I sent potential agents as I struggled to understood this old-school, traditional side of publishing.

Dead Weight

Can a headstrong 17-year-old boy survive and find love at the end of the world?

This is the story of Zephyr Rockwell, a wealthy, small-town teenager who wakes from a night camping in the woods and discovers his girlfriend missing, all of her clothes left behind. Confusion gives way to panic and then terror as the boy learns that her disappearance is not an anomaly, but a statistic in a widespread phenomenon that seems to have swept across his hometown.

Everybody is gone. His parents. His friends. His neighbors. The entire population of nearly 30,000 residents. The streets are littered with abandoned cars, the only remnants of their inhabitants the clothes and shoes and jewelry and even fillings they wore. Television broadcasts static channels and live newsrooms with bodiless chairs. The Internet displays yesterday’s stories and no signs of activity.

What the hell is going on?

Ill-equipped and petrified, Zephyr embarks on a journey for answers and companionship in a world where great cities lay in ruins, resources grow scarcer by the day, and every other survivor is a potential threat.

Along the way, he meets a variety of characters, including a little girl named Jordan who lost her mom, an old man named Ross with a penchant for guns and alcohol, twenty-something twins who claim to have visited Area 51, and Aurora, the most beautiful girl he’s ever seen. Zephyr learns that despite the loss of so many millions, humanity remains, and all the wonder and magnificence of mankind with it. But also the brutality.

There are secrets waiting in California. Still, is the trek halfway across the country worth the risk? Zephyr and some of his new friends decide to find out, and not all of them will return.