07 April 2025, Writing - part xxxx011 Centurion Republication
Announcement: I
still need a new publisher. However, I’ve taken the step to republish my
previously published novels. I’m starting with Centurion, and
we’ll see from there. Since previously published novels have little
chance of publication in the market (unless they are huge best sellers), I
might as well get those older novels back out. I’m going through Amazon
Publishing, and I’ll pass the information on to you.
Introduction: I wrote the
novel Aksinya: Enchantment and the Daemon. This was my 21st novel
and through this blog, I gave you the entire novel in installments that
included commentary on the writing. In the commentary, in addition to other
general information on writing, I explained, how the novel was constructed, the
metaphors and symbols in it, the writing techniques and tricks I used, and the
way I built the scenes. You can look back through this blog and read the entire
novel beginning with http://www.pilotlion.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-novel-part-3-girl-and-demon.html.
I’m using this novel as
an example of how I produce, market, and eventually (we hope) get a novel
published. I’ll keep you informed along the way.
Today’s Blog: To see the steps in
the publication process, visit my writing websites http://www.sisteroflight.com/.
The four plus two basic
rules I employ when writing:
1. Don’t confuse your readers.
2. Entertain your readers.
3. Ground your readers in the writing.
4. Don’t show (or tell) everything.
4a. Show what can be
seen, heard, felt, smelled, and tasted on the stage of the novel.
5. Immerse yourself in the world of your writing.
6. The initial scene is the most important scene.
These are the steps I use to write a novel
including the five discrete parts of a novel:
1. Design the initial scene
2. Develop a theme statement
(initial setting, protagonist, protagonist’s helper or antagonist, action
statement)
a. Research as required
b. Develop the initial
setting
c. Develop the characters
d. Identify the telic flaw
(internal and external)
3. Write the initial scene
(identify the output: implied setting, implied characters, implied action
movement)
4. Write the next scene(s)
to the climax (rising action)
5. Write the climax scene
6. Write the falling action
scene(s)
7. Write the dénouement
scene
I finished writing my 31st novel,
working title, Cassandra, potential title Cassandra:
Enchantment and the Warriors. The theme statement is: Deirdre and
Sorcha are redirected to French finishing school where they discover difficult
mysteries, people, and events.
I finished writing my 34th novel
(actually my 32nd completed novel), Seoirse,
potential title Seoirse: Enchantment and the Assignment. The
theme statement is: Seoirse is assigned to be Rose’s protector and helper at
Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses and schoolwork; unfortunately,
Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.
Here is the cover
proposal for the third edition of Centurion:
|
Cover Proposal |
The most important scene
in any novel is the initial scene, but eventually, you have to move to the
rising action. I am continuing to write on my 30th novel,
working title Red Sonja. I finished my 29th novel,
working title Detective. I finished writing number 31,
working title Cassandra: Enchantment and the Warrior. I just
finished my 32nd novel and 33rd novel: Rose:
Enchantment and the Flower, and Seoirse: Enchantment and the
Assignment.
How to begin a novel. Number one thought,
we need an entertaining idea. I usually encapsulate such an idea with a
theme statement. Since I’m writing a new novel, we need a new theme
statement. Here is an initial cut.
For novel 30: Red Sonja, a Soviet spy,
infiltrates the X-plane programs at Edwards AFB as a test pilot’s
administrative clerk, learns about freedom, and is redeemed.
For Novel 32: Shiggy Tash finds a lost girl
in the isolated Scottish safe house her organization gives her for her latest
assignment: Rose Craigie has nothing, is alone, and needs someone or something
to rescue and acknowledge her as a human being.
For novel 33, Book girl:
Siobhàn Shaw is Morven McLean’s savior—they are both attending Kilgraston
School in Scotland when Morven loses everything, her wealth, position, and
friends, and Siobhàn Shaw is the only one left to befriend and help her
discover the one thing that might save Morven’s family and existence.
For novel 34: Seoirse is assigned to
be Rose’s protector and helper at Monmouth while Rose deals with five goddesses
and schoolwork; unfortunately, Seoirse has fallen in love with Rose.
For novel 35: Eoghan, a Scottish National
Park Authority Ranger, while handing a supernatural problem in Loch Lomond and
The Trossachs National Park discovers the crypt of Aine and accidentally
releases her into the world; Eoghan wants more from the world and Aine desires
a new life and perhaps love.
Here
is the scene development outline:
1.
Scene input (comes from the previous scene output or is an initial scene)
2.
Write the scene setting (place, time, stuff, and characters)
3.
Imagine the output, creative elements, plot, telic flaw resolution (climax) and
develop the tension and release.
4.
Write the scene using the output and creative elements to build the tension.
5.
Write the release
6.
Write the kicker
Today: Let me tell you a little about writing. Writing
isn’t so much a hobby, a career, or a pastime. Writing is a habit and an
obsession. We who love to write love to write.
If
you love to write, the problem is gaining the skills to write well. We
want to write well enough to have others enjoy our writing. This is
important. No one writes just for themselves the idea is absolutely
irrational and silly. I can prove why.
In
the first place, the purpose of writing is communication—that’s the only
purpose. Writing is the abstract communication of the mind through
symbols. As time goes by, we as writers gain more and better tools and
our readers gain more and better appreciation for those tools and skills—even
if they have no idea what they are.
We
are in the modern era. In this time, the action and dialog style along
with the push of technology forced novels into the form of third person, past
tense, action and dialog style, implying the future. This is the modern
style of the novel. I also showed how the end of literature created the
reflected worldview. We have three possible worldviews for a novel: the
real, the reflected, and the created. I choose to work in the reflected
worldview.
Why
don’t we go back to the basics and just writing a novel? I can tell you
what I do, and show you how I go about putting a novel together. We can
start with developing an idea then move into the details of the writing.
Ideas. We need ideas. Ideas allow us
to figure out the protagonist and the telic flaw. Ideas don’t come fully
armed from the mind of Zeus. We need to cultivate ideas.
1. Read novels.
2. Fill your mind with good
stuff—basically the stuff you want to write about.
3. Figure out what will
build ideas in your mind and what will kill ideas in your mind.
4. Study.
5. Teach.
6. Make the catharsis.
7. Write.
The development of ideas is based on study and
research, but it is also based on creativity. Creativity is the
extrapolation of older ideas to form new ones or to present old ideas in a new
form. It is a reflection of something new created with ties to the
history, science, and logic (the intellect). Creativity requires
consuming, thinking, and producing.
If we have filled our mind with all kinds of
information and ideas, we are ready to become creative. Creativity means
the extrapolation of older ideas to form new ones or to present old ideas in a
new form. Literally, we are seeing the world in a new way, or actually,
we are seeing some part of the world in a new way.
The beginning of creativity is study and
effort. We can use this to extrapolate to creativity. In addition,
we need to look at recording ideas and working with ideas.
With that said, where should we go? Should
I delve into ideas and creativity again, or should we just move into the novel
again? Should I develop a new protagonist, which, we know, will result in
a new novel. I’ve got an idea, but it went stale. Let’s look at the
outline for a novel again:
1. The initial scene
2. The rising action scenes
3. The climax scene
4. The falling action
scene(s)
5. The dénouement scene(s)
I’m
one of those unfortunate authors who had works published by regular publishers,
but whose publishers went out of business.
We aren’t that uncommon. I guess
you get your day in the sun, and if you don’t break in as a bestseller, you
never see the light of day again. Let’s
hope that isn’t true.
I
have another author friend who is in the same boat with me. He has gone the self-publishing route pretty
exclusively. I’ve not gone completely
there, but he encouraged and discouraged me with some truth. Even if I get a new publisher, there is
little chance my previously published works will ever get republished. With that he encouraged me to get my previous
novels back into the market by republishing them. He uses Amazon, so I started looking at
them. I went on contract with Amazon to
republish Centurion, and I can report that about nine months later Centurion is
being published in a revised edition.
The revision simply corrects some very small issues as well as known
spelling and other errors I noted in the novel.
I
can be very specific about the changes.
I study history of this period about 500 BC to 300 AD very intensely,
and came to a conclusion that metal was even more limited in use than I had
determined back when I first wrote the novel.
In addition, I found that furniture was even less common than most
historians realize. This was from the
study of archeology as well as Greek and Latin documents. My real expertise is in Classical Greek. My reading of these documents as well as the
study of first Century Jewish documents, led me to revise the account of John
the Baptist’s immersion. These changes
are all very subtle and small in the document, but they make the novel even
more accurate than it was.
The
other changes were to contractions. I’m
not certain why we didn’t use lots of contractions especially in the dialog,
but we didn’t back in 2008, so to make the reading easier I just applied normal
contractions in the dialog. These are
all the real changes in the document.
I do
have to report Amazon did have some real problems with formatting, but they
stuck with it. I’ll get into that next.
Really,
I stuck to the fixes in the document, and I haven’t ordered or received a published
copy yet. I need to take a close look at
one. The problem with Amazon, and I presume
with most publishers in this market (self-publishing) is that their clientele are
not familiar with or educated on formatting and publishing. Amazon as well as others will just spew out a
document, and I suspect most authors will accept what they provide without much
review or understanding.
In my
case, I provided Amazon with a fully formatted and previously published
manuscript. They went to great pains to
completely corrupt said manuscript. What
resulted was months of back and forth.
After I had reviewed their latest document for about the tenth time
making word for word passes about five times per review, I came to the
conclusion that I would not review any document they sent me that had any
repeat or obvious formatting issues they caused. I threatened and billed them for any formatting
problems I found. I also checked the word
count and left telltales in the document so I could tell if they were using the
most recent document and if they had deleted text (or added text). I found significant problems just by checking
word count and by looking at my telltales.
As I wrote, I think most writers who self-publish think they have
written the great American novel and then publish it. They have no idea what a publisher is
supposed to do. I’m not convinced that
Amazon (or other self-publishing) houses know what to do. For example, my novel, Centurion, was
formatted just like the WSJ with a large letter for the initial paragraph of a
chapter. In addition, the paragraphs
were formatted similar to the WSJ (Wall Street Journal). It took months and many emails to get Amazon
be produce this very common formatting.
There is more—I’ll get to that, next.
Did I mention that this was the
republication of a professionally published novel? My publisher’s editor, who was a fantastic and
detailed editor (meaning she was very careful of the details) put in italics
for specific emphasis in the novel.
These were wiped out in the big formatting push that put the novel at
around 380 pages, more in line with the original publication. I was happy with the page count, but not the
destruction caused in the text. This
began another few months of back and forth.
As I wrote, I got to the point where I just told the Amazon crew the
first problem I found and sent them back the document. I had had too much of spending a week on the
text and outlining the problems then finding even more on the next go. I should mention that I moved from very
careful editing with comments in text, like I had done with my very competent
publisher, to just making the changes in the text myself. At first, I found many things I could not
fix. They were embedded formatting problems
where the text would blowup when changes were made. At first I tried making these fixes myself,
but they were so intensive and so embedded, I just passed them back to the
formators. There is much more to this,
but I should write much of the problem, in my opinion, was that Amazon has no
skin in the game. They figure if the
author puts out a crappy novel, it won’t matter much because most of the novels
and document they see are really crap.
In addition, the virgin response of their self-publishing authors who think
they are getting premium service when they are just getting bottom feeding publishing
is a real problem. I’ve had six novels
professionally published and I can assure you, I know what a good final
document and ready for publishing document looks like. The fact that basic WSJ styling is a mystery
to Amazon should tell you something. The
WSJ comes out every day but Sundays and holidays and is a classic format. This shouldn’t be difficult. I’ll explain more, next.
I want to write another book based on Rose
and Seoirse, and the topic will be the raising of Ceridwen—at least that’s my
plan. Before I get to that, I want to write another novel about
dependency as a theme. We shall see.
More
tomorrow.
For more information, you can visit my author site http://www.ldalford.com/, and my individual novel
websites:
http://www.ancientlight.com/
http://www.aegyptnovel.com/
http://www.centurionnovel.com
http://www.thesecondmission.com/
http://www.theendofhonor.com/
http://www.thefoxshonor.com
http://www.aseasonofhonor.com
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