The Muse - Bloopers

I have a blog of a more personal nature today over at www.gracebridges.blogspot.com - come on over and see :) In the meantime, here's the single most successful video from the campaign for The Muse:

The CFRB tours The Muse by Fred Warren

I am the publisher of this book, and therefore in an interesting position as regards writing a review. I can't really, not in the usual sense of the word. I'm not unbiased. But I was once, way-back-when I first got to read it. It was supposedly just for a critique swap, and Fred had one of my novels in return.

But for some months already the idea had been simmering away to start a publishing company, and this was the story that forced the decision. Why? Because it would be nothing other than tragedy if this amazing book never saw publication due to the author being a first-timer on the novel scene. "First novels never get published," says common wisdom, "put it in a drawer and write a better one." Never mind all the difficulties of getting anywhere with the Christian Fantasy genre.

I don't think I even had a name for my gig when I first got hold of The Muse. Soon after, Splashdown Books was born and I began to crawl up the learning curve. The rest, as they say, is history.

Check out these member blogs this week for more info.

CFRB Blog Tour for The Muse

Hey Fred! They're touring your book! Yeah, I know you know :)

In any case, look for lots of review action at these sites this week. Let's make it even more fun - the best commenter from all the CFRB posts for The Muse will win a free copy, how's that?

I'll have more to say over at my personal blog, and do a roundup of all the reviews here at the end of the week.


Check out these member blogs this week for more info.

The Muse is Online at Amazon and Barnes & Noble!

For your shopping convenience, The Muse is now available for purchase through both Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble. The fastest way to find the listing online is to do an “advanced search” by ISBN number 9780986451713.

Or, you can click on the handy links I’ve provided here:

Order The Muse from Amazon.com

Order The Muse from Barnes & Noble

Right now, Amazon is listing the book for $9.95, plus free shipping if your order totals $25 or more. Barnes & Noble is selling it for $8.95 plus shipping.

As always, you can find more information about the book and order directly from the Splashdown Books main webpage.

The Muse is Here!

Finally, after about a year of work from conception to publication, the official release date for my novel, The Muse, has arrived!

It will be listed on Amazon.com soon, but in the meantime, there are three ways to get a copy:

1. Order from the Splashdown Books website.

2. Find a local bookstore that has access to the Ingram ipage database (most do), and search for ISBN 978-0-9864517-1-3. They’ll be able to order you a copy.

3. I think this is pretty cool–If you happen to have an Espresso book machine in your neighborhood, you can watch as it manufactures your book in a few minutes. You get the same quality as any other commerical paperback, and you’re on the cutting edge of publishing technology!

So, check it out! Order a copy, and if you enjoy it, tell your friends. We’ll be posting news about the book, interviews, signings, etc, so watch this space for more!

Pre-orders open for The Muse

Well, here we are. Today I've set up the pre-order facility over at the Splashdown Books homepage, (preview at left) along with a dedicated page for each new release. The addition of shopping cart buttons drives in the fact that this is for real - and very soon, there's going to be real books to show for it. To reward those who buy before release date, we're going to offer a special electronic bonus as incentive. Fred's working on that right now.

In fact, Fred has been nothing but patient as I've gotten more and more frantic this week. Maybe he can't tell from halfway around the world. You see, I'm headed away on another two-month trek (blame that travelbug) and there's been a lot of stuff we needed to get done before that. I'm glad to say it's pretty much all done and in the can. What remains can be done from underway, or rather, en route in the back country of France.

It's been a busy week, all right - but I've loved every minute of it. Seriously, there's nothing I like better than to publish books and sink my teeth into marketing projects. Says she, the career-hopper. Heh.

Here's a video blog I just recorded today, including a bunch of stuff on Splashdown and upcoming projects. Talk to you later!

The Muse video trailer

Hey! This is the day I've been waiting for...the unveiling of the trailer movie for The Muse, by Fred Warren.



We are also taking pre-press reviewers right now, so get in touch with me if you're keen to read and help us promote it!

Final Draft

Well, so much for weekly posting. If I'd kept a running diary of my last couple of months of activity on The Muse, it would have looked something like this:

Week 1: Editing.
Week 2: Editing.
Week 3: Family Crisis.
Week 4: Work Crisis.
...and repeat. Not terribly interesting.

That's not to say the time hasn't been productive. I fixed a lot of annoying little problems, and with the help of my reviewers, identified areas of ambiguity in the story line, inconsistencies in some of the characters, and a couple of spots that didn't do much more than slow the story's pace and needed to be cut down and tightened up.

My biggest fear at this point was running into something that was so screwed up that I would have to do a major rewrite. Fortunately, that didn't happen. There was some clunky dialogue, and a few scenes that weren't focused well enough, and a little-girl character who needed to do a better job of acting her age, but nothing that required extensive meddling with the structure of the story. So, after all the dust has settled, I've got something close to a final draft of the manuscript, though I know we'll be tweaking it all the way to publication.

Now it's back over to Grace, and I'm sure she'll identify some opportunities to tighten up and polish the story even more. In her early feedback, she had some recommendations about strengthening the spiritual element within the story and handling the climactic scene near the end, and I hope I've answered the mail on both those issues.

Inspiration

When one of my stories is published, one of the first questions I get, often from people who know me well, is, "What inspired you to write that?" My first response is to wonder if they really mean, "What possessed you to write that?" but it's a good question, and I don't always have a good answer.

The Muse is all about inspiration--what it means, where it comes from, how it gets lost and found again, and whether it's always a positive thing. The story plays with a lot of my ponderings about inspiration over the past few years.

It started out very simply. I'd been writing a bunch of short stories and wanted to write something longer and more complex. The challenge of doing that was inspiration enough, at the beginning. I had the seed of a story--writers are always talking about "finding their muse," or "listening to their muse." What if muses were more than a metaphor for inspiration, and a struggling writer actually found a muse, but it wasn't benevolent?

That question opened the door for a horde of other questions--who was this writer, why was he struggling, what sort of friends and family did he have, who or what is this evil muse, why is it evil, and what does it want? I had to come up with answers, preferably creative answers, for all these questions and dozens more. Every answer led to more questions. I discovered that the act of asking and answering questions was very inspiring and motivating. It took me to a lot of unexpected places.

As I began filling in details, I found myself drawing from life experiences. The story is in no way autobiographical, but bits and pieces of people, places, and situations from my life from childhood through the present day found their way into the story and provided inspiration, in a broad sense, for characters and settings and conversations.

There was also an aspect of inspiration that was less about ideas and more about simple raw energy--the drive to create. Some of it came from within, but there were many times my batteries were spent and needed recharging. Encouragement and support from friends and family were very important. Sometimes I just needed a change of pace or scenery. Sometimes I had to set the writing aside and do something completely unrelated to writing.

The common element in this constant search for inspiration is that I never had to go far to find it. It was always nearby, whether just around the corner or right in front of my face, and it was often both surprising and embarrassing to find a needed insight in a familiar place that I'd failed to recognize because its familiarity made it seem commonplace and unimportant.

There are muses all around us, if we take the time to look, and listen, and feel, and remember.

Moving Right Along

It's been a fun week! Mike came back to us super-quick with his brand-new original track for Fred's video trailer. I've had it playing on repeat a good deal over the last few days and I'm sure this is the perfect soundtrack for what we want to do. In case you haven't heard it yet, go to http://virb.com/michaellrogers and look for "The Muse". My new flatmate Steph (http://www.myspace.com/stephdickinson) has agreed to play the part of Jilly, so all we need now is for Fred to find a Davos lookalike. Oh yes, and I have to procure a princessy cone-hat and sparkly-star wand. Shouldn't be too hard.

After a lot of to and fro I've finally gotten an account open at Lightning Source. This means that I can upload book content as soon as I have it ready, and be publishing it very soon after. How exciting! The first one out is going to be Legendary Space Pilgrims, and many thanks to JesusPuppy for his help with the cover. I'll be redoing the book trailer for that, but you can head over to http://www.shoutlife.com/aloftstudios-clank and have a listen to "Dawnlight" - this is the soundtrack for the Space Pilgrims.

In New Zealand the weekend is almost upon us. I'm taking some time out with my parents in a place far from here (well, not that far, I can see it from my window - but it will take an hour on a car ferry to get there) and I'm taking my writing kit to get moving on Godspeed at last - the sequel to Faith Awakened, which many of you have asked me about. It's coming! I last worked on it in a motel in upstate New York, and that was in early October. A long time ago. I'm looking forward to getting it moving again. I'm really excited about it because it's a storyworld I'm so familiar with I could tell it in my sleep - yet now it unfolds new opportunities and new characters as Naomi ventures from Ireland to America and runs for her life. *rubs hands together* This is going to be good!

Editing is Job One

Once Grace and I got the contract hashed out (which required a little research from both of us, but happily, no involvement of dueling lawyers/barristers), I set to work polishing my manuscript of The Muse in detail. I began by making several complete passes through the story myself, looking for any holes or logical disconnects in the plot, inconsistencies in the characters, and mechanical errors--typos, grammar, punctuation, etc.

I also farmed out the manuscript to several outside readers for input. I was fortunate to gather a nice cross-section of folks--young, old, male, female, writers, non-writers, and both fans and non-fans of the genre. Some of the critiques are still in progress, but the feedback they've provided so far has been very helpful. You might think that after going through this story a couple dozen times, I'd be intimately familiar with every letter and be able to recite the entire thing in my sleep, but this process has shown me how easy it is to develop blind spots and how important a fresh set of eyes can be to turning out a quality product.

At the same time, Grace and I discussed concepts for the cover art and a promotional video clip. I hadn't anticipated how tricky the choice of font and color can be. There are so many subconscious flags associated with the shape, size, and color of letters that it's very easy to inadvertently communicate a misleading message about the story. Some fonts are indelibly linked to famous works of literature or particular kinds of stories. For example, there's a font called "Agatha" that was used for a long time on the cover of all the Agatha Christie mysteries. The font is so distinctive, it's almost a trademark for that author.

There are also land mines buried in the video development process. How do you pique a reader's curiosity in under two minutes and summarize the book's theme without giving too much away? Are there actors available to stand in for the book's characters, and do they look and sound right? Will there be background music, and if so, what sort? How can you stage a professional-looking video despite a tight budget?

It's challenging, but it's also a lot of fun. Grace has been very easy to work with, and her creativity, writing experience, and skills in graphic design have kept things moving along briskly.

I plan to post updates about once a week, but I'm hoping this blog will be very interactive, so if you have any questions for Grace or me, fire away, and we'll do our best to answer them.

Total Freedom

This work-at-home deal is certainly liberating after all those years in an office. However, I'm finding that I have to give some structure to my days, even though I'm not a structured person at all. Mostly.

Yesterday and today it's worked out quite well as follows:

9am deal with email, check Shoutlife and other networks.
10.30am go bush (there's a lovely forest park just across the road)
11.30am clean pool and swim
12pm lunch
1pm start work: admin, crit, write, design, video, and possibly more networking.

This takes advantage of the afternoon as my best working time, while ensuring I get my exercise in. Days when I go out for errands will be different. Also, right now I'm not pumping out wordcount on any of my own WIPs at present, so when I take that up again I'll be sitting down to that in the mornings as I like to get 3000 words by lunchtime. Other stuff in the afternoon as necessary, and another 2000 in the evening if I'm free.

Anyway, things are churning along at a fine old pace. I've figured out the Lightning Source applications and will be sending off the final forms as soon as I hear back about a returns address for UK bookstores. My thanks to Cynthia of the Writers' Café Press for giving her address to receive my US returns. Returnable books are an advantage for all dealings with brick 'n' mortar stores, so this is something I really want to have. Whether books are ever returned or not, I'm still glad to have returnable books.

After much to-ing and fro-ing (because I'm picky!) I have approved the cover design for Legendary Space Pilgrims, with an awesome rocket drawn by Clank of aloftstudios.co.uk. It's a wonder to see my characters peering out of the screen at me, just how I imagined they'd look!

Fred's contract arrived in the mail from America, and his book cover for "The Muse" is taking shape - after much fruitless searching for a suitable cover model, I found one right under my nose, as it were. We'll be making video trailers with the same actor and I for one can't wait to see the bloopers reel...More on that later, I'm sure!