The Indie Author Month Event

Tomorrow marks the first day of Indie Author Month, an exciting event that's being sponsored by the Aside From Writing book blog. Up to 30 ebooks will be given away during the event, and a new writer will be featured every day all May long. I'm one of them! Check Aside toward the end of the month to see my feature and find out how you can win books from the Deck of Lies series.

Each day, a new indie book will be featured on the blog. The daily posts will also include a small interview with each indie author. Month-long and daily ebook giveaways will also feature heavily in the month-long event. To enjoy all the action and find out what makes indie writers tick, you'll have to check Aside From Writing every day in May!

Writing 101: Colons, Semicolons and Ellipsis

Is it okay to use semicolons? What does it mean when you add an ellipsis to your story? Do colons have a place in prose? These are the questions that writers have been debating for many years, and some have some very strong opinions. When it comes to the punctuation rules of fiction...well, what are they?

The Semicolon

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college." These were the words of Kurt Vonnegut, a well-known master of the literary arts. Writers are often opinionated -- occupational hazard -- but does that mean Mr. Vonnegut is right, or just passionate about his own style of prose? Other writers have waxed poetic about the meaning one of the semicolon; one well-known writer even likened it to God. 

Book 3 Update

A lot of readers have been asking me about Book 3 in the Deck of Lies series, and I can now report that the first draft is nearly done! I put in a lot of hours this past week and through the weekend, and I'm now working on some of the final scenes in the book. So far, so good -- right now, I don't see any reason why I won't be able to release the book this summer as planned. When I'm feeling a bit more confident about it, and after I've talked to my lovely cover designer, I'll tell you the exact date you can expect to find the book on Amazon.

If you've been to my official site, you may already know you can read the blurb for Death (Deck of Lies, #3) there, but I've also included it below just to help you get excited about the ongoing family saga of lies and secrets. The story will continue this summer with all-new surprises, twists, turns...and romance.



All In

I never wanted to get in this deep, but I did go looking for the truth before I was prepared to handle it. But how do you close the lid on Pandora’s box? You can’t unlearn something, or forget a dark secret once it’s been revealed.

I have no choice but to do my part to bury the truth again -- this time, someplace no one will ever be able to find it. But that’s the problem with lies. Once you start pulling threads, everything unravels.

No one is who they seem to be…not even me.

Writing 101: Dialogue

Dialogue is an important element in any story, but many writers struggle with creating believable conversation. What's the secret to great dialogue? If you don't already know, you'd better figure it out before you publish your work. Bad dialogue can ruin any story, and will make readers stop turning pages.

Speech

Speaking is a basic part of the human condition, and it's likely that your story is mostly populated by speaking people. Less commonly, you might be writing about non-speaking characters who are deaf, mute or both, but even in this case they will be using some form of communication. It may not be speech in the traditional sense of the word, but you will still be using some form of dialogue so your characters may interact with each other. There's a certain formula to crafting great dialogue. Learn it, and your story will be much richer and more believable.

Participants

In every conversation, there are characters involved. No matter how many there may be, make sure there's a logical reason for the dialogue that's taking place. Few people stand alone in rooms and speak their thoughts out loud to themselves, yet this is a vehicle that is often used by writers. If you're going to do it, write it so it makes sense. When multiple characters are speaking, note what they're doing and where they're standing. This can help you avoid repeating "he said, she said" one hundred times during an exchange. Sometimes, you can skip the identifier entirely -- but make sure it's always clear to the reader who is speaking.

Know where your participants are and what they're doing, but also find multiple ways to label them. Pronouns are proper names are only so interesting. Throw in a description here and there (for example, the youngest child Clara might be called "the baby of the family," or the wizened grandmother "the matriarch) to keep things interesting.

Inconsistency

Don't always use "says or said." Use other words to denote speech. Characters can do all sorts of things with their speaking parts. Instead of making them say their words, have them respond, cry, scream, shout, whisper, reply, answer, and break out the thesaurus any time you want to find more words. When you're writing dialogue, inconsistency is great. Otherwise, your dialogue will become monotonous and boring. You can even do this when your characters are asking questions -- she queried, he questioned, they asked.

You should also be inconsistent in other ways when you're writing dialogue. Instead of following a specific pattern (for example, "Hello," she said; "Hi," he answered) try putting the speaker first and then the speech (ex: She said, "hello;" "Hi," he answered).


Break It Up

Don't just create a bunch of one-line dialogue to fill up a chapter. Add description and observation in-between the dialogue. Give the readers an insight into a character's thoughts or actions in the middle of a dialogue-rich scene to add interest and include something different and interesting. Remember that, above all, a good book is meant to entertain.

So be entertaining.

The Tower: An Excerpt

The Tower (Deck of Lies, #2) has just been released this month -- and to celebrate, I'm releasing a selective excerpt. The piece of the scene you're about to read takes place in Chapter 5. Some names have been hidden to protect the dead (and the spoilers from Book 1!).

   I was taken aback by his interruption, and the way he’d honed in on my true feelings. “I…I wouldn’t say I hated her, exactly, but I-”
   “Where were you on the morning of March 29?”
   “What?”
   “March 29, Rain. It was barely two weeks ago. Surely you can remember where you were on the day that your fellow student disappeared?” His voice was low and gentle, almost chant-like.
   “I…” And I racked my brain for a moment before the memory clicked into place. Of course. March 29. That was the day I went to school to find that my locker had been completely trashed by Carsyn. I felt my cheeks flame just thinking about it. “I was at school.”
   “And before that?” He pressed.
   “Before that I was at home,” I answered hotly. Maybe it was that horrible memory of seeing Carsyn’s angry red lipstick smeared all over my personal space, but I was suddenly furious at Lieutenant Edwards. Why was he dredging all this up? And why were we sitting in this tiny room?
   “Did anyone see you leave that morning? Did you eat breakfast with your family? Can anyone verify your whereabouts before you walked into Sloane Academy that Monday morning? When did you first see the suspect that day? Were you with him in the canyons, Rain?” His tone had dramatically changed from singsong to rapid-fire, each word hurtled at me like a bullet.
   His hard expression, his unrelenting questions, the plain little room…I suddenly realized I’d seen this all before. On TV. And that’s when I understood that I was being interrogated by the police. I spun around in my chair to stare at the mirror, and cold dread washed over me when I thought that another police officer was probably staring at me from the other side.
   My mind started to spin madly. The note he’d asked me to copy. The receipt he’d pulled out of his pocket. Dread settled in my stomach, and for a few horrifying seconds I was certain I was going to throw up. “Oh my God,” I whispered. “A Fendi purse purchased on March 28. She was killed with a leather strap. Do you think -- do you mean --” I couldn’t even finish the question. I leapt out of the plastic seat, not at all surprised to find that my legs felt wobbly when I forced them straight. “Was she murdered with a purse strap?” I didn’t mean to halfway scream the question, but waves of shock were rolling over me now. I felt like I was caught inside a storm. “Then why have you been holding the suspect? Because his name was on the note? Where did you find that note? Did you find that note on her…on her?” I couldn’t say “body.” It was just too gruesome.
   Edwards was standing now, too. “Where were you on Monday morning, Rain?”
   “I’m a suspect?” It came out half-question, half-accusation. “Am I your new suspect?”







The Tower is now available at Amazon, on B&N and Smashwords. Read Justice (Deck of Lies, #1) to get caught up on all the backstory, or just dive right in to this installment of the ongoing saga of family deceit and secrets!

Writing 101: Justify My Interest

 You spent all that time crafting an exciting book, filled with humor or romance or mystery (or whatever you write about). You wrote a blurb that garnered my interest, designed a cover that got me all fired up. So I bought your book. And now, I wish I hadn't...because you didn't even justify it properly. It's one of the simplest steps, and one of the most overlooked. Justify my interest in your work, and show all your readers that you actually give a crap about it. Take a few extra seconds to set your justification. Otherwise, you might look like an amateur.

 Justification

 Go to any shelf, pull out any book and open it to any page. You'll always see the same thing: neat, even edges on either side. There will be a few indents where paragraphs begin and end, but the overall look is still clean and straight.

You can create the same look with an ebook, and you should. Electronic books should absolutely look like print books, because everyone is familiar with how print books look and that's what readers expect to see.  Otherwise, one side of the ebook will have a ragged, unattractive edge. It looks lazy, it looks incorrect and it immediately aggravates readers.

 There are only four different ways to justify documents, and when you open up a brand-new blank document and start tying, your justification is automatically set. In most cases, it's automatically set to the wrong option.

• Left. The default justification for most word processing software, left justification creates a clean, even edge down the left side of the page. The right side ends up looking jagged and uneven, because spacing between each letter and word will be perfectly even between each line. Words will end at different points all down the right edge as a result. 

• Right. The opposite of left-side justification, right justification creates a neat, even edge down the right side of the page. This justification rarely appears in any work, and should only be used on selected text and images for stylistic purposes; you will not find any books where right justification is used throughout. 

• Center. When the text is set to center justification, it will be symmetrically arranged down the midline of the document. Center justification is often used for chapter headings and titles. It may be used in poetry, but standard prose should never appear in center justification. 

• Full. The only acceptable format for books, full justification creates neat, even edges on both sides of the page. 

 Here's the thing: Kindle will automatically change your justification. A lot of indie writers know that, so a lot of indie writers don't mess with the justification in their documents. But when you don't set the justification properly, you could get errors in your book's HTML code. The errors could create formatting errors that screw with the automatic justification...so that means you've got to manually set it anyway. Kindle is supposed to adjust the justification automatically, but the system isn't perfect -- and I know it to be true because I've read plenty of books with incorrect justification. So set it on your own before you ever publish your book, and avoid a silly error that could alienate your readers and make you look lazy.

Writing 101: Page Numbers, Headers and Footers

The beautifully bound books you buy from well-respected publishers usually have all the same characteristics...and that commonly includes helpful page numbers and pretty page headers that announce the title of the book and/or the author of the work. So why can't you include these same professional touches in your ebook?

Because of the formatting, that's why. If you want to use all that fancy stuff in your self-published books, do yourself a favor and give up the ghost right now. No matter what you do, they're never going to appear on the epage correctly. Yes, never.

Never, Ever Ever?

Never. There's no standard page size for eReaders, and there's no standard size for ebooks. What's that mean? Basically, that means your ebook is going to look different on different devices. Pull it up on a Kindle, and it will look one way. Open that exact same book up on your iPad, however, and there will be more text on each page. So if you try to carefully place page numbers at the bottom of each page, and add a header with your name and the book's title along the top, it's never going to appear correctly on all those different devices.

You can't even format your headers, footers and page numbers for a specific eReader and then only sell it on that eReader. You can sell your ebook exclusively on Amazon if you like, and make it available only to Kindle users -- but even so, there are different Kindles out there and more still to come. And your pages are going to look different on those devices. Even if they don't, your readers always have the option of changing the font size of your text. Someone who has trouble reading fine print might jack the size up, and that means less text will be appearing on each page...and that means your page numbers and headers are going to be off.

No matter what you do.

So save yourself the trouble, and only incorporate page numbers, headers and/or footers on books that are going to be physically printed on paper. Even when you're doing this, through CreateSpace or a similar self-publishing program, it's extremely tricky to get your embellishments placed correctly. Formatting your ebook is hard enough as it is. Do yourself a favor, and don't try to go above and beyond -- just focus on making the story perfect, and that will be enough to keep your readers happy.

Writing 101: Brand Names

We all snigger during the movie or TV show when someone's drinking a black-label can of a beverage called "Soda," because it's so obviously generic. But we also know why the movies and TV shows do it: they can't afford to pay a billion-dollar company for the rights to the brand name, or perhaps they don't want to endorse a brand name, or the company said they couldn't use the brand name, or whatever. Basically, they don't want to break the law by using a brand name they don't own. So what about when you use a brand name in your book?

Brand Names

We all use brand names, and everybody owns something with at least one designer label (yes, Levi counts as a designer label). I wash my dishes in Dawn, drink Coca-Cola products and swear by the Swiffer. But is it okay if my characters do, too? Telling your girlfriend to run right out and buy Colgate toothpaste in one thing; self-publishing it in print (or eprint) is quite another. So are your characters texting on Androids, or smartphones? Are they crying into a handful of tissues, or Kleenex?

Using Brand Names in Your Book

There's no simple answers -- there never are. Basically, it boils down to this: it's all in the usage. Yes, you can use brand names and no, you don't have to pay for them...unless you screw up.

• Brands as Nouns

Writing brand names into any book is very tricky. You can use them, but only when it's specific to that brand. For example, it's not okay to use the word in place of everyday nouns. You can't replace the word "toilet paper" with a specific brand like Charmin. You characters shouldn't be "typing away on the Sony Vaio" instead of on the laptop. In other words, you can't use brand names generically. However, if you add the specific modifier ("typing away on the Sony Vaio laptop") the usage is a little more specific.

You can reference that your character is using their iPhone to make a call or send a text, or that she reached for a can of her favorite soda, Diet Coke. You cannot use the word "Coke" when you mean any can of cola or soda pop. Brand names have to be used specifically, not generically. But even when you're careful about specifics, you're not out of the woods.

• Negativity

It's fine, and makes a story much more believable, to use brand names as a background in the story. It adds a certain element of realism when your characters enjoy a fine bottle of Dom Perignon rather than any old bottle of fancy champagne. But if you go on to say that the Dom Perignon tasted like utter swill, you're in trouble. Companies do not like having their brand names disparaged, and if you do then you leave the door wide open for a lawsuit. It's called defamation, and it is illegal. In other words, it's fine to mention brand names. It's not okay to make any judgments about them.

• Designer Labels

Can you mention designer labels? Absolutely! Let your characters strut their stuff in fancy duds from Calvin Klein, or have them sweating it out in a pair of well-worn Wranglers. Again, don't use the brand names generically and don't use them disparagingly in any way, and you're perfectly safe.