The Wizard's Rede

I learned something very interesting over the last few days. People seem to love polls. Even if they don't take them, or if they've already taken them, they come back to check on them. Once I put my poll up on my website, my traffic spiked like the punch bowl at prom. And ya know, I like them, too. Not just for the increase in traffic, either. I like seeing what people think.

The results from my last poll showed a close call between superheroes and post-apocalypse fiction. One of my readers suggested I mash the two of them together. I like the idea, so my current side project is a super-hero post-apocalypse story written in installments. Like the old serialized stories in magazines & newspapers.

Just because it was fun, I'm also posting a couple of new polls, following the theme of superheroes and the end of the world. So, hop on over, vote and share it. Please. Thank you.

http://www.chancefortunato.com/writing.html

This was how I grew up in the 70's. We played outside, we had Big Wheels, bicycles and the most sophisticated piece of electronics in our house was the original Atari game. Three channels on TV, and your favorite shows ran all season long. If you wanted to know about your favorite stars, you bought one of the magazines from the supermarket.

No internet, no cell phones, no computers.

Funny how I feel like people were a lot closer back then without all those things. Seeing this image on Facebook today reminded me of something I saw recently while I was walking around in my neighborhood.

A group of kids were playing in the yard of a house I was passing by, and, as will occasionally happen, one of them fell down on the sidewalk. Skinned knee ensues. Now first of all, when I was a kid, you skinned your knee, and it hurt like hell but you kept it to a little whining, maybe shed some tears. Because yeah, pain sucks. Then you sucked it up and ran crying to Mom. And what I saw might not be the way it always happens. But when this kid went down, the best word to describe what happened is "histrionics", right here on the sidewalk. Crying and screaming of epic porportions. And, of course, Mom arrives on the scene alerted by her very normal human hearing because small animals nearby were fleeing the scene in fear at the screaming going on. The blubbering tones down to something akin to reasonable, and Mom sends the oldest in the house for the First Aid Kit, which she then proceeds to use like a field medic. Wetwipe to clean the wound, then Triple Antibiotic Ointment followed by a bandaid. Then, when everything is tended to, Mom closes up the First Aid Kit and heads back inside. I could have timed her wth a stopwatch and been surprised if she broke the three minute mark.

And as she is heading in to the house, I stopped for a moment and wondered "Where was the kiss to make it all better?"

As a kid in the 70's, a scrape or a cut meant quality Mom time. Not triage, treatment and discharged before the blood was dry. You went inside, and Mom took you to the bathroom, where you kept all the stuff. Mom asked you what happened while she used a washcloth and soap to clean things up, then sprayed a little Bactine on it while she told you how brave you were being (because Bactine stung a little), then the Band-Aid, which was like a badge of honor, your very own kid sized purple heart. Then, Mom kissed it to make it all better, told you to be careful, and off you went.

Now, it's all business, it seems. We've become so used to "I <3 U!" that we've almost forgotten how to show that with a touch or a smile. Sexting seems to have replaced the romance of notes and love letters, and constant contact seems to have made us forget how much we miss family and friends when they're away, because in truth, they never are all that far away to us.

I'm not one to say "Throw your cell phone away!" My girlfriend says I pretty much live on the computer. But maybe, we should remember some of the things that made our lives cool back then, and revisit them...and revive them. The 70s were far from perfect, but we shouldn't forget what made them cool.

Page of Swords is off to the editor, and then, it will be time for the usual hacking and slashing that accompanies the book creation process. Wow, how much fun is that gonna be?

During the editing process, the story is, of course, pored over several times. Studied. Dissected. Reassembled. Brought to life through an esoteric and painful process that involves strange, malodorous chemicals and lightning. And more than a little maniacal cackling. But during that process, it's still the same story. And as a writer, that is just hard to do without something new on my plate.

With that in mind, I'm considering work on a side project, something serialized for my own enjoyment and the consumption of readers. Because I like my sanity, and even though change is good, I'm something of a traditionalist where my fragile mental health is concerned. The options I have in front of me are either a superhero story, a zombie story, or a dystopian post-apocalyptic story. I've put a poll on my writing page. Stop on by, vote and add your comments. I'd love to hear what you think.

http://www.chancefortunato.com/writing.html

Yesterday, I put over 5,000 words to page, in spite of the best efforts of the new Angry Birds app on FB to distract me from finishing Page of Swords. Chance is seconds away from the climactic scene, but I had to stop so I could pick it up and write straight through the whole thing uninterrupted. Today is going to be a very LOOOOOOONG day at work. Total word count is just over 85,000. Some is always lost during edits, but I'm hoping to get this one in a little under 100k by the time all is said and done. It's looking like I'll have the first draft of Page of Swords finished before the end of March!

If you haven't bought the first book in the Demon's Apprentice series, go to my website to read the first chapter, and buy it on Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Smashwords.

So, in the past I’ve commented on the concept of the True Believer, the kind of fan every writer needs. You know, the reader who spends as much time learning about the world you created as you did creating it? The reader who asks questions that you never thought of, and notices details that you forgot. The one who asks you questions that make you think hard before you answer them. This is the kind of reader who tells other people about your book. The kind of reader who starts fan forums and helps take your work from a small following to a huge one.

Up until now, I’ve only seen this level of dedication from people I know. But at VisionCon, I finally met my first True Believers. It was a great experience.

First of all, I was blown away by the enthusiasm I saw. And I was not prepared for how this one pair of smiles could make my whole con complete. As a writer, I love when people enjoy the stories I write, but I had completely missed what makes a True Believer. Part of it is the enthusiasm. But a big part of it is that they love the characters. Not just Chance, but his mom and sister, too. They laugh when I compare Lucas to a chihuahua, because they know why it’s so accurate. They loved that the bad guy got what they thought he deserved. Their blood pressure went up when one of the characters was being abused, and they were so happy Chance did what they wanted to do.

The other thing is, I had no idea how important it would become to me that I not let these folks down. I mean, yeah, I’m a local author. I don’t have that big of a following yet. Steven King, I am not.  Even if I never have more than a few fans, I have to say, meeting these two made writing the book worthwhile. (I do want more fans, though, feel free to recruit, dear readers).

I came away with two basic conclusions. First of all, this is the kind of reader who drives me to write the best story I can, because if I screw something up, they are GOING to catch it. Secondly, I will always try to remember that it is the readers who make this author gig work. When I make it big I will not do the kind of skit William Shatner did on Saturday Night live in 1986, or have that attitude even. What William Shatner failed to realize was that he was relevant (and working) again because of the fan dedication he was making fun of. Star Trek made it to the big screen because of the fan dedication that spanned almost a decade with little more than paperback books, syndicated reruns and fan magazines. And conventions.

I love my readers, and I won’t forget that they’re the reason I am writing another book. I promise.

Some thoughts on VisionCon.

For about ten hours during VisionCon here in Springfield Missouri, I was given a spot at a guest table. I was privileged to have shared it with several other talented people. The con staff were very nice about scheduling, some even apologizing that the table space was limited so that we had to rotate through it (the rest were very busy working their butts off trying to make the con happen). Here was what I noticed on Friday. The artists and the writers like myself set out some great displays of their previously published work ( my layout wasn’t quite as polished as some of theirs). It was obvious that lots of prep work went into the “before” part of the con.

However, once the display was up, it seemed like they had nothing to do. For the first half hour, we just sat there. The artists drew, and the writers chatted among ourselves, but that was about it. The local guest table was in a prime spot, too! I mean, you walked in the door, and there we were, less than twenty feet away from where you signed in. What’s more, we were in the area where you could walk around without buying a con pass! EVERYONE should have seen us, and yet, we seemed to be practically invisible. In the first half hour, I counted no less than one hundred people going back and forth in front of us. Of those hundred, maybe four actually stopped and gave us more than a passing glance. The math oriented part of my brain lumbered up from where it had been hibernating since Algebra 2 in my ancient days of college, and told me that only four percent of the people passing were actually SEEING my display. Otherwise, I was stuck in some Neil Gaiman-esque limbo. There was no way I was letting my cool table poster go to waste. I had BOOKS to sell!

So, I started talking to people as they passed by. At first it was generic.

“Welcome to Vision Con!” Heads nodded, eyes glanced my way, then ignored me like I was asking for money…which, oh yeah, I was, after a fashion.

Then I got a little more specific. This was a gaming and sci-fi convention. It’s not like there weren’t literally hundreds of things opportunities to say something unique. It was when I engaged one young lady in a red and black steampunk themed costume that I hit upon my epiphany.

When I complimented her on her costume, I also got the reference right. First of all, you should have seen her face light up as she did this very cute little happy dance. It was like she’d won a prize on a game show. Evidently, I was the first person who had said anything. She chatted with me for a couple of minutes and soon, other people stopped to see what we were talking about. Suddenly, my table wasn’t invisible any more. I sold a few books Friday, some to friends, a couple to first time readers.

By Saturday, I was ready to hit the ground running. I was sitting next to another local author who wrote in the same basic genre I do, and whom I had some good chemistry with. And as I engaged people, a curious thing happened. We BOTH started selling books. If they bought her book, they bought mine. If they bought my book, their mom bought hers (I write YA, she writes for an older audience). The first time I engaged a total stranger in conversation, and ended up selling copies of both our books, my fellow author looked at me like I’d just done something amazing. In less than two hours, I had sold ALL of my books. Which led me to two conclusions: one, this worked, and two, next time, bring more books.

More importantly, I had learned that no matter what you do for the “before” part of con, if you don’t have anything for the “during” part of con, you’re pretty much invisible. Conventions are all about visibility. The only books that people buy are the ones that they can SEE. And it takes more than a cool display to become visible to the casual con goer. Too often, we authors think “Write it and they will buy…” It doesn’t work that way.

Being an author is about visibility. This is why an author has to create their own “brand”. We have to get ourselves out there so people can see us, see who we are, and learn about our books and our characters. Unless we are already on the New York Times best seller list, we have to do more than have a pretty sign up. This is the difference between successful self-published authors like HP Mallory and Amanda Hocking, and authors who still have to work their day job. They got their stuff out there where people could see it.

Next blog: The kind of fans every author needs to have.

Imagine if one day, New York City was suddenly devoid of human life. Canyons of steel, concrete and glass, eerily silent, with only the wind moving along the streets of the city that never sleeps. Eight million people, gone. Nobody knows where they are, or what happened to them. Was it aliens? Was it some sort of conspiracy? Zombies? Imagine the response. The military and every agency with an acronym would be converging on the place to find out what had happened. CNN would have to by another channel just to cover it. We wouldn’t see the president in public for weeks. Twitter would go fail whale in about 30 seconds.

A month later, Los Angeles is equally empty, just as mysteriously. Almost four million people, gone without a trace. Panic would be rampant in California, and the government would impose martial law in a heartbeat. The president wouldn’t see the light of day for months, not until they got to the bottom of the whole thing. People would be scared to leave their houses. I know I would be. The US would have no other topic of conversation. Twitter…still fail whaled.

The next month Chicago goes missing. Over two and a half million people, gone over night. By now, even the military would think twice about going out alone. Panic would be pretty close to a normal state of being. Bets would be made on which city was next, and when, because humanity is like that. And when Houston, Philadelphia and Phoenix turned up empty over the next three months, we stop being surprised, because now it’s a pattern, something we can predict. We’re still scared, but we’re accustomed to it by now.  Everyone knows someone who went missing from one of those cities. And as San Diego, San Antonio, Dallas, San Jose, Jacksonville, Indianapolis, San Francisco and finally Austin join the list, the number of people with direct connections to “The Missing” as the media might call them, grows. Websites, candlelight vigils, blood drives, donations and support groups would all spring up around The Missing as their number broke the 27 million mark.

On the surface, it sounds like the plot of a thriller or a science fiction story. It begs for a mysterious force that is abducting huge numbers of human beings for some deep, sinister purpose. Anyone who has read some of my blogs will find that number familiar, though. Twenty seven million people. That is the number of people who are currently being trafficked around the world today. Enough people to empty the fourteen largest cities in the US. And that’s just an estimate. No one really knows because it’s a very secretive business. No aliens, no secretive society behind it. Just one factor: human greed.

I really wish it was just a story. So do millions of people who disappear from their lives every day. Women who wake up to a drug induced stupor knowing that thy are going to be forced to have sex with multiple strangers that day, or men who will wake up facing day of hard labor with no pay and abuse at the hands of their “employers”. But this…this is reality. Their reality.

There are people who are trying to make a difference. Recently, over forty thousand college students raised $2.6 million at the Passion 2012 conference. President Obama declared January as National Slavery and Human Trafficking Prevention Month. For years, The A21 Campaign has fought to help trafficked women from around the world not only find freedom from their captors, but from the way of life imposed on them, while seeking to bring justice to those who deal in human misery. CNN’s Freedom Project regularly reports on efforts to curb trafficking, and the impact it has on people all over the world. We can all help, even if that help is miniscule in scope. A mountain can be reduced to a desert by a man with a spoon in a thousand years. A thousand men and women can do the job a lot faster.

I urge anyone who reads this, DO something. Contribute. Spread the word. Raise awareness. Be aware of the signs of human trafficking. Share this link, or, even better share the link to The A21 Campaign.

For my part, I blog about it, and I contribute. It isn’t much, but it’s something. My readers make a difference, because part of their purchase price is contributed to The A21 Campaign. Together, we can level that mountain.

So, Page of Swords is at just under 60,000 words, which is about 20-40K from the max a good contemporary novel should be. Coming up on the major climax of this one, but I'm also realizing that the big fight is still a ways from the actual end of this story. Not so worried about this one coming in short now. Looking back at it, I probably never should have been, but a little neurosis is what makes a writer keep improving.

This story has been an exercise in attention to detail for me, and a study on Chance and Shade's relationship. Things start to heat up between them in this book, though their course is by no means a smooth one. These two characters just keep on surprising me, and I think the reader will find surprises from some of the other recurring characters as well. We also meet the High Council of the Wizard's Conclave, which I really enjoyed writing. I went into that scene with a specific idea in mind but they refused to stay in the mold I had cast them in, and came out as a much more varied group than I originally saw.

Each book has a theme to it, and for Page of Swords, it's been about what it means to be someone's hero. About doing the right thing, even if no one else agrees with you at first. Sometimes, we're faced with a choice between what everyone else wants us to do, and what we know is the right thing to do. Chance faces this all through Page of Swords, and sometimes, doing the right thing puts him in even more danger than if he did the simple thing, or what everyone else wants him to do. But sometimes, if you do the right thing, you save the world, or something like it.

I hope that you'll be able to read it soon. I just need to get back to writing it so you can.

First off, Governor Sam Brownback, you need to hear this. You're a big boy. Stop your whining. And Karl Krawitz, you're an educator. Shame on you, You should know better than to abuse your position.

I say this because I read in the news this morning about Emma Sullivan, a student at Shawnee Mission High School who exercised her First Amendment right to speak her mind about Kansas Governor Sam Brownback in a public forum. She evidently doesn't like him.

Last I checked, not liking a politician's views and saying something about it out loud was not illegal or against any school policy (though that may be changing). but evidently, Governor Brownback pays his staff to sift through social media to see what Kansans say about him. Which, in and of itself, is an innovative way for him to listen to his constituents. Something I think any elected official needs to do. But it's what his office DID with the information gleaned from that practice and the response from Shawnee Mission High School principal Karl Krawitz that I find odious.

Rather than address the issue himself, or, better yet, laugh it off like a mature person, his staff decided that they needed to report this to Shawnee Mission's principal. So, I have to wonder, how much time (and time being money, how many taxpayer dollars) did they just spend looking for one girl's name and the high school she went to? All so that they could tattle to the principal that 18 year old Emma Sullivan said that she said mean things to the Governor.

And what does the principal do? First, he makes like he's having to do "damage control". Oh, poor me! You made fun of the governor and now he's mad! Unless I kiss his ass and make YOU kiss his ass by writing an apology letter, bad things might happen! Look, Karl, if your governor can't take a joke, you need to either grow a pair (reading the First Amendment might also help with that) or get another job, because your job is to be the advocate for those kids first, not bend over backwards to appease a thin-skinned politician.

Second, he SUGGESTED that Emma remove the "offending tweet" and (get this) if she DIDN'T write the apology letter, he was going to add a disciplinary action to her transcripts which would affect her chances to attend the college of her choice.

Here's the irony that the supposed adults here didn't get when they were trying to cow Emma.

One: There is a controversy, and it IS making both your high school and the governor's office look like a bunch of authoritarian bullies, but it wasn't caused by the tweet that would have been read by all of 60 people. The controversy and shame that is being heaped upon your school and your state is being caused by the so-called adults here. As Gov. Brownback's office and Mr Krawitz were lecturing Emma on how she was representing her school on that trip, they were in the process of doing a worse job of embarrassing the state and the school. Thanks to these people, Kansas is all over the national news. Way to act like grownups there.

Two: As pointed out by one of the "adults" here, social media has a lot of impact. What they did will be on the internet forever. And because of what they did, Emma Sullivan is now a national figure, and a champion of First Amendment rights. Because of how they reacted, searching for "Brownback" on Twitter now brings up an ever growing list of disparaging tweets regarding the Kansas governor. Had they left this alone, Emma SUllivan's remark would have been read by about 60 people, and maybe a few would have laughed at it and then gone on to read with more interest about her Twilight movie marathon, and completely forgotten about it.

But, because the governor's office thinks that showing him disrespect is such a big issue, and because a high school principal had to threaten Emma SUllivan with disciplinary action over a tweet, both men have lost a lot more respect (and rightfully so) than they did from a single posted comment from a teenager on a high school trip.

What takes the cake for me is Principal Krawitz statement that this is a private issue, not a public one. To you sir, I say this.

No, it isn't. This stopped being private the SECOND you stood up for tyranny and censorship by holding a girl's transcript hostage to force her to write an apology letter to an elected official because she disagreed with him publicly. You are a poor example for any kid to follow. This needs to be public, so that the reprehensible way you represent your school can be seen.

So, The Write Agenda fired back recently, just not through their own website. No, this time they tried continuing their case on a rip-off site. If they are who many people believe they are, they should be familiar with the place, having had their names mentioned there so many times. However, this tactic stinks of stupid to me, since they are taking a person who charges NOTHING for the service she provides to task on a site about rip-offs, which by definition means the aggrieved party lost money to whomever they are complaining about, right? This chain of reasoning only works if you're one of the people Writer Beware exposes as a rip-off. Because these are the only people who lose money to Writer Beware, by being deprived of the cash flow they worked sooooo hard to get from authors who don't know that REAL publishers don't charge writers a penny.

To be fair, TWA posted a lot of letters that they claim come from law enforcement agencies in Utah. They claim these letter state that no complaints about American Book Publishing exist.

SO, I started looking a little more closely at the “evidence” that The (snickers) Write Agenda posted on their website to “disprove” the statement in Writer Beware’s site stating that they had been the subject of a police investigation. This is the problem with slapping stuff up where writers can see it. We know how to find holes in a plot, and many of us write stories with mysteries in them. We can see a crappy investigation from six chapters away.
 
After reviewing the "source material" that TWA presented, I note several telling facts. Many of the responses they receive don't simply tell them there are no investigations of ABP. Mostly, they tell them "you're looking in the wrong place". Some tell them that they need to look in Murray, Utah, or that they need to contact the Utah Consumer Protection Division. Two replies tell them this agency is the one to contact, but there are NO letters to them from that agency. I have to wonder “Why not?” According to the material Victoria presents, these investigations were started around 2002, if I'm taking the dates on the blogs right, and I believe that ABP moved at some point. I wonder if TWA asked about current investigations, as opposed to previous investigations. In one case, the reply indicates that they asked specifically for “incident reports” for the address of ABP, which only shows if police were sent there, not if there was an investigation. Furthermore, they don't follow up on the information that they are given, specifically to check with the Utah Consumer Protection Division. This really disproves squat, especially since they were given a lead (twice) that they did not follow. I also note that not only are the names blacked out, so are the dates. But what strikes me as less than thorough about several of these letters is that they state that the request was made through the FOIA, but that they really needed to file a GRAMA (Government Records Access Management Act). So, this “noisy investigation” went to all the wrong places, filed all the wrong forms, or asked the wrong questions, and calls a lack of results based on a flawed set of inquiries as “proof”. Given that they are unwilling to show unredacted source material, the material that they give is impossible to vet, so I can't even trust that their "source material" is, in fact, source material. Secondary to that, said material appears in only ONE place: TWA's website, which I regard as highly suspicious as a matter of course, given who they are attacking. Now, if it comes down to “he said, she said”, Writer Beware wins hands down, EVERY time, over someone who is stridently defending a fee-charging “publisher.”
 
Even IF the original posting that Victoria based her statements on were to be proven false somehow, the worst case scenario is that she trusted what someone said at face value. She showed her sources. From the beginning. TWA has not addressed the veracity of said sources, only continued to act as if they don’t exist.  BUT...I also note this. If Cheryl Nunn, or one of her many aliases, were THAT upset by what was posted, and there was NO basis for the statement...why hasn't SHE taken action on this? If these statements are false and therefore defamatory, why has C Lee Nunn not taken Writer Beware to the cleaners before this? The continued silence from the supposedly offended parties is deafening. The continued rants by TWA are clearly the kind of smokescreen they accuse Victoria of to focus attention on one thing that they want people to look at, instead of the whole picture, which shows a fee charging pseudo-publisher known as American Publishing, run by C Lee Nunn, a CPA who at one point had her license suspended in California. Yeah, credibility issues abound here. Just not in the places TWA wants you to think they do.