writing – Page 2

Writing Updates

June 2, 2017 by David Dubrow 4 Comments

I’m three short chapters away from completing the first draft of the third book in the Armageddon trilogy. It’s a massively difficult task to bring everything together in a way that satisfyingly completes both character and story arcs, which is why it’s taking so long. And the first draft is so horrible I’m not even sure I can bring myself to look at it to work on a second draft. As we say in the video business, “We’ll fix it in post.” Anyway, the end is in sight. The story of angels, demons, psychics, Nephilim, witches, and ordinary people living in extraordinary times is drawing to a close. The series titles in order are:

The Blessed Man and the Witch
The Nephilim and the False Prophet
The Holy Warrior and the Last Angel (Forthcoming, probably 2018)

After this series, I’ve got tentative plans for a more traditional Urban Fantasy series. And, perhaps, something more science fiction-oriented.

Because I don’t have enough to do, I’m also contributing to a short story anthology. This is a collaboration effort with another writer, and will focus on near-future science fiction along the lines of my short story Hold On. Stories about next week as opposed to next year, focusing on the cultural and social changes we’ve instituted, and where they might lead. Plus some very strange stuff I’m really looking forward to writing. You want to be entertained? Provoked? Amused? Horrified? It’s in there. More details will become available when we’ve got the foundations laid a bit better.

Things You Should Always Do Before Writing Articles for Another Website

April 25, 2017 by David Dubrow 5 Comments

Congratulations! You’re a writer. You’ve written an article, published a short story, ground out a novel, gotten a piece linked in a magazine, or something similar. You’re on your way. Then you realize that for people to read you, they have to find you. You’ve got to get your name out there. Create that much-vaunted Author Platform. All the experts say that blogging is good, but who has the time to do it often enough to get noticed? That’s long-term, shouting words into the ether. What to do, what to do—wait: maybe you can write pieces for a more popular site and piggyback on their traffic! Yes. Lots of people will read your stuff and will like it so much that they’ll click on your name, find your author site, and start gobbling up your books like Joey Chestnut on a plate of hot dogs. And you’re contributing to the Community, whether it’s genre-focused, politics-focused, or whatever-focused. You’ll make friends, develop business relationships, maybe find new books to read: it’s all good. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t, but it can’t hurt.

Here are a few things to consider before selecting a site to write for, if they’ll have you. (They will have you: nobody turns up his nose at free content.)

Exposure: You’re doing it for the exposure, right? The sweet, sweet exposure. Just remember that you can’t spend exposure. Nobody has ever paid a mortgage or bought a cup of coffee with exposure. You want money, don’t you? We all do. You’re not offering your books for free, so why should you offer your articles for free? It’s a dilemma. But still…that exposure. Getting your name out there. So you take the trade. The hope of potential future earnings in exchange for hours of your time writing content for someone else’s website. Fair enough. Whatever you do, make sure that it’s good exposure: your name needs to be at the top and/or bottom of every article in clickable format that links to either a page all about you or your personal website/social media home of choice. Your articles need to be shared by the website on the most-trafficked social media platforms available, and on each share your name/handle needs to be front and center so people know that you wrote the piece. That’s only fair.
Gratitude: Along with the meager-to-nonexistent pay of Exposure, you should also be remunerated with gratitude, the coin of the volunteer’s realm. Each and every piece you write must be received with a thank you so you don’t get the feeling you’re pouring your time into somebody else’s ungrateful well. (No writer is an island; even loners work for psychic income.) Requests for your effort must be made in friendly fashion, with no pressure applied. Compliments are necessary. If the site owner doesn’t make it clear that he knows that you’re doing him a favor by providing free quality content for his site, he’s not worth your work. You’ve earned those thank yous.
Controversy/Drama: Some sites are controversial, either because of the content or the owner/editor’s personal drama. While controversy doesn’t typically devolve upon unpaid grunts like yourself, personal drama always attaches itself to you if you write for a drama queen on a regular basis. It doesn’t last forever, but it does cling to you like shit sticks to a blanket. Avoid all drama queens: the cost of doing business with them is never worth the Exposure. Drama queens are easy to spot as long as you don’t ignore the signs: lots of self-created enemies, passive-aggressive communication on social media, cliquish junior high school behavior, a constantly-expressed feeling of being attacked.
Values: Make sure that the site you write for shares at least some of your personal values. We don’t have to agree on everything, but when you find yourself significantly at odds with the site’s editorial slant, you’re eventually going to run into trouble. Even if you keep your personal beliefs separate from your work, others may not. Combine that with a lack of gratitude or a penchant for drama, and you have a combination that’s sheer poison. A casual perusal of the site and its associated social media accounts will show you if you’re a good fit. If you’re not a good fit, don’t risk it. The red flags are there to protect you, so do not ignore them.

I foolishly ignored my own advice some time ago, and as a result all the hard work I did was deleted by a hostile, ungrateful drama queen because I dared to express, on my own social media sites, deeply-held opinions that millions and millions of other people share. Pleasantly, the sites I write for now, including my own, are run by kind, generous people who behave like consummate professionals, and I appreciate it.

For now, I’m heading off to the bank to cash this month’s Exposure Check. Cha-ching!

Back to School Sale: A Post-Mortem

September 20, 2016 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

Overall, my Armageddon Back to School Sale met my modest sales goals, so I can’t complain. It didn’t do as well as my earlier giveaway, but the reasons are clear:

Despite the concept of perceived value, where people expect to pay more for things that they consider of higher quality, readers will almost always download a free book, given the opportunity. The risk and effort are amazingly low: just a few clicks and you’ve got a book. Most people who download free books rarely read them; they download them just to have them. A person who buys something typically intends to do something with it. So it’s kind of an apples-to-oranges comparison anyway.
In addition to Ereader News Today, I advertised the sale with a few less well-known book marketing services. The smaller services didn’t perform and I won’t use them again. The most success I’ve had was with Book Barbarian (reserve your spot way in advance), Ereader News Today, and Books Butterfly. I was rejected for BookBub again, but that’s okay: I kind of expected it. I’ll get there eventually.

Because money’s changed hands, I won’t give away sales figures here; I’m old fashioned like that. I will say that I sold more of The Nephilim and the False Prophet when I gave away The Blessed Man and the Witch than I did just offering each book for $0.99. So 1st Book Free + 2nd Book Regular Price was greater than 1st Book Cheap + 2nd Book Cheap.

My friends, colleagues, and associates on social media were very kind in Retweeting, Sharing, and Liking my book sale post. Thanks very much to Holly Evans and Jason Berry, who’ve always been very supportive (even if they don’t like all of my stuff!).

Special thanks to Chris Barnes, the owner and publisher of The Slaughtered Bird, who was kind enough to spread the word about the sale.

Thanks also to fellow authors R.M. Huffman, Ross Greenwood, Gerri Bowen, Israel Finn, Olivia Stanton, Isaac Thorne, and Iain Rob Wright for their Retweets.

And, last but not least, thanks to John’s Horror Corner, Chris (Movie Corner), Damnation Ave, Kreepazoid Kelly, Indie Undead!, Dave B, Hardcore Horror, and Horror by Proxy. It may be just a click of the mouse to you, but it means a lot to me.

If I’ve forgotten anyone, you have my deepest apologies. This includes my Facebook friends who were likely most kind and spread the word on Zuckerberg’s Social Experiment.

Judging a Book by Its Cover: Guns

September 6, 2016 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

The four principal rules for firearm handling, codified by the late, great Jeff Cooper, are:

All guns are always loaded.
Never point a gun at something you don’t intend to destroy.
Keep your finger off the trigger until your sights are on the target.
Be sure of your target and what’s around and behind it.

I learned these rules early in my professional career and have never forgotten them. I can recite them in my sleep, just like I can do Heaven Six without having to remember the movements. They’re ingrained.

In my years and years of working with firearms experts, I have never seen a single one of them, man or woman, point a gun at the sky except when shooting birds or skeet. Never. It just isn’t done by responsible gun owners. When bullets go up, they have to come down, and you have no control over where those bullets might land. This is why celebratory gunfire is very, very stupid.

For thriller novels, there’s nothing quite like a cover depicting a person holding a gun. You pretty much have to have that, unless you want to show a silhouette of a man and a woman holding hands and running away from a burning city. Where this motif falls down is in pictures like this, this, this, this, and this. It’s a stupid way to hold a handgun, and even people who teach this way of gun-handling acknowledge that it’s far from ideal.

You don’t have to be a firearms expert to write characters with guns. Heck, you don’t even have to be a “Nazi gun nut” like me. But you should learn the basics, which are easily found online. When I see a book cover showing someone pointing a gun at the sky, I know the writer doesn’t have his firearms material wired tight.

Authors, tell your artist to pick a different stock photo. The whole gun pointing up thing has got to go.

CoaR Interview With Dave Dubrow, Part Two

February 9, 2016 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

It still is quite an honor to be featured on Nev Murray’s Confessions of a Reviewer!!; I can’t believe anyone would be interested enough in the prosaic insanity that is my life to ask questions about it. In Part Two, we conclude the interview with questions about the Armageddon trilogy and Nev’s dreaded Ten Confessions: ten gut-check questions that you want to run away from, but can’t. He just pins you with those eyes of his and you have no choice but to confess.

Confession Question 1: Who would you view as your main competitor in the writing world?

I have no competitors. Not that I’m terribly original, it’s just that I’m doing my own thing and other writers do their own things, and I treasure every reader. If my work stands out, it’s because I take a point of view in my religious-themed horror that’s respectful to Christianity and appreciates the breadth of thought and consideration behind Christian apologetics. Without me being a Christian, even. Louis Pasteur, Michael Faraday, and C.S. Lewis weren’t unsophisticated, Bible-thumping buffoons: they were brilliant, learned men who had an abiding belief in God. People of faith get a bad rap today, especially in fiction, which is unfortunate.

Things get much darker from there. Click on over and get reading!

CoaR Interview With Dave Dubrow, Part One

February 8, 2016 by David Dubrow Leave a Comment

I’m really humbled and honored to have been interviewed by Nev Murray, proprietor of Confessions of a Reviewer!!. Nev is the hardest-working book reviewer I know, and he has a gift for getting you to open up about things you might otherwise keep to yourself. Here’s an excerpt of Part One of the interview he conducted with yours truly:

CoaR – Philadelphia then Colorado then Florida. Were you on the run from something or just like to travel? Where is your favourite?

DD – I moved to the mountains of Colorado as a younger man because it was a massive life change that scared me, and the only way you grow as a person is to do things that make you uncomfortable, even frightened.

It was there that I met my wife and started a family. As the years passed, we found that we missed the beach (my wife’s also a former East Coaster), so when a career opportunity beckoned that took us to warmer climes and proximity to the ocean, we jumped at the chance. My favorite place to live is anywhere with my wife and little boy, so I’m always lucky.

There’s quite a bit more, including discussion of my writing process, how I keep track of my ideas, my thoughts on indie publishing, and other bits of interest. Click on over to Confessions of a Reviewer!! to read Part One, and come back tomorrow for Part Two!