Interview at ARQ

The lovely Kelly Leard, blogger at Alien Red Queen and now at To the Controller, has given me even more ink. Check out our virtual interview on the topics of indie publishing and The War Master's Daughter.

"The best way I’ve found to avoid writer’s block is to work obsessively and compulsively […] limited periods of time. I value quantity over quality. Quality will come with time and practice. But you can’t fake quantity. The words will never write themselves. I set ridiculous goals for myself so that I’m so busy with writing, I don’t have time to second-guess what I’ve written. . . ." [read more]

The best part? Getting to cast the book. A lot harder than I thought it would be! Kelly offers up her own selections as well. Who do you see playing Aurora, Storey, and all the others? We're still looking for a great Dymphna!

Lucky 7 Blogfest

Rance Denton just tagged me over at The Action Prose for the Lucky 7 Blogfest. I'm so glad too, because, like Rance, I've been so busy writing, revising, marketing, and doing all sorts of authorly stuff, that SYEWW has been stalled. This is a great, fun excuse for a post. And the best part is that it doesn't take too much brain power, because writing, revising, marketing, and doing all sorts of authorly stuff doesn't leave you with much mental horsepower.

I have two simultaneous works in progress (to assuage my two different personalities, obviously), so I thought I'd treat you all to bits from both. The rules for Lucky 7 appear after the excerpts.

Excerpt from page 7 of Bugged:

Finally swallowing, he said, “You’re right. Not everything is different to everyone. Most sensation is linked to physiognomy. So barring some genetic anomaly, we basically see the same, smell the same, taste the same.” Swish, swish. “But of course, not you, Richard the Supertaster.” Sometimes he had to flatter Richard to make sure he was still listening.

“I can’t help it if I have access to thirty percent more taste buds than you.” Richard flicked his pink tongue out over his fat bottom lip. Ever the sucker for old fashioned flirtation.

“But there is so much about perception that isn’t actually linked to the physical sensory organs. Things that are linked to the intangible, emotions, gut feelings. You perceive fear, but that doesn’t always stem from physical stimuli. You can’t even always explain it. What scares you might be nothing to me, and vice versa.”

Excerpt from page 77 of [untitled] cozy mystery, to be mysteriously published under a mysterious pseudonym:

“Couldn’t he just be someone you know?” I ask. I take a sip of my drink and I actually like it. But it’s strong, really strong, and I promise myself not to have another. “I’m sorry. I mean, are you sure you want to talk about this?”

“Absolutely!” she says emphatically. “I confess I had ulterior motives to inviting you over. Sometimes, I just need to vent. And Maury’s pretty much put a gag order on me about the whole thing. He thinks media attention just fuels this guy. And Maury’s not the type of person you can sit down and have a heart-to-heart with.” She whispers confidentially, “I need a girl to talk to.”

Funny that both random excerpts are one-on-one dialog during the course of drinking alcohol. I hope I'm not becoming . . . samey. Seriously, though, these works couldn't be more different. Just a neat coincidence.

The way the Lucky 7 blogfest works is this: 1) If you’re tagged in a post by an author, you can choose to take part (which I hope you do!); 2) Go to page 7 or 77 of your current work-in-progress, go down to the 7th line, and post on your blog the next (approximately) seven lines! It’s as simple as that. 3) Remember not to cheat! Don’t pick a part you think will be engaging; don’t edit; just post it, show the raw, unedited truth of a writer’s first draft; and 4) Tag some of those writers you know would be wiling to show a bit of their creativity.

I'm tagging seven of my friends who write, and who I know--or hope--have a current WIP. I hope you'll respond on your blog or a Facebook note!

Kelly Leard
Jes Goodyear
Laura Bogart
Gavin St. Ours
Shauna Kelley
Jenna Morton-Aiken
Josh Munro

Another Positive Review!

Blogs are picking up on The War Master's Daughter!

Check out the review on Alien Red Queen:

"But probably what is the most impressive about this debut novel is Zupko’s use of smooth transition between past and present as a technique for controlling the pace and plot development of the story. Though the cast of characters is fairly small, given the isolated nature of the main character’s predicament, and this makes it easier to discern possible plot twists, Zupko still manages to surprise and engage the reader.  She manages what could have been a rather standard and boring storybook ending – 'and they all lived happily ever after' – in a way that leaves the reader something to ponder.  I genuinely didn’t want the story to end.

"The War Master’s Daughter is likely the beginning of what I hope is a long and prosperous career in fiction for Elly Zupko, and well worth a read." [read more...]

The book continues to get positive reviews on Amazon, maintaining 5 stars. Check out what people are saying!

New Review for TWMD

A beautifully written and insightful review of The War Master's Daughter has just been posted over at The Action Prose, a great in-your-face writing and life blog by @RanceDenton.

"To suggest that Elly Zupko’s The War Master’s Daughter is merely a historical fiction novel would be to ignore a great number of its evident strengths.  Simultaneously, pigeonholing the novel into any specific genre would be to discredit its willingness to step outside its comfort zones. The greater part of The War Master’s Daughter is confused about what genre it may actually be, but that doesn’t draw away from the novel’s overall quality.  Zupko’s book is a fantastic independent offering the intense strengths of which outweigh the few moments where its footing occasionally wavers.
..."[read more]

It's the End of the World As Wayne Knows It

Since I've done almost nothing but rant and argue and complain for the past eight posts, here's something on the lighter side.

My friends and I--team Liquid Squid--participated in the 48-Hour Film Project last year. I encourage you to check out the organization and read about the details of the contest. It basically boils down to:

• Friday = beer and pizza fueled screenplay writing, constrained by contest-wide parameters including a specific character, prop, line of dialogue, and genre
• Saturday = coffee and doughnut fueled acting and filming, constrained by location, available equipment, and daylight
• Sunday = adrenaline fueled editing, constrained by flagging energy and a looming deadline

The result is a short film that may or may not be coherent. But damn did we have fun--and we won "Best Use of Prop"! This was our entry, It's the End of the World As Wayne Knows It. 

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (8 of 8)

In November, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal. This is the final post in that series.

8.

Edan: “I’m Busy. Writing.”

Elly: “A Successful Writer Does More Than Write.”

Lepucki’s final argument falls so flat that it completely exposes her as a writer who herself has found little success. Here she laments how busy she is, and how she only has six hours a day to devote to her “new” novel (apparently she gave up on the “old” novel). Therefore, she is—I think she’s saying—too busy to self-publish. Well, I can’t argue that if you don’t have a novel to publish, you can’t publish a novel. You have to get busy writing before you can get busy with everything else that publishing entails. But that just can’t be what she’s saying. She wouldn’t have written an article anti self-publishing if she wasn’t considering publishing something, right? It’s more like, “I’m not publishing this first novel I wrote, because I want to write another one first.”

Wait, that can’t be right either. I mean, we all like to write. We all prefer crafting characters or metaphors or nuanced arguments to hammering out (ugh) query letters. But I’m pretty darn sure that nearly all of us write with the ultimate goal of having other people read our writing, and not to stick that writing in a drawer. I don’t think she’s planning to write tome after tome just to lock them away, unread, Salinger-style.

So if her argument is that she’s too busy writing to independently publish her drawered work, then she is simultaneously making the argument that she is too busy to get someone else to publish that work. Any writer who has at least attempted traditional publication knows there is serious legwork involved in the process. If you’re “too busy writing,” you’re too busy to: send out query letters, secure an agent, work with agent to edit your work, work with agent-found editor to further edit your work, write jacket copy (a lot of writers have to do that now, even at trad pubbing houses), schedule your book tour, do your book tour, write marketing pieces, start a blog, do blog posts, do guest blog posts, and on and on.

The traditional publishing does not mean your job as an author is only to write. Everyone knows that the better you get at a job you love the less you actually get to do of the stuff you love. If you write well enough to be published, you transcend being “busy writing.” You are no longer only writer. You are promoter, marketer, public speaker, blogger, internet personality, etc. etc. Unless, again, your goal is not to have anyone read your work, you’d better find the time to write and the time to do everything associated with being a published author.

We may all dream of the day when our lives consist solely of channeling the muses and allowing our perfect and aesthetically transcendental words flow from our fingertips like the tears of a small child hugging his puppy goodbye. But the reality is that being a writer is a job, like any other job, and with all jobs comes the crap we don’t like to do. If you’re too busy to do the crap, you’ll soon find yourself little reason to bother with the good stuff. 

Reasons Not to Not Self Publish: A Rebuttal (7 of 8)

In November, Edan Lepucki posted an article on The Millions called "Reasons Not to Self Publish in 2011-2012: A List." I disagree and would like, over the next several blog postings, to offer my own point-by-point rebuttal.

7.

Edan: “Is it Best for Readers?”

Elly: “Let the Readers Decide.”

The essence of Lepucki’s argument here is that the self-publishing revolution is creating a “slush pile” that is publicly available. To parse it out, what I think she’s trying to say is that there is a lot of crap being self-published, and she doesn’t want to be lumped in with said crap. I think. She uses the example of her brother-in-law learning that she hadn’t sold her book, and warning her against self-publishing because it could only lead to the book being ignored in favor of something someone’s friend posted about on Facebook. I think.

I’m not sure I get the point here. Given a book of the exact same quality—i.e., the same exact book—the b-i-l wouldn’t buy it if it were self-published. But he would if he read about it on The Millions or heard about it on NPR. Huh? Sounds like a man who can’t make his own decisions about what he likes. Is this a person you really take advice from? Is this a person whose advice you really pass on to your reading public?

I’m beginning to feel like a bit of a broken record here, but seriously: I’m all about letting readers make their own decisions rather than letting their world be curated by a small, elite group of media who have other interests at stake than creating a culture of superb, enduring literature. To repeat myself, this is why I offer the first 15% of my book, The War Master’s Daughter, for free. If people are captivated by the story, they can purchase the rest. If they don’t like it, they become one of the statistics on my dashboard that shows me how many people have downloaded the sample but chosen to spend their money and time elsewhere.

Let the readers decide what they consider to be crap. I think Stephenie Meyer is crap. I think most of the books sold in grocery stores are probably crap. But that doesn’t mean my view of the entire publishing industry is colored to believe it’s all crap. Perhaps the degree of crappiness in self-publishing is higher, but I think the concomitant intellectual offensiveness tied to said crappiness is higher in traditional publishing. Lepucki trusts the curation of the same folks who put out The Time Traveler’s Wife, which sold millions of copies. Millions. That book seriously stunk it up, and I am offended that people even recommended it to me. But it's not going to stop me from buying another traditionally published book. That would be a comically poor foundation on which to base my choices. 

Encourage your readers to judge a book on its merits, not on its company. And don’t tell your readers what is “best” for them.