Event news

I just wanted to give you some updates of some upcoming events. I will be at Joseph-Beth Booksellers Cleveland in Legacy Village in Lyndurst, Ohio on August 9th at 1:00. The bookstore is also hosting a family fun day. It is going to be a great time! Hope you can come.

I will also be at Barnes & Noble at Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio on August 16 at 2:00. I will be signing copies of Byron Carmichael Book One. Hope that you will come out for this event too.

I have more events in the planning stages too! Plus there is the possibility of some big news too, but that will have to wait. I will keep you up to date as to what is happening.

Hope to see you in Cleveland or Columbus over the next few weeks!

J. Eric King

Outline VS on the fly part 2

So I had to scrap my first story. I was sad. I sulked for a few days, felt the pain of loss of 450 pages, and I morned the passing of a few characters I knew I was about to lose. But I also knew that the difference between a published writer and an unpublished writer was the former is willing to rewrite, and rewrite again if it is necessary.

So I turned to an outline method and asked good friend and big time reader to help with through a brainstorming session. I laid the basic plot of the story out and then we began tossing ideas back and forth. Ideas were flying. Those ideas sparked more ideas and those more ideas began to give me visions of specific scenes I wanted to write.

What this did was give me a basic map of where I wanted to go. The outline is basically just that; a map. It can be as detailed as a road or street atlas or it can be as broad as a view from space. I preferred a map or outline that just gave me the major cities or scenes that I wanted to hit along the course of my journey or story.

This allowed me to keep my mind open to the creative visions that are produced during a writing session, but at the same time it gave me direction in my storytelling. I knew the direction that each scene would take me and where the next scene needed to go. By the end of the story, I was left with a tight story in which all of my mystery trials and loops and twists and turns all came back on the one path.

So what is your method? Outline or on the fly?

J. Eric King

Outline vs On the fly

As I have said earlier, I want to post more of my thoughts and opinions about writing. One topic that comes up a lot and one that I have made a direct reversal in opinion has to do with writing while using an outline or writing the story ‘on the fly’ or as it comes to you.

In my first three novels, I used the ‘on the fly method’. I had the story idea and the general plot of the story in my mind as I wrote the stories, but I didn't know where the story was heading. It may sound like a set up for writers block, but it actually works for the most part. As you allow your mind to settle in deep into your story, it is amazing how the story can flow, telling itself, and how great ideas are spontaneously born. Then, mysteriously, the story comes together in the end, and as you look back, you are amazed at how well all the tangents flow back together to close the novel.

I was a fan of this method and preached that it was the best avenue for bringing the best out of the creative mind.

But that all changed when I wrote Byron Carmichael Book One. This book was to be a mystery novel; my first of this genre. I had big visions and a big story, and I set out just like before, diving right to my creative mind.

But my mental canvas became too big. I had too many characters that I wanted to develop. I had too large of a setting that I wanted to explore. I had too much story that I wanted to tell in just one novel. I reached nearly 450 typed pages when I realized that my story was too many, too large, and too much. I was nowhere near reaching the end of the story. I could not rein in all the wild tangents to close my story, and in a mystery, every tangent must lead you home; somehow.

So I scrapped it.

Come back in a few days and check out my thoughts on using the outline method and how it saved my story.

Update

It's been a while since I posted; I know. May was a great month. Byron Carmichael Book One was featured on Flamingnet.com, we had a great promotional contest, book sales increased, and we had our first book signing. It's been busy!

The book signing was great! We purchased a new display booth and some new posters to make it special for everyone. The managers and staff at the Barnes & Noble Pickerington, Ohio store were wonderful. They let us set up next to the front door where we greeting everyone who walked in, offering them some candy and a free bookmark.

I am in the process of planning out a summer tour of sorts in Ohio. I will keep you posted with the dates and locations. If anyone has any suggestions of a bookstore that may be interested in hosting an event with us please feel free to suggest them by posting a comment.


I will be posting more of my thoughts on writing soon!


J. Eric King

Winners of the Byron Carmichael Promotinal Contest

Hello. The Byron Carmichael Promotional Contest was a great success! We had a great turn out and the top three winners came up with the answer to the final question within seconds of each other. All three winners have agreed to be recognized.

First prize went to Sarah B. from McAlester, OK. Sarah answered the final question first and will receive the new iPod Nano and a copy of Byron Carmicahel Book One.

Second prize went to Lynn B. from Klamath Falls, OR. Lynn answered the final question second and with in only 7 seconds of the first answer. Lynn will receive the amazon.com gift card and a copy of Byron Carmichael Book One.

Third prize went to Becky O. from Shippensburg, PA. Becky answered the final question third and only one second from the second place answer. Becky will receive a copy of Byron Carmichael Book One.

I wanted to thank Flamingnet.com for featuring my book and for promoting our contest to all of the members of their newsletter. And thanks to all the guys who worked so hard on the website. Thanks for getting the bugs out when we desperately needed them out. Hope everyone will join me again when we have our next promotion!


J. Eric King
www.byroncarmichael.com

May Promotion

I am pleased to announce the May is Byron Carmichael Month Promotion. Byron Carmichael will be featured on the review website flamingnet.com.

Please come and join us for some fun, some free books, and some great prizes through our contest. Above is the flyer describing the events.

Modern author

This past weekend I did something that I thought would never be possible. I created a web page. In today's world of knowledge at your finger tips there is also a phenomenon of author at your finger tips. Today, a fan has a great chance to logging onto a popular Internet community or author blog and find themselves just a few key strokes away from their favorite author.

The days of growing piles of fan mail have turned into expanding files of inbox.

How has this changed the responsibilities or the duties of the modern author? I don't consider myself to be the typical author or more precisely the traditional author, but I have my share of duties in my attempt to stay in touch with my readers.

I've created six profiles on separate online communities that I maintain; some more than others. I've created this blog site that I am trying desperately to keep up to date. And my latest creation as I have mentioned is the creation of my website for Byron Carmichael Book One and the contest that I will be announcing shortly. My desire for all this, is so that I can offer my readers the most insight to my writing, my publishing, my story, my characters, and to an extent I am comfortable with, to me.

This responsibility to the modern author seems to be an increasing mode to marketing and publicity. I come from a scientific and technical educational background which has been a benefit. But a question arises. What is in store for the future author? How technological savvy will he or she have to be to reach the fans reading the books? And where will the balance of time fall between staying connected with readers and writing the stories that those readers are longing to hear?

Neglect

Oh, I know how I have neglected posting this week. I do promise that my negligence will be made up in the next few weeks.

I am reluctant to make this announcement since we are still in planning stages, but I will offer it as a peace offering. We are planning a promotion for Byron, calling May, Byron Carmichael month. The book review website, flamingnet.com, has agreed to feature Byron Carmichael Book One: The human corpse trade for the month and we have some fun games, contests, and book drawings planned.

Please stay in tuned for the final announcements. Let's have some fun in May!

The Best Advice

When I was in college, I remember receiving some of the best advice I had ever heard. I can't remember if I was in a business class or speech class or what it was. Obviously, the class must not have left it's mark on my memory, but the words I learned that one day have lasted; wherever it was I heard them.

The advice had to do with dealing with people in a business sense. It went like this. 'Under promise and over deliver.'

The simplest advice I've ever heard.

When you are asked to do a job, when you are dealing with people either in business, in your career, friends, family, whomever it may be, take a few seconds to consider your response. Under promise and over deliver.

When your boss needs that report done by next week, tell him or her that you will, but shoot for turning in completed after lunch on Friday. If you quote a job to paint someone’s house for five hundred dollars, try your best to do a great job in the four hundred dollar range.

The idea here is that when you make pledge to someone, that pledge becomes your word, your reputation, and sometimes your value.

If you are always under promising and over delivering, then you will always be seen as an asset because you over achieve, you are always on time, you've never let them down.

BUT if on the other hand, you over promise and under deliver, you quickly become a liability that no one will be albe to trust and depend upon. And no one will ever want to work with you.

So the next time you are given a task, take a moment to consider your time frame, and under promise and over deliver. At the very least, meet the time frame you originally promised.

I pass this on as the best advice I've ever heard with hopes that the whole world will hear.

So why do we do it.

Why do we write? What an interesting question to pose. I am not bold enough to create an essay that will explore the topic of why all the authors of the world do what they do. But I will take a stab at trying to explain why I do.

I write because the worlds that I have created on paper are a part of me. They are true realities that run as a parallel existence to this world you and I live in. This statement may sound as if I have a multiple personality disorder or delusions of grandeur, but I assure you that I do not; I don’t either.

To better explain what I am talking about, it would be more fitting to describe what a writer feels when he or she is not writing. Anxious, unsettled, impatient, are some descriptive words that come to mind. I am currently involved in the consuming process of marketing my first release title Byron Carmichael; the first of a mystery series. I completed the novel well over a year ago, and the world of Byron Carmichael is always alive and with me; always calling me to come back.

That world is similar to ours. There are old broken villages and new sprawling suburbs. The winds and seasons continue to gust and change. The world persists, but the people are waiting.

Old men rock on their porches while their wives crochet. The children sit restless, gazing into space with their heads propped up on their fists. The vehicles are tuned and repaired, their tanks full of fuel. The paper press awaits the next breaking news broadcast and reporters stand by.

My three characters, my children, Byron, Nick, and Gracie, are checking their email, their voice messages, desperately waiting for the call to get back to work. Their lives are frozen. They are in a dreadful state, awaiting the outcome of their teenage lives; will they make the grade, will they find their match, will they defeat their rivals.

Yet, I keep them waiting. I hear their calls. I constantly see glimpses of their future, and I long to come back to them, to watch them, to direct them, answer their questions, spend time with them, and give them life. But I still wait, anxious, unsettled, and impatient. While the evils plot and the dangers linger in the world of Byron Carmichael, I still wait. I instead answer the question, ‘why do we write.’ And I do too…

origins

When does it all begin? At birth? At the foot of our parents? On the carpets of kindergarten? When is it that we fall into this love for a good story? I've always been a sucker for a good story and occasionally a bad one. When an author has done his or her job well and hooked me into the drama of a few characters, I can't sit well until I've conquered the final pages or the final disc on CD.

I've heard it said before that we as writers are the first readers of a story. That statement is so very true. We write because the reader in us, the human is us, longs to be drawn into that next great story. As we write, we have been given the opportunity to create, and craft, and perfect a short window of drama and tickle that reader inside of us.

But when do we decide to make the transition from reader to writer?

For me, it happened one long winter in the late 1990's. The story I've told centers around a job I had at a pottery factory while I was in college. At this job, I was permitted to wear headphones while working, and I quickly exhausted my CD music collection. As a result, I turned to a book on CD; the bait was set before me.

When I finished the first book the following day, I had a hunger for another author to take me along on another journey. I picked up another book. Then I picked up another and then another; the hook was set.

Luckily, my time at the pottery came to a close when the college semester returned for session; I was nearing the end of the book on CD collection of our small town library.

But as I returned to college, I kept hearing a voice in my mind. It wasn't the onset of psychosis or delusions. It was 'THE VOICE' of all of those excellent performers on the books I had been listening to, coming together in one voice to tell me a story. I could hear the story that I wanted to tell, coming in clearly in my mind; a story I never knew I wanted to tell. I was caught and reeled in.

Today that factory is an abandoned building and the pottery has been sold and forgotten. Those few weeks I spent there all those years ago I hold dear to my heart. There was the origin of 'MY VOICE.' There was where the reader in me discovered my love and my need, to write, to create, to craft, and to perfect a good story.

How about you?

observe

The next time you and your evening meal are waiting in line at your favorite grocery story take the time that you have been given and look around you. I don't mean to check up on the latest celebrity gossip in the magazine rack or the latest in chocolate and caramel combinations. Look at the people who are sharing the moment with you. Watch your cashier, your grocery bagger, the patrons shopping in the isles around you, and the fellow patrons waiting along with you.

We all have our own mannerisms and quirks that make us unique. As a writer, we have been given the opportunity to freely observe billions of unique individuals and a seemingly endless supply of excellent character traits for a new novel.

It has been said before that great characters carry a novel. Your characters are the bones of a story. How they will react to one another, to their settings, or to their situations, will often dictate the direction your story takes.

Finding that idea for a good story, can be accomplished by finding those ideas for a few good characters.

So the next time your cashier proceeds to tell you about her cold sore and how her fear of needles kept her from getting it check out and how it also made her cancel her date the night before and how she spent the the night instead watching infomercials and...

Don't dismiss it as 'too much information.' Just make a mental note and wonder, 'what if a young lady with trypanophobia decided after the ending of a long relationship that she would confront her fears by becoming a phlebotomist?' Hmm... I wonder.

“Don’t have any bright ideas”

These are usually the tough words grumbled by a bank robber in the middle of a hold up. If, however, they are grumbled by a writer, they can prove to be just as deadly.

The foundation for every story, every novel is composed of that all important bright idea. Occasionally, those ideas can prove to be hard to come by, but there are a few tools that may help summon the idea for the next best seller.

There are an infinite number of ideas that can branch off of what has been called a ‘what if’ question. What if a man jumped out of a plane and forgot his parachute? What if a woman showed up on her first date with two different shoes on? In these simple questions an additional infinite number of questions can be asked until a story begins to develop. What is the scenario as to why the man is in the airplane? Is he forced out? Does he make it? What does he do for a living? Is he the main character? Where is he landing?

What about the woman? How old is she? Is this a blind date? What can possibly be happening in her life to let this happen? At what point does she realize her blunder? What will she do?

By asking and answering all these questions, the idea for a new novel comes together seemingly like magic.

There are also an infinite number of ideas found by simply being an observant writer. This will be discussed in the next post.

Welcome

Welcome to all the visitors to this new blog. This is the first post, and I want to send out a warm welcome. My goal with this blog is to give some of my insight into the publishing of my new novel, Byron Carmichael Book One: The human corpse trade, and into what I have learned about the craft of writing. I don't claim to know everything about writing and my knowledge is not a 'guarantee to sell', but I will share with you some of what I've picked up along my journey to where I am today. So please stop by, subscribe, and comment. I look forward to hearing from you often.

J. Eric King