Welcome all you hackers and programmers, and all the artificial intelligence listening in today. This is Lisa Burton Radio, and I’m your host, Lisa the robot girl. I’m pretty excited about this interview, because my special guest today is a police consultant working in the Counter IT section of the Artificial Crimes Unit. “Welcome to the show, someone who only goes by the name of Q.”
“First off, I just have to say, this really isn’t my kind of gig—I mean, it’s good to meet you, definitely, but when you work and play in the shadows, the spotlight tends not to be your friend. I guess, when you’re doing penance, though, you do what you gotta do. So, here I am.”
“It all sounds pretty covert to me. I’ve never known a cop who had a code name.”
“I’m not really a cop, per se. Now, the Department does sign…
It’s inevitable sometimes. No, not a reboot. I’m not talking about a remake either. This is about the good old sequel. A story that doesn’t completely finish in one shot needs closure or maybe people are still clamoring for more, which means you can do a second tale with the same characters. So, what are some things to keep in mind?
For the love of every punctuation mark, keep continuity in mind. A sequel can allow you to change a few things, but if you rewrite everything that came before it then it can weaken the whole thing. After all, people will read a sequel to see the continuation of the story instead of an overhaul that makes it something else. That’s what reboots and remakes are for . . . Well, that and cash grabs.
Never be afraid to doubt yourself when writing the sequel. You aren’t a master after one book or even one hundred. People make mistakes, so you need to follow your gut on what works and what doesn’t. This is especially true if you fear that you’re forgetting something that’s been established.
New characters need to shine, but try not to overshadow the established cast. A few can take some steps back to make room in the spotlight, but you don’t want to replace everyone. Bring the fresh faces up to equal standing with the veterans, especially through interactions.
Don’t think that just because you described a character, location, monster, or thing in the first book means you can skip it entirely. Some readers might not remember the details while others could be starting in the middle of the series. You don’t have to go in-depth, but pepper reminders throughout the story in regards to key points like hair color, nervous tics, identifying marks, etc. This also helps with creating a bridge between the volumes.
As much as you have to remember the past, you still have to pave towards the future of the series. This means, you never stop world-building. Create layers upon the foundation you built in the first book and flush out whatever shows signs of being more than window dressing. Besides, you never know if there are other stories hidden in the details.
Be careful changing cover styles and series titles. If you decide to rename the series or simply put a series name on it then be ready for a little confusion. This can be greatly reduced by announcing it and making the proper changes to the first volume. Not a good chance of the same happening with the cover. You’d be surprised how many readers will see a cover style change and assume it’s a new series. If you can afford to revamp the previous book as well then it helps, but you’ll have to make clear note of the book being a sequel in the blurb to reduce this headache. (Talking from experience.)
Don’t forget to have fun. Once the writing becomes more work than play, you risk losing that spark.
Today’s post was written by my good friend, Lyn Miller-Lachmann, one of my classmates from VCFA. Lyn has written novels like Gringolandia, Surviving Santiago, and Rogue. She’s here to talk about her work as a translator. Take it away, Lyn!
The months of August and September are busy times for us translators of children’s books. For the past several weeks, we’ve honored international women writers and the women who have translated their work, and next month we recognize those books for children originally published outside the U.S. and Canada, many of them translations, as part of #WorldKidlit month.
I have had the good fortune to translate six books for young readers from Portuguese to English, all but one of them written by women. I became a translator quite by accident when I attended a meeting of children’s book authors where Claudia Bedrick, the publisher of
Hi to all the Story Empire readers! P. H. here for this week’s Wednesday post with a bit of marketing news. For those with a newsletter, there were some recent major issues with one of the bigger email marketing services that you may not have noticed. MailerLite reported they were blacklisted several weeks ago and they have been working with the issue since. Here’s the scoop on what happened, what MailerLite has done and how you can keep your newsletter delivering correctly.
First of all, it’s important to remember when using larger email marketing services like Mailchimp, MailerLite and others that their reputations regarding SPAM are affected by the larger email marketers which can affect smaller ones like those of writers. Personally, I was using a smaller, author-designed service until a few months ago. It had a better SPAM reputation across the board and I had great results. Unfortunately, the…
Trade Remained Publishing’s Brightest Spot in 2017
The release late last month by the Association of American Publishers of its final sales estimates for 2017 highlighted a number of trends. Although total sales were down only marginally in 2017 compared to 2016, industry sales have now fallen for three consecutive years, dropping roughly 6% between 2014 and 2017, when sales were estimated at $26.23 billion.
During the 2014–2017 period, of the four major categories tracked by AAP, only the trade segment recorded gains. Indeed, between 2014 and 2017, while overall industry sales fell 6%, trade sales managed to rise 3.4%. Between 2014 and 2017, the professional publishing segment had the steepest decline, with sales falling 24.2%. Sales in the higher education market dropped 18.0% and pre-K–12 segment sales were off 24.2%. All three segments are dealing with changing expectations from their customers. But in something of a bright spot, all…
I was tempted to introduce Lost right away, but I think I’m going to save that for next week. This one makes for a great build up. Windemere is a pretty dangerous place if you’re not careful.
Unless you spend most of your time under a rock, you will have heard of Facebook’s troubles regarding its cavalier use of its user’s personal data. Zuckerberg was grilled in Congress and they were recently fined £500,000 for their role in the big Cambridge Analytical data scandal, which saw some 87 million Facebook users have their data exposed and used to influence political elections.
Facebook’s Response
As reported by Ron Douglas, Facebook has responded by quietly taking away targeting options that were based on sensitive data they don’t want people to know they had in the first place.
These include options built on the data provided by third-party companies like Axiom or Experian. These options are called Partner Categories and are very powerful when trying to target users based on the behaviors they take outside of Facebook. This explains why you may search for shoes on Google and…
Well, we’re coming up on the release of War of Nytefall: Lost. It wasn’t too long ago that War of Nytefall: Loyalty came out, but about 17 years have passed for the Dawn Fangs and old-world vampires. You would think such powerful beings would have settled things by now. After all, Clyde can take out armies and some of his enemies are weak against the sun. Just charge into the enemy stronghold, tear everyone apart, and get home in time for dinner. Fortunately for readers, none of it went that way because I needed to have a large time jump. The only question was the rationale for it taking so long, which has a few different answers.
Clyde really did screw up in the first book. He wanted a challenge instead of simply taking the ‘throne’, so he didn’t put this war to bed right away. Now, faced with a paranoid and influential enemy, he’s no longer in a position to end things quickly. He could charge in to destroy everyone, but the sides have already been drawn and he’s been told that he would simply create a new power vacuum. This means he has to draw things out until it’s clear that the old-world vampires can’t win.
His enemies are well aware of his power, so they’ve heavily warded their fortress. The smaller groups don’t have this protection, but Clyde is too destructive to use on the minor targets. This means he’s negated for the most part because he can’t get to his cautious enemies. Although, he could bash his way through them, but they’re strong enough to hurt and anyone who follows would be killed instantly. Last thing Clyde wants is to lead a charge that only he can survive.
A full slaughter would require eliminating vampires who are known to the mortals as well as making it a very public fight. Clyde is determined to keep the Dawn Fangs a secret for as long as possible. The threat of the entire world turning on such dangerous predators before they can prove they’re peaceful looms over everything. Even the old-world vampires hold to this rule because they would get swept up in the elimination campaign. Keep in mind that this isn’t even 100 years after the Great Cataclysm, so the mortal lands are still nervous about another world-changing event. The appearance of powerful vampires who are immune to the sun could easily be seen as the next disaster.
Immortals don’t have the best concept of time since they live forever. So, these 17 years might have gone in the blink of an eye for some of the combatants. They have the luxury of being more cautious and planning since they don’t have to worry about old age or disease playing a factor. That isn’t to say some of the Dawn Fangs aren’t getting impatient though.
Not all of the books in War of Nytefall will have such long jumps, especially when it reaches a certain point. The war is going to heat up and barrel forward at some point, but it’s a lot of poking and prodding now. You also have outside forces stepping into play while both sides get their act together. In War of Nytefall: Lost this would be the womb-born and the Utukku. In fact, most of the books will deal with an outsider trying to take advantage of the war. The reason for this is because Clyde and his enemies could finish this in one battle. Yet, they have that fear of the unknown and a constant jockeying to make sure they have it in the bag.
One positive part of the drawn out war is that I get to write immortals demonstrating a fatigue with everything. They know they live forever and accept that they have time to do things right. Yet, they also know that they have eternity to do everything they want. If you had the time to visit every place on Earth, eat every food, and experience everything without rushing then you’d be a little bummed about only being able to fight. As long as the war goes on, the Dawn Fangs have to stay in the shadows and avoid indulging in their desires. Well, I guess the positive was for me as an author doing character development and not for the headaches that the characters go through.
Unless you’re a new visitor to my blog, you’ll have heard that my latest book, A Heaven For Toasters, is now live. Set in the near future, A Heaven for Toasters is more than a sci-fi crime romance. It’s the book that will make you look at your toaster in a whole new way. And you can read it on Amazon for only 99c.
One of the more popular pieces of technology featured in the book is self-driving flying cars called zoomers. They are like a big bubble sitting on top of a number of more, smaller bubbles. The former sits the passengers; the latter, the engines. It all sounds terribly futuristic, but then I came across an Atlas Obscura post featuring The Automatic Motorist, A British short film from 1911.
In it, a robot chauffeur is given as a gift to a newly wedded couple. The robot…
That’s a serious question up there. If I’m stepping back from writing then there aren’t going to be a lot of weekly goals. Nothing beyond the basic, which would be sleep, work, eat, and spend time with my son. That last one is the only thing that will really bring out some stories too. So, these posts might become a little thin for a while. Not unless I get to a point where I can touch my notebooks.
It was pointed out that I’ve been talking about this coming for most of the year. I’ve stated a lot that the money has dropped significantly in terms of royalties and this might be it unless War of Nytefalltook off like a rocket. My hope was to work my ass off to go down fighting and start working towards the other path around November. Current situations have forced my hand faster than I’d like, so I spent a lot of the week researching jobs and mourning. I am happy that a lot of people have offered to help me do promotions every few months to keep me active. There are also a bunch of volunteers for War of Nytefall: Lost, which could end up being my last book for a while. Thank you so much for that because it makes me feel like I’m not dead yet.
Miracle Max from Princess Bride
I want to talk about the future. Let me make this a bit easier and do sections to stop myself from rambling:
Writing/Publishing
As it stands right now, I won’t be doing much writing because things are too chaotic. I also can’t get my head right to do more than daydream. Keep fearing that touching a notebook will cause trouble, so I’ve put all of them on a shelf. When things settle, I’ll probably go back to outlining and preparing other series for the possibility of a return. For those who want to say that I can’t give up and need to keep writing, there are things going on that prevent that right now. So, no amount of pep talks are going to get me back into the ideas until maybe mid-September.
With publishing, I have War of Nytefall: Lost coming out without question. The third volume will have to wait until maybe spring of 2019 if I can even do it then. It’s written, but not edited and I don’t have the heart to go into it right now. Even if I could, I need to redirect my attention to job hunting and can’t go full bore (boar?) into preparing a book for publishing. Lost has already been edited, has blurbs to be tested tomorrow, and the cover art. So, I’m probably going to be writing for myself more than others for a bit. Kind of a hard pill to swallow.
The Blog and Social Media
I’ll be keeping up with the daily pinned Tweet, but it might be only retweeting in early mornings and night. Depends on the job and schedule I get. The blog is going to be something different. The ‘Goal Posts’ will continue and I’ll be repeatedly making offers to host guest posts. I have everything scheduled through October too, but that might only be guest posts and the Raven finale. Monster Maker would require more time than I have at this time and I won’t be able to get to comments so quickly to do character interviews. Feel like this is going to hurt me the most. After October, I’m not sure what I can do as far as posts. A Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule still requires time and I don’t know what I would write. I considered doing Teaser Tuesdays every week, but choose from any of my books instead of just the most recent one.
There are two other blog options that require their own paragraph. I finished writing Derailing Bedlam a while back and never published it. That can be made a weekly blog post and I can do the same with Ichabod Brooks once Lloyd and Cassidy are done. This is a tough one since ‘Bedlam’ is an outlier for me since it isn’t fantasy and a higher rating than the others. Yet, I don’t have any of the new Ichabod Brooks stories written. I could start working on those and hit January with one on Monday and one on Friday. This is only if I can get my head and heart together to start writing them. It also abandons November and December. I can’t do any interactive back-and-forth interviews, but maybe I can do a poll to get favorite characters from all my series. Then, I’ll put a post up for people to leave questions and do the answer post a few days later. Just throwing things against the wall. I would really appreciate any suggestions for post topics and ideas.
Health
My health has taken a hit here. Lost my appetite for a few days and I’ve been averaging 2-3 hours of sleep a night. Finally got a 5 hour snooze last night, but only because I was so exhausted. I worry that this is going to make job hunting even harder. Doesn’t help that I have no idea what I’m doing.
Jobs
This is the tough one because my son is still on summer break. I expected the last few weeks to be me getting him mentally and emotionally ready for 4th grade. Last year, he was having fun until the day before school when he abruptly became terrified of getting on the bus. I was aiming to work hard on preventing a repeat, but that’s not possible if I’m working or rushing off to interviews. It throws chaos into his life, which is when he begins acting out and regressing. My hope is that I can find a way to work from home for a little bit and start the real hunting once he’s back in school. Anything that I can do in the morning, at night, and when he’s at school would be ideal. I’m going to check out Flexjobs, which is a site dedicated to remote jobs. Proofreading, data entry, and the like are where my strengths are going to come in handy. If this does work out then maybe I can combine that with a part-time position, but it’s going to be taking things by steps. I keep wanting to factor writing into this, but I know I shouldn’t. For now, I’m going to push for enough time that my son is ready for school and try for a few work-at-home gigs. That’s the plan for now.
This post has gotten pretty long and I want to end it with a list of goals, but I’ve got nothing. Feels like a lot of traditions are going to end this year. Raven is done, publishing 4 books a year won’t happen, Monster Maker can’t be accomplished, and the whole thing feels like it’s coming apart at the seams. Guess the plus side is that I haven’t been desperate enough to answer one of those ‘we found your resume’ emails. Those never end well.
First of all, it’s important to remember when using larger email marketing services like Mailchimp, MailerLite and others that their reputations regarding SPAM are affected by the larger email marketers which can affect smaller ones like those of writers. Personally, I was using a smaller, author-designed service until a few months ago. It had a better SPAM reputation across the board and I had great results. Unfortunately, the…
The release late last month by the Association of American Publishers of its final sales estimates for 2017 highlighted a number of trends. Although total sales were down only marginally in 2017 compared to 2016, industry sales have now fallen for three consecutive years, dropping roughly 6% between 2014 and 2017, when sales were estimated at $26.23 billion.
