Finally, Bad Monkey has a cover picture at B&N

Bad Monkey is available online at Barnes and Noble.

Barnes and Noble finally put up the cover image for Bad Monkey, the ebook that I collected the second year's worth of newsletter articles that I wrote for Hearthstone Community Church. I am not sure where there was a delay for the cover to appear there; I guess that B&N has some manual vetting and approval process for covers. What I do know is that my little ebook spent the whole Christmas shopping season without a cover picture. I can't imagine that helped its sales any. Oh well, B&N now shows that it actually has a cover picture of a very bad monkey armed with a hammer, breaking up pottery.

What an art day is like for me

Art?! No, this lap is made for Kitty.

First, one cat decides that my lap is not meant to be used for an art pad.

Can I eat these?

Then another cat debates eating my color pencils.

My turn in the art area.

Then a third cat decides that my lap and attention is better focused on a kitty.

At least, I am making some progress.

But despite it all, I swear that I am making some progress on some artwork.

Why you want to hire a real artist to do your illustrations

And I learned here that my cheap crayons are better than some of my oil pastels. 

Looking around the vast regions of ebooks being published, one cannot help noticing the artwork of the book covers being trotted out. In some case, the artwork is like "Wow--who is the artist? I so want them on my team." And in other cases, it is "God, I hope that you did the artwork yourself because you paid too much otherwise."

There are reasons to hire a real artist even if you can draw a straight line and/or modify photos in Photoshop. Just like there is a whole bunch of rough drafts and technical knowledge involved in being a writer (also applies to formatters, social media pros, and editors...perhaps even publishers), there is also a whole bunch of technical knowledge and puttering around involved with being an artist.

Just take for instance, the technical knowledge of various art materials. Oil pastels sound so much better than colored pencils, don't they?

But in practice, you could end up with a piece of bad art like the above development piece. It turns out that some oil pastels are worse than the cheapest box of crayons.

Oh, maybe you say it is just a bad artist. Ok, the blue scary monster below is by the exact same artist using the exact same paper. The difference? Oh, he used colored pencils instead.

Of course, to figure out that colored pencils are a better option (at least, compared to this particular set of oil pastels), he had to spend some time doing a rough piece of artwork. This is why artists do not necessarily work at the speed that one thinks that they should.

And if you do not want to spend a lot of time developing your art talent and learning a lot of stuff about various art materials, yet want decent artwork, you are better off hiring a professional artist.

Same artist, same paper, different medium. 

The original pencil sketch (changed color filter for contrast).

Stuff that you need to know about being a writer (but were afraid to ask)

Over on the BookTrust blog, Matt Haig blogged the 37 facts that he knows about being a writer. And hey, since it is a good idea...and this is the blogosphere, and I am a writer...this is my list of 26 things that I know about being a writer. (26 things because that is the number of letters in the English alphabet.) So here is more or less, everything that I know about being a writer after thirty-four years of writing (twenty-eight years actually spent being involved in the actual trade of being a paid writer), having sold greeting card slogans, numerous erotica stories, working for a college newspaper and several magazines, having done five years of monthly columns (astrology and Wicca), and having restarted my business last year.

1--The quickest way to annoy a writer is to suggest an idea to them, and then offer to allow the writer to write up the project while you take fifty percent of the proceeds just for having the idea. If it was so easy to write up the idea, then you should do it yourself and leave the writer to work with their own ideas. It is not like there is only one Muse in the world.

2--Writers have been practicing their story telling craft since they learned to spell, if not before they learned to talk.

3--Writers are insulted by the idea that all creative works should be given freely to the world. They are also insulted by the idea that the life span of their copyright should be less than their own and their spouse's lifetimes, plus a dollop of years for their dependents. Even more insulting is the idea that other people should be allowed to use their work without paying the writer.

4--Writers are deeply offended by the idea that they should support themselves with a burger flipping job, even if that burger flipping job involves retail work or a cubicle. In a writer's mind, a writer should be paid for what they do best.

5--While writers do believe that certain forms of writing are better than others, they do not need you to tell them which forms are better. Writers are quite capable of being judgmental all by themselves. The same holds true for market venues (traditional v. indie), other writers and their works; writers can weigh the merits of the written word without the need to consult you or your chosen model of literary standards.

6--Occasionally a writer will give away some of their work. It is called advertising, and does not violate the idea that writers should be paid for their hard work.

7--It is easier to find a new client than convince an existing client to pay a writer more; this is especially true if the writer started out by giving away some of their writing in order to gain a few bylines and portfolio items. It is not heresy for a writer to move onto more monetary rich pastures.

8--A writer is always working, even when it looks like they are playing computer games. Napping, gardening, and talking on the phone are also working on projects. Some of the best writing occurs while loading the dishwasher or taking a shower. The writer's work starts in their brain, and grows long before it is committed to paper or pixels.

9--A writer is capable of ignoring dirty floors and mountains of moldy dishes; such things are not visible in the world of forms and forces that their mind works in.

10--Writers can be driven to the keyboard by the lack of rent and cat food money. This is not prostitution of their talents; it is survival. If a writer could find a rich patron, they would be quite happy to never to write adcopy or any of the less-savory forms of writing ever again...provided that the less-savory forms did not give them a challenge.

11--Writers can play the same song over and over a thousand times without noticing that others are being driven crazy by it. In fact, the same song being repeatedly played may be essential to their writing process.

12--All writers write something that they do not admit to writing.

13--Pen-names, deadlines, and editors are just tools to help a writer be able to write more.

14--A writer's routines are holy, and necessary to compel their Muse to show up. The most valuable routine is quiet time at a keyboard.

15--Writers consider the details about their characters and worlds to be amorphous. A writer will never allow an inconvenient "established" detail to stand in the way of a good story.

16--Writers tend to collect books, cats, and stray facts.

17--Writers live on unguarded food, especially cookies, chips, and soda.

18--Writers obsess over their sales figures and audience numbers.

19--Writers hate people who expound upon how professional writers do things, especially when the expounder is not a professional writer themselves.

20--Despite popular opinion, writers know that not everyone can write. Likewise, they realize that not everyone can fix a car engine, or do plumbing and electrical work. Writers, being specialists, believe that specialists should be used as needed and paid well for their services.

21--Stories eventually find their audiences. The trick is to be happy with the size of one's audience, and have the skill to be able to grow it as time goes by.

22--The hacks of today are busy producing the works that will be studies in tomorrow's literature classes. Shakespeare was a hack; the proof of this is that he wrote entertainment for the masses--even more damning is the fact that he was doing it for money. A successful writer embraces being a hack.

23--Writers cannot help writing. A writer who is no longer writing is dead, or at the very least, very, very sick. Writing keeps the monkeys in one's head from screaming too loudly.

24--All writers are mentally ill. After all, all writers lock themselves up to be alone with their imaginary friends.

25--The market for writing is always changing. A successful writer deals with the market as it is, not as it should be. A successful writer has numerous projects going on, and cultivates new venues to sell their work in.

26--A successful writer needs a strong ego and well-established personal boundaries. They must be able to turn down work that does not help their career, and be able to defend their schedule and mental health from those who want to rob them of their limited time and sanity.

Bad Monkey is now available from B&N

The Bad Monkey ebook is now available online at Barnes and Noble.

The good news is that Bad Monkey--the Collected 2011 Hearthstone Community Church Articles is available for sale online from Barnes and Noble (99 cents). The bad news is that there is no cover image for the ebook. *sigh* Not that the cover would actually help the ebook sell--after all, it is more of a in-joke between my friends and me (shared with those who attended the June 2011 Open Full Moon ritual), but still I can't imagine it doing better without the cover image being available. There is also no product description, and the sample size is so small that you really can not get a flavor for my writing style. Oh yeah, this is really going to sell. Yes, you can file this under "The joys of writing ebooks."

Tentacle Sex Fiends

That thing on Trump's head is a Tentacle Sex Fiend.

Something that one notices when one writes erotica, especially after this spring's Paypal fit over the Forbidden Four, are the weird things that other erotica writers are hacking out.

One of these weird things is Tentacle Sex. Yes, erotica involving tentacles (demonic and/or alien), especially slimy tentacles and dubious consent. Isn't that bordering on two of the Forbidden Four?!

At first, I thought that it was just a Lovecraft fan taking their Lovecraft fetish to a new level. But then I noticed that more than one person was writing about tentacle sex. Ok, maybe there is more than one writer out there with a Lovecraft fetish, I thought. Then I noticed more tentacle sex show up in the Smashwords front page display--enourgh to make me curious.

So last night, I decided to punch in "tentacle sex" into the search form at Smashwords (400 plus in the results), Barnes and Noble (between 400 and 100, depending upon how refined your search is), and Amazon (about 400 results). And there are a couple of dozen writers who seem to specialize in this sub-genre, with a half dozen or more tentacle sex ebooks apiece. More telling is the fact that the prices seem to be solid at $2.99 for three or four thousand words.

Ok, I understand why the writers are writing this stuff. After all, I write one of the Forbidden Four...because, well, people buy the stuff, and I have cats to feed. (In fact, it was the realization that someone was getting paid to write one of the Forbidden Four that got me started as a professional writer.) As a writer, occasionally you write something as a test...to see if there are some sex fiends out there who will like your tasty erotica offering.

And if you make enourgh, you write more of that type. Your focus as a writer tends to go when the money is...especially if you are good at writing a genre or sub-genre (even if it does not personally turn your own crank) and the pay is decent. But in order to sell the stuff, there has to be readers.

So my question, given my search results, is: Who are these tentacle sex fiends?!

I mean, based on my search results, there has to be quite a few of them. You wouldn't get that much of this stuff up in the five years that ereaders have been around if there wasn't a fair number of them. Could my neighbor be an alien tentacle fan?! My doctor?! The bag-boy or bag-girl at the local grocery store?! How about the cop at the local station house?! Is the world filled with these tentacle sex fiends?!

Of course, the bigger question is should I attempt to write a tentacle sex story myself to test the market. What?! I am supposed to be classier than that--who did you think that you have been reading? Miss Manners?

After all, I have cats to feed; and I have already proven that I really have no pride left, thanks to my empty wallet.

(And before you ask, no, I will not advertise any tentacle sex offerings here...I have my silly rules about not advertising most of my more interesting work--call it a small town sense of shame. Only wholesome fiction and esoteric commentary gets advertised here.)

Now available on Barnes and Noble

Shakespheare's Monkey is now available on Barnes and Noble.

Revised cover for Pizza Boxes on the Floor: The Collected 2010 Hearthstone Articles.

Shakespheare's Monkey, a collection of my short-short fiction that I wrote a few years ago is now available on Barnes and Noble for $1.99. It took me awhile to get it up on B&N because I was having trouble with creating a linked table of contents--now, that I have learned the trick, I have to go fix a couple of my previous ebooks to the improved table of contents type.

Sometime, before the first of the year, I plan on assembling and uploading the 2011 collection of Hearthstone articles (Bad Monkey); also possibly the 2012 collection (Lunatic with a Soapbox).

Also available on Barnes and Noble is Pizza Boxes on the Floor: The Collected 2010 Hearthstone Articles (99 cents). In 2010, I started to write a monthly column for the Hearthstone Community Church's newletter. Recently, I had the chance to fix the table of contents. While the metadata and sample are out of date, the cover has switched to the new cover (I lost the original file, and Smashwords recently upped the suggested cover size), so I presume that it is actual the version with the fixed table of contents.

Remember that buying books from me helps support the cat on the cover--he likes the really tasty expensive food. Be kind to kitty--buy an ebook from me.