Tuesday, December 23, 2014

New Site

I have a new site! It's at: http://strangerealm.com/ and it is awesome.

And this site has my blog in it. And it's mine. Which is why I will no longer write in this blog. If you are interested in reading whatever it is I have to say about my writing, please go to my new site! It has blog posts and a newsletter widget and an "about" page and... uh, well, that's pretty much it for now.

So go there, keep following my progress as I transform from aspiring indie author to a beautiful butterfly.

(This is a true fact. Indie authors wrap themselves in a cocoon made of delusions of grandeur and dreams, and weeks later they hatch as butterflies. Butterflies with E-books for wings, who drink book reviews. When they mate, they create anthologies)

Thursday, December 11, 2014

Onward and Upward!

So up until now, my next immediate step was in a gray area. Would Sleepless be published with Kindle Scout? Will it be me? When, why and how?

Now I can answer the questions to myself and to anyone who's interested:

Q: Will Sleepless ever be published?

A: Of course, silly questioning person. It'll be published in the next two months. Initially, I will probably only publish it on amazon.

Q: Why two months? Isn't it ready? You said it's ready!

A: Calm down, crazy questioning person. It's ready... but there are some small points to tie up:

  1. Sleepless has links within it to the blog of the protagonist. Those links actually work... except they don't. I still need to create the blog. The content is all there. It's all a matter of some design, domain acquisition and hosting
  2. I don't have a website yet, but I want to have one when Sleepless is published, so that I can redirect people from within the ending of the book to my website, so that they can register to my mailing list. So that has to happen too.
  3. There's some virtual paperwork to handle before I can publish my book. Tax... stuff. Some people are afraid of spiders, some of heights, some of clowns. I'm afraid of bureaucracy. But I'll get it done.
Q: Are you crying at night because you wanted to be published by Kindle Scout?

A: You're an annoying imaginary questioning person. I don't cry at night, I do my crying during the day. And not over this. This will probably be for the best, and is really no biggie.

Q: What is the meaning of...

A: And that's all for my Q&A between me and myself.

Q: Awww.


Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Oh Well...

So... No kindle scout for me. Not for Sleepless, anyway.

Disappointed?  A bit. Not dramatically. I've written five books before Sleepless. I've received 6-9 rejection letters for each of them (three were published). I'm used to rejection letters. The only thing different in this one is the e-mail I got straight afterwards:

Dear Michael Omer,

We wanted to let you know that your Kindle Scout nomination, "Sleepless", was not selected for publication. The author, Michael Omer, wanted to make sure you received this thank you message:

“Thank you, this means a lot to me...

This is, of course, the e-mail that all people who nominated my book receive. I nominated my own book (Not because I'm biased. I read the first 5000 words, and I thought it was awesome), so I received the same e-mail.

This is a decent thing. Kindle Scout lets an author send the people who nominated him to his blog or website, where he can update them regarding the book. However, since all my family and friends nominated my book, this is also a bit like publicly slipping on a banana peel.

So, to reassure everyone: I am not incredibly upset. I wasn't sure at all that this was the right thing for my book, and now the decision, for better or worse was made for me. The book will be published, hopefully in the next two months, and it will all be awesome.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

How Did I Get Here?

It's been a bit more than a month since I started my new career as an indie author. Of course the only thing that makes me an indie author is me claiming to be one, since I haven't published anything yet, and I guess some indie authors would say that the kindle scout program is not really self publishing. But I digress.

I've been happy this month. I've written in a much higher pace than ever before. So far this is one of the best things that ever happened to my writing career.

It's worth mentioning how I got here.

I was looking for some writer blogs. I was just approaching the task of sending out query letters to agents for "Sleepless", and the daunting task made me look for advice from my peers. In a "top X blogs for writers" list I found one blog for JA Konrath.

Here it is: http://jakonrath.blogspot.co.il/

I've read the most recent post, and the one before it. Then I read the "bio". Okay, this was some "self publishing" author who made it. I was used to disregarding this as "something I would never be able to do", since I had learned the hard way that I can't market for shit.

So I switched to another blog, which bored me, then I switched back and read some more.

How many posts before I started muttering "This is doable"? Four? Five?

And that's the thing that Konrath does so well. He makes it feel doable. He clarifies that as long as you know how to write, and as long as you're prepared to work hard for a long time, you will succeed. And that basically the main thing that you have to do is write a lot.

After reading twenty or thirty posts I was completely hooked. I bought a bad "how to self publish" book. Then I bought a good one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00OS96EYU/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title

I e-mailed some people who didn't really understand what I was so excited about (but they were polite about it). I scared my wife, who knows that I'm sometimes prone to impulsive decisions, and she made me promise that I won't self publish "Sleepless" that week. I bored people to tears with explanations about the wonderful era that we're in, and how writing has stopped being a dead-end job.

And I started writing again. It was great.

Monday, November 24, 2014

Goals

I've been told that as a writer, I should have some goals.

When I say told, I mean I read it in some blogs. So the person who gave me that wonderful advice is not necessarily aware of my existence. But he told me to have some goals, and have goals I shall.

So, my big goal for this year (and by this year I mean until the end of December 2015, because I started all this serious writing business on October, so I'm stealing a couple of months from 2014. Do not report on me to the time police) is to publish three books:


  1. Sleepless - Which is already written aside from some blog entries within the book, and is waiting for the Kindle Scout verdict (14 days to go)
  2. My point of view (temporary name) - My sci-fi thriller which I began writing last week, and am having a blast with
  3. Moth to a Flame - The sequel to Sleepless, which has a pretty good draft already written, but needs to be rewritten from scratch because of reasons.
To accomplish this large goal, I set a weekly word count goal of... 4000 words.

Yeah, I know. This might be a small number. Not for me, okay? I don't write so fast, I have three children and (Insert any excuse that sounds plausible here). 4000 words. I might make it larger but listen:

My point of view is intended to be a 50,000 word novel. This means I can write the first draft in two and a half months.

Moth to a flame is also about 50,000 words (perhaps a bit longer), so let's say three months.

And I still have a month and a week I stole from 2014. Muhahahaha.

So it's doable, and I'm not lazy. This is the current number of words that I can really write per week. This is not Nanowrimo. I plan to write for years to come. I can't do it in an insane sprint. I have to pace myself.

There we go. Some goals. We'll see how it goes.

Wednesday, November 19, 2014

First Chapters, Self Doubt

I've written the two first chapters of my new book yesterday, and invited in my old friend, self doubt.

Me: Hey, self doubt, please, come in.

SD: Thanks Michael. Don't mind if I sit down.

Me: That's actually my chair...

SD: Yeah.

Me: Uh... Would you like to drink anything? Tea? Coffee?

SD: Can you make coffee the way I like?

Me: I don't know, how do you like it?

SD: that's disappointing. Water's fine.

Me: Right. One glass of water, coming right up.

SD: Glass, huh?

Me: I don't... would you rather drink a mug of water?

SD: Nevermind. I'm not thirsty anymore. What do we have here?

Me: The first two chapters of my new book. Isn't it great?

SD: So this is a chase scene, huh?

Me: Well, it's more of an introduction. I want the readers to get a feel for the characters.

SD: There's a chase here.

Me: Yeah...

SD: It's crap.

Me: I know. I totally intend to rewrite it later.

SD: Of course you are. And the fact that you don't know how to write a chase scene doesn't have any impact on your writing skills.

Me: I didn't say it did. Does it?

SD: So, second chapter. What do we have here. Mhm. Uh huh. Hmmmm.

Me: I mean, I guess I could make it a bit more... interesting?

SD: Yeah?

Me: Yeah, I mean the first part definitely needs working on, and the dialog here about the elevator...

SD: Interesting character here, this Richie.

Me: Is he?

SD: What do you think?

Me: I can rewrite it. I can rewrite it all.

SD: No, no, it's really okay. I'm not bored at all.

Me: Bored? It's just the first two chapters...

SD: I think I'd like that water after all. It's becoming really dry here.

Some rewrites later this week. People say you should never edit the first draft while working on it. I say, get out of my office, I'm trying to work here, and stop giving me advice.

Sunday, November 16, 2014

Amy

So where does Amy (The protagonist of Sleepless) come from, originally?

During my honeymoon, which we spent in the far east, we visited China. If there was something we really fell in love with in China (and there was a lot to fall in love with), it was the tea houses. Each tea house was a calm, serene beautiful place, many times located in the middle of a park. You could order some tea, which would come with a huge jar of hot water for refills, and just sit there for as long as you'd like. People easily sit in a tea house for four or five hours, playing mahjong or talking to their friends. Me and my wife joined this Chinese national pastime, my wife practicing her calligraphy, and me writing. It was there that a concept for a book called "Amy's test" was born.

Amy's test was a story about a sixteen year old who was going through a crisis in life. Her best friend stopped talking to her, the guy she was in love with didn't return her love, her newly acquired friend turned out to be a mess, and over everything loomed an incoming math test which she had to score high in. The book's name of course has a double meaning where it literally means the math test, but the actual test is the way she handles those obstacles in her life... you get the gist.

The book never went anywhere. I think it isn't bad, but at the time no one wanted to publish it, and self publishing wasn't a thing yet (people self published, I guess, but it was much harder).

Much later, when I decided I want to write my scary thriller, I decided I needed a protagonist which was a fourteen year old girl. Then I realized I already wrote a protagonist I really like. True, she was sixteen, but presumably she was fourteen just two years prior, why not use her? She had a snarky voice, she was confused, headstrong, quick to act, and full of life. She was exactly what I needed.

A writer friend once told me that he took one of his stories, dismantled it and sold the parts. This is exactly what I did with Amy. I dismantled Amy's test, took her and a few choice lines, and sold those parts to Sleepless.




Friday, November 14, 2014

Hot and Trending

Okay, wow.

So it took only six days, and look what happened!

The Kindle Scout first phase is dependent upon the votes of the users. It's only natural for readers to vote for books that are in the "Hot and Trending" category, since there's a bigger chance that they'd get the free copy (which they get if the book they nominated is published). Therefore, the sooner someone (say...me) hits the "Hot and Trending" category, the bigger are his chances.

I'm there after six days, which is not bad at all.

Now just twenty four days more, and we'll find out if "Sleepless" is published by Kindle Scout...

Thursday, November 13, 2014

Storium

I've been a gamer once. It wasn't even that long ago. I loved playing video games. In fact, I still do! I recall the joy of playing Mass Effect, Walking Dead, Legends of Grimrock and many more. My digital game library sports more than a hundred games. I once (for two years) created a complex RPG called Misfortune (It still exists and you can check it out here: http://www.loadingames.com/).

However, something terrible happened. I joined Storium's Beta.

For those of you who don't know what Storium is (and I assume it's most of you since it hasn't launched yet), it's basically an online platform for creating shared stories. One player (or writer, however you want to call it) takes the role of the narrator, the other players each create a character in the story. The narrator writes the basic framework for the story, laying challenges for the players, who write how their characters react to this challenge.

I'm doing a ghastly job at explaining this, but I really don't want to dive into the details. You can check it out here: https://storium.com/ and if you want a well written explanation, you can get it here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/05/09/storium-pen-and-paper-rpg-pc/

You might notice that the last link is for rock paper shotgun which is a fantastic website for PC gamers, which I no longer read. And it's all their fault. Because they published this article and I followed their link and joined up.

I'm a parent for three small children, I work as a programmer, and write novels at night, I need to run at least three times a week because my cholesterol is up, and I have two dogs which I take out twice daily. This means I don't have a lot of leisure time. So once I joined Storium, and began having the time of my life, something had to pay.

That something was gaming. I think that, all in all, I played about 10 hours of video games since May. Before Storium I used to play about an hour every day.

There was nothing missing in my life. I had no idea that something like Storium existed, and had no need for it. But once I discovered it, I realized that, in fact I needed to play it. Constantly. I carved a place for it in my life. I've been a criminal called Sara Breadknife, and a medium whose guiding spirit was his dead ex-wife, and a heartbroken lost nerd called Peter Ross (My favorite), and a rich bitch called Charisma Chase and... so many more.

I was recuperating from my last publishing experience, and Storium reminded me how much I love to write. In all likelihood, without Storium this blog wouldn't have existed and I wouldn't have been writing every night, trying to self publish all the novels in my head

So thanks, Storium, for changing my life. And I hope that someday I'll play a video game once more.

This is part of my Storium dashboard. Each banner is a story I partake in

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Creating a Story Arc for a Crime Novel

While I'm waiting for the mysterious Kindle Scout to determine the fate of my novel, "Sleepless", I decided to start working on my new novel. This is completely irresponsible, there's still some work I need to do on Sleepless, whether it gets published by Kindle Press or not. However, to say the truth, I feel like I need to feel the new novel getting closer. I've been talking about writing it for months, and it keeps getting postponed due to Sleepless related issues (Okay, and one son being born. That also happened).

So I decided to work on the story arc. I have the basic premise. This is a sci-fi crime novel, about detectives in a police station in the year 2037. I have a plethora of ideas about how to construct the world, but I don't have an actual story. Which I guess is kinda important.

Okay, so I created a Google doc called imaginatively "sci-fi story outline" (what will I do when I want to write a second sci-fi novel?). And then I stared at the blank page a bit. And a bit more.

I had no idea where to start. I've never written a crime novel before. How do you even begin? In the police station? In the crime scene? Do I plan ahead the entire investigation or do I drop them in the scene and figure it out when the time comes? Finally I figured out an important concept.

The real hero of a crime story is the crime. Not the criminals, and not the detectives. If I want to outline the story, I need to really understand the crime. I wrote down six questions (with example answers, to help myself get in the mood). Here they are:


  1. What’s the basic story? E.g. husband killed wife because he found out she has an affair
  2. What’s the fact that makes this story special? The wife had an affair with her cousin
  3. What was the plan? The husband decided to kill his wife with a knife in the morning, when he should be at work.
  4. What went wrong with the plan? Someone at work noticed that he was gone, the wife managed to get the knife away from him and cut him with it, and he ended up choking her to death
  5. What are the red herrings? The wife had a well known feud with the neighbor, who once killed her cat. Lately the threats became more and more violent. In addition, the wife was a member of a BDSM club, who are known for choking some of their patrons
  6. Particular fact about the victim and about the offender - the husband collected rare fish. The wife just won an award for best blueberry pie in the district.
Okay! Time to get to work. I wanted this novel to focus on two murders which are solved one alongside the other. So I created two murders, and for each one I answered those six questions. Everything fell into place after that. It's the first time I created a story arc for a crime novel, but all in all it took about four and a half hours, which feels kinda fast. 

The only place I got stuck a bit was deciding upon a first scene. One of the problems in Sleepless, is that the first couple of chapters in the book are not very action packed. I think they're great, but editors and writers explained to me over and over that I have to hook the reader in the beginning. This is even worse in Kindle Scout, since they only display the first 5000 words (the real action in Sleepless begins around the 12000nd word).

Eventually I decided to start by placing two of my detectives in a stakeout. This will enable me to immediately get into some action in the first few pages, and give the readers enough time to understand the story premise before I begin lobbing murders at them.




Sunday, November 9, 2014

Kindle Scout

My book is up on Kindle Scout!

It's awesome, no doubt about it. I emitted a very unmanly shriek of glee this morning when I got the e-mail, really let out the twelve year old girl in me. There's a link, people are nominating my book (I know that because I am standing over their shoulder, grinning madly as they do it, their fingers shaking in fear).

So first of all, if you feel like having a look, you can see the book's page at: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/2EHOI0UNS9VB9 and of course, if you nominate it, I'll be ever so grateful.

Since it won't be there forever, here's a picture for prosperity:


(That's it there on the bottom right corner)

First impressions from Kindle Scout? It's a bit weird.

We live in the age of feedback, when the motto is pretty much "I've been re-tweeted, therefore I am". However, Kindle Scout doesn't tell me if anyone nominated my book, it won't tell me how many people watched it, or shared it or anything. I can only pray that enough people nominate it... and that's about it.

It's a bit liberating, actually. I can go to sleep knowing that I won't check the statistics of the site obsessively for the next 30 days. It either succeeds or it doesn't.

It's fun either way.

Thursday, November 6, 2014

In Narrowdale... Or Eerie Indiana?

When I was a child, there was a TV series I loved, called Eerie Indiana. It was about a kid who moved into a town (called Eerie. In Indiana. Duh), in which strange things constantly happened. The theme song, which echoed in my head for years afterwards showed Elvis, Bigfoot and a... dog jumping in circles. Which is less weird, but whatever.

Ah, wonderful technology, you can see it for yourself:


It's weird, the TV series that brand themselves in your brain. All in all, I think I saw four or five episodes, as I was constantly forgetting to turn on the TV when it ran. But I grew up thinking it was the best TV show ever created. As it turned out, it was cancelled after one season, joining freaks and geeks in the club of the series that were cancelled because someone was very very stupid.

I decided I want to write a book with a town like Eerie Indiana... Except a bit darker. Eerie Indiana was aimed for children, and focused on being funny. I wanted to write for teens, and wanted to focus on being a funny thriller (That's a real book category. Funny thrillers. They're all the rage).

In came Narrowdale, a boring, suburban town in which nothing seems to happen, but where dark secrets are buried deep. The local kids have a game called "In Narrowdale." in which each one takes his turn to state something that happens only in Narrowdale. There's a moment in the book where Amy, the protagonist is told about this games. Obviously, she asks:

“And who wins?”

“No one. We all live in Narrowdale. We all lose."

For example "Only in Narrowdale there's a small truck which drives around every night, leaving half a dozen eggs by each drain. By morning, all the eggs disappear."

Or: "Only in Narrowdale, there's a tree that has no shadow"

The funny thing is, people who read the book constantly tells me "Wow, this town is like Twin Peaks."

No one says it's like Eerie.




Wednesday, November 5, 2014

A Focus on Happily

I needed to choose a name for this blog. Blogs have names. That's the way it goes. My previous blog was called "assisting you shortly". When my wife asked me why I shrugged. The URL was available. It had a nice ring to it. She told me it's idiotic. I told her she doesn't understand.

She understands. Names are sometimes important. They reflect something. In "assisting you shortly", the name reflected the fact that I couldn't be assed to choose an actual name.

In this blog I chose "Writing Happily", and it reflects something. Writing... Well the blog is intended to be mostly about writing.

Happily? Does that mean that I am happily doing the thing I love, which is writing? Well...

I love to write, and many times I am happy to do so. But the happily in the title isn't just an adverb that describes the way I feel when I write. It's a decision that I intend to put an effort into.

Being happy sometimes demands effort. I am not one of those people who just say "Decide to be happy". That's too general, and there are things in life which challenge that decision all the time. But I think I can decide to write happily.

There are things that hounded me for the past months. I was depressed about the sales of my last book. I was sad about criticisms the last book received. And, worst of all, I started being envious and bitter about other writers. When I saw a writer posting his small success on Facebook, I felt angry. It's not like I didn't have my share of small successes, but I wanted his successes as well. And, being disposed to self reflection as I sometimes am, I became sad about this new trait that I developed as well.

So here are some decisions I decided to put an effort into:

I won't give in to envy. If a writer talks about his success I will like it. I will comment on it, telling him "You are awesome!". I can't decide not to feel envy, but I can decide not to let it manifest in any way, and to do the opposite. Envy is disgusting. Stating the obvious, I am not measured by the success of others.

I won't be depressed about sales. When you go into self publishing, you have to be prepared for bad sales. It's part of the deal. So I'll assume it'll happen, and I won't let it sadden me.

I won't be sad about bad criti... Yeah, okay. There's a limit to the power of the mind. Of course I'll be sad about bad criticism. I'll try not to let it consume me, though. And I'll never, ever engage critics (This is an easy resolution. It's what I'm prone to do by default).

Time to be happy with my writing career. Even if it's not a career, but a hobby. Even if it'll remain a hobby. I'll be happy about it. And when everything fails, and I can't be happy about it, I'll pretend I'm happy about it.

Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Gone Self Publishing

I'm a writer. I've been a writer since I was sixteen. These days I'm thirty five. Applying my amazing skill of mathematics, that means I've been writing for nineteen years!

Which is a bit of a lie.

Because there were years I didn't write. There were busy years in which I wrote very little. All in all, if I'm honest with myself, I'd say I've been writing for five years, top.

During that time I've published three novels, and had varying experiences which I hope to share in this blog. And I will! But not today.

Today I'll give the bottom line, which is... I think I'm going with self publishing now.

I have a novel in my hands, called "Sleepless". Fine, it's not actually in my hands, it's in the computer. But it could be in my hands, if I finally bought that printer I've been meaning to buy, and bought some A4 pages, and printed it. It would be in my hands then.

I've been a bit sad lately, thinking about this novel, which I love so very much. I've been sad because I knew I need to write agent queries, and send them out, and be rejected. And then, maybe... just maybe... I'll find an agent. And then he'll look for a publishing house, and maybe... He'll find one. And then the publishing house will publish my book, and maybe... it'll be moderately successful. And then it'll be out of print, because moderately is just not good enough these days.

And then I stumbled into the world of self publishing. I know, it's a bit like saying "I found this cool doohickey called an iPhone", but you have to understand that due to my bad marketing skills, I always ignored self publishing, justifying it to myself by saying I'll never be able to sell my book. So I ignored this world completely, and just found out about it when reading the blog "A newbie's guide to publishing (http://jakonrath.blogspot.co.il/) .

I'll talk about this blog at length, because it deserves it's own post in my blog that has no readers yet, but for now I'll just say that it opened my eyes. It made the task of living from writing seem doable. I never wanted to be incredibly successful. I just want to earn a decent paycheck, and apparently, with self publishing there is a chance to get that.

So how do I start? I could just toss "Sleepless" into the amazon self publishing path and see what happens... But then I discovered something else. A new service was just launched last week. Kindle Scout. It's crowd sourcing the task of finding new books, it's a pretty brilliant concept, and you can read all about it here: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/

It has another great advantage. It was launched last week. The category of sci-fi and fantasy, which is the category for my novel contains 48 books. Despite the fact that I've managed to discover self publishing after the rest of the world did, this was my small chance to be a pioneer.

I called my friend, Shahar Kober, who is a talented Children's books illustrator and asked if he knew someone who could make a cover for my book really fast. And he sighed and said "Yeah, okay. I'll do it." And he did. He asked no payment (in fact he insisted that he doesn't get any despite my pleading)

Here is the wonderful cover:


And today I've been working on creating a 500 characters summary for my book, a 45 character blurb that describes my book and a 500 character bio.

Here is what I currently have:

summary

Amy knew she’d hate Narrowdale, a boring suburban town. How could it possibly compare to L.A., where she lived her entire life? Being a high school freshman in a new place made things even worse. And that was before she started having the same nightmare over and over again. Before she woke up every night to a shrill whistling sound outside her window. Before she met a homeless man who seemed to know way too much.  Some things seemed to happen only in Narrowdale, where dark secrets were hiding beneath the surface…

Blurb

Either: What dark secrets hide in this suburban town?
Or: Don’t fall asleep. Don’t dream. Don’t get caught.

(It really depends on what I want to accomplish. And I'm not sure what that is)

Bio

Michael Omer is a writer, journalist and game designer. He wrote and published his first novel when he was sixteen, and figured he’d keep at it, why not. Since then, he has published two more novels, and wrote… who can even count how many? He’s happily married to a woman who keeps pushing him to write more, and has three kids who insist he should stop writing and come play with them. He also has two dogs. Let’s not mention the fish. He should really do something about the fish.

And there were additional tasks (making sure the first 5000 words of the book are awesome, changing some chapters, adding a chapter... stuff)

So hopefully I'll submit tonight. I'm excited as hell.