Geeks, freaks, cheers and beers.
Mario here:

What I'm reading this week:

Tainted Mountain by Shannon Baker.











Big congratulations and a fly-over of the corporate UFO to Rudy Ch. Garcia for his Honorable Mention in the category of Fantasy/ Science Fiction novel in the 2013 Latino Book Awards for The Closet of Discarded Dreams.











Warning! If you missed this year's Denver ComicCon, you might get your geek credentials revoked. Just sayin'


After a long absence (years!), I did my bit at the Larimer Square Chalk Festival. Three days on my hands and knees, getting so down and dirty that I'm surprised I wasn't arrested.


My fellow scriveners,

• Spinning your writer wheels? 
• Looking for inspiration and support? 
• Is a thirst holding your Muse hostage and you must pay the ransom with booze? 

If you checked any of the above, then sign up for this year's Lighthouse Lit Fest. Bring your trusty writing implement, bend a knee, and learn from the fabulous Lighthouse faculty: Steve Almond, Robin Black, Andre Dubus III, Bill Henderson, Gordy Hoffman, Erika Krouse, Thomas Lux, David Wroblewski, and Jason Heller. Plus me, and I'll be teaching these craft seminars:

Monday, June 10. You Had Me At Hello.
A great story begins with a great intro. The opening lines of your novel should draw the reader into your house of magic. Make them suspend disbelief and follow you deep into the drama. In this workshop we’ll discuss masterful opening lines and analyze the techniques used to create a compelling tone and an engaging voice. Participants are invited to bring the first page of a fiction (or narrative nonfiction) work-in-progress.

Thursday, June 13. The Longest Distance: Putting Your Ideas On The Page.
It’s been said that the longest distance your ideas will ever travel is from your head to your hands. We’re writers and we live to write—or so we say. Then why don’t we write? Why are writers masters of procrastination? In this workshop we’ll discuss self-defeating behaviors, head trash, and those other nasty demons that keep hijacking our motivation. More importantly, we’ll discuss techniques to shorten the distance between your head and your hands.

Monday, June 17. Start With The Diamond: The Premise of a Great Novel.
Your brain is bursting with ideas for a wonderful novel—your big breakthrough. But you’ve been here before. A hundred pages into the manuscript, you peter out. Those great ideas stagnate and your plot turns into a soggy mess. In this workshop we’ll discuss how theme and character motivation drive the story. We’ll drill through your plot to find the true premise—the diamond—that you can build your story around. Participants are invited to bring an outline for a novel that we’ll discuss to find the diamond.

And...Thursday evening, June 13, I'll be on the salon panel, Yes You Can: Writing in a Subjective World. 

Labels: Denver ComicCon, Hulk smash!, Jason Heller, Lit Fest, Rudy Ch. Garcia

  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 7:41 PM  4 comments

  Three Cheers. For Jon, Rudy, and Lit Fest.
Mario here:





A huge grito to Rudy Ch. Garcia on being named a finalist in the Best Novel--Fantasy/Sci-Fi category of the 2013 International Latino Book Award for his novel, The Closet of Discarded Dreams. We'll raid the petty cash jar to grease the appropriate palms in his favor.






 


 Lighthouse Writers Workshop presents its eighth annual Lit Fest & Book Fair, June 7-22, 2013. It's your chance to mingle with a fabulous bunch of booze hounds community of writers addicted to novels, poems, short fiction, memoirs, and screenplays. I'm teaching three craft seminars--You Had Me At Hello; The Longest Distance: Putting Your Ideas on the Pages; and Start with the Diamond: The Promise of a Great Novel. Plus I'm on a salon, Yes You Can: Writing in a Subjective World. Check out the catalog. See you there. I'll pour your first glass of wine.

Labels: John D.MacDonald, Jon Bassoff, Lighthouse Writers, Lit Fest, New Pulp Press, Rudy Ch. Garcia

  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 8:58 PM  3 comments

  For Xmas--My Next Big Thing Mario here:


What I'm reading now:

Factotum by Charles Bukowski

I got tagged a couple of weeks back by Scott Browne who was trolling for victims for The Next Big Thing blog meme. I mean, this multi-level marketing approach to pimping our books was certain to go viral and get us scads of publicity. Yes!

My Next Big Thing? The University of Doom.
Where did the idea come from for the book?

Am not sure. Like most of my ideas, it materialized from the fog of a hang-over. Or while I was speaking in tongues.
 
What genre does your book fall under?

YA.

Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie
rendition?

A cross between an adolescent Boris Karloff and a young Cantinflas.




 
















 What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

Young Alfonso Frankenstein battles the evil James Moriarty to save his middle-school ass. And his dad's.

Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

The gods will decide.

How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

Much too long.

What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

Frankenstein (duh!), Lord of the Flies, and anything by Tim Dorsey and Tolstoy.

Who or What inspired you to write this book?

Utter and complete desperation. That and the voices in my head.

What else about your book might pique the reader's interest?

If you love robots, monsters, and middle-schoolers reanimating the dead, this is the book for you.
 
Below are the people I tagged. All great writers and worthy of gold-plated pimpage.

Aaron Michael Ritchey is a writer and inspirational speaker from Littleton, Colorado. He belongs to several writers organizations and will be the emcee of the Pikes Peak Writers Conference in April 2013. Thank you for letting him share his stories.

About Jaye Wells. After several years as a magazine editor and freelance writer, USA TODAY Bestselling author Jaye Wells finally decided to leave the facts behind and make up her own reality. Her overactive imagination and life-long fascination with the arcane and freakish blended nicely with this new career path. Her Sabina Kane urban fantasy series is a blend of dark themes, grave stakes and wicked humor. Jaye lives in Texas with her saintly husband and devilish son.

Rudy Ch. Garcia’s noir detective story LAX Confidential appeared in Latinos in Lotusland, Bilingual Press (’08). His Southwest fantasy, Memorabilia (honorable mention in Writers Digest competition) appeared in Needles & Bones, Drollerie Press. A SF-fantasy flash fiction piece A Grain of Life is viewable at AntiqueChildren.com (’09), and a humor-fantasy-horror, Weird Ronnie, took first place in an AlternateSpecies.com competition in Britain. The fantasy story Mr. Sumac published in AQC’s journal Kingdom Freaks & Other Divine Wonders, Spring 2012. His SF short Last Call for Ice Cream was accepted by Rudy Rucker, Sr., for his Flurb webzine #13, 3/12. Garcia is a quasi-ex-member of the Northern Colorado Writers Workshop, holds a B.A. in writing from the University of Colo.-Denver and works as a Denver-area bilingual elementary teacher. He is a founder-contributor to LaBloga.blogspot.com, a Chicano literary website.

Feliz Navidad, amigos!
 

Labels: Aaron Michael Ritchey, Charles Bukowski, Frankenstein, Jaye Wells, Rudy Ch. Garcia, Santa Claus, Scott Browne, University of Doom

  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 8:18 PM  0 comments

  The marketing road to nowhere Mario here:

Another Colorado Gold conference is in the rear view mirror. Gold conference number 30 to be exact. It was another welcome opportunity to reunite with writer friends and get all wonky about writing commercial fiction. The Saturday keynote speaker, NYT romance author Jodi Thomas, had us laughing as she spun her tale of going from rejected wannabe to making the "List." Sunday's farewell speaker, Debra Dixon, shared her stories of getting published, dealing with a rotten review, and making the transition from author to publisher.

And next:

Newly published novelist Rudy Ch. Garcia hosts his book launch signing at El Centro Su Teatro's Civic Theater, Sunday, Sept 16, 5pm. Go show him some love.








 
There's no doubt that the growing phenomenon of eBooks is changing the structure of the publishing industry. One concern among both writers and readers is the trend to rush a manuscript into epublication before the book is ready. The big question is: How can you tell? If you've been through the ordeal of submitting query letters and getting rejections, then it's tempting to avoid that heartache by publishing the work yourself. After all, there are plenty of writers who've done rather well self-publishing on Amazon and Nook. Hugh Howey, Elle Lothlorien, and Lynda Hilburn are three good examples.

With that thought, I was drawn to the blog by Penny C. Sansvieri addressing 7 Signs That You're Not Ready to Publish, thinking she'd shed much needed light on the topic. Sadly, no.

What most bothered me was this:

2. You haven't researched your market or genre: This is another biggie and oddly enough, very often overlooked. Do you know what's selling in your industry? Who else is writing about your topic? Have you bought or read their books? It's important to know what's trending in your market, what's selling and what isn't. It's always good to read other people's work because you really want to know how others are addressing the topic that you're going to be writing about. Not only that, but these could be great people to network with.

If you're a novelist, chasing trends will lead you nowhere. Writing a novel can take months or even years. Unless your book is gonna get fast-tracked by the publisher, expect at least a year between submitting the manuscript to your editor and seeing the book on the shelf. Remember the zombie mash-ups a few years back? The pipeline for the first of those books was greased before the initial word doc was created. But the market dried up in a hurry and I know of one author who got burned in the process. Right now we're in the middle of Fifty Shades mania and it'll be interesting to see how hot that market remains.

Years ago, we were told that Anne Rice had written everything the public wanted about vampires. The market for undead bloodsuckers was, well, dead. Then Twilight and True Blood kicked that idea in the ass.

I've attended a few How-To-Market-Your-Book-Using-Social-Media workshops and what was missing from every seminar was the most crucial aspect about writing a book. Which is: Write a Good Book. Nowhere in Sanvieri's blog does she mention the importance of writing a good book, or more simply, writing something worth reading. You could say that's an obvious assumption, but we writers know that there's a reason that writing is called opening a vein. Putting words together to make a coherent and compelling story is hard work. If it was as easy as pulling the marketing levers and getting your fiction onto the bestseller list, then every novel would be a winner.

Why do marketers harp so much on marketing your book? First of all, marketing is what they know best and that's the prism through which they see the world. Two, it's easy to set up a marketing plan and quantify your efforts. Do A. Then B. C. etc., and pretend you're doing something useful for your writing career. But no one has yet to quantify what makes a book "a good book" before it is written. Amanda Hocking is touted as a writer who marketed her way to success. But all her work wouldn't have mattered if her books hadn't resonated with her readers. You may go down the Write-A-Bestseller-Checklist and still end up with a turkey.

Remember what W. Somerset Maugham said about writing:

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are."

Don't let the marketing experts make you spin your wheels when your most important function as a writer is to write a good book. And forget that stupid 80/20 advice that you should spend 80 percent of your time marketing and 20 percent actually writing.

Does this mean you ignore marketing? Of course not. There's no point in publishing a book if no one hears about it.

But the best way to promote your current book is to write the next one.

So write and write well.

Don't forget, if you're in L.A. next weekend, catch me at ComiKaze Expo.

Labels: Colorado Gold, Rudy Ch. Garcia, Sansvieri. W. Somerset Maugham

  ¶ posted by Mario Acevedo @ 8:10 PM  11 comments