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Speaking at the Decatur Book Festival

March 29, 2016 by Jeff Haws Leave a Comment

For those of you who have been to the Decatur Book Festival, you know it’s basically Shangri-La for book lovers. It’s one of the best such festivals in the country, and it’s arguably the best when it comes to giving young and self-published authors a chance to get exposure for their work.

On that note, I’d like to announce that I’ll be speaking at this year’s festival, in the Emerging Writers tent, and I’ll also be doing a book signing for “Killing the Immortals,” my first novel. My speaking/signing spots will be either Sept. 3 or 4. I’ll provide an update on that when I know more, but I got it fairly early, so hopefully it’ll come that Saturday morning. I’m not going to be picky, though. [Read more…] about Speaking at the Decatur Book Festival

When Your Story Goes Too Far

March 22, 2016 by Jeff Haws 2 Comments

In the pieces I’ve been writing so far, I haven’t exactly been shying away from tough scenes, death, sex, whatever. I don’t think you can write well if you’re scared of what your mom, or some random person with delicate sensibilities will think, and I’ve made every effort not to hold back.

However, in the book I just started reading, there’s an early scene that made me think there may be limits to that. I’m not going to go too deeply into the scene (Let’s just say it involved the potential apocalypse, and some panties from a laundry basket), but I’ll say that I wondered how necessary it was. Now, it’s possible that it will have an important role in building the character that was involved, in which case I’ll just have to revisit my thoughts on this, won’t I? [Read more…] about When Your Story Goes Too Far

Patience Between Rough Draft and Publication

March 15, 2016 by Jeff Haws Leave a Comment

I’m not a particularly patient person, and writing (then, eventually, publishing) a novel is certainly a good test for whatever patience I have. It’s sometimes amazing just how little of the time you spend writing, and how much is spent doing all sorts of things to polish and prepare that novel — and yourself, because you’re a writer, not a salesman, or something like that — for people buying it. And reading it. And not thinking it sucks. It’s not a quick process.

As I’m right in the middle of that, a blog post from Just Publishing Advice caught my eye the other day, looking at “How To Publish A Terrible Book.” Incidentally, it used to be really hard to publish a terrible book. You had to slip it by a lot of gatekeepers, from agents to editors to publishers before it ever saw the light of day, beyond you just paying to print a few copies for the people in your Bridge club. But today, with Amazon and other self-publishing services just a few mouse clicks away, it’s never been easier to publish your crappy little novel about unicorns and fairy dust (not that there’s anything wrong with unicorns and fairy dust). It takes no time at all to publish a terrible book. Anybody can do it, in less than the time it takes you to boil a pot of water for the pasta you’ll eat because it’s cheap, and nobody’s buying your terrible book.

If you want to write a good book, though — one people will buy, and enjoy, and recommend to their friends, and subsequently stalk you over — it takes a lot of patience, and a willingness to go through a borderline masochistic process of having people rip your work apart, and ripping it apart yourself, in the hopes of finding the diamond that hopefully lays at the heart of it. Here are the steps Just Publishing Advice laid out, all of which, once complete, might tempt you to publish, but that’s a temptation you must resist. I’ll look at where I stand with each. [Read more…] about Patience Between Rough Draft and Publication

Why Cover Design is So Important

March 1, 2016 by Jeff Haws Leave a Comment

As I move closer to needing to actually sell this novel I’ve written, I have to start thinking seriously about what matters most for doing that — if, for no other reason, than to know where to direct most of the budget I’m willing to potentially waste on getting this thing out into the world of Amazon.

There are plenty of factors that go into that. I talked about three of those in another post. The top one I cited was the book’s cover. Honestly, if your book cover is terrible, I’m not sure much else matters. You can write the next Great American Novel, but if your cover is done by someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing, but once dabbled with Photoshop a few years ago. If your cover looks like it was done in MS Paint, nobody’s ever gonna know if your book is any good. [Read more…] about Why Cover Design is So Important

My Next Short(er) Story

February 23, 2016 by Jeff Haws Leave a Comment

After finishing up the rough draft of my first story, “Killing the Immortals,” a few weeks ago, I needed to kill some time while I got a bit of space from it. If you can help it, you never want to edit something you just wrote. It’s hard to catch all your stupid mistakes when you’re that close to it.

But I didn’t want to just sit here watching Netflix while it collected a bit of dust. So I immediately dove into writing a shorter piece that I could put in my bank for doing something with later. The working title for it is “Tomorrow’s News Today,” and it’s about a journalist who accidentally discovers that anything he writes will happen exactly as he wrote it. If someone compared it to a Twilight Zone episode, I’d be pretty damn pleased. Hell, let’s be honest, I’ll be happy if anyone is just willing to read it, especially if they pay to do so. But I’d definitely love to have people see a little Rod Serling there.

What I’ll do with it, I’m not quite sure. There are a few options: 1) Release it as a stand-alone work, probably charging $1.99 or $2.99 as a regular list price; 2) Keep writing these shorter pieces and package 4-5 of them into a collection that I release as a novel-length book that sells for $4.99 or so; 3) Keep it in my back pocket for potential entry into a contest or submission to go into an anthology when a publisher is looking for stories; 4) Give it away for free on my site, potentially for people to sign up for an email list I’ll be building soon. And, keep in mind, these aren’t mutually exclusive. I could, over time, do all four if I choose.

In the meantime, here’s a little tease to the story. Below, you can read the first few paragraphs of the rough draft, so you can get a look at the beginning, and the mood of the story: [Read more…] about My Next Short(er) Story

Where do Ideas Come From?

February 16, 2016 by Jeff Haws Leave a Comment

I’ve been asked a few times since starting my first book, “Where did you get your idea from?” I wish there were some simple answer, like “I had this amazing epiphany one day!” or “I went out to the idea tree and picked one.” I can confirm we do not have an idea tree, though I’m considering planting one in a few months. I hear they’re a spring/summer plant.

The answer on that particular idea is that I’ve always been fascinated by questions of “What would happen if …?” And, seeing as it’s basically a stated goal of modern medicine to cure every disease and keep people alive for as long as possible, this is a great “What if?” That would be to say, “What if we actually reached a goal we have?” It’s compelling to me because it’s a goal we have as a society, but I think it might cause a lot more problems if we achieved it. And my story is just about one problem I came up with. I thought of plenty more — from massive overcrowding in cities to healthcare distribution to resource depletion to restrictive family planning to all sorts of other issues — and I talk about some of them in the book because they have an impact on the story, but this was the one I thought translated the best as the main focus of a novel. Of course, it’s quite possible I’m wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time. [Read more…] about Where do Ideas Come From?

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