“Ringo played the drums.” (Active sentence)

“The drums were played by Ringo.” (Passive sentence)

In sentence number two, the phrase “were played” is a passive verb. It makes the drums the subject of the sentence, when really, the reader wants to know about Ringo. After all, he’s the one who makes the drums come to life. Too many passive sentences can make a piece sound wooden, stiff, and unexciting.

And sometimes, they can cause significant problems.

Imagine that someone has written a will, and in that will he has left a large sum of money to a non-profit group that supports a local museum or school or orchestra or some other cultural entity. Suppose the will states that the funds “should be used to supplement the services already available.” This sentence is a problem. Why? Because it does not say who will use the funds to supplement services. Is it the non-profit group that has received the funds, or is it the cultural entity that benefits from the group’s support? As you might expect, one’s interpretation will vary depending on whether one is a member of the support group or a member of the entity. The group is apt to disagree with the entity.

When the amount of money involved is small, this is an annoyance. When the amount is large, it can create hard feelings as both sides try to assert control over the money.

Whether you are a novelist trying to scare people with a ghost story, a newspaper columnist describing the latest presidential candidate debate, the author of a textbook, or a lawyer writing a will, improperly used passive sentences can: 1) make your novel or column boring; 2) make your textbook even more boring; 3) start a conflict. When the sum of money is in the hundreds of thousands or millions, that conflict could end up in a courtroom. All because the writing was unclear.

Like any other part of language, passive sentences have their place and legitimate uses. However, writers should take care not to overuse them, and they should give careful consideration to meaning when they decide to use them. We write to communicate — a message, a story, a joke, driving directions, or instructions. If we’re going to take the trouble to write something, shouldn’t we do it in a way that leaves no doubt as to what we mean?

It’s not communication if the receiver doesn’t understand what you said.

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When was the last time you got a letter in the mail? December sees a lot of mail and you remember that sense of delight when the first card arrives. You can have that more often.

I have a simple challenge for you.

1. In the month of February, mail at least one item through the post every day it runs. Write a postcard, a letter, send a picture, or a cutting from a newspaper, or a fabric swatch.
2. Write back to everyone who writes to you. This can count as one of your mailed items.

All you are committing to is to mail 24 items. Why 24? There are four Sundays and one US holiday. In fact, you might send more than 24 items. You might develop a correspondence that extends beyond the month. You might enjoy going to the mail box again.

Feeling intimidated? It’s fewer words than NaNoWriMo and I know how many of you do that. Join me in The Month of Letters Challenge.

It’s an interesting idea. I don’t know if I’ll send letters all 24 days (what with February starting tomorrow and all,) but I might send a few. I used to live for letters back in high school (you know, in the far distant past of the 1970s.) It might be kind of cool to send and receive them again. For a while. Until I get writer’s cramp and run out of stamps.

Think you’ll try it?

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An Indie Publisher Investing Plan

Step One: Set a Goal to Publish Something New Every Two Weeks.

— It could be a short story or your latest book. It could be a collection, whatever. Just put into print one new item every two weeks. (I know of very few writers who haven’t been working for a time that don’t have backlist as well to help with this. If you hate the story and think it sucks, put it under a pen name.)

— Give yourself one week to miss, so you will have 25 books, stories, collections up in one year. (Even if you miss for three full months you will have 20 books, stories, and collections up. Not bad.)

— This investment plan will also keep you writing new work.

Step Two: Consider Each Publication a Deposit into Your “Future Investment Account.”

— So instead of turning into an “Author” with every new published item, consider each new published book or story an investment in your future. Just like putting $100.00 into a 401(k) every two weeks. Think of it in the exact same way.

— Just as you ignore your 401(k) statement most months, ignore how your sales are going. Focus on the writing of the next thing.

— And if you really want to use your writing as an investment, just let the money sit in an interest-bearing account as it comes in each month from your sales. You might be stunned at how fast that will grow as you keep writing and publishing. (I know some writers are already doing this with their indie publishing accounts.)

— Take the long-term approach. Think out five and ten years, not two weeks. (I know, impossible for beginning writers to do, but again, you are investing in your future. It’s all an attitude.)

I like the idea of thinking of my writing output as an investment account. It provides an incentive to write more and to spend more time polishing what I’ve written. This approach reminds me of advice I’ve heard given to salespeople: Rather than think of cold-calling as a chore, think of it as a source of earnings. If it takes on average 20 cold calls to produce one sale, and each sale produces an average of $500 commission, then each cold call is worth $25. The thinking goes that, if the salesperson approaches a cold call with the thought that it will earn $25, cold calling becomes less of a chore.

I’m not a salesman by trade and I think I would hate having to make cold calls each day, but I like the thinking behind this. I am a writer, however, and there’s nothing stopping me from adopting Smith’s attitude toward writing production today.

Leave a comment and let me know what you think of this approach.

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In this episode, she interviews public relations professional Joshua Logan Seideman. Some of you may know that public relations is one of the many hats I wear at my day job, so I was especially interested in this one. The conversation surrounds the topic of marketing a game (Jennisodes is a podcast devoted to role playing games, after all,) but his points are valuable to anyone who is trying to get their work noticed. I listened to it once yesterday while walking my dog and driving to work (not at the same time,) and I plan to listen to it again when I can scribble down some notes.

Whether or not you have an interest in RPG’s, I highly recommend Jenn’s podcast simply because every week she gets fascinating guests to interview. This week’s episode features the two attorneys who do the Law Of The Geek podcast. Again, the talk was about the legal aspects of game design and marketing, but they made some very interesting points about contracts with illustrators and other outside content creators. As someone who is contemplating self-publishing, I had not given this any thought, which is especially bad since I spend much of my time on the day job reading contracts. Even if you decide not to bother with a formal contract, you should be aware of the implications of that decision, so I strongly recommend you give that show a listen.

So much to listen to, so little time…

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The following are my bold and not so bold predictions for publishing in 2012.  My boldest prediction will be that Amazon will buy Goodreads in 2012.  The most unlikely to happen prediction is Number 10.    What are your predictions for 2012?

1.  More authors will self publish than in 2011.  I suspect that nearly every author will try his or her hand at self publishing new and previously unpublished content, either in novella or full length book form.  After 2012, I suspect that there will be a retrenchment in self publishing and authors will look to digital first arms of traditional publishers or digital first only publishers as they realize that a) self publishing is difficult and b) they’d rather write than focus on the business aspect.  However, there will be a rise in the number of self publishing success stories and the quality of self publishing will increase as supply increases.  Along with this prediction, we will see the rise of publishing service companies and indie communities of publishing service providers akin to Penguin’s Book Country and HarperCollins’ Authonomy where editors, copy editors, graphic artists will be able to offer their services and be voted on by the community.

There is a fair amount of discussion about this in the comments section of this post. As I’ve discussed here before, I’m giving serious thought to self-publishing one or both of my podcast novels this year. I know people who have self-published ebooks, and they haven’t described the process as terribly difficult. If any of you have a different view, I’d love to hear it in the comments below.

3.  Readers will gravitate to lower priced books, those priced 3.99 and under, so long as the book has a good hook and a decent cover.  These books will be substitutes for traditionally priced books.  In looking back at Bookscan, authors sold well if they had an established name.  Breaking out as a new author is more difficult than ever, particularly from traditional publishers.  I suspect the new books that readers will be talking about will come from the $3.99 and under price range and those books will be available to readers around the world.  That’s the discovery price range.

I’ve heard different opinions on what the sweet spot is for ebook pricing, anywhere from $2.99 to $6.99. I’ve heard of several authors selling well at $4.99, so I’m not sold (no pun intended) on $3.99.

4.  I think the price of most digital books will be $3.99 and that $.99 fiction will fall into either short fiction price (under 25K words) or will be promotional.  Publishers will experiment with book pricing and readers will be more hesitant to buy older titles at full price, hoping for a lower price deal.

If you agree with point #2, then this makes sense. The $0.99 price point for shorter works I think is already pretty much the rule. Some of my peers like Abigail Hilton, Jennifer Povey and Phil Rossi have priced their short stories this way.

5.  There will be a Steam-like publisher offering resellable digital books, available only in the cloud.  This is being experimented with by Austrialian publishers Book.ish and ReadCloud.  This might be offered by a romance publisher, but I suspect it will be a small press publisher for SFF or maybe comic books or a textbook publisher that would allow students resell ability of their digital texts.

If my sons could buy digital textbooks for a reduced price and resell them after the semester ends, I’d buy them Kindles tomorrow. I’m curious as to how this would work. Anyone have any experience with the two Australian publishers she mentioned?

6.  Sites like Goodreads will become more popular and thus more powerful.  Goodreads currently has over 6 million users.  Membership at Goodreads is increasing on a daily basis. Publishers are attempting to break into that market through Bookish, the as yet unreleased website backed by Hachette, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster, but I suspect that Bookish and sites like it will wither on the vine mostly because they won’t be reader oriented but book oriented which I think are two very different things.  My boldest prediction is that Amazon will purchase Goodreads for the community and its recommendation engine.  (Amazon already owns Shelfari but back in 2007, Amazon purchased DPReview.com, the premiere digital photography recommendation site)

As a reader, I love Goodreads; as an author, I have to put it to better use this year (see my last post on marketing.) Not everyone sees a potential Amazon purchase of Goodreads as a good thing. Check out the comments after her original post. Do any of you have thoughts about this?

7.  Digital book sales will represent 50% of trade sales by the end of 2012.

I’m not so sure about this one. Undoubtedly, digital books will continue to grow in popularity in a big way. However, I still hear more people say that they prefer physical books than the other way around. Predictions of a 50 percent share next year may be premature.

9.  BN will continue to move toward offering non book content. BN will allow large store leases to expire and relocate into smaller locations. The larger locations will decrease the book content to half of the retail contents.  BN will begin to carry more toys, house ware goods (like cooking supplies to go with the cookbooks and craft supplies to go with the craft books), and other celebrity designed products ala Target’s pairing with Moschino and Jason Wu.  BN already has Vera Bradley paper goods.

I’ve already noticed how much floor space my local B&N stores are devoting to toys, puzzles and games. Not sure I like it, but this prediction rings true.

10.  There will be an innovative print on demand machine that non bookstores will install.  Maybe it will be something you see in department stores.  The new print on demand machine will print mass market or trade versions of books.  (This is probably something more that I would like to see than what may happen, but I do believe that print on demand technology will increase dramatically in the next few years. There will be a high demand for it.)

Cool as it sounds, I don’t think we’ll see this this year, especially given the continued weakness in the economy. I just don’t see retailers gambling on an expensive, unproven machine when they’re under so much pressure right now. We daydreamed a bit at a meeting of one of the two library boards I serve on about how cool it would be to have a machine like this in our library. The price tag brought us back to earth in a hurry. Employee benefits and pension costs are cannibalizing our budget, and there will be no room for something like for a long while.

So, what do you think of these predictions? Eerily prescient or utter hogwash? I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

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Marketing isn’t about striking it rich with every activity you do. That’s an unrealistic expectation. You can’t expect perfection, but you can expect success. Therefore, your marketing goal should be to build a “body of work” that generates momentum over time and draws readers to you and your books. Think of the process like building a large magnet that begins to consistently attract people. Your objective is show up where your reading audience congregates numerous times and in numerous formats. You want people to think, “Everywhere I turn, I seem to bump into this author’s material, advice, stories, or resources.” Does it take a little more work? Yes, but this magnetic approach also produces larger results over a longer period of time.

I should print this out and read it every day, because I recognized myself in a lot of what he wrote here.

Have any of you done any of the following?

• Sent out a few query emails, then stopped after you received a few “no” responses or “no responses”?
• Written a bunch of blog posts, then slowed down to a crawl when you noticed you weren’t getting a lot of comments on your posts?
• Released a couple of novels as podcasts, then followed up with…nothing?
• Groused about how no one ever asks you to be in their podcast productions, even though you never announced you were available?
• Wondered why you don’t get invited to be on con panels, even though very few people know about your books?

Yep. I’m guilty on all counts.

I had a very eye-opening experience at Dragon*Con last summer. I was hanging with Starla and Scott Huchton and their friends, and at some point in the conversation I mentioned something about one of my podcasts. Starla said, “I keep forgetting that you’ve podcasted novels, because you never talk about them. Ever.” ZING! Those books are on my mind all the time, but apparently I’ve done precious little to make others aware of them. If Starla, who is an active participant in the podcasting community and a sought-after narrator (see her fine work in Lindsay Buroker’s The Emperor’s Edge) doesn’t think I’m promoting my work, then clearly I’m not.

I’m not big on New Year’s resolutions, but this year I have to make a schedule for promotional activities and stick to it. That means writing down a plan for regular blog posts (and interesting topics) at the beginning of the month. It means a numeric goal for queries each week, both for my fiction and my freelance work, which has slowed to a crawl. It means becoming a regular poster in the Facebook Podcast Community and letting the folks there know that I want to play roles in their podcasts. It means getting assertive about telling people that I want to be on panels and do readings at cons.

And when I do all that, I have to keep this Writers Digest blog post in mind. Not everything I do will have an immediate payoff, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it. I go to the gym four or five times a week, and though I don’t yet fit into size 32 jeans or have the physique of Tom Cruise in Top Gun, I keep going because I know it will pay dividends in the long run. So it is with promotion. Every activity helps build the brand, which will hopefully make people interested in listening to or reading my books.

Next Dragon*Con, I want Starla to say, “I’m f**king sick of hearing about your books.”

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If you like this song, please share it with your friends and anyone else you can think of who would like it. I’d love to see them get more widespread exposure. Enjoy!

“Frosty’s slowly melting watching episodes of ‘Lost’…”

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Here’s the beginning of the story, as posted on Podcastle’s site last Christmas:

Trish led Nate from the room, into the hall — their parents’ door was
closed — and onto the stairs. She could hear someone moving down
there. Trish crept down the carpeted steps. The only light in the
living room came from the bright Christmas tree. Even the yule log in
the fireplace had burned down.

Two men, dressed in black pajamas with their faces covered, were tying
a big red ribbon around a crate that was bigger than the couch.

“Ninjas?” Trish whispered to her brother.

“Christmas ninjas,” Nate said.

One of the ninjas pulled up his mask a little and ate one of the
cookies they’d left for Santa. He drank the milk, too, leaving a white
mustache on his ninja mask when he pulled it back down over his mouth.

I hope you like this as much as I did.

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Here’s the description from Douglas’s Web site:

The Podcast Community on Facebook has come together this season to record an audio version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol. This reading is based on an edited version of the story created by Dickens himself for his own live readings.

Wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Listen to Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

Our cast includes:

• Douglas E. Welch – Career Opportunities Podcast
• Michael Falkner – The Weekly Podioplex (part of the Chronic Rift Network)
• Bryan Lincoln – Fullcast Podcast
• Paul Ellis – It Was A Dark & Stormy Night
• James Bennett – All Things Geek
• Heidi Jenkins – Castlecast
• Paula Berinstein - The Writing Show
• Jason James – thenutgallery.com podcast
• Michael Lawshe – Eclipse-1 Media
• Peter Lythgoe – The Zzipp & Co. Podcast
• Browncoat – thenutgallery.com podcast
• Megan Enloe – Podcast Community
• Rish Outfield – The Dunesteef Audio Fiction Magazine
• Hatton Humphrey – East Coast Conservative Podcast
• Rosanne Welch – WelchWrite.com
• Lauren “Scribe” Harris – Pendragon Variety Podcast
• Lauren “Skrybbi” Nicholson – Pendragon Variety Podcast
• Raven Wei – Pendragon Variety Podcast
• Tim Dodge -Podiobooks ACTS OF DESPERATION and PURGATORY
• R.E. Chambliss – Podiobook Dreaming of Deliverance

Produced by Douglas E. Welch and WelchWrite.com

Interstitial Music and Sound Effects provided by Michael Lawshe of Eclipse-1 Media

Join the Podcast Community on Facebook

Enjoy!

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Look no further. Give a listen to the E.P., Seasons Geekings by nerd musician extraordinaire John Anealio. You can stream it here, and if you like what you hear, you can download it from his Web site. While you’re there, check out some of his other songs. My personal favorites are his theme song for Mur Lafferty’s podcast I Should Be Writing; his ode to Steve Jobs Blue Lego (Steve Jobs Hates Flash); The “NaNoWriMo” Song, his tribute to masochistic novelists everywhere; and the iconic George R. R. Martin is Not Your Bitch.

I’ve heard John play live at the last two Balticons, and I’ve really grown to enjoy his music and the weekly podcast  he does with Patrick Hester, Functional Nerds. Give him a listen!

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• Cut down a Christmas tree. This is a family ritual going back 23 years — I cut one down the week after my oldest son was born, and we’ve been doing it ever since. Traditionally, we go the day after Thanksgiving, as we always wanted to have it up for his birthday, and that was one day when we could get around work schedules, basketball games, etc. This year, we went a day later; we had to work around a schedule conflict on our usual work-around day. The tree is a beauty and it’s been gracing the family room for a week now.
• Music: Messiah by George Frideric Handel. When I was in high school, I sang in a chorus that performed parts of this at Christmas-time. I try to listen to at least some of it every year since. I also love the CD We Three Kings by The Roches, several of the old classics (Bing, Andy Williams, etc.). This year I’m listening a lot to On Thin Ice by Pandora Celtica. This is not a Christmas album in the strictest sense, in that I don’t think the lyrics mention Jesus once. It’s more of a Yule album, but the harmonies are breathtaking (par for the course for them), the versions are different than those you’ve heard before (imagine Deck the Halls sounding sad,) and the original song Santa Claus Got Eaten by the Kraken is wickedly funny.
• Books: A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens (natch — I blogged about this last year). A relatively new ritual is to re-read the fine stories in Connie Willis’ collection Miracle and Other Christmas Stories. Thank you to Mur Lafferty for making me aware of this book. The stories have the holiday spirit without excess sentimentality.
• Movies: Sure, I like It’s a Wonderful Life as much as the next guy, and I can quote several of the funniest lines from A Christmas Story. However, one of my favorites is a made-for-TV movies that most people don’t know about: The Gathering. This excellent 1977 film stars Ed Asner as a curmudgeonly successful businessman who, through diligent effort, has managed to alienate most of his adult children, not to mention his estranged wife, played to perfection by Maureen Stapleton. Shortly before Christmas, he learns that he is terminally ill and probably won’t see February. Reconciling with his kids suddenly becomes very important to him. When his ex-wife figures out what’s going on, she offers to invite all of the kids home for an old-fashioned family gathering. He agrees on the condition that his illness be kept secret. The story that follows warms my heart every time I watch it. One scene in particular, in which the man and his son (played by Lawrence Pressman) have a confrontation that’s been brewing for years, is very powerful. The film sends a wonderful holiday message without ever getting sappy. It used to get rerun on cable every year, but it seems to have been forgotten the last few years. For a long time, I was reduced to watching a recording I’d made on VHS on some long-gone cable channel back in the 90′s. However, when I finally found it on DVD online a couple of years ago, I had my credit card out before the screen refreshed. Now it’s a permanent part of my collection.
• TV specials: Love me some Charlie Brown Christmas (“That’s what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown”) and I caught up with my old friend the Grinch last week. I have a soft spot for Rudolph, of course. Another of my favorites from childhood is Santa Claus is Comin’ To Town with the voices of Fred Astaire and Mickey Rooney. I don’t get to see that one every year, as I don’t think it gets repeated as prominently as some of the others, but I look for it in the listings.
• Watch the Christmas Eve midnight Mass at St. Peter’s Basilica. Our local NBC affiliate carries this every year (tape-delayed, of course; Rome is several hours ahead of us here in the eastern U.S.). Most years, I don’t watch the whole thing, but I try to catch at least some and hopefully most of it. There is something about the pageantry of midnight Mass, especially when celebrated by the pope, that I love. We’ll attend Mass ourselves on Christmas Day, but it’s obviously not quite the same.

That’s my list. I’d love to hear what yours are. Fill up the comments with ‘em — maybe I’ll end up stealing adopting some of yours.

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In the mean time, the last issue sparkles. The non-fiction sections (which, to be honest, I didn’t always read) covered the recent and current crop of movies and TV shows based on fairy tales, starting all the way back to the 1946 French version of Beauty and the Beast and continuing to the current TV series Once Upon a Time and Grimm. The Folkroots section, which every month covers the origins of some fantasy literature-related area, made a detailed examination of the influence of Greek and Roman myths on C.S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. (Another confession: I have not read these books, but this article got me wanting to.) Elizabeth Bear’s history of urban fantasy is essential reading for anyone who wants to write in that genre, and worthwhile reading for fans. There was also the regular assortment of book and game reviews.

The heart of every issue is the collection of short stories, and this is where this issue really shines. My favorite, hands down, is Scott William Carter’s The Man Who Made No Mistakes, in which a man with the ability to rewind time spills his story to a jaded priest in the confessional. This story made a flight from Atlanta to St. Louis pass extremely quickly, and I’d love to hear it in a future episode of Podcastle (are you reading this, Dave and Anna?) Betsy James’ Sweeping the Hearthstone is a variant on the Cinderella story (fits nicely with the discussion of fairy tales referenced above) in which the Cinderella character acts…not exactly as you’d expect.

In Second Childhood by Jerry Oltion, a woman’s long-dead mother reappears, looking as she did when she was in her 30′s. As you might imagine, this has a significant impact on the woman, her husband and daughter. It ends with a nice message, and it includes the immortal line, “A ghost of your mother gives my willie the willies.” Nick DiChario’s Barbie Marries the Jolly Fat Baker is about a toy, jilted by a Barbie doll, who decides he’s had enough. You need to read this for the conversations between the toy and the family dog alone, but the entire story is humorous and touching.

Lastly, Return to Paraiso by Rochita Loenen-Ruiz tells the story of a land and a people that are under the oppressive thumb of a military dictatorship. One young woman takes on the army. The army clearly has no idea who they’re dealing with.

This fine magazine is going out on a high note. I’m sad that it won’t land in my mailbox anymore, but this issue is a fine swansong. If you can find it on a newsstand, I highly recommend buying it or the PDF version.

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I’ve made multiple trips to Lowe’s recently (there’s no home repair job so simple that I can’t find a way to have to do it three times), and it’s hard to miss all the Christmas decorations, lights, inflatables, etc. on display there. Maybe I’m just getting older (refuse to use the word “old”), but it seems like every year the stores start putting out Christmas merchandise just a hair earlier. I know that retailers make most of their profits in the fourth quarter of the year (the day after Thanksgiving is known as Black Friday because that’s the day they finally get into the black for the year.) From a business standpoint, it’s hard to fault them for doing this, especially as we wrap up the fourth consecutive year of a pretty lousy economy.

Of course, the merchants wouldn’t put this stuff up for sale in mid-October if people didn’t buy it then. So what does it say about us that people start stocking up for the holiday season two months in advance?

I think most of us (okay, me) have mixed feelings about the holiday season. I get to see my parents and siblings on Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve, and we don’t get to see each other that often, so it’s something I look forward to. And I love the movies and the books and the TV specials (some of them, at least), and the food (that’s a biggie.) For a month, the opening notes to Tchaikovsky’s The Nutcracker Suite will be stuck in my head, as will the harmonies from For Unto Us a Child is Born from Handel’s Messiah. I have certain Christmas albums that I love and turn to every December like an old friend. I love all of that.

Also, my oldest son was born in December, and that alone has made the holiday season special every year since 1988. And there are special readings and hymns at Mass, and all of the rituals that make up the holiday season.

So what’s not to like? How about crazed crowds of shoppers, the kind that trampled a Walmart employee to death on Black Friday a few years ago? Or TV commercials telling you that, if you really loved that special someone, you’d park a new car with a big red bow on it in the driveway Christmas morning or give her a diamond bracelet? Or the joyous sounds of people screaming at their kids in shopping malls? Or the letters to the editor (they should start any day now) decrying the “sudden” commercialization of Christmas or worse, the alleged war on Christmas? Christianity’s second most sacred celebration (Easter being the first) becomes just another battleground in the culture wars, egged on by those who know they can boost their television ratings by encouraging Christians to think of themselves as a persecuted minority. This in a country where some tried to paint a sitting President of the United States as an enemy by suggesting that he’s secretly a Muslim.

Why do we start the Christmas sales season so early? And why does it bother so many of us so? Probably for the same reason. We’ve bought into the myth of Christmas days of yore, of small towns with bells ringing and an inch or two of snow on the ground, families gathered around the tree to open a few simple but meaningful gifts, of serene churches filled with songs lifted up by the voices of angels, and without obnoxious commercials, ugly crowds, and crass consumerism. We long for that. We yearn for it. The last 10 years have been pretty rough ones for America. The shock of September 11 gave way to the endless wars in the Middle East and the collapse of the financial system that plunged us into an economic slowdown from which we still struggle to recover. In the midst of all this pain, who wouldn’t want to grab onto the good feelings of the holiday season as early and as often as possible?

Yet selling Christmas merchandise only a few short weeks after the autumnal equinox feels somehow wrong, like it cheapens the season and makes it all about buying and selling. It seems to mock a holiday that we love (or at least are told that we should love.) And that makes people irritable, even angry.

Here’s the deal. I guess I’m officially middle-aged, having reached the age of 50 and all. I was a little kid in the 1960′s, which means that I remember all the good Saturday morning cartoons but not The Beatles being together. And I also remember wanting lots of stuff for Christmas. The holidays didn’t become commercialized in 2011 or 2001 or 1991 or even 1981, for all that. It’s been that way for a long time. The simple, country Christmases that we think used to be the norm? They existed only in movies. Everyone wants to spend Christmas in Bedford Falls because it’s not real. It never was real. We want it to be real because it symbolizes love and happiness and peace and all those other things that seemed so far away with Americans in Baghdad and Kanduhar, in the rubble of the Twin Towers, during the height of the Cold War, in the jungles of the Mekong Delta, and in the blood-stained streets of riot-torn cities in the 60′s.

In the end, we all have the power to decide how to react to what we see and experience. I can let the inflatable Santa on sale at Lowe’s raise my blood pressure, or I can say “Meh,” and go on about finding the repair kit for a leaky faucet. I can rant about how Christmas has become all about the dollar, or I can focus on the image of shepherds on a hillside, in shock as they listen to angels tell them that their Savior has been born. I kind of like that second option better.

So, rather than fight reality, let’s face it with gusto. Halloween’s over. It’s Christmastime! But I’m still going to fast-forward through the commercials when I watch a show on TiVo.

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My plan now is to write a couple of short stories, then start the rewrite process on the book. Coming up with a good title is also on the agenda. I always have trouble with titles, so that will be a project.

Nevertheless, the first major step is finished. That’s one New Year’s resolution to cross off the list…

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Thing is, if I’m going to do this, I want to do it the right way. If I’m going to ask people to spend money on one of my books (even if the price is only $3.95 or something like that,) I have to deliver a quality product. That means hiring a professional editor to catch any remaining typos, inconsistencies, plot holes, etc. Because I recorded audio versions of both Acts of Desperation and Purgatory, I’ve caught a lot of the typos and missing words, but no way am I confident enough to say that I caught them all. Good editors do not come cheap, nor should they. I’m figuring between $1,000 and $1,500 to edit just one of the books.

Next comes the cover. Again, if I’m going to offer a book for sale, it needs a cover done by a professional illustrator. I happen to really like the covers I chose for the audio versions of my books, but the cover for Acts is a Creative Commons licensed photo that I found on Flickr. I gave the photographer attribution, but the license does not allow me to use it to make money. I did pay a license fee for J.R. Blackwell’s lovely photograph for the cover of Purgatory (worth every penny,) but using it on a book for sale is a different matter. I estimate a few hundred dollars for a cover illustration.

That brings the total bill to $1,500 to $2,000 even before I get into formatting, distribution fees, etc. That means, if my price point is $3.95, I have to sell around 500 electronic copies just to break even. Obviously, I want to sell way more than 500 copies, but if I’m the publisher as well as the author, then by definition I’m the marketing department. It will take a lot of time and effort to publicize the book enough to generate sales. I think I’m up for that challenge, but it will be a major commitment.

If I do this, I think I would start with Acts of Desperation, which has been rejected by a lot of agents and publishers but has also been downloaded a lot on Podiobooks. More than 5,000 people have downloaded the final episode, meaning they liked it enough to stick around to the end of the story. I have Purgatory on submission right now to a small press publisher, and I still have some hopes of publishing that the traditional way, so it will be some time before I choose to self-publish that one.

Publishing has changed tremendously just in the seven years since I first started tapping out novels on my keyboard. Self-publishing ebooks is becoming more viable every day, and it’s something every author should consider. Will it be right for me? Jury’s still out. I need to save up that upfront money, and I haven’t sold a freelance piece since July. Looking for new freelance gigs is occupying a fair amount of my time these days. But, if I can generate those funds and cover the cost before I sell anything, I very well may take the plunge.

Stay tuned.

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I haven’t dared step on a scale since I got home.

I joined a gym last fall. That pesky 50th birthday was looming ever closer, and I had the sense that, if I didn’t make an effort to get in shape then, I never would. Also, a few friends who are active gym members actually got me thinking about a gym membership, something I’d never considered before.

Lastly, in June 2010 I was invited to play in a golf tournament organized by the local independent insurance agents association. It was a good time, a good chance to network, and I’m glad I went (my play was, shall we say, consistent.) One of the souvenirs of the day was a plastic coffee travel mug with photos of each player’s foursome on it, including shots of the individual driving the ball. The photos of me are not flattering. The word “blob” comes to mind every time I see that mug.

For these reasons, I decided to get off my ever-expanding derriére and hit the treadmill. I’ve been a regular since November 1, and the results so far have been decent. Prior to this year’s Dragon*Con, my weight had dropped 15.5 pounds from the time the travel mug photos were taken. According to the Body Mass Index charts, I need to lose another 20, though I think I’d look and feel pretty good if I lost 15. In any case, this work in progress is still a work in progress. And I didn’t progress much at Dragon*Con. I made it to the hotel’s exercise room on the Friday the con started, but that was it. The other three days: Fun, learning, food and drink.

Starting last Friday, I decided to workout every day for 14 days to undo some of the damage I did in Atlanta. That doesn’t necessarily mean the gym; I’ve mapped out a running route of 4.25 miles that begins and ends at my house, so if I get a nice day this weekend, I’ll do that again. However, I have hit the gym every day since Friday (for those of you counting at home, that’s six days.) My routine is to go after I get out of work, so today will be number seven. Barring any unforeseen events, I think I can meet the goal of 14 straight days. Then I’ll take one day off. One.

And maybe get back on the scale again.

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Rather than flying out of Rochester, as is my usual custom, I set out very, very early on Thursday morning for Boston. My oldest son has just moved there for law school, and my charge was to deliver a car trunk full of his stuff upon my return. Fearful of Boston traffic and unexpected roadwork delays resulting from Tropical Storm Irene (NOTE: Compared to what other people suffered from the storm, my problem was very minor), I hit the road just prior to 6 AM. The trip actually was very smooth, and I parked my car at Logan Airport more than two hours before my 1:25 PM flight. The flight itself was a piece of cake, and I was at the Atlanta Hilton and meeting my roommate Justin by 5 or so.

Last year, Dragon*Con’s registration process was a nightmare. I spent three hours in line coaxing a little more battery life out of my iPod. This year, they made some changes, and I’m happy to say the changes worked. I was in and out of there in about 15 minutes. My compliments to the staff and leadership — it was a much better experience this time.

Thursday night brought the first of three concerts I attended by the amazing Pandora Celtica. If you like Celtic music and/or you love tight harmonies, you owe it to yourself to give this group a listen. They are a five-part a capella group from Denver (it’s kind of ironic that so many of their songs are about the sea and they’re thousands of miles from the Atlantic Ocean.) I first heard them last year and bought one of their CD’s on the spot, then requested and got another for Christmas. Stalking them was one of my missions for the weekend, one that I’m happy to say I fulfilled. I bought their other two CD’s, got to meet them all, and collected a few autographs on the CD’s. As terrific as they are as musicians, they’re even nicer people. I hope they return to Dragon*Con every year.

Friday brought my one and only workout of the con, the arrival of the eternally awesome Christiana Ellis, and the kickoff of the podcasting track. John Lenahan, the author of two podiobooks but one who has actually gotten said books into print, was one of the panelists. As the author of two not-yet-in-print podiobooks, I was curious as to what he did that I did not, and he very generously gave me a big chunk of his time after the panel ended. He didn’t know me from Adam, and I really appreciated him taking the time with me. I then attended a couple of panels by game designers (game designing is a subject that’s started to interest me — stay tuned for a future blog post); a reading by best-selling fantasy author and writing instructor Tracy Hickman; another Pandora Celtica concert; dinner with Starla and Scott Huchton and their friends Jamie and Chris (who get my vote as the cutest couple I’ve met this year); and a special reading by Scott Sigler of brand new material. I ended up at a small party in Alex White’s room with a bunch of people I’d never met before, hung out with them for a bit, then finished the night in the Hilton bar with P.G. Holyfield and crew.

Saturday: Settled into my ritual of dropping off CD’s of Purgatory and business cards on the freebie table and got caught in the Dragon*Con parade while trying to get to Starbucks. Once I had coffee in hand, I went to a reading by mighty Mur Lafferty, where I heard excerpts of a piece she’s written for Scott Sigler, an excerpt from a new unreleased novel, and something from her forthcoming sequel to Playing For Keeps. Every con, I try to spend a little time with Mur because I love her I Should Be Writing podcast and she gives voice to so many of my writing anxieties. However, whether she recognizes it or not, she’s also something of a rock star, making it tough to get too much of her time, but I was glad for the time I was able to get.

Next were a couple of writing panels, including one where I met up with Abby Hilton and listened to Aaron Allston and Michael Stackpole discuss plotting. The high point of the day was the Parsec Awards, which honor excellence in podcasting. I put on a black suit for the occasion and went in style (practicing for the day when I might actually be a finalist for a Parsec; a guy can dream, right?). Several of my favorites won awards, including The Drabblecast, Nathan Lowell and Scott Sigler. A short party followed the ceremony, after which a small army of us descended on a Thai restaurant. No one left hungry.

Sunday: A good panel on writing in a world that another author has created, followed by a podcast writers roundtable. I had thought that I would be a panelist for this and was a bit disappointed that I wasn’t. However, within five minutes it became apparent that I would have been out of place. Every panelist had at least one book in print, and I don’t. It would have been awkward, so I’m glad it worked out the way it did. The discussion was excellent, and I’m looking forward to the release of the recording as a podcast so I can listen a second time.

I then jumped between a panel of best-selling authors (Kevin J. Anderson, Terry Brooks, Charlaine Harris, etal.) and a panel on favorite books, which gave me ideas for even more books that I will buy or borrow and not have time to read. Another Pandora Celtica concert preceded a panel on game design, leading up to a return performance by Scott Sigler in the role of his cousin Frankie in “Let’s Get Pissed With the FDO”. His interview victim was Dr. Pamela Gay, who gave as good as she got. As usual with these events, the true winner was Tuaca.

During all this, Starla was frantically tweeting about the amazing night she was having. When I returned to the Hilton, I saw her and Scott and immediately demanded to know what was going on. “Follow me,” was the coy answer. In a nutshell: Colin Ferguson, star of the SyFy Channel’s Eureka, Misha Collins of Supernatural and Nicole de Boer of Stephen King’s Dead Zone had ended up in Alex White’s room to record some episodes of his podcast Disasterpiece Theatre. Starla, Scott, Jamie and Chris had been among the lucky throng who attended the recording. However, that was not the end of the night. The three actors and a battalion of hangers-on joined us out on the street, whereupon we went back inside and joined the karaoke party taking place in the lobby (see Starla’s blog for all the details.) I didn’t actually get to meet Colin, but he seemed very personable and down-to-earth, and he clearly knows how to have a good time.

The evening (uh, early morning) concluded with a 4 AM breakfast with Starla, Scott, Jamie, Chris, P.G. and me at the Metro Diner.

Five short hours of sleep later, I was back in the game for the last day. I did some souvenir shopping (didn’t buy anything) and went to a writing panel featuring Terry Brooks, Mercedes Lackey, Timothy Zahn and Mark Van Name. I had every intention of returning to the hotel to say goodbye to Christiana and others, but I dropped by two more writing panels and was quite glad I did. I got to meet and talk e-publishing with Ridan Publishing’s Robin Sullivan and self-published author John Hartness. I learned a lot from the discussion, and it’s got me seriously considering self-publishing ebooks.

Promptly at 5 PM, the con ended. Within a couple of hours, the hotels were ghost towns. The 40,000 geeks were mostly gone. It was really quite a forlorn sight. Had I not saved $130 on airfare by staying until Tuesday, I would have regretted staying through Monday.

Tuesday was for packing up, bidding adieu to Justin, and flying back to Boston and checking out my son’s estate in a comfortable neighborhood straddling Brookline and Brighton. Okay, it’s really a studio apartment, but he likes it, and it befits a first-year law student. I delivered his stuff, we went out to dinner, and then I drove the five hours back to Syracuse.

Was it a good con? Put it this way: I’m already thinking about next year.

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There’s no point in denying it. There’s a pile tipping over in my closet. There are countless more in the basement. When I pop into my son’s bedrooms, I eye their book collections greedily, wanting to snatch several volumes from their shelves.

And we’re not just talking books. My computer bag is stuffed with back issues of magazines I haven’t read yet, copies of Weird Tales, Realms of Fantasy, Asimov’s, Writers Digest, Sports Illustrated — they seem to multiply by themselves.

Some people have eyes bigger than their stomachs; I have eyes bigger than my ability to read quickly. There should be a restraining order against me setting foot in libraries and bookstores. I need help. The cycle must be broken. I can’t go on collecting books beyond my means.

The only solution is cold turkey withdrawal. I must resist the urge to buy more books. I must ignore the reviews on Goodreads, the write-ups in Realms of Fantasy, the recommendations I hear on podcasts. I must turn a blind eye to all those attractive book covers I’ll see next week at Dragon*Con. I mean it this time: I’m swearing off book-buying.

At least until the Liverpool Library’s used book sale next month…

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