Man Who Built the World is on discount

In the rush to get the next Tube Riders book done, I tend to forget the others a bit. However, for the next two days The Man Who Built the World will be reduced to 99cents in the US and the equivalent elsewhere.

It's currently featured here on Free Kindle Books and Tips, and the added exposure has helped it bounce up to #6 in the Dark Fantasy Top 100 on Amazon USA. I've been as high as #4 so I'm hoping it'll have a bit more wind and get a couple of places higher. I really like Free Kindle Books and Tips because they're keen to promote bargain books as much as free ones because while of course we write for love it's always nice to get paid once in a while. They'll be featuring Tube Riders with it's shiny new cover on June 10th, so look out for that.

Okay, over and out. Got to finish off revising Tube Riders Exile. I have two chapters to go. Added in almost 10,000 words so far, roughly 30 pages. No idea where it comes from, but it's actually not much shorter than volume two.

Also, had a couple of hours free up at a mountain school yesterday so I got down to brainstorming ideas for TR: Revenge. I actually ended up doing more on my side novel, set in London after the Tube Riders escape. I've decided to rename it Tube Riders: In the Shadow of London, and I'm hoping to get a bit of time on it this year. I've also decided it might be fun to write a novel about the Governor's backstory. It'll be pretty much one for the fanboys (assuming there are any ...) because the central character will basically be the bad guy from the main series and therefore the story won't have mass appeal, but it does mean that the Tube Riders world could expand to FIVE books. And that coming from a guy who hates writing series ...

Anyway, back to it ... go buy Man Who Built the World and Head of Words while you're waiting, because they're both awesome. Just had another five star review come in for HoW, and there's plenty of critical praise out there for MWBTW that I don't have to say anything.

Laters ...

Chris Ward
22nd May 2013

The Tube Riders: Exile update

I'm very much a person who likes to spread their wealth but I decided last week that my writing time and energy was being spread too thinly, shared over a variety of projects and promotions. Therefore, in order to get the second book in the Tube Riders Trilogy out as quickly as possible I've scaled everything back. All other writing projects are currently on hold, while I'm attempting (somewhat unsuccessfully...) to withdraw from the social media world in order to concentrate on getting this book revised and out.

It's going fairly well. I've revised 190/542 pages at the time of writing, and the current wordcount stands at 147,393. I've added a couple of thousand words since I started revising, but that's mostly minor world detail. I've not come up against anything yet that stands out as being out of place.

All being well, I'm hoping to get through my own revisions by the end of May (I'd love to say the middle, but I have a day job and a family to look after so time isn't something I have an abundance of right now ...), after which I'll be sending it to a handful of beta readers whom I have already chosen to basically tell me where it does and doesn't suck. Once I've fixed up any common complaints (hopefully there won't be any ...!) it'll go to the editor and then the proofreader. All being well I'll have it published by the end of July, August at the latest.

The cover has been commissioned, so look out for that too. I'm going to try to get Marta on this one, but that's all I can say right now. Stay tuned.

While I'm here, The Tube Riders is currently still 99c, so if you have any friends you want to convert now's the chance, before the price goes back up. Remember, telling your friends and writing reviews helps me out more than you could possibly imagine. The more I sell of part one (and hopefully then part two), the sooner I'll be able to get part three (and four ...?!) out to you. I thank everyone of you who reads my books from the bottom of my heart.

Happy reading,

Chris Ward

May 2nd 2013

The Tube Riders: Exile teaser snippet

I'm in a good mood today so I thought I'd post this tiny little snippet from near the beginning of Tube Riders: Exile.

Can you guess which character this is?

The rushing wave forced his mouth and his eyes open. His vision blurred and he felt bitter, salty water pummeling its way into his lungs. He felt himself tumbling over and over, dragged under, pulled back down, caught in a death roll. Sharp rocks lacerated his clothing and slashed fingers of blood across his skin.

Then, for a brief moment there was air, and he howled like a dying man as water burst out of him, seconds before the next monstrous wave crashed down upon his head, dragging him back under.

He thought of his family, of his mother’s arms. He remember how she had kissed him in the days before, told him how much he was loved.

The water battered him again, and he saw himself being torn away from his family, dragged down into a black mine of hell that would turn him into a monster with a dark, cancerous hatred in his heart.

CW Feb 19th 2013

Tube Riders: Exile - What happens next?

Yesterday, after five and a half months, of writing, I finished Part 2 in my Tube Riders series, titled Exile. It rocked in at 145,166 words or in readers' terms 530 pages.

So, the first draft is done. What happens next?

I see a lot of writers just rushing their books out, sending their first drafts off to an editor the day after finishing. I'm going to go old skool with mine and leave it on a virtual shelf to mature for a bit. The draft is done, but I have to decide if I'm really happy with the story as it is. For example, less than twelve hours after finishing I came up with a couple of small changes to make in the last scene, including one important confrontation that wasn't in the original manuscript. These are changes I'm going to make and there will be others, too. My drafts tend to be fairly sparse, so there's a lot of room to add stuff in.

I'm aiming to let it sit for about six weeks before I actually read it over. That should be  enough time for me to look at it more objectively. Once I start reading I'll aim to tighten the existing text, add more detail, get rid of as many basic typos as I can (my first drafts are littered) make sure the characters - particularly the new ones - maintain the same "voice" all the way through, hunt down and kill any plot holes, and try to make some of the more unbelievable sections as believable as possible.

Then, once I'm satisfied with it, I'm going to make it ready for the world.

1. Beta readers

These will be a small group of people who get to read through the draft. I have a couple of volunteers but I'd like five or six so if anyone else would like to ...

These people will have a direct influence on the final story. They get to tell me which bits sucked, which bits are stupid, which characters are lame. If I agree, I'll fix it.  If they all say the same thing and I don't agree, I'll probably still fix it. While it's unlikely I'll agree to bring a dead character back to life, or a kill a character that survives, I could be persuaded to kill them differently, or give them a bit more of a beating in lieu of actually killing them. I'm open to suggestions!

2. Copy editing

I edited Tube Riders 1 myself and I kind of got away with it because it had been three years since I had looked at it and the whole manuscript felt like someone else had written it. I was able to edit it as if I was editing a book for a stranger, but time it'll be a little more difficult, because I don't want to wait three years before getting this book out. A copy editor will aim to tighten up the text in sections I've missed, spot repeated words, that kind of thing.

3. Proofreading 

I may or may not get the same person to do the proofreading, but I learned the hard way that you can't do it yourself.  When I first put Tube Riders out last year it had more than a 100 errors in it, and it took me six different volunteer proofreaders to get them all out. This time I'm going to get it done before I release the book. It's way too important to go out with errors in this time. I'm learning slowly, but I am learning.

4. Formatting

Same as the above - I put Tube Riders out myself and the first edition had some bad formatting errors, sections that were all in bold, sections that didn't have intents, etc. Again, I'll probably pay someone to do it for me this time.

5. Cover!

Obviously a book needs a cover. I'll probably start planning the cover while I'm doing all of the above so that there is no delay once the book's ready. For this one I'm going to get Marta Banks on the cover as she's my leading lady. Not sure how yet, but it'll make a nice change from the scary Huntsman on part 1.

6. Release

I'm going to put the book out on all formats this time, not exclusively through Amazon. This will mean that I can't do free promos, but I will be able to do bargain books and also giveaways I arrange myself.  While I like the KDP free promos as a way of reaching a wider audience, I've been hit by far too many bad reviews by people who don't even like my type of book yet just download it because it's free and then complain about it. I've had enough of that. If a sci-fi fan hates it that's fine, but I'm tired of people who don't even like sci-fi slamming it because it somehow didn't manage to transcend a genre that they don't even enjoy reading. Tube Riders 1 will also be coming out of Select at the next opportunity, which is late Feb. My standalone books will stay in for now, as I don't mind a hit or two on those.

What am I going to do until March?

Write! I have a ton of stuff that's been put on the backburner while I got this done. I have a novella to finish, a short story collection and two novels to edit for starters. Then I'm going to play around about, maybe write some poetry, or a few stories about my cat ... We'll see. Once this book is done I'll get back to work on part three. Looking forward to it!

CW
10th Feb 2013

A Year in Self Publishing

A Year of Self Publishing

Those of you who know me well will know that I’ve been writing since forever, but it was only one year ago, January 24^th, 2012, that I self-published for the first time.

I’ve been traditionally published before to a certain extent – two short stories in professional magazines and more than 20 times in the small presses. In total, I’ve sold 33 short stories, however a lot of those sales were to magazines that bit the bucket before my story (and my pay check) ever saw print.

  

I won’t go too much into my reasons for deciding to self-publish, but it was mostly an attempt to save myself as a writer. I’d written what I thought was a seriously top drawer book (Tube Riders) and seen it rejected time and again by publishers and agents (it actually got three partial requests, but that was about it). My confidence in being able to sell was at such a low ebb I was close to quitting. I hadn’t written anything meaningful in more than two years and I’d been wasting my time doing all sorts of random things which weren’t writing fiction, generally throwing away whatever shred of talent I had.

Self-publishing was something I felt I had to try. I wanted people to read my books, had confidence in my writing skills and my stories, and saw it as an opportunity rather than a last chance saloon.

This is what happened.

On 24^th January 2012 I uploaded a previously published short story, Forever My Baby, to Amazon, followed a few days later by another short story, The Ageless.

By the end of January I had made four sales – two to myself, one to my dad and one to a mate.

In February I added three more previously published short stories and a collection of ten, Ms Ito’s Bird & Other Stories. By the end of the month I had sold 22 total copies, mostly to friends and family, and made about $20.

So it continued. In March I published my novel The Tube Riders, followed by another novel, The Man Who Built the World, in September. I added several more short stories, the first two episodes of a novella series, and I split Tube Riders into three parts, primarily as a marketing tool.

By the end of the year I had 21 items for sale on Amazon.

My sales ticked over very slowly without really kicking off. Still, by the end of the year I had sold 415 books and had make a fraction under $700.

Ebook sales totals by month

(all Amazon stores combined)

Jan – 4

Feb – 22

Mar – 15

Apr – 13

May – 6

Jun – 32

Jul – 30

Aug – 27

Sept – 20

Oct – 72

Nov – 33

Dec – 113

Paperbacks (Sept to Dec) - 18

Total – 415

Revenue - $699.66

October’s spike was the first time I offered Tube Riders as a Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select free promotion, and in December I did another one. While I’m not a fan of giving books away for free, I am very serious about making this into a career and in the early days it is important to get as many readers as possible. Hopefully in the future I will be able to move away from KDP Select into other distributors and more traditional forms of advertising beyond the free promotions that Select allows. However, so far it has helped me a lot, although for those sales I have given away roughly 16,000 free books through promotions. It is quite some figure, but considering there are probably more than 10 million people with Kindles alone it’s a drop in the ocean, and it allowed me to reach readers that would otherwise have not found my work. It’s a form of advertising, and costs me nothing, whereas billboards or newspaper ads would cost a small fortune I don’t have. So far it’s been worth it.

So, $700. It's a solid figure, but not so much when you consider the outlay. So far, my rough costs have been –

$650 – production costs (cover design, formatting etc)

$200 – advertising (paperback giveaways, competitions, ads sites, websites etc)

And how about time?

It’s impossible to tell for sure, but at a rough estimate over the last year I’ve spent an average of 2 hours a day on writing, advertising, designing covers, formatting . . . so even if I hadn’t had the expenditures I would still have earned less than $1 per hour for my efforts.

What does this tell me?

That self-publishing is no easy cash grab. I have a day job and some days I’m out of the house working from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. Fitting in so much work on self-publishing around that was pretty hard. In layman’s terms, I busted my ass on this.

Am I satisfied?

I don’t consider myself a flash in the pan or a fly-by hoping to make a quick buck. I am a careerist and sooner or later this will be my full time job. It’s not open for debate. The number of great reviews I’ve had back up my own confidence in my material. I’m currently working on a seven year plan to go full time (by the time I’m 40) so I have six to go. As I write this I’ve already had 113 sales in January which is 528 in my first year. If someone had offered me that at the beginning of 2012 I would have jumped all over it.

While some people blow up with just one or two books and start selling by the thousand, I never realistically expected that to happen to me. I’ve always been a grafter, but that’s fine. Health permitting I’ll be putting out the same amount of product (and hopefully more) each year. Unless there’s some random market crash I only expect things to improve.

I’ll save what I’ve learned from self-publishing over the last year for another post, but self-publishing has already achieved what I needed it to achieve.

It has saved me as a writer.

For years I wrote roughly a novel a year, but by the age of 30 (2009, when I wrote Tube Riders) the years of rejection and failure to find a publisher had taken its toll and my creativity was at an all time low.

Back in June last year, three months after I published Tube Riders, I realised that it was time to start writing again. In the past seven months I’ve written a shade over 275,000 words, or three good-length novels. That is my most productive period ever, and with 24,000 words in January so far it is showing no signs of abating. I’m back, and writing better than ever.

And I’m committed to continuing to improve. Not just my books, but my knowledge of the business side of self publishing.

There’s a lot more to come from me. I hope you’re looking forward to it.

CW

24^th Jan 2012

Tube Riders free promo early results

The Promo

I previously ran a free promo on Tube Riders in October that saw it reach #76 overall in the free rankings with just over 3700 downloads in the US and another 600 or so elsewhere.  The result was roughly 60 sales/borrows (I count borrows in with sales as I receive more or less the same amount of payment for them) over the following month, before it fell off a cliff at the 30-day mark.

In the previously seven months Tube Riders had sold roughly 30 copies, so a bump of 60 was significant for me, even though my highest number in a 24 hour period was just 4.

I scheduled my next free run for December 20th to 22nd, hoping that my book would hit the Also-bought lists on Amazon around Christmas Day (last time, I had maybe just one sale in the 48 hours post-free).

My promo was again moderately successful, getting picked up on one biggish site (Freebooksy, the same as last time) and it shifted 3300 copies overall, just over 3000 of those in the US.  I'm fully aware that a book such as mine has only limited mass market appeal - it isn't in the romance genre, doesn't feature good-looking vampires or angsty teenagers, for example, plus there is a scary guy on the cover - so it's unlikely to ever go really high up the free lists.  Still, it topped a couple of genre lists (including one in Germany) so I was relatively happy although not expecting a big post-free sales peak.

Factors against me were -

a) I had less downloads than last time

b) ebook numbers are growing by roughly 1000 a day

c) it's Christmas, and more people than usual will be doing promos

The Results

After Tube Riders came off promo I was hoping for about 20 to 30 sales over the coming month.  Possibly a couple more because of Xmas.  However, after just under four days I've already beaten the total from the whole of October.  Considering that up until December 22nd I'd sold 12 copies total in the whole month, that is a significant bump.  I've reached my highest rankings ever in both the US and the UK.

Obviously Christmas has played its part.  However, considering there must be far more books all vying for the same sales, in addition to the fact that I gave away less than last time, my ever-analytical mind has turned to considering other possible factors that may or may not have had a significant impact.

a) obviously it's Christmas

b) Tube Riders has more reviews than before - 13, compared to 6 when it did its last free run.  The more reviews there are the more popular a book appears to be.

c) Some of the reviews are negative.  I don't really worry too much about reviews because everyone is entitled to their opinion and reviews are not really for me but for other readers, but I think a couple of negative reviews actually provide a bit of balance.  I'm always suspicious of a book that has ten or twenty straight five-star reviews.

d) I had already given away a bunch on a previous promo so perhaps they were logged into the system somewhere, giving it a higher bump this time around.

e) it's dark and cold outside and the book has a scary cover.  I don't know, but I seem to get a lot of sales around midnight!

f) I've kept the price the same.  Last time I juggled it a bit - moving it up to $5.99, putting it down to 0.99c for a bit.  This time I've kept it at a steady $3.99 in the US and whatever that translates to elsewhere.  I'm pretty much an unknown writer, however I think anything less makes it look cheap for what it is (it's 600 pages) while anything more would cause people to hesitate longer.  I don't know.  It's selling at that price so it's staying at it for now.


I can't prove or disprove any of the above, and I won't make any predictions on future sales.  What it does do is give me confidence in knowing that with enough visibility there are people out there that will buy my book in decent numbers.  I'm certainly not giving up the day job any time soon but as I intend to publish many, many more books over the next few years this is certainly a stepping stone in the right direction.

CW
27 Dec 2012

The Tube Riders - Free promo 20th Dec - 22nd Dec

Tube Riders news

Back in October I issued The Tube Riders as a Kindle free promo on Amazon, shifting just over 4300 copies and taking it as high as No.1 in free sci-fi, No.2 in free fantasy, and No.76 overall.  If you missed out last time you have another opportunity to grab a free copy of this future masterpiece.

Read it, enjoy it, and if you like it tell your friends.  The sequel, The Tube Riders : Exile, is a little over half finished and  I'm currently shooting for a summer 2013 release.  I could push it through quicker but I don't like to rush these things.  Part three, and so far what I'm considering the final part, The Tube Riders : Revenge, will be a sci-fi epic on a scale you've not seen before.  Trust me.  It's already part drafted and it's just monstrous.

I'm not planning to extend the series beyond three volumes for the simple reason that there is other stuff I want to write, and I'm not one of these writers who strings a series out just to get readers to part with their money.  There will be three books, all will be long, all will be non-stop action.

However.

It's a big story.  There will likely be other Tube Riders stuff at some point.  I'm currently working on a spin-off novel, titled either Tube Riders : The Hunters or Tube Riders : Contraband, depending on what day of the week it is.  This features an almost entirely different set of characters, some of whom will feature in part three.  The plot is a lot darker (oh, how I love dark plots!) but it will probably be essential reading before you read part 3.  And one last thing - it's epic.

So, back to what I was talking about - Tube Riders is FREE from Dec 20th to Dec 22nd.  Tell your friends, tell people you don't like.

Get a free copy of Part 2

And one last thing.  I love reviews, but while they're not so important to me (I know the book is awesome already!) they're very important for visibility, attracting new readers and generally becoming successful.  Therefore, I have a little preposition for you.

Anyone who writes an honest review of Tube Riders on Amazon can have either a free ecopy of Tube Riders : Exile when it's released, or a free ecopy of either The Man Who Built the World or Ms Ito's Bird & Other Stories.  Take your pick.

Let me just emphasize the word HONEST.  I'm an honest writer and I like honest readers.  As long as your review is genuine then I'll quite happily send you a copy, even if you don't like the book (however, if you don't like it you probably won't want a free copy of part 2) and you only give me a star or two.  If you just write "this books sucks, now give me a free copy of part 2", I'll likely tell you where you can stick your free copy.  However, write a genuine opinion and you get a free book.  Tell me why it sucks.  That's it.

So, one more time:

Write a review of Tube Riders on Amazon and get a free ecopy of Part 2 or a free ecopy of one of my other longer works.  To prove you've done it, send an email to thetuberiders at gmail dot com.  That's it.  I'd love to offer paperbacks but I'm poor, so this is only for ebooks, sorry.

And here's that badass cover and the link -

 

FREE DEC 20th - 22nd

And don't forget to sign up for the New Releases mailing list so that you'll know when the next book comes out.

Okay, over and out.

CW

17th Dec 2012

What makes a good character?

What makes a good character?

I’ve been reading a couple of books recently (yes, really) and a couple of thoughts came to mind regarding characters, their development, and the empathy readers have with them.

In one book I’m reading, a YA dystopia, the male lead’s only recognizable feature is his spiky hair.  On top of this he appears to be good-looking.  No surprise there.  The female lead is a teenage girl who appears to be Bella out of Twilight with a different name.  Several reviewers have mentioned “great characters”.  Um, why?  The guy is a TV presenter transposed into a sci-fi novel.  The girl is a high-school girl of regular attractiveness and intelligence who will obviously at some point get with the guy.  There’s nothing at all that makes either of them special or makes them stand out.

And perhaps here we have the answer.

Do readers, particularly young adult readers, merely want a character that they can pretend to be?  So that they can pretend to be in the book itself, interacting with the other characters as if they were real?

Another recent book I read, a so-called sci-fi classic, had a review bemoaning the lack of character development.  The book was set on a foreign planet, and revolved around a guy finding out what was going on in his world.  Which he did, and it was great.  Why would I need the guy to have some kind of big change in his life?  The story wasn't just about the guy, it was about the whole world around him.

Another issue I have is with empathy.  Matt Cassidy, the central character in The Man Who Built the World (that's him looking miserable on the cover), is an alcoholic borderline wife-beater who hates pretty much everything.  He’s intentionally detestable, in fact I went out of my way to give him no redeeming features.  The point of the book is such that through his story you discover why he is how he is, and whether he can find redemption. You're not supposed to like him.

I recently had someone pull out of reviewing the book because they couldn’t identify with him.  While I fully respect the reviewer’s opinion this pleased me in a certain way because I don’t want my readers to identify with him.  I want them to pity or hate or be repulsed by him.

I don’t write books with swimwear models or high school nice guys for characters.  If you find one, you can be sure he or she won’t last long.  Charles de Molay, star of my favorite of my unpublished novels, Hooks, is a cripple.  Dan Barker in Head of Words (forthcoming) is mentally insane.  Even the Tube Riders have their issues.  Marta - the only one close to being good-looking, hardly ever gets to wash and her dreadlocks are a case of more grime than intention.  Switch has, for want of a better expression, a fucked up eye, and Paul is balding and overweight.  It’s not just about their looks, either, but their actions.  In a lot of books nothing seriously bad ever happens to the main characters, or they never do anything bad, take your pick.  In Tube Riders, Marta sleeps with guys to pay her rent (or at least she did before the book starts).  Paul does even worse.  Switch kills without thinking whether his victim deserved it or not.

A reviewer recently said my book contained “real people”.  This was perhaps the biggest compliment someone could ever give me.  It doesn't matter if they liked it or not, they got it.  In real life people don’t always do the right thing, and they certainly aren’t always good-looking.  For every Che Guevara (cool enough to spawn a billion t-shirts) or Aung Sung Suu Kyi (gorgeous - at least in her youth, damn) there are hundreds or thousands of 'heroes' that are nothing much to look at.  It is totally possible for someone who isn’t cool or an oil painting to have an adventure, to be a hero.

So what do I think makes a good character?

I used to suffer from something I call the Steve Syndrome.  I would have a couple of main characters who were more distinctive then everyone else would be a Steve (apologies to anyone called Steve!).  This would be a character who had no real features or definition and often a generic name (the first character I identified as having this problem, in my third novel, Resort, was called Steve - hence the name).  In Tube Riders, both Paul and Simon were originally Steves.  Marta and Switch were always pretty well-defined, but I had to make a real effort to make Simon and Paul distinct.  Paul I made fat and more unattractive, while with Simon I went the other way, making him more feminine, almost androgynous.

Therefore, the first thing that I believe is important is memorability (is that even a word?!).  A character has to be memorable.  And not just by having a cute smile - that’s not memorable, it’s generic - they have to have some feature or mannerism (or both) which makes them stand out.  It doesn’t have to be good, and it doesn’t have to be bad.

Also extremely important is voice.  People talk differently.  Some people swear, some people don’t.  Some people say certain words more often than others.  Some people talk in long sentences, others talk in short, clipped phrases.  You should (within reason) be able to write a three- or four- way dialogue without using any identifying dialogue tags yet still have the reader know who is speaking each time.  If you can do that, you’ve got it.

Also very important to me (as you’ll notice from my character descriptions above) is flaws.  I hate good-looking, perfect characters.  Boooorrrriing.  Have you ever met anyone who was perfect?  (Actually, I have met a couple of people who were, and god they were dull).  Perfect characters are only allowed in comedy, because their very perfection can make them hilarious (see my novella series, Beat Down!, for an example).

So what do people think?  Obviously few people agree with me.  I’ve sold 27 books this month so far.  How many has Stephanie Meyer sold?  A billion?  Even the book I was complaining about above has probably sold about 200.  So, I’m likely wrong (except in my own head of course!), but I’d love to hear your ideas on what you think makes a good character.

CW

27 Nov 2012

10 Tips for New and Busy Writers

Okay, I was giving some tips in a forum the other day and thought I’d write them all down in one post for people to reference.  These tips will mostly be useful for beginning writers, busy writers or those who just can’t find the muse, but maybe there will be some info in there for pros to agree with as well.  Of course, these are just my opinions, so you can take them or leave them as you see fit.  I hope that everyone will find at least a couple of things useful.

1.    Kill the internet

Don’t think about it, don’t talk about it, just do it.  I defy anyone who claims they can write well with an internet connection on the same computer.  If they can, they’re a stronger-willed person than me because I really can’t.  I’ve written 125,000 words since I killed the internet on my wife’s old laptop in mid June and adopted it as my main writing computer.  Some of you retired/stay at home/machine-gun writer folks might think that’s nothing, but that’s my most productive period EVER, plus, with working full and part time, looking after a wife and cat, rocking out in a band and managing a cricket club, I rarely get more than an hour or two to write per day.  I can directly correlate the last time I was heavily productive to the last time I had a computer with no internet on it.  That was seven years ago.  That’s an awful lot of writing I didn’t do in exchange for mostly useless web browsing.  I may live to regret it, or I may have pulled it back again just in time.  If you like the internet, have two computers (in different rooms).  But one more time, if you like writing, kill the internet.  No talking.  JUST. DO. IT.  No excuses either, no “Well, it’s my only computer and I need the internet …” whiny type things.  Save it.  You don’t need much power to write.  You can pick up a secondhand 512MB laptop with Word 2003 for less than $100.  Then all you need is a cheap flash drive to transfer your work to your power machine when you want to publish, format or do any of the other stuff.  No excuses.

2.    Stop watching TV

How much do you enjoy watching those chat shows, soap operas, game shows, football matches?  You’re allowed to watch some TV, of course, but have a think about how much you actually watch because you’re interested in the program, and how much of what you watch is just boredom browsing.  Stop doing the latter, and stop doing it right now.  All the other things I could say about this are covered in point 1.

3.    Value that fifteen minutes

One for the busies, this.  So, you’ve got some stuff on after work that you just can’t get out of, and when you get back you’ll be tired, but do you have time to jump on to the computer for fifteen minutes before you go out, or just before you go to bed?  How about before you eat breakfast?  You don’t need to set aside an entire evening to write.  Fifteen minutes before work, when you get home and before you go to bed, and you’ll have 1000 words a day down.  And that is three novels a year.  Some people might say that you can’t get into a story that quickly, but the fact is, that doing it a little and often will keep the plot fresh in your mind throughout the day.  You’ll find yourself thinking about scenes while you’re at work, or lying in bed, or in the pub with your mates, and when you jump into that short fifteen minute session you’ll find you have so much more to write.

4.    Set goals/targets, and push yourself to stick to them

I’m a killer for deadlines/targets.  I literally can’t work without them.  Back in June, I decided, based on a blog I read, to try to write 52 short stories in a year.  I set up a spreadsheet to keep track of everything and then got to work.  That quickly morphed into 1000 words a day but I stuck to it.  It’s very important to set goals within your means, though.  1000 words a day is easy for me.  For others it might be 3000, or just 500.  Set a goal well within your limits and then every time you beat it you’ll feel like you’re cruising and anything else you write during that period will be a bonus.  I wrote 57,000 words in the third month of my challenge, but I didn’t increase my target because I’d be pushing myself too much and there’s nothing that kills motivation more than failure.  Regardless of what my final tally is, at the beginning of the next month I just add another 30,000 words and get to work trying to top that.

5.    Don’t overcomplicate things

I read a lot of posts asking about the best writing software and filing programs to keep notes, particularly from new writers.  That often says to me that people are looking for shortcuts to getting the work done.  You should write with as little distraction as possible, and, particularly at the draft stage, just get those words down.  I use Word to write, then an Excel spreadsheet to keep note of the major characters and what happens in each chapter.  I usually don’t do this until I’ve finished the first draft, though.  Again, different things work best for different people, but I find if I’m spending too long typing details into Excel I lose track of the story.

6.    Plotting is your friend, but don’t overdo it

Stephen King is the most famous advocate for not plotting your books in advance, but while I love his writing his books tend to ramble on and he’s not well known for great endings (I’m not dissing him – I’d kill to be half as good!), but particularly when you’re a newcomer it’s always useful to have a general idea of where you want the story to go.  When I write, I’ll generally write a couple of lines down for each of the next four or five chapters so that when I come to the page I know more or less what I want to happen.  Quite often I go off on a tangent or things change, but there is nothing worse than sitting down and not knowing what is supposed to happen in the remainder of a scene.  Again, plotting is something you can do in your head on a bus on the way to work, or in a notepad sitting quietly beside you on your desk at the bank.

7.    When “in public” as it were, act professionally at all times

Okay, this is not so much about the craft but is something that has frustrated me a lot recently and is rife in self-publishing.  When you put your work out there for people to buy, you cease being an anonymous person typing on a keyboard and you become potentially a professional writer.  Therefore, you should act like it.  This involves complaining about reviewers and starting arguments with other writers on internet forums (or in public, but at least the rest of us don’t have to read it then!).  If someone slams your writing – particularly your mechanics (grammar, spelling, word choice, etc) see it as a free lesson.  Take a good look at what you do and see if you can make it better.  So many people think self-publishing is a way to a quick buck.  It’s not.  Even apparently overnight successes had to learn their craft.  You have to too, there’s no way around it.  Don’t start talking about getting someone to ghost write it, or search for a really good editor to rewrite your paragraphs, learn how to do it yourself.  Editors and proofreaders should be painting your house, not trying to build it from a jumble of bricks you’ve dumped in front of them.  Read grammar books if you have to, but most of all read other novels and think about the flow, the sentence structure, the way the dialogue works.  Then get back to work on your own stuff.  Don’t thank the reviewer or bitch at them, because their review is not for you, it’s for other readers.  That doesn’t mean you can’t learn from it.

And on starting arguments – just don’t.  Self-publishing is not a school playground, it’s not about jostling for the first go on the slide.  If you’re childish enough to pick arguments with complete strangers because they sell more than you or you think their book sucks and yours doesn’t but no one buys it or whatever … get lost.  Go back to school, learn some maturity and come back in five or six years when you’re ready to try again at acting like a professional.  And if someone starts coming after you, just leave.  Internet forums are not the world, they’re just places where people hang out and shoot the shit.  I used to be a member of an English teacher’s forum and I got into a couple of minor disagreements with the long termers who liked to shoot down all the enthusiastic newcomers and I got tired of it.  It became immediately apparent that I would never win, yet the arguments were encroaching on my thoughts at other times of the day when I wasn’t anywhere near the forum.  So I left (without one of those egotistical, “I’m leaving!” announcements, I might add), and I haven’t posted in the two years since.  Every now and again I pop in to see if there’s anything useful, and around the occasional post with some interesting information there’s the same stuff going on, the old timers shooting down the newcomers, the occasional mouthy newbie getting dragged into a flame war, and I’m glad I don’t participate.  It’s not worth the effort.  I have better things to do.  So, don’t be a dickhead.  It’s a complete, utter waste of time, and at best you won’t win any friends, while at worst people will start spreading your real identify and try to trash your books.

8.    Learn to touch type

Okay, enough about decorum, back to the craft.  You might think that you can type well enough with two fingers, but unless you’re a virtuoso you probably can’t type that fast, relatively speaking.  I learned to touch type at school and it is probably the most useful skill I ever learned.  According to this speed typingtest I can type at 70 words per minute without any errors.  Yeah, so I’m a badass, but I only average about 30 wpm when I’m writing, because obviously I’m not just copying, I’m thinking as well, or rewriting sentences.  If you’re typing less than 20 wpm you should really think about learning to touch type.  You can get free online programs to help you and it’ll really help you make use of those little fifteen minute sessions mentioned earlier.  Be aware that it takes time to learn – even after doing a course at school it took me six months of forcing myself to use a touch typing style when I wrote before I could do it without looking.  It was hard, but so, so worth it.

9.    Have several WIPs on the go at the same time

A lot of people won’t agree with this, but I find it really helps when I get stuck on something to have other works in progress I can go over to.  I have I think six current WIPs, and while I have my favorites I keep everything on a spreadsheet now so that I don’t forget about anything.  Quite often I’ll take an hour and have an update, doing ten minutes on each one, aiming just to get another 100 words or so.  Quite often one will take over and draw me in, but that’s no bad thing.

10.   Be patient

Rome – nor any other city – wasn’t built in a day.  Your book might be an overnight success, but I can guarantee you won’t write it, nor even learn to write well, overnight.  Practice, practice, practice, write, write, write.  Then repeat.  Then, after a minimum of a couple of years – more like four or five – you’ll be writing at a standard that won’t get trashed if you self-publish it.  Neither should you rush your WIPs.  Having deadlines is all well and good, but a book takes time to write itself, to iron out all the creases and fold itself up nicely into something wonderful.  Give it time.  Don’t write when you’re too tired.  Don’t write when you’re drunk.  Don’t write with the TV on in the background (okay, guilty, but it’s the wife watching it and I live in Japan so I can’t understand most of it anyway).  Let your writing breathe, be patient, take your time.  You’ll be better off for it in the long run.

Right, this little post has stretched out into a 2000 word tome, so it’s time to put it to bed and get on with some creativity of my own.

Thanks for reading (if you got this far!) and I hope you find some of these tips useful.

CW

24 September 2012

Great Review for Tube Riders

My first British review for Tube Riders came in and I'm pretty pleased with it.  I've submitted the book to a lot of bloggers but The Future Fire is also a well-respected small press magazine.  After I subbed it there for review back in June I read through a few of their previous reviews.  It became quite apparently that they wouldn't take any crap and would call a spade a spade.  I hear a lot of reviewers giving it the "well, I feel bad if I have to give less than four stars" line and while I understand the desire to be nice on the other hand this keeps a lot of junk afloat when some writers really need to be told, "Sorry, you suck.  Go away for five years and practice and then come back."  As a result, a lot of good books get drowned out by the noise given off by all the crap.

So I was a little nervous.  Would I get a good one, or would I get canned?

Here's what they said -

http://reviews.futurefire.net/2012/09/ward-tube-riders-2012.html

The Tube Riders, written by Chris Ward and available through Amazon Digital Services, is a gritty dystopian novel set in future Britain, known as Mega Britain. Now a corrupt, deliberately isolated and socially devastated island, the government rules oppressively and the poor scavenge for food under a persistent threat of suspicion by the Department of Civil Affairs—almost like an Orwellian Thought Police outfit.

The novel’s focus is a gang known as The Tube Riders. Walled within a devastated London—now called ‘London Greater Urban Area’—the group have developed a high-risk game that involves leaping onto the side of moving trains from underground platforms and hanging on for as long as they can. The head of this gang is Marta, who took over leadership from her missing brother. She is supported by the experienced and friendly Paul, the dangerous yet highly loyal Switch and Simon, who is soon joined by his girlfriend Jess. Part way into the book, Paul’s 12 year-old brother, Owen completes the group. Despite most of the gang being relatively friendly—misfits who desperately try and keep their heads down in the civil dystopia that otherwise envelopes them—The Tube Riders appear to have a notorious reputation which is rarely challenged.

This changes dramatically however when they are betrayed by Dan, who leaves the gang in the first chapter after an argument with Switch. Dan approaches rival gang The Cross Jumpers (who jump across tracks in front of oncoming trains)—and tells them of the underground station where The Tube Riders are located in order to curry favour. The Cross Jumpers, led by the deranged Deggo, move to attack but The Tube Riders manage to escape by jumping onto the side of a train and heading down a tunnel. They jump off in unfamiliar territory, only to witness a brutal crime at the hands of government agents. The Tube Riders, as witnesses, subsequently become wanted individuals. Their survival is threatened further by the Huntsmen, biologically-altered, government-bred killing machines who track their prey like dogs. The story delves into The Tube Riders escape and beyond as they carry devastating evidence, film footage captured on camera, and ultimately seek to expose the corrupt authorities.

The novel, as with any traditional dystopia, is a satirically critical perspective that relates to contemporary society. Mega Britain is a grotesque corporate monstrosity that seems like the result of staunch right-wing capitalism and authorities drunk on maintaining a pedantic level order and control, regardless of costs. The class system is polarised more than ever, the poverty is both stark and foreboding and the iron fisted authority often seems to have it’s roots in contemporary right-wing governmentality. In many ways it’s an even bleaker society than that of Moore’s V for Vendetta, and just as striking in written word than animation.

I enjoy analysing these kind of novels from a feminist perspective and The Tube Riders is an interesting study. The gang leaders Marta and Deggo—both powerful characters in very different ways—make the story interesting in that the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sides are represented by strong female characters. The sinister government authorities, led by the Governor (think of a very hands-on Prime Minister!) are resoundingly ‘male’ and yet seemingly peripheral to the main character development. It is, by no means, a feminist novel and yet I saw little that differentiated women in a discriminatory way. Society has a distinct phallocentric hegemony and so any perceived sexism is more a factor of the dystopic society, rather than any casual subconscious implication by the author. In many respects the fact that characters are or are not female becomes mostly invisible; you have those which are strong, sensitive, violent, caring and determined—gender is not a label that is associated by default with any. If a reader considers the caring mentality of Paul, the fierce loyalty of Switch and the strength of Marta, such qualities are actually interchangeable regardless of biological sex.

While many dystopian novels export a moral of some kind, a classic message or a political pamphlet of some kind, I felt that The Tube Riders was just a very good adventure story. The pace is as relentless as the trains themselves and the narrative physically throws characters around like puppets. The story is very much a work of popular fiction, a text that takes the reader to the dark and scarily recognisable Mega Britain and yet lets it’s characters shine through brightly in spite of it. It’s perhaps then a tale of raw human determination overcoming adversity more than anything grander.

In conclusion, The Tube Riders is a tense, gritty and enthralling thrill of a dystopian novel, the break-neck speed of which is the kind that refuses to warn you of upcoming bumps and denies you the breath to secure your seat belt. You often feel jolted, shocked and yet sometimes deeply touched by the very humanistic adventure it describes. If you enjoy solid British sci-fi, or like me, are a sucker for terribly bleak yet well written dystopia, the book is a joy to read and something that really does stay with you long after you turn the final page."

I'll take that.  In fact, I'll quite happily take that every time.  It's certainly given me a lot to think about, especially as the sequel is now being written.

Just a shame hardly anyone else as read it, but I can live in hope that with a few more reviews like that people might start to pay attention.

CW

14 Sept 2012

All about Tube Riding

What is “Tube Riding”?

I actually got asked this the other day, so I thought I would explain to you the rather dangerous practice that is at the centre of my dystopian novel, The Tube Riders.

## Disclaimer – “Tube Riding” is a fictional sport performed by a very small number of people in 2075 London.  It is highly dangerous.  DO NOT attempt to do it for real.  You could quite possibly die and I, the author of The Tube Riders, will not be held legally responsible.  Trust me on this.  Just watch the movie. ##

A “tube” is a nickname for a subway/underground train.  The Tube Riders are a group of young people (there could be older people, but they probably wouldn’t be able to handle it) who “surf” the sides of these trains.  However, while the novel opens with them tube riding in the London Underground, it is possible to ride any train providing the prerequisites are met.

Prerequisites for Tube Riding –

1.      A wooden board, known as a “clawboard”.  Any flat piece of wood will do, but it must have metal handles or leather straps (preferably both) attached to one side, and a curved hook on the other.  Some clawboards have two or more hooks, others have one big one.

2.      Somewhere you can jump on the side of the trains without getting arrested.  The Tube Riders in the novel use the abandoned London Underground Station of St Cannerwells.  Now, don’t go looking for it, because St Cannerwells doesn’t exist.  Yet (the novel is set in 2075).

3.      A train.  Obviously.  Preferably one going pretty fast.  The benefit of St Cannerwells is that it is abandoned and thus the trains don’t stop.  They move through the station at speed, meaning the Tube Riders get a very exhilarating ride.

4.      Some old mattresses or pillows to land on when you jump off.  This is non-essential, as with correct technique it is possible to leap off and roll.  However, as Marta explains in the book, “it hurts like hell”.

How to Ride and Dismount

As the train enters the station, you must run at a diagonal angle in towards it, as demonstrated by Marta in the first chapter of the book.  You hold your board out in front of you.  As you come alongside, you leap up towards the train, angling your board towards the metal drainage rail that is just above the window.  Not all trains have this, so check beforehand.

If successful (and you really don’t want to miss), you stand with your feet braced apart just below the window, leaning back.  Give any commuters a little grin, then get ready for the dismount.

It is very important that you get off before the train goes into the tunnel.  Some of the tunnels are very tight and you could die.  When you are nearing the breakfall mats at the end of the platform, push your board in and up.  It will be held against the rail by the force of motion and you have to counteract it.

Immediately duck your head and arms in.  Land on your back on the breakfall mats and be thankful that you are still alive.

The Aim of Tube Riding

While in the book, Switch describes Tube Riding as "better than any drug", obviously, the main aim is not to die.  Several deaths have occurred, mainly when a rider misses what is known as the “hook” or the “mount”, and gets caught between the edge of the platform and the moving train.  Some platforms have smaller gaps than others, but you really want to make that hook.

However, once successfully on the train, the aim is to dismount as close to the wall as possible, as indicated by painted or chalk marks on the platform edge.  A score over thirty feet is novice, fifteen to thirty good, ten to fifteen exceptional.  As mentioned in the book, no one has done under ten feet and lived.

You can check your own scores, but a score is not official unless it has been verified by at least one other Tube Rider.

More than anything, though, for the Tube Riders, their dangerous sport is something that holds them together in the chaotic days of Mega Britain.  None of them have much family left, so it holds them together.  It will also be needed to save them when they fall foul of the government.

Lastly, that disclaimer again.  Remember, Tube Riding is a FICTIONAL sport.  DO NOT try it EVER.  NOT ONCE.  I am not responsible.

The Tube Riders is available now from Amazon as an ebook or paperback.

CW

September 4^th 2012