A Snapshot of Joe Konrath's e-Book Success

As authors, we know to write it now, get it out there and expect our payday later--much later.  And, yes, we cannot all pretend to reap the numbers of Joe Konrath, but we still have our hopes.  Whatever yours may be, here's a quick look at what Joe did and his earnings (per internet findings; my apologies to Joe if any of the info is incorrect).

To date, he has nineteen novels (purely written by him, whatever pen name used) which is what I'm tracking in this particular post.  So I'm not counting those books where he paired up with another author.  FYI:  He also has four short story collections:

03/01/2010 - Horror Stories - Assorted short stories, e-book

03/01/2010 - Crime Stories - Assorted short stories, e-book

11/11/2010 - Jack Daniels Stories - Assorted short stories, paperback

03/23/2011 - 65 Proof – An Omnibus:  Sixty-five Short Stories, paperback

The date shown above corresponds with the publication data given on Amazon.

From my research, Joe Konrath had his six Jack Daniels mysteries written, one per year, up to and including 2009 when he first began to upload his books to Amazon.  So he had a "backlist," multiple listings to entice new and newly addicted readers.  TIP:  Never stop writing.  Keep on creating those novels even while rejections are coming in.

Here's the Jack Daniels books and their "publication" date.  Sorry I don't know if that is the date of copyright/creation or whether they were actually published pre-Amazon.  Regardless, I'm just seeing how many books Joe had up to match against his earnings therefrom.

05/01/2004 – Whiskey Sour

05/01/2005 – Bloody Mary

05/01/2006 – Rusty Nail

05/01/2007 – Dirty Martini

05/01/2008 - Fuzzy Navel

05/01/2009 – Cherry Bomb

These are the other novels Joe uploaded to Amazon within 2009:

04/01/2009 – Afraid, horror novel, paperback

04/08/2009 – Origin, e-book

04/11/2009 - Disturb, horror thriller about medical experiments, e-book

04/12/2009 - The List, a police technothriller, e-book

04/12/2009 - Shot of Tequila - heist thriller, e-book

07/04/2009 - Truck Stop, a psycho thriller, e-book

He also offered Cherry Bomb in hardcover and e-book on 07/07/2009, but I'm just counting actual titles, not their form of publication.  Still, you can always keep those different formats in mind for later application with your own e-books--branch out into audio, paperback and hardback.

Then in 2010, Joe added three more novels:

06/16/2010 - Endurance,a horror novel by Jack Kilborn (pen name), e-book

06/20/2010 - Trapped, a horror novel by Jack Kilborn (pen name), e-book 

10/26/2010 - Shaken, e-book

Paperback versions of The List, Shot of Tequila, Disturb and Origin came out in July, October, November and November, respectively.

By 2011, besides Shaken coming out additionally in paperback form in February of that year, there were four more Joe Konrath novels on Amazon:

02/22/2011 - Shapeshifters Anonymous, e-book

02/22/2011 - The Screaming, e-book

07/27/2011 - Banana Hammock, a Harry McGlade adventure, paperback

11/22/2011 – Stirred, e-book

As of this writing, I have not found a new J.A. Konrath novel out yet this year.

His earnings are reported as being:

$    2,300/month as of January 2010 (first uploads in April 2009) from 12 novels offered
$  34,000/month as of January 2011 (first full year compared) from now 15 novels offered (total)
$100,000/three weeks as of January 2012 from his total library of 19 novels to date

Keep in mind he's doing e-books, audio, paperback and hardback, plus his books resulting from collaborations with other authors not to mention his short story collections, so all those are included in the earnings quoted above, with each book selling for a minimum purchase price of $2.99.  While almost all of his novels are in e-book format, only some become paperbacks, with less as audiobooks and even fewer in hardback.

Not bad.  Not bad at all.  I look forward to being able to report these numbers!  Of course, I need to get moving on my novel production, instead of my nonfiction books.  I'll have to work on that.

Starting right now . . . .

For Me, It Is Indie All the Way - P.S.

One thing I was surprised to hear about was the shelf life for paperback books.  One month.  Or less.  Hardly time to gather a readership for a new name on a book cover.  I don't begin to understand this aspect of traditional publishing.  From what I gather, the books are "remaindered"--their covers torn off and returned to the publisher.  What a waste!

Just another great side effect of going Indie.  Those e-books have an infinite shelf life.  What I upload this month, should be generating more sales as all twelve months of 2012 tick off the calendar.

I do have plans to publish paperback versions of my e-books down the road.  At this point, CreateSpace within Amazon would be the first place I'll investigate.  When I'm more actively pursuing that avenue, I'll have more to share.

Plus audio books.  I definitely am interested in that medium as I particularly like them while I'm spring cleaning.  Since I'm totally in author-plus-freelancer mode again these last couple months (and beyond), I'm not in my car or that would be a great use of driving time as well.  Still, this is on my horizon for later.

For me, there is no downside to Indie as I love all the myriad creativity involved.  I'm 100% Indie.  But you can be 50% Indie if you want, too.

Isn't it great?  We have options.  There is freedom in having choices.

A Very Basic Tutorial on Uploading E-Books to Amazon and Barnes & Noble

I should have written this down while I was setting up my own account, but I didn't.  However, I shared this with my budding author friend and decided to share it with others, as well.  It is meant to be a shortcut, but you should go to the source and read all the Kindle/Nook literature yourself.  After that, compare my listing below to the authorized site and adapt as needed.  With that caveat, here goes.

1.  Go to www.Amazon.com.

2.  At bottom in middle is Make Money with Us.

3.  Fourth down is Independently Publish With Us.  Click on that.

4.  Which brings up the Self-Publish with Us page--first part is Self Publish via CreateSpace (to have your books in print) and the next down is Kindle Books (for e-books).  Choose Kindle Books.  You can download the free Kindle Publishing Guide or you can click Learn More to read about it, or you can click Get Started and just begin.

5.  Under Get Started, it will ask you to set up your Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Account (name, sign-in and other info, mailing address and if you want your royalties via check or via direct deposit.  I did direct deposit).

6.  After that, it should direct you to the BOOKSHELF area.  Yours should be empty.

7.  Click on Add a New Title.  It will ask you for the usual stuff, the title, the publisher, that you have the rights to this work, if you have an ISBN.  If you have no Publisher Name, Amazon will be your default publisher.

For e-books, it is not necessary to purchase an ISBN at this time (although there are contradictory opinions on this--if I had the money, I'd probably purchase my own block of ISBNs).  Absent your own ISBNs, Amazon will assign you one of their inhouse ASIN routing numbers for free.  Add in the author's name--but you can also choose to add the illustrator's name or co-author's name from the drop-down menu.  You need a Synopsis, a short blurb of your work like you would see on a book jacket, so have one prepared.  I think it gives you like 2400 WC to do that.
  

Amazon (or B&N) will take your Microsoft Word document (although there are other formats accepted, but MSWord seems to translate well) via their free software conversion process.

YOU DEFINITELY NEED TO PREVIEW THE DOWNLOAD.  Here is where I spend at least two hours working out all the glitches.  There will be strange indents happening and missed paragraphs or too many blank lines at different spots.  You go back to your MSWord doc and play around with it, save it and then UPLOAD your document AGAIN within KDP, PREVIEW it again (and again) until it is pretty and looks like it should.  

It SHOULD go without saying (but I will stress it here anyway) that your book be free from spelling snafus and grammatical errors, with no plot holes or inconsistencies and you have checked your facts.

You need a JPG cover (or maybe a TIF is allowed as well)--there are only two forms allowed.  To get my JPG, I simply scan my cover into my home printer and play around with colors and text (title and author name) with the use of free art software called GIMP 2.  MAKE SURE YOUR COVER LOOKS GOOD AS A THUMBNAIL--those small cover sizes you see when you peruse Amazon to buy a book.  

Just reduce the % within MSWord from 100% to 25% and see how the cover looks.  Even if you cannot read your name, make sure your cover still is recognizable and your title is readable.

For a cover, you can create your own, hire an artist or buy one of the royalty-free stock photos found online (like at www.istockphoto.com/).  The problem I have with stock photos is that you (and anybody else) can buy the same photo and your book cover could be duplicated many many times.  I like the uniqueness of having my own covers. Make sure any purchased stock photo is ROYALTY-FREE.  You want just flat-rate services as you Indie-publish your e-books.

You will upload your cover in a separate step from your text.  Hit "Save And Continue," going on to page two.  You choose a royalty.  For UNDER $2.99, you get 35%, I believe.  So about 34 cents of the 99-cent price (which is the lowest price, whether you are selling a one-page research article on How To Lose Weight, or a 600-page tome) is your royalty amount.  

If you choose to sell your book at $2.98, you still get just the 35% royalty from that.  However, if you go with the $2.99-up-to-$9.99 price ranges, you get 70% of the sales price (in the U.S.).  My books are all 99 cents, with the exception of my copyediting manual, which is at $2.99.  Pricing is up to you.  

Check the box re Worldwide Rights, so you will be in all the countries where Amazon has an online store--right now: Italy, Spain, Germany, UK, France, U.S.  There is something about "Do you want your project digitally protected from theft?" and I choose YES each time.  It always confuses me but it seems to be a good thing (unless I've misunderstood it all this time).

8.  Click Upload or whatever once the two pages are filled out like you want.

9.  Your book will be "Under Review" for at least a day and then it becomes LIVE and will appear on both your BOOKSHELF as well as the online Amazon site.

10.  You should go to Amazon Author Central and consider uploading a picture of yourself or your pet or favorite landscape or your book cover.  Upload your bio (I forget how many WC you have, but it's a lot).  List your website if you have one.  It won't take my blog page, so I added it to the end of my bio.  List all your books here too.  It will have the thumbnail of your novel show up soon and you just click Yes This Is My Book, or something like that.

11.  Then you can go back to the BOOKSHELF page load and up top, choose next to it REPORTS, then MONTH TO DATE UNIT SALES and it will show you if you've made any sales in the U.S.  You have to scroll down to the drop-down menu and choose UK, FR, ES, DE, IT to see about sales within the other online stores in other countries.  It should default to the U.S. for us here in the States.  

If you make more than $10 IN ROYALTIES at the end of a month (your 35% or your 70% of sales) or at the end of two months or whatever, then you will get a royalty check/direct deposit from Amazon in sixty days.  I've received three or four from Amazon to date (I first uploaded March 27, 2011) and have received one royalty check from B&N.

TWO THINGS:

12.  I never could get my tabbed indents to work for my paragraphs IN THE PREVIEW UPLOAD, so mine are flush left with an empty line between paragraphs.  For my upcoming novels, I will use the ruler to set auto indent and no spacing between paragraphs--like the standard e-book and paperback formats.  We'll see how that works out later.

13.  YOU HAVE TO USE A SPECIAL "PAGE BREAK" FUNCTION WITHIN MICROSOFT WORD TO MARK YOUR CHAPTERS--or forced page breaks--OR THE UPLOAD WILL BE MESSY.  Within MSWord, go to Insert, then choose Break, and finally select Page.  THAT'S THE ONLY QUIRK WITHIN THE AMAZON UPLOAD.

It does take me about three hours Previewing my work to get each e-book pretty before going public with it.  Of course, once you set up your KDP account, then you just need to go to the BOOKSHELF area and ADD NEW TITLE each time.

You can edit both your initial personal info and the individual book info at any time by going back to BOOKSHELF and there is an "Actions" button to the far right-hand side of each title.  Click on it and it gives you the ability to Edit Profile or Edit Book Details or Edit Rights, etc.  Again, there is the "In Review" process going on and in a day or so, your book again becomes Live.

I read the Amazon contract but if you have the money, an Entertainment attorney can explain it to you probably for one hour's fee.  I'm not saying you can get the terms changed, but at least you can have the boring legalese translated to you in layman's terms.

Three more things:  (1) NO ADS are allowed in your e-book.  I took that to mean even a preview of my new book and asking readers to buy it with a CLICK--although other authors seem to be doing this.  HOWEVER, with an email or two to Amazon, they said it is not a contract violation for me to have a page (which I entitled OTHER BOOKS BY AUTHOR) of Amazon links to my other books.  I do not want to do anything that bans me or my books from Amazon.  (2)  You cannot publicly share your royalties made.  Weird, I know.  But it is plain as day within the contract.  (3)  In fact, you cannot share the Amazon Contract publicly.   So no postings to the WWW or even within a group forum posting or a blog.

That's "it" for Amazon.  Ha!  I know.  In one initial sitting, it can be overwhelming, but you'll get through it.  And then a couple months later, when your next e-book is ready for release, you will wonder if you remember how to do it.  You will.

For B&N, you go to PubIt! at http://pubit.barnesandnoble.com/pubit_app/bn?t=pi_reg_home and fill out their form.  They only have a U.S. store at this point.  There is a little extra step in uploading your JPG at B&N because of pixel size restrictions (750 to 2000 pixel count).  I fix my Amazon cover to fit those B&N specs via GIMP 2 and make a second version of my cover to upload to B&N.  B&N takes less time to upload its ebooks to LIVE status, but you still NEED TO PREVIEW your upload and fix the glitches that occur in translation.

The royalty rates are different at B&N, being 40% and 65%, respectively, compared to Amazon's.

I am looking into Smashwords (another free site for e-book uploads) to access the other markets:  Kobo, iPad, Sony reader, etc.  Will let you know more about that when I get into it.

Good luck all!

My Novel-Writing Mode

If you are an author, you've been asked before if you are a plotter or one who writes by-the-seat-of-your-pants.  I'm the latter.  Although at first I do have vague ideas about the beginning, the ending, the three try-fail scenes.  But I'm more fluid about sticking with them as-is.  After all, imagination is King and allowed to reign free for the most part with me.  Thereafter, as things jell, my plot becomes more rigid, more set.

I'm definitely a character-driven author (again as versus a plot-driven work).  So I get my stories from people, real-life ones I see in 3-D or ones depicted in magazines or stills--or blogs.  One such photo, that launched itself into my mind and right into a fast blip of a short movie clip, came out of a magazine ad (for what, I do not remember).  But there was a woman in a flannel lumberjack shirt, standing relaxed in front of her open door, coffee cup in hand, gazing at the snowcapped mountains.  That tale still resides in me, awaiting release.

One was a beautiful tan self-assured girl in safari garb driving an open Jeep which passed my DART bus on my way to my less-exciting day job.  I've posted about her before.  I'm still gonna write her story at some time--"her" story in the way my creativity sees it, that is.

I get ideas from TV shows and books and movies, too.  I love Murder, She Wrote (TV series) and J.D. Robb's In Death (book) series.  I love how each protagonist is a good person, trying to do right, amid all the wrongdoing they see.  Plus my first-ever written story, a short-short creation in response to a required homework assignment for my seventh grade English teacher, was a mystery.  So, I definitely have at least one mystery to be written from within my DNA.

While I love my characters I embellish, there are some other loves of mine that I pair with them.  Being an entrepreneurial-author type, I like to choose different careers for my guys in my novels.  So you probably won't find a doctor, a lawyer or an Indian Chief among them.

As for settings, I love my Deep South roots.  So you will see that reflected in my tales.  But I yearn to see Paris, France and other European sites (also found in my genetic makeup), so that is inevitable as well.

Then there are those topics where my own interests lie, so my personal research/learning would end up being info/knowledge used for later books.  Again, I'm tied to mysteries, thus drawn to Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids.  Overlay that with just a general awe over creation itself and you would understand why landscapes pull me so, like sunsets and sunrises, and nature walks and hiking through parks, etc.

If you are a fledgling author, do not despair.  Ideas will come to you as you read a newspaper and ask "What if . .  .?"  What if I took my next-door neighbor merged with my boss and my mother and put this newly created conglomerated individual in this scenario from today's news, what would happen next?  What would the life of my rich (or poor) friend look like from an insider's viewpoint?  What if I took a traditionally male job and put a woman in it?  What if I took a marriage and made the woman the breadwinner and the man the at-home caretaker?

Examine the works of others you love which work on many levels.

I love Firefly (the Joss Whedon TV series--too short-lived!) and the follow-up Serenity movie, not to be confused with the supposed first episode named "Serenity."  I still watch it over and over on DVD.  If you study Joss's character cast, you see a bunch of neat twists and turns just with the makeup of his cast.  You have Serenity herself, the ship, which acts as much as a main character as it does for the setting, the cowboy past comingled with the spaceship future.  Genius.  Double genius.

You have Mal, the ship's captain (a necessary character), but this one is flawed and we love him all the same.  He has his yes-man subordinate, Zoe, who acts as his conscience and will speak up when she feels it necessary.  She's the fighter/warrior married to the wimp-like ship's pilot, Wash, and their relationship is hot and inspiring.  We have the onboard renter, a professional companion, Inara, who secretly loves Mal who secretly loves her, amid all the whore-bashing rhetoric he flails her way, which definitely appeals to the more tormented love seekers who watch the series and may yearn for the Zoe-Wash marriage, but are currently not there yet, still in flux.

To round out the ten-character cast (I'm counting the spaceship Serenity), there is the shepherd, aptly named thus, and this crew is in need of his and His help.  You need a mechanic on any ship, and who doesn't love Kaylee?  She's our naive, sweet, optimistic young girl with the heart of gold.  Her down-to-earth girl-next-door good looks are just as beautiful in their way as Inara in her decked-out, bejeweled, Glamour Shot, model-perfect version.

Jayne is the guy you love to hate.  He's our in-house nemesis that you end up policing even while you are fighting a greater terror, like the Reavers.  Simon and River Tam were a brilliant addition to the cast.  First, it makes for an uneven pairing of the crew/cast, and it certainly added an interesting element to the "Out of Gas" episode.  Second, River is an entertaining conundrum, going from insane-acting person to superior IQ intellect to cockney-accented foible.  She's great.  Third, the brother is a doctor taking care of his patient, but his patient is smarter than he is.  I find him an odd mixture of hero and wimp.  Probably as Joss planned.  Fourth, it adds another element to an enemy to be fought, both within their ranks and from without.

Joss, you are another of my mentors.

Still, for those newbie authors, don't be intimidated by the genius that is Joss.  Follow it like you can do the Eight Archetypes or other external guideposts.  Not to be discounted is the factor of you.  You have no farther to look than inside yourself.  Write about characters that personify your greatest values.  Write about situations where the good guys or underdogs win.  Write about causes you wish to elevate to make the world a better place.  Write about what you love.  Move your readers to care, to shed a tear, to write a donation check, to improve themselves somehow.

You CAN make the world a better place for you having been here.  Do it.  Write from the heart.  Start now.

The Dreaded "Final Edit"

As I stated in an earlier post, I am doing a Final Edit on my debut novel.  Being a workaholic and a perfectionist, I want my book to be the best it can be.  In light of the current changes in publishing, I want my book to be the best it can be--especially since I will be releasing it as an Indie-published e-book.  As an author, I want my book to be the best it can be because it carries not only my name but also my words, my thoughts, my philosophy on life.

But I was having no fun editing with all this pressure.

I had to remind myself of a very famous writer with her seven-book series whose later books show her growth as an author.

We should all show our growth as authors.

Yet, her books were published and enjoyed by millions before she reached increased levels of perfection.

Kind of like a physician's practice (emphasis on the word "practice") connotes a lifetime of learning his art, so does it with us creators using our imagination and words to tell a tale with the art of written communication.

Plus, isn't this daily road trip on my way to my goals supposed to be fun?

Here's the distillation of these random musings.  I am not perfect (Gasp!) and should relax a little--hard for us workaholics to do.  Instead of waiting to publish when I have studied and learned all that is out there, not to mention implementing the entirety of that knowledge, I have realized that I would never be published in my lifetime.  No one would with that criteria.  Obviously, this does not mean putting up slop to sell.  I take great pride in my work. 

Besides there are those brilliant authors who break the rules and win over the readers and critics alike, all the while presenting their storytelling in such a way so as to effectively share it with us all.

So why take decades to study these "rules" if you can be persuasive with the written word without them?  I'm reminded of that oft repeated axiom to stop the research, stop the studying, and just act.  Good advice.

I'm taking it.

Again, I'm not advocating to ignore the Web11 spellings and definitions of words, nor the standard English grammar usages that encourage the art of successful communication.  I am saying there is no "perfect" time and I will yet to be perfect myself, so we should take the sum of our knowledge AT THIS POINT and use it wisely.  Go for it!
 
And for those who are interested, I'm enjoying my process so much more now.  With my new improved mind-set (yes, this is the Webster's 11th Edition way to spell it), I have worked through the first fifty-four pages of my two-hundred-twenty-page novel.  I'm not sure how many rounds I will need to polish my work, but I'm feeling my way to finding out.  For this book.  I'm sure each one poses its own set of guidelines and needs.

After all, I am a work in progress myself, just like my books. 

Target Audience / Reader Demographic

As a follow-up to my previous post regarding how my age does not determine what I read, I would like to further discuss the anomalies of “target audience” and “reader demographic.”  I happen to enjoy teen paranormal books/movies, and I am neither teen nor paranormal (much).  Yet if my age and human status are limiting factors, then booksellers would never realize they have a market in fifty-something females of the non-vampire, non-werewolf variety.

Anyway, I don’t believe the old writer’s adage to “write to your audience” as if only people of the same approximate age of my main characters will read that book.  My personal reading habits alone defy that model.  It is too much like "write what you know."  Which sounds logical, until you apply it to the fantasy writers out there, or the SciFi genre or the paranormal crowd.

I recently read in the Kindle Direct Publishing newsletter about the top twenty most well-read cities in America.  It’s an interesting collection of not only cities, but what was the bestselling genre sold for some of them (nonfiction, cooking, children’s books, etc.).  Now this is information an author can use.

To begin with, you could choose a city you know and love from that list of topmost-book-reading devotees and make that place a central theme to your next book, a character of its own.  Think of Tara Plantation in Gone with the Wind.  Or for a more timely example, Lisa Turner’s Memphis in A Little Death in Dixie.

Follow your genre and market heavily (local newspaper articles, TV station spots, radio ads, billboards) in those cities which devour your kind of books.  Amazon’s Author Center states “Nielsen BookScan does not aggregate sales data for Kindle or ebooks, or for books available only through third party sellers.”  HOWEVER, Amazon compiled these figures and included Kindle e-book sales.

I predict Nielsen BookScan and the like will incorporate e-books sales.  Just like Bestseller Lists will incorporate e-books.  And contests will allow e-book submissions.  All that will have to change to accommodate the jinormous elephant in the room.  Because e-books are big sellers.  

In the meantime, write what moves you. 

 

This Author’s Partial To-Do List re Indie Publishing

This blog spot is as much for me as it is to share with you.  The following is a compilation of ideas I’ve garnered from my reading.  I read A LOT.  And I can see one line out of a whole newsletter that spurs me to activity or to capturing an idea on paper.  Being Indie-published, I am the sole person in my publishing company.  Therefore, I have lots to do.  It helps to write stuff down.  Here goes.

If you are like me and have uploaded e-books for the Kindle and Nook, have you considered recording an audio version of your book “as read by author”?  I understand all you need is a computer-compatible microphone and you can create an MP3 (maybe some software is involved).  Like I said, this is on my To-Do List.  I don’t have the experience yet.  But I need to add that knowledge to my base.

This idea works for me currently as all I have e-pubbed to date are nonfiction How-To books, so I can read it well enough to entertain my readers while they are driving to work or cleaning their kitchens.  However, when I get to the novel productions, I am not the one to create the different voices required to distinguish all my characters.  Someone more gifted in that area would need to read my taped novels.

How about a vlog?  Create your own video and upload it to YouTube?  Great marketing tool.

When I go to print books, I want freebies.  I like theme-based pencils, erasers, bookmarks and such.  Start thinking of what promos you would like to help market your creative works.

Even now, with my e-books, once I start uploading my novels, I intend to have bookmarks at the back end that the reader can print out on plain card stock (or heavy white paper) and cut apart with a paper cutter.  This is all a work-in-progress, but my current thinking is to have my book cover on each and maybe one of four or five great one-liners from my story per bookmark, since I should be able to put five per 8-1/2x11-inch page. 

I love the idea of giving more, so this works well, even for e-book versions.  I already have my Lagniappe page at the end of each current e-book, which “success formula” is printed on the reverse side of my business cards as well. 

I was reading a bio about a local author who will be speaking at an event soon and checked him out on Amazon and was surprised to see his blog compilations for sale for a monthly fee.  I use Blogger.com for this site and it seems to offer the same option for providing a book of your blogs.  Worth checking into.

 Best wishes in ALL your endeavors. 

Wisdom Can Be Found Anywhere: Interesting Thoughts from Books and Movies

As a curious and studious seeker of wisdom and knowledge, I find evidence of both everywhere.  Plus I’m a movieholic so it is not surprising that I find pearls of universalisms in big screen productions.  One of my all-time favorite flicks is Sweet Home Alabama which has a great line that goes something like this:  You can have both roots and wings . . . .  I love that line.  Why do we have to choose between the two?  Why can’t we have both?  Why can’t we have it all?

These are not just kernels to create a novel from, although that is something I am likely to do.  However, learning in and of itself is useful.  It adds to our confidence level, can improve the quality of our lives and our world.  Who knows which one of us will assimilate a random collection of facts and come up with something new from that combination’s synergy? 

A new philosophy perhaps.  Ayn Rand did it with her books, novels Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, not to mention her nonfiction works about objectivism.  How about a cancer cure or a new fuel supply?  What about something so basic like learning to understand and communicate effectively with the opposite sex, or just our siblings and other family members or even coworkers?

We each have such a unique fingerprint—and I’m not only talking about what is under our nails, but more of a soul print.  Something so vast and complex and special and whole, in and of itself, so as to not need 

repeating.  That describes every one of us.

For the record, when the Bible speaks of the beginning of wisdom is the fear of God and that we were fearfully and wonderfully made, I question the translation from the Hebrew that led to the usage of the word “fear” in both these instances.  I find “respect” would be a far better choice.  Regardless, that is my opinion and I’m off on a tangent here.

So back to my original thought:  finding gems to live by or, in the case of us creative types, some topic to paint, research, study or write about whether in a textbook or a paperback novel.  Can you guess where these paraphrased snippets or actual quotes came from?

-         …made everything beautiful for its own time.  [Note:  I particularly believe that this means you and me.  If we are alive in this time and era, we are beautiful as THIS is our time.]

-         Sex should only be delayed by mutual agreement of the married couple and only for the purpose of prayer.

-         A new husband shall take on no public responsibilities but shall instead stay home for one year to make his wife happy.

If you guessed that all three came from the Bible, you would be correct (Ecc. 3:11, I Cor. 7:5 and Deut. 24:5, respectively).  I share this for two reasons.  One, you never know where a good idea can come from, and can be put into praxis in your actual everyday living or in an imaginary work of art—or both.  Two, I think the Bible can scare people away from it sometimes and I want to illustrate that it is full of great stories, humor, poetry and all the possible human conflicts that we depict in movies and books.

So, here we are, roundabout to the beginning of this blog.    Revering the written words found in bookstores, libraries, schools, churches, homes--or resident in our minds until unleashed--as well as the works on film or DVD or Blu-ray or whatever new technology someone else is sure to invent.

Wisdom can be found anywhere . . . you just need to focus your sights on finding it.  And the addition of YOU may be all that is needed to create something amazing.

Where do I get my novel ideas? And other mental wanderings . . .

As a novelist, I know it may not seem like “work” when I watch a movie, read a book for pleasure, study an author’s work by reading and rereading and dissecting and evaluating and diagramming, or while flipping through a catalog or magazine.  Or just by staring out my window at the beauty of nature.  But it is.

However much my career is not “work” to me but pure pleasure, the above motions feed my imagination.  I fall in love with a movie and I want to know:  Why?  What about that movie touched my soul?  I need to know this so I may replicate that emotional pull on my readers in my own stories.  Ditto for books I read that move me and engage my feelings.

Studying the masters or having a mentor is key to learning, improving.  I happen to be an avid J.D. Robb / Nora Roberts fan.  In more than one of my personal library’s How To books on writing, a common homework assignment is to take your favorite author and actually copy down by hand a passage from his/her book.  This is NOT to endorse plagiarism.  This is to get your mind and fingers in tune to great writing.  Sometimes I have to listen to an audio book twenty times before I begin to see a little glimpse into Nora’s patterns in her usage of the English language, because no matter how often I read her stories and know them by heart, she swallows me whole into her tale and I’m lost in it.  I yearn to be able to do that with my writing.

As far as catalog cruising or magazine meanderings, I get great ideas for characters that way as well.  Same goes for people watching wherever you are.  I remember taking the DART express bus downtown to work one day and an athletic-looking young woman in an open Jeep dressed in safari gear drove by with the sunshine raining down on her flawless natural tan.  THAT book that she initialized is still percolating in my mind.   One story idea of mine came from a paper ad with a full-page photo of a woman in a flannel shirt sipping coffee in front of the open door of her cabin high in the snowcapped mountains. 

Sometimes I just write about people I would love to surround myself with, in a world that I would like to inhabit.  It is okay to let your imagination run wild and consider various scenarios.  I also love mysteries and will write at least one in my lifetime.  Research into Stonehenge or the Holy Grail or the Bermuda Triangle would be great fun and I would love to tackle any of those subjects and see what kind of a tale I could wrap around those wonders.

Anything that interests me is fair game:  cell memory, transplant recipients taking on new habits and loves, our sixth sense, other dimensions, powerful forces we cannot see—just to name a few.

Speaking of powerful things not visible to us, I am overwhelmed with a sense of good tidings coming my (and your) way.  It’s been with me for three days.  I can’t wait to see what it is . . . .