Swept Away

Firstly, let me apologize for the inexcusable and enormous gap between posts! (Now note that although I previously dubbed it inexcusable, I follow promptly with an excuse.) Between my mother and mother-in-law's visit in October, Thanksgiving and the first of the baby doctor's appointments in November, family up for Christmas and all that jazz in December, I have sorely neglected this blog so early in its bloom. And thus, I begin anew!

One of the greatest things about this new year of 2012 is that I am very, very close to finally completing my first full-length novel, Wolf Prints. (Look! Look! See? I get the right to underline the name of one of my books now! Huzzah!) I have a couple novellas out, sure, but nothing compares to the pride that comes with calling oneself a novel writer.

(Warning! The following mega-paragraph is a detailed explanation why never to use the named self-publisher. If you do not want to read it, you may comfortably skip past it and continue with the intended contents of this blog. However, if you are an aspiring author, this may save your bacon.)

I am also expanding my publishing horizons this year. With "Diamond Heels" and "Diamond Heels: Special Edition," I naively self-published with a free site called lulu.com. I am neither afraid nor ashamed to tell you that Lulu is a scam. Yes, they really will publish your book. Yes, they will give you a free ISBN number. Does this sound too good to be true?

It is. Unlike other self-publishing sites such as Amazon or whatever it is you intelligent folks use for your publishing needs, Lulu does not make its money by selling your book. It will not advertise, but it will ask you to purchase a highly expensive advertising agreement to make your book available on Amazon. (Luckily, I did my research before actually finding out the hard way about the following). Your book will be on Amazon for a couple days if you are a highly lucky individual. After that, Amazon will take your book right off their market because Lulu is mot one of their sources and therefore thinks it is posting junk on there illegally. Fact is, Lulu knows this. They do not care because this leads right into their main trap (one I have unwittingly fallen into).

The way Lulu makes its money is by destroying the book formats the author painstakingly put together. The editing format is incredibly tedious as it is. "First reformat your document into this example so that our system can read it and put it into this other example which you will then have to change into this third example which will lead into this final example to send into us." The author works doggedly through the night to make it all happen, checking and rechecking, reading and rereading, fixing this then altering that... until finally, finally can he/she be sure it is in all ways perfect. Then Lulu will take the work, reformat it once again "to better fit the binding of your hard copy or eReader version" and call it finished.

Now here is where the Amazon part of the scam comes in. By now, the author already knows one way or another to avoid their Amazon advertisement. Therefore, the only way to get his/her book known is to buy it himself (because nobody is going to actually search and order from lulu.com) and distribute it wherever he/she can (be it church, a bff's bookstore, or a Facebook fan page). After a killer of a wait, the overpriced books (which will go up in price whenever Lulu feels like it, giving NO revenue to you even if you were so lucky to get one sold off that site) come to his/her door, he/she opens it up... and realize Lulu completely off-centered every chapter page, threw off the text size, and did all sorts of weird things to the content of the book. Thus, they blame the author and he/she have to do the process all over again, no compensation. Some will do this a third or even a fourth time before realizing the truth: Lulu makes its money by skrewing up the author's book and charging insane amounts of money for more and more faulty prints to be made. An adequate one will never emerge. Ever. Thus, goodbye Lulu! Hello Amazon (or somebody legitimate).

(End of enormous and somewhat interrupting paragraph)

Okay, the very long rant is over and I will continue where I was supposed to be going with this blog.

I came across a really interesting quote this morning that totally epitomizes how I see and why I love the people in Wolf Prints!

"When writing a novel a writer should create living people; people not characters. A character is a caricature." -Ernest Hemingway

When I originally started writing this book, I had my ideas in mind about the characters I was going to use. For the sake of understanding and a little self-advertisement, I will give you a little sneak peak on these characters. (By the way, this is a very loose representation of my interpretation of the classic beauty and the beast story -werewolf appocolypse style. That's kind of all you need to know right now.)

Drake: He was supposed to be my diamond in the rough. The pack leader, haughty, disdainful, etcetera, and yet he was supposed to have a heart of gold. However, as I began writing, the story flew out from under me and began creating itself into something entirely different. Drake made himself an overall Jack-hole with a heart and soul as black as his past. He really did not care a whit about other people, even deep inside. He develops throughout the story, however, not brought out into his true loving self by the beauty character, but transformed into someone he had never been by something much more powerful.

Sophia: She was and is my little mouse, but my intentions to exploit her as a misunderstood damsel-in-distress kind of tanked when she revealed herself to be a (well-meaning but nevertheless) selfish manipulator. She had all the insides of gold with the habits of a monster. Instead of changing the beast, the beast showed her the truth about herself and she must then decide what to do about it.

Steven: He was going to be the annoyingly childish side-liner, side-kick, and otherwise second to Drake -or so I thought. Boy was I wrong! A wisdom I never knew he had brought him out as a remarkable and very important individual -maybe even moreso than his "hero." Steven has many layers to him, but the way he picks and chooses his battles and carries himself with an honorable mixture of confidence and humility makes him shine the brightest out of all of my "characters."

Elly: To be honest, she was going to be a background character of comic relief mentioned now and then in non-influential  scenes of the novel. Well, Elly is a stubborn girl, and the background was not for her. As I had intended to write her, she was a ditzy, shallow, googly-eyed, typically stereotyped blonde teenager with a cheerleading uniform to boot. In the end, she is still "shallow," but you are going to fall in love with that word! Elly is genuine, resourceful, and the banana to the pack's peanut butter. She does not have a celebrated "deep" personality or a mysterious past because she does not need it. The openness of her character, the rawness of her emotions, and the frankness of her attitude are a refreshing and entirely relateable element that, I think, is mostly responsible for the heart-hammering transformation Wolf Prints has undergone from book to novel. 

I would love to take the credit and say that "I made my characters people, not caricatures. I disrobed from the usual blandness of thinking in which so many other authors entrap themselves!" Yeah, but I cannot. To be honest, I am not even sure I was the one to write this book! Yes, it was my original story idea, yeah, I typed it out under my fingers, yes, it was my sleepless nights and premature grey-hairs that paid for this endeavor, but this story changed into something beautiful that I never could be capable of. I mostly blame God, and the fact is, if you want your characters to be people, then you have to kind of let go and let them be as they may. Just like you cannot manipulate real people into boxed personae, you cannot keep a strangle-hold on your characters and expect them to be realistic.

Well, I had my fun. Thanks for reading all about my exciting adventures in writing! Haha. If you want to keep track of my ongoing author-like endeavors, then follow me on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/pages/Kimberlee-Long-Author-Page/164966216920669?sk=wall&filter=1). Otherwise, until next time! Ciao!