Or maybe it is more like a prisoner that can’t get outside.

Several times in the last few days I have had interactions on FaceBook with people on my friends list. They aren’t seeing any of my posts about writing. If I post something political, it is everywhere. Mention a book, invisible.

Perhaps it is the algorithm looking for conflict to create engagement. Or maybe it is related to the 50 ads I get from FaceBook each day offering me more eyes on my posts starting at $5 a day.

Either way… I have become invisible. And without more marketing, my books won’t be read. It’s frustrating. Really frustrating. The flip side of the coin is that there are a million different marketing paths I can take. But… most of them suck. All of them promise massive sales and engagement, but there is always a little hitch.

Regardless, I either have to find a way to break out, or just accept that actually selling books is too far fetched. Personally, I think stealing the spoon from the prison food line and trying to dig under the wall is a lot more attractive than giving up. But the question remains… Will I just dig myself into a different prison?

Previously, I have not managed to participate in NaNoWriMo. My timing has been a little off. Each time I had just completed a book going into November, or had one that was mostly written. This year, I’m going to try to do coordinate myself with the event enough to write a book that month. For me, the goal is about 100,000 words, but that is because of the genre I write in and my desire to do a little cutting in the editing process.

So, in the last installment, we talked about creating a story arc from your idea, and the primary elements you needed to have. Here is a link if you haven’t read it yet. This time, we are going to talk about your characters, as well as organizing other things in your story.

There are probably as many ways to organize story elements as there are authors. Some go old school and pin items to the wall in front of their workspace. Others may use post-it notes. I write in the living room of my house, so those don’t work for me. I also have intricate timelines in some of my books… in fact, some of my timelines intersect in other books. So I have to track those as well.

The first thing I do as I begin to write is create a “notebook” in Evernote. There are other note-taking programs or apps that likely work as well… maybe even better… but this is what I use. Then, I begin populating the notebook with the details that I need to track.

Characters… As I create a character that will appear more than a time or two, I try to build a dossier for them. I grab a picture from the web… it’s just for me… so that I can look at them. I describe them… physical characteristics, as well as personality. Even if it will change through the story, I need a baseline. I also add significant events… maybe a marriage or divorce, loss of parents. Often, I will create a backstory for them. At a glance in their dossier, I can refresh myself on their character so that I don’t unwittingly change them.

Places… I do the same thing. For a house, I have been known to grab a Pintrest pics of an interesting house, business or other location and build up from there. I will add descriptions as needed as well. A location can be just as important as a character in that regard.

Because I’m me, I also add cars to some of my characters. If they drive something unique or special, I may include a file just for the vehicle.

Timelines can be pretty loose or very specific.

In the Dixon-Prince series, I use dates. So, I will check the calendars for a specific year, and use the date. I track those dates in a master Excel Spreadsheet for the series. I enter the date, and what happened then. Sometimes it’s backdating, such as in a character’s backstory. I include birthdays and anniversaries in those dates as well. I keep them organized by date for future reference. That is in addition to having special dates noted in character dossiers.

In Triple Cross, I included day and month in the book, but not year. I did track the year, but it was as a note in the margin for my purposes. That helped when I was “going back twelve years” and had to keep the timeline straight. Kids age, and since there were kids being born and growing up, I couldn’t just wing it on the times. The character dossiers have birthdays and other similar information, just like the Dixon-Prince books, they just aren’t completely identified.

Lies and Omissions is a little more open on dates. We have a start time, but aside from me identifying it as “the early 1980s” in the preface, there are no specific dates given. Oddly, I found that harder than either of the other ways to write. It gave me the most freedom to break up into chapters, but I felt the need to meticulously track the dates. I started out not doing that, but quickly saw the error of my ways. Again, character dossiers had important dates, and there were margin notes for when each action took place.

Honestly, each system presents challenges and opportunities. For the Dixon-Prince books in the future, I will continue with the same regimen, but for other books I likely won’t. It is easier, but limits the ability to break the action up into chapters. For example, in Unknown Caller (Dixon Prince 6) I had a flashback in the middle of a day. Luckily, it was an long and action-packed day, so I was able to easily cover three chapters (early in the day, flashback, late in the day). But that is seldom the case.

And the completely wide open arrangement I used in Lies and Omissions was hardest to write, and more importantly, to track accurately. I didn’t start with all of the dates recorded, so I had to build that out after writing the first draft. And I figured out that I had a lot of impossible timelines that needed to be cleaned up. Perhaps nobody would have figured it out, but I think it would have shown through as sloppy.

I have not really done the NaNoWriMo thing to very good effect since hearing about it in 2019. It’s been going on much longer than that, though. My failure to participate hasn’t been due to anything with the event. I think it’s rather cool. Instead, I have had poor timing.

For me, writing a novel is an exercise in chaos. When I wrote my first one (which I finished the first draft of in October 2019), I started out with a plan. It fell apart immediately. My characters had other ideas. Instead of the quirky sci-fi/fantasy novel I expected, I got a thriller. Hmm.

For this year’s NaNoWriMo, I plan on doing my writing in November. But, in order to do that, I will need to make a better plan, and stick to it. It will take more discipline than I have displayed thus far in my writing. So, the first thing I will do it create a plan, rather than creating characters and seeing where they want to go.

A good story relies on an arc of events. The basics are the same, but I would recommend researching story arcs for your genre. Here is a place you might start…

1. Exposition
2. Inciting Incident
3. Rising Action/Progressive Complications
4. Dilemma
5. Climax
6. Denouement

It doesn’t have to follow this, but this is the basic organization of most stories.

Sometimes, though, there are mini-stories within the major arc, so you might find that you have more going on. But you’ll still see similar basic steps in your story.

So, unless you are always reading free books, those titles start adding up. Fifty books at $3 each is $150. That is definitely getting into the realm of buying a subscription to Kindle Unlimited. There are hundreds of thousands of titles available for KU subscribers for no additional cost. And those aren’t all unknown authors or $3 books. Some of the titles are as much as $10.

So, if you like to read a lot, it can be a pretty good deal. And, all of my books are currently available on KU, too. Except, of course, the book you can get for free for subscribing to this blog… the form should be over to the right.

Just in case you are wondering, as authors, we DO get paid for KU reads. We are paid per page. The actual payment varies each month, but in general I make just a little less than I do on a purchase, IF you read the whole book. It also bumps the book up in the ratings as more pages are read.

Right now I am well behind where I need to be in order to reach my book sales/KU reads goal for September. But if a few of you that are KU subscribers give me some reads, I’ll be right on track again.

As if you didn’t already know where to find my books… Here is my Amazon Author link. For good measure, here is my Vocal Media link, too. There you will find a lot of my short stories. Those are FREE to read, always, but if millions of you go and read my stories, I’ll make enough money to buy a happy meal.

I have to tell them the specific changes that have been made. So, for each change, I have to give them a “location number” (which I think might be a paragraph, but I’m not sure) as well as the nature of the change… location 5476, changed word ‘ot’ to ‘to’ or some similar.

Well… I didn’t record all of that, and it is VERY difficult to go back and figure it out, so I have had to scour my books (I have done Planning Vengeance, Dig Two Graves, You Don’t Know Jack, Who What When Why?, and Grafton. I’m in the midst of Unknown Caller, then will be doing Triple Cross and finally Lies and Omissions. That is all eight of my books. Feel free to get a few of them.

If you already have a copy, you can go into your Amazon account and look for content and devices. Then, under content, search out the book titles (I order them by author… it’s easier because they are grouped together). Under the ones that have been updated, there is an “Update Available” tag. Click it and the new update will be sent to your app or device.

A word of caution… if you have notes, they might not survive the update. I think that has to do with the changes in location that can happen as words move. This is especially true if you have a much older version of the book.

None of the changes are truly significant. I’m not changing plot points, characters, structure or action. These are changes to words or (in a few cases) formatting. Typos, wrong words (I have a couple of hanger instead of hangar that I’ve found) and similar things. They are annoyances… especially to me. The most significant changes were VERY early in Triple Cross. Right after I published it I realized I had some of the timeline mixed up. I had changed some things BEFORE publishing and didn’t catch all of the related changes. I fixed it within a few days. But… if you are the other person that downloaded it then, you might have the old version.

Do I need to say that this doesn’t work with the print versions of the books? That is one of the reasons I don’t do the print versions right away… Readers spot mistakes and tell me, and I correct them.

The common thing I see on the webs is that if I wanted there to be no mistakes, I would hire an editor… and yet, reading BIG NAME authors, I often spot multiple mistakes, especially in first editions. They have a phalanx of editors and others that go through their books with a fine-toothed comb, and there are STILL errors. It happens.

I’m just trying to fix mine.

If you ever find an error, please let me know. If it is an old edition, there is a good chance I’ve found it, but if not, I will fix it for future editions. Because of the way Amazon does it, there have to be a bunch of changes to trigger an update, though.

“Go,” Finn yelled, pushing Beth deeper into the house.  He pushed her through the back door just as Finch managed to pick up his weapon with his left hand.  Eight shots rung out as he pushed her in front of him through the door.  “Around to the right,” he told her, just half a step behind, stripping the memory card from the recorder he had been carrying in his jacket. 

“Crap that went bad fast,” Beth said, slowing up after sprinting all the way back to the barn with the Land Rover.  When she turned around, Finn was on the ground just outside the door.  A red stain was spreading from his side. 

“Go,” he told her as she rolled him over. 

Beth ignored him, tearing the shirt away from his side where he’d been hit.  

“It’s a clean shot, Finn.  We can fix this,” she told him.  Her limited medical training years ago was being pushed past its limits.  Finn held out his hand.  There was a micro-SD card between his thumb and index finger.  “Take it.  It’s as close to a confession as we can get.”

She took the card from him and jammed it into the pocket of her pants. 

“The passcode on my phone is 0819, the day we kissed.  Look for Alex.”

“I’m going to get you to the hospital.  You’ll be alright.  You have to be.”  She looked around the barn, seeing nothing but what they had brought, along with a few dirty, oily rags and a roll of duct tape.  She ran to her backpack and pulled out a couple of t-shirts.  She took those and the part of his shirt that she’d torn off and fashioned a bandage.  She wrapped duct tape around him and then did her best to leverage him up and into the passenger seat of the old Land Rover. 

She ran back around the driver’s seat and jumped in.  She cranked the engine, but it refused to fire. 

“Button,” he said weakly. 

“Right.”  She slammed her hand into the glow plug button, as if hitting it harder would make it work faster.  She held it for what seemed like forever… as she counted to thirty.  She turned the key again, and the engine sputtered to life. 

She pushed it into gear and pulled out of the barn.  When she looked off toward the rustic cabin and the trail beyond, she saw Finch, his gun held unsteadily in front of him.  She grabbed Finn’s 1911 from his slack grip and fired half a dozen shots as she popped the clutch.  She saw the older man collapse in a heap on the ground as she turned away from him and headed down the two-track as she’d been instructed. 

The drive seemed to take forever.  Pulling the Land Rover into the ambulance lane she looked at him, his skin pale from blood loss.  “I can’t leave you,” she told him.  She remembered seeing a hospital as Marty drove them out a few miles from the meeting point.  After passing the barn with the car, and not even slowing to check for the car inside, she recognized a feed store.  From there she had known the way to the hospital.