The Heroine’s Journey

I think many people are familiar with the idea of “The Hero’s Journey” (by Joseph Campbell), but what about “The Heroine’s Journey”?

If I ever heard of it, I assumed the phrase simply meant the Hero’s Journey applied equally well to women.

Maureen Murdock, a student of Campbell, came to believe it did not. She developed a model of a heroine’s journey based on her work with women in therapy. But when she showed it to Campbell in 1983, he reportedly dismissed the idea, telling her:

“Women don’t need to make the journey. In the whole mythological journey, the woman is there. All she has to do is realize that she’s the place that people are trying to get to.”

How passive is that, eh?

Yeah, I agree with Murdock, not Campbell, but it was only from Sacha Black, on The Rebel Podcast episode in which she interviewed Gail Carriger on The Heroine’s Journey that my eyes were opened. So Murdock in the 90s wrote her book, for people to use as a model for their own behaviour, to improve their own lives.

Carriger is the author of The Parasol Protectorate series, starting with Soulless, a whimsical steampunkish paranormal romance thriller. (I love the whole series.)

Most of what I know about this topic I learned from listening to the Gail Carriger interview, who has just published her first (and she quips, hopefully her only) non-fiction book, The Heroine’s Journey. She said she’d been waiting for someone else to write about The Heroine’s Journey for fiction writers, but eventually realised if she didn’t write it, no one might, so she rolled up her sleeves and set to work. Also, because Murdock’s book was from a Jungian Archetype standpoint, that concerned Carriger because she felt such analysis often conflates biological sex and gender, whereas the two journey types are really genderless.

In the interview, they start discussing the topic at around the 24 minute mark. It’s worth listening to. In it, Carriger explains that in The Heroine’s Journey, there are big differences in purpose, approach, strength, motivation, and ending.

Key differences:

Carriger says (after warning that what she’s about to say will cause a ‘psychological break’ in people’s minds!), that a heroine’s strength is the ability to ask for help from others. Western culture has real trouble in seeing the ability to ask for help as a strength. But that ability lies at the heart of networking, and making connections.

A heroine’s goal isn’t Power, but Networking, Connection: reuniting with someone taken from her.

A heroine’s motivation is not revenge or to right a wrong, but restoration or connection.

Her approach isn’t to take the offensive, but through communication and information gathering. She’s a builder and a general, self-aware enough to know when to ask for help.

A hero’s end is usually poignant isolation, in power. The heroine’s is usually happy, surrounded by family and friends.

The hero’s power comes from his innate abilities and strengths, but the heroine is strengthened by her network of allies and her connections. I think I’m struggling with this concept too, since I had to remind myself of the truth that one twig is easily broken, but a tightly bound bunch of them is super strong. Or that ‘old boys’ networks’ can form powerful groups. The more you look at it, the more obviously true it is.

Carriger noted that a heroine is weakened by isolation from her network, and that often, a Heroine’s Journey story ends with the restoration of connections.

In her book, she gives pithy but flippant definitions of each type of Journey in the Introduction:

The Hero’s:

Increasingly isolated protagonist stomps around prodding evil with pointy bits, eventually fatally prods baddie, gains glory and honour.

The Heroine’s:

Increasingly networked protagonist strides around with good friends, prodding them and others on to victory, together.

Note: neither Journey is gendered: e.g. Harry Potter is a Heroine’s Journey. Carriger noted that if as an author your heroine is struggling and the plot is stalling it may be because you keep putting the heroine in isolation, cutting her off from her network. That’s what you do in the Hero’s Journey to force him to draw on his core strength, but for the heroine it cuts her off from her core strength. So if this is happening it may be because you’re trying to force your heroine’s story into a Hero’s Journey structure.

Three beats: Descent, Search, Ascent

The Descent (involuntary withdrawal)

1. Broken network (something taken away)

2. Pleas ignored

3. Abdication of Power

4. Family Offers Aid

– Isolation and Danger –

The Search (aided by companions)

5. (Goes into) Disguise, Subversion (Hiding)

6. Surrogate Family

7. Visit to the Underworld

8. Delegation, Networking, Information Gathering

The Ascent (structured reunion)

– The Compromise –

9. Negotiation for Reunification

10. Revenge & Glory Irrelevant

11. Network Established or Rebuilt

Of course, as I listened, I was asking myself “Is Leeth’s journey a Hero’s one, or a Heroine’s?”, and realised (yeah, a bit of an epiphany): it’s both. Individually each book is a Hero’s Journey, but the series as a whole will be a Heroine’s Journey. That feels both correct and good to me. I’m writing the series by the seat of my pants, but this structure flows from Leeth’s deepest motivations: her need to belong and her hunger for acceptance and love. So of course that’s going to play out across the series as a whole.

Further reading

Some good references I found while writing this were Carriger’s book (The Heroine’s Journey: For Writers, Readers,and Fans of Pop Culture or the book description page on her web site), and for writers I think that’s the most helpful reference.

A much shorter look at the topic for storytellers is Why Screenwriters Should Embrace The Heroine’s Journey, aimed especially at screenwriters. It uses the film Wonder Woman as an example of its ten stages of the Heroine’s Journey – with nifty chart.

The wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heroine%27s_journey gives a reasonable overview, pointing out Victoria Lynn Schmidt’s version of the heroine’s journey (which is set up as The Heroine Journeys Project, “Exploring and Documenting Life-Affirming Alternatives to the Hero’s Journey”.

Another article good article is Julia Blair’s The Heroine’s Journey: Examples, Archetypes, and Infographic. In it, she notes that the Hero’s Journey is rooted in ancient myths that no longer completely fit the modern world. Her article looks at the topic from several angles, including Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, noting that the heroine typically faces challenges from higher up that pyramid of needs. (Also interesting is that she sees the film Wonder Woman as following the basic shape of the Hero’s Journey, just with a female protagonist. I don’t agree.)

Maureen Murdock breaks her version of the Heroine’s Journey (for self-improvement differently):

1. Separation from the Feminine

2. Identification with the Masculine and Gathering of Allies

3. Road or Trials and Meeting the Ogres and Dragons

4. Experiencing the Boon of Success. (The Hero’s Journey normally ends here.)

5. Heroine Awakens to Feelings of Spiritual Aridity/Death.

6. Initiation and Descent to the Goddess.

7. Heroine Urgently Yearns to Reconnect with the Feminine.

8. Heroine Heals the Mother/Daughter Split.

9. Heroine Heals the Wounded Masculine Within.

10. Heroine Integrates the Masculine and Feminine.

A Novel Ending

A funny thing happened on the way to the ending…

I’m loving my new being-an-author career, despite my inability to earn a living from it. (Yet?)

One of the things I enjoy is that each book feels like it comes with its own unique challenges.  I hope that means I’m learning as I go along.

For the current book in my Leeth Dossier series, Lost Girl (#5), there were two challenges.  The first was my feeling that on the subject of plot, I fly too much by the seat of my pants, so the whole journey from start to end is like a billy-cart racing downhill out of control.  Exhilarating, but also nerve-wracking.

Looking back through my revision control files, I deduce I started writing the Lost Girl segment of the story back in Apr/May 2009.  I wrote a chunk more in Jan 2015 before posting the chapters for review on the Online Writing Workshop for Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror over a few months and receiving valuable feedback.  By Oct 2015 it had grown to about 25,000 words.  I think that was when I set it aside to devote all my energy to completing the earlier books in the series.

That took five years.

So, for book #5 I was starting with a broad idea of the story, 25,000 words of draft, and thanks to a discussion with Jon Marshall one night, a good feeling for the theme of the novel.  I also wanted to try a hybrid approach to plotting.

Pantser or Plotter?

I love the organic surprises and creativity that comes from flying by the seat of my pants, but at the same time, having watched his video Misconceptions About Rewriting, and from my own experience in algorithmic development, I deeply understood the value in at least high-level planning.  So I hoped that creating the bones of a plot might work well, since it would only be a sketchy outline and thus pretty painless to change it if the story started going in a different direction.

I started reading John Truby’s “The Anatomy of Story” in early 2019, reaching a quarter of the way through before getting distracted. (I see there’s also a video interview here.)  The book and advice is fine, but it wasn’t sparking any flames for me and I set it aside.  (I do intend to return to it and finish reading it though.)

I’d downloaded a free writing book from Daniel David Wallace titled “How to Write Better Sentences”, and watched some of his videos, and liked them, so when he offered a course on his character-driven plotting course in December 2019 I decided to sign up for it.  I did that diligently from mid Dec 2019 to end of Jan 2020, and was very happy with the outcome.  I had lots of ideas for how the plot would unfold, all of course driven by the characters, which is how I have to write.

The problem that remained was that I only had a satisfying end.  I think you also need the ending to be unpredictable.  I (still) don’t know how you plan that.  For me it’s just happened by luck or inspiration, and I was still in the same position, lacking that final piece of the puzzle.

As I’ve written on several occasions now, I’ve really come to trust Unconscious Thought Theory.  It’s an excellent way to use the full power of your mind and surprise yourself.  So I carried on writing, always with the lightly-plotted ending in mind, and things flowed along pretty well.

Now, because the World Science Fiction Convention was to be held in New Zealand in July/Aug 2020, a place I’d wanted to visit and a convention that seems exciting, I planned to attend.  I booked my travel and accommodation, with the goal of publishing the book late July and maybe even launching it or promoting it in some way at the WorldCon.  To do that I needed to send the MS to Dave at ThEditors.com by E/April.

So I was trying hard to meet a deadline of E/March to have a good 1^st draft of the MS.  I was extremely lucky to be little affected by the unprecedented Australian bushfires of 2019, but no one could remain unmoved by those events - from the heroism of our fireys and communities ( (even this Aussie speculative fiction anthology put together for fire charities: Stories of Hope), to the jaw-dropping failures of our so-called political leader to actually lead.

There was also the ongoing drama of the Democratic run-up toward the 2020 US presidential election, which I had grown addicted to (since the US has an inordinate impact on world affairs, and I could see what a turning point the 2020 election could be, with luck).  Then of course, the global pandemic of Covid-19 arrived, making the insignificance of my own efforts even clearer.  Now, I may not be as stubborn as Leeth, but I am stubborn, so I carried on.

Like the period after the death of my wife Stella in Dec 2014, my writing sustained me and kept me positive. So for that reason as much as any I stuck to my plans.

Which brings me to the part of the story which most surprised me — and in the end delighted me.

How did it go in the end?

Approaching my deadline, I had set myself a (120,000) word count limit to try to hold myself to, to keep the book a manageable size for all concerned.  And as the days fell away and March 31 approached, it looked like I might just do it.  But when the days dropped from three to two to one and I arrived at the cusp of the ending, I’d run out of time and still didn’t know fully what the ending would be.

Partly this was just having confidence in my unconscious to pull a rabbit out of the hat; partly it was the belief that if I didn’t know what the ending would be, it might mean that when (if?) it did arrive it would also surprise a reader; and partly it was having faith in my characters.  I also had an interesting mix of actors there at the ending.  There was the potential to have… (counting…) seven major players in the scene at the end.  Unfortunately that meant there was a huge range of ways the ending could play out.

So I think there was a certain amount of choice-paralysis at work, although it’s also possible my unconscious was simply beavering away at the complex problem I’d set it.  Of course I was also worried I might not be able to pull it off at all.  Would the ending be good enough?  I didn’t want just an exciting one, I wanted it to have emotional depth too.  So the stakes felt high to me.

And still I couldn’t seem to make much progress.  Here’s how the last several days went:

March 29: Had reached the climactic scene — I mean, all the players were on stage together.
March 30: Wrote 3700 words of the scene.
March 31: Day off, visiting Mum.
April 1: (astute readers will see this is after E/Mar) Strangely blocked, until I forced myself to design the physical location. Then: +600 words.
April 2: Wrote 3,600 words and halfway through the “action” part of the ending.
April 3: Finished the “action” part (wrote 1000 words).
April 4: Still didn’t know how it would end. I simply considered each actor and let them do their thing. Various agendas in play, conflicting, and stage fully set and conducive to just letting the movie roll. Each one being clever and true to themselves, a dramatic race to the finish with real challenges and emotional drama. At the very end of the day (11:50pm), I felt delighted. My characters had thrilled me and moved me. I’d been biting my nails more than once, and in tears more than once. 5,100 words and the MS was basically complete.

I’ve never experienced anything like that last day.  My feeling was one of excitement and satisfaction.  I made some small additions while cooking dinner (9pm), and when I sat down with it I realised I didn’t want to watch any TV as I ate, I instead wanted to dwell on those final scenes, to savour and digest it all.  I suppose it felt a bit like I’d just stepped off an emotional roller-coaster!

I still have thirty one small gaps to fill or issues to check, and then lots of work to polish it up enough to be ready to send to my editor, so I can’t really relax much yet.  But the weight on my shoulders of finishing that critical 1^st draft, and perhaps as importantly, writing a ‘good’ ending, is over.  So a lot of unacknowledged stress has fallen away, and I must say I’m looking forward to the next few weeks.

I’ve written this because the experience felt really special, and I wanted to capture it. It was nothing like I’d had for the previous books.  Once again, I feel I learned a lot.  My fingers are crossed in the hope that readers will have the same opinion!

Leeth’s Journey So Far: “Four Books!”

Chatting to an author friend today (Barbara Strickland), about what lay ahead for Leeth, she asked whether my idea for the series in the longer term was to pursue the action path or the emotional side of things?

I’m four books in now, and so far I believe I’ve delved deeply into both sides.  I had to stop and think though, to consider Barbara’s question.  Thirty years ago, I thought the series would be a sci-fi/fantasy action series, but when it came down to it, I couldn’t tell the story without honoring the depths of the characters.

(Because I love Mirella’s cover designs, let me just brighten this short post by including them here:)

Anyway, I realised my answer to Barbara’s question was “both”, even though it means I’ll need to continue a tricky balancing act.  I mustn’t let the excitement of the action elements of Leeth’s dramatic life distract me from the compelling human and emotional side of her story as it unfolds.  There’s no chance of losing sight of that in Book 5, Lost Girl, but in later volumes it may be something I’ll need to keep in the forefront of my mind.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch…

I’ll finish with a quick status update.  In August, Galaxy Bookshop hosted the launch (see the video) for Violent Causes (The Leeth Dossier Vol. 4): all my books are available on the shelves there!  As well, I’ve been learning bits and pieces about book marketing.  I’d much rather be writing, so I plan to go back to devoting myself to that — soon.  Maybe I’ll spend one day a week on the marketing side.

Things I’ve been learning about are Facebook ads from Mark Dawson and Nick Stephenson, Amazon ads from Bryan Cohen (I even created some ads), drawing up a far too exhaustive marketing plan, and learning bits about getting reviews and starting up a mailing list.  I also set up my Facebook Author Page (which I gather if you Like it, you’ll be notified when I post something there).  I also 99% converted my Blogger blog site into a kind of web site, only to stumble at the final hurdle.  Two days before I discovered how to overcome that last problem, I gave up and recreated my website in Wordpress.org.  It’s in pretty good shape, though I still have a small list of things to do.  Via my hairdresser Sebastian I discovered the talented Kellie M Davies and through her, the Aussie Speculative Fiction (ASF) FB group.

I also sent some books down to Bendi-con as part of an ASF contingent, and some are on their way soon to Supanova Adelaide and Supanova Brisbane with the same group of Aussie authors.  (We also had a small get-together in Sydney CBD, which was a great evening.)

Roger Patulny kindly agreed to shift the meeting date for our local writers’ group Authora Australis to a Wednesday that didn’t clash with the Sydney Mediaeval and Renaissance Group’s monthly meetings (thanks, Roger et al!), so I can attend regularly.  And this Sunday (Oct 13) Kristyn M Levis will be talking to our Book Marketing discussion group about Instagram for Authors.

I also created my first Nielsen “Book2Look” book widget (“biblet”) for Wild Thing.  Biblets let you look inside a book, share it on social media, find out where to buy it, and more.  Oh, and I had a flash fiction sci-fi story accepted by Antipodean SF magazine, called Dangerous January (which will be available there for a limited time).  Which also reminds me: I completed the Neil Gaiman Master Class too, and enjoyed it!

I guess I have been working hard after all (but not with blogging — shame, Luke!), even though there’s been far less writing than I like.

Amazon book tweaks — Categories, Keywords, reviews, and links

Following some discussions with Barbara Strickland (Amorina Rose's blog) about Amazon Categories and Keywords, and remembering some of what Lama Jabr explained in one Amazon publishing seminar, and after reading this article Six Things You Should Be Including in Your EBook (and Probably Aren't) by David Kudler, I decided to revise all three of my books for Amazon.

What I wanted to do:

• Make sure I had links to each book in the series so far.
• Follow the suggestion to add a review link right at the end of the book.
• Make sure my categories and keywords were good.

It took me about a day to update the first book, four hours for the second, and an hour for the third. Hopefully this article will help you tweak your first book in less time than I took for mine.

The tweaking is in two parts: tweaking the copy of your MS (probably in .docx or .odt format), and editing your ‘book details' on Amazon.

Links

It also occurred to me (largely because Barbara Strickland had recently commented on how attractive the covers were), that a thumbnail of each cover would make a more attractive link than just the plain text title. Like so:

Novels by L. J. Kendall

The Leeth Dossier:

Wild Thing
Harsh Lessons
Shadow Hunt
Violent Causes
…

(By the third book, I even realised I should include a link to my Amazon author page!)

While doing this, I found Calibre doesn't preserve hyperlinks on images when you convert to .mobi format, which is what I had been using for upload to Amazon. But the developer, Kovid Goyal, said that format was pretty obsolete, and recommended a different one. I tried epub, and that was just fine.

I wanted to put country-independent links to my other books, in each book. Links to the appropriate Amazon store for the reader's country.  I didn't want to do it through Amazon's OneLink system:
https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/202165020?ac-ms-src=faqonelinklp&cid=faqonelinklp

merely because I myself am leery of systems that earn money from people clicking on links.  Granted, I think it's only a few cents, and only if they actually buy the product, but still...  Maybe that's just me being weird, but maybe other people have a distaste for that, too.

Image composition on Linux

I spent some time grabbing images for those buttons to make my own.

I then spent 90 mins finding image editing software that would let me combine them together, for Linux. Lots were recommended, but apparently the idea of a canvas on which you simply drop some images and move them around is a bizarre mental model. Well, apart from the Gimp, but I thought if I could find any other program to do that, I'd probably save time compared to working out how to perform even that simple feat using the Gimp's diabolical UI.

In the end, I found the KDE program KolourPaint, which was very simple and intuitive — it was easy to open up images, and copy them onto a single canvas and then move them around.

Reviews

Before I did any of this, I first contacted Amazon directly to ask if it was okay to use generalised links that pointed to the reader's local Amazon store, instead of to the US one only (say). I specifically asked if it was okay to use bookshow.me. The representative responded and said that was fine.

E.g. the country-independent links for my books in Amazon look like this:

Wild Thing: http://bookshow.me/B019DQVR76

Harsh Lessons: http://bookShow.me/B01HA4FALC

Shadow Hunt: http://bookShow.me/B06XVH355Q

Previously my Afterword asked people to review the book, but didn't offer them any help to do so. In contrast, the Six Things article described how to construct a link directly to a "rate/review" page for your book so the reader just needs one click, with no typing or searching to arrive there.

I also added a note that reviewers will need to login (to Amazon or Goodreads respectively), to be able to write a review.

So the idea is to add a note at the end, saying something like:

"I hope you enjoyed reading this. If you did, consider rating and/or reviewing it. Thank you!"

(You'll need to sign in to your account(s).)

The Six Things article used an image to click on for the reviews, which I think is more appealing and ‘button-like' to click on than just text. So I grabbed some images from Goodreads and Amazon to make the buttons. I feel that's safe, as Amazon owns Goodreads, and I'm only directing readers to Amazon sites. If you're not selling through Amazon, of course you'd need to pick review sites related to your retailer.

Goodreads review

But the link structures for reviews described by the 2013 Six Things article have changed since it was written. E.g. for Goodreads they'd said:

… um, I can't find it, actually. Maybe David didn't spell it out? He does describe how to find the book ID, though. (You can find it out just by clicking on a Goodreads review link and inspecting the URL.)

Anyway, the review link needs to look like:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/<goodreads-Book ID number>
Just search for your book in Goodreads to determine your book's ID and examine the link. E.g. for Shadow Hunt the book link is https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34823396-shadow-hunt, so the book ID is 34823396, and the review link becomes https://www.goodreads.com/review/edit/34823396

Amazon review

For Amazon, you determine your Amazon book ID (ASIN) the same way: find your book and examine the URL.

The example book link http://www.amazon.com/Your-Book-Title-ebook/dp/B00EXAMPLE/ is pretty correct, except the http has changed to the more secure https. E.g. Shadow Hunt is https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Hunt-Leeth-Dossier-Book-ebook/dp/B06XVH355Q/

But the link the article describes for reviews, "http://www.amazon.com/Your-Title-ebook/product-reviews/", is now quite different, and the Amazon review link is now coded like this:
https://www.amazon.com/review/create-review/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_wr_but_top?ie=UTF8&channel=glance-detail&asin=B00EXAMPLE

E.g. since Shadow Hunt's Amazon ASIN is B06XVH355Q, the URL for its review is: https://www.amazon.com/review/create-review/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_wr_but_top?ie=UTF8&channel=glance-detail&asin=B06XVH355Q

I also thought it made sense to repeat the links to all the books in the series at the end, since at that point the reader is more likely to know if they'd like to read more of your work.

Amazon Categories and Keywords

The categories & keywords topic is where things get interesting...

Amazon have a good help page about setting them up:
https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200652170

It turns out that everything on that page is essential reading. I had ignored it.  So my keywords were not doing what they should.  E.g. I didn't know you had to also apply one (or two) of your categories as keywords, for certain Amazon searches (category searches?) to work for your books.
Watching the video that's also on that page suddenly made a whole lot of things really, really clear.  E.g. the stuff at the 3min40s mark where she says something like "Words in the title, categories, and description, will already be part of the search criteria: try to say something new".  Also, she says you should play around with the keywords and see which work best — I've never done that!

It's worth watching — maybe several times.

Setting Amazon categories

From https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G200652170:

"Browse categories are the sections of the Amazon site where customers can find your book. Think of browse categories like the sections of a physical bookstore (fiction, history, and so on).

"During title setup, you'll select a BISAC (Book Industry Standards and Communications) code. The codes you choose, along with your selected keywords, are used to place your book into certain categories, or browse paths, on Amazon. After your book has an Amazon listing, your book's category will appear under the Product Details section of your listing. This will be the path a customer can follow to find your book. [...]

"You can choose up to two BISAC codes for your book. We may also assign additional browse categories depending on your BISAC selections and assigned keywords."

The article also includes tips on choosing categories, and you should definitely read it.

Setting Amazon Keywords

Also note the topic "Categories with Keyword Requirements." For sci-fi and fantasy that links to this page: https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/G201216150

Now, for each of my books I'd just made up keywords that I felt best reflected it, and entered those. I suspect I'm not following best practice even now, but at least I'm choosing keywords from the above list. I assume these are words which are most used by readers in Amazon searches.

You might be able to discover them by typing a search term and seeing what words auto-complete in the Kindle store?

Here's my before and after list of keywords for each book:

Keywords — Wild Thing, before
Science fiction	Urban fantasy
Strong female lead	Magic
Near future	Abusive relationship
Adult situations

Keywords — Wild Thing, after
cyberpunk	Urban
Strong female lead	paranormal
horror	Coming of age
Adult situations

Keywords — Harsh Lessons, before
strong female lead	some adult situations
some humor	some violence
assassin	covert agency

I also changed the category from Fiction > Science Fiction > Action & Adventure, to Fiction > Science Fiction > Cyberpunk

Keywords — Harsh Lessons, after
cyberpunk	urban, fantasy
strong female lead	paranormal
spy, spies, assassin, covert, agency	bully, bullies, bullying
thriller

(I also made the same category change for Shadow Hunt.)

Keywords — Shadow Hunt, before
thriller	cyberpunk
mutants	wizard
magic	coming of age
vampire

Keywords — Shadow Hunt, after
thriller	cyberpunk
strong female lead	magic, wizard, paranormal
spy, spies, assassin, covert, agency	coming of age
vampire

So, that's it: a bit fiddly, bit not too bad. I don't expect dramatic changes, but hopefully the rate of reviews will climb from nothing (for almost a year) to a handful of new reviews!

To Do

What I've failed to do (yet) is add the attractive-clicky-button links to make social media sharing of your book super easy. I think that might even be the most important thing to do!

The Six Things article describes how to set up sharing links for Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest.

Scribus for print edition covers

Here’s the long-delayed article on using Scribus to make the cover for your print edition. It’s not a full tutorial on using Scribus — I’m sure there are Youtube videos covering that, and anyway, its manual and the tutorials that come with it are very good. It’s surprisingly easy to use, amazingly powerful and well-designed, and… I just love it! It’s also free, and works on Mac, Windows, and Linux. And it works so well!

(I wrote it today because someone - hi, Eustacia! - was interested.)

Why new covers, Luke?

Several reasons. I have a small sci-fi/fantasy convention coming up (the Sydney Freecon, Nov 3,4,5), but I have zero printed copies on hand. I also wanted to make some subtle changes to the covers, along with reformatting the internals of the first two. I was also finally ready to make the 4.25"x7" A-format ‘mass market’ style paperback editions. (Simply because I prefer that size for paperbacks.)

A brief digression, before I get to the topic at hand: the internal changes were switching the dialogue quotation style for the first two books to match that of the 3^rd. I’d held off for years, hoping the bug in LibreOffice preventing me from doing that would be fixed. In the end I gave up and used WPS to change them all. Of course, pasting the novel back into LibreOffice left the odd block of text in weird point sizes (some side effect of using ‘direct formatting’ instead of styles, I gather), but they weren’t too hard to fix. And having received help from some of the LibreOffice developers to understand page setup, I had created a good and safe couple of templates for 4.25"x7" and 5"x8" before transferring all the text into them.

One other thing, too: dreaming about offering some printed copies to my local library, I realised there was no way for a potential reader to know the story is quite dark, so I came up with the idea of including some quotes from reviews, since a lot of reviewers did comment on that. That meant I also wanted to insert one page in the very front, as you often see in traditionally-published books. For me though it was less for advertising than to warn readers what to expect.

And let’s start with a picture of the sort of errors that can occur if you don’t pay close attention to the trim and guide marks provided by your publisher. Here’s a picture provided by a very helpful person at Ingram Spark (waves to Erica), pointing out several serious placement errors in what I thought was a nicely-crafted cover for the A-format paperback edition of Harsh Lessons. How wrong I was!

What do you need for a cover?

I had the excellent cover files generated for my guesstimated size (page lengths) from Mirella de Santana, including the CMYK-profile Photoshop .psd files. You need a template from your publisher that lays out the exact dimensions for your cover: where the front, back, spine artwork goes, and what are the safe areas to stay inside. (The cover can shift a mm or few in the printing.) So I logged in to Ingram Spark and used their cover creator tool to generate and send me a PDF file for each of my books, and sat down with Scribus to make the new covers.

Here’s what the template for Harsh Lesson A-format looked like:

Now, because I had given Mirella only a guess of the no. of pages, and I was wrong in the end, I had to fiddle things to make them fit the template exactly.

Even if you have the right sized cover artwork, though, Scribus is great to let you prepare the right file for your publisher/printer/distributor. Although some people say you should be able to work in RGB images (the colour space you see on your computer screen, with its red, green and blue pixel elements), because printing presses cost millions of dollars and have a lifetime of decades, we’re still a long way away from being able to send most publishers anything other than the Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK colour space files they need. Which is where PDF/X (which is also called PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-3) comes in. PDF/X is a file that lets you specify what’s called a ‘colour profile’ for the images in your artwork. Ingram Spark require/prefer ‘U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2’. You can download the free ICC CMYK colour profiles for a wide range of needs; as with everything Scribus, there are good pages about downloading, installing and using the ICC profiles, such as this one.

Setting the colour space in Scribus

I remember when I first started using Scribus I had trouble enabling the colour management. After some Googling, I found the answer at askubuntu.com. (Scribus 1.4.2: "PDF/X-3" option still grayed out, how make it work?) Manfred Moser posted with a problem similar to mine. Some time later he made a follow-up post (emphasis mine) —

"Okay, so I figured it out myself. It is important to turn on color management for the current document. This is done in File - Document Setup - Color Management. Changing it in File - Preferences - Color Management like described everywhere I found only affects new documents and not already existing ones."

If you’ve done that properly, when you open a new file in Scribus and go to File->Document Setup->Color Management, you can easily set things up so it will look like this (it’s showing ASUS for the RGB because that’s the display I use on my computer):

Note in particular the ‘Simulate colours on screen’ and the ‘Show colours out of gamut’. If, when you load in an image, it shows large patches of horrible lime green, that means it won’t print properly: unless you click on the image and choose the correct colour profile for it! As soon as you do that, all that nasty green should vanish. And you do that by right-clicking on the image and choosing Properties, clicking on the Image tab in that dialogue box, and choosing the correct ‘Input Profile’ (which in my case is ‘Embedded U.S. Web Coated (SWOP) v2’). That’s all you need to do.

How to use your cover’s template PDF

One of the many great features of Scribus is that it can read and work with PDF files, and understands some of the internal structure, so the PDF ‘image’ is not just one big image blob. So, just open the template file PDF for your cover with Scribus. E.g. in my template file (which I named HL-4x7-284pp-9781925430073-Perfect-template.pdf) here’s some of what that structure looks like in Scribus:

You can select each object and the corresponding picture element will move into view and be highlighted in the main drawing area.

At this stage, I recommend doing a few things that will make life easier:

1) Click about in the Outline dialogue until you find the three parts of the barcode for your book — the white background rectangle, the barcode itself, and the ISBN — and rename those objects to be something sensible. Then copy each item to the top of the page. With the object selected, the Properties dialogue easily lets you move it up and down in the drawing order. (You click on the green Up and Down arrows in the ‘X, Y, Z’ tab.) Don’t change the size of scaling at all: you want the barcode to scan properly!

It’s a good idea to Group these three parts together for convenience. And maybe name the group something sensible — like Barcode!

2) Now click about in the Outline dialogue until you find the parts of the template that show the inner, middle, and outer edges of the front, spine, and back of your cover, and rename them to something sensible.

3) Open the Windows→Layers dialogue and click on the ‘+’ button to create a new layer. That will make it trivial to flick all your artwork to be visible or not, so you can see whether all the important stuff fits entirely within the safe areas. It’s also a great idea to click on the Lock icon for the Background layer to make sure you don’t accidentally move or change anything in your publisher’s template!

Adding your Cover Image(s)

Next, insert the excellent cover artwork for your cover itself. For simple cases you can just create a single ‘frame’ to hold the whole cover image. Or you might need to create a separate frame for the back, the spine, and the front if you messed up and need to move or stretch or clip parts of the image.

You must create an image frame to hold an image: you do that by choosing ‘Insert Image frame’ from the Insert menu. Next, drag a rectangle that roughly sizes the rectangle. You can easily size and place it exactly, by either zooming in insanely far, or by going to the ‘X, Y, Z’ tab in the Properties dialogue and adjusting the Geometry by directly typing the measurement you want (and hitting Enter when you’re ready), or by using the up and down arrows beside each number. There’s also a small ‘Chain/lock’ icon you can click to tie the Width and Height together. Incidentally, the Name field in this tab is where you can type a new name for the object (Using just numbers, letters, spaces, parentheses, dash, or underscore: again, hit Enter when you’re ready).

Anyway, after you’ve placed and sized the image frame exactly right (or before: it’s up to you), you add the image to fill that frame by right clicking in the frame (or on the object) and choosing ‘Get Image...’ and then browsing to the location where your image is. Another insanely great feature of Scribus is that it understands Photoshop .psd files, including the CMYK colour space (unlike the Gimp), so you can directly use your cover designer’s Photoshop file if you thought to ask them to prepare a CMYK version for your print edition.

When editing the image (resizing, scaling, repositioning, etc.), just keep in mind: the ‘X, Y, Z’ tab in the Properties dialogue lets you adjust the image’s frame (the ‘window’ or ‘viewing port’ onto whatever part of the image you choose to make visible), and the ‘Image’ tab in the Properties dialogue lets you adjust the image itself. Again, you can (and should!) use the lock icon on the X-Scale and Y-Scale so you can’t accidentally squash or squeeze the image so it’s out of proportion.

And a super handy feature of Scribus is the ‘Scale To Frame Size’ radio button on the Image tab, which will quickly scale and position the image to good starting value that you can then later changing by choosing the ‘Free Scaling’ radio button instead.

One last thing: check! Use the Outline dialogue to click on those boundary objects for the front and back cover, and the spine. In the main view, you’ll see fine red selection rectangles appear, and you can use those lines to check that all the important parts of your cover are within the safe margins your publisher has recommended.

It was only after receiving the image at the start of this post, today, that I realised this was a really important step which I had failed to do.

Barcode (and QR code?)

You’re almost done! Just use the Outline dialogue to bring the barcode (that you copied and then Grouped together and named sensibly earlier, remember?) to the top of the drawing order so it’s visible, not hidden underneath the image you added for the cover. Make sure it’s still one inch (25.4mm) high. Don’t change its size!

I personally think it’s a good idea for self-published authors to also add a QR code alongside the barcode, containing a useful search string or URL as the encoded text. For this, I use the free software ‘qrencode’. Here’s the command line I used for Harsh Lessons:
qrencode -o QR-code-HarshLessonsBuyGoogleSearch.png -s 20 -d 300 \

"https://www.google.com.au/#q=%22L.J.+Kendall%22+%22Harsh+Lessons%22+buy"

which is just a way of encoding a Google search for: "L.J. Kendall" "Harsh Lessons" buy

There are also similar QR code tools with graphical interfaces, like qtqr.

Creating the PDF/X file for the printer

Your printer/publisher, who supplied you with your book’s cover template, will also have told you what kind of PDF file you need to create, but typically it will be PDF/X (PDF/X-1a or PDF/X-3), which means it supports CMYK.

In Scribus, simply select File→ Export → Save as…, and then

Choose the right ICC CMYK colour profile. These things are designed so the printer doesn’t try to put more ink onto the cover than the paper can handle, as well as faithfully reproducing the colours.

So… how hard is it?

I think my first cover, using Scribus, took me a day to work out most of the stuff above. Then, coming to it this time, I wanted to make four covers in one day (Wild Thing and Harsh Lessons, A and B formats).  I discovered I had no Scribus cover for Wild Thing — I had used Inkscape, and not provided a PDF/X!  I remember Ingram Spark at the time warning me that the cover was barely within the limits of the 240% maximum ink coverage, and a few parts slightly over. I realise now that it worked only by pure luck: the colours happened to be that way.

So I started from scratch, after having not used Scribus for several months (and that last time, was just one day in the last year). Even so, creating the cover for the B-format edition of Wild Thing took just 45 mins. For the A-format, I decided that process had been so painless and easy I’d do it from scratch for that one, too. This time, it took 20 minutes! So then I moved on to Harsh Lessons: each of those took me just 15 minutes.  That's right: four book covers in under two hours, since I already had the actual cover designs and the template PDF files.

So, yes: Scribus is powerful, flexible, robust, and once you’ve picked up a few key concepts, really easy to use.

Go forth and Cover!

Q&A part 4 — the Darkness of the Story

This is the 4^th part (of four) articles from the Q&A I had with AndyK much earlier in the year. (There were some other topics we discussed, but I think four articles is more than enough!)

Spoiler alert!

Once again, because we discussed books 1 & 2, this contains spoilers if you haven't read them: i.e., it’s only intended for people who've read Wild Thing and Harsh Lessons.

L: I have had a few people (a teacher, a book store owner, and a someone in the book industry), tell me it is definitely Young Adult: less dark than some of the stuff available.  Amazing, yes?  But I never intended it for that market.  And I've had other people (YA readers) tell me it's definitely not.

I tend to agree with that.

A: Holy... YA? I mean… I did read my share of YA fiction and the emotional setup of the story is nowhere near what YA fiction presents.
Hell it's not even suited for a lot of ‘mature readers’ to be honest.

L: That was my feeling!  Yet (e.g.) my local chemist's son (about 15? — hi, Damian!) is greatly enjoying the series, and was waiting eagerly for the 3^rd.  Like I said, I've had a few people — who I trust to know what's acceptable as YA — say it definitely is.  I find that disturbing and a bit mind boggling.

Some of the moments when I realised what Harmon would do, chilled and appalled me. And definitely, I was literally crying while writing some of that stuff, on more than one occasion.

A: I can imagine that.

Although you did leave out the actual descriptions of the torture or sex. Come to think of it: why? I mean, this story is seriously not for children anyway. And I guess it would make it a bit clearer if this is not left to the reader's imagination. Especially book 2 is pretty vague in that regard.

In book 1 her first time is pretty clear. How the dynamic is set and what very probably happened and how. Same is true with her little encounter with the security chief. Where she used her sexuality as a weapon, or as a means to an end, for the first time. Again, could be a bit more detailed but was pretty clear how the dynamic between those two would be.

The torture stuff with gags and beating is somewhat described but since it's only towards the very end if I remember correctly it's not that central to the story yet. But it could have been a bit more explicit to not leave any doubts in the reader's mind.

But in book 2 things get very vague in that regard. The sex scene after the spanking is totally left to the reader's imagination. And at that point clarity would be important.

But most puzzling is the abuse/torture parts. There are only some flashbacks mentioned by Leeth and those too leave a bit too much to interpretation. Some might imagine things worse than they were. Some may imagine them less bad. And that would result in not really understanding the reactions that follow. You implied he forced her to hurt herself (which is a strange choice. Using the bondage to that end will only lead to another problem just like with the spanking, wouldn't it?)

Don't get me wrong, I'm neither an advocate for explicit scenes in books. Nor am I an adversary to it. But sometimes they could be truly part of the story and help clarify it. Show certain dynamics in the relationship. Like I am sure it would have in this case.

L: The second most important reason for leaving out the detail was to allow readers of different fortitude levels to imagine a level of abuse they were comfortable with.  If I made it more explicit, I think it would have been too much for many people.  I'm definitely walking a tightrope as it is.

A: But it's important to know how and what she is suffering through there. To understand how far gone (or faulty) Harmon's reasoning is. And also to understand what she is REALLY going through.

Leaving it to the imagination of the reader leads to every reader having a (maybe vastly) different story in their head. Making that story connect to the outlines provided might result in friction, head scratching or gaping holes.

L: To my mind, what's happening and what she's going through is quite extreme.  So I hope no reader imagines something worse than what I have imagined!  I also think it's reasonable and even healthy for readers to only imagine the worst they're individually comfortable with.

In a nutshell: bad stuff is happening to her.

Knowing just that sketchy detail is enough to let a reader follow the story.  Of course, I have to provide much more detail than that to make the reader feel the truth of that glib summary.

A: Well, my psychology lessons were decades ago but:

What Harmon creates is psychic traumas.
Traumas can lead to PTSD.
PTSD is the last thing any operative needs. (Well it's the last thing anybody needs, really)
Also it is obvious what he is doing can only lead to alienation at the very best. More probable it will lead to hate. In the uniquely human self preservation ignoring form of ‘I don't care if I die as long as I take him with me’.

So I have a hard time seeing why a psychologist would go that way. There are less personal ways to produce pressure.

That only leaves one good explanation I can get behind: He is a sick bastard who puts his scientific work second and his base lusts first.

L: Keep in mind that people can have major psychological breakthroughs when they survive a great stress, in our world; and that in Leeth's world, magic exists and is another possible outcome. See what you think of Harmon at the end of book 3.  I think he's ‘blinded by science’ — and he and Leeth are in many ways ideally unsuited: each provokes the other.  But he's shocked by much of what Leeth does, despite much of it being his responsibility.

A: I still smirk and shake my head at the scene in book 1 where she hunts the jogger. But yes, that's what he raised and trained her to. Again… he should have known that everybody needs some form of moral guidelines. Else we are animals guided by instinct. (Didn't Godsson say that somewhere in book 1?)

L: There are also some truly delicious scenes with Leeth I'm dying to write.

A: I am curious to read them. She does deserve a bit of a breather.

L: I certainly agree.  I think every reader would be pretty well unanimous in that opinion, too.

A: Actually it is much overdue. I just read the other reviews on the books on amazon.de and then amazon.com after I wrote mine for book 1. And there are some pretty harsh things there. Seems most people feel a lot stronger about it than I do... some of it is way unfair and under the belt. But... you did get under your readers skin. Quite an accomplishment in and of itself!

L: I agree. I went and had Google translate a couple of German reviews, recently. And US reviewers seemed to be more offended than anyone else. So that was when I finally realised I hadn't given enough warning to readers, in the Book Description on Amazon.

A: Yes. It's pretty different from most other stories out there. Going in with the wrong expectations is probably not only draining but even a bit traumatic.

L: There is that! Apart from the one review that said something like ‘poorly executed, doesn't work’.

A: That doesn't fly. You can always be of a different opinions about the story. But the craft part of the trade can be objectively analyzed. And it's definitely not poorly executed.

L: There's also a huge difference between leaving something to the reader's imagination, with hints, and making it explicit.

As well as that, by leaving it vague, and having the reader fill in the details (to the level they're comfortable with), I think makes it more powerful, because the reader is supplying the missing parts.

A: I understand. But those missing parts are not what you imagined for the story. So the more vague the descriptions get the more readers have to fill in. And the farther they get from the ‘facts’. And that makes it hard to understand developments and reactions in the book based on this abuse and torture.

L: But that's an accepted (if odd) truth: each reader brings themselves to each book they read, so each book a person reads is a collaborative experience produced by the author and the reader together.  So each experience of the book is unique.

If a book is well-written, I think the experience would tend to be more consistent across all readers, at least on the ‘factual’ side: what happens.  But I think the emotional experience for a well-written book would vary a lot; and maybe it would vary more from person to person, the better it's written, because it would resonate with each person's emotional experience differently?

Interesting: I'd not thought about that so deeply before.

A: For example I still don't know what he did to her before her breakdown. Did he use the compulsion to force her to maim herself? And then mock her about it? If yes then that is a new level  of short-sightedness on his part. If no than what did happen? I always had the feeling I missed something there....

L: Yes, and yes.  But it's not purely short-sightedness: his theory demands such kinds of stresses.

I'm reminded of a panel in Scott McCloud's ‘Understanding Comics’ where he illustrates exactly that point: you see an axe-wielding maniac, you see the victim in the lonely house, and then it pulls right back and you just ‘hear’ the scream.

A: Well.. comics are depictions which put them in a different legal setup. They have no choice unless they want to be seriously restricted in their sales channels. You can write about dicks and pussy and what to do with them all day long and still sell it on Amazon.

L: That's true, but McCloud was making a point about the artistic/emotional effect, ignoring the legal angle.  And I do think it's true.

Interestingly perhaps, I think graphic novels tend to be less gruesome than some Hollywood films or TV shows.  I wonder why?  Maybe because each moment is frozen, and available to be easily studied at length.

Also, I guess the main question is how much is left to interpretation and how much can be misinterpreted.

A: True.  Misinterpretation is unwanted; under- or over-estimating I think is less problematic.

L: For the scene where she almost detonated, emotionally, I think it was clear what was going on, physically.  If I'd added more, I think I'd be writing an erotic passage (at least, for people who like spankings or - shudder - torture).  I don't really think it would have added necessary clarity.

A: Hmm. Hard to say. I only had the feeling I was missing a piece of the picture there. Especially how the dynamic between those two was at that point.

L: By writing it this way, I'm allowing the reader to set the intensity level to whatever they're comfortable with.  In my own mind, it was pretty extreme, and I think for the vast majority of people, reading about torture is the very last thing they want to suffer through.  I would hate for the books to be categorised as ‘torture porn’.

A: Hmm. Wouldn't you say the intensity level was what it was at that point? The things that happened were the things you imagined to happen. Not what I imagined. Not what any other reader imagined.

L: Well, yes.  But then I'm very non- post-modern, and reasonably absolutist.

A: I agree with you that nobody needs to read about the smallest gory detail that is of no consequence to the story. But gory details that ARE of consequence? Or sex scenes that do have implications? I guess it wouldn't be bad to go into as much detail as necessary to clear out any misunderstandings or misinterpretations.

L: I felt more comfortable taking the risk of some misinterpretation (since I felt the broad facts would be quite clear), rather than being overly confronting and possibly losing many readers.  I think the books are pretty far out on the limb of what people can accept, as is!

A: But I know… you already got a lot of flak for the dark parts of the books and this would probably antagonize the torch-and-pitchfork faction even more...

L: Yes. I'm confident that's basically a certainty.

I don't think there'd be much lack of understanding as it's written, since her reactions tell the reader that it was very bad indeed: enough to shatter her faith and trust, and to need to escape.  And we've seen by this stage that she can endure a lot, so the strong implication is that it gets really bad.

A: Yes. But at least for me it left the feeling I missed a crucial part of the story. Not some gory detail but what did he actually do? Is he just over eager? Is he a bit twisted? Is he totally sick? You know that plays into the question we discussed earlier: How redeemable is Harmon?

L: Well, what he did was just as you supposed, further above.  And various humiliations. Is he a bit twisted?  Yes.  Totally sick? No.  How redeemable is he? Well, his actions will speak louder than words in the long run, obviously.

Maybe it would be (barely) acceptable in Germany, and the UK (I'm interested that at last look, I'd had no 1-star reviews in the UK!), where readers can handle it better, somehow?  In the US, I think there would have been a massive reaction against it.

A: ALL reviews in .de are pretty high.
Apart from that... every adult should be able to distinguish between fact and fiction. And if a story is told that demands a certain level of explicit detail... so be it.

L: I don't think that's the issue: my hunch is they identified enough with the character to feel (subconsciously) that they were participating, and felt soiled by feeling that way; and especially, they assume that most other people would react that same way: and feel I am ‘polluting’ large numbers of people.  That's my guess.

You know how some people react completely irrationally when you ‘push their buttons’?  I think my books trigger that kind of reaction in some people.

But fundamentally, I didn't think that an extra level of explicitness in the abuse or in the sex parts would really add to the deeper understanding of the books.

A: As you are the author I accept your judgement.

L: Thanks!  I do think it has to be that way.

A: But I dare to disagree. :}

L: And that too is 100% fine, and the way it has to be.

A: I could accept you decided based on the (prognosed) critical or public reception. But that the story didn't need it? I don't know. I still feel like I am missing a part of the picture. But again I am totally aware that that might be just me.

L: I'd honestly estimate that the decision was 70% that the story didn't need it, 20% concern over public reaction, and 10% trusting in my editor's advice.

My editor advised me to tone it down (and I did), but pushed me to tone it down/remove even more, but I couldn't or wouldn't, since it would have changed the dynamic by reducing the abuse. He was quite clear: he said I would lose readers because of it. But I decided the story demanded it, so I kept it in. The story and the characters are more important to me than profit or success.

A: You don't make a name for yourself by doing it the way everybody else does. Your story is interesting because it is different. Its not ‘enjoyable’ like the mainstream out there. Maybe it could have used some more ‘ups’ in between. But the story and what happens is told well. And it all makes it feel pretty unique. And that is a GOOD thing.

I actually doubt you would have reached more people by lightening it up. Well... what kind of story would have been left anyway?

L: I completely agree.  And I genuinely feel there is considerable originality in my series; and that that's very much a good thing.

A: For anybody not familiar with SR [Shadowrun] the story is a revelation. And that shows in the reviews. And for those who know SR it is still a very well made re-imagination with some pretty serious deviations. And ultimately it's about characters anyway and at least Leeth and Harmon are unique. So is Godsson and the Enemy of Mankind (I never mentioned how much I like her)

L: Cool: that's exactly my feeling, too.  Yeah, d'Artelle was pretty scary.

A: Well... the Department is a bit stereotypical so far. Apart from Dojo. But that's fine. Not everything needs to be unique.

L: I think that's a very fair comment.  The Department was certainly heavily influenced by both the Max Headroom TV series and Nikita (the French film).  I'm not sure if Nikita was released before or after Leeth's birth in my mind.

I think the author Kristin Cashore also has a very original ‘something’ about her fantasy novels, that help make them wonderfully appealing (at least, to me).  I think originality helps.

A: Well.. if you ask me.. it helps. But it's not the most important part. Good execution and consistency is important as well.

L: Quite!  I think all the elements have to be at least basically sound: if any aspect is bad, it ruins a book.  And if every aspect is great, you have a masterpiece of its kind.

And my hope is that Leeth is a truly unique character.  I've read everything I can where the main character sounded like she might be similar.  So far, I haven't found her twin!

A: She definitely is unique. So are the other characters mentioned above.
Though she did remind me of a character in a Shadowrun novel I read ages ago. I just cant remember the title. (Some girl experimented on by a megacorp that gets freed during a Run...)

L: I read several of the SR novels; I bought one, Striper Assassin (I tend to buy all the books I discover with a possibly-similar character, hoping that no one else traverses the same path as me. So far, so good!), but didn't think she was very similar.

But I think my editor was observing that it was more likely to have mass market appeal: avoid offending a good percentage of your readers.

A: Now, this is something completely different but this argument reminds me of Kingdom Death: Monster. When he released it, it had no mass market appeal at all. Nobody was even willing to fund it. It is controversial, offensive, sexist as hell and the antithesis of political correctness. And by now it is the most successful game ever brought to Kickstarter.

What I want to say: just because you DON'T whore yourself out to the mass market does not mean you can't be successful. Or will reach a lot of fans. Many of which will come to you just because you do your thing.

L: I know what you're saying, and I agree.  But I'm also stubborn (perhaps a little less than Leeth), so I won't make changes that would compromise the story or the characters' integrity.

If I feel strongly about something, I won't change it.  If I'm ambivalent, or undecided, I'm happy to accept input and suggestions and advice.

But he didn't pressure me hard: he understood what I was doing, and why; he just wanted to be sure I understood the risks I was taking, and the consequences.

I had to think about what I'd consider a success, and set a modest bar:

if it generated more hours of ‘enjoyment’ (appreciation?) than hours of work to create it, I'd consider it a success.  (Assuming one reader needs about 8 hrs to read one book.)

A: And it is good you didn't cave (for the most part). And it is refreshing to hear somebody is going through all that work mainly for the fun of it.

L: I imagine many (most?) writers do.  But I'm also trying hard to make the quality at least as high as traditionally-published books.

---

Anyway, so that wraps up the Q&A between AndyK and myself.

And here's a final snippet of news for anyone who's read right to the end: I've finally sorted out the issues with the templates I used for LibreOffice, so I've been able to make the mass-market (A-format: 4"x7") editions. I worried that someone browsing the print books wouldn't get the ‘warning’ about the story's darkness that I added to the Book Description at Amazon; so I inserted a leaf with excerpts from the reviews I've received. I also made a couple of other small changes: including using the same nice quotation marks for dialogue that I used in Shadow Hunt. (I gave up waiting for the Find/Replace bug in LibreOffice to be fixed, and just spent a day or two on a multi-program edit that worked around it.)

Part of the drive for getting the updated print editions ready was my attendance in two weeks' time at a small (and Free!) speculative fiction convention. (Main days: Sat 4^th — Sun 5^th November. See: https://www.facebook.com/sydneyfreecons/)