I've finally given up on trying to get the interest of an agent or publisher. I'm going to self-publish my fantasy middle grade novel, but I've decided if I'm going to do it, I'm going to do it right. Professional editing, artwork, and an initial print run so I can convince indie bookstores to carry it and sell copies at conventions.
I have more details about the fund raising project on my Kickstarter account,
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1393473826/pandemonia-chronicles-a-novel-for-boys
To summarize things, if you pledge you are entitled to certain rewards. I also do not receive any money until the goal amount is reached.
Thanks for reading this, even if you decide not to pledge.
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I have more details about the fund raising project on my Kickstarter account,
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1393473826/pandemonia-chronicles-a-novel-for-boys
To summarize things, if you pledge you are entitled to certain rewards. I also do not receive any money until the goal amount is reached.
Thanks for reading this, even if you decide not to pledge.
Nielsen Bookscan has found that of 86,000 new titles published in the UK in 2009, 59,000 sold an average of 18 copies.
On the one hand, that makes me feel a little better about all my rejections. The "experts" printed thousands of books nobody wanted to buy, so their judgment of what is commercially viable isn't infallible.
On the other hand, if the publishers are losing millions of dollars then they are going to take less chances on unknown authors who have no platform.
On an unrelated note, this may be the future of e-publishing. I certainly hope so.
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On the one hand, that makes me feel a little better about all my rejections. The "experts" printed thousands of books nobody wanted to buy, so their judgment of what is commercially viable isn't infallible.
On the other hand, if the publishers are losing millions of dollars then they are going to take less chances on unknown authors who have no platform.
On an unrelated note, this may be the future of e-publishing. I certainly hope so.
I'm not sure why I haven't posted this here before, but we have a Facebook page for the film right here.
And for those who haven't watched the film yet, the Crunchyroll page is here.
Also, I'm working out details for a web series followup to the film. Stay tuned for more details!
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And for those who haven't watched the film yet, the Crunchyroll page is here.
Also, I'm working out details for a web series followup to the film. Stay tuned for more details!
From Lori Perkins blog, http://agentinthemiddle.blogspot.com/2009_11_22_archive.html#335403721534032281
However, it's become increasingly difficult to sell any genre fiction from a male protagonist's perspective, unless he's really hot. But even if he's a really hot teen vampire, it's better to tell the story from a female point of view. If you have a male character, I'd almost suggest that you change the gender of your main character to sell a novel in this climate.
So if this advice is to be believed, if you didn't write a story with a female protagonist, even if the story is good you might be SOL trying to get an agent to read it.
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However, it's become increasingly difficult to sell any genre fiction from a male protagonist's perspective, unless he's really hot. But even if he's a really hot teen vampire, it's better to tell the story from a female point of view. If you have a male character, I'd almost suggest that you change the gender of your main character to sell a novel in this climate.
So if this advice is to be believed, if you didn't write a story with a female protagonist, even if the story is good you might be SOL trying to get an agent to read it.
Hulu is, apparently, on a mission to upload every cartoon I loved as a kid.
When I was like 8 or something, I used to watch the live-action Super Mario. Bros Show because occasionally they would show The Legend of Zelda cartoon instead of the usual Mario cartoon. Even then, I thought the live action show was boring and cheesy but I would suffer through it in the hopes of watching a Zelda cartoon. I was usually disappointed :(
But now, thanks to the power of the internet, I can finally watch these damned episodes whenever I want to!
(Of course, now they no longer hold the same wonder they used to....the scripts and voice acting are terrible. But I swear, I'm watching them all to appease the inner child in me). And in doing so, I can notice all the adult humor that was snuck in...like how the first episode opens with Link looking down Zelda's shirt.....
I was also a big He-Man fanatic when I was little (like 4-6). I don't remember any episodes of She-Ra ever airing, but I did watch the crossover movie.
I really liked The Littles. I think it was one of the first American produced cartoons to have an actual storyline. Sadly, where I lived it only aired on Sundays. I ended up reading several of the books because of the cartoon.
Inspector Gadget needs no introduction.
Voltron was another love; I still have a ton of the toys I bought at garage sales. It used to play on the USA Network but they aired the episodes out of order so it was impossible to follow along.
Now they just need to upload The Raccoons, The Real Ghostbusters, Thundercats, The Muppet Show, and Fraggle Rock. Then my attempts to revisit my childhood will be complete.
But please, no Jem and the Holograms. I hated that show so much because they would air it between the shows I actually liked and to this day I have an irrational hatred of all things related to girlie pop singing.
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When I was like 8 or something, I used to watch the live-action Super Mario. Bros Show because occasionally they would show The Legend of Zelda cartoon instead of the usual Mario cartoon. Even then, I thought the live action show was boring and cheesy but I would suffer through it in the hopes of watching a Zelda cartoon. I was usually disappointed :(
But now, thanks to the power of the internet, I can finally watch these damned episodes whenever I want to!
(Of course, now they no longer hold the same wonder they used to....the scripts and voice acting are terrible. But I swear, I'm watching them all to appease the inner child in me). And in doing so, I can notice all the adult humor that was snuck in...like how the first episode opens with Link looking down Zelda's shirt.....
I was also a big He-Man fanatic when I was little (like 4-6). I don't remember any episodes of She-Ra ever airing, but I did watch the crossover movie.
I really liked The Littles. I think it was one of the first American produced cartoons to have an actual storyline. Sadly, where I lived it only aired on Sundays. I ended up reading several of the books because of the cartoon.
Inspector Gadget needs no introduction.
Voltron was another love; I still have a ton of the toys I bought at garage sales. It used to play on the USA Network but they aired the episodes out of order so it was impossible to follow along.
Now they just need to upload The Raccoons, The Real Ghostbusters, Thundercats, The Muppet Show, and Fraggle Rock. Then my attempts to revisit my childhood will be complete.
But please, no Jem and the Holograms. I hated that show so much because they would air it between the shows I actually liked and to this day I have an irrational hatred of all things related to girlie pop singing.
Last night I watched the documentary film The War on Kids. I've long been a supporter of youth rights and I considered producing a documentary about the subject (I've even filmed some footage) but these guys beat me to it; and I'm glad. They did a fantastic job.
One thing that really hit home for me is the information about the poor quality of education because of misguided State regulations. The emphasis on learning to pass a specific test doesn't really teach anyone about the subject. For example, you supposedly study "American history" but you don't really learn American history; what you learn instead are snippets (many of which, such as Paul Revere's ride and the roots of Thanksgiving, sometimes include more myth than fact) that may be a few hundred years apart.
Many classes even have questionable value; when I was in the 9th grade I had a class called "Internet Explorer". This was a program about researching a country and writing about an imaginary vacation there, complete with the "make-a-poster-with-magazine-clippings" project. For some reason this was considered a high school level class rather than, you know, grade school.
I can completely relate to the frustrations of the kids interviewed in the documentary. Rather than purchase new books (In 1999, we were using half-torn textbooks from the 70s) my school district decided to cut down every tree on high school property and erect a giant fence around the buildings to, "Deter smokers".
Just about every other week our principal had drug dogs sniffing the lockers, and he searched the pockets of many of my friends after lunch break (which never produced anything-- if you smoked, you had the good sense to leave your stuff at someone's nearby house). And I can never forget the supposed "ADHD" kids hopped up on Ritalin that would go from being perky to apathetic (and occasionally suicidal). There were kids expelled for all kinds of silly things, like band T-shirts (Metallica and Snoop Dogg was against the dress code. So was short skirts, tank tops, and wallet chains).
I was looking forward to wood shop because it was a common project to build your own engraved hunting rifle stock and I thought that was pretty cool. Yet, our principal brought the hammer down and even though you can't shoot anyone with a wooden stock (no moving parts, ya know?), by the time I got to high school making anything beyond a small bookshelf was cause for expulsion.
I ended up dropping out of high school in the 9th grade, getting a GED and enlisting into the Army (a year before 9/11 went down). Oddly enough, it's only because I enlisted that I discovered I was smarter than I realized. In public school, I was a C and F student-- but I had very good GED scores. My ASVAB (the test you take to get into the military) was also high enough for Military Intelligence.
Five years later, when I went to college I took the COMPASS placement test and got a perfect score in Reading and Writing.
I promise you that during those five years I was in the Army, I did very little writing and the bulk of my reading entailed field manuals (Army literature is notorious for having typos on every single page).
I'm not sure if this says something about me (I do consider myself a self-taught writer) or it says something about how irrelevant the public education system is. My younger brother also had trouble in public school; he barely passed and had to attend summer school.
However, like me, he also did amazingly well on his ASVAB (unlike me, he did go into Military Intelligence. Where he was top of his class and has rapidly risen through ranks...I'll just leave it at that).
It makes me wonder if, perhaps, the public school educators are mistaken about the very subjects they teach and they find faults when there is none?
READ MORE
One thing that really hit home for me is the information about the poor quality of education because of misguided State regulations. The emphasis on learning to pass a specific test doesn't really teach anyone about the subject. For example, you supposedly study "American history" but you don't really learn American history; what you learn instead are snippets (many of which, such as Paul Revere's ride and the roots of Thanksgiving, sometimes include more myth than fact) that may be a few hundred years apart.
Many classes even have questionable value; when I was in the 9th grade I had a class called "Internet Explorer". This was a program about researching a country and writing about an imaginary vacation there, complete with the "make-a-poster-with-magazine-clippings" project. For some reason this was considered a high school level class rather than, you know, grade school.
I can completely relate to the frustrations of the kids interviewed in the documentary. Rather than purchase new books (In 1999, we were using half-torn textbooks from the 70s) my school district decided to cut down every tree on high school property and erect a giant fence around the buildings to, "Deter smokers".
Just about every other week our principal had drug dogs sniffing the lockers, and he searched the pockets of many of my friends after lunch break (which never produced anything-- if you smoked, you had the good sense to leave your stuff at someone's nearby house). And I can never forget the supposed "ADHD" kids hopped up on Ritalin that would go from being perky to apathetic (and occasionally suicidal). There were kids expelled for all kinds of silly things, like band T-shirts (Metallica and Snoop Dogg was against the dress code. So was short skirts, tank tops, and wallet chains).
I was looking forward to wood shop because it was a common project to build your own engraved hunting rifle stock and I thought that was pretty cool. Yet, our principal brought the hammer down and even though you can't shoot anyone with a wooden stock (no moving parts, ya know?), by the time I got to high school making anything beyond a small bookshelf was cause for expulsion.
I ended up dropping out of high school in the 9th grade, getting a GED and enlisting into the Army (a year before 9/11 went down). Oddly enough, it's only because I enlisted that I discovered I was smarter than I realized. In public school, I was a C and F student-- but I had very good GED scores. My ASVAB (the test you take to get into the military) was also high enough for Military Intelligence.
Five years later, when I went to college I took the COMPASS placement test and got a perfect score in Reading and Writing.
I promise you that during those five years I was in the Army, I did very little writing and the bulk of my reading entailed field manuals (Army literature is notorious for having typos on every single page).
I'm not sure if this says something about me (I do consider myself a self-taught writer) or it says something about how irrelevant the public education system is. My younger brother also had trouble in public school; he barely passed and had to attend summer school.
However, like me, he also did amazingly well on his ASVAB (unlike me, he did go into Military Intelligence. Where he was top of his class and has rapidly risen through ranks...I'll just leave it at that).
It makes me wonder if, perhaps, the public school educators are mistaken about the very subjects they teach and they find faults when there is none?
Cosplayers: The Movie is now available for free viewing on Crunchyroll.com
I'm glad that (so far) the comments have been positive. This was such a difficult film to complete-- everything that could go wrong, did go wrong and I had such a small budget to work with.
A DVD copy is also available for sale on Amazon
READ MORE
I'm glad that (so far) the comments have been positive. This was such a difficult film to complete-- everything that could go wrong, did go wrong and I had such a small budget to work with.
A DVD copy is also available for sale on Amazon
I've done about 40 critiques on Inkpop so far and most have been pretty detailed.
Some trends:
-I've noticed common mistakes and occasionally find myself having to copy and paste an explanation; for example, when I notice someone has written a synopsis for their long pitch, I point out the specific mistakes and paste in an explanation of what a pitch should be about.
-The most common genres so far are contemporary humor and dark urban fantasy.
-I've noticed few male users on the site.
Twilight Chronicles was at rank 35 a few days ago, but is dropping to the forties. I'm losing out to the users that spam all the new users to vote for them. I'm trying to refrain from doing that because I've decided to give detailed critiques to those who read my novel, but I think their tactic might be superior to mine.
READ MORE
Some trends:
-I've noticed common mistakes and occasionally find myself having to copy and paste an explanation; for example, when I notice someone has written a synopsis for their long pitch, I point out the specific mistakes and paste in an explanation of what a pitch should be about.
-The most common genres so far are contemporary humor and dark urban fantasy.
-I've noticed few male users on the site.
Twilight Chronicles was at rank 35 a few days ago, but is dropping to the forties. I'm losing out to the users that spam all the new users to vote for them. I'm trying to refrain from doing that because I've decided to give detailed critiques to those who read my novel, but I think their tactic might be superior to mine.
I guess I've always known.
My first stories were not written; they were acted out when I was a child. I think a lot of people forget the stories they invented when they played with their toys or ran around outside with their friends; I still remember some of the make-believe adventures I went on. And when I played with my action figures, my characters went on epic adventures that would span weeks and months. Most of them centered around a Voltron castle and the generations of heroes that protected it from the forces of spooky doom.
When I was in grade school, I used to make my own hand-written books with line paper and staples. I actually still have some of them. I had a series of short stories about 'Super Rabbit', which was an imitation of Super-Man so terrible that it could be considered a juvenile parody.
I used to be a big Star Trek fan and I wrote fanfiction about "Star Trek: The Next Crew" which took place after "ST: The Next Generation". This was years before the internet was available to the masses and a decade before fanfiction.net existed. I typed up the stories on my school's Macintosh 128K. I used to have a floppy disk with them all on it but I have no idea where it is now.
I also used to write stories in notebooks; somewhere I have a big box of notebooks that contain a couple novellas. Most of it was epic fantasy.
READ MORE
My first stories were not written; they were acted out when I was a child. I think a lot of people forget the stories they invented when they played with their toys or ran around outside with their friends; I still remember some of the make-believe adventures I went on. And when I played with my action figures, my characters went on epic adventures that would span weeks and months. Most of them centered around a Voltron castle and the generations of heroes that protected it from the forces of spooky doom.
When I was in grade school, I used to make my own hand-written books with line paper and staples. I actually still have some of them. I had a series of short stories about 'Super Rabbit', which was an imitation of Super-Man so terrible that it could be considered a juvenile parody.
I used to be a big Star Trek fan and I wrote fanfiction about "Star Trek: The Next Crew" which took place after "ST: The Next Generation". This was years before the internet was available to the masses and a decade before fanfiction.net existed. I typed up the stories on my school's Macintosh 128K. I used to have a floppy disk with them all on it but I have no idea where it is now.
I also used to write stories in notebooks; somewhere I have a big box of notebooks that contain a couple novellas. Most of it was epic fantasy.
Several years ago (when I was in the Army) I was sitting in a guard shack with an M16. While trying hard to stay awake on my 12 hour shift, the image of a patchwork teddy bear with a handkerchief cape and a top hat popped into my head. He met a young boy in a forest and said, "I'm not really a teddy bear, ya know?"
So you could say I came up with some crucial elements of my story while suffering from sleep exhaustion.
A year or so later, after I had my first rough draft of the story finished (which was a short story), I was reviewing Final Fantasy 4 & 5 for an online game site and came upon a realization: the end-game bosses of RPGs are probably the most powerful beings in the universe since it always takes about four to twelve of the strongest fighters in the world to defeat them-- and only after they get help from some legendary magic artifacts.
So I said to myself, "Why don't I make the main character a demon king and the antagonist a crazy goddess of light? But how do I go about that since he's actually a normal human boy from another world? Maybe he could be possessed by a demon king who was defeated and banished to another world? Don't they sometimes get banished at the end of a game because they are too powerful to perma-kill?"
Everything just sorta went from there.
READ MORE
So you could say I came up with some crucial elements of my story while suffering from sleep exhaustion.
A year or so later, after I had my first rough draft of the story finished (which was a short story), I was reviewing Final Fantasy 4 & 5 for an online game site and came upon a realization: the end-game bosses of RPGs are probably the most powerful beings in the universe since it always takes about four to twelve of the strongest fighters in the world to defeat them-- and only after they get help from some legendary magic artifacts.
So I said to myself, "Why don't I make the main character a demon king and the antagonist a crazy goddess of light? But how do I go about that since he's actually a normal human boy from another world? Maybe he could be possessed by a demon king who was defeated and banished to another world? Don't they sometimes get banished at the end of a game because they are too powerful to perma-kill?"
Everything just sorta went from there.
Journalist Jesse Kornbluth wrote an article at Publishers Weekly about how publisher and author responsibilities are changing places.
I think it raises some very interesting points. I'm not convinced mainstream book publishers are the best at marketing books.
Just look at your average book cover to see what I mean.
BTW- Jesse runs Head Butler, a great site for finding midlist gems.
READ MORE
I think it raises some very interesting points. I'm not convinced mainstream book publishers are the best at marketing books.
Just look at your average book cover to see what I mean.
BTW- Jesse runs Head Butler, a great site for finding midlist gems.