Timelines and the pace of change

We like to think that the pace of today's world is so fast. When you write about World War II you have to be extremely cautious to match timelines of activities with real events - compared to today, they were all on a fast train to oblivion!

Take America's entry into the war - December, 1941. By VE day - March 8 - the entire drama of the European conflict was played out - 3 years, 6 months. Compare that to Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. The Battle of Britain began in August, suspended in September (sort of - it mostly died away over time, but not before the Blitz over London), followed by the invasion of Russia. By February, 1943 - following an assault that began in August, German forces were defeated at Stalingrad. A year later was the countdown to D-Day.

Events moved very fast, scattered all over the globe. Managing your novel timeline in that short time frame can be a challenge. What was a major objective in August could be discarded by November. You must keep your pace hot and lively, and plot every action against the historical background. It is easy to mess up - believe me!

I am struggling right now with timeline issues in The Black Sun - spring rains play a major part of any drama during war, and the same happens indirectly here. That compresses activity to very short windows, and may require a rethinking of one of the story lines.

Can you imagine what the actual wartime planners had to go through?

Good reading!

Making a living ... Northwest style

Making a living writing is great ... I am sitting in the lodge at White Pass, Washington, thinking up new ways to kill someone. What a job!

Writing tools are changing rspidly. Mobile technologies allow me a much greater sphere of trsvel while keeping me working ... and not carrying around a bulky laptop. I use Pages on my iPad to do most of my composing. It stores the document in the Cloud so it is always curretc at mt desktop. When I create my final manuscript I use Mellel. It is a word processor from a small software company in Isreal. It handles very large files beautifully, and puts MS Word to shame for power, features, and flexibility.

Christmas reading lists and other things ...

It's the night before Christmas ... I happen to have a beautiful original edition of The Night Before Christmas in a glass display case. It is one of my prized book possessions. I pull it down every Christmas and read it to the children, and now grandchildren. There is nothing more special than a great book, and this is the proof.

Finding a great book can be a little tough. There are some great new services now - subscription services like Oyster.com and Scribd.com that let you read as much as you like for a set fee per month. If you are an avid reader, take a look at these. My books are there, but that really isn't the point. Enjoy looking over a lot of new potential reads without having to pay for them all.

In a more traditional vent, I have a link on the website to a reading list of historical novels, from the Civil War to Korea. I'll be adding to this as time goes on. These are all titles of SMASHWORDS, my distributor. This retailer is worth taking a look at.

I am getting an evil look from "Mrs. Claus" right now - we have company coming and I am doing the cooking. So Merry Christmas, and good reading!

L.W. Hewitt

Cruise ships and other backgrounds ...

In "War of the Worlds" with Tom Cruise, in the middle of armageddon, death all around them, not a living soul anywhere except 1 man and 1 woman (biblical reference intentional, I am sure) if you watch in the background, top right corner of the screen, a cruise ship is sailing up the river. Pretty funny.

I have always enjoyed catching the odd editing errors in movies. Someone is always falling into the water, only to come out bone dry. Or their hair is parted on the left in one scene, the right in another. It happens all the time, and there are some pretty funny videos that document these "continuity" errors.

After publishing my first three books, I don't laugh at them any more. Finding that odd irregularity can be painful, embarrassing, and downright maddening. I edit my work very hard, but things get out of whack. Dates, sequences, timelines - I keep them all written down. But sometimes something changes that echoes through your book - and sometimes more than 1 book.

In The Juno Letters, the most intense and important scene is the death of Marianne. It is on Yom Kippur - the date is significant. Somewhere along the line, I moved the date of the death (which also is part of book 2, Cross of Fire - another important scene). I don't remember why. But after a dozen readings, editings, a few false starts, etc, I finally finished republishing as a series Book 1 and 2 - in print as well as ebooks. Sold a bunch of them, and put them all away to focus on Book 3 - The Black Sun (The Story of Ariele).

Except... in the middle of a writing session at my Oly Club office, I had a thought (a rare event) - I think got the date of Yom Kippur wrong. So I looked it up. In 1943, Yom Kippur was October 8. In my book, it was Sept 23. A little thing ...

WRONG! That would be like saying Christmas was in January. I had several hundred sales out there, 5 major ebook versions, and print version - all had to be changed. I did it last night, and just now approved the proof of the print versions. All is better.

No one else found the mistake - yet. It doesn't matter. I FOUND IT.

Maddening.

It helps to be a little mad to be a writer.

Audio Book #1 Done plus ...

Writing is a strange business. You imagine a world of creativity, endless hours with inspiration bringing world peace to the masses. Unfortunately, for every hour of truly creative writing you have many hours of hard work - editing, reediting, marketing, cajoling, screaming in the mirror - you name it. Writing is hard work, don't let anyone try and convince you otherwise.

Lately I have added audio books to my product line, and have just published the first one, a version of NOCK on Wood. Luckily, I have a great narrator - Gary Regal. He does most of the work. We will be starting on The Juno Letters series right after the new year, and plan to have all 3 finished by June.

I am back writing again after editing and publishing Cross of Fire, and revamping the website to accommodate the new book and new formats. The new story - book 3 of the series - is a lot darker, delving into the Nazi occult practices.

I have also repositioned my products price-wise, and my sales seem to have benefitted accordingly. Oddly, despite the low price and immediate availability of the e-books, I am selling more print-on-demand. I am not complaining - the margins and commissions are better -- and there is just something very compelling about holding the print book in your hands.

I am not going to make a big fuss about Christmas sales - it is more important to get the series completed and positioned correctly with all of the versions by spring. It is much like building a new business - don't open the doors till you got it right.

The web site has all the products for sale - I hope you will stop by and take a look for Christmas. But if you don't, there's always next year!

Have a merry Christmas and enjoy the time with family and friends.

Larry

Getting caught up...

I have been a little neglectful here lately. I have finished writing and editing book 2 of The Juno Letters series, Cross of Fire. It is the story of Gela Pientka who appears as a minor character but a major turning point in The Juno Letters, Book 1.

We also finished the first book in audio format - we, because it was Gary Regal, my narrator, who did all the work. What it did point out to me was there were some errors in NOCK on Wood, the first book in The Viper Chronicles, that had to be fixed. I took the opportunity to rework all three novels in a slightly different but standardized format. I also made some adjustments to Juno book 1 to make it match with the story as it emerged in book 2.

That meant reediting and reformatting for all of my media, including print-on-demand. It has been a huge task, but I just posted the revised editions online today. I'll put the POD versions up later in the week - don't want to miss Cyber Monday.

We are going to start the audio version of Juno after the first, and plan to have all three of The Juno Letters books done by June. That said, I have also started on book 3 - The Story of Ariele. I am toying with the story line and right now I think a great title will be The Black Sun, based on the story as I see it. That may change, however, so don't hold me to it.

That said, as I went to print on Cross, Apple pulled a fast one and gutted my favorite word processor PAGES, and took out the ability to do facing pages - critical for print-on-demand. I tried to do it in Word - big mistake. There were so many times that changes I made were not reflected in the saved version (I actually did a SAVE AS in three different file names and had 3 different sets of errors in the final product .. go figure) that I wasted almost 8 hours trying to format for POD. 8 hours is a lot, and at my billing rate ... well, that was the last time.

I switched to Mellel for my final product, a powerful word processor I had looked at once before. It is from a small software company in Israel, and the product is optimized for large manuscripts. It is NOT for the weak kneed, but once I got the rhythm of the interface, I fell in love. It is fast, powerful, and stable. I was able to reformat all 3 documents for print in 4 hours (as opposed to 8 hours for 1 in Word).

I still write in Pages - Cloud synced with my iPad, which is important to my work flow. I transfer to Mellel for the final document.

Google 'Mellel' if you want to see what a REAL word processor is like. They will give you a 30-day trial.