For the uninitiated, National Novel Writing Month is an annual event taking place in November in which writers try to complete a novel in a single month. It’s a great idea, but I’ve never participated.
For one thing, I work full-time as a journalist — basically writing all day — and I’ve never had the time or energy to participate. Also, maybe I’ve just never had the timing right. Every time November rolls around, I seem to be in the middle of a project and I don’t want to lift my head up to work on something new.
Still though, I’ve always liked the idea of spending a month just focusing on creative writing — a month to bash out ideas and just get in the flow of writing.
Thanks to the encouragement of my lovely wife Mallika, I’m finally going to do it. Okay, so not in November, and I’m not starting from scratch on something new… but I am going to spend the next month making a full-on effort to finish my in-progress third novel, The Wanderer and the New West.
Our time in Australia is in its sunset. Photo taken in Broome, Western Australia.
I wouldn’t be able to do this if not for the fact that Mallika and I are in the midst of a huge life change. After three years living and working in Australia, we have decided to move back to the USA. I finished working at IDG Australia at the end of March, and as a result have about four solid weeks to focus on my novel.
As mentioned in an earlier post, I’m about two-thirds of the way through. I’ve written all that over about two years (including development of the idea and the actual writing), all while self-publishing and promoting my first two novels and working that full-time job to which I keep referring. I think now, though, that I’ve got enough momentum to finish the remaining third of the first draft in the next month if I give it my devoted and undistracted attention.
Happy to report I got to work today and wrote two new scenes and tuned up a few existing chapters. I have to say that it felt really good. In fact … I better get back to work!
We, The Watched and Divided We Fall are set in an unnamed nation that is not unlike the US, UK, Australia or other “western” countries, but is much further along in its use of government surveillance.
While technically science fiction, I purposely avoided any out-there, overly futuristic elements in order to keep these books as grounded in reality as possible. The surveillance technologies discussed in the book mix what’s available today with what there is potential for in the future. I wanted to create a place that, while fictional, didn’t seem like much of a stretch given the current debate over government surveillance.
My novels have two interlinked, overarching conflicts, with three sides.
Within the country, you have the government and the Church together in a fight against revolutionaries who call themselves the Underground. Essentially, I took America’s First Amendment promise of separation of Church and State and turned it on its head. By uniting, they exercise totalitarian control over the people. The government provides physical enforcement while the Church spreads the psychological propaganda that keeps the people in line.
Illustrating the merger of Church and State is the motto of the Guard, the nation’s army:
PATRIOTS ARE THE TRUE. HERETICS ARE THE DAMNED.
Holding to that policy, the Guard keeps a Watched list of suspicious citizens. Those who are found out as Heretics face public execution.
Naturally, not everyone’s going to agree with that, and the strongest opponents have formed a revolutionary group called the Underground. Funded by a mysterious benefactor, the Underground collects evidence of the government’s wrongdoing in an effort to gather followers and spur an uprising.
The fire-eyed graffiti symbol of the Underground.
Meanwhile, there is a second conflict–an international war between the nation and an unnamed Enemy. The division between the government and the Underground makes the nation weak against the Enemy. The more internal division, the worse things seem to get in the war against the Enemy.
The hero of my novels, Seven, enters this nation without memory. Like the reader, Seven finds it all very strange and forms an opinion of who is in the right and who is in the wrong. But what can one man do, especially when the punishment for treason is execution?
Find out this answer and more in We, The Watchedand the sequel, Divided We Fall, available now from Amazon and other major online booksellers!
You can also get the first book free by signing up for my newsletter via NoiseTrade below! If you sign up in the next month, I’ll throw in the sequel! (eBooks only)
I’m excited to say I’ve reached about the two-thirds mark of my next novel, The Wanderer and the New West.
It’s a mix of the western and dystopian genres with lots of action, and I can’t wait to share it with you all. Whereas my first two books focus on a nation where the government and church have united in a totalitarian force, my new novel imagines an America where things have swung entirely in the other direction. The government is weak and individuals use guns to make their own justice. It’s a real return to the Wild West.
The Wanderer is a lone vigilante in this New West, travelling from town to town fighting for what he thinks is right.
Of course, there is much more to the story than that. But I hope this gives you a taste of the direction I’m heading. I believe there’s potential for a lot of interesting stories within this world, and I’m finding it absolutely addictive to write. I’ve always loved the Western genre but think it’s ready for an update to make it more relevant for modern times.
Hope to share more soon! Please feel free to email me your questions and I’ll try to answer them the best I can in my next newsletter. If you’re not already part of The Underground, click here to subscribe.
Exciting news! My first novel We, The Watched is now available to download for free on NoiseTrade! All you have to do is provide an email address and you can instantly download the eBook (MOBI and EPUB versions available).
If you like what you read, NoiseTrade provides the ability to donate. However, as a self-published author, I’d be even happier if you left an honest review of the book on Amazon, Goodreads or another bookstore website.
So what’s it about?
An amnesiac struggles to conform in a surveillance society he doesn’t remember. Resistance is heresy and punishable by death. But some seek to ignite a revolution. Will the fresh perspective from Seven’s rebirth be a blessing or a curse?
As an independent author, I’m always looking for new ways to promote my books. I recently came across a cool website called Story Cartel. The site is all about finding new readers–and importantly–encouraging them to write reviews on Amazon and other bookseller websites.
I’ve put both of my novels up on Story Cartel in the past few months. Essentially, the book goes up on the site and for three weeks visitors can download it for free in exchange for their email address. At the end of that period, the reader writes a customer review and submits a link to Story Cartel. When they submit the link, they are entered into a contest to win great prizes like an Amazon gift card.
The review itself does not have to be positive–Story Cartel stresses to readers that they should write honest reviews.
I asked Story Cartel founder Joe Bunting about the origins of the site and his thoughts on how authors can best succeed in a time of immense change in the publishing world. Check out his answers below and please leave your own comments.
What was the problem you were trying to solve when you created Story Cartel?
Joe: Out of the millions of books on sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads, and all the rest, how do readers figure out which ones they actually want to read? First, they’ll ask their friends, but if their friends aren’t readers or have different taste in books, they turn to reviews.
Not professional reviews in the New York Times or Vanity Fair. Regular readers are much more interested in finding books other people like them are interested in reading.
That’s why getting reviews on their books are the first and most important thing authors can do today to market their books.
We had figured out how to get a lot of reviews on our own books, and so we built Story Cartel to help other authors get reviews on theirs. It’s working out pretty well. Since 2012, we’ve helped authors get over 15,000 reviews on their books. We’re pretty excited about that.
Why do authors need a site like Story Cartel?
Joe: Reviews, especially Amazon reviews, do three things:
Reviews provide social proof. You’re much more likely to buy a book with 100 reviews than one with 3 reviews, even if the 100 reviews are lower than the book with just 3. We all like to read books other people are reading.
Reviews build word of mouth buzz. And word of mouth buzz is what sells books the best.
Reviews work on Amazon’s algorithm. While Amazon is always changing its algorithm, we’ve found that books with more reviews rank higher on Amazon than books with fewer reviews.
How long have you been running, where are you based, and how big is the team?
Joe: We’ve been helping authors since 2012, when we started by launching just one book a week (now we launch over 20 a week, on average). We’re based in Atlanta, Georgia (but we often travel to Santa Barbara, California to escape the heat!), and have a small, busy team of four people.
The publishing industry is in a state of flux right now. Where do you think it’s going, and how well will self-published authors fare against industry published authors?
Joe: From our perspective, publishing has always been about relationship and conversations. Now the conversation is just faster and less centralized.
Publishers in the last model were heavily reliant on book reviewers in magazines and newspapers to generate buzz for their books.
So what do you do when the magazines and newspapers are closing their book review departments and yet the average reader has more of a voice than ever?
We’re doing the same thing publicists have been doing for decades–getting books into the hands of people with influence. The difference is that now everyone has influence!
How can self-published authors match the marketing budgets of the big publishers?
Joe: Honestly, they don’t need to. They just need to make relationships with one reader at a time, one life-long fan at a time. If you have 1,000 fans who are willing to tell all their friends each time you publish a new book, that’s a career. What else do you need?
Here’s how We, The Watched looked on Story Cartel. During the giveaway period, the “Buy on Amazon” button said “Download.”
Besides Story Cartel, are there any other innovative companies in this space you like that are helping self-published authors?
Joe: Story Cartel fits really well with Bookbub, the eBook promotion service that’s helping so many authors sell books online. They require at least 25 reviews before they’ll host your book, so Story Cartel is a good first step before using them.
I like what NoiseTrade books is doing to help authors build relationships with readers by giving away free copies of their books.
There are lots of other great services, but I think it matters less which tools you use and more that you’re developing relationships with your readers online using whatever tools are at your disposal (e.g. email, Twitter, Facebook, your blog, etc).
What are the next steps for Story Cartel? Do you have any plans to expand or improve your services, for example?
Joe: We’re writers ourselves, so I think we’ll always be creating new things to help them. Our sister site, The Write Practice, is all about helping people practice the craft of writing, and we’re in the process of building a publicity agency to help handcraft custom online publicity campaigns, especially for publishers. We just want to help writers, in whatever way we can, and it’s a huge honor to get to do that every day.
Missed the giveaway of my dystopian novel We, The Watched? For a limited time get the book for just $1 at Smashwords with the coupon code JQ73E. Or get it free on NoiseTrade! And please, leave a review!
