Popocatépetl  (Attribution: Tlazotlaliztli   CC By-SA 4.0)

 250,000 BC:  From the Shadow of Popocatépetl

So I lied.  I didn’t plan to lie.  I really thought I wasn’t going to write any books this year—focus only on marketing.  Ah, Bobby Burns, wonderful past poet, my plans “gang aft agley.”  My words, however, should not be worthless nor my character terribly impugned.  At least I hope not.

July 5, my publisher asked me if I would be willing to write a novella and have it to him by September 15.  Now, I’ve been writing novels averaging over 140,000 words in length.  I had to ask what the length of a novella was.  He told me 20,000 to 30,000 words. I asked for twenty-four hours.  I wanted to be certain that my manuscript readers on whom I depend would be with me.  Both replied enthusiastically in the affirmative.  Well, then, I found myself agreeing to deliver a manuscript by September 15.  Yikes.

I spent some time thinking about how to choose a subject.  I didn’t want to write outside my chosen subject of passion, peopling the Americas before the last Ice Age glaciation event.  Then, it came to me.  I’d write novellas, not just one.  I’d write them identifying the places suspected of being pre-Clovis sites across the Americas.  That could set me up for years and fill my time with effort of substantially less than a 140,000+ word novel.  What a delightful opportunity.

I fumbled around wondering which site to pick first.  It wasn’t difficult.  The single most fascinating site to me is the Valsequillo area in Mexico.  There was a find of a human skull that had been dated to 250,000 years ago.  The location was under volcanic ash.  The story of that location is messy.  What happened there isn’t nice.  I think of it as the ugly side of the Clovis-First power, not science, just strong fisted power.  I may be misjudging it, but if so then I’m guilty.  I don’t often go out that far on a limb, but in this case, I’m willing.

Many findings from that site have been removed, destroyed, made unavailable.  Still, it hasn’t been utterly discredited and the findings that remain are amazing.  That does not preclude stories from forming around what’s known.  Storytellers will weave their tales.  This one’s irresistible to me.

So, I now have a plan for a series of novellas growing.  It’s exciting to me!  The first is a “take” on Cinderella.  Well, it’s a far-fetched take.  In this case, Cinderella is a guy, age sixteen, whose name is Wing.  The title of the story is 250,000 BC:  From the Shadow of Popocatépetl.  The name of the mountain is pronounced at the end so that petl sounds like petal (e.g., flower petal).  The second e is not a long e.

Having to think small is a challenge.  I’m already at about 9,000 words.  That’s about one half to one third complete.  Yeah, I do write fast.  The writing style has changed.  I remain utterly convinced these people have plenty of intelligence, but I’ve decided to limit their verbal communication to simple sentences.  Ever try to limit yourself to writing in simple sentences?  It can be hilarious!

Yeah, I know the story from end to end.  I always have to do that before I write.  I won’t give it away though.  You’ll have to read the novella.  It’ll be short!  I hope to be able to send it off to my readers by the end of next week.  I’m eager to get reaction to the change and the story.

Read the novella and decide whether to impugn my character!

 Outline for The SealEaters, 20,000 BC

I WRITE FAST?

Numbers of people have been curious about the length of time it takes, or doesn’t take, me to write my novels.  My novels average 140,000 words per book, most a few thousand over.  The first one, Ki’ti’s Story, 75,000 BC, took me about nine months.  I was new at it.  It’s a bit awkward, but readers tend to favor it, though it’s the least well written in my own opinion.  The second was about four months of writing time.  The rest were a lot faster at about three months.  Ki’ti’s Story, 75,000 BC came out in 2012, Manak-na’s Story, 75,000  BC came out in 2013, Zamimolo’s Story, 50,000 BC and Tuksook’s Story, 35,000 BC both came out in 2014, and The SealEaters, 20,000 BC came out in 2015. I do work very long days and require little sleep.  When I’m writing I’m "submerged" so that often I don’t hear the phone ring. Being "submerged" like that is a source of great pleasure.  It's a total envelopment in the project.

I never have an outline.  In my school days when teachers required outlines, I'd have to write my paper and then outline it.  My brain synthesizes before analyzing.  The closest I come to an outline is the genealogical chart that appears in each of the Winds of Change novels.  That is actually an 8.5 x 11 piece of paper, and I occasionally put notes on it.  It gives me all the guidance I need on one surface.  It's great. 

Oddly the third book, Zamimolo’s Story, 50,000 BC, brought out a reader complaint that the book appeared to have been written too fast.  I don’t have deadlines.  There’s no need.  Zamimolo’s Story, 50,000 BC was about average in writing time, and, no, I wasn’t pressed.  I had read a book on plot and structure, thinking that might enhance my writing.  I’ve never taken a novel writing course.  I thought some learning might be good.  I followed the guidelines of the book.  Readers didn’t like the effect, so for the remaining two novels, I discarded what the book taught and reverted to my original storytelling approach.

It’s not that I never wrote as a part of my occupations.  One of my early jobs was writing self-instruction courses for the federal government.  A friend of mine and I had the same function but we arrived at our products very differently.  She wrote and wrote, filling trash cans with wads of paper.  I walked about the office building on the 26^th floor of the Federal Building in Seattle staring out the windows, drinking coffee, sometimes almost audibly humming.  People knew not to startle me when I was roaming.  Near the same time my fellow writer and I would both write our final draft.  We were friends, and after we finished writing, we’d go somewhere we could make noise, and we’d critique the other’s writing.  Some saw it as brutal.  Neither of us did.  At that point our job was to polish the product of the other to the very best of our ability.  It was pure joy to each of us to see our product improve due to the effort of the other.  One of us might say to the other, “When you wrote that (pointing to a line), what were you thinking?”  Then when the writer saw the problem, we’d both explode with laughter.  The problem would be fixed, piece polished, and move on. 

When people asked about our processes, I explained my process as lazy.  I wrote the course in my head as I wandered around the building.  When I finally sat down, I knew the structure and content from end to end.  I’d write the first and final draft.  The same holds true for my novels.  Except, instead of wandering about a high rise, I’m at home, out doing book signings where there’s an occasional lull, driving the car, sitting on the porch, running the tractor, and so on.  All these interludes are filled with my head actively massaging the story.  Then it’s just a matter of sitting down to write the book from end to end.  I still have initial readers who know me well enough to pick at my work down to the molecular level.  They are wonderful!  They give me their input and I take that and do the final edit.

Sometimes as I've walked through a store, people may have thought me rude for not recognizing them.  Little did they know that I might be imagining thousands of years ago in a cave.  I could pull up the scent of the place, the breeze, the chatter of characters and birds in the trees.  I didn’t see the apparel beyond the groceries.  I saw imagined Neanderthals.  I “wrote” mentally as I walked through the store.  I enjoyed that while shopping, something so routine and boring that the grocery list on my phone and my knowledge of where the product could be found in the store led my walking, while my brain freely “wrote” or tested what-ifs or processed other questions.  How would a character or two or three respond if something, such as _____, were to occur?  Could I interject this little piece of information in this way smoothly?  This mental writing form gave me time to get to know my characters.  Playing the mini scene let me know whether the behavior would be consistent with each character.  In doing this, the brain can function differently.  Some writers will call it arguing with a character.  In freely writing in one’s head, it can happen that the what-ifs come up with something for which I had no plan at all.  I cannot pin down the source.  But it was the prior development of the character that showed me that my expectation did not fit with the character and what “came to me” did.  Arguing with a character?  I don’t really think so.  I do know that might be how it would look.  I’d much prefer to do that mentally than on paper!

One factor that influences my writing fast is that I researched for five years before I started writing.  That provided a wonderful platform for “writing” the whole series.  It gave me my sense of time where humans were affected by great earth events, starting with the actual eruption of the supervolcano, Mt. Toba, setting off a Time of Peace on earth as humans had to depend on one another for basic survival to the Ice Age Glaciation of the mid-20,000 years ago which ushered in a Time of War, creating land ownership conflicts that continue on today, shifting from guilelessness to cunning.

Research time isn’t a neat tidy package.  Bits of knowledge float about in a murky soup.  It’s only by staying with it, stirring, adding more elements to the soup, that it suddenly becomes analyzable, almost mystically, and then the soup becomes something that can be synthesized into a novel and novels and a series of novels.  In some ways research is my favorite time.  It sets off great sparks of creation that ignite my interest in the stories.  Interests that last for keyboarding the story, editing it, seeing it form into substance, and establishing the passion for the crusade of getting the book out there to share with others.

INTUITION, INSIGHT, AND 
OPPORTUNITY FOR BOOK SALES

Writers write;  authors sell what they write.  The two functions involve separate skill sets.  I’m working assiduously on my marketing skills.  I set aside 2016 not to add another novel but to focus on selling.

Marketing is not something I was born with.  I had to develop it.  With the shifting world of publishing and book selling, most publishers don’t have big budgets for author promotion.  It’s left to the author.  There really isn’t training universally available to learn to sell books.  What sells itself to some extent are a few genres:  mystery, thriller, and romance.  My writing is from my passion—prehistoric fiction.  Not exactly the top of the public interest list.  To help the ignorant author there is a lot of merchandizing available for purchase.  I’d say, BEWARE!  The products can become black holes for expense and not contribute positively.

Besides genre, one way for authors to cash in is to self-publish.  I don’t have those skills, and I haven’t wanted to learn them.  I’m happy to contract with a small publisher on a royalty contract.  He excels at what he does, and I do the best I can doing what I do.  It works.

One of the first things that comes to mind for book sales is book signings.  Book signings intimidated me until I actually did one.  Then, I discovered to my delight, it’s just conversing with strangers about my passion.  Well, that was fun!  Plenty of people told me they wanted to read the book but couldn’t afford to buy a copy.  I suggested they go to their closest library.  To me that's common sense.   Speaking events can feel threatening, but it’s a great way to get known.  Fortunately for me, speaking to groups wasn’t intimidating at all.  I had that skill set for eons.

Writing to genre, book signings, and speaking events are great, but in my case I wasn’t by any means making real money on my books.  Others encouraged me to do my own publishing.  I still lacked interest.  Down deep inside I felt that my novel series, so heavily researched in science, needed to be in libraries.  My publisher discouraged me.  I had the intuitive sense that I needed to try.  I sent out a pitch letter to libraries, and not a single response came back.  Demoralizing but instructive.  I sent a single copy of my first novel, Ki’ti’s Story, 75,000 BC to every library in the borough in which I live.  The result, silence.

I continued on bungling my way through marketing.  I’m not embarrassed to admit it.  I think I’m in good company.  I attended craft shows.  One of these was in a library and to my surprise, they were displaying Ki’ti’s Story, 75,000 BC.  I was astounded.  For me the art/craft shows are tough.  I’m old.  Carrying boxes of books hurts my shoulders.  It does usually bring in more than the entry fee.  Still not great for sales.

This summer, years after the craft show when I saw my book displayed in a library, I learned that in the borough all my books are now available.  How interesting that the donation resulted in making four other books available.  The librarian with whom I talked made it clear, people are reading them!

One day I was talking to Tammy Gray, a member of the local Women In Business groups.  She’s wonderful for sharing.  When she realized I was looking for space to do book signings along with a couple of other local authors, she offered space for three opportunities.  I was delighted for the chance.  My publisher provided me with “invitations” to attach to community bulletin boards and countertops.  We three authors will paper the area with these “invitations.”  I keep going back to places I put them.  I find they’ve been removed by interested people, just as I hoped.  I replace them.  It’s busy work, but necessary.  Taking the information to local radio stations is also helpful as is posting the event in the local newspaper.

It was Tammy Gray who waked me up when it came to focus.  While doing my first book signing at her place of business, she said, “You’ve gotta go where your target group is.”  She was asking about demographics with respect to my readers.  She offered some suggestions of local businesses where their clientele might be reachable.  I was shocked.  I’d overlooked the thing I knew.  You always consider your target and their goals.  What planet had I parked myself on?

Tammy Gray made me acutely aware of the intuitive focus I’d had since the beginning.  My books belonged in libraries.  I’d had the same experience my publisher had with libraries.  I sensed there was a key, and I didn’t know what the key was.  I was focused on reader goals, not librarian goals.

I tried again.  In my state there is a list of libraries.  I emailed them, but the way I did it was to try to consolidate the addresses on my email.  Every single one came back.  I was utterly demoralized.  How could this be?  The books were legitimate library books.  Every novel had won an award.  There was a to-die-for novel series review from Midwest Book Review.  The judge on my last book, the same judge who judged all the others, called me “America’s preeminent writer of prehistoric fiction.”  Why so hard to reach the libraries?

People told me you had to have your book noticed by “Library Journal” or this place or that.  It seemed overwhelming.  It also didn’t help that I’d sent out all those emails, and all had come back because I didn’t use the technology correctly.   What a waste of time.  But also a learning opportunity.  And, as life frequently presents, a blessing in disguise.

One morning just after the emails were all returned, I opened my email to find an invitation to a webinar that focused on selling to libraries.  I laughed out loud when I saw the header.  I figured I had nothing to lose, so I planned the time and attended the webinar.  I was bowled over.  I had been doing what I knew better than to do.  My pitch to libraries had been my own focus, not looking at it from their view.  How utterly stupid of me!

So, I listened carefully.  I bought the course they sell.  It’s expensive, at least to me it’s expensive.  I followed their advice and put together a package for the LIBRARIAN.  Now, I’m ready to try again.  Whether this time will be successful, I have no way to know.  I know it’s better than what I’ve tried in the past.

I’m seizing this opportunity to follow my intuition.  The insight Tammy Gray provided has hopefully steered me in the right direction.  Now, with this opportunity to follow the solid guidance of how to approach librarians, I’ll have success.  If not, it adds to my learning.  Give me about three or four months, maybe six, and if there’s good news to report, I’ll share with you what course I took to break through.  I have lots of hope and enthusiasm this time.  Something just feels as if I’m finally getting the tools put into the right context to turn opportunity to a new success for those I try to reach and myself.