Which pitch to pitch?

January 24, 2012 at 7:39 pm (Personal, Writing)
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The Kansas Writer’s Association’s Scene Conference is less than two months away. I am, indeed, excited. There is new knowledge, old friends, and opportunities.

One of those opportunities is a thing called PitchaPalooza, described on some web sites as the American Idol for Books. Apparently without Simon. The idea is that you get one minute to pitch your book with the winner getting a meet with a literary agent. It condenses all the frustrations or all the joys of sending query letters into sixty seconds of your life. Live. In front of other people.

Oh, what the hell! I’ll give it a go. Sure, I get nervous in situations like that. But if I hide behind my Tikiman persona and figure I’ve got nothing to lose, then everything will be okay.
Except…I’ve got two books I could pitch and I don’t know which one to go with.

Which pitch to pitch?

There’s Swansong, my first NaNoWriMo from 2007 which I have fleshed out and developed over the last four+ years. A good piece of hard-boiled crime fiction. Detailed locales from here in Wichita, KS. Really out-there characters (as you would expect from something detailing the dark underbelly of the crime world). A troubled yet heroic anti-hero.

On the other hand, I’ve got Weekend Getaways, or Adventures in Contract Killing. Darkly comic and Transgressive. (Think Brett Easton Ellis or Chuck Palahniuk.) Looks at the notions of self-improvement and the extreme angst of call center customer service. Unusual fonts and integrated paragraphs of non-linear description. Probably unpublishable. But I absolutely love it.

Traditional vs. non-traditional.
Dark vs. dark comedy.
Fitting into the mainstream vs. swimming upstream.
Good work in a genre of a lot of good work vs. standing clearly outside the lines and daring the reader to step over.

I know it’s not much to go on, but I’m asking you who read this…

Which pitch to pitch?

16 Comments

2011 in review

January 2, 2012 at 9:39 pm (Blogging)

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,800 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 47 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

5 Comments

Hmm! Very Interesting! A Smashwords Experiment follow-up.

December 17, 2011 at 11:27 am (Writing)
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A couple of days ago I changed the sub-category of “Just Like Daddy” from Erotica>Suspense/Mystery to Literature>Transgressional. I was at 419 downloads. I stopped at 421.
The power of marketing or the minds of readers? Which do you think it is?

2 Comments

A Smashwords Experiment

December 13, 2011 at 7:06 pm (self-publishing, Writing)
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This past year, my primary goals have been editing viable material and expanding my networking. To that end, I have gotten involved with Twitter, Linkedin, and Klout. I have published two collections of poetry on Lulu and continued to promote my existing catalog on Smashwords.

The world of e-publishing is expanding at an amazing exponential degree and Gordon Kessler, president of the KWA, has strongly advocated a focus on it. I decided to offer two short stories on Smashwords for free as a small way of generating buzz.

The first story was “Just Like Daddy” concerning an unnamed prostitute who dresses up for her clients to help them fulfill their fantasy. It ends with a violent crime.

The second story was “How to Kill Your Boss and Get Away With It”, a tongue in cheek crime story inspired by my wife’s comment after a particularly difficult day at work.

I placed the first one under the category Fiction>Erotica>Suspense/Mystery. The second one was filed under Fiction>Literature>Transgressional. I uploaded them one day part, the first one eight days ago and the second a week ago.

As of today, “Just Like Daddy” has had 406 downloads. “How to Kill Your Boss and Get Away With It” has had 25.

Title? Category? Expectations? Don’t get me wrong; I’m grateful for the reads. But I’m beginning to understand more fully the power of successful marketing in the digital age.

8 Comments

The Madness that IS NaNoWriMo

December 1, 2011 at 9:16 pm (Personal, Writing)
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Well, another November has passed and another “successful” attempt at NaNoWriMo. By that I mean I write a 50,000 word “novel” within the thirty day time frame. That’s five years in a row. Woo hoo! Drop the confetti and break out the champagne. I just won the Super Bowl.

A bit of sarcasm? Yes, certainly. And for several reasons. The first is that 50,000 words is not really a novel, more like a novella. When Colleen Lindsay was still a literary agent, I sent her a query letter. It asked for the number of words. My manuscript was between 50 and 60 thousand words. I got back an automated response indicating that it was too short. She didn’t even read my query; good, bad, or indifferent, her computerized system decided to filter me out. So either she was extremely picky or Chris Baty (founder of NaNoWriMo) is lying about 50,000 words being a novel.

Second, what kind of writing is it that puts you on such a heated deadline and expects something resembling a story? That’s the point. There is no sense to be made of it. You could be like Jack Nicholson from The Shining and just right “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” five thousand times and, voila, you’ve won NaNoWriMo.

Third, after you’ve done it a few times, it’s not about be able to finish but doing it in the quickest time possible. The tenth, twelfth, fourteenth of the month and you are a certified hero to your NaNo friends. What if, at the stroke of midnight on October 31, having consumed copious amounts of your favorite caffeine, started writing just about anything, would it be possible to complete it in one day?

There is the positive side. it forces you to sit down and write, perhaps not totally meaningless yet not as structured as you would like. It does give you a sense of accomplishment. It’s good training for freelancers who want to know what it’s like to work on a deadline.

As far as the overall quality, pay no attention at all to that first so-called draft. It’s worthless. My first three efforts have undergone revision and still (in my mind, at least) have some merit. Last year’s had great characters and a good concept but the story was so highly illogical with subplots started and stopped in the same chapter and minor characters brought in like deus ex machina.

This year, I was on vacation for the first five days of the month and I still wanted to compete. So I outlined twenty-five chapters of two thousand words each, knowing that if I stuck to my schedule I would “win”. On top of that, I wrote early on weekends and doubled up on some evenings. All for the sake of a 50,000 word story to upload and be verified so I could print up a cute certificate and download some impressive badges for use on Facebook and my website and my blog. Gee whiz!

I can’t wait until next year.

7 Comments

Somewhere Between the Ridiculous and the Sublime

November 20, 2011 at 5:15 pm (Dudeism, Personal)
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Life events can often start with the best intentions and wind up in tragedy. Or start in darkness and end up…well, somewhere else. This story is the latter.

I met Jeremi Kirkhart on the first day of new hire training at my current job. It was July 19, 2010. He was an imposing figure, the kind of person by appearance alone that would cause you to cross the street if he were walking toward you. He was tall, not six feet, bald, with a thick black moustache and goatee. It was in talking with him that the concept of Appearance vs. Reality came to light. He was thirty-three. He was a single father with full custody of his daughter who he adored. He was an avid reader. He had a dry sense of humor. And he had a mastery of language where he could turn a phrase so easily. He wrote but sparingly.
I made some attempts over the last year to get together with him for anything creative or artistic. Writing a book or a play. Making a short film. Anything. I felt as though that whatever project we would initiate would be something outrageous and fantastic.

The opportunity is now gone. A little over a week, Jeremi Kirkhart died of a massive heart attack at the age of thirty-four. The world around him, the family and friends that were his circle, is lessened by his passing.

My co-worker, Jennifer Dale, had worked with Jeremi at a previous job. He was to have officiated at her wedding in April, 2012 since Jeremi was ordained in the Universal Life Church. She asked me to take his place.

“Wow!” is the first thing that comes into your mind because you are being asked to do something very significant for an individual as well as take the place of a really wonderful man. When I got home that night, my wife recognized the honor that I had been given. But she reminded me in all of this to stay true to who I was. If an online religious certification meant embracing values that were not my own, I would not be honoring anyone.

I am Jewish and as such, any organization that proclaimed Christian concepts would not be a match for me. On top of that, I would be insulting and mocking those who did hold those particular values dear to them.

A simple Google search: HOW DO I BECOME AN ORDAINED MINISTER ONLINE. There were plenty of results, which may not surprise many people. I started clicking on web sites. Finally there was one that struck me as being more suited to my mentality.

Dudeism.

For those who have seen the movie The Big Lebowski, it will be easier to conceptualize. Their website describes it as “an ancient philosophy that preaches non-preachiness.” How cool is that?

So for Jennifer’s sake, I became ordained. Upon receiving confirmation via e-mail, I forwarded it to her. At work the next day, knowing that I was Jewish, she dubbed me as “Rabbi” Dude.

In discussing this with my neighbor, the Rev. Cindy Watson who IS the actual pastor of West Heights United Methodist Church here in Wichita, she advised me that in the state of Kansas ANYONE can officiate at a wedding. Nevertheless, I will not take my ordination lightly.

For Jennifer, who is venturing into marriage, and for Jeremi, who deserves recognition and remembrance, on certain solemn occasions, I will embrace my alter ego, “Rabbi” Dude.

14 Comments

“What do we do now?”

October 11, 2011 at 9:15 pm (Personal, Writing)
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In the 1972 movie The Candidate, an idealistic lawyer played by Robert Redford is persuaded to run for the Senate against a popular incumbent. He’s given free rein to run his campaign as he sees fit, until he starts to become a viable candidate. At the end of the movie, after winning the election he sits glumly in his hotel room rather than confident and proud. He speaks to his campaign manager who is surrounded by a throng of people and asks “What do we do now?”

Well, I’m feeling that same way. I’ve realized the needs and requirements of being a writer in this contemporary digital age and have followed through accordingly. I have dipped my toes in the waters of Facebook and LinkedIn and Twitter and Kindle. I have set up my own website and added links to, well, me out in the world of cyberspace.

What do I do now?

The interesting thing is that I know what to do and it involves regular management, as though I were diabetic and needed to test my blood sugar. There is no longer the casual get-together with writers in coffee shops smoking clove cigarettes and contemplating the modern version of ancient Roman classics. (Yes, I did all that.)

There is a new world of tweets and posts and entries and connections and networking. I KNOW what to do. It’s time to get around to doing it.

3 Comments

My Digital Progress — A Follow-Up

October 5, 2011 at 7:56 pm (Personal, self-publishing, Writing)
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Per Dictionary.com, the definition of PLATFORM (item #7) was

a body of principles on which a person or group takes a stand in appealing to the public

So, we as writers and artists are intent upon building our platform for the sole purpose of appealing to the public, identifying ourselves, our character and personality as well as our work. We hope you will purchase said work because, if we weren’t interested in selling it, we wouldn’t be building our platform.

I’ve been doing this blog for four years, have been on Facebook, have signed up for LinkedIn and Twitter, hand out business cards, talk as much to non-writers (you know, The Public) as much as I discuss writing with those that suffer the same affliction as myself. I’ve uploaded works for sale in both printed and electronic formats on Lulu, Amazon’s Kindle Page, Smashwords, and others. Until now, the only thing I lacked was a website.

Until now.

I am pleased to announce the unveiling of hbberlow.com and hope that there will be visitors as well as purchases of books.

I am indebted to my brother-in-law Greg for getting the thing started. We’ve both been talking for years about each of us needing our own websites for different reasons. Every time I would agree and it would just stop there. Until he just went out and secured my name as a domain (thank goodness) and set up the initial skeleton and instructed me as to how to build up the rest of the body.

Thanks should also go to Gordon Kessler, the founder and current president of the Kansas Writers Association who, for this past year has been strongly advocating the membership to embrace the Digital world and heavily research and explore e-publishing.

Special mention should be made to Samantha Lafantasie, a woman who balances being a wife and mother and writer and adds a great passion to the KWA meetings. She has established a critique group and she is passionate about the craft. It is people like her (who are so utterly different from me) that motivate me in stepping into these new fields.

After all, I’m just an old analog dude living in a digital world.

Please visit my website and come along for the ride.

9 Comments

My Digital Progress

September 21, 2011 at 7:35 pm (Personal, Writing)
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Here’s a scorecard:

WRITING: I’ve started editing two novels, giving them the full revision treatment. I’ve worked out a synopsis for a new novel based in part on the life of a retired Wichita, KS police detective. I’ve thought about a story line for NaNoWriMo.
On the writing front, pretty abysmal.

PLATFORM: I’ve continued to blog, Facebook, recently signed up for Twitter, stayed abreast of e-publishing options, attended KWA meetings, and am this close to getting a web site set up.

Platform vs. writing. Gotta have something to promote. Gotta have someplace to promote it. Sometimes the efforts are side by side and sometimes one takes a lead in the race while the other catches up.

And in between and all around this carnival is regular good old Life. You know, the full-time job and homeowner thing and the husband. It’s all an incredible magic act, not really juggling, because we are creating an illusion with every hat we wear, a performance of wonder.

I wonder what I’ll do next.

2 Comments

“Quick” — Book Trailer

August 25, 2011 at 8:41 pm (Writing)

I went a little out there and quirky with this book trailer because it is not as light-hearted as “Kansas Two-Step”.

So, a few more photos, a faster pace on editing (in conjunction with the name of the book) and a truly “out there” song, and we have ourselves a vastly entertaining trailer.

Hope you enjoy. (Well, I hope you buy the book, too.)

“Quick” — Book Trailer

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