Photo montage as a form of book marketing.

June 30, 2012 at 2:04 pm (Books, Writing)
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Many people are familiar with book trailers as a way to promote one’s work. I’ve got two that I’ve created, one for Kansas Two-Step and another for Quick.

But I got the idea to do a photo montage on Facebook in which images, closely resembling scenes from the book, would be posted, along with a page number and quote. It is far more brief than a book trailer and perhaps easier to accomplish. I realize that the concept of motion and music might be more powerful to some. however, with the right image and a tantalizing quote, this marketing tool might just as easily capture someone’s attention.

For those not one of my friends on Facebook, here it is. Any feedback or comments would be greatly appreciated.

P. 27 “And maybe it was just sour grapes because I lived in a combination loft/efficiency/office in a crummy old building on Douglas just outside of Old Town.”


P. 26 “I’d like to say that I was blown away by the architectural splendor of the house design or the magnificence of the landscaping. However, the superlatives would have been wasted. Each home had the same “trying-to-outdo-you” attitude making the whole effect moot.”


P. 38 “The garage door was open, the punching bag was swinging, and Gregg was lying down on the weight bench doing 200 lb. presses. The grey t-shirt-with-ripped-off-sleeves was covered with sweat and the ‘ooh’ was followed by the ‘aah’ as he lifted.


P. 78 “I paid my bill quickly and left. I walked down to Old Town Square and sat on a bench and stared at the shooting waters fountain.”


P. 45 “The early news on the NBC affiliate reported a body found in a field off E. 61st St. and North Broadway not too far from I-35. Nothing unusual about a murder except the severity of the assault.”


P. 168 “Still running the porn lines?” “Not enough money in that business. No, we reacquainted ourselves with some of our former colleagues. We have a lovely fenced-in house with a pool out in Goddard. It’s on a large piece of land so we have a lot of privacy.”


P. 152 “I hack into public and private databases to find out information which is useful to my clients who are usually shyster lawyers looking to get huge settlements in divorce cases.”


P. 14 “I sit here most of the day at my trusty computer. Occasionally, I go to the library or the Epic Center. More often than not, I go to Old Town for lunch and a beer. But I figure it’s within walking distance so it’s easy to stumble back here.”

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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.

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“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.

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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.

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Reflections on Resolutions

December 28, 2010 at 12:42 pm (Personal, self-publishing, Writing)
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It was about a year ago that I composed a document: 2010 Writing Goals. I had never been much for New Year’s resolutions relating to diet or lifestyle or anything, really. But by the end of last year, I had started blogging and had published a book “Kansas Two-Step” on lulu.com, had gotten rather quaint business cards from VistaPrint, and felt that in some small way I was making progress and wanted to continue to encourage my own growth as a writer.
After printing up this document, I taped it to a shelf above my computer so that I could simply look up and refresh my waning memory. Well, it’s a year later and I am taking account of my efforts.
EDIT
I wanted to work on editing four novels. I did a fifth and sixth draft of “The .9 MM Solution” and a fourth and fifth draft of “Swansong”. Both were NaNoWriMo efforts. I did not get started on “Weekend Getaways, or Adventures in Contract Killing” (my transgressive novel) or “The Stooges” (another NaNoWriMo effort).
COMPLETE
I wanted to complete a first draft on two recent efforts: “The Last Road” (a literary piece about a widower’s cross-country adventure) and “All Day Long I Biddy Biddy Bum” (another even darker transgressive piece). The only NEW writing efforts were “Professor thug” (this year’s NaNoWriMo) and “Unemployed and Dangerous: A Trilogy of Transgressive Novellas”. After being terminated from my job of thirteen years, I had a lot of understandable anger which I filtered into these works. EXTREMELY dark in nature, they are not something I want to present to my 80+ year old parents as an example of my efforts. However, they do stand on their own as strong, well-defined pieces.
ACCOMPLISH
Multiple things on this section. No luck yet with finding an agent although I gave a four-week exclusive to Jessica Regel of the Jean V Naggar Literary Agency. Even though that did not turn out the way I wanted, it was a very good step.
As for networking efforts, I got onto Facebook and actively sought out people with the additional repercussion of contact relatives that I either hadn’t talked to in years or had allowed my efforts to lapse. Bonus points for that.
I did get two more books onto Lulu: “Quick” and the aforementioned “Unemployed and Dangerous”. In doing so I continued learning formatting and cover art (thanking my wife/my editor for the photo on “Quick”).
I started initial research on web sites and my brother-in-law (a talented software engineer who also happened to inspire “The .9 mm Solution”) offered his assistance.
Not on the original list was attending Writer’s conferences but I did go to the KWA Scene Conference here in Wichita as well as a seminar by Gordon Kessler earlier in the year. I also learned how to make small movies on Windows Movie Maker. I’m working on a book trailer, just to develop my skills. In the meantime, I did a project for the family for Christmas that was highly entertaining, especially if you know my family.
And finally, there was blogging. I may not have presented as many articles as I desired but I did what time would allow. And I also avidly followed other writers whose efforts seem somewhat similar to mine: refreshing commentary on their lives as writers.
Jennifer Neri (http://jenniferneri.wordpress.com/), a writer from Canada who shared her experiences with motherhood over the past year and still had time to pass on significant motivational comments.
Lawrence Estrey (http://lawrenceez.wordpress.com/), a writer and photographer and IT kind of guy from north of London who writes psychological thrillers, takes very moving photos, and has impressive feedback regarding storage systems and photo editing software.
Ryan David Jahn (http://gunsandverbs.wordpress.com/), a crime writer from Los Angeles, whose novel “Acts of Violence” won the Crime Writer’s Association Dagger award and yet talks about day-to-day life and his impressions of the minutiae as though they should be considered more strongly than the greater events.
Teresa Frohock (http://frohock.wordpress.com/), a dark fantasy and horror writer who gleefully advised her readers of her representation by Weronika Janczuk of D4EO and then of her sale of her book “Miserere: An Autumn Tale” while those of us who read her blog gleefully cheered alongside her.
I wish I could say that I follow more blogs regularly but Time is a beast with wings hovering over my life as a husband and homeowner and employee.
Overall, I would say that I got through nearly half of my goals, some to differing degrees than others. It is not measured as SUCCESS/FAILURE or PASS/FAIL but rather as another chapter on a long road. At some point within the next couple of days I will create a new document and tape it to the shelf above me. And I will proceed and continue and persevere and think and create.
And write.

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A Contemporary Writer Explores the Mathematics of Time

September 29, 2010 at 12:41 pm (Personal, Writing)
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I have this absurd notion that being an expatriate writer in Europe after the First World War was part writing and part drinking and that each one supported the other.  Relationships were tenuous; there weren’t that many happily married couples.  Very few were homeowners.  There weren’t 401(k) or money markets or retirement funds to worry about.  Therefore they MUST have had all the time in the world to write and develop their craft.

That’s when I look at my contemporary life and begin to wonder where the time goes.  We start with 24 hours in a day.  There are 168 hours in a week.  I get by on 6 and a half hours of sleep roughly.  Any more and I would be frittering away the time; any less and I would be sickly.  I work (or am at work) 42.5 hours a week.  But between sleep and work there is morning time: shower, coffee, breakfast, maybe the newspaper.  That equates to 7.5 hours per week.  And we take into account commuting to and from work which equals 4.16 hours.

I am more health conscious than before so I do work out.  Between the gym at work and at home that comes to 5.5 hours total for the week.  I do all the cooking at home so calculating making and eating dinner that’s 9 hours.  And I usually go grocery shopping once per week; I’m using 2 hours total for shopping and putting everything away.

Now, these are all the “have-tos”.  I suppose, as stated earlier I COULD sleep less and not work out.  Then I’d possibly be like those struggling writers of the 1920′s.  But I AM contemporary.

The math for the have-tos is 116.16 hours leaving me a total of 51.84 hours per week to write or an average of 7.4 hours a day.  I should be able to write encyclopedias, right?

Well, there are other things.  For example, even though I work the weekends (Tuesday and Wednesday are my “weekend”) I still spend the evening with my wife.  Maybe there’s a movie and/or commiserating that married couples are known to do.  So let’s say seven hours of a Friday and Saturday are our social time.

My new job is better than my old job so I’m a lot less stressed out and want to write more.  BUT let’s say I feel like kicking back and watching a couple of episodes of “Criminal Minds” on ION Television.  And let’s say I do this two times during the week.  Four more hours.

So now I’m down to 40.84 hours left which brings my per day average to slightly over 5.8 hours per day.  Still a lot of time.  But there are errands to run on my day off and homeowner things that have to be done because my wife and I are not Ernest and Hadley or Scott and Zelda and we can’t afford to hang around drinking all day.  So throw in another four hours for errands and an equal amount for household things.  Eight more hours into the mix.

I’ve got 32.84 hours left in the week to write.  But writing also includes blogging, reading blogs, updating Facebook, responding to Facebook comments and entries, researching agents, updating the query letter, sending out the query letter.  Writing is no longer simply one letter after another to make a word, one word after another to make a sentence, one sentence after another to make a paragraph, one paragraph after another to make a chapter, and several succinct and well-organized chapters to make a novel.  it is all the extraneous components of networking and research that are fundamental.

I’m not even counting the time it is taking to write this missive or the calculations that went into the details herein included.

Perhaps this is a diatribe at getting older and having more personal responsibilities, none of which I resent because they are elements that enhance and, in essence, define my life as a Human Being.  But what defines me as a writer?  Youth has a greater capacity for freedom because of fewer restrictions.  Age has fashioned a schedule and a set of parameters.

In the end, it becomes an issue of the quality of time spent doing anything as opposed to the quantity of time.  It would be nice to have more time to write more often.  Yet writing well in the time afforded to me is more significant.

And, on top of all that, as I was composing this, Mongo jumped up on my desk and laid down exposing his belly and reminded me that time HAS to be spent paying attention to him.  And Camille.  And Rupert.  Cats are so demanding.  But then, several of you already knew that.

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