The End of an Era

There comes a time in every Blogger user's life when he or she decides to switch to Wordpress.

I already talked about doing this once, but I was kind of promising more than I could handle at the time. A lot has changed since then. I've learned a lot, and my priorities have changed. At this point, I've started to see this blog as a big mess. There are tons of entries that are kind of junky and meaningless, or that started things that never led anywhere. The formatting is extremely frustrating for me, too--still can't get that Twitter widget to look right.

Overall, though, it just doesn't offer the things that a Wordpress blog does. I've been using Wordpress quite often lately, both for my group blog, Obscure Authors Alliance (which is itself just getting up on its feet), and for my contributions to Operation Rainfall, a news site for video games. Each experience has taught me a lot about the site, and why it's beneficial to go there. I feel more connected to other people that way, and it's easy to find and mess with all the aspects I want. It's even fun to mess with the layout, in my opinion, and you might see it shift quite a bit.

After this point, I'm going to have two more entries that I'll post to both blogs. That will give a little bit of transition time, but I'd like people to follow the new blog, called Ephix Books, from now on.

So go on. You can find Ephix Books by clicking here.

Nonfiction Review: "Your Path to Publication"

Continuing from my last look at a few books about writing, I wanted to give you a peek at the latest one I've finished.

Your Path to Publication by Kim Wright is a little book that gives you a truly realistic view of what to expect if you want your book traditionally published. It's a tough world out there, and this isn't going to kid you about that. It's just going to give you all the tips you need. You'll learn where to go to meet an agent or publisher, how to interact with these people, and, of course, the art of the good old-fashioned query. It's brought up a lot of options that I didn't even know existed! Also, it does touch on self-publishing for a chapter, but that's really not what this book is about, and if you're going that route, don't waste your time. Read this book if you're serious about getting a deal with a publisher.

Sorry to give you only a short post after several days without one. Hopefully, this will tide you over until I bring out my news tomorrow.

Ask Eibmoz!

As The Third Face's publication date draws ever closer, I'd like to announce a very special video event, coming March 28th--one week before the book comes out.

One of the most pivotal, and well-liked, characters in The Third Face is Eibmoz. Eibmoz is a dead guy who's made his way from the Underworld back to the realm of the living. He's really out of his mind, and he loves being silly and making everyone around him uncomfortable. In essence, he brings humor to an otherwise dark and depressing world.

Eibmoz also seems to be very powerful, as he leads the organization, Redhand, that eventually takes Rasuke in. He works to free those seen as evil from the oppression of the ones who call themselves good. How he manages to band together an entire army, with his odd personality and quirks, is anyone's guess.

In fact, there are a lot of mysteries about him, in part because he prefers to just say silly things rather than actually explain anything properly. So, I'd like to give everyone in the audience the chance to solve those mysteries... if they don't give away too much, that is.

Comment or otherwise contact me in order to give me your questions for Eibmoz. Then, we'll take the questions and have an interview with him, which will air on March 28th.

Looking forward to all the silly shenanigans that will surely ensue!

Nothing

There have been times when I had so many things to say that sometimes I had to hold back, so I wouldn't overwhelm everyone. Things probably got lost at those points as I waited for the right time to bring up a new subject.

In all that, I've said my piece over and over again, and probably some other people's pieces too. And today, since it's been a few days since I last did so, I wanted to say another piece. Well, it turns out that I'm out of pieces. Yup. Nothing to say.

I talked to a couple of friends about it, and here's how that went: "Blog about that."

Now, obviously I ended up listening to this advice, or you wouldn't be reading this right now. But at first it seemed silly: Hey, I don't know what to write. The end!

It's a form of writer's block, I suppose. I don't normally get this type during my fiction work--there are a million other kinds of writer's block and I get one or a few of those--but it kind of came back to hit me this time. I guess I always had a feeling that if I kept blogging, eventually there would just be nothing left to say.

So, here's my next blogging mission: how does one go about finding a subject for these entries, day after day? It's obviously an important one, because many people don't find a topic for weeks at a time.

First, though, I want to ask you, readers: What do you do when you have nothing left to say?

Learning

I spend a lot of time looking for more tips about writing. In fact, out of the books I've read each week this year, three of them were just that.

Of course, not everything you read is worthwhile. The three books I bought caught my eye because of their descriptions on Amazon, and I looked through the reviews to see if they were actually as good as they were played up to be. It turned out that just about every book on the subject that I could find got really good reviews, but I couldn't just spend all my time and money on every single one. I had to go with my gut.

What follows is a quick look at each of the books I read, and how I feel about them. A mini-review, if you will, but an honest one, based on my overall experience with writing materials. I've already reviewed one book on writing here in the course of all my other book reviews, but I decided to make this sort of a separate realm.

So, without further ado, let's see what I've got.

Progress

Lately, I've been talking a lot about the ebb and tide of emotions--the ability to keep moving. I've risen past both doubts and exhaustion, so now it's about time that I really got to work.

That's why I'm getting started on my final offensive, as it were, on The Third Face. After this work, there shouldn't be much left to do on it. I'm not rewriting it again (thank goodness), but some scenes definitely did need to have some big changes made to them in order to get them working in the context of the big plot. I may have to add and delete a few, too.

In other words, you can definitely look forward to things picking up here. April 5th is about a month and a half away, so the excitement is about to start building. Expect me to start bringing it up more often, talking a bit more about what the book is exactly, and throwing more and more tidbits out there.

It's even safe to say that I have a cover artist lined up. I had made a big deal about a cover art contest before, but I had very few entries and nothing really jumped out at me. So I finally decided to be active about it and actually look for a specific artist. Negotiations are going on right now, but I have a feeling the work of that is going to begin very soon. Once that's done, you'll know, because I'm probably going to start showing it off everywhere--this artist is a winner.

But, in the meantime, I can't celebrate until I've actually done the work of it. Every chapter needs to be looked at, both by itself and as part of the whole. I wouldn't be able to do this without a great group of friends and editors backing me up, of course. With their help, this novel is finally going to get done right.

Rest

When you meet resistance, you can either force your way through, or back off until you get your energy back.

If you're the type of person that pays close attention, you might have noticed that even though I've been pretty consistent about posting a lot lately, this is the first one I put up since last Friday. Why is that? Well, it has to do with vacations.

Actually, having three days off in a row from my job was just a happy coincidence of scheduling. On Sunday I set out to read an entire book, not to mention beta read about 20 pages, and to follow up on my hunt for a cover artist. I e-mailed one artist, got halfway through the book, and didn't beta read anything. On Monday, my goal was to finish the things I wanted to do on Sunday. I managed to read another quarter of the book, but that was it.

Before long, I realized what was happening. I was trying to get things done on days that simply were meant to be lazy. For the rest of Monday, I just relaxed. Watched TV. Napped. Played games. Maybe it was a waste of time, but I felt like I was recovering from something. Yesterday I just did a little cleaning and then relaxed again, and then I was completely ready for today.

This morning I went back to work. Conditions were tougher than they've been in a while, but I pushed through. After that, I came home and got started on that beta reading after all. And, of course, I finally managed to get a blog post done.

I'll admit, I haven't exactly accomplished greatness in the last week. Still, the downward spiral of productivity has come back to an upward direction. It seems like the reason for that is the time I spent resting. It's fair to say that such patience is sometimes what we need to balance ourselves.

Just don't take this advice as a license to be lazy all the time, please.