A not-so-hidden feature gets in done in three days

I don't talk about my writing process on this blog because I know most people couldn't care less, but I think some of you might be able to relate to this.

I just sent the manuscript for my next full-length release to my beta reader. This is a huge relief. I started working on it two years ago (wait, that long ago?!) and instead of plotting it out in a linear fashion, I wrote it as I needed to get the scenes out. Which isn't the worst way to write, but makes things more complicated when it's a mystery with a lot of moving parts. I didn't have writer's block on this one, but I did have editor's block. I knew I needed to fix a number of things, but it seemed like so many that I couldn't keep track of them.

Part of my issue is that I'm not using Microsoft Word but Google Docs. The machine I do the bulk of my work on is a Chromebook (and I LOVE my Chromebook), and it hasn't seemed worth the trouble to install Word because what I could get for Chrome isn't fully functional. That meant I couldn't take advantage of the outline feature that Word has...or so I thought.

Earlier this week, I saw that some of my chapters were randomly showing up in the outline. I'd seen this on other Google Docs I work with but hadn't known how to use it. I did a little research and found...wait for it...that all I needed to do was highlight chapter titles (or whatever) and change it to a heading style. Yeah...just like what you do in Microsoft Word, though it might be a little easier to change styles.

God is in the simple things

After I spent thirty seconds grumbling at myself, I jumped into the editing. So. Much. Easier. Now. As soon as I saw something I knew I needed to carry through to another section, I could quickly figure out where it needed to go. That was three days ago, and it would have been one if I didn't have to do things like care for my children.

Before I found this (really simple) solution, I was fantasizing about getting something like Scrivener, a software many writers I know use which allows you to visually organize scenes and rearrange by dragging-and-dropping. But something in me resists getting the latest-and-greatest out of principle--and the principle would be not wanting to have to keep up with every new software or gadget. My orientation is to pull as much use as I can out of something before I walk away from it. This is hand-in-hand with being a tidier person, but the lesson here is that we need to be more proactive about researching what we have.

What hidden-to-you features have you discovered that saved you time?

In Praise of...Books Or My New Year's Resolution

First, Happy New Year! 2016 was an improvement over my 2015, and I'm hopeful that I'll be able to say the same about 2017.

In general I try to stay away from resolutions, but I'm making an exception this year. My one resolution: read more books and less news.

Those of you who know me from anywhere other than this blog or my Facebook page know that I am someone who pays attention to the news, including domestic and foreign policy. I consider it a duty as a citizen of the United States but also of the world at large to know what's going on. But like many people, I've been shaken by how ill-informed I ended up being. There's a bit of listening to what we want to hear (and going to places where we know we'll hear it), but as I see it, it's more a problem of not seeing that there was a fundamental shift in real-life conditions.

In a world where we can watch or listen to the news every hour of every day, how can that be? I'm not an expert, but I think it's related to the kind of coverage major news outlets regularly give us: if there's a major, developing event, mainstream media outlets will make sure that I know the birth dates, religions and number of siblings the key actors have, and at least ten subject matter experts will spend a combined total of about three hours across the networks trying to give us some context for what's happening. The coverage can be pretty thorough, but good luck if you're interested in anything happening in any other part of the world. For example, during our election cycle in the United States, was anyone paying attention to Haiti's? Or Uzbekistan's? And did anyone catch Aung San Suu Kyi getting her ass handed to her by her fellow Nobel laureates?

Less of this

Maybe people don't have a good reason to care about Haiti, Uzbekistan or Myanmar at this moment, but what if you suddenly need to, in the way we suddenly needed to care about Yugoslavia and Afghanistan over the last two decades? Perhaps I'm asking too much, but I'd like to be well-informed about something before it becomes explosive.

In this current climate, I know I am asking too much. So what's left for someone who wants to stay informed? Books, glorious books.

and more of this

I mentioned in my last post that I've devised a self-study "course" to help prep me for my next planned but to-be-written series. So far it's been heavy on history, and those readings have satisfied me in a way that I haven't felt from the news in a long time. (Seriously, who knew I'd find the history of revolutionary military technology so fascinating?) To be able to place an event into context, and not simply see it as an exciting (or frightening) snapshot, is the difference between having the time to create good options and having to choose between something bad and something worse.

The trade-off, of course, is that books take longer to read than the news and I'm not going to be as up-to-the-minute as I was before. But I can live with that, because now I'm actually learning something.  

What's your New Year's resolution this year?

The fine print: there is what's technically considered an affiliate link above, but I'm not sending you there so I can make money off a book purchase but so you can read my review. And if that makes you want to read the book, I'm sure you can find it in your library.

Technology: A World History, or How I learned to stop worrying about the 2016 election and love the research opportunities

My next series after the next New Pioneers full-length novel is going to be speculative. It ticks some of the boxes in sci-fi, some of the boxes in fantasy, but it doesn’t fall neatly into either. (Because I like to make things hard on myself when it comes to marketing.)

Honestly, I’m daunted. Every story requires world-building, but it’s much easier to do that if that world is something you’re familiar with and that readers will immediately relate to; for example, a major metropolitan area in the contemporary United States. This series is going to span roughly five generations, and there will be significant transformations technologically, politically and culturally. Also, a number of the characters serve in the armed forces. In short, I have a lot of research to do.

Part of why this isn’t bothering me as much as it used to is that I’ve been reading a lot recently about self-directed learning. It started out as something I was investigating for my homeschooled sons, but then I started thinking about how it could apply to me. A number of adults have written about a “self-directed masters”, which is essentially digging deep into a topic and doing research as if you were, well, doing it for someone else. I’m fine with someone objecting to an independent course of action being the equivalent of a master’s degree, but it’s a useful way for me to organize my research for this upcoming series. Thus begins my project to study The History of The World.

Please note: I have NO intention of actually writing a history of the world; my next series will not be an academic treatise, nor will there be a quiz at the end. I suspect that most of what I learn won’t specifically show up in my novels. BUT it will give me a better sense of where it’s realistic to lead a story and where the logical transitions are.

I have a long list of books to start with, and the first one I’ve finished is Technology: A History of The World. It’s part of the New Oxford World History series, and I’m in love. Every person who’s ever said that history is all about memorizing a bunch of names and dates should look into this series. In under 150 pages, it gives an explanation of not only what was developed but why and what effect it had on the larger (and smaller) civilization. It was fascinating, and one of those books I was sad to finish.

It also answered a question that has bothered me and other history enthusiasts for a long time: why did Europe suddenly start winning the technological race circa the beginning of the Renaissance? Before that, China was it for implements and innovation, and the Muslim world was the place to be if you wanted to learn cutting edge math and science (and no, it wasn’t just preserving the knowledge of the ancient Greeks, although that was a big plus).

The compass, just one of many Chinese inventions

al-jabr, "the reunion of broken parts". You might know this as "algebra"

The answer was the Mongol invasion. The explanation for why the nomadic Mongols became pre-eminent is fascinating as well (I will never look at stirrups the same way again), and had Kublai Khan not died at just the right time, Europe might have come under their heel as well. But they didn’t, and by that time China and the empires of the Muslim world were soon ready to throw the Mongols off as well.

But the damage had been done. Whereas the Muslim world could have been described as a region that valued innovation and had an atmosphere that invited a robust exchange of ideas, after the Mongols left they never recovered from their siege mentality and adopted the more conservative and cautious character we associate with that region today.

China found the experience of Mongol rule humiliating (as did the Koreans), and from there on they approached anything “foreign” or even different with suspicion; while Charles Mann points out that it’s not accurate to say that they had no trade at all, their activities could barely be described as commercial.

And yet...for hundreds of years after, China’s standard of living ranked pretty high compared to the rest of the world, and their example counters the truism that improved technology is the key to improved quality of life. Their technology and organizational systems were adequate for their essential needs, and they concentrated on improving skill and applying more manpower (labor) to what they already had. In short, they dragged as much productivity as they could out of what they had.

But people as a group tend to be natural innovators, so why did individuals in those places stop? Simply put, because they had to. The systems of government in both regions were autocratic, and even if one person did create a new technology, government officials could decide how far it went, if at all. Europe, which by comparison had a more chaotic political system, didn’t have a comparable entity which could prohibit innovation on a massive scale, and ideas spread at a relatively rapid pace. (Ironically, many were initially inspired by technology the Chinese and Muslims had invented but then abandoned.)

Gunpowder, a Chinese invention abandoned to the rest of the world

It was impossible to read that without thinking of our recent election and (at least according to some analysts) the reason why Donald Trump won: he’s going to bring back all of those missing jobs. There’s just one problem with that: what really killed those jobs isn’t trade and “globalization”, but technology. We could force every manufacturer’s operations back to this country and we still wouldn’t replace those jobs. Better machines are more efficient (i.e., they get the job done more quickly) than human labor, and using those both reduces the cost of goods produced and increases the profits of the companies who “employ” them. This isn’t a new problem: when the Chinese developed more efficient instruments for spinning, they were able to create textiles more quickly, but they also forced many women to seek new employment (and no, I don’t know where they ended up). Even massive spending on infrastructure (which really, really needs to happen) won’t create the level of jobs the United States saw during the Works Progress Administration; the machines we would use now replace too many people, and work too quickly.  

These guys would have much better equipment today...and fewer colleagues

I’m not saying that job losses aren’t a problem, and I’m not necessarily arguing for technological determinism. As I said, China provides an example of how jobs could be, well, preserved. And while we don’t have the autocratic system of government they had (have), we do have a system of laws and regulations that could be used to limit technological innovation and return or create some jobs in the United States. It’s not impossible. But please note that once China’s population reached a tipping point in the eighteenth century, even the labor needs required for their older technology wasn’t enough to sustain a decent standard of living for everyone. (Was that exacerbated or delayed by their anti-trade policies? That’s a question for another day.)

Or...maybe we could follow the example of Renaissance Europe? Maybe we can sponsor new industries with new uses for new technology to create—wait for it—new jobs? (And while it’s fair to note that Europe got a big boost from the conquest of the Americas and ignoble “trade” with Africa, those relationships weren’t a guarantee of success; compare Spain and England, for example.) And maybe we can be uniquely American and retrain people for both new technology and new jobs?

Of course, this is just talk right now. The decision’s been made, and for the next two years, there’s nothing I can do about it except observe. While the citizen in me is going to be white knuckling my way to 2018 (and a handful of municipal races in 2017), the writer in me is going to exploit this first-hand research opportunity for all it’s worth.

Changes

I've given this a lot of thought—years, in fact—and I've decided to change my pricing and distribution policy. 

First, The Smartest Girl in the Room is now permanently free. This wasn't something that I was comfortable with a few books ago. However, I've just released my eighth title, and I'm happy to let my first book be a free introduction to the rest of the series.

Second, the e-books for all of the other titles in The New Pioneers are now exclusively through the KDP Select program. While I agree in theory that making titles available on as many platforms as possible is a smart move, everything I've seen for the past three years has convinced me that authors in KDP Select can more easily promote their books than those who aren't. 

There's nothing stopping you now

Third, this also means that I'll be able to more easily offer sales on my titles. This is the biggest change. Again, I appreciate the arguments behind keeping prices stable, but it's just the smarter business move to be able to offer sales.

I've spent a lot of time writing (and editing...), and that should be my primary job. But I also now have the time to start thinking about marketing again. I'm excited about this, and I look forward to seeing how things shape up. So if you know of a marketing title you want to recommend, I'm all ears.

The next installment of The New Pioneers: Needs, Wants and Other Weaknesses (Book 6)

I am so excited to finally be able to share a preview of my latest novel. This will be released on October 3rd. A big thanks to Mia Darien and Erin Cawood for helping me pull this together, and another shout out to Caroline Fardig for helping me nail down the synopsis.

This is still the universe of The New Pioneers, and you may remember Detective Robert Teague from The China Doll and Let's Move On, but otherwise this is a huge departure for me. I felt pretty comfortable talking about politics in The Golden Boy Returns, but I squirmed as much as anyone would talking about the dark places and people in this book. This isn't about human trafficking as much as it is the banal human exploitation that goes on every day...and one person who decided to do something about it.

I hope you like it.

Boston Police Detective Robert Teague risked his professional reputation to close the case that ruined his father. He burned a lot of people to do that, and after six years the captain who saved his job hasn’t forgotten how much Robert screwed up. A detective of his experience should have something better to do than chasing down a complaint against a paroled convict, but maybe that's why his gut is telling him something doesn’t make sense. Why did this boyfriend pimp get such a light sentence in the first place, and why did one of Boston’s most prestigious law firms represent him? And what is it about the complaining witness that makes her less reliable every time he talks to her? (The fact that she’s using an alias isn’t helping.)

Even a hard-boiled cop would be shocked by the world Hannah Bruges has been slipping in and out of since she was a young teenager. Counterfeiting, child prostitution and slave labor in all its forms make the world a miserable place, and Hannah knows better than most how evil it can be when no one cares. When anyone can get what they want at every level of a dark market, nothing’s as cheap as a human life. Robert would be happy to close the case if Hannah didn’t keep walking into trouble and dragging him into it with her. And if he’s honest, the detective in him wants to know what she’s really after: the people the law can’t find, or the person no one bothered to look for?

There’s always someone who can give you what you want and what you need, but nothing comes without a price. How much are you willing to pay when it’s someone you love?

Buy it on Amazon