New Approaches

First, if you haven't read my post on how to best support your favorite independent author, do so now.  Then go support them as best you can.  I'll wait.

OK, thanks.  They'll appreciate it (BTW, the advice will also work for new/lesser known authors with mainstream publishers, too.

So what's happening in the writing world of T. Allan Bishop lately?  Well, the muse story stepped back and hasn't cried out for more to be written lately, so I have it set slightly aside.  The zombie story has reshaped itself, and I've written several sections for it over the past week.  It looks now like it'll be formed mostly of "newspaper articles," "police report" excerpts, "medical and lab report" excerpts, personal letters, etc.  I don't know if that will be just one section that talks about the outbreak and part II might change POV to be first or third person yet or not.  the story hasn't revealed details from that far ahead yet.  I do know that some of the personal notes will be from at least one zombie.  I know that this isn't the first time an approach like this has been used (Stephen King's Carrie comes to mind), but it's a new approach for me.

The Josef Mengele vampire story has been popping into my head a little lately, too.  So, it might just turn out that I start juggling stories based on which one is yelling at me the loudest that day.

I got tired of having to constantly reboot my phone, have apps stop responding, the previously awesome battery life suddenly being non-existent, and the phone not even give me the option to answer it.  I was planning on buying it later this summer when I hoped a sale would be happening (though it was going to be painful waiting that long when it was basically a paper weight).  When I did a search for rumored sales of the phone I had decided I wanted, I found that it was $130 cheaper from Amazon than from Verizon, so I went ahead and got it and will be putting the money I was going to be setting aside for it to the credit card bill to pay for it.  We'll keep the Amazon route in mind when we go to upgrade Candice's phone eventually, too.  If it saves us $$, why not?

I got the Samsung Galaxy Note 3.  The primary reason was because I have large clumsy fingers and figured (correctly) that it would be easier for me to type, etc on it.  The secondary reasons was that it has handwriting recognition and I figured that could help me as a writer, and that it has good battery life.  It turns out the handwriting recognition is AMAZING (but slow).  It recognized my handwriting even when I wrote in my crappiest form and EVEN when I wrote in cursive.  I have to write a little slower to get the handwriting recognition to work and convert to typed text, but I'll be able to use it when waiting in waiting rooms, or lying in bed and getting inspired, etc.  So, as a writer, this is the first time that writing using technology has excited me instead of simply handwriting on paper with a pencil, this is another new approach for me to writing.  Granted, when I really get in the groove, I will still probably use a pad and pencil for now, but eventually this might be the way I go.  (This phone will also allow me to change the battery if/when this one starts to die, too).

That's all I have for this post.  Thanks for reading.

Fonts Can Be A Hassle

Since Forbidden Knowledge has Macedonian, Chinese, and Arabic Text in it, I searched for a way to get them to all show up without having to mess with a whole lot of fonts that might not be in some handheld readers.  I found that Arial Unicode MS was available on most.  But after reading some more, I'm finding that many of them don't support displaying the extra characters needed to show those languages.  Which of course means that I will have to change the story some if I plan to publish it in At The Turn Of Midnight (the tentative title of book number two).  I'm torn between rewriting the parts to just mention the various languages used on the book cover, or making a picture that I include that shows them similarly to how I show them in the text of the story.  Feedback would be appreciated.  Would the pictures (there would be two, slightly different) distract from the story or enhance it? One would look similar to the one I've included on a few other blog posts and also include here below:

The muse story has grown some more, and parts of the beginning have been re-written to fit the way the story seems to be headed.  

Also, in my self-editing phase, I've written about 300 more words to Cat's Eye View, which is about how a cat sees the world it lives in.  I've also made some changes to The Journey, which is a sort of surreal story of a man's journey through the cosmos.  Tomorrow I hope to either write some more towards one of my ongoing short stories I'm working on, or to do some more editing on the stories from Dark Stories For A Restless Night.

That's all for this blog.  Thanks for reading, and come back soon.  I plan to write a blog on how you can best help support your favorite independent author (hint:  it's a lot more than just buying their books)

Pricing For Dark Stories For A Restless Night

I was reading The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success from Smashwords today since the words weren't flowing when I had a chance to write, and it looks like my pricing might be wrong.  In it, it discusses sales at various price ranges.  $.01-$.99 had a sales ratio of 5.9x, $1-$1.99 was 3.2x, $2-$2.99 was 6.22x, $6-$6.99 was 2.2x, and $10+ was 1x.  For some reason, in two different years of doing the analysis, having a sale price between a dollar and $1.99 was kind of a black hole for sales.  With that in mind, I plan to now price it at $0.99.  That should get it out to quite a bit more readers.

On another writing note, I did write more for the muse story the other night, though I think the second section that I wrote belongs at the beginning.  It's also shaping up to be a frightening story for artist types.  We'll see if my muse strikes some more later this week.

That's all I have for this entry, thanks for reading!

Muses?

Yesterday I got an image in my head of a painting.  It involved a muse and a painter, though the muse is not the classic simple inspiration type from literature references..  It persisted, and I wrote a small scene describing it last night.  It doesn't fit into any of my current story ideas, but it might end up being a story idea of its own.

I haven't had any story speak to me since finishing Forbidden Knowledge, so hopefully this is a sign that the stories will start to flow again soon.

I finally got the license plate sticker put on yesterday, also.  I had to scrape off ten years' worth of previous stickers first, but it's done now.

I also cut the baseboard for Candice's witch cottage dollhouse.  I think we're getting to a point where I'm supposed to help put it together and/or start wiring it soon, but I'm not sure.  Candice also got inspired to do some clay work last night making miniature wedding cakes with "sugar skulls" on them.  Since sugar skulls are normally 1:12 scale, she's making them in 1:144 scale, which is apparently pretty frustrating.

I think today might be a lazy day with maybe a little bit of inspiration thrown in if I'm lucky.  That's all for this blog, thanks for reading.