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How to build an Engine instead of a Platform

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When I published my first novel, HE HAS MANY NAMES, I wanted a book tour with all the fixings: morning shows, signing lines, standing room only readings. You know the usual accommodations to literary world rolls out for unknowns. I mean how expensive could an ad in Times Square really be? It’s not like I was asking for a 30 second spot in the Superbowl, just a 15 second one. Like all humble artists, I required a few simple things:

T-Shirts
Stickers
Posters
Bookmarks
Enamel pins
Book trailers
A concept album
An official podcast
A comic book adaptation
A documentary short series
And a partridge in a pear tree

These seemed like reasonable requests on my backstage rider. That and fifteen-foot python filled with brown M&Ms. It turned out indie publishers didn’t budget for exotic pets. If I wanted promo materials, they’d have to come out of my own wallet. I tried to hypnotize artists into making them for me, embedding subliminal cues into casual conversation.

“I need to finish this YOU-line good-WILL paper-WORK be-FOR FREE-day.”

I’ve since discovered that mentalism is a junk science and Derren Brown is a vampire who glamours all his participants.

I had to do my book promos myself. This proved challenging after the book had already been published. I cut together a book trailer with some unused film school footage. When that failed to get any traction. I cut another one, and another one. Eventually I wrote screenplay for a local filmmaker who’d expressed interest in shooting the opening scene. That never came to fruition and the promo cycle rolled on. My publisher had bigger successes from authors with bigger platforms.

Then Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram adjusted their algorithms to downplay links, and I was back to square one (I blame Buzzfeed and Upworthy, a pox on both your houses).

Fast forward, through an international health crisis, and I have a second novel. Now, I could start shopping it around, find a publisher, get it out into the either, but what happens when it comes time to promote it. Quit my full-time job and pray for success? I need a better strategy. I need to work on the promotion side of things, before bringing a book to market. In this instance, it’s smarter to put the cart before the horse.

What Videogames Taught Me About Bookselling

In the videogame industry developers rarely program from the ground up. They use frameworks built on libraries of 3d assets, real world textures, and motion capture data. They call this framework an engine, because it sits at the heart of a complex machine. Engines simplify game design by giving designers elements they can reuse over and over.

If my next novel was going to have a chance, I’d have to build an engine of my own. An engine filled with assets perspective book buyers might like. So, I asked myself, what kind of content keeps me from scrolling on?

Visual Art

Not the slick homogenous stuff an AI might spit out, but evocative, imagination driven designs. Patrick Nagel’s art deco women. Gustave Doré’s depictions of the inferno. Drew Struzan’s movie posters. Those are the designs that get me every time and they’re applicable to what I’m working on.

If I could teach myself to draw like that, my next novel might have a chance. Over the last six months I’ve been building a portfolio, depicting my character Mahthildis as one of Patrick Nagel’s femme fatales. I now have a healthy library of designs.

Designs I can reuse by turning them into memes.

Video

The next step was to build a framework for video. Let’s face it, short-form video rules social media. If you want young people to consider your long form content you have to engage them in quick bursts first. Photoshop helps with this, since my subjects are grouped into layers. I can separated them from the backdrops, make them zip in and out of frame, and eventually move their limbs.

I’m beta testing my engine with animations. I’m writing a series of short stories featuring the demon goddess Mahthildis. In each story I’m pitting her against a mythic figure associated with that month. Krampus for Christmas, Father Time for New Year’s Eve, and St. Valentine for Lupercalia.

I thought it would be funny to animate Mahthildis facing off against her foes, like characters in the VS screen in Mortal Kombat 3. That way I could reuse the Mahthildis image and slot in a new villain each month.

It seems like a lot of effort to make a book trailer, with music and narration, for a series of free short stories, but each one is a test to see how far I can reach.

Hopefully, this process will teach me how to streamline my video edits. I’ll learn which social media platforms are worth targeting. I’ll learn how to build an engine with a lot more horsepower than before.

An Engine is a Good Excuse to Dust Off Some Old Skillsets

More and more people want to be writers, which makes getting your work noticed that much harder. Authors need to bring every skill they have to the table. Imagine the ideal reader for your story. What are their niche interests? What tools do you already possess to engage them in other spots? Write them down and plan out a frame work of reusable tools.

If you’re a photographer then bust out your DSLR. Stage pictures of subjects relevant to your novel and tease the images out throughout your promotion cycle. If you’re an actor get some friends together and record a reading of a scene. If you’re a musician create soundscapes you can read excerpts over.

Follow other indie authors. Scrub through their feeds. Consider which posts get traction and which posts don’t.

An Engine is a Good Excuse to Develop Brand New Skills

I learned Photoshop the same way I learned to tie a tie with Youtube tutorials. That’s how I’m teaching myself motion graphics and animation, one video lesson at a time.

Think about the skills your framework requires. Which ones have you always wanted to learn? Which ones would you want to have, even if your book promo doesn’t go well? Those are the skills worth investing in.

Build an Engine on an Engine

There are plenty of time savers out there. Just remember that over one else is using the same ones.

Yes, you could use AI to generate art assets. You’ll have to study the prompts other creators are using before you can make something the slightest bit unique. I’ve experimented with several of the AIs out there. I found the characters were inconsistent from frame to frame. They generate awkward artifacts. AI struggles with eyes, with edges, and fingers. Every image has the same tight depth of field. And so many of the creations look like renders from video game engine.

If you don’t have time to learn Adobe Premier, you can use a book trailer maker. Drag and drop some assets into a video template. Choose from a library on licensed stock video scenes. Type your pitch out in a series of captions. I’d recommend pushing the boundaries of the template as much as you can. Those stock scenes rarely cut well together.

Look up the #BookTrailer hashtag on Instagram for examples of people who didn’t put in much effort. You’ll find music that doesn’t jive with the spirit of their story. Images with mismatched color tones. Videos with abstract subjects. Most of them look like video collages. You might be better off using still images.

Do whatever you can to give your trailer a sense of author ship.

Conclusion

There’s a reason all the those bright-faced booktubers say, “You shouldn’t get into writing for the money. You should do it because you love it. It should be its own reward” That’s a nice way of saying you’re probably not going to get paid for it (I’m not talking to you though, just everyone else, you’ll be one of the exceptions that takes the publishing world by storm).

There’s a song that breaks my heart every time I hear it. It’s called Everything is Free, by Gillian Welch.

“Everything is free now
That’s what they say
Everything I ever done
Gonna give it away
Someone hit the big score
They figured it out
That we’re gonna do it anyway
Even if it doesn’t pay”

That verse must hit every artist right in the gut, because they know it’s true. We are all feeding the content dragon, hoping for but a taste of the horde its sitting upon.

You have to love making art for the sake of it. You have to love promoting it too. I’ve made no allusions to how much I hate self-promotion. That’s why I’m building an engine, to give myself a framework, to showcase my creations without having to conjure up a fresh scheme every time.
Continue reading How to build an Engine instead of a Platform →

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BLOG UPDATE

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I thought I’d pop in and let you know what I’ve been up to since last summer.

On second thought, “pop in” sounds too passive. Not an action worthy of your time. Let me start again.

I thought I’d drive a chopper through your door, hurl scorpions at your lap, and sing a rock opera about frost giants. Still too subtle?

I thought I’d crash through your sunroof with a weaponized double-guitar firing flame from one stock and liquid nitrogen from the other. Hope you like Hanson covers, because I’m going to MMMBop your fucking socks off. Still. Too. Subtle?

I’m working on new novel. It’s two drafts deep. It uses the word “was” less often than my previous novel. I’ve been working on my core and feel you’ll sense that from my writing.

This blog will shift from the monster driven political satire I’d been writing into subjects that are more in tune with my new novel.

Things are about to get a lot spookier around here.

MUCH MORE COMING SOON.

Blog, Shorts, Writing

Why I Keep Inserting Monsters into the News

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I’ve been writing a lot about monsters lately:
About werewolves protesting the lockdown because it keeps their prey at home.
About ghosts intensifying their hauntings now that they have captive audiences.
About eldritch horrors lurking aboveground because of the lack of pollution.
About giant spiders ensnaring runners with tripwire webs.

These stories are my way of processing the pandemic without dealing with it head on. I did that once when I wrote a blog about having COVID-19 symptoms. In it I related a string of bad luck.

First I got sick. Then I got laid off. My boss used the lockdown as an opportunity to “right size” her business, despite the fact that our UPS Store had lines out the door. After two weeks of unemployment I was asked to come back. Another employee was showing COVID-19 symptoms and they needed the support. I was afraid I might still be contagious and I wasn’t eager to return to an unsafe environment. I was told “Now or never.” I went with never and lost my unemployment benefits.

That story was one of my most successful blog entries. It was off the cuff. But that kind of intimacy can’t be forced. You can’t reproduce it to increase your metrics. I considered journaling my depression throughout these turbulent times, but I didn’t want to overexpose myself. I ran the risk of sharing personal details that would made me unemployable or exhaust my readers’ empathy.

So I changed tactics. I wanted to write something topical, but I didn’t want to overwhelm people. I decided to come at the news from another angle. I’d address the pandemic, but I’d add monsters to it.

How Monsters are Helping My Sanity

I like stories with moral messages, but I tend to beat people over the head them. I get up on my soap box and give a ham-fisted speech that scares people off. I’ve been writing for twenty years and I still struggle with subtext. My best stories happen organically once I’ve abandon my commentary. They follow Stephen King’s adage: entertain first, enlighten second.

When I started writing news parodies I thought I was putting a creepy spin on what The Onion was doing. Then these pieces turned into thought experiments. The question, “How do I address the plight of essential workers during the pandemic?” became “What if people really did have to work through a zombie apocalypse?”

The question, “How do I take the OK Karen meme and apply it to witches?” became “What if magick was real and witches were subject to online harassment?”

The question, “Would people go out if there were giant spiders everywhere?” became “But what if there really were giant spiders everywhere?”

I became less interested in writing commentary and more interested in playing up the absurdity of these stories. These fantastic times pair well with fantasy creatures. Writing about these heightened realities makes this one bearable to me. My monsters have allowed me to reclaim my imagination from so much of what’s going on.

Closing Thoughts

This pandemic is soul crushing. This lockdown is depressing and the state of the economy is demoralizing. Many of my favorite coffeehouses, bars, and restaurants are closing for good.
I have a friend who’s a nurse in New York. I have another friend whose care facility has had several deaths. I’m healthy and relatively young, but I got much sicker than I expected.

I’ve spent weeks trying to get through to the unemployment office. I’m still waiting on my stimulus check. I’ve been applying for every job I think might put a dent in my expenses, and yet I have too much free time. I’m single. I live alone. I haven’t seen any of my friends in months.

My monster stories are keeping me going. I know I ought to be better about sharing them, about building the old brand. I’ve been told to start a Patreon, but I don’t have that kind of following. Not yet.

I’m open to feedback. Please let me know if you’re digging what I’m doing.

•••

Continue reading Why I Keep Inserting Monsters into the News →

Blog, Featured

So, I Probably Had The Virus

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The shivering started in the middle of the night. I zipped up a pullover, piled on the sheets, and tapped the thermostat. The chill grew more intense. My teeth chattered, my collar quivered, and my forearms broke out in goosebumps. When I stood it felt like I had a full body hangover. From my temples across my brow I was dizzy and top heavy.

I took a hot shower until my bathroom became a sauna, plugged the tub and fell asleep in the bath. This was my morning routine for two weeks.

If you take too much Tylenol in a day your ears will ring. I don’t know why, but that’s a thing.

I worked at a UPS Store. Before the COVID-19 cases were widely reported a customer told me he wasn’t worried. “It’s all about your outlook. You choose what you let in. You put negative energy out into the world then negative energy gonna come find you.”

Days later a mailbox holder challenged me for wearing a mask. She was usually a good natured, charming woman who cracked jokes as she unwrapped tubs of vitamins. On that day she was stepping over the 6 foot line on the floor to say, “Everybody’s freaking out about the Corona virus, but they should be freaking out about what they’ve being putting in the water. Do you have any idea how happy the pharmaceutical companies are right now?”

Another customer told me that the 5G Verizon installed during the NCAA final four games will make us more vulnerable, because of the microwaves it emits.

“Don’t you mean radio waves?”

After the governor shut down all the coffee shops, restaurants, and bars, the UPS Stores stayed open. We are an essential business. Our customers might need to ship medical masks, hand sanitizer, or toilet paper. They might need to overnight ventilators to New York City. I say might, because most of the people in the lines out our door were returning underwear, dresses, and socks.

The store makes about 80 cents for every Amazon drop off it takes in. It doesn’t matter if it’s an iPhone case or a 150 pound safe (like the one that I threw my back out lifting). They are worth the same to us. I started calculating the risk/reward factor once the stay-at-home order began. Everytime an item slid across the counter I thought, “This was worth risking your life and mine?”

A few weeks into the quarantine, Hennepin county became the epicenter for the outbreak in Minnesota, a customer knocked on the delivery door in back. She started to say she would like her mail walked out to her car so that she could keep a safe distance from the other customers. She started to say that, but cut herself off. “You look sick. Are you sick? Because you look sick.”

In truth, I’d been feeling weird. I wasn’t sure if it was stress from the sudden rush of customers or if it was a psychosomatic response to news of the virus. I checked my temperature every morning, and as long as I was at the same average of 98 degrees I felt I was fit to go to work.

Then my temperature went past 100 and I felt something in my bones. It’s still flu season. My boss theorized that this could be garden variety influenza, maybe adult onset allergies. But we’d been told if anyone had COVID-19-like symptoms we’d be paid to stay at home, so I took the company up on the offer.

Then I was told corporate needed some kind of proof before authorizing sick pay. I’m in my thirties. My job does not provide health insurance. My symptoms are not so severe as to warrant a trip to the ER, and there’s a finite amount of COVID-19 tests to go around. I downloaded Apple’s COVID-19 app, took the survey, and it told me to self-quarantine. I took a screenshot of the results and sent it to my boss. That’s the quality of healthcare I can afford.

This is all I’ll say about the American healthcare system: this is a country where a science teacher cooking meth to pay for his cancer treatment is a plausible plot line on TV. Breaking Bad would make no sense if it took place in Canada.

Not long after that my boss called to say she was laying me off. I wasn’t sure if this meant I was being furloughed, if I had a job waiting for me when I got better or not. She said this is the best way to make sure I got paid without crippling the business.

I was told it was important to file for unemployment on Wednesday, because the office was flooded with requests and the last digit of my social security number is assigned to that day.

Before my symptoms started to show. I spent a lot of time walking around. I live next to a chain of lakes with hiking trails. Those trails are packed so densely with people that there’s no way anyone can keep 6 feet away from one another and it seems like no one cares.

The customers at our store didn’t care. We had tape on the floor meant to keep people from getting too close to the counter. They always crossed it. We had to instruct them to step back. Some people thought it was funny to pretend they were sick and cough on the door handle on the way out.

A string of retail jobs has sullied my belief that people are essentially good. This pandemic has obliterated it. If you’ve read this far then there’s one point I want you to take away from this: be kind to the people who are risking their lives to serve you. If you ask how someone is doing you better mean it. Most clerks are past pleasantries. They just might tell you.

Might I suggest you stop asking, “How’s it going?” and start saying, “Thank you for being here.” instead.

I know it’s hard, but please be decent to each other.

Blog, Featured, Writing

Specters of Summer: Creepy Real Life Encounters

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Flash Non-Fiction from a Frightened Pedestrian

I live in a part of Minneapolis where I can walk most everywhere I go. While other city dwellers live in food deserts, far from healthy produce, I live in a food oasis with four grocers just blocks from my apartment. Minneapolis has a greenway where cyclists and pedestrians can travel without having to worry about oncoming traffic. Everyday I walk that way to work. I have my choice of four lakes to hike around to find my calm. I walk to the coffee shop where I write. I walk to my Twin Peaks viewing party. I walk to karaoke.

I grind the heels of my boots down flat. I go through one set of insoles a month, and my jeans always have a shortened lifespan, but I can get away with eating donuts and maintain the same frame I’ve had since I was eighteen.

I like walking, despite all the gravel I track into the apartment or the fact that I have to carry an umbrella at all times.

The only real drawback to traversing the city on foot is that it leaves me much more vulnerable than if I were in a vehicle.

There are always wolves looking to prey on anyone they perceive to be lagging behind the heard. Sometimes it’s the red cup wielding frat brothers picking fights on street corners while onlookers yell “World Star.” Sometimes it’s the sidewalk trolls, panhandling for a toll, following me for blocks until I give them a hard, “No.”

Sometimes it’s the people spotting me over their shoulder, ducking into entryways, thinking I can’t see their breath spiraling out in the cold. These are the people who leap out of the shadows, follow me between buildings, and chase me into gas stations. These are the predators I don’t always see coming.

I’ve been jumped before, laid out, full on woke up in a hospital with no clue what happened, missing a phone and a lot of time. The experience puts me on edge at night. It’s made me hyper aware of my surroundings. When I see a shady character standing in my path I check the bushes for silhouettes. Attackers are like Velociraptors if you see one in front of you odds are there are two swooping up from your sides. Continue reading Specters of Summer: Creepy Real Life Encounters →

Blog, Featured, Writing

A Different Kind of Bathroom Bill

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DISCLAIMER: Discrimination is ridiculous. Especially when the ability to discriminate hides behind the veil of victimization, like the religious liberty bills that have been proposed throughout the US this year. These bills would give devout shop owners the right to deny service to members of the LGBT community.

The following isn’t simply a parody of this ironic situation, it’s a callback to a prejudice against another segment of the population. They too were discriminated against for religious reasons. They too have a trait that can be found in 1 in 10 members of the population, and they too cannot change the way they are despite efforts to convert them.

The following is written from the perspective of someone with a strong prejudice against them. Continue reading A Different Kind of Bathroom Bill →