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All great writing starts out as 'fan fiction.' How far it goes depends on effort and circumstance.

People who have a dream must also have courage, and faith in something. Almost anything will do, really. Here at Shalako Publishing, we have faith in readers, for reading is a very special thing.

Without you, the reader, all of this would not be possible.

-louis

In the Pursuit of Happiness

Suncor Nature Corridor, Sarnia, Ont. Photo by Louis.

Louis Shalako



Years ago, I knew this guy. One time I asked him a pretty simple question and he couldn't anwer it.

"If you won the lottery, if you could do anything you wanted to do, anything at all, what would it be? What is your dream?"

He had no answer. I tried to rephrase it.

"You would never have to work again. You've got bags of cash laying around, you drive a nice car, and you live in a big fat house. What is your dream? What do you want to do now? What do you want to do next?"

He still had no answer. I found that very disturbing indeed, not because I thought it was a dark and dirty secret, or that he was just fooling around, not because I thought he was stupid, but because it was true.

The gentleman did not have a dream.

The dream is what sustains me as a writer. Sometimes it is the only thing that sustains me, not just as a writer, but as a person struggling in the great river of life. Sometimes that dream is the only thing that keeps me going, and sometimes I really am, 'taking it one day at a time.'

How much of a price tag would you want to put on that dream?

I wouldn't swap places with that man for a million bucks--I wouldn't swap places with him for a billion dollars.

Guys like that just piss me off.

Themes: 'Carrie.'

c2012 (S)


I had the devil of a time sleeping last night, and there is a time just before dawn when everything looks so bleak.

On my way to get a coffee, for some reason I found myself thinking about Stephen King's 'Carrie.' I was just trying to figure out what the themes were.

What was so bad about Carrie? What made her so different, that justified the torment of her peers? She wasn't imagining it, it was real.

She was a bit off, I suppose, but people like that also survive and enjoy pretty normal lives much of the time. They have friendships, they get married, they have babies. Ignoring the fact that she had certain powers, telekinesis, or whatever, would she have gone off 'inevitably' at some other point in her life, maybe at work, if the appropriate provocation did not happen at the high school prom?

Was that simply her fate, and it could not be altered?

Would Carrie have gone postal at work, even if she did not have supernatural powers to deal out death and destruction?

Didn't she sort of lack a sense of humour about herself? Was it really her mom's fault? Surely the prank with the pig's blood was what triggered her, but it had been building up inside her for a while. Right?

People make a big thing out of symbolic rite-of-passage rituals, and the prom is a high point in many young women's lives. But then so is their wedding, their first-born, the day the eldest one goes to college.

In real life, lots of things go wrong, and plenty of nice things get ruined. Sometimes things get ruined maliciously by other people who ought to know better. Again ignoring the supernatural element in the story, any rational person would have held back and kept that power a secret, knowing full well the consequences, both legal and moral. A rational person would have understood that they really didn't have the right. Maybe Carrie had just had enough.

Maybe there is the potential for violence and or evil in each and every one of us.

Is that one of the lessons? Aging pseudo-scholars can debate that for thousands of years, now that all of our great literary works are in cloud-based storage units...

Today, it seems as if I am in an Ornery Mood. But, I have some sense. For example, I have never submitted my story, '101 Ways to Kill Stephen King,' and I may never do it. It's just a fun little thing, but I don't want to do hard time. I have always drawn back from the edge, when standing on the brink of an abyss.

Life isn't that bad.

Sweat Equity and Self-Investment

c2012 (S)


After having book proposals rejected numerous times, and then getting some contracts offered and some interest in my books, I did something you’ll often see in the context of a western novel.

In purely symbolic terms, I went out into the wilderness with my trusty steed and my six-gun, ribs taped up and lips swollen from a pretty good beating, and learned the craft all over again. That is to say, the author put a few bottles up on a stump and blazed away until the wounds healed and the speed and accuracy were what they should have been all along. Then I went back into town, loaded for bear and looking for trouble!

A little background is essential for the reader to understand what I am talking about. I got three contracts with a publisher, and it was only later that I started to think, when that publisher started to have some problems, right in the beginning of the big publishing crisis. At about the same time I concluded that it was a form of vanity publishing. Without offering a whole lot of disrespect to that company, I became aware of certain problems with my writing, and I had to ask myself just how much time they were going to invest in making ‘a better book.’ Why even give me a contract at all? Suffice it to say that I managed to get fired, something not too difficult for the student of human nature.

I also realized that the work represented some monetary value to somebody somewhere. A far more prestigious publisher asked for a ‘partial,’ that’s where you send in the next three chapters, i.e. chapters four to six. That book was eventually rejected, and then somebody briefly considered another novel as an e-book. I didn’t know much about e-books at the time, and I won’t say I was insulted by the possibility. This was also a well-known, reputable publisher.

That one just didn’t happen, for reasons that fall squarely on my own shoulders, and yes I have regrets.

I had some insecurities, about the work, and about myself as a writer. What if I couldn’t do as they asked? What if they wanted me to do something with the book that I wasn’t capable of, or was uncomfortable with? Maybe I wasn’t the right guy for the job.

I published my first two e-books in October 2010 or thereabouts. Just before Christmas 2010, I got another contract offer in the e-mail. I couldn’t sign it. First of all, I didn’t know who they were, and that’s important. Without an advance, it sure looked like a vanity publisher, and due to a reluctance or inability on their part to answer questions, there was just no way.

So. At this point in my alleged career, what I am looking for is a story development editor, and a good one. They must have a minimum of fifteen years experience in acquisitions and ‘writer development.’

They have to be accessible. I can’t stress that enough, if people had answered their e-mails I would be published now with a very good house. That’s besides the point.

Skills like that don’t come cheap, and due to being on a relatively low fixed income, I can’t afford to buy such expertise.

Here’s the deal. I’m willing to sign with a legacy publisher because I need what they have to offer: professional editing, promotion, marketing, exposure and distribution, sales and translations of foreign rights, the whole mix. I’m not willing to sign with a vanity publisher, or a predator, or any sort of flim-flam operation.

This is where all those hours where I didn’t get paid for my time come into play. It’s called ‘sweat equity,’ and it’s another way of looking at investment without using any of my own cash. It’s going to cost you something. Money talks and bullshit walks. Actions speak louder than words.

You get what you can pay for.

I guess the western analogy runs dry at some point, but if it comes to a shootout at the O.K. Corral, I would prefer not to go in there alone. And, if I have to kick in my friend’s doors, they’re not really friends at all, are they?

In no position to offer advice to any other writer, all I can say is this is where I'm at right now.

Feedback.

c2012 (S)


Feedback is essential to any creative process. Over the course of the last two or three years, I have made about 670 short story submissions. Less than three percent have been placed, and probably less than one percent paid any money. That is a kind of feedback.

On Blogger, there are stats. You can see how many page hits a given story might receive. If one story gets a lot of page hits, and another story, of different subject matter, gets a few, then obviously the savvy writer will write more stories on the more popular subject matter.

On my Smashwords dashboard, there is a 'stats' button. It takes me to a separate page. If I put out a link on Twitter, and an hour later see that I have received 'x' page-hits, then all I have to do is put out ten links to achieve ten times 'x' page hits, and after a while, I can figure out exactly how many page-hits it takes to sell a book. This can be compared to how many page hits I get without any promotion at all.

The difference is pretty obvious.

Now, if I put out a link for Smashwords and get fifty page hits, then it's a pretty good bet that if I put out a link leading to a product on Amazon, or Barnes & Noble, or Kobo, or Sony, then I will get the same number of pages hits, approximately. At this point the relative market share of the retailer comes into play, and this skews the numers, but feedback is still essential. In purely physical terms, try doing anything without feedback. Try walking without eyes and a sense of balance, and no feeling in your feet.

For many short story rejections, all the editor says is, "Not quite what we are looking for."

That's too bad, as I had this one story with a real bad error of fact in it. No one told me! And of course I kept on submitting it around. It was only later that I discovered the error. Mentally reviewing just how many places I submitted the story, I sure wish someone had told me about that.

A little bit of feedback would save everyone a bit of time in the long run, put it down to 'species altruism' or whatever. That's because one editor's effort might benefit another editor's publication in the short term. However, in the long term, it would come back to the editor's benefit, as I would be less likely to submit a bad story, over and over again.

I'm always glad to receive feedback or criticism, as in the long run I am better off! That's called, 'enlightened self-interest,' and I never take it too personal.

I just figure the editor was having a bad day, and my story wasn't helping any.