Tales of The Lobster Boy

Best digital tools for writers #writetip

2011-07-20T09:07:00.000-07:00

If you follow my blog, you know I’m no stranger to digital. At the risk of confessing age, I’ve been making work with computers since 1984. Jeepers.

Despite that my writing process has been fairly analogue. Make notes in a notebook, write and review the text in Word -- digital yes, but a glorified typewriter at the end of the day.

The last couple of years, this has changed. I now blog, write fiction, children’s, scripts and books. And the tools have changed.

Here are a few of my favorite digital tools:

Scrivener

Scrivener is the best tool a writer can acquire. Any system based on a corkboard / index card system should make it possible to write your work in chunks, then rearrange text on the fly. Scrivener adds more.

Each index card can contain text, photos, videos, web links and a number of other research references. Cards can be organized into folders. Saving is automatic and instantaneous. And when you’re done, press “compile”, detail the format of your output, and spit out a book. No Word required.

And it outputs ePub.

Self Control

Self control does one thing -- shuts off all your favorite websites for a given amount of time. Once started, it can’t be stopped. You can reboot your computer, and it won’t make any difference. As a writer, you know how important this is.

Visual Thesaurus 3

I’m old school. I love Roget’s -- the process, the index numbers, the wafer-thin pages. Visual Thesaurus’ spider’s web-like navigation made that all go away.

Dramatica Pro

I hate this software. It’s clunky, complicated, looks like it was developed in 1995, and won’t run on OSX Lion. The developers seem to have gone AWOL (and seem to have some conflict going on, although it's hard to tell through the nets). Yet it’s the only software that will walk you through the Dramatica methodology for plot development. And that is invaluable. I use it to begin the plotting of every story I write. But please, developers, if you’re reading -- code a new version.

Google Earth

Finally, when I write fiction, Google Earth is usually running in the background. A derelict building in Selma, Alabama. The main road in Gibsonton, Florida. The route from St. Louis to Atlanta, and what the scenery looks like from the highway. They’re all in Google Earth. (And, try to ignore the horrible music in this video.)

Best writer's nook ever

2011-07-03T08:34:00.000-07:00

Meet Nelson, Coupland and Alice

2010-09-25T05:50:00.000-07:00

There are likely more hit-the-nail-on-the-head ideas about the future of the book in this five minute video than you'll find at any book or ebook conference over the next wee while. I particularly like Alice, but only because it mirrors my story-telling practice of the last few years.

Tales of The Lobster Boy on Facebook

2010-09-18T01:39:00.000-07:00

My first novel, Tales of The Lobster Boy, is now a serialized novel on Facebook.

I'd like to say it's the first one, but it's very hard to know. Years ago, Penguin said they were serializing a novel, but to my knowledge, no blogger has been able to find it. What I can say is this: many novels have been part serialized there (there? Where are you when you're on the internet?).

This is one of (and maybe the) first to be completely serialized amongst the blue-shaded friends and followers.

As it has just launched, there's no URL, but search "Tales of The Lobster Boy", and you'll land in the right place. I'm 12 "likes" short of a unique URL, so give it a like.

And, I'll post later on how Facebook pages are so hard to navigate, and why it is in Facebook's best interest to make it difficult to become a Friend of a page.

Ben Folds, Nick Hornby and Pomplamoose

2010-08-30T09:56:00.000-07:00

September Predictions - Pt 2

2010-08-30T08:53:00.001-07:00

Oh, yeah, and Apple will release a social media platform. No game changer there, much...

Tales of The Fat Lady's Daughter

2010-08-20T09:02:00.000-07:00

Today was an extraordinary pleasure, shooting a promo for a documentary with my good friend Simon Wells.

The documentary is wrapped around my sequel to Tales of The Lobster Boy. The working title (for the sequel) is Tales of The Fat Lady's Daughter, and will revolve around Melinda Barry, returned to the carnival, to find the man who murdered her mother.

What a lovely day. Here are a few pics...

Shooting in our kitchen (Ebenezer Chapel from Tales of The Lobster Boy)

Sorting out photos at the big wood bar (again, you'll recognize it from the book -
the bar upon which Alissa Andersson was murdered and flayed)

My family, the Kriels (the inspiration for the Koontz family)

Wylie and the Odyssey, Part 2

2010-07-23T05:39:00.000-07:00

To update this post concerning Wylie and Amazon's recent deal, here's a long quote from The Guardian:

Fear and loathing among the movers and shakers of America's publishing industry reached new heights late last night with both Random House and Macmillan denouncing top literary agent Andrew Wylie's move into digital publishing.

Home to 700 authors and estates, from Philip Roth to John Updike, Jorge Luis Borges and Saul Bellow, the Wylie Agency shocked the publishing world yesterday when it announced the launch of Odyssey Editions. The new initiative is selling ebook editions of modern classics, including Lolita, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Updike's Rabbit tetralogy, exclusively via Amazon.com's Kindle store, leaving conventional publishers out of the picture.

The disintermediation provoked an immediate reaction from Random House, which publishes a number of the authors featured in Odyssey Editions in physical form. On learning of the new venture on Wednesday night, the publisher fired off a letter to Amazon "disputing their rights to legally sell these titles", which it said were "subject to active Random House publishing agreements".

And late yesterday evening the publisher went a step further, with spokesman Stuart Applebaum issuing a statement saying that "on a worldwide basis", Random House "will not be entering into any new English-language business agreements with the Wylie Agency until this situation is resolved".

At the very least, this will be interesting to watch. Me, I'm staying out of this fight.

Sarah Warsop in The Huffington Post

2010-07-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

I would not be a good husband if I didn't take a moment to note Sarah Warsop's presence, gracing an article in The Huffington Post.

She rocks!

Wylie and the Odyssey

2010-07-22T10:23:00.000-07:00

You won't wander far on the web today without knowing there's a new publishing house / imprint / book label in town - Odyssey Editions, a cooperative venture between Amazon.com and the Wylie Agency.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Amazon.com now has exclusive rights to sell the e-book versions of some of the best-known titles from top literary authors Philip Roth, Norman Mailer, Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike and more. In an announcement late Wednesday -- shortly after midnight Thursday, East Coast time -- the online retailer revealed that a deal with the powerful Wylie Agency will give Amazon.com the exclusive e-book rights for two years to books such as "Lolita." The e-books will only be available through the Kindle store.

The initial Odyssey Editions booklist? Voila:

“London Fields” by Martin Amis
“The Adventures of Augie March” by Saul Bellow
“Ficciones” (Spanish Edition) by Jorge Luis Borges
“Junky” by William Burroughs
“The Stories of John Cheever” by John Cheever
“Invisible Man” by Ralph Ellison
“Love Medicine” by Louise Erdrich
“The Naked and the Dead” by Norman Mailer
“Lolita” by Vladimir Nabokov
“The Enigma of Arrival” by V.S. Naipaul
“The White Castle” by Orhan Pamuk
“Portnoy’s Complaint” by Philip Roth
“Midnight’s Children” by Salman Rushdie
“The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” by Oliver Sacks
“Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S. Thompson
“Rabbit, Run” by John Updike
“Rabbit Redux” by John Updike
“Rabbit Is Rich” by John Updike
“Rabbit at Rest” by John Updike
“Brideshead Revisited” by Evelyn Waugh

And here is what is so very clever about this move - every undergraduate student in the English-speaking world (should they read more than one English Lit course) will buy all of these books.

Probably on a Kindle. (Here's what's not clever: they might just download an illegal PDF and read it on an iPad.)

Odyssey Editions will be many things, but they will also be apublisher of text books for the English Lit academic market.

A very smooth move.

Wags guess-timate a 25% market share for ebooks in 10 years. That's as conservative as a Baptist at a Bob Jones bake sale.

I hate Paul Bennun

2010-07-22T09:45:00.000-07:00

I really do. I mean, he is one of my best friends, and I should like him.

But then he does things like make SuperMe, and then I have to re-evaluate.

It's just so GOOD. And, well, I didn't make it.

It's a great game.

Damnit.

My next game is going to be called "I hate Paul Bennun".

Social Marketing Compass

2010-07-21T06:08:00.000-07:00

Social Marketing Compass, via Hugh Garry

Let me add, as an aside (and not speaking about either of the linkees), that I value phrases like "Value Proposition" and "Core Values" as much I like the word "allows" when speaking of a software "product".

I can explain to you what they mean, but I am certain they communicate nothing in common usage. They're on a level with brackets and odd capitalizations in postModern(ist)-speak, and only manage to communicate this: "I speak the Shibboleth."

I see a long post about language coming soon....

David Foster Wallace on quiet concentration / Kevin Slavin on putting it in the mix

2010-07-21T05:36:00.000-07:00

"The faster things go, the more we feed that part of ourselves .... We don't feed the part of ourselves that likes quiet."

David Foster Wallace speaks here, as part of a longer interview, on American attitudes toward literature (I disagree - the issue is education, not geography), and our growing inability to sit quietly and encounter works of culture, undistracted.

As a fan of Wallace's, and as a man who enjoys a bit of doing nothing, I understand his point. We are changing, and part of that change is that we don't quietly contemplate a single work of art as we once did. We browse while watching television. We chat while reading a magazine. We prefer to listen to audio commentary while contemplating a painting.

The last time went to Cannes, I spoke with an older American producer about ebooks, and shared my desire to create rich media experiences for readers. He was outraged. "The last thing I want messed with is my time alone with a book."

But let me suggest this - if we like to tweet and facebook while we watch television, shouldn't this be seen as a new way of enjoying media? Starling see it that way.

And if, like me, you find that while reading on the iPad, you open Maps to look up a location, or Wikipedia to read background, or Google to understand context, shouldn't we see this as something new - a more committed engagement with literature - rather than something bad?

I'm all for sitting quietly doing nothing. But perhaps, as authors and producers, we should consider our new audience, and invent new ways to serve their engagement with our work.

Kevin Slavin on Starling:

Failure, Features and Fable

2010-07-19T07:54:00.000-07:00

Games Industry publishes an insightful interview with Microsoft's Peter Molyneux.

For a man representing a corporate behemoth, Molyneux is incredibly introspective about his practice, as much in this interview as in others we've encountered. Of particular interest are his thoughts concerning why Pixar manages to avoid the Uncanny Valley, what it means to add features just for the sake of adding them, why less blades make a better razor, and how great ideas are hindrances in the face of poor delivery.

Molyneux also takes time to reflect on the future of iPhone gaming. He predicts a future of seven-figure budgets and high barriers-to-entry for iPhone developers. This vision speaks volumes concerning the presence of big brands in the iPhone space. We'd love to see an interview with Molyneaux that tackles the future of casual gaming on the device, as well as the role of indies in relation to AAA developers on the iPhone. His is a brain we'd like to see into.

An excellent interview and write-up by Managing Editor, Phil Elliot.

Would you rather own books or words in a cloud?

2010-07-07T05:54:00.000-07:00

http://www.doonesbury.com/strip/dailydose/

Thanks to Ros Lawler over at Random House, we found this link to an article in The Olympian.

Best quote: "[T]he neurological phenomenon of reading is centered in a location of the brain that appears to have no preference for media, other than black words against a white background." From Stanislas Dehaene.

Books and Apps

2010-06-06T06:11:00.000-07:00

Marcus du Sautoy, the author of The Num8er My5teries: A Mathematical Odyssey through Everyday Life, writes a long and interesting post on apps and their relationship to literature, non-fiction and children's books.

Taking Wolf Hall and Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland (the apps) as starting points, he makes a strong case for the integration of rich media into literature. He briefly suggests that novelists should consider multiple-platforms at the conception of their work, and just as quickly moves on to explore the potential for non-fiction writers.

I wish he had stood still for a moment. In original enhanced fiction, not interactive footnote references, animated illustrations for children, adaptations for the iPad, or video interviews with the author, lies the greatest potential for rich media fiction. Bring on the literary apps - a few text-based literary journals on the iPad just aren't doing it for me.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jul/03/marcus-du-sautoy-apps-books

Principles for Digital Publishing

2010-05-30T06:13:00.001-07:00

Stephen Page outlines a few principles for digital publishing in The Guardian. Interesting read.

Here are some:

1. Creating the greatest value for writers should lie in keeping their print and digital publishing in one place, as it is crucial for the promotion, publicity and management of texts – and for fair pricing. Publishers have to be imaginative partners across print and digital.

2. Publishers have to be clear that they will offer a fair return long-term to authors, and review royalty rates sensibly as the market develops. (This is already widespread in new contracts).

3. In the digital world, price is flexible 24/7. Publishers need to become expert in managing, not just setting, price in international markets.

4. The web offers a connection to niche readerships that can be spoken to directly, but only with great care. Publishers need to have direct conversations with readers through all available means, despite the fact that they won't shop with us. Shopping's not the point, connection to audience is the point.

5. Publishers will need to be passionate about boring data and thrilling technology. Excellent metadata – the information that governs and accompanies every copyright in the digital world – is crucial, as is an understanding of new technologies and the creative opportunities they offer writers.

6. Traditional news media has long driven a great deal of book-buying. But the means by which people find reading recommendations have changed and publishers need to join this new conversation while supporting and respecting it.

The Augmented Reality of the Book

2010-05-12T10:33:00.000-07:00

The development of multi-platform books (or platform-optimized experiences, if you will) is one of my passions -- not iPad books tacked on with author interviews, but books as immersive experiences, living in the mind, through text and music and art.

The video backdrop and rich soundtrack against which Nick Cave reads The Death of Bunny Munro comes very close to my imagining of this narrative world.

So does this video by Camille Scherrer, a design student at ECAL, the University of Art and Design Lausanne.

One day, when I'm reading a book on the iPad, I want a dark bird to fly across the page.

Keeping you healthy and literate...

2010-05-12T09:57:00.000-07:00

Cigarette Dispensers Refurbished as Book Vending Machines

Welcome to the site

2010-05-11T10:06:00.000-07:00

Thanks for dropping by. Lots more to come, but let's start with Weird US's excellent introduction to Gibtown, on The History Channel.