Monthly Archives: September 2010
The state of Authonomy
I’ve just done a drive-by on Authonomy to check the state of the nation. You know, that web site run by Harper Collins which claims to be “dedicated to sourcing the best writing talent around and connecting readers, writers and publishing professionals.”
I’m a long-time user. I joined the site back in September 08 although I did retire in disgust for a while. But then, yes, I admit it, I came back. Lots of other people have blogged about the Authonomy experience so I guess I’m just adding my small voice. Why am I doing this now? Because of promises made to change the system and my latest brief foray of loading a book onto the site.
Like many of the old hands, I loved the early days when Authonomy functioned as a crit site. You put up your book and you received comments mainly about the first few chapters but occasionally, readers would go further or even ask to read the whole MS. And that, as all my writer friends know, is worth its weight. Sure, you got a bit mesmerised by the numbers as your book rose up the rankings and became crest-fallen when the little red arrow appeared to show your book was slipping. But all was good. The forums were sometimes educational, sometimes fun and even then, sometimes the trolls hurtled insults at each other. Let’s not put on rose-coloured glasses. This is the internet. There are trolls. One of my books rose to number 35 (even). But by then I’d figured if HC was interested they would have tapped me on the shoulder and I could not be bothered with the race for the desk. Not one of the books reaching the coveted desk (five per month for two years now) had been selected for publication. Some were published elsewhere but that’s another story. What I really got from Authonomy was a network of writer friends around the world with whom I could share the writing experience. They became real friends and although I’ve met very few in the flesh, they are still friends who understand my writing trials, tribulations and triumphs.
And then came Klazart and his gamer friends. Overnight two thousand gamers, organised by this man through a Youtube video clip, descended on the site, backed his book and left. Rather like a plague of locusts. These people ended up with the top ‘talent spotter rankings’ on the site, because they backed a book which rose rapidly up the tree. Never mind that the vast majority never logged on again or participated. Eventually, the site administrators recognised the flaw and changed the scoring algorithm.
So now, you want to know why I came back? Because you can never have enough beta readers, especially of your genre. I loaded my book ‘Die a Dry Death’ on Authonomy as I was working on it and got a great deal of help and support. So I did it again, unsure if my current WIP was going to work. I’d hardly loaded the book when the top ‘Talent Spotter’ backed it. I hadn’t even had time to put in the cherry-picked comment telling readers I wasn’t after backings, all I wanted was constructive criticism. This lady left a comment later in the day, a generic ‘it’s wonderful, I loved it.’ And followed up some days later, wondering why I hadn’t supported her. To be sure, I have had a very few useful, thoughtful comments on the first few chapters of my book. But I would log on and gaze, jaw dropped, at my newsfeed showing backing after backing after backing of my book. Most did not leave a comment. I confess I never even bothered to thank the anonymous folk, or those who simply copied and pasted the comment they left on the last fifty books they ‘read’. Pretty soon, I pulled the book. So, no book, right? Just yesterday I received this message.
“hi
My book is titled the mind setter, Backing it will give you 4 strong backings and a genuine comment .
best”
Uh huh.
This person tried a similar approach a few days after I loaded my book. I deleted the message. This time, I sent a message pointing out that I had no book and I wouldn’t accept an offer like this, anyway. Past high –ranking ‘talent spotters’ had even been known to use ‘stand-over’ tactics, messaging people whose books they’d backed and demanding reciprocation. And now it’s clear that another Klazart type operation is in full swing for the book ‘Bamboo Promise’.
Authonomy is threatening to revamp the backing system. I wish them luck. I’m an ex-programmer/analyst and it’s such a difficult task. There are so many variables they need to juggle, human nature and the thrill of the chase for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow being the most difficult to manage. They’ve tried to clean up the increasingly vitriolic forum, I’m glad to say. Some of the threads were becoming positively hateful and vindictive. But I can’t help but feel that while the editor’s desk is a prize for the best gamer, I’ll be reluctant to go back. I’d LOVE some more beta readers and I’m happy to reciprocate, but I can’t be bothered with the gaming. (By the way, if you’ve read this far and you want a beta reader, contact me on FaceBook). And for you folk out there that still want to play the Authonomy game, remember that querying will give you better odds.
How I designed the cover
Since I wanted to put the first chapter of my latest finished novel The Orionar Queen on my website, I thought I should design a cover for it. I must stress I’m not planning to self-publish, this was just a bit of fun I did for myself, using some of the knowledge I’ve garnered about designing covers. I’m no expert but if this article is of any use to anybody, that’s great. Please note the design was only ever intended for use on the web, not to be printed off.
I used Photoshop Elements version 8 to do the manipulation. Photoshop is a very powerful program and I certainly don’t rate myself as an expert. I am self-taught. Photoshop has a number of excellent tutorials on matters such as layers (I’ll mention that later), removing bits from backgrounds and so forth. There are also plenty of books and articles around to help you.
Okay, first things first. What’s the book about? This is important because I want the cover to attract an audience and I don’t want to disappoint that audience. My book is science fiction with a strong romance element. Sort of space opera with sex. But not erotica. My audience will be largely women. So I went looking for some pictures that might signal that theme.
I searched the internet for pictures of lovers and came up with several free images, none very large. That was fine. It wasn’t going to be the most important element in the design.
This was what I decided on.
As you can see, there are a number of parts of the image that just won’t work in a space saga, so I cut the picture down and removed any remaining seagulls in Photoshop.
Which left this. Note that this is a very low resolution image and as such wouldn’t be suitable for a printed cover.
Now I needed my space opera element. I went searching the web for a suitable space ship scene. I use Dreamstime but there are other sites. I bought this image for about $5.
Now to put them together.
I saved the battle cruiser at a smaller size using Microsoft Office Picture Manager (although I could have used Photoshop).
I used the lovers as the background. I increased the image size which made the outline fuzzy but it didn’t matter for this purpose. I also converted the shot to black and white so it would merge with the starscape.
Then I added the battle cruiser as a layer. A layer is what it sounds like – another image set on top of the existing one. You can combine any number of elements into one picture using layers. You can set a level of opacity to a layer, so that deeper layers are visible through whatever you place on top. The level of opacity for the battle cruiser is 77%. I had to do a bit of fiddling with extra layers to adjust for the different horizontal and vertical orientation of the two pictures.
This shot shows what I mean. That light grey section only shows the background image. I had to take a wedge of the background from the battle cruiser picture to fill in the extra bits. I added two layers, top and bottom of the battle cruiser picture, as fillers.
I placed two red rectangles at the top and bottom of the image as a highlight and to add a bit of extra colour. You can see the original colour and what it adjusted to with the starscape darkness over the top.
Next, I chose a font for the words on the front. I wanted something strong and easy to read, something fitting for the subject matter. I selected Trajan Pro for the title and my name and Vijaya for the tag line. I picked the yellow colour because it contrasts well with the dark background and because it picks up the colour of the planet.
Selecting fonts is a serious subject, both for the cover and (if you’re planning to self-publish) for the content. It spells the difference between professional presentation and amateur handy person. I recommend Lexi Revellian’s article on this topic. For more in-depth advice for formatting inside the book, formatting the interior of your book by N. Gemini Sasson is a great resource.
So there you have it. You can do it, too.
An encounter with aliens
As some of you know, I write science fiction and I don’t much like the propensity for everybody’s aliens to be humanoid – two or four arms, legs, eyes etc. But you don’t have to go far to meet some very intelligent aliens which aren’t humanoid at all. For me, that means an hours travel in a boat.
Every year, humpback whales leave the Antarctic and head for warmer waters to give birth and mate. They travel up both the east and west coast of Australia. The east coast population arrives in the sheltered waters of Platypus Bay off Fraser Island between late July and early November. And there they stop, some for a few hours, some for a few days, to relax with their mates, feed the babies or look for a bit of sex.
Like most of the world, Australia used to hunt whales but the activity was banned in the 1960s. Since then, the decimat
ed populations of whale species have been rebuilding. At the same time, the industry of whaling has been replaced with something altogether more gentle and delightful and I suspect much more lucrative – whale watching. When whaling was stopped in 1963, humpback whale numbers were down to less than 500 individuals on Australia’s east coast. Now the whale boat skippers report seeing as many as 250 a day in Platypus bay. But they’re not out of danger. Humpbacks give birth every other year and the gestation period is almost a year. Add to that shark nets and pressures by pro-whaling forces to recommence the hunt and the whale’s continuing survival is at risk.
They are filter feeders, meaning they eat krill which they scoop up in the cold waters of the Antarctic, filtering sea water through plates of baleen in their mouths. They have no teeth and don’t eat fish, so for six months of the year, while they’re on the annual swimathon to the tropics, they don’t eat. At all. Except the babies. They are born in warm water and need to grow and build up a layer of blubber to protect them from the cold down south. Being mammals, the calves feed on milk but they don’t suckle. Mother expresses milk into the water, where the baby can slurp it up. The milk has the consistency of yoghurt and is forty percent fat (as opposed to human milk, which is about two percent fat).
I went on my latest whale watching adventure a few days ago, along with people who had come to Hervey Bay from all over the world to see these marvellous creatures. In the years since hunting stopped, the whales have returned and they are as curious about us as we are about them. We were privileged to have a group of three teenaged boy whales (four or five years old, sexually immature and about ten metres long) take an interest in our boat. They hung around for a good half hour, circling the boat, spy-hopping, slapping around and generally behaving as teenagers do. When they grow up they’ll get to fifteen metres or so. The females will be slightly larger, as much as sixteen metres.
A few other whales put on a display for us. Humpbacks are very acrobatic. One reason is that unlike toothed whales (orcas, dolphins, sperm whales etc) they do not have echo location. They navigate by a sense of direction and sight. Breaching is a way of getting a good look around. When you bear in mind these creatures weigh up to forty tonnes, their athleticism is formidable. Just three flips of that mighty tail and they launch themselves almost completely out of the water. They also have enormously long pectoral fins (the ones at the side) which give them excellent manoeuvrability. Apart from breaching, you’ll see tail slapping, rolling, waving of those pectoral fins and head lunges.
These are all my pictures, taken on just four cruises. Whale watching isn’t the same as a visit to Sea World. These guys do what they want, when they want. The boats are not allowed to chase them or crowd them and those rules are enforced. It’s a beautiful, beautiful thing, a glimpse into a world so very, very different to ours. It’s a privilege I would love to share with all of you.
The art of developing believable characters
Characterisation is at the heart of any really good story as far as I’m concerned. Real people dealing with real situations. Or sometimes (as in speculative fiction) not-real situations. That’s when creating believable characters becomes absolutely crucial. If your characters aren’t believable, your reader won’t relate to them.
I recently read a SF romance book (Linnea Sinclair, “Games of Command”) that has stayed in my mind ever since. Because of the brilliant characterisation. I’ve re-read parts of the book several times. Yes, you’re right; one was the Big Sex Scene. But not for any cheap, auto-erotic thrill. Rather, it was because of the wonderful way she has portrayed her male protagonist, a cyber-enhanced admiral. Finally, after all those years, he’s going to actually live his fantasy with the woman of his dreams. Please understand this man is a leader, on top of his game (pardon the pun) in the military. But when he’s faced with the reality of getting his gear off and making love to her, every anxiety, every imagined inadequacy he ever had, comes to the surface. And it really is so totally believable. I felt for this guy, I really did.
How do you do it? I don’t know. I don’t use people I know as characters in my books. Sure, I think about how people I know might react in a given circumstance to give me a clue about what somebody might do. But I can honestly say, hand on heart, that if anyone I know recognises him/herself as a character in my work, he/she is deluding him/herself.
What I do use is Allan and Barbara Pease’s excellent book “The Definitive Book of Body Language” to try to sort out how people might react in a given situation. Another useful tool is the Myers-Briggs personality types. There are many, many websites. This is just one. Now you might be like me and think the whole Myers-Briggs thing is eyewash, but it actually can give you some great ideas on combining personality traits into one coherent person.
I’d love to know what other people do in their quest for a believable character.
