Titles – Author Shlomi Harif

Publishing & Reality… and Magic

shlomi on July 4, 2022

My series, under a nom-de-plum, is finally back in process, after a bout of reality-induced depression and anxiety courtesy of religious fundamentalists in all branches of government. Oh, and nazis. They’re feeling empowered more and more. “This can only end in tears” — ancient parental saying. This was compounded by my having a discussion with a publicist who refused to work with me on the series because the owner is pro-life. (And apparently Jewish practices are anti-life, but I’ll let that one lie.)

So I’m close on the release date of the next book in that series, but having said it would be in “the fall of 2022,” that’s not a small bullseye target.

To restart my engine I returned to a novel I’d completed in first draft, shown to a couple of folks, and knew I needed to make many changes. It’s a YA fantasy novel, with a large world-building component (points a finger at Marshall Maresca’s thoughts and work on that topic).Getting magic right is tricky. Don’t know if I nailed it, but I’ll be reaching out to a few readers in the next couple of weeks.

Publicity for the Indie Author

shlomi on April 30, 2022

The second book in my murder/mystery series is done except for incorporating my editor’s edits, and getting a cover finalized.I didn’t do any advertising; I wanted to see how the process worked until publishing. The answer was well and also that, without marketing, there’s just a stealth book out there.

So I’m on the search for someone or a firm to get the new book’s name and author recognition going. Talked with a possible publicist from the Jewish community, and have a contact in the Israeli publishing scene to see if I can get a Hebrew-language version of the books out there.

On more this-author’s-site-related side, I’m going back to the novel I’d like my agent to push. She needs a few things like a synopsis, summary, tag line(s), back cover blurb, and other all-related-but-different collateral. Also, another last reader to make sure nothing’s slipped past me.

I’ve got a few short stories in play, including one that’s already available for purchase: Shloshim. Yes, click that link, buy that story (I mean, it’s only $0.99!). That one might appear in Israel as a reprint, but we’ll see.

That’s all for now. I’m sure any publicist I hire will insist on my getting into a regular publishing schedule, both for this and my nom de plum’s sites. Stay tuned!

Manuscripts vs. Entropy

shlomi on August 1, 2021

I’m prepping a manuscript (Last Run) for shopping, after a HUGE number of great changes suggested by the White Gold Wielders writers group here in Austin. Having one’s novel read and commented on in group format is a blessing I would hope for all my novels.

I fired up Scrivener, started making changes, moved from my laptop to my desktop, and Uncle Murphy struck. The result: A few dozen “recovered” files, blank scenes where once text resided. What’s been updated? What’s had changes? Between a Word copy used for the group discussion, a text comparison tool, and a lot of careful scrutiny of the recovered files, I was able to bring the manuscript back to wholeness, with only one scene flagged as “deleted right before the crash–” and therefore not an issue.

Save. Save again. Save yet more. One of the first things a writer learns is “keep a backup.” I have Dropbox, exports to Word, saved zip files of scrivener folder structures for major edits. And still, Murphy manages to get a word in edgewise. Or at least cost me three hours of quality time repairing, because things went splat at exactly the wrong time.

WIP

shlomi on August 24, 2019

Back from hiatus, and starting, edits on my second Shmuley Myers book. It builds on an ultra-Orthodox Jewish Austin police homicide detective in a world (soon to be real, apparently) where every non-birth pregnancy becomes a murder investigation, contraception is illegal, church and state prance together in an evil waltz.

Shmuley needs to balance his roles as a pious Jew, a loving husband, his job as a civil servant, and…

Quick Post-Prandial on Manuscript Maintenance

shlomi on November 24, 2018

I did some time-and-motion monitoring in terms of getting changes to a manuscript fit from Scrivener to Word and cleaned and ready for The Agent to use.

Fine-cleaning two scenes (~2.5k words). That means reading them aloud, copying the pieces to a word file, then reading that to ensure it’s clean: 75 minutes.

Compiling from Scrivener to Word and cleaning up the resulting mess, adding a TOC, etc.: 75 minutes.

2.5 hours for each revision change, assuming a total copy of manuscript from Scrivener to final.

Lesson learned: Get the frickin’ manuscript done and fully cleaned ONCE before moving it into Word. Agh. Double agh.

POVs and Trunking

shlomi on November 10, 2018

I’ve been wrestling with getting my next novel started before getting a full-time, paying gig. And score is trunk novels: 5, Shlomi manuscripts: 0. It kept coming across lifeless, a narration of facts and events that even extensive external and internal dialog didn’t help. I’m a pantser, so I wasn’t worried about “where the book was going.” But the main character motivations, their plate tectonics… that I was winging.

So I went back and did what I’ve done in the past: write a preface. Only every time I wrote something, it was in the Q&A style of an interview. engaging, casual dialog, casual narrator… first person. I’ve done almost that with 3rd person limited. And 1st person with a fourth wall intact. I’ve stuck to a single person’s POV as well.

Meh. Who needs walls. If John Scalzi can do it, if William Goldman can do it with The Princess Bride, then I, unpublished unjeered at, can make a go of it.

An Author Moment

shlomi on October 17, 2018

Just finished hand edits of Last Run, a monster novel (originally 185k or closing on 800 pages). I’ll have a much lower word count when I’m done, if for no other reason than most post-apoc manuscripts are best salable when they’re under 120k. Or so I’m told. This month, at least.

I find the act of writing on paper validating, as I immediately see what I’m changing. In Word, or Scrivener, old words disappear, and are seamlessly replaced. (Yes, edit tracking in Word. Also yes, it makes it really hard to read.) It also gave me some more practice at writing in cursive. Because we all know that’s the next New Thing.

What I didn’t expect was the emotional impact reading the book. I hadn’t picked it up in a year, so while I knew what was happening, I was rediscovering the phraseology and tension. (Especially after pruning all those extraneous words…) So I had the tear-jerker moments, the tension-filled suspenseful ones. The chuckle at the narrator’s subtle wit. It was fun, damn it! I enjoyed it. And after re-reading it, I’m sure an audience will as well.

Unlike my Shmuley Myers books, this one’s going to go to a professional editor for cleanup, then straight to alpha (beta? gamma?) readers.

Hope my agent doesn’t mind hawking two manuscripts at once…

Accountability Report: Needing Brightly

shlomi on September 20, 2018

Snapshot of empty progress graph for "Needing Brightly" First, old business

A Day at the Zoo is being shopped with editors. Most are based in New York, which is in its yearly Jewish High Holiday convulsions. Which means it might not get the attention it’d have if, say, it gets pitched in two weeks. But… I’ve already cast that dice.

Zepps, my “I’ve tied myself into knots” manuscript, is done. At least, in the draft form. There’s a slew of corrections, but I’ve got the mss in the right shape in terms of plot lines. Yeesh. Don’t want to go through that again. Lesson: If I’m gonna “pants” a novel, I’m going to need the plot laid out better before I start, just so it doesn’t spiral out of control. (Damn characters and their agency!)

So… new business. After going through my “ooh, write this next pile” (current population: too many), I came across a little snippet called “Shave the Moon.” Long story short, and mostly riffing off that title, I’m starting a hard-SF, character-driven novel. Should be fun—if I can just stop stopping to do research on which the plot dangles. Tech and background have already gone through my wonderful writers group, the White Gold Wielders. (They tell me this means something in the gaming world.)

And I know I’ve been using titles for these unpublished manuscripts. I just want to say I have no expectations any of them will see the light of page. Just see what Marshall’s written on the subject.

The beat goes on. Itchy fingers to start writing. Must. Plot. A. Little. First!

Motivations

shlomi on September 11, 2018

I’m juggling too many books that aren’t finished. “Last Run” needs a 40% diet, and I’ve been plowing away at edits. “Zepps” has a hit list of dozens of changes (see my previous post: Knotted!) I’m wandering around, like a Shakespearean actor in a Dr. Seuss play, shouting “what’s my motivation” in the various voice of my characters.

Oh, and I’m sending, via agent mine, the first salvo of agent queries to editors. So I’m writing up tip sheets in additional to customized queries, to make life faster for her.

That’s not to say I’m done with the final flourishes on the novel I’m pitching (“A Day at the Zoo.”) Aside from my awesome writers group, Chris Brown (author of Kansastan and ArmadilloCon #40 had a few suggestions.

Baby Novelist Issues: Writing Myself Into a Knot

shlomi on August 23, 2018

I’m 116,000 words into a SF novel. It’s got great tech, interesting characters, action and thrills… and no motivation for bad guy actions. Well, it did, when I started. But the pitfall of pantsing is getting pulled off course, one degree at at time. (And when writing about matters aeronautical, there’s three dimensions to those degrees. But I diverge from the point.)

Part of how I got here is because of the aforementioned fun aspects. It takes time to tell those complicated battle scenes, the points where relationships change, key threads weave a novel together. And writing little notes to myself on the virtual margins on what to change on the first draft edits kept up my velocity. I just needed to remember all the facts and events changing in their later retelling from their initial description earlier in the book.

For instance, I realize in scene thirty that Maura’s got to have combat experience. She’s already written in with anger issues, but when her background was discussed in scene five, that big deal didn’t come up. No problem: write a note to rewrite history.

However, when “change requests” for the manuscript get past a certain point, the rewrite gets uglier and uglier. Which brings me to a pile of actions and plot twists now blowing in the breeze of a torn zeppelin at forty thousand feet, as the gore of two shootouts and two bombings dry in the thin air. What was worth their conflict, their deaths? What drives them to continue, at so high a human cost?

Oh, you don’t know either? Some fourth wall you all are!

I need to bite the bullet, put in all the noted changes (84, from trivial word or location replacements to “why’d they do it” types of changes), and then take a look at character motivations and see how it all fits together. {picks up chainsaw, chisel, flamethrower, and flyswatter and heads back in…}