The value of a good cover

22 March, 2012 ~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

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Currently I do the illustrations for all of my book covers. I have a little bit of an art background (in fact have even had some exhibitions), so while I’m no professional I like to think that I have a reasonable idea of how to make a reasonable picture. Sometimes my covers work and sometimes not so much. Case in point here is my cover for my story Stone Goddess. I had the idea – to suit the story – of a pile of rocks that kind of looks like a statue. I attempted a blend of the rocks with the image of the statue (all rendered in Bryce). There are some elements that work, but I’m not convinced that this cover is going to sell many copies of the story (I think the story is one of my best, but so far has sold zero copies on Smashwords).

I was following Jeff Ambrose (another writer who’s inspired me on writing goals) and found his post about working on his covers. Now I though his covers were pretty good to start with, but some of his new ones are just leaving me in the dust. Look at the one here (used with his permission for illustrative purposes) for his story The Stone Goddess. Wow (and yikes, practically the same title). That illustration is so professional that it ought to help him sell an awful lot of copies of the story. (I’m terrified to read his story for fear that not only is the cover better, but so is the story).

That said, he is using dreamstime (an online resource where artists sell the rights for the use of their illustrations), so the covers are going to be pretty professional. Maybe I should take a lesson from Jeff and start investing a little money, rather than time – especially when a cover isn’t working out so well.

Maybe I’ll buy one of Jesse-lee Lang’s illustrations (she did the picture on the cover of Jeff’s story), and go head-to-head with Jeff.

Book in hand, typos… in hand

20 March, 201220 March, 2012 ~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

The proof copy of the paperback edition of The Tunnel arrived today. It’s very cool, I’ve got to say, to hold the physical result in my hands (as you can see from that goofy grin). The idea of a proof copy, I guess, is that final check before it gets properly published. I knew there would be some tinkering with the cover to do, but what I didn’t expect was to open it up and spot a typo immediately. This is after three proofreads (one by me, and one by someone else [who’s not to blame at all!] and another by me). It’s just a silly thing too – an “at” when it should be “as” – which makes that sentence (“And as Morgan was leaving…”) make no sense at all. Guess I’m going to have to proof the whole thing again. I might have to do that backwards. At least I know that the ebook version is correct (checked it just now – I guess I got the paperback proof printed before that final proofread. Silly).

The Tunnel – The Hidden Dome Volume 1: new cover and updated text

9 March, 20129 March, 2012 ~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

My novel The Tunnel, available at Smashwords and other ebook retailers, has a new cover (subtly nicer, I think, richer colours, better layout) and (very importantly) updated text. It’s been proofread (yet again) and more typos have been corrected, plus a few clunky sentences. I seem to have this habit of dropping the last letter from a couple of words (“her” for “here” and “the” for “they”) and missing it in initial proofreads. So now it looks better and reads better.

The little pic here is how the old cover looked, for comparison’s sake.

Careful what you wish for: rejection slips

7 March, 2012 ~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

I got a rejection slip today. That means I’m down to thirteen live submissions.

This slip was one of the nicer ones, I’ve must say, in that it included some feedback – fair and fairly positive – from the first readers, with comments like these below:

“[T]his is a complex idea. You’ve only barely touched the surface. The writing is solid and workmanlike, but because the central concept is so complex, you’ve been unable to offer much of characterisation, or setting, or colour.”

“This should be a novella-length piece, so you can do justice to the main concept. Accepting it in this form would be wrong for both you, and [our publication].”

Fair enough. Decent food for thought. It is a very stripped back story, one that I had worked on for a long time. The first versions were five or six thousand words long and really didn’t work so well. The final version is 1600. That’s barely more than flash fiction.

Perhaps this is a case for writing a longer version (again). I’ve done that before – my novel Rotations originated from a flash story, as did my forthcoming novel The Room (that flash story – “Don’t Sleep Downstairs” – is still available at Flashes In The Dark.

I had planned on writing a couple of short novels this year, amongst all the other stuff, and I am writing longer these days (that rejected story was written and rewritten quite some time ago).

Now that I think about it my latest novel – The Tunnel – was going to be a short novel (it went to over 60,000 words when I was expecting 25,000 – as I was getting into it I realised that it had to be bigger). I’m feeling more confident with longer forms these days (most of my current submissions are from 5000 to 20,000 words), a far cry from my period of focusing on flash fiction.

I guess that’s a project for later in the year – take that “solid and workmanlike” writing and develop the story with some characterisation, setting and colour. 🙂

In the meantime, the story is going back out to find a publisher who might like it in this form (I still think it works as is – a spare and stark piece). Then I’ll be back up to fourteen live submissions.

Fourteen submissions out and waiting

6 March, 2012 ~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Well, waiting and writing, writing, writing. I have fourteen submissions out with publishers right now. I know for some writers that might be a pretty low number, but for me it’s up amongst the highest at any one time. I find I get both excited, and concerned. Excited that some of these stories that have been out for a while might be moving up from the slush pile to more senior editors (yay). Concerned that they maybe never arrived, or have been lost. I need to keep track of those enquiry times – some publications say enquire after a week (I don’t have any subs with those ones at the moment – their turnaround is pretty slick), some say wait ninety days before enquiring.

It’s hard not to be excited, and then always a little disappointing when it comes back after ninety days with a form rejection. Still, that means it can be live again with another market.

So I get the goofball award, but at least it got me writing with focus…

5 March, 20124 July, 2024 ~ Sean Monaghan ~ 2 Comments

In my last post, I bleated on about my best story not even making the long list of a competition (when a slightly weaker story had made the shortlist in another round of the same contest). Well, it turns out I was reading the wrong list. I was reading the (just published) list for the just previous round of the contest, where I’d entered a much weaker story. In fact, they’d already been polite enough to personally email me and let me know that my (not especially very good) story for that round hadn’t made the finals (no surprise there).

This means three things. First: my current best story ever is theoretically still “live” – since it’s in the contest’s current round, not lost from the list they’d published.

Second: I was being a goofball and I need to keep better track of things.

Third: thinking I need to just write better is a great motivator. I completed a new story over the weekend, and have begun yet another one. Talk about motivated. I felt like I was writing with fire. Now I don’t know that either of these stories is better than that other one, but I raged into the writing of them and I think they’re up there with my best. Good enough, in fact, to enter into those next rounds of the contest, when those submissions open up.

Whether to have a crisis of confidence, or just get on and write better…

2 March, 20122 March, 2012 ~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

Last year I entered a writing contest. I didn’t win, but I placed pretty highly (top twenty). Yay for me. I entered again (this particular contest has four rounds a year), with a story I knew wouldn’t win – just to reassure myself that placing wasn’t easy. Sure enough that story didn’t even make the list of around 100 named as making it to the long list. So placing highly was some kind of achievement. Yay for me, again (not to sound too self-congratulatory…)

Good. So then I wrote my best damn story ever and entered that for the current round, feeling pretty smug and sure of myself that I would, if not win, at least get into that top 20 again. The results have just been posted, and guess what. Not a win. Not top 20. Not even on that freaking long list of around 100. Nada.

WTHeck? That was the best I could do. And it didn’t even place. Maybe I didn’t even send it right (nope, I got an acknowledgment). Maybe the reader was having a bad day. Maybe I really do suck as a writer. Maybe I should just pack it in and buy a PSVita and spend the rest of the year playing Uncharted.

Right. That would be a solution.

Actually, I’ve got a better solution. Write a better story. Yep. Gotta keep improving as a writer. If I want to win this competition then I need to write my even better best damn story ever. In fact, I’ve got the idea down already. And I’ll start writing it tomorrow.

And, on another note. I’ve got to remind myself that contests and submissions are all something of a lottery. You’ve got to buy a ticket to win. Sure, it’s important to write well, but it’s still a whole lot to do with what’s going through a particular editor’s or judge’s head on that particular day.

That story? I’ll be send it to a pro market soon. Actually – tomorrow. You’ve got to buy a ticket to win.

300,000 words progress

22 February, 2012 ~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

At first I was going to give an update when I hit 75,000 words for the year. That’s a quarter of my goal. But that milestone passed a couple of weeks back. As of today I’m at a shade under 95,000, so will probably be a third of the way to my goal early next week.

It might sound like I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, but I was making allowance for doing tutoring this year. I might not have made quite enough allowance. Tutoring is going to be one big giant tyrannosaur with teeth like stalagtites (and stalagmites). The paper’s structure has changed radically this year. Instead of the regular 4 assignments, with a three week turnaround, the paper now has nine assignment dates. Now those are smaller, certainly, some of them are much smaller, but there is much more regular on-going contact. That’s got to be good for the students and developing their writing, but for me it means that the blocks of time between the deadline dates are smaller and less free. I’m sure that it will be good for me: challenging and stimulating, rather than just cruising into it, but at the same time I’ll have to redraw the way I hit my own writing goals.

Speaking of goals, my first new novel for 2012 is up and available. The Tunnel is available immediately from Triple V Publishing as an ebook through Smashwords – here. It’s a sci-fi adventure story. I’ll blog about it more when it’s made it through to Kindle and B&N and so on, and when the print version is out.

Free fiction

17 February, 2012 ~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

As I’m deep in the heart of writing novels and novellas, I’ve found a moment to write a piece of flash fiction. “With Demon” is a horror piece about the problem of trying to take a demon to a wedding. Kind of. And it’s available for free now at Microhorror. Thanks to editor Nathan Rosen for publishing this story – check out the rest of the site too: Nathan hosts a wealth of horror flash fiction.

Four recent publications

15 February, 201215 February, 2012 ~ Sean Monaghan ~ Leave a comment

As the writing races on like a horse on a track, I’m still managing to find a little time to format and publish some short stories and collections as ebooks.

First up are two short stories – “To A Pile of Ashes” and “Stone Goddess”. Ashes was first drafted years ago while I was working on my thesis. Over the years it had numerous revisions and eventually found a home at Infinite Windows. Goddess first came out a couple of years back, first in Lame Goat Press’s Horror Through the Ages, then in The Best of Lame Goat Press, and was also podcast by Barry J. Northern at Cast Macabre. Ashes is fairly straightforward adventure sci-fi, while goddess is a Mars story but sci-fi with a slight horror edge.

Then there’s also the second of my flashpacks – short collections of flash fiction stories. This new one, following Lizard Brain and other stories (which I neglected to publicise), is Zombie-Eyed Girl and other stories: five stories with at least a hint of zombie to them. One story – “Unbuild the Bridge” – is new for this collection, with the other four having appeared elsewhere over the last few years.

Finally there’s another Michael Shone story – “Katie Stumbled”. This is an odd hybrid of a story, a little sci-fi, a little somethingpunk, and all adventure. It was originally published in the Static Movement anthology Bounty Hunter. I used the pen name since I already had a story (“A Visit to the Theatre”)under my real name in the volume.

These will show up at ebook retailers if you search for Sean Monaghan, or just find them at my Smashwords page – here.