In the groove with a more mature Abigail storyline

After complaining about being tasked with writing five scripts for the proposed web series, The Station, I find myself in the position where I have to offer an apology. I shouldn't have complained.


I am actually quite enjoying the experience. And I've completed the first drafts of three scripts already.


It's an interesting challenge, to be honest. My colleague, Nancy Lynch, and I have agreed that the web series should be based on the Abigail Massey children's stories but should aim for an older, more mature audience. As a result, I basically need to re-write the larger Abigail story arc, adding depth and detail and a great deal more conflict.


Where Abigail Massey of the children's stories responds to tense situations with an "Oh, golly" and a can-do attitude, Abigail of the web series will be forced to face much more difficult situations and much more challenging moral questions.


I'm having fun with the project. I don't want to give too many details away -- we are hopeful of securing funding for the series and then revealing details over the course of the show's first season -- but I will say that Abigail's family relationships aren't quite so rosy in the new series, her love life is more complicated and the group of young women she meets at the Station include not just a couple of nice girls like Jenny and Alice but also a group of "Mean Girls", as I've dubbed them in early drafts.


My sister, Lynn, suggested that I should name the two main "Mean Girls" after her and my other sister, Janice. But, when I explained to Lynn some of the things the Mean Girls get up to, she quickly retracted the suggestion. Yes, they are that mean...


What's fun for me is that, now that I have made the adjustment from writing stories for 8-12 year olds to writing scripts for teens and adults, I am finding myself in the same writing groove I have so enjoyed over the first five books of Abigail stories.


I feel I have a strong understanding of the characters, the setting and the overall arc of our storylines -- and that makes the writing easy and enjoyable.


Let's hope it keeps flowing along so well for the final two draft scripts.

Promoting is always more challenging than writing your stories

Awesome book launch event last Sunday afternoon for Volume 4 of the Abigail Massey stories. After some tense early moments, we ended up with a full house and a great crowd of supportive people.


My colleague, Mary, for whom this was the first real event to feature her creative work, seemed to enjoy herself very much and spoke beautifully. I did my bit and we ended up selling more than $1,000 worth of books.


All in all, an excellent day.


And now the real work begins. We have no fewer than eight promotional events on the slate for the next two months, plus media interviews, email campaigns and all kinds of other things we need to do to get people interested in the books.


It's fun but, to be honest, I find it hard. And extremely tiring. While I really enjoy the writing and I find it fun to do the public presentation part (both at speaking engagements and with the media), I do find the pace and the demands rather challenging.


You get yourself into a place where you don't want to miss any opportunity to promote the book so you have a very hard time saying no. You check your email constantly, you're always on Facebook or Twitter or Youtube tracking the progress of your various campaigns and you always... ALWAYS... feel like you have to respond fully and immediately to any request.


No matter how run down I get during these periods, I keep reminding myself that I should be grateful that anyone is taking an interest in the books. That I should be (and I really am, to be honest) delighted when the media calls wanting to cover the story and promote the book. That I should be honoured (and I ALWAYS am) that someone wants to spend his or her hard-earned money on the book that I wrote, over all the competing priorities in their lives.


Speaking of the media, I enjoyed a really fun interview this morning with a reporter for one of the bigger New Brunswick newspapers and I am very grateful that the Abigail books will be featured in a publication of that size and reach. The reporter was very nice and very well prepared, with great questions. Even better, she actually listened to what I had to say and asked excellent follow-up questions.


One thing that threw me, however, was that she didn't have a pen nor a single piece of paper with her. She read her prepared questions from her smart phone. She recorded our conversation on her smart phone. And when I gave her contact names and information for further research, she typed that directly into her smart phone.


Wow. It's a brave new world.

Honest criticism is an honour to receive

I wrote the other day about some of the possibilities that have arisen with regard to one of my ongoing writing projects: the Abigail Massey at McAdam Station series of short stories for kids.

At least I think I wrote about them.... oh well, if not, bear with me. Or should that be "bare with me"? No, that sounds a bit rude.

One such possibility is the opportunity to adapt my Christmas novella, A McAdam Station Christmas, into a stage play. Now, I'm not a playwright by any means. I wrote a couple of one-act plays way back in my youth but writing for the stage is not something I consider to be among my talents.

When a screen-writing colleague at work suggested, however, that I consider such a project, I jumped at the chance. I thought, "Why not?" and "It would be great if it worked out!" and "Holy crap, did I really just agree to this?"

But how does one go about converting a novella into a play?

With no clue how to proceed, I did what I always do in such situations: I took the process step by step.

First, since plays are all about dialogue, I stripped most of the exposition from the story, leaving only the dialogue itself and just enough "stage direction" to make it make sense.

Second, I re-reviewed the resulting draft script with the strengths and limitations of live stage in mind. I reduced the number of characters, for example, by eliminating unnecessary scenes and, in at least one case, having a major character take on the functions and dialogue of a minor character. I also reduced the number of sets required, by identifying three or four major locations and then relocating all scenes that had been set elsewhere in the novel into one of these locations.

The result was fine, I guess, but I strongly suspected that, well, although it looked like a play on paper, it didn't really have the shape and structure of a play. At that point, I was stumped as to what to do next.

My colleague came to the rescue. She investigated local theatre groups, identified one to which she felt the play was best suited in theme and audience, and approached its artistic director to discuss my play.

To my amazement, the director not only agreed to read the play, he also agreed to meet with us to give us feedback!

So tomorrow morning I sit down with my colleague and a real live theatre man to talk about the Abigail play.

He warned us that he intends to be blunt and honest in his "notes" on the play draft -- I guess he's had too many bad experiences with egotistical writers who don't like to hear criticism -- and I find myself actually quite delighted to hear that.

I have no fear of criticism. In fact, sometimes I think struggling writers get much too little criticism of their work. Strike that -- I strongly believe that very few struggling writers get enough honest criticism of their work.

And, as someone who knows that play writing is NOT my strength, I am really interested to hear what he has to say about how I can improve the Abigail play.

To be honest, I'm quite honoured simply by the fact that he read the thing in the first place, not to mention that he's willing to take the time to comment on it in person. I am trying not to get my hopes up that this means he found enough worthwhile in the play that he might consider mounting it on stage -- I am focusing on this amazing opportunity to get honest, if blunt, criticism and to improve my written work!

Pondering the next set of writing projects

As the end of November starts to slide into view and the sales process for the new Christmas novella swings into the automatic phase of appearance after appearance after appearance, I start to turn my mind to the next writing project.

As anyone who has read my earlier posts on this blog will know, I have been considering a number of different possibilities for 2015: a comic novel, a more serious novel that seems to be developing to of the comic novel, another collection of Abigail Massey historical stories for children, perhaps another Abigail Massey novel, and even a play project that would be developed out of A McAdam Station Christmas.

That's a long list, I know. And it may just end up that I actually pursue two, three, even four of them in the new year.

I have written about 15 pretty good pages of the comic/serious novel and I find myself continuously developing it as I wonder through my life.

I had a nice coffee with a friend the other day, a friend who has been strongly involved in the Abigail project over the past two years, and she has expressed an interest in creating a writers' group specifically to work on new Abigail children's stories. The idea would be that we find two more strong writers, toss around stories ideas together, then each of us go away and write a story for the others to review.

There are a lot of real advantages to this kind of approach, including the fact that it would become less a work project and more a social project and the fact that having four writers involved in the project would mean that we had four people helping to promote the new book once it is published.

The possibility of a new Abigail novel, meanwhile, got a jump start when, in response to a very simple story suggestion sent to me by a friend, I pumped out a fully developed plot proposal of more than 500 words for a possible novel. It surprised me that it came so easily: clearly I have been considering the possibility, at least in my subconscious, for some time.

And the play idea... well, that one might actually be the first on the list. A friend at work has earned a degree in screen-writing and is very interested in working with me on a play. And I think that, if we can write a decent stage play out of the Christmas novella, we could have it performed next Christmas at the McAdam Station or perhaps at a local theatre. That would provide a boost not just to the Station but to the sale of the Abigail books themselves.

These are interesting times... with lots of decisions to be made and lots of writing work to be done.

Promoting the promotional video...

It's finally finished. Once again, in order to support my work as a writer, I've had to learn a whole pile of new skills. This time, to create a new video trailer for my Christmas novella.

To my own amazement, it's done and I'm actually pretty happy about it. Check it out here.

In order to create this strange little, happily flawed little gem, I had to continue to perfect my understanding of, and skills with, a number of computer programs that come standard with my iMacs: Garageband, iMovie,  and iTunes. I also had to practice my announcing voice and my piano skills.

It ended up being quite a challenge but also a lot of fun. Especially since I'm so happy with the result.

Now, as I've said before, I have to figure out how to promote the video I've created to promote my book. So I am actually promoting my promotional materials.

I don't think I've ever begged so often and so hard for people to "favourite", "share" and "retweet" my messages.

So far, so good, however. The Facebook announcement I posted has been viewed by more than 300 people in the couple of hours since I posted it. And we're already past 15 views on the video itself, which isn't too bad.

Still, I'll keep working on promoting it. And I'll keep working on putting the novella to bed with our new on-line printer and on setting up our pre-launch party in my home town.

At some point, I wouldn't mind getting back to writing.

There's nothing like some positive words from strangers...

The author, left, chats with appreciative readers

This is what it's all about. Writing is, at its heart, an act of communication and, in my humble opinion, nothing is more thrilling for a writer (for this writer at least) than having the chance to communicate directly with people who are interested in his work.

I was invited to attend a book signing event on Sunday at the McAdam Railway Station and Hotel, the historical edifice in which I have set my collections of stories for young readers.

Held in conjunction with the Station's very popular "Railway Pie Sunday" event, the book signing proved to be a tremendous success, with surprisingly strong sale of the three existing volumes of stories and plenty of interest in the upcoming release of the Christmas novella.

I even sold a couple of the audio book version of the first volume of stories.

Even more exciting for me as a writer, however, was getting the chance to talk to dozens of people who have actually read the books. The feedback I received was consistently positive and supportive. And people who were new to the project proved to be very excited by what we are trying to accomplish through the sale of these books and eager to get reading.

It's a wonderful feeling for a writer to receive such positive feedback from people he's never met. Sure, our families and friends say nice things about our writing and we appreciate their kindness in doing so. But to have complete strangers come forward to tell you how much they like your stories, how excited they are to learn that another novella is on the way... that's a fantastic, inspiring feeling.

Amazing, humbling moments of feedback

Every once in a while you need to have a day that reminds you why you spend so much time and energy writing.

I had such a day yesterday. I was invited down to the Village of McAdam to take part in its Canada Day celebrations, talk to the people and maybe sell a few books.

It was a hot, humid, glorious day and the crowds at the event were surprisingly large, considering the heat and humidity.

I met a lot of really nice people and received a great deal of enthusiastic feedback on my writing. That, in itself, was fantastic. I have often said that writers of middling success, like me, don't get enough feedback (positive or negative) on the writing itself. We're not often reviewed in newspapers, online or in magazines and we don't have massive online presences to which our readers can submit questions or comment (and, believe me, I have tried very hard to build an online presence but it is slow slow going).

But two incidents from the six hours I spent yesterday in McAdam stand out in a really positive, almost overwhelming way.

Early in the day, a neat, prim woman with silver grey hair and glasses approached the table, a smile illuminating her face. I expected her to tell me that she had purchased the Abigail books for her grandchildren or that she had visited the Station many times, as is usually how such conversations go.

Instead, this very kindly looking woman saw the poster advertising the publication of the A McAdam Station Christmas scheduled for this coming November and actually did a little dance.

"So there's going to another book?" she said to me, beaming.

I confirmed that the story has already been written and work is currently underway on the illustrations and design for the new book.

She did another little jig, her arms waving with controlled delight.

"I have read every one of your stories," she then told me. "I just love them. I was so hoping there would be more."

I was stunned, to be honest, and honoured and a bit overwhelmed. I had written these stories for children and yet here was clear evidence that adults were reading and enjoying them too. And to see her excitement and delight... well, that was an amazing feeling for me as a writer. The best feedback I could ever hope for.

Then, a short while later, another woman stopped by my table with her young daughter. She smiled at me, looked over the display and noted the posters that said the next Abigail Massey book is coming out in November. "That's great news," she said. "My son will be so happy."

I thanked her for her kind words.

"Are you the author?" she asked, her eyes brightening even further.

I said I am, indeed, the author.

She told me she and her family are from Toronto, Ontario but have connections to McAdam. She explained that a family friend had sent copies of all three of the Abigail story books to both her daughter and her son and that her son, in particular, had loved them.

"He's here somewhere with my husband," she said. "I'll have to find him and bring him over to meet you. He'll be so excited."

A short while later, the woman was back, with her entire family this time. Her son was shy but looked with wide eyes at the books on the display. We had created a placeholder in the display for the next book (an appropriately sized box with the mock-up cover pasted to the front) and the young lad saw it, broke into a huge smile and gabbed the placeholder off the display.

Realising he wasn't holding an actual book, he looked up at his mom in confusion.

"It won't be published until November," his mother said, smiling. "You'll have to wait."

The boy looked suddenly downcast, as if waiting until November for the next Abigail adventure was simply too much to ask. I felt a sense of awe at that moment, seeing how much the books that I had written and my sister had designed and illustrated have come to mean to this sweet young boy from a thousand miles away.

"Is there something else you want?" his mother asked, directing his attention to our selection of Abigail mugs, fridge magnets and audio books.

The boy mumbled something, which I didn't catch, but his mother laughed. "I have no doubt we can take a picture of you with Mark!"

He glanced shyly up at me and, with an immense feeling of wonder and gratitude, I came around the table and posed with this young man. The feeling of excitement radiated from him as his mother clicked away with her smart phone.

I shook his hand at the end of it and thanked him for reading my books. His mother asked if I would be okay with her posting the photo on Twitter. And then they were gone.

It was an amazing, humbling moment for me. I have no great expectation that I will be the next J.K. Rowling or that the Abigail books will become New Brunswick's answer to Anne of Green Gables but, for that brief interlude at least, I got a taste of what that must feel like and a feeling of how important what we write can be for our readers.

The many hats of an independent author

I'm not sure if it's exciting or a pain in the backside but, when you have no publisher, you end up doing a lot of things for which you have no training, no skills and little interest, to support your books.

I spent much of this past weekend not on writing my next great novel but on trying to figure out how to design and produce such promotional materials as posters, CD "envelopes" and point-of-sale displays.

You read that correctly: point-of-sale displays.

I didn't even know what a point-of-sale (POS) display was until I started trying to think of ways to attract more attention to my Abigail books in the McAdam Railway Station's gift shop. The three beautifully designed story books sit there on their shelves, quiet and unassuming. I'm not complaining, to be honest, but I just thought there must be some way to tell the tourists who wandered through the shop that my books are something different, something for kids, something fun.

And that, apparently, is the job of POS displays.

So I decided to try to figure out how to make a POS display cheaply. Because, you know, when you have no big publisher behind you, everything you do comes out of your own wallet.

I researched and shopped online, trying to work out what I would need to create an interesting, three-dimensional, eye-catching showcase for the books and how much it would cost.

I even went so far as engineering and creating a cardboard contraption to display the different Abigail books.

Cool cool cool.

Then, fortunately for me, I checked in with my sister Lynn, who is a graphic designer, works in the large-scale advertising printing business and is my creative partner on the Abigail project. She got a good chuckle out of my efforts.

"Why are you re-inventing the wheel?" she laughed. "We do those kinds of POS displays all the time. We have templates. It's simple."

In my defense, I did have a great time doing all that research work so it wasn't a total loss. But I am excited that she can create a POS for me simply and cheaply.

Lynn also told me to forget about using plastic CD cases to sell my "Books on CD" versions of the stories. "No one uses those anymore," she said. "They're rigid, hard to mail and easy to break. Besides, they're a disaster for the environment."

Instead, she told me her company has a number of templates for cardboard CD sleeves that she can use to create appropriate cases for my audio creations. Cool cool cool once again.

Problem two solved.

And the posters, well, they're a cinch and always have been. She'll have those done in no time.

Three for three.

And that's when I realise just how fortunate I am. Yes, as an independent author I have to think about these things. I have to come up with promotional strategies and new ways to market my work (like the Books-on-CD/Podcast approach) and I have absolutely no background in marketing. I write. I read. I don't know much about promotions.

But at least I have a sister with the incredible skills Lynn has, who has access to the equipment and materials we need to put our ideas into action.

I can't imagine what my life would be like if I had to be a writer, reader, promoter, designer, and manufacturer.

That seems like a lot to ask of anyone. So I feel a great deal of empathy for independent authors who don't have access to a creative partner like my sister Lynn. And I feel grateful that I do.

Public appearances bring excitement... and fear

Public appearances can be both a blessing and a curse for a writer, especially one of minor to middling success.

First, it is a huge honour just to be invited to come out, meet the public and sign some books. Yes, you recognize that the people who invite you to appear in their venue hope to benefit as much from the event as you will but, still, just the idea that your presence in their building might actually attract customers is a pretty nice compliment.

And, let's face it, it is a huge ego boost to sit at a table and have people actually come out to meet you, talk to you and maybe buy a book or two. When you aren't published by a big publisher and you have no publicist and you're never reviewed in papers and on websites, public book signings like these are often the only time you get any real feedback on your work.

That's the blessing.

The curse is the almost immediate clenching of your gut when the thought occurs to you that, well, it's possible no one will actually come out to your book signing.

We've all seen those poor writers, sitting in our local book store behind a table stacked with copies of their latest novel, all alone and lonely. You feel so badly for them when you see them there, a look of hope mingled with despair on their faces, that you either go up and buy a book you would never in a million years have thought of buying, just to give them a bit of a boost, or you go out of your way to avoid having to interact with them at all.

The stomach clench when you receive the invitation is the recognition that, this time, that poor sap might actually be you.

In some ways, I'm lucky on that count. The books I'm promoting were written as fund-raisers for a local historical landmark and the book signings are planned to coincide with other, larger events at the landmark so I'm pretty much guaranteed at least a little bit of traffic at my table.

But, and I hate to admit this, I know that, when the day comes, I will find myself keeping a watch out for that person who sees the table and immediately turns away, or gazes at me with pity in their eyes.

The trap of self-editing...

I don't mind self-publishing -- my Abigail Massey at McAdam Station stories for children are self-published and they've done very well; this blog is self-published, come to think of it.

What concerns me is not so much the self-publishing as the self-editing.

(maybe I'll write about the overuse of underlining and italics to create emphasis someday... but not today [which might lead to an entry on the overuse of parentheses {uh oh... I'm trapped...}]).

Self-editing is, in my opinion, one of the greatest chasms into which a writer might fall (including the placement of a preposition at the end of a sentence, which I narrowly avoided there [only to get myself caught up in another one of these parentheses spirals]).

Case in point. I finished the draft of my Abigail Massey Christmas novella in December of last year and, over the course of January, went over it at least five times, revising, rewriting and editing. I consider myself to be pretty good with grammar and punctuation and all that so I felt pretty good about editing my own work.

Fine. So, at the end of January, I sent the revised and refined (might I say "perfected") manuscript off to the graphic designer with whom I work (my sister, Lynn, who is as fine a designer as I've ever met [and I'd say that even if she weren't my sister {uh oh, more brackets}]). I was confident that it was in finished and final form.

Enter the trap.

Lynn did her usual amazing work over the next three months, coming up with an absolutely gorgeous cover design, an equal amazing title page design and a beautifully laid out, easy to read book. Wonderful.

Now it's mid-April and Lynn sends the design back to me for review. I'm blown away by the beauty of it. Who cares about the writing? This thing will sell itself.

I want to be a careful, detail-oriented publisher, however (did I mention that, when you self-publish, you are writer, editor AND publisher?) so I figure I should read the entire novella again, just to make sure no sentences got cut off in the design process, no paragraphs got shuffled, no pages went missing.

Crash and burn. Lynn made few, if any, mistakes, to be sure. Her work was practically perfect: I think I found three paras that weren't properly indented and one extra period at the end of a sentence. (and I'm not sure those weren't mistakes in my own draft). Other than that, perfect.

But, who the heck edited this thing? Who was responsible for making sure the writing flowed smoothly, the diction was appropriate and the story consistent? Whoever it was did a terrible job.

Despite my very careful revisions throughout December and January, I still found in April that I had some significant revising and editing to do.

For example, I still had characters going back in time: at one point early in the story Abigail looks at her watch and sees that it's 9:50 a.m.; five paragraphs later, she squeals "Oh Golly, it's half-past nine..."

How does an editor miss that kind of thing?

And how does he miss the fact that the author used the word "up" three times in a single sentence and then, one paragraph later, "mirror" three times in two short lines?

Luckily for me, the three months Lynn spent working on the book gave me time to gain a little objectivity and perspective on the writing. Time, plus the fact that it was now presented to me in a completely different layout and format, allowed me the chance to distance myself from the story and see it for what was truly on the page, not for what I had intended to write.

I ended up sending Lynn about 40 edits that should have been caught in the original review and editing process.

But that is the trap of trying to be your own editor: you can't see your work clearly unless and until you put some time (three months or more) and some distance (provided through reading it in a new format) between the author and the written piece.

With time and distance, you regain the ability to read what is actually on the page, to see the problems afresh and to lose your own egotistical love for your own writing.

Self-publish all you want. But self-edit with extreme care and caution.