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Source Material

21 Saturday Oct 2017

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IMG_1611Want to flatter a writer?  Send them a selfie reading their book.  Works for me.  This man has nerd written all over him.  My target audience.  My tribe.

Cyber War I is as much a primer on computer security as it is fiction.  And as far as fiction goes, I didn’t make much up.  DDoS attacks.  Ransomware.  I took everything from the headlines.  I figured there might be a market for cybercrime fiction because I couldn’t find any.  Some stories play it up by saying a massive DDoS attack leads to some sort of dystopia, but that’s about as much tech detail they provide.

I read a number of nonfiction books for source material.  I will say, they were very good reads.  Such good stories that they read like fiction.  Fatal system Error by Joseph Menn and Kingpin: How One Hacker Took over the Billion Dollar Cybercrime Underground by Kevin Poulsen.  Reminds me of the first cybercrime book I ever read, a solid twenty years ago, The Cuckoo’s Egg by Clifford Stoll.

I’m still outlining and researching more than actual writing, for my next novel.  I would tell you that my new job has slowed down my progress, but that’s not to say it’s because I’m too busy with work that I haven’t the time to write.  It’s that all the discovery involved in a new job occupies my free thoughts.  I wrote my last novel during my ten and fifteen mile runs.  Nowadays, my free thoughts center around all my work projects.  It’s so hard to discipline random thoughts.

I’ve discovered a new trick though.  My buddy Dave has prompted me to listen to podcasts again.  Dan Carlin and Sam Harris.  Something I used to do more regularly ten years ago.  I downloaded four cyber security podcasts and began listening to them on my ten mile run today.  Excellent method to obtain source material for my next book.  Absolutely brilliant use of my time.

 

The Kirkus Review

15 Wednesday Mar 2017

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I was slow to warm up to the idea of paying for a professional review.  Not that I was concerned over the criticism, but I simply wasn’t comfortable with how marketing works in this industry.  I’m learning and I’ll leverage this review for some promotional plans.

It’s good feedback too.  Sort of reminds me of working with my editor.  I can’t thank my friends enough who have posted online reviews for me.  Those are like gold.  But, not surprisingly, they contain very little criticism.  That makes receiving professional criticism so much more interesting.  I’ve posted my Kirkus review below, but first here is what I think about it.

There are two negative critiques.  The point of some of my less-than-great writing examples doesn’t bother me.  I rushed this novel with a first draft in 6 months and fully published in 9 months, with minimal editing while working my day job.  I met my objective of getting a book on the shelf.  Plus, that’s really just an example of my writing style that I am okay with.  So no biggie.  The criticism on my character development though stun a bit.  Not just because I know it to be true.  One of my lessons learned was that I’m weak in this area.  Still, it hurts for the review to use my lead character to make this point.  I was somewhat confident on my efforts describing my protagonist.  It’s good criticism though.

I’m totally thrilled by the compliments.  Clearly this reviewer appreciates the tech thriller genre but it made me feel pretty good to be told I did well describing technical detail through dialog.  I initially used a large amount of narrative to describe highly complex topics and received negative feedback on this from my beta readers.  I responded by rewriting it into dialog.  To be fair, I deleted a great deal as well, but good to know my efforts were deemed successful by this reviewer.  Especially since my target audience is technical.  Below is the review.

*****

Computer-security analysts stumble upon plans for a cyberstrike that could immobilize the United States in Mahoney’s debut thriller.

After a security breach involving user IDs, Cyber Business International’s investigators trace the source of the hack to one of its clients, the Arabian Nights Casino in Macau. Rob Warner, who leads CBI’s incident-response team, heads to the Asian territory to investigate. It turns out that Justin Peters, a CBI network administrator there, had been doing work for the casino when someone accessed his privileged user account and wreaked havoc. Rob, however, is suspicious of the casino’s director of cybersecurity operations, Edmund Ho; he may have a grudge against the casino that stems from his demotion after a cyberattack that crippled the local network by flooding it with traffic. Further investigation reveals other players, which leads CBI to predict a similar attack in the United States. But a larger conspiracy may be at play—which would explain why an assassin is targeting Rob. Mahoney’s acronym-laden technological jargon gives his novel an air of sophistication. For example, he intelligently defines terms such as “botnet” and “exploit kit” by context, generally via dialogue between Rob and others, such as Rob’s friend and colleague Bill Johnson. Myriad plot elements along the way keep the tale exciting, including the actions of an American spy and more than one hired killer and a Las Vegas–set final act in which many characters converge. Some oddly structured sentences slow the story down, though, as when Rob questions “flirting with guidelines, well ethics, shoot, the law, like he did in Macau.” The novel also includes little information about its protagonist’s personal life, although it’s abundantly clear that his job is putting a strain on his marriage.

A smart, highly detailed entry in the techno-thriller genre.

*****

Kirkus reviews are known to be almost entirely a rehash of the storyline.  I feel fortunate to receive as much commentary as I did.  The final sentence is what I’ll be able to attach to book covers and other media to promote the book.

Indie Publishing

10 Saturday Dec 2016

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For anyone interested, this is a short primer on self publishing a book.  Made shorter yet, because I undoubtedly skipped a few steps.  All I can relate though is my experience.  I equate self-publishing with acting as your own general contractor on a large home improvement project.  You can hire out any task that a traditional publisher would do for you, or you can choose to do it yourself, or some tasks you can choose to skip.  You don’t need no stinking permit.

My first step was to write a first draft.  This was more than an outline, it was a cover-to-cover story, and it made me confident that I could continue the writing and publishing process.  Near the end of my first draft, I began peppering a writer friend with questions on what my next steps should be.  The key step I missed already was that I should have been participating in a writer’s critique group, eliciting feedback on my manuscript as well as providing others my critiques.  This process not only helps to progress your story, it forms a network of contacts in the industry.  This is something I’ll do earlier on my next book.  In fact, I’m already in one group and plan to start up another.

My next key step was to attend a writer’s conference in Denver, sponsored by the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers.  This turbo-charged my progress, providing me with invaluable information on both the industry and writing itself.  The cost was in the $500 range, so it was my first real financial commitment, but so worth it.  You can only learn so much googling information online.  There is nothing more powerful than attending sessions with real people and networking.  I  learned here that I needed business cards, which I then purchased for $15.

The business cards led me to license what would become my cover art.  I bought a graphic from Dreamstime for $15, which I later increased my usage rights for $69.  The initial license allowed me to use the graphic for my blog and websites and business cards, as well as 500,000 copies of my book.  This would have been fine but I was nervous that I didn’t fully understand the license terms and increased my digital rights to be safe.  I think many writers spend a few hundred dollars having something original created.  I believe you want your cover art well before you actually publish to use for early marketing.

Marketing should start early.  I could argue that I began to relate my efforts in my blog after my first draft was complete.  That’s something.  I still have not created a website.  I plan to over the Christmas Holidays but I did purchase a couple of URLs for about the price of my business cards.  One for my story title and another for my publishing firm.  You don’t need to establish a publishing firm but I was advised to and did it even though I wasn’t clear I understood its importance.  Turns out it is nice for other steps in the process like registering a limited liability corporation.  Also not necessary but if I make any real money it will be good for financial record keeping.  It cost $35 to register an LLC with the State of Colorado online.

Along with establishing a business entity, you should register with the IRS for an EIN, an employee identification number that is the business equivalent of a social security number.  This isn’t necessary either but again is wise.  The EIN, LLC and publishing firm were all good to have for when I opened up a checking account at the bank.  With these things in hand, I was able to register an account with a publisher.  I went with Ingram Spark.  Their role is essentially a distributor.  You could register directly with Amazon or Apple iBooks.  You will want these financial items in any case as you’ll need to setup an electronic bank transfer for your expenses and royalties with these publisher/distributors.

I took care of these business tasks while my book was with an editor for three or four weeks.  This included spending another $100 plus on ISBN codes.  As an indie publisher, I didn’t need to hire an editor.  I already had my second draft by this time and I was gaining confidence that it was readable.  I am so glad I hired an editor.  My third draft, based on her suggestions, is a thousand times better.  This cost me $800, which was very reasonable for my number of pages.  I could have hired additional editing services, like someone to check for typos or someone to design my cover and book layout before publishing.  I had help from friends on correcting typos.

Sort of wish I’d have paid what is called a book coder to design my book layout.  Might have cost me a few hundred dollars, but I still had to spend money buying a copy of Adobe InDesign.  I’m actually subscribing to an online version for $29 per month.  Having to learn how to use this software was harder than I anticipated.  The really difficult part is not knowing the format expected by publishers.  The print versions were straightforward but designing the eBook took me a full week to get right.  Actually two weeks if I count the time it took to fix an issue I discovered after reading the iBooks sample.  I could write another blog on just that process.  I probably will.  Ping me if you have questions on self-publishing.  Happy to share my experience.

Spacing

16 Wednesday Nov 2016

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I promised earlier to provide useful content as I report on the progress of my novel.  Useful I guess to anyone else writing a novel.  I’m currently in a final read-through of my manuscript and have discovered a nice editing tip to share.

I have a spacing issue with some sentences.  Initially, before I fixed it, one or two sentences per page.  And I have nearly 500 pages.  Spacing is the term ascribed to when a line of text doesn’t complete the row as expected before beginning on the next row.  The carriage return is off.  My first reaction was to place the cursor at the start of the next row and hit backspace, expecting one to three words to move back up to the previous row.  But this didn’t work, the words joined without a space.  So it’s a spacing issue.

I’ve known about this issue for months.  It occurred when I stopped using Apple Pages for my editor and began using Microsoft Word.  I preferred Pages because it had better export functions to ebook formats and whatnot.  I was eventually forced into using Word because that’s the file format the industry prefers.  Everyone is too stupid to use their preferred tool unless given the proper format, so we have to all agree on a single format.  I suspect the spacing issue resulted from some bug when exporting from Pages to Word.

For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how to fix it without retyping most of the split sentence.  Given the massive number of spacing issues, fixing this was tedious.  I kept putting it off until I could figure out the root cause and an easy fix.  I then noticed a pattern.  This typically occurred when the next line contained the start of a new sentence.  I wondered if it wasn’t the result of my double spaces between sentences.  This requires a tangential explanation.

I type two spaces between sentences.  Some people will tell you I do this because I’m over 40.  I’ll tell you I do this because I took a typing class in high school and was taught to do this.  The modern convention is to type only a single space.  I’m staunchly in the camp that two spaces is better and refuse to change.  As if my muscle memory will even allow me to change.  Long story short, I backspaced a sentence down to a single space, and the spacing issue corrected itself.  It was truly magical.  So I performed this simple edit for a while, but even this shortcut to retyping partial sentences became tedious after a 100 pages.

I then had this thought that maybe I could leverage the search and replace function.  But search on what?  It occurred to me that, as far as the computer knows, a space is a character as much as any letter.  I typed two spaces in the search function to test this out.  I couldn’t exactly see the spaces, but I knew they were there.  Before I could tab down to the replace with line, the number of found instances of two spaces began to populate to the right of the search bar.  This gave me confidence.  I typed a single space into the replace function and hit enter.  Viola, hundreds of double spaces were replaced by a single space, essentially all the inter-sentence spaces were fixed.

More importantly, nearly all my spacing issues were fixed.  I’m finding a handful of additional spacing issues as I perform my final read-through.  They don’t have a sentence starting on the next line, so it’s a variation of the bug that caused this.  I’m fixing these by retyping part of the sentence.  Not so many to make this tedious.  I’m finding very few typos.  I’m fixing some other things like italicizing words when I switch from third person to first person.  Stuff like that.  I expect to be done by the weekend.

Next step will be designing my page layout and publishing.  My brother-in-law is researching the best font to use for my title.  Right now I’m looking at stencil.  I need a war theme.  I welcome your suggestions.  For all my beta readers, give your feedback quick.  I’m still targeting Black Friday.