Category: Stories and Me

Emotional Autobiographical Writing

Posted on by Kai Raine

I just started reading One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of This Will Matter by Scaachi Koul. It’s a brilliant book, a collection of personal essays by the Canadian daughter of Indian immigrants. Obviously, in many ways I can relate.

But it struck me that Koul’s ability to take her own life and tell her stories with honesty and emotion while still being able to make fun of herself, her family, and her friends is an amazing, impressive skill.

I tried to do a similar thing yesterday, though it was less a story and more part of my mental health blog. Yeah, I thought to myself, I come across as too angry, pretentious, accusatory. How is it that Koul can write herself and come across as so self-aware and engaging, while I probably come across more like a child stomping my foot?

I think it’s a skill, and for me, it means having to train two separate skills.

The first is learning to explain my actions and thought process and behavior and emotions to myself. There’s usually an existing framework, an existing understanding of those things; but it isn’t always the best one. This is the element that makes autobiographical content easiest to write years in hindsight, when I can step away from the emotions and my then-interpretation of the situation to perhaps see more clearly.

The second is learning to talk about my life in a way that makes it fun and engaging and relatable for other people. Some may say this is just a generic writer skill, but I disagree. It’s rather different when you’re writing about someone else or a story in your mind, versus when you’re trying to write about yourself. Again, I think that this is something that time aids a great deal: if enough time passes, we can look at our past selves as if they were other people, and that distance makes it only a little harder than other stories. But writing about oneself in the present, when the person on the page is supposed to represent exactly who you are?

It’s terrifying, and it’s difficult. Just because we can accept that we are flawed in certain ways doesn’t mean we can write those flaws in an engaging and relatable way. If we’re appealing to the reader for their understanding, their acceptance—this probably comes across the page, or the screen. This probably is something that creates more skepticism in the reader, rather than less.

It’s these elements making my entire Keeping Ahead of the Shadows experiment the least relatable of the things I write, I think—unless you’re going through the exact same thing, and can give me the benefit of the doubt when I misstate something or misrepresent something.

It is a skill I’d like to train, though. My purpose, as a writer, is questioning assumptions—including assumptions about myself. This may seem to contradict yesterday’s post somewhat, but I want to be able to question things, without being thrown off balance and down a depression spiral if I lean a millimeter too far.

In a few decades, age will help me in this, I think. When my neurological pathways are more settled, less plastic, I’m sure I’ll be able to better hold myself firm. (At the same time, I’ll probably be less able to fold my mind against someone else’s, the way I still sometimes can.)

It’s a complicated thing to do, autobiographical writing. What matters to me? What would matter to readers? What seems important to me, that isn’t to readers? What seems unimportant to me, that is important—or even crucial—for readers to understand where I’m coming from?

This is one of the reasons why I’ve been updating this blog less and less.

Meh, maybe I should try vloging instead. Maybe I should stop trying to write about my own life, and focus on my fiction. Maybe it’s just one of those things I have to stick to, that will improve dramatically with time and practice.

Trapped in My Mind: Big Picture, Little Picture

Posted on by Kai Raine

I’ve always felt a little bit trapped in my own mind. It frustrates me endlessly that while I can flip a switch in my brain to understand  any perspective, I can only view one perspective in depth at a time. Generally, since I must be at least a little biased, I let my bias be in favor of my own perspective.

I’m also a fan of character-driven stories. Even if a story is genre fiction, it’s the characters that I hone in on—their ups and downs and the way that they think and perceive and learn and grow.

What this means, in essence, is that my reading niche is a place where stories have fleshed out characters with all the little details to show me who they are and who they are becoming, but also allow for a sense of the bigger picture.

In the final stages of editing/rewriting These Lies That Live Between Us, I was watching and reading a lot (and I do mean a lot) of One Piece. In a mindset where I was finding it hard to focus on—much less enjoy—any other author’s creations, One Piece simply clicked, as it always has since I first discovered it at age ten.

I analyzed this, and recalled the way that my attitude changed with regards to TLTLBU in the many different forms that it has taken over the years.

In my first post-publication review of TLTLBU, I received a positive review (not posted publicly) that contained the following feedback:

I had a hard time trying to follow the story line in a few places because there were too many characters. Fewer side characters would help and more development of the main characters to get to know them better.

Honestly, I’m surprised I didn’t get more feedback like this. There’s a lot going on in TLTLBU, and a lot that is left unstated—merely implied, or left out of the text altogether. Notably, that Nicki’s storyline is told entirely from other characters’ POVs, with the only character used more than once being Dara—I knew that I risked alienating some of my audience by doing this.

I did it anyway because it felt right. To me, Nicki’s story is much more fun when you the reader don’t know what she knows or is planning. It’s thrilling and intriguing in a way that mounts and climaxes toward the end, in a traditional and time-tried fashion. In contrast, if I were to tell that same storyline from Nicki’s perspective, the tension would be highest when her father throws her in the tower. After that point, even though she is caught off guard a few times, things generally go her way—which is great for Nicki, but not very exciting to read if we’re in her head.

I did consider telling that whole storyline from one other person’s perspective—Manon, perhaps, or Odilon or Hervé or even Enri—but I didn’t feel that was right. Making any of these characters the primary POV for that story would have conflated their role in the story. If I did that, then in later books, when I begin to use Nicki’s POV, I would have to create an all-new storyline for the former POV character so that he or she didn’t simply fall out of the role of protagonist.

I could have done it, certainly. But What Words Have Torn Apart is, at its core, about the three sisters. If you’re wondering why, then, Alderic was permitted the role of protagonist: his role as a member of the king’s guard means that his storyline, unless he deserts, will always run parallel with the Ceryllan royal family. After the events of TLTLBU, his storyline is even more entangled with the sisters’. This is why I could comfortably make him a protagonist when needed.

There were a lot of things I could have done. I could have cut the distracting detail about how nobility doesn’t use contractions (though they occasionally do), and the common folk do use contractions (though they occasionally don’t). But I didn’t, because I like doing something that starts out feeling ever so slightly off before you realize that oh, this is just how this world is. (Although, let me say, if I’d known I was going to do an audiobook, I probably would have edited this out. It was a nightmare to try to do in voice, and will probably sound even more unnatural as I try to make it work.)

I could have avoided mentioning the inner workings of the royal council, and Nicki’s as-yet-undefined title of Shadow, until it became relevant in the third book. But I didn’t, because I prefer the world that shows you that there is something going on before it is relevant (at which point it will be explained) over the type that surprises you with new titles and roles that the characters had all along that never got mentioned until it was relevant to the story.

What I am illustrating is that all of these choices were made, knowingly and consciously, with only myself as an audience in mind. Does this sound like a terrible decision? It probably would have sounded like it, to me, at one point in the past.

But this is where I must come back to One Piece.

One Piece has a question and answer column between chapters that began in about volume 4. At some point, the author explained that he has this rule: when he writes a chapter, he rereads it and asks himself, “Would I have enjoyed this as a boy?” to which the answer must be yes. If the answer is no, he tosses it and starts again.

One Piece is remarkable in many ways, but one of the most notable is the continuity. As the story goes on, we learn more about the pasts of various protagonists as well as the world itself, answering questions that we never thought to ask. Sometimes, the set-up is hundreds of chapters before the payoff—over a decade in real world time, in some cases. Most authors writing this way would inevitably create a few plotholes that had to be dismissed by handwaving.

Yet somehow, One Piece has avoided that pitfall. It also has, for the most part, avoided repetition. (Though in recent story arcs this may be up for debate. If you feel that Dressrosa=Alabasta, Whole Cake Island Arc=Enies Lobby Arc, or Sabo=Ace, DO NOT POST IN THE COMMENTS! I’d be happy to have that discussion, but please use the contact form to avoid spoilers in the comments.)

As to how the story has managed twenty years without plotholes, and only three major claims to repetition? I believe it lies in the author’s method of making sure that the story appeals to himself.

This means that he can comfortably go back and reread his own story from time to time—no small endeavor—and still catch any details that might be relevant. Yes, he has a notoriously enormous number of notebooks filled with notes—but notes alone can’t keep you from accidental plotholes. There must be rereads, especially where histories are being inserted beneath something or someone that we readers already know.

And so—I geared my book toward myself. Not my teenage self, who I think would probably have preferred a much more clear-cut story with a clearer sense of who to root for, and a more traditional romance—but my present self.

I expect that there will be more readers out there who will take issue with the way I’ve chosen to do things. I expect to receive at least a few negative reviews that take issue with any of the issues discussed above, and/or a few others—the ease with which I kill characters and animals despite this being a YA novel, for instance.

But in creating a final draft for myself, I also inadvertently stumbled upon something that has become valuable to me as an indie author: I don’t take negative criticism personally. Because the final version of this book was written with a reader like myself in mind, I’m well aware that not everyone will like it, and I accept that. I hope that TLTLBU will find many people who enjoy and love it half as much as I do, but I understand that it won’t be so for everyone.

Since publishing my book, I’ve started taking a lot of the criticism of it a lot less personally. I acknowledge and accept it, but a reader missing what I was going for, or informing me that it was a difficult book to get into, doesn’t bother me as it once did. Ever since this last round of edits (if you want to know whether you have the final version, check chapter 39: if it was written by Stelle, then it’s the old version; if it was written by Deric, it’s the new version), I don’t fall into the well of wishing I could make changes anymore.

It is, at last, as complete as I could make it. (Though I have no doubt that there will come a day—in a month or a year or a decade—when I will idly wish I could go back and refine it.)

I believe that, in trying to fix all the little-picture problems in the details, and tailoring the book to my own preferences, I stumbled across a pre-emptive solution to a big-picture problem that I’d never noticed: as long as I’m writing first and foremost for myself, readers’ opinions—while valuable—no longer feel like judgements. They are more of an acknowledgement that some people understand and enjoy this story with me—which is delightful beyond words—and that some people don’t—which is disappointing, but not cutting. This is particularly important, I realize now, as an indie author, because when you lose confidence in yourself and your book, there’s no one there to assure you that your book really is as good as you think it is. There’s no agent or publisher whose existence alone can assure you that, at the very least, someone experienced thought your book stood out among thousands of others. There’s only you, and your own self-assurance and love for your book.

As an aside, I’d like to say that I don’t mean any writer should ignore criticism. I always aim to question myself and my assumptions, and if someone comes up with some criticism I’d never thought of, I will give it all due consideration. But at the end of the day, I find that it’s important to be critical of the criticism. No book has ever pleased everyone, and if I rewrote my manuscript to try to please every person’s criticism, it would never be finished—and I would never be happy, because I would be writing toward a non-existent sense of universal acceptance. So yes—I read and acknowledge and consider and value every reader’s criticism. But at the end of the day, it doesn’t diminish my delight in my story, or my love for this book that is my firstborn child.

Perhaps this was obvious to other writers and I’m a late arrival to the party. It was a valuable piece of growth to me all the same.

So, I’d like to announce a the start of new blog series! I’m going to start talking a little about my journey into indie authorship. I know there are a lot of blogs out there that talk about it, but I thought that perhaps my experiences and insights as someone who dove into this world headfirst, knowing nothing, might be valuable to someone out there.

 

 

I started a mailing list! Please subscribe below. You’ll only receive notifications about the thing(s) you asked for—no spam, I promise! Plus, you’ll get access to Nevena’s Silence, a prequel to TLTLBU.

The Time Conundrum, a.k.a. TLTLBU Chapter 39

Posted on by Kai Raine

When someone advises you to make a major change to your manuscript, how do you know if it’s the right decision or not?

In my case, it’s simply a question of time. Time to try to implement it. Time to process the changes that brings to the manuscript as a whole. Time to decide whether or not I like it.

I added chapter 39 in November, after the book was well into the publication process. I was prompted by a cousin who remarked (without having read the book) that I shouldn’t have just one handwritten chapter.

I considered this out loud with her. I don’t remember the entire exchange, exactly, but I remember considering transposing Deric’s note to be its own chapter, then discarding the idea for some reason. It seemed important that the writing belong to Stelle, bookending the story with her writings.

Well, it’s no spoiler to tell you that that messes with the otherwise linear timeline of the book. Stelle’s first handwritten chapter is chapter 2; Gwen feels the effects of her death in chapter 3, which we then see in chapter 4. Thus, chapter 39, which is again Stelle’s writing, takes place in the timeline after chapter 2 and before chapter 3.

It also creates this morose, dreamy atmosphere that outlines and makes explicit much of what I feel was already there in the text or between the lines by chapter 38.

In terms of atmosphere, perhaps this is preferable to the cut-and-dry tone with which I otherwise portray grief throughout this book, I thought—yet at my core, I don’t like it. I never have. I like the descriptions of grief cut and dry.

In an earlier draft of this book, much more of the focus was on the grieving process. There’s a reason why I cut most of that out. The grieving process is very personal, and it’s hard for a reader to empathize with page after page of description of a grieving process that doesn’t match their own. This is why, though in my mind, Gwen’s grieving process is much the same as it was in that draft, the text is a lot subtler. It’s there, at times even explicitly, but hopefully now it’s been tempered enough to mitigate the barrier of personality.

Chapter 39 is a letter that Stelle wrote to her sisters while delirious with fever. It has some details about her life at the Crossing that this book would otherwise not mention, but mostly it’s a letter of love and regret. If ever anyone thought that Stelle carried the anger with her ever since leaving Castle Dio, chapter 39 dispels that.

And yet.

The more time passes, I don’t think it’s all that important. That Stelle’s anger has long been cold is there in the text of chapter 4.

I don’t like that there’s an entire chapter dwelling on her past regrets and pain—because, in the end, she isn’t truly past the anger. It may have gone cold, yes, but as we see in chapter 4, it’s easily ignited again. Stelle has only left her anger and pain behind—she hasn’t worked through them, or overcome them.

It took me 2 months to reach this conclusion. There’s been a lot of back-and-forth of “Should I take it out?” and “Should I leave it in?” While I was swaying back and forth, my book was published.

I don’t regret it: in a strange way, it makes me feel better about the over a dozen typos I’ve found in the published book. Because those typos exist, I feel better about asking to change an entire chapter, since I’m requesting all these other changes. But because chapter 39 will change, I don’t feel as bad about the typos: because now, there’s some reason for these books to exist. They may have a lot of typos, but they’re also going to be the only ones with this chapter.

So, if you disagree with me, and feel the book is better with Stelle’s chapter 39—it’s out there, and I can’t completely take it back.

(But the year is also wrong. It ought to have been 451 A.D. — so there you have it, yet another typo.)

 

 

Kai Raine is the author of the high fantasy series What Words Have Torn Apart, beginning with These Lies That Live Between Us.

Ebook is available at Amazon (US, UK, Germany, India, Japan, Italy, France and others) Kobo, Google Books and iBooks.

Paperback is available through Barnes and Noble and Amazon (US, India, UK, Germany, Japan, Italy, France and others).

.

 

Why I Write

Posted on by Kai Raine

I believe that stories can set the mind free.

The largest portion of each of our minds is tightly constrained by the realities that it has experienced, and the beliefs of the cultures and societies that have surrounded it. This necessarily limits our ability to understand, and therefore accept, the experiences and beliefs of those with vastly different experiences, or from starkly contrasting societies or cultures.

I have heard this neatly summed up as “tribalism,” “preference” or “comfort,” but it’s so much more than even all three of those combined. It’s biology. Our brains are not designed to be accepting of all our fellow humans. Our brains are designed to survive, and we respond more strongly to fear, sadness and anger than we do to joy, comfort or happiness.

Even in love, often portrayed as the most positive of all emotions, many of us have internalized negative emotions as loving or romantic, because this is how our brains are hardwired to feel strong emotions; and because our culture, society and media have a tendency to propagate this. Pick up an average popular romance novel, and generally speaking, the driving emotions will feature jealous anger, fear of loss, sorrow of unfulfilled wanting, and/or sexual frustration. Sometimes, a character reveling in one of these emotions is even portrayed as noble.

This is not to say that this is bad, or wrong. But it is a pattern—a reality too often accepted without question. All too often I have heard people (women especially) complain about the abusive dynamics that would result if they were to take popular romance fiction tropes as reality. Even more often I have watched these tendencies unfold harmfully in reality before my eyes.

It doesn’t matter if our stories are that way because our brains are hardwired that way, or vice versa. (I’d guess it’s a bit of both.) The resulting effect is the same, though what those effects are will vary from person to person, and culture to culture.

Most of us don’t possess the natural capacity to shrug away these cultural norms and simply accept what we are taught is socially unacceptable. For example, this could be someone coming walking down the street naked, or a family member announces out of the blue that they are in a polyamorous partnership.

In fact, even if we do possess that natural capacity, as we get older, our brains grow less plastic. It becomes increasingly difficult to accept starkly different viewpoints that we’re encountering for the first time.

Young or old, this is especially difficult in reality. Certainly, there are any number of non-fiction books out there that would help us see how the minds works. But how many of us seek those out? In my experience, we tend to seek to read the views we agree with; when we read the views we disagree with, it usually seems to be for the purpose of figuring out how to counter those views.

I have no doubt that there are people out there who seek out the exotic and the new and the things they find instinctively repugnant with the intention of learning to accept and empathize with these views. I commend and admire these people.

I am not one of them.

Let me be clear: I do not advocate for cultural acceptance over legal action. If someone comes to from a culture where it is acceptable to murder someone over an insult, and that person commits murder, I believe that that person should suffer the consequences and go to jail. (Ideally, I would advocate for rehabilitating them to be able to live in a society without committing murder on the regular, but that’s another story.)

This is not because I believe murder is an inherently evil act. I believe our society and the people in it are much healthier and happier in a world where murders are not condoned.

As a person, I aim to be able to accept any act that does not do anyone harm of any kind.

As a writer, I aim to write compelling stories without bringing any of my own judgements to weight the scales. Should you read my stories and choose to judge my characters as good or evil, that is your choice—and, perhaps, the influence of the perspective of the character through whose eyes you are experiencing the story.

But I aim to make it difficult to easily call any one character purely “good” or “evil.” Instead, I showcase their humanity and tragedy, adversity and perseverance. Everyone is human. Everyone is flawed. There is only understanding and empathy, or the lack thereof. There are protagonists and antagonists, and I have no doubt that some of readers would overlook the protagonists’ flaws and the antagonists’ virtues.

That’s fine. I don’t hold my opinions and intent over anyone’s interpretations. I only aim to make it a little harder to simplify it into an “us and them” scenario.

I write my books first and foremost to be enjoyable to read. My debut novel is indie-published, but believe me when I say I put every effort into making sure it looked as good and read as easily as I could manage. Reading a novel shouldn’t be a chore, or homework. But as you enjoy the story and the plot and the characters, I will try to subvert your expectations—not to shock you, but to make you think and try to empathize with a character whose choices and beliefs have stopped following the expected narrative.

Sometimes these are based on things I wished I saw in stories more often, or indeed at all. More often than not, it’s what feels right for that character in that story when I break through some small part of my own mind’s barrier of what I think should be.

This is one of the reasons why, so far, I’ve written principally for a young adult and middle-grade demographic. Writing for these age groups means my characters are of similar age, and have minds that, while already holding some strong beliefs, can more easily accept that these strong beliefs are not consistent with new facts that come to light.

The effect that this style of writing has had on my psyche has been remarkable. I feel like I can see far more clearly than I ever could: not just my made-up worlds, but reality.

Come and join me in my world. Read my book, and tell me what you see.

 

 

Kai Raine is the author of the high fantasy series What Words Have Torn Apart, beginning with These Lies That Live Between Us.

Ebook is available at Amazon (US, UK, Germany, India, Japan, Italy, France and others) Kobo, Google Books and iBooks.

Paperback is available through Barnes and Noble and Amazon (US, India, UK, Germany, Japan, Italy, France and others).

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These Lies That Live Between Us: Book Trailer

Posted on by Kai Raine

Three sisters: the heir, the airhead and the dead. Parting in anger, each attempts to confront the looming threat of invaders practicing forbidden magic in her own way. However, they soon learn that history is not so simple—much like their bond to one another.

This is the start of a fantasy epic about family, adventure, love, loss and the ever-changing interpretation of history long gone.

These Lies That Live Between Us is now available in ebook form at Amazon (US, UK, Germany, India, Japan, Italy, France and others) Kobo, Google Books and iBooks! Paperback is now available from Barnes and Noble!

Indie Publishing: A Summary of the Pros and Cons

Posted on by Kai Raine

…as I have experienced them in publishing my novel through Gatekeeper Press. Let’s jump right in.

Pro 1:

Achieving a professional look while retaining complete (or as near as I could tell) creative freedom. The fonts, the cover art, and everything were all up to me to choose.

Pro 1.5

That said, I didn’t have to choose everything. If I didn’t give them specifics, GP has people who know what they’re doing who could work off of the basic information about the book.

Con 1:

Going in as a wide-eyed newbie to bookmaking, I learned that there were a lot of things that I never knew I had a preference about until I was sent something, and my gut screamed, NO!

Pro 2:

I was always able to request changes, and they would be made.

Con 2:

Asking for changes to a finished book file (which I ended up doing a couple times) does cost money, on top of the original fees.

Pro 3:

My author manager Takako was very nice about these costs, waiving fees where she could.

Con 3:

Because I was publishing through Gatekeeper Press rather than simply doing everything myself, there were some restrictions: for instance, sometimes I would want a certain font, but they would not have that licensed.

Pro 4:

With regards to the above “restrictions,” these were not insurmountable. For instance, if I offered to pay the licensing fee for a font, they would use that font.

Ultimately I didn’t do this, though I came very close. I was very picky about a handwriting font that went into the book. At the start I told them I didn’t care what font they used but it should look like “a wayward teenage girl,” but ultimately the font they chose just didn’t click with me. So I finally sent a list of fonts I liked and told them if they had none of those, I would pay the licensing fee for one of them. Fortunately, they had one font from that list, and used that.

Con 4:

I had no idea how picky it’s acceptable to be. (I still don’t know. I wonder if some of the people who had to deal with me and my learning curve are exhausted with the lists of changes I can demand now and then.) Ideally, I wanted to try to build these relationships so that if I decide to go this publishing route with the next work, I could happily work with the same people. I’m not entirely sure I succeeded.

Pro 5:

If I could articulate a question I had about the process, I could always ask my author manager at GP. It was okay that I didn’t know everything.

Con 5:

Because I knew nothing, a lot of my questions only came to me after the point at which it would have been ideal to ask it. Even now, I sometimes suddenly realize that there’s some detail that I never thought about and wonder, is it okay this way? Does it need to be changed? If I want to change it, between the fees and the work I’m making other people do, is it really worth it?

Most recently, this happened when I suddenly realized that the cover design isn’t credited to the artist on the copyright page. Of course—I never specified, because I never thought that was optional; and I never checked to see if it was there or not. But at this point, I’ve decided to let it go: the cover artist has seen the “final” version and didn’t mention it either, and there’s a page about her in the book, so the information is there inside the book.

Pro 6:

I really, really like the end result. (At least for the ebook, and the digital interior of the print book. I haven’t actually seen a physical print book yet.) I know I couldn’t have made it look like this on my own in this amount of time. Maybe I could have figured it out eventually, but the amount of stress it would have caused trying to figure out what I wanted it to look like when I didn’t know half these details would have been considerable.

Con 6:

It was frigging expensive. My book probably cost in excess of $2500 (this is an estimation because I haven’t yet been billed for all the changes made, or for the page count).

Don’t get me wrong: this was a choice, and I don’t regret it. I could have made it cheaper, but I didn’t. I had paperback and ebook formatting and distribution, a complete line edit, and probably close to 20 content changes (i.e. changes to the text after file is already complete) from Gatekeeper Press, plus an extra 10% on top of that to expedite the process (back when I thought I could get it out by Christmas). I paid an artist for the cover art.

All of this could have been done more cheaply, but I didn’t because I wanted it to look like a book I would pick up and read without knowing anything about it.

Pro 7:

Once I made the decision to do this, I could make it go fairly quickly. It took two months because of all the changes I kept wanting, which is already quite fast, but if I’d wanted fewer changes or known what I wanted from the start, it would have gone even faster.

Con 7:

Once the book is out, that’s it. You’re on your own. GP has no marketers or publicists, though they do say they can refer you to people they trust.

This is big. You can’t just publish your book and wait for it to sell—especially for someone like me, whose readership is still limited to people I know. It has to get promoted somehow, pushed out to a readership.

Marketing myself could easily cost me as much as it cost to make the book, if not more; but being too cheap in marketing could mean this book never reaches an audience beyond my circle of family and friends. Marketing myself effectively would take skill and experience. I’m still at the start of my learning curve here. Maybe in a year or two I’ll be in a position to talk about marketing as an indie author, but at this moment I’m not.

Honestly, I think it would be foolish to think about making money on this book. Yes, the listed prices are presently a touch higher than the costs of production. But as soon as there are other books published, I plan to drop the costs of this one to the cost of production. Currently, I view it as a foothold to use when marketing the next book.

If you happen to be someone who wants to help me in this, you can absolutely do that! Sharing and recommending my book on social media will help the book reach past my circle into your circle. If you’re someone who read and liked the book, I need (positive) reviews on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other such sites. Those are extremely valuable, because the presence/absence of reviews and the ratings can be the critical difference when one stray stranger comes across the book and is contemplating whether or not to buy it.

That said, I don’t want anyone to feel like they have to do this. If you write a positive review, please let it be because you liked the book, not because I asked you to.

If the book isn’t your cup of tea but you want to help me anyway, I’m looking to distribute my book by donating it to libraries in my area, and asking friends to do the same (I’ll provide the books). Contact me if you want me to send you a copy to donate to your library. Alternatively, if you can convince your library to purchase a copy, that would be even better! It will be (and may already be) available from Ingram, which distributes to libraries, and NACSCORP, which distributes to universities in the US.

Pro 8:

The reach of this book as distributed through Gatekeeper Press seems much better than I could have achieved on my own. As stated above, it’s available with distributors to universities, libraries and retailers, as well as all the usual sites like Amazon, Kobo, Google, iBooks and Barnes and Noble, which is great!

Con 8:

The reach of the book may have been even better had I gone through traditional venues.

Pro 9:

Having control over every step of this book including how it’s publicized makes me more driven to sell it, to get it to a larger audience. There’s no guarantee it would have succeeded no matter how it was published, and no one knows why this book is worth it better than I do. Traditional publishing would have meant that the book was out of my hands, and perhaps I wouldn’t have felt so strongly about it anymore after the editing and cover art and approach to marketing.

Probably if it had flopped, I would have shrugged and moved completely on to the next book rather than saying to myself, “Okay, that didn’t work. So what do I have to do to get this to people?”

I’m closer to my book now than I was even when I made the decision to go to Gatekeeper Press, and I’m determined to do everything I can to help it find its audience.

Con 9:

But if it had been traditionally published, I would have sold a lot more copies than I can dream of now, even if the book had flopped. I wouldn’t have born the costs of production, so any money lost wouldn’t have been my burden to bear.

Pro 10:

I retain all of the rights, and receive 100% of the royalties. This doesn’t mean much of anything right now, but in the unlikely instance that this book ever becomes middling to big, this will be a big deal. Then again, I’ve never been traditionally published, so maybe there are advantages already that I’m not aware of.

Pro 10.5:

Most of the cons, as you may have noticed, are about the financial burden, of a first-time-only variety, or about the financial burdens that resulted from my inexperience. If I were to go through this process again, I could mitigate some of them.

Ultimately, a lot of the financial stuff comes down to a time vs money question: which would I rather save? If the answer is money, then I have to be careful not to overload myself, because this could easily become overwhelming and crushing both mentally and emotionally. I was aware of this, which is why I chose to pay to have a lot of it done for me this time around.

But having done it once, I feel that there are some things (like formatting the interior for the print copy) that I’m sure I could manage myself without having to pay for it next time. This would also ease the burden of constantly asking for changes.

Having done this once will especially improve the way I approach marketing next time. Now that I have one book published, as long as I keep trying to get it out to a larger readership, maybe in another novel or two I’ll be able to start thinking about earning money on my work.

If I were to do this again….

I’d start focusing on marketing and publicizing the book more than a couple weeks before it comes out. Which means I’d also not bother trying to rush publication. That time could have been valuable if I’d focused on using it to build hype.

I’d go into formatting with a list of fonts I like for absolutely every part, or at least my preferences (like that there should be serifs, even on headers)—or I’d do it myself.

I’ll think about details like chapter headers before I submit the manuscript.

I’d submit an ARC to reviewers. I’d do some sort of event on the date of publication, trying to sell the books in person.

Related to making sure there was less rush, I’d make sure there was less stuff on my plate. Trying to do holidays and make a book all at once was a lot.

It would probably be smart to hire editors twice next time: a developmental edit after I feel like I like the manuscript, and a line edit when I’m ready to publish (because I assume there would be a lot of editing in between).

In summary…

It’s frigging expensive, and frigging scary. At the moment, it’s looking more like a money-draining hobby than a career.

But that’s ok. My goal going in was that if I can reach 100 readers I don’t personally know who genuinely like my book, that’ll be enough for now. That’s nothing if I want to make any of the costs back that I put into the book; at the same time, it feels like a ridiculously lofty goal right now. Lofty, but (I hope) achievable.

These Lies That Live Between Us is now available in ebook form at Amazon (US, UK, Germany, India, Japan, Italy, France and others) Kobo, Google Books and iBooks! Paperback is now available from Barnes and Noble!

Beginning My Journey in the World of Indie Publishing: Why Indie Publish?

Posted on by Kai Raine

As you may be aware, my first novel, These Lies That Live Between Us, came out today. It’s thrilling and exciting, but also frightening. One of the reasons it’s frightening is because I chose to go the route of indie publishing. I’d like to share some of the lessons I’ve learned over the course of this journey, but first I have to start with the question: why indie publish?

The internet seems to be awash with people with strong feelings about indie vs traditional publishing. Some declare that traditional publishing is dead or too biased in favor of established names and commercialization. Others declare that authors who indie publish are people who didn’t want to put in the work to be accepted through traditional routes, or whose book simply wasn’t good enough.

I used to feel that traditional publishing was the only way to go. It was San Francisco Writers’ Conference 2017 that changed my mind. I met agents, publicists, indie authors, and indie publishing companies there, all of which contributed to my understanding that this will be an uphill battle no matter which route I should choose to take. There are pros and cons on all sides, and ultimately all that rests on me is to make a decision.

I received cards from four agents at the “speed-dating” event intended for authors to find an agent at the conference. I left the conference with the resolution that I would pitch to the four of them, and if they all rejected me, I would self-publish.

I sent to three agents and got rejected. I never submitted to the fourth, whom I had saved for last, because she was my first choice and I felt so sure that if anyone will take it it’s her. (The idea was that if the other three rejected me, I would learn and perfect my pitch before it got to my first choice.) I lost her card with the instructions for my submission, and was frighted of being rejected simply because my query hadn’t fulfilled her requirements stated on the card.

Then, one fine day in early November, I realized—I could publish at the end of the year and take another novel to SFWC 2018. Maybe I could have it published by Christmas and convince people to buy it as gifts. (Eventually the Christmas deadline was abandoned in favor of a more realistic one that allowed for corrections, of which there were many.)

Most likely, one of the factors that contributed to this decision was the length of time that I’ve been shopping this manuscript around. I’d been agent-hunting for a solid year, without even a manuscript request. Even at the conference, some agents in casual conversation explained to me that the premise of my book sounded unmarketable—too cross-genre to have a clear target demographic. I couldn’t deny it: even as I market it as a YA novel now, I’m frightened of the disappointment that some readers might suffer when they realize that it doesn’t do what they expect—most particularly because none of the “romances” will lead anywhere.

Of course, looking at the facts in retrospect, I see an entirely different picture. My pitch improved dramatically after the conference, but I only sent to three agents after that point. In the middle of submitting to these three agents, I cut over thirty thousand words of internal monologue and other nonsense, and added a third storyline. The first fifty pages changed dramatically in September 2017, and I never submitted to another agent after that.

Above all, with everything I learned at the conference, my story has gone from having potential to being great. I’m not trying to brag or sell myself, though you may not believe me. It astonishes me, the changes that those eight months brought to my story. If I had to estimate, I’d say that 80% of the book was rewritten in those eight months. In many ways, it isn’t the book I brought into the conference anymore. I was proud of that book, but editing it was an exhausting chore. I love editing this new one. Even when I start out not wanting to, the story sucks me in and I have trouble stopping.

That’s never happened to me before with something I’ve written. I didn’t think it was possible to enthrall myself with my own words and my own story.

So perhaps my mistake was not submitting to agents after all these edits were made, and I knew beyond a doubt that I written something worth reading. Maybe if I’d done that, I’d now be starting a journey into the world of traditional publishing. Or maybe I’d still be sending my pitch around, writing and rewriting it ad infinitum.

The fatigue of a year of rejections wasn’t so easily reasoned away by confidence in my new and improved manuscript, especially when there wasn’t a single voice around me supporting traditional publishing. The voices around me were instead urging me to self-publish and put an end to this so I could move on to the next work and asking when this book would be published. I can say without a doubt that the voices around me became the determining factor that effected my decision, for better or for worse.

And so the decision was made.

The only caveat I had about self-publishing was that if I was going to go that route, I needed my book to meet professional standards. No one picking up the book would know that it was self-published just by looking at it, or by reading it.

So I turned to Gatekeeper Press. I met Rob and Tony at the conference, and even there and then was strongly compelled by their style. From the moment I made the decision to self-publish, I knew I would do it through them. Gatekeeper Press is at its core a distributor—they make sure the book ends up on every ebook retailer it can—but they offer every step of the publishing process for a flat upfront fee, including cover art, formatting and editing.

The same day that I decided to abandon the last agent and self-publish, I emailed Rob and scheduled an appointment with Tony on their website. Five days later, I signed on with them.

Now, less than two months later, I’m a published author! I understand the world of publishing a lot better than I did even a mere two months ago. I’m glad I made this decision, and hope this book eventually finds a readership that loves it as much as I do.

These Lies That Live Between Us is now available in ebook form at Amazon (US, UK, Germany, India, Japan, Italy, France and others) Kobo, Google Books and iBooks! Paperback is now available from Barnes and Noble!

Elements of a Popular Story

Posted on by Kai Raine

In my first semester of university, I made friends with a girl who loved books as much as I did. Both of us loved the fantasy genre, and both of us aspired to write books of our own. At the time, I voiced the view that I could never write a popular story, because there could be nothing true in one. My friend said that she could never write a popular story, because she could never write a story so simple.

Now, of course luck is the biggest factor in the popularity of a book. But, while I have no doubt that every popular book was lucky, not every book can become popular by being lucky. In order to be that, a given book has to have the ability to resonate with many people from many different walks of life, and this is a remarkable thing. A book can be poorly-written or not at all liked by critics, and still be wildly popular because it resonates with people. It is an amazing phenomenon, and any author who manages to write something that is so resonant deserves a commendation.

At the same time, if anyone could pin down what made something popular, the world would be a very different place.

So my friend and I were each thinking of “popular” in terms of a handful of books that we thought about a lot, that proved our points. In reality, there were as many books that disproved our points as well. There are popular books that simplify the world; that highlight its complexity; that get adopted into classroom staples; that English teachers come to abhor; that cater to the commonly held views of the audience, reinforcing what they already know; that become popular in foreign cultures, where the views highlighted in the story are not commonly held at all.

I have never expected to write a best seller. But I also know that in all likelihood, I’ll manage to sell to only a handful of people without my story ever leaving any sort of mark anywhere. I love the stories that I am trying to tell, and I want to be able to tell them so that other people can love them too.

So I took it upon myself to read popular books, and whatever my personal opinion of the book, I analyzed and studied them to work out why they resonated with so many people.

Since the novel I always intended to be my debut is a YA fantasy novel, over the past decade and a half, I have given particular attention to the juggernauts there: the Harry Potter series, the Moribito series, several of Tamora Pierce’s series, many of Miyuki Miyabe’s fantasy- or supernatural-themed books, Jonathan Stroud’s Bartimaeus trilogy, the Twilight series, the Hunger Games trilogy, and more recently, the Lunar Chronicles. (Note: the popularity that I refer to is not necessarily limited to any one geographical location.)

Based on these books, I put together a set of general trends in popular YA fantasy novels. Not all of the elements are in all the stories, and for some stories, the answer wasn’t as simple as yes or no to the presence of a given element. Below, I summarize the elements I identified in these popular series in the form of a chart:

  Harry Potter Tamora Pierce Bartimaeus Twilight Hunger Games Lunar Chronicles Moribito Miyuki Miyabe
Humor Yes! Sometimes Definitely Not really Nope Yes! Sometimes Sometimes
Familiar setting with a twist Yes: boarding school with magic Yes: medieval fantasy with girls Yes: Victorian London with daemon-based magic Yes: our world with vampires Yes: reality TV in a world that’s lost perspective Sort of: the Sailor Moon world where some lunites have magic Yes: historical Japanese setting with magic Yes: our world with secret magic
Good vs Evil plot Yes Sometimes Yes …Sort of? But the plot got dropped like a hot potato, so hard to say Yes, but with nuance underneath Yes Sometimes No
Mystery Yes On occasion there is an element of mystery, but not as a rule Yes What avoids sunlight and sucks blood? Only in book 2 (but the mystery is only apparent when solved) Yes Yes Yes
Characters with distinctive, easily-identifiable attributes Yes Yes Main characters No for the main characters but yes for many background characters Not as much Yes Yes Sometimes
Low stakes for the reader (without sacrificing high stakes for the characters) To an extent, though some beloved characters are killed Definitely No Yes, hilariously so To an extent, though there are psychological consequences Yes To an extent Yes, but a harder question to answer here
Simple story and easy concepts* Yes: a testament to Rowling’s prowess as a writer. There is plenty to think about for readers who wish to, but it isn’t necessary within the story. Yes Seemingly yes at first but ultimately no Yes Yes Yes To an extent To an extent, but with complexity of thought
Strong friendship and a love story for the ages Yes on friendship; love stories exist, but ymmv (Rowling’s did) Yes Yes Yes Yes, though friendships crumble Yes Yes, though the love story is subdued and mostly only implied Yes, though love stories are fewer and usually bittersweet
Fanfic fodder and further world exploration Like nothing else: the characters and the world are rife with possibilities  Yes. There is no end in sight to the books set in her worlds by the author herself, much less the fandom’s additions to that world. No Yes, even spawning the Fifty Shades of Gray trilogy Yes: not only for the HG characters, but bringing HG AUs to other fandoms Yes Yes to the extent that 1 book expanded into 12+, but difficult to say on the fandom front. No

*While this entire exercise is subjective, this criterion is particularly so. This is based on my opinion alone.

I was content with this explanation for a long time. The popularity of a given series, it seemed to me, was directly proportional to how well it executed each of these elements. Harry Potter, whose popularity outshone all of the others by far, executed every single element well. The only one that it didn’t—low stakes for the reader—it improved upon, because there are enough consequences to give the reader a sense that the stakes were truly high, though all of the main characters came out unscathed and lived happily ever after.

My friend had been right, I concluded. The core of a good popular story was something derivative enough to feel familiar, but with a twist that made it feel fresh, with a story simple enough to follow with the brain turned off, but enough detail to provoke thought if the reader so chose. It’s a balancing act, I thought: a balancing act so very precarious that many books tip too far to one side or another and miss the mark.

Then, years later, I discovered George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire. His books are wildly popular, but are missing most of the elements I had identified. It confounded me. I loved those books then and still love them now, but they broke the system I had grown comfortable with, defining the makings of a popular fantasy novel.

But those are books for adults, one might argue. A different set of rules govern those. Yet I had been reading many fantasy novels, YA and adult, and had never seen one that so thoroughly disregarded these “rules” and was popular all the same. As an example, here is how it fares side-by-side with Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy:

A Song of Ice and Fire Lord of the Rings
Humor Nope No
Familiar setting with a twist Medieval world with surprise dragons and ice zombies Widely known creatures of legend all in a fictional world together, with hobbits
Good vs Evil plot Not so far. Nuance abounds Yep, like wow
Mystery In the first book A little, at the start when Frodo and Bilbo don’t know the power of the ring yet
Characters with distinctive, easily-identifiable attributes Many, but also a cast of hundreds; so instead the houses are the ones with distinctive sigils and words Yes, but the attribute in question is often species; beyond that, less so.
Low stakes for the reader The stakes have never been higher No: the characters are always in danger of death or temptation by the ring, and ultimately much is lost for the hobbits, dwarves and elves
Simple story and easy concepts Not by any stretch of the imagination The world was new and the concepts were new, but within it the rules are clearly and well defined
Strong friendship and a love story for the ages Not so far Yes to both
Fanfic fodder and further world exploration Possibilities abound and the author is forever expanding the world; but adult books tend to have a smaller fanfic community than YA, and the author abhors fanfic Tolkien expanded his world widely, creating both the standard for world building and the template that has guided the western fantasy genre for decades

Yet so many other books match these elements. One might conclude that it’s not that the elements I identified were irrelevant; it was that I was missing some other elements that Martin highlighted. For instance, I believed that it is important for the story to be simple and concepts easily explainable to appeal to a mainstream audience. I neglected to realize that some concepts which seem simple in the hands of a given author would come across as extremely convoluted and complex in the hands of another.

Harry Potter is the prime example of this. The world of Harry Potter is astonishingly easy to digest, almost like ours but different, full of fun quirks and exciting new discoveries around every corner. Even though the books spend a great deal of time explaining the world, it never feels like the author is explaining to us, because it’s so much fun to read about. The difference is that in Harry Potter, much of that detail is irrelevant to the main plot. (The details that are relevant are investigated, discovered and then exposited about at length.)

So too does Martin fill our heads with details of battles and political plays and strategies and history. He does so naturally in dialogue, as characters talk about what they have seen and believe, or in internal monologue, as characters reflect on what has been and what will be. But it all ties in with the here and now: what the character is doing or feeling or planning. It never takes the form of hollow exposition. No doubt there are those readers who find it too involved to be enjoyable, but the popularity of the books speaks for itself: a great many people enjoy this. But all of this is relevant to the plot, and to our understanding of the story as it continues to unfold.

What about the other elements? Well, A Song of Ice and Fire would not work if someone tried to make it fit with the other elements. No doubt there is also an element of time to this: after so many decades of Tolkienesque fantasy about good versus evil, the fantasy reading community needed a new sort of story; and our world today is increasingly less interested overall in narratives about the good hero defeating the evil villain.

But above all, Martin knew the story he wanted to tell, and he wrote it well, in a way that was well-suited for both him and the story. I have often reflected that in the hands of another author, Daenerys’s story might be the sole or main narrative, or Jon’s, or perhaps a fraction of the cast of characters. Not many people have Martin’s brain for strategy, and fewer still know how to explain strategy concisely without sounding like they are talking down to the audience.

Similarly, not many people have Rowling’s ability to play with words: into character names and spells and object names she infuses story and humor and delight. She also has an uncanny knack for taking the most familiar of things and making it exciting and fresh and hilarious with the smallest of twists.

And so these two amazingly popular fantasy series lean on what the author is naturally good at.

That, I believe, is the most important element. If an author loves his or her own strengths in writing and leans on those strengths, the result is remarkable. Perhaps those strengths are not what one would wish, or what makes critics sing. Perhaps those strengths are not given towards mainstream popularity at all, but rather appeal to a smaller audience.

The truth is, there’s no way to know until the book hits the market. And even then, if it doesn’t do well, it’s impossible to know if the story was not appealing, or if it simply wasn’t particularly lucky. As authors, we can only focus on doing what we do best.