Posts Tagged ‘editing’

Laura Horn: First Draft Finished!

Posted: July 23, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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After a year, a week, and two days, with twenty-six minutes before midnight, I am finally finished with the first draft of my fourth novel Laura Horn. I wish I hadn’t had to take so many breaks to focus on schoolwork (not to mention writing was nearly impossible during my study abroad trip), but I’m glad I was able to get it done. And even though it’s a first draft and obviously will need a lot of editing when the time comes for that so it can look something resembling publishable quality, I’m quite happy with the result.

For those of you who are not very familiar with LH, it follows the story of a girl with a very traumatic past who, through an odd series of accidents, stumbles upon a conspiracy that could destroy the United States of America. With a few good friends to help her, she sets out to save her nation from the threat that looms over it, and confronts her demons as well.

So it’s kind of like White House Down or Olympus Has Fallen, only it’s got less explosions and a little more character development. Actually, a lot more character development. Our titular character goes through a lot of changes throughout the book, and it’s astounding even to me, the guy who created her, how much she changes in the course of the story.

It’s also a lot more thriller than I tend to write, but my next big project will be some pure psychological/supernatural horror, so it all pans out in the end.

Anyway, I’m happy to announce that I’m finally done with LH, and that in a few months (schedule permitting) I can start editing the book and getting it ready for eventual publication. I’ll be setting up a page for the book on this blog with the notice “Coming Soon”. With any luck, I can have this book out sooner rather than later, and maybe work on a sequel or two (I have a couple planned out, I just need to commit to them).

So now for the page and word counts. I wasn’t actually too far off. I did say the three chapters that would make up the epilogue would be around five-thousand words and it turned out to be more like nine-thousand, but hey, it could’ve ended up much longer. Anyway, the Epilogue in total was 32 pages and the word count ended up as just under eighty-nine hundred. That brings the total page count to 356 pages and 94,774 words. About average for a Rami Ungar novel. Of course, these counts might change drastically by the second draft, but this is a good placeholder until then.

In the meantime, let me tell you guys what projects I plan to take up next (though they may or may not be in this order):

  • Work on the outline for the novel that’ll be my senior thesis (more on that at another time)
  • Edit Video Rage
  • Write several articles on writing for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors
  • Write a few blog posts I’ve been putting off so I could finish LH.
  • Write several short stories, and hope I can get a few of them published in magazines
  • Start assembling a new collection of short stories
  • Experiment with writing erotic fiction (yes, I plan on doing that. I meant to do it earlier this summer, but things got in the way).
  • Try and get through the many books I still have to read for pleasure.
  • And just have a good time as usual.

Not too hard to do, right? At least, I hope so.

Anyway, that’s all for now, my Followers of Fear. It’s late, so I’m going to read a little and then sleep. It’s my day off tomorrow, so I’m going to find plenty of time to celebrate before I get back to writing (it’s a work hazard, I just can’t stay away from it). Anyway, that’s all for now. Have pleasant nightmares tonight. I know I will be!

Writing Is My Other Part-Time Job

Posted: July 20, 2014 in Living and Life, Reflections, Writing
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When most people hear that I work, they ask me where I work. I inevitably reply, “I work part-time at the financial aid office at OSU.” What I often forget to add is, “I’m also a fiction writer in my spare time.” The reason I bring this up is because I recently read this article on the Huffington Post (which you can check out here) in which she learns that her friends don’t see her as working because she writes full-time, and reasons why writing full-time should be considered working (some of those reasons I will reiterate here).

The thing is, writing is work. Hard work. Some people envision writers as sitting on their butts with a notebook, typewriter, or a laptop and watching a story unfold before our eyes. In their minds, we might as well be playing video games or watching Netflix for all the energy we’re expending.

The reality is far from that image. Here’s my process for writing a novel, for example: I outline the story, which usually takes a couple of weeks depending on how crazy my life is. Then I do my preliminary research, which is usually done when I’m not working at the office or doing schoolwork (so summers make a great time to do research because I’m not in classes, but sometimes I’m not lucky enough to be in summer when I do research). Then I start to write. And there’s nothing more daunting than the blank page at the beginning of a project. My novels are usually upwards of eighty-thousand words, so seeing that first blank page is terrifying. I have to force myself to get the first words onto a page and from there try to get into a groove.

Usually I’m doing schoolwork and working part-time while I’m writing, so I often save my writing during the evenings, and usually during the commercial breaks when I have something on TV I really want to watch. So how much I get done is dependent on time, how distracted I am, if anything else comes up in my life, and a million other things. With this sort of schedule, writing a novel can take anywhere between six months (which was the case with Snake) to almost two years (as was the case with Reborn City). I’m in the final chapters of Laura Horn, and I’ve been working on that for over a year, taking breaks for all of life’s crazy moments.

And that’s another thing: sometimes I have to take a break from writing in order to work on school or anything else going on in my life. When that happens, it usually takes longer to get words down on the page. As was the case with RC and is the case with LH.

Your average writer.

And if I need to do some additional research? That takes a bite out of writing time too.

And after I finish a novel, it usually requires one to three more drafts before I’m ready to publish it. Even then I usually send it to someone (usually another author and a friend, though in the future I might be looking at professional beta reader/copy editor to help me with the technical stuff) to make sure I haven’t missed any plot holes or horrible typos. Then I design the interior and the cover, apply for a copyright, and set a release date.

And after the book comes out, there’s all the marketing to do. Heck, even before the book comes out, I’m advertising in every place I can so that as many people as possible will know about the book and maybe want to read it. I’m blogging, Facebooking, tweeting, updating business cards, e-mailing, slipping mentions of my new book into articles, updating my resume, telling people by word-of-mouth, and asking people who do end up buying the book that once they’re done, I’d really appreciate it if they’d write a review or do something else to let me know what they think. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to all the marketing I have to do in order to get word of my book out there.

Because let’s face it, I don’t have a team of advertising professionals. I’m self-published, so part of the territory is that I’m doing all my advertising on my own. It isn’t easy, but it’s something I take upon myself so that my book can sell well and people will read it.

Does that sound like sitting on my butt playing video games or watching Netflix? No, it’s work. We don’t have time cards or an office cube or water coolers, and very rarely anything like a regular paycheck. But yeah, we are working. It’s as grueling a job as working in the Sales Department or on an assembly line or going to a meeting with execs from another company. Our job just allows us the perks of setting our own hours and picking our own projects.

In summary.

So I think from now I’ll be adding that writing is my other part-time job when people ask me where I work. And I hope people who read this article who aren’t writers will realize we’re not just relaxing in our living rooms or home offices (if we’re lucky enough to have those) playing solitaire or watching funny cat videos on our computers. We’re working, and we’re working hard.

Still don’t believe me? Then go ahead and write your own novel that’s halfway decent, and then tell me it’s not work. I’ll wait.

How do you feel about writing as work?

Has anyone ever mistook what you do for free time? How did you respond?

The Quiet Game: One Year Since Publication

Posted: July 17, 2014 in Living and Life, Progress Report, Review, Scary Stuff, short story, Writing
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tqg cover

One year. I can’t believe it’s been exactly one year since my first book, The Quiet Game: Five Tales To Chill Your Bones was released. Maybe that’s because so much has happened in that year: I finished my third year of college, went on a study abroad trip to England, France, and Germany. I began and finished Video Rage, the sequel to Reborn City, and I’m very close to finishing Laura Horn. And I also released two more books. Am I forgetting anything? Oh yeah, I moved into an apartment off-campus with a friend and I also turned 21, which causes certain members of my family endless worry about my drinking habits (though I usually only drink alcohol 1-3 times a week, and usually not that much).

Anyway, back on point. The Quiet Game emerged from an idea I had while the editing process of RC was going on. That process was going slower than I thought it would, so I thought to myself, Why not release a collection of original short stories? I ended up doing just that, writing all those stories during winter break and rewriting one of them during spring semester. I also included at the end of each story a little bit about how the story came about and what influenced me while writing it, which was fun because it gave me more ways to relate with my readers. And after many long months, I released it on July 17, 2013, not too long after the copyright process ended. And it’s been selling and scaring here and there ever since.

Besides also being my first published book, The Quiet Game is also my most popular book. I think that might be because it’s a lot shorter than the other two and it’s a lot cheaper. But that doesn’t mean people don’t like it. I’ve gotten ten reviews over the course of a year on The Quiet Game, and people have had some positive things to say:

5 wonderfully crafted tales! I purchased this as an eBook originally and put off reading it for quite a while, I really wish I hadn’t waited. Sometimes when one purchases a collection of short stories you expect some of them to be less entertaining or of lower quality than the others, but none of these disappoint. Well worth the money, especially considering after you read each story the author gives you creative insight into what inspired him to write each tale, which is really wonderful.

–Jeff D

Imagine if you will a young Stephen King penning dark scenarios inspired by his youth, and what you get is this anthology. Through this collection of short stories, Rami Ungar brings us into the world of dark urges, childhood traumas, ghosts, phantoms, and dark psychological thrillers. An inspired creation, and definitely a good intro to this indie author’s world!

–Matthew Williams, author of Whiskey Delta

All of the stories were really diverse and fun to read. I also enjoyed the authors blurbs about each stories origination and development. Keep up the good work!

–kimberly broulliard

These and other reviews have lead to The Quiet Game gaining a 4.3 rating on Amazon, which I am very happy about. It also encourages me and makes me think that this and my other books will continue to do well and that I will be able to write very good and very scary stories for years to come.

To the people who helped me create The Quiet Game, thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me. You don’t know how much I appreciate it. To the people who have already read and/or reviewed The Quiet Game, thanks for your patronage and I hope in the years to come you’ll enjoy reading my books and getting scared by them. And to those who will read The Quiet Game and my other books, I hope you enjoy them. And whatever you think of my books, please let me know in a comment or a review. Bad or good, I love feedback.

If you’d like to know more about The Quiet Game, click here for its page here on the blog, or check it out for yourself on Amazon and Smashwords. It’s available in both print paperback and e-book, though the former is only available on Amazon.

That’s all for now. If I have anything else, I’ll let you know later in the day. Have a good one, my Followers of Fear.

Self-Pub Authors: Tips For Gaining New Followers on Your Blog

Posted: July 15, 2014 in Journalism, Writing
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I’ve got another one from Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors! This one is Tips For Gaining New Followers on Your Blog, and as you can guess from the title, its full of tips I’ve found useful at one time or another in attracting followers to the blog you are currently reading. And if you have any tips on how to grow an audience on your blog, please check out the article. If enough people respond with their own tips, I might end up making an article from said tips.

And if you like reading the article, make sure to check out the rest of the blog. Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors is an excellent resource for all types of writers, and contains articles for self-published authors by self-published authors on how to write, edit, publish, and market your work cheaply and effectively. I’ve certainly found it helpful, so who knows. Maybe you will too.

Thanks for reading, and have a wonderful day.

Conversations with Pat Bertram

Posted: July 14, 2014 in Author Interciew, Writing
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pat bertram

Today’s interview is with an author who has a lifetime of experience and some really great books too. Pat Bertram is an author with Second Wind Publishing, whose books include the thriller novels More Deaths Than One and A Spark of Heavenly Fire, as well as the non-fiction book Grief: The Great Yearning, a book about dealing with grief based on personal experiences. Pat also is an administrator and active participant in a Facebook group for suspense and thriller writers, and has two blogs, one of which she writes posts for at least once a day.

I was lucky to have a chance to ask Pat, whom I consider a friend, some questions on her life, her writing process, and what she’s up to these days.

How did you get into writing in the first place?

When I was in my mid twenties, I set out to be a writer. I quit my job, gathered up paper and pens, and sat down at the kitchen table to write. I thought writing was a type of automatic writing, that I just needed to put pen to paper and words would come. Didn’t happen. When I tried to force words on the page, I discovered I had no talent for writing, so when real life got in the way, I let go of my desire to write and turned my mind to other things. About fifteen years ago, I had some predicaments I wanted to work through, so I decided, talent or no, that I would write the story, which I did. And it was terrible! During the subsequent years, I have learned how to write, to pace a story, to write sparse but picturesque prose, but most of all, I have learned how to rewrite and edit.

How would you characterize the stories you write?

The unifying theme in all of my books is the perennial question: Who are we? More Deaths Than One suggests we are our memories. A Spark of Heavenly Fire suggests we are the sum total of our experiences and choices. Daughter Am I suggests we are our heritage. Light Bringer suggests we are  . . . ? So, perhaps my genre is “identity quest,” though I can’t see that as ever being a big draw. My only hope is to build an audience for “Pat Bertram books.”

What is your writing process?

I have no real process. When I do write, it’s usually late at night because all is quiet. I don’t set a daily goal — the words come hard for me, so I’m grateful for whatever words I manage to get on paper. Oddly, considering this is the electronic age, I still prefer to write longhand, though I am gradually doing more writing on the computer. As for the story, I know the main characters, I know the beginning of the story, I know the end of the story, and I know how I want the characters to develop, but I don’t flesh out the individual scenes until I start writing them.

You blog at least once a day, and you often talk about your personal life, both the good and the bad. What gives you the courage to share such information with your readers?

Before my life mate/soul mate died, I wrote innocuous — and fairly impersonal — posts about the books I read, the stories I was writing, general thoughts I had. After he died, I was shocked both by the true scope of grief and people’s ignorance of the process, so I made it my mission to tell the truth of what I was going through to help dispel the myth that after a couple of months, life goes on as it did before. I gained so much by opening up, that I have continued to be open as other traumas enter my life, such as my efforts to cope with both my aging father and my dysfunctional brother.

Are you working on anything at the moment?

Yes. When the members of my dancing class found out I was a writer, they suggested I write a book about them. It’s been fun —  all the characters have real life counterparts, so it has become something of a group project.

What is some advice you would give to potential writers?

Writing is not always about writing. Some authors can sit down and let the words flow and lo! There is a story! Other authors have to think about what they’re doing. So ask yourself, what story do you want to write? Why? What do your characters want? Why? How are they going to get what they want? Who is going to stop them getting what they want?

If you were stuck on a desert island and could only take three books with you, what would they be?

Three blank notebooks. And pencils, of course.

 

If you’d like to find out more about Pat, you can find her at her personal blog Bertram’s Blog and on Pat Bertram Introduces, where she interviews authors, publishers, and even book characters, as well as on her Facebook page.

Laura Horn: Part V Done!!!

Posted: July 14, 2014 in Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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I could just about start dancing in my seat! Well, I would but I’m typing up this post, and it’s getting very late, so no time to mess around.

Anyway, I’m proud to announce that I’ve just finished Part V of my novel-in-progress Laura Horn, leaving only three chapters left until I finish the whole damn thing! I’m so excited, especially this novel has taken longer than others to write, a little over a year at this point in fact. It’s also been a great challenge to write. That’s true for any novel, but this one was a challenge because it’s a lot more thriller than my other books (even Snake, which is thriller, is one with horror overtones), and there’s a lot of growth centered on one character, which I had to monitor and make believable throughout the book. All in all though, I’m happy witht he result. Sure, it may take anywhere between one and three more drafts to make ready for publication, but I don’t see too much of a problem.

And now I’m going to add up the pages and word counts to see where I stand in. Part V was 32 pages and 8,605 words. That brings the total number of pages (8.5″ x 11″ double-spaced 12-point Times New Roman font) to 324 pages and the total number of words to 85,879. Wow, looks like that prediction on word count back when I finished Part IV was right. Though I can’t imagine the Epilogue to be very long. Five-thousand words or so, or twenty pages or thereabouts.

I hope to finish LH in the next couple of days, Friday or Saturday at the latest. In the meantime, I plan on writing up an interview and one or two blog posts and articles before I get onto the last three chapters. It shouldn’t take me too long. I hope, anyway.

That’s all for now. It’s late, so I’m heading to bed. Goodnight, my Followers of Fear.

Snake: One Month Since Publication

Posted: July 10, 2014 in Novel, Progress Report, Review, Scary Stuff, Writing
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snake

How far would you go for love and revenge?

I swear, unless there’s a review, this’ll be the last post I write about Snake for a while. I know by now some of you are so sick of hearing about it you want to strangle me, but hey, I’d be remiss in my job as an author if I didn’t do my fair share of advertising for my books. And the one month milestone is pretty big.

For those of you who aren’t aware, Snake is my second published novel, and my third published book overall. It follows a young man whose girlfriend is kidnapped by mafioso after she overhears something she shouldn’t. In order to get her back, this young man becomes the Snake, a serial killer who takes his cue from techniques used by the Russian mafia, and starts hunting down members of the family who kidnapped his girlfriend in order to find her. He will go to any lengths to get her back, including becoming a worse monster than the ones he is hunting.

I’m very happy with how this book’s been doing during its first month. I’ve had plenty of people checking it out, including two people from England and Germany who downloaded e-books within the past week (first time that I can remember having someone from outside of North America checking out my work). And I even got my first review on Snake, from fellow author and good friend Angela Misri. Here’s what she had to say on Snake in her four-star review:

Rami Ungar makes a promise to (the reader) in all his writings: he WILL scare you, and if he does “his job is done.” Snake will scare you. I am a huge Stephen King fan, so this should give you some idea of my tolerance level for gore, death and mayhem – I was scared. Rami takes you into places you would never have believed possible, and manages to pull his hero (and eventually his heroine) out of them against all odds. If you like to be scared. If you LOVE to be scared. You should read this book.

Considering that I’m a huge fan of Stephen King and I got favorably compared to him, this is probably one of my favorite reviews of all time. And I hope it leads to more people giving it a chance and checking it out.

If you’d like to get a copy of Snake, you can follow this link to Amazon and check it out (though I will be uploading it onto other sites soon). And if you like or hate it after reading it, please don’t hesitate to write a review and let me know what you think. I love feedback, positive or negative, so if you have some for me, please don’t hesitate to share it with me.

You can also check out the page for Snake here for excerpts and more information, if you wish.

That’s all for now. I’ve got a few things to take care of this morning before work, so I’m going to get on that. Have a great day, my Followers of Fear.

Laura Horn: Part IV Done

Posted: July 7, 2014 in Living and Life, Novel, Progress Report, Writing
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Oh, I doubted I would actually get this far. I mean, with all the delays and breaks and whatnot I had to take with this novel, I really despaired about getting to the climax of the book. I’m happy to say that after four or so days of working through Chapter Fifty, I whizzed through Chapters Fifty-One and Fifty-Two and finally finished Part IV: Inauguration Day of Laura Horn.

This part of the novel actually got longer and shorter while I was writing it. I added two chapters to give the antagonists more page time, and then I combined two chapters into one so that the flow of the novel would…well, flow smoother. I’m glad to say that it all went very well in the end. Now I’ve only got ten chapters left of the novel, seven of which are in Part V: Triumph, and three in the Epilogue. I can’t wait to see if I can’t get through these last ten chapters in the next seven days. Ten or twelve at the most.

And now for the page and word counts (and by page counts, I mean 8.5″ x 11″ pages). Part IV was fourteen chapters, comprising about seventy-five pages and seventeen-thousand, seven-hundred and ninety-four words. Combined with the preceding thirty-seven chapters, that’s a total of 292 pages and 77,274 words. Wow, we’re right up in the novel range. I’m going to make a guess between 85,000 95,000 words at the end of it all. Well, that’s around normal for one of my books, I guess. Video Rage was around eighty-four thousand, while Snake was 110,000. Reborn City was somewhere between them, around ninety-one or ninety-three thousand.

Huh…funny now that I look at it. The novels that had longer chapters but less of them had smaller word counts, while the novels with shorter chapters but more of them are much longer. I’m not sure why that is, but I’m sure it might have something to do with the books I read growing up and how I began writing with the goal of being as good as the books I was reading.

Well, I’m going to probably write an article for Self-Published Authors Helping Other Authors and a blog post or two and then get to work on finishing this novel about a girl with a very dark past who confronts her demons and ends up saving her country from a horrific coup. Should be fun. Wish me luck on it.

Well, I’ve got a big day tomorrow. I’m meeting someone who’s helping me find a job after graduation tomorrow morning, and if I’m lucky I might be able to pick up my new glasses beforehand. Plus another shift at work, so that’ll be my whole afternoon. I might as well go to bed now and get some sleep. Goodnight, my Followers of Fear. Pleasant nightmares to you all.

Snake: Sale Till July 7th

Posted: July 4, 2014 in Novel, Scary Stuff, Writing
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snake

How far would you go for love and revenge?

If you haven’t heard yet, Snake‘s e-book is only on sale for a few more days, until July 7th. After that there won’t be any more sales for a while…no, wait. The Quiet Game‘s one-year anniversary is ten days later. Never mind.

But yeah, Snake‘s e-book will only stay $1.99 for a few more days, so if you’re interested in reading the book one author compared to a Stephen King novel, now’s the best time to check it out. All you have to do is head to Amazon, and from there it’s easy to obtain the story of how one young man is willing to become the most horrific of killers in order to save the woman he loves and bring his enemies down to their knees.

Have a great weekend, everyone. I hope to have a review out tomorrow night on the new horror movie Deliver Us From Evil, so stay tuned for it. I hear it’s going to be great.

Snake: The First Review!

Posted: July 2, 2014 in Novel, Progress Report, Review, Scary Stuff, Writing
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snake

I’m going to be perfectly honest: I nearly jumped out of my chair when I saw Snake had its first review. The only reason I didn’t was because my computer was in my lap and it’s not even six months old yet. It’d be a pain in the butt to get it fixed because of some well-deserved excitement.

Anyway, back on point: Snake received its first review, from fellow author and dear friend Angela Misri, who helped with the editing and sprucing up of Snake prior to publication. She named her review If you LOVE to be scared, you should read this book, and gave Snake four stars out of five. Here’s what she had to say:

Rami Ungar makes a promise to (the reader) in all his writings: he WILL scare you, and if he does “his job is done.” Snake will scare you. I am a huge Stephen King fan, so this should give you some idea of my tolerance level for gore, death and mayhem – I was scared. Rami takes you into places you would never have believed possible, and manages to pull his hero (and eventually his heroine) out of them against all odds. If you like to be scared. If you LOVE to be scared. You should read this book.

Okay, any review with me and Stephen King, and even being scarier than him, makes it onto my list of favorite reviews of all time. And I’m glad you found it terrifying, Angela. There were times I wanted to hold back on how terrifying to make the story, and I’m glad I didn’t. And I’m glad you gave Snake such a strong recommendation. Coming from you, it is a really huge compliment.

If you would like to read Snake after reading that review, you can check it out on Amazon, both in paperback and in e-book (which until the 7th is on sale for $1.99, so now’s a great time to get it). If you do decide to get Snake and end up reading it, please let me know in a comment or in a review on Amazon what you think. Good or bad, I love feedback, and I would love to hear yours.

And while you’re at it, you should also check out Angela’s book Jewel of the Thames, which I’ve reviewed here. It’s a great mystery in the style of Sherlock Holmes (in more ways than one), and great for mystery lovers. Check out her blog for details, which I’ve left a link to above.

That’s all for now, I’m off to get some more writing done before the evening’s done. Have a good night, my Followers of Fear.

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