bruce-elgin.com

@brucerelgin

You're giving away your books for free! I don't know how to respond. 'Thank you!' ... 'Whoa!'... 'Really?' and the Debbie Downer favorite: ...WHY?!"

Seriously, Bruce... why? And is it working?

Long story short, I'm following what I call the Sigler-Howey model of book marketing. With this approach, you give a ton of stuff away in the hopes of making some very happy fans who get addicted to your work. The one problem to it is that it's also dependent on being able to write a lot of books quickly, so there is always something there for people to buy.

Add in the Catch 22 that you have to put food on the table and somehow have all that writing time...

Well, I guess I still have to work all that out. But in the meantime, people from almost every place on earth have had a great time reading Schism and Voodootown. I just have to crack the Antarctic barrier. I have to find someone at the bottom of the world to read one of the books so I'll have readers on every continent.

So, is it really working? Yes and no. Am I making my living the way I want to, as a writer? Not yet. But have a lot of people loved my books? More that I could have hoped for.

I'll take that as great for now.

Tell me about your journey into self-publishing.

That is a winding journey to say the least!

I've been writing since I was a little kid and always dreamed of being a writer. Keep in mind that I grew up in the age when authors got some big publicity from their publishers and did big book tours. My dad had an agent and a couple of nonfiction books published. Self-publishing was still known as "vanity press" in those days. You got a publisher or you weren't a real writer.

So, I grew up seeing a stigma attached to self-publishing and spent the early part of my writing career really focused on the traditional route.

Now, this is where I have to admit some things I'm not too comfortable talking about...

First off, going the traditional route was all kinds of painful. I went after an agent first, and the number of cover letters I sent out was amazingly high...hundreds. I scoured querytracker.net and sent that letter and sample chapters to every agent that was even a remotely good fit. And I got a lot of responses, a lot of requests for the full manuscript. And, I got a lot of great responses...but no offers. They loved the writing, they loved the story, but it just wasn't what they were looking for at that moment.

Second admission...This was really flipping depressing. For months, reaching out to agents was my full time job. It took me away from writing and the best thing I got in return was an invitation to send them my next book for consideration. Mostly, I got a lot of silence. Agents rarely respond these days.

The third thing, and the one I'm most uncomfortable talking about is that I know I'm a good writer. Crazy good. I put in my 10,000 hours a really long time ago. I've also studied. I got my MFA in 2007 and have done two other non-degree programs, so I basically have the equivalent of three MFAs in writing. And I'm trying to work all that study into my approach to writing.

Now here's the thing...it's weird to hear someone say that they are a good writer. I totally get that. We're supposed to be humble all the time and are supposed to let our work speak for itself. I agree with those things and I want to stress that it's not my ego I'm talking about. When I mention any skills I have as a writer, the first thing I do is give credit to my teachers, especially Helen Kantor and Katherine Taylor. I'm a good writer because of them.

But I mention it here because I want everyone to be able to feel that way. Work hard and start to build a little hubris about your writing skills. The reason why is that traditional publishing is kind of broken right now. Publishing companies should be buying up books left and right now that they can go all digital, but they aren't! They are still acting like they have the huge expenses of hardback book launches and big media campaigns, even though they aren't doing those things nearly as much.

And because the publishers are flailing around, the agents are too. They don't know what to do and because most everyone in the world has access to some kind of a keyboard, the agents are now buried in waves of submissions.

So, what we have is a business that is centered on rejection. Agents reject the vast majority of writers. The tiny fraction that do get accepted then have to go to editors and publishers...where they are generally rejected. So...you've got to believe that you are beyond awesome if you are going to get through a day of that constant rejection.

With that agent search as a big pitstop, my journey to any kind of publishing seemed to be at a dead end. But, with that hubris in hand, I knew I couldn't give up.

So, I went to talk to some people I knew at Grasshorse Technologies. They are an animation and app company that I had done some work for in the past and I knew that they were looking for some ways to expand. They had an app where you could decorate your own voodoo doll and I took that basic idea and pitched them a whole story line. We talked about doing an animated series and finally settled on the serialized books that became Voodootown. People loved it and we hit the top 20 in our Amazon categories a few times.

And the big thing about that stop on the journey, even more than having someone else publish my work, was that it reminded me of the most important aspect of writing...getting readers.

The publicist from Grasshorse had turned me on to Scott Sigler (remember the Sigler-Howey model?) and I started to study how he was giving his books away. It made sense to me, so I started doing research on the best places to share writing (I bet you can guess where I decided to go) as I was polishing Schism.

It was also about this time that I was able to dump that stigma about self-publishing. It was very obvious that the agents who said no to my books didn't do it because they had some objective, empirical knowledge about what good writing was. It was the complete opposite! They had their own personal tastes just like everyone else and that is what they made their choices on. Same with editors. Not one editor out there is able to know what readers will buy, even though they act like it. Realizing all of that helped me know that self-publishing was a good thing to do.

So, I found Wattpad and started giving my novels away at the same time that my wife and I founded Hope Books.

Let's talk about Hope Books. Do you plan on ever expanding? Your wife is mentioned on the site. Is she involved in the publishing world too?

Sorry that last answer was so long! I think I got on my soap box a bit. But...maybe that answer will help keep this one shorter!

My wife and I started Hope Books for Schism and the nonfiction book I'm working on, Reasons For Hope. Even in self-publishing you want to make sure you are taking care of things properly on the business end. But, from the beginning, we knew we wanted to be able to help other writers too.

My wife is actually the boss of Hope Books and I work for her. I'd say that's pretty normal for a marriage, but it fits for what we're doing as well. We both have our English undergrad degrees, but she has an MBA while I've got an MFA. So, in the business world, she has the trump diploma.

And to top it off, her nickname, for as long as we've been together, has been Captain Red Pen. On one of our first dates, I gave her one of my stories and she quite literally brought a red pen out from her purse and started in on it. We nearly stopped dating right then and there.

So, she's the line editor and I'm the story editor. Together we make a pretty good editing team and we've been lucky to help a lot of writers out, even though we haven't published anyone else yet.

Now, let me say, before people bombard me with submissions...that we aren't accepting submissions right now! Sorry...but not yet. When we do start publishing other writers, we will most probably start by taking referrals, and will slowly branch out from there.

You're accomplished in the martial arts, Grasshopper. Do you think that art created your interest in the Action genre of writing, or do you think your love of Action inspired your interest in the martial arts?

Yeah, I grew up watching Kung Fu and tons of those old Chinese martial arts movies. And I've been doing martial arts for a long time, in a lot of different styles. But I've been lucky to find good teachers there too. I found a Jeet Kune Do (Bruce Lee's martial art) school nearby and from there I got linked up with some of the best teachers in the world, including Dan Inosanto, Bruce Lee's #1 student.

As far as which action-y chicken or egg came first, I don't really know. I think I can just put it down to the fact that I've kind of concentrated all of my typical guy things into two basic areas. First, all things are better with some fighting, be it novels or your daily workout. Second...barbeque sauce and hot sauce makes almost any food better.

Other than those two things, I'm really quite mellow.

Holy interplanetary yardsticks, Batman! You've got some serious clout with your blurbs! I mean... Jay Bonansinga? Scott Sigler? Wow. How did you get to know these guys?

I can't take any credit for getting Scott Sigler's thumbs up. The publicist at my publisher for Voodootown did all the work on that one (Thanks, Scully!). She had met him at a convention and worked through his chanels to score the review. That took her about six months to land.

Jay...I met Jay when I was hosting a film festival. We showed a film that he wrote and directed called Stash. It's a hilarious movie about a company that clears out your porn stash before anyone can find it after you die. It took such a taboo subject and totally had fun with it. I got to know him at the festival, started reading his books, which are amazing, and we stayed in touch. He's been very supportive of my work and I couldn't be happier to see how well known he is getting with the Walking Dead books.

Voodootown feels like it should be a graphic novel, and given the people you associate with, I wonder: is that the eventual plan for your work?

You are outing me as a comic book junkie, aren't you? Well, so much for keeping that secret. I guess I might as well admit that Schism has a few superhero elements in it as well, huh?

Yeah, I have a thing for graphic novels and comics. My MFA is actually focused on screenwriting and it was actually my years at Gotham with Katherine Taylor that helped me work on my fiction and prose skills.

I think what this means is that I have a battle raging in my brain about which way to go. I love the visual element of graphic novels and film scripts, but prose still has the edge because you can build a really rich interior life for your characters. That's pretty hard to beat.

What I'd really love would be for Wattpad to enable in-line images in stories. Then we could do fully illustrated books. I think that would be the ultimate for me! I'm trying to plant that seed...

Tell us about your writing routine.

Oh, you want another novel length answer with this question, don't you?!

For the best peek at my writing process head over to the @improveyourwriting profile and read the Writing Great Fiction book, which I am writing. This is one of those Ambassador initiiatives (I've been an amb for about 6 months) and we really hope to help a lot of writers be able to improve their writing and the way they approach their writing.

Basically, I'm a plotter. I get where Pantsers come from, but it's just a total myth that plotting kills your creativity. It's actually the opposite. When you plot, you just start the creative process early and you are even more free because your mind gets to go wild with the plot before you have to be creative with style and word choice and building nice sentences. And if, in the middle of writing, you decide you want to change the plot you can...and you have an outline to revise instead of the full manuscript.

Plus, when you get done with a first draft that was written from a well plotted outline, you have a lot less editing and cutting to do.

So, I just start with a basic idea. It might be a character or a situation or a certain problem that a character would have to solve. I usually let it ferment for a while, take a few notes every now and then until it gets big enough that I have to really put things down.

Then I'll dive in. I'll put down notes about the characters...about what they want, how they need to grow and change. I'll do research on locations, any science involved, literary and pop culture references (just count how many there are in Voodootown alone!). Along with that, I'll get down tons of random story notes, which I organize more later.

With things like that lined up, I'll start to work on the logline, which is a one sentence summary of the story that basically goes protagonist has to beat the antagonist or else X happens.

Now, that may sound really odd, simplistic and formulaic, but remember...it's trying to take a whole novel and put it in one sentence. It's just a guide...one of those "high concept" screenwriting tools that helps you make sure you are on track from the very start.

From there, it's outline time. I start with a simple, plot point style outline that just lists the major turning points of the story. I then expand this to an eight to twelve section "Sequence Style" outline. This is another old screenwriting trick, taken from the earliest days of silent movies. Movies used to arrive in the theaters in individual reels that were about 15 minutes long. Before they had projectors that automatically changed the reels, the projectionist had to stop the movie to take the last reel off and thread and start the next one!

So, if the ending of a reel wasn't exciting, people might leave. In order to ensure that the audience stayed put, screenwriters used to put in cliffhangers every 15 pages, where the reels would end. Now, you know all those authors that put a cliffhanger at the end of every chapter? That's where they got that from.

With the sequence outline done, I start on the most crucial step...the backwards pass. The all important, magical backwards pass. With this, I start at the end of the outline and figure out what had to happen at Y for Z to happen. From the very end all the way to the beginning.

This usually gives me a complete scene outline and it definitely makes sure that everything is logical and not random. The necessary lines of events is something I call "Causal Chains" and they really help with continuity and believability, no matter how strange things get in a story.

After that's all done I sit down and start to write. With a detailed outline (one page of outline for me generally turns into ten pages of written story) I can write pretty darn fast. I can have a first draft done in a few months.

Then, I edit and rewrite like crazy...usually at least ten drafts before it's ready for my wife to tear into and then we publish.

And even with all that, typos still show up!

8. You have a clever, and twisted little mind. What inspires you? What scares the crap out of you?

Thank you. I will take that as a compliment!

This could turn into another long answer, especially if we want to get into my views on ontology. But for what inspires me, the quick answer would be to look at Schism and the voices that William listens to in that book. That explains a lot of how I see creativity...I think I have an Advisor of my own.

That probably sounds like a whole lot of crazy...but just remember that William is the only character in that book who is actually sane!

For what scares me, I think I have to look at my habits when I write (the habits I don't want to admit). First thing, whenever I sit down to write, I get the urge to txt or email some old friend that I haven't talked to in a while. I have to really fight those urges to hang out with people so I think I have that fear of being alone that is common to writers. That might explain why I love doing public readings so much too.

Thank you so much for your time, Bruce!

Thanks! That was a great time! Very good questions!!

Hit me with anything else you have. I'll try to keep answers under 100,000 words!