Karen Sandler

Tag: clean burn

  • Horse Shopping, Or, Choosing Among Writing Projects

    I recently sold my beautiful Andalusian/Morgan mare, Belle. She and I had been together for eight years, and we learned a lot from each other. Now she’s off to a new home, helping another rider learn the fine points of dressage.

    So I’m horse shopping. I have a clear idea of what I want in a new horse: not too young, not too old. Not located too far away (not going to check out that great horse in Vermont). I definitely want an easy-going gelding. Size matters–neither a 13H pony nor an 18H draft horse will do. And there’s only so much I can spend (sadly, I’m not independently wealthy yet). Which means it might take a while to find the perfect partner. But here are some of my current options:

    TOSHIBA Exif JPEGThis is Sequoia Mambo Man, an 8-year-old, 15.2H palomino Morgan. Very cute, and sounds like the easy-going temperament I’m looking for. But not a whole lot of miles under saddle yet.

    Bentley JumpingThis is Bentley, a 6-year-old, 15.3H Quarter Horse Paint. I don’t jump like you see Bentley doing in the picture, but I’ve seen videos of him ridden dressage too. He seems to have a decent amount of training under his belt.

    Kato cropThis is SQR Kato, a 9-year-old, 15.1H bay Arabian. The owner says he’s very quiet, and he looks quite talented as a dressage horse. This one seems to have the most training of the three.

    There are a few others I have my eye on, but you get the idea.

    So what does this have to do with choosing writing projects? Well, imagine that you’ve just finished a book (let’s call it THE BEST BOOK EVER). Finished as in, TBBE is completely polished to a quality where your agent is now shopping it around, or you’ve submitted to your editor. Or if you’re an indie-pubbed author, TBBE is completely vetted and ready to be uploaded to the various online booksellers.

    Now what do you do? All those story ideas that have been shoved to the back burner while you were getting TBBE to a publishable stage are now competing for your attention. Do you work on that hysterically funny romantic comedy you’ve been dying to start? The young adult paranormal that wakes you up in the middle of the night, the scenes so clear they’re begging to be written? Or that thriller that’s so powerful you can visualize it as not only a novel, but a film?

    How do you decide? One way is to do it the way I will probably choose amongst those horses I told you about. I will probably use something like the following checklist:

    • Which one do you feel the strongest about, with which one do you have the strongest connection? Just as it will be easier for me to work with a horse I really like, it will be much easier for you to spend the months it takes to write a novel if the concept is one you feel connected to and excited about.
    • Which one is the most developed? With a horse, I’ll consider how many months or years of training or under-saddle work he’s done. With a story idea, you have to think about how well fleshed out the plot is, how developed the characters are, and how comprehensively you’ve imagined the settings or world of the characters.
    • Which one is most likely to get you where you want to go? With a horse, the one that’s best trained and has the conformation and movement for dressage would be my best choice. When it comes to story ideas, you really have to look at the reality of your career and the marketplace. Have you got two books of a thriller series out that’s just begging for a third, but you’re considering detouring into a romantic fantasy novel? Maybe not the best choice, career-wise. Better to write that third thriller, and get back to the romantic fantasy later.

    It’s possible to fall in love with the wrong horse, and quite possible to become enamored with a story idea that’s not to your advantage to pursue. Go into both transactions with a level head, a clear eye, and you’re sure to make the right choice. And remember, with story ideas (unlike horses), the one you set aside will always be waiting for you to explore later.

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  • Fake Blood and Shooting After Dark–the Making of a Vampire Flick

    Poster 2At this point in my career, I’m a dedicated novelist. I’m sticking to writing and promoting my traditionally published books like the Tankborn Trilogy and the upcoming Janelle Watkins mysteries, as well as my indie published romances.

    But there was a time when I would fill in the gaps waiting for an editor’s notes or when I was between book contracts by writing screenplays. I’d work on my own or with a producer to write feature length scripts. I was a member of the Writers Guild of America and made a little bit of money as a screenwriter.

    I’d also play around with short films. I’d write a short script (ten or so pages, which translated into about 10 minutes of film), then find ways to produce that script. It helped having a friend with a production studio (The Studio Center) complete with cameras, sound equipment, a green screen, and editing bay. Frank would charge me bargain rates in exchange for directing credit.

    Sweet Tooth was one such project. I’d gotten the idea years before and had intended to write it as a short story. I ended up writing it as a short script instead. Here’s the logline for Sweet Tooth: It’s Trish’s last chance–she either makes big sales at her next WundaWare party, or she’s history.  Trish does her best, but she can’t seem to overcome an irresistible temptation that ruins everything.

    Linda-Karen-Frank Since this was a super-low-budget film, I had to make some choices in the writing of it. I had to be able to shoot the whole film in one location–my house. Since it was a vampire movie and shooting “day for night” wasn’t practical, it all had to be shot after dark. Other than the camera and sound work (and the editing later), I did pretty much everything. I was writer, producer, set decorator, propmaster, continuity, and craft services. All the props came from either my own kitchen or the dollar store. The actors all worked for credit only.

    We shot over two weekends, Friday and Saturday nights. There were a few pitfall in our choice of a production window. First, we started on the night of the summer solstice, which meant it was the longest day of the year. Waiting for “dark” made for a very late start each night.

    Myrtle-deadThe other issue was that the first couple days of shooting were hot-hot-hot (we can get over 100 degrees here) and my AC wasn’t working right. So it was sweltering in the house.

    We were all troopers, though. I got to make some fake blood on the fly (corn syrup with red dye and a touch of chocolate syrup for color). I’d sold Tupperware for 15 months back in my 20s, so I had a lot of fun setting up a display of the faux plasticware, WundaWare. I also enjoyed getting inventive with the various rooms of my house, transforming them into the sets we needed.

    Trish-vanityMy takeaway from the experience is that filmmaking is an entirely different animal than publishing. The biggest difference is how many people are involved. Yes, when you’re publishing a book, you rarely do everything yourself, even if you go indie. There will be an editor, a cover designer, marketing folks, and if it’s print, someone to manufacture the book.

    But imagine if books were written like films are made. You’d have to hire people to act out your characters. You’d have to bring in a propmaster to acquire every single item you’ve described in your scenes, plus a set decorator to lay everything out. A sound crew would have to record the sound or you wouldn’t have any dialogue. A gaffer would have to make sure the lighting is just right, or your reader wouldn’t be able to see who or what is in that scene. And craft services had better feed everyone, or your characters would be getting mighty cranky.

    [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8g9lU5MVM-k]

    That would certainly make things a lot livelier for the novelist–and a lot more expensive and time consuming to write a book. I think I prefer the thinking-it-all-out-in-my-head-and-typing-it-on-my-computer way of doing things. That way, the only one filching out of my refrigerator is me. My characters can just eat air.

    How about you? Have you ever been involved in a film production? I’d love to hear your experience.

  • Social Media for the Genre-Conflicted, Part 2

    KarenSandler_TillTheStarsFade_200pxIn Social Media for the Genre-Conflicted, Part 1, I talked about how I created social media identities for all three of the genres in which I am published–romance, young adult science fiction, and mystery. In part 2, I’ll talk about how I juggle these multiple personalities.

    I’m not yet entirely satisfied with how well I’m managing the task of promoting myself in these disparate genres. In some cases, I’m learning as I go, discovering what works, and stumbling over the pitfalls of what doesn’t. But it’s been a relief to accept the reality that my work doesn’t fit neatly into one pigeonhole. And while I can’t really say that I have something for every reader amongst my 20+ books, there’s certainly plenty of variety.

    Awakening Final cover-s So how do I wrangle the three-headed hydra of my author identity? By promoting myself in a united fashion where I can and splitting my personalities where necessary.

    This blog is one area where I let all three genres come out and play, sometimes together (in more generic posts) and sometimes separately (such as in this one). I do my best to put up a new post at least once a week. If you look through my previous posts, you’ll find that the majority of them are writing-related, along the lines of tips and tricks of the trade. There’s some personal stuff woven in there as well, such as this remembrance of my dad and this post about a childhood memory. I also will do a hybrid like this post, interweaving the personal and the writing craft together.

    Besides this blog, I utilize numerous social media platforms–Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Triberr, Google+, and Linked in. Most of my efforts are focused on Facebook and Twitter. Facebook, despite its shortcomings, does have one bit of functionality that makes it very easy to manage multiple identities–Pages. By logging into my profile, Karen Sandler, I can access all of the four pages that I administrate. There’s a handy little wheel in the upper right-hand corner that allows me to switch from my profile to my author page, the Tankborn page, the mystery page, and the OnFireFiction page. I don’t have to log out of Facebook to post as those alternate identities.

    Full CoverTwitter, on the other hand, requires a separate login for each identity. It would be pretty crazy-making if I was logging in and logging out of the various Twitter accounts I use. Instead, I’ve installed several browsers (Firefox, Chrome, IE, and Opera), and login to a different identity on each browser.

    For me, that means I’m logged in as @karensandlerYA on Firefox (my favorite browser), @karensandler on Chrome, @OnFireFiction on IE, and @tankborn on Opera. I can hop back and forth from one to the other, retweet posts that I think the followers of multiple feeds would find interesting, and keep track of who I’m following and who’s following me.

    Why not use a tool like Hootsuite? I do use Hootsuite, but I haven’t figured out a way to tweet as a different identity than the one I’m logged into. In other words, if I’m logged in as @karensandlerYA on Firefox, even if I select the @karensandler tab, my tweets will be identified as having come from @karensandlerYA. If there’s someone out there who knows differently, please tell me in the comments!

    As for the other social media sites, Google+, Pinterest, Triberr, and Linked in, I’ve so far had less of a presence there. Triberr automatically feeds through all my blog posts (a fantastic tool for reaching new followers). I will post the link to my blog posts on Google+ manually. I haven’t discovered an automated way to accomplish that. I feel a little freer to post what might be considered controversial opinions on Google+, while I mostly keep politics out of Twitter and Facebook.

    I think Pinterest is extremely cool, but I just don’t get on the site much (browsing the wonderful images there is a real time suck). And I don’t think Linked in is as useful to authors as it might be for more business-related professions.

    The question I’m continually asking myself as I post and tweet and blog–what works? My goal is to sell more books. To do that, readers have to discover me. So, do regular blog posts, status updates on Facebook and Google+, tweets on Twitter, and Pinterest pins accomplish that? I confess I haven’t yet got all the answers.

    Where are you finding success? What do you think produces results? I’d love to hear about your experience.

  • When Fiction Becomes Future…or Present

    KarenSandler_TillTheStarsFade_200pxScience fiction is a funny genre. There are those (like me) who devour it, who sometimes feel there’s something missing in a book that doesn’t include at least a little imagined science. Then there are those who just don’t get the genre, are completely alienated by it. To them, it’s weird and unreal.

    Yet in the best science fiction, there’s nothing more real. It looks ahead to what might be and extrapolates not just the science, but how people adapt to the science. It can show how one change, small or large, completely transforms a people, a society.

    The Green Movement in Iran and the more recent Arab Spring got me thinking about a Larry Niven story I read thirty or so years ago. “Flash Crowd” showed the impact of the transfer booth, an instantaneous, essentially free form of travel. You step into a transfer booth down on the corner near your house (like a way cooler bus stop) and in the next moment you’re downtown, or at the university or at the local mall.

    What happens in the story is that folks start hearing about something interesting going on at Santa Monica mall (a stretch of several pedestrian-only open air blocks in Santa Monica, CA) and all those people jump into transfer booths. This near immediate influx of people on the mall leads to a riot, something that never could have happened if folks had to climb into their cars, negotiate Los Angeles freeway traffic, find a place to park, etc. Easy availability of transfer booths = riot.

    Transfer booths haven’t been invented yet, but think about their virtual equivalent. The Internet. Facebook. Twitter. Texting. The demonstrators during the Arab Spring used those near instantaneous forms of communication to organize, to plan, to keep their compatriots and sympathizers and the outside world updated as to conditions on the ground. The protesters couldn’t instantaneously appear in the streets of Cairo or Damascus, but the Internet and cell phones have facilitated their movements.

    What Larry Niven predicted when he published “Flash Crowd” in 1973 didn’t come literally true. We still haven’t figured out how to instantaneously transport matter from point A to point B. But that phenomenon of informing the world in an instant has come to pass and in the case of the Arab Spring (despite the current state of affairs in Syria), I think that can be a good thing.

    Have you read a book or a short story that has projected a possible future? Have you seen that projected future become now? Leave a comment. Include the title and author if you have it.

  • Social Media for the Genre-Conflicted, Part 1

    Awakening Final cover-sIn a previous post, I described how my husband and I designed my new website to encompass all three of the genres I’m published in–science fiction (YA), romance, and mystery. I have a great landing page that directs visitors to each of the three genres so they can further explore the books that interest them.

    There’s another aspect to writing in multiple genres that has proven to be a challenge–social media. I’ve taken a varied approach to solving the social media puzzle, in some cases with multiple identities (Twitter) in others, designing my presence similarly to what I’ve done on my website (Facebook).

    As I mentioned in the previous post, I’d moved from romances to YA thinking that would be a one-way street. I liked YA and was just as happy sticking with that market. So I did a total redesign of my website, turning it into the other-worldly SF site you see here. I created a new Twitter identity, @karensandlerYA, as well as one for the Tankborn trilogy, @tankborn. I created a Tankborn Facebook page, which my editor and the marketing department at Tu Books also administer. My focus was entirely on YA.

    KarenSandler_TillTheStarsFade_200px But then the opportunities for indie publishing opened up, giving me the courage to bring my romance backlist back to light. And then I sold two Janelle Watkins mystery novels, further complicating my identity. I had a decent number of followers on Twitter as @karensandlerYA, but it didn’t make sense to promote my non-YA books there.

    So I had to create and build a new identity on Twitter, @karensandler, to promote my romances and mysteries. I also created two new Facebook pages, Karen Sandler Author and Janelle Watkins Mysteries. The Janelle Watkins page is still a work in progress, but the author page is set up similarly to my webpage, in that it promotes all three of the genres I write. There are tabs that will take you to pages where you can buy or pre-purchase any of my books.

    Full CoverWithin this same time frame, I and ten other authors established an author co-op we’ve named OnFireFiction, which I described in this post. So I’m also participating in the social media related to OFF, on Facebook and Twitter. That makes four Twitter accounts to track, @karensandlerYA, @karensandler, @tankborn, and @onfirefiction. Then there are five Facebook accounts to follow, my Karen Sandler profile, my Karen Sandler Author page, my Janelle Watkins page, my Tankborn Series page, and our co-op page, OnFireFiction.

    How in the world do I keep track of all this? That’s complex enough that it’s worthy of a second post. Keep an eye on my blog for part 2.