My first novel – historical military fiction – made it to the top 10 of 9 of Amazon's bestseller lists. Via my blog I share what I have learned while writing two more.
This morning we spotted this young man on a porch off the end of our driveway…
Bambi hiding between two pots on our porch.
I was also able to get a photo of him from the other side peaking over the wall.
Bambi peaking at me over a wall between our porch and backyard.
Mother deer will often leave their little ones behind in hiding places while they forage or otherwise carry on with their business. We left him alone (after a few photo ops), and a few hours later when I went to check on him, he was gone.
So I headed to our mailbox, which is up a hill past a small side yard that is wedged in between three tall hedges, so well hidden and protected. Bambi was there with his mother, and they were both watching me.
I retreated to the house so as not to disturb them, but we watched from the window. Bambi was practicing walking and running, which was a bit of struggle and made us laugh. He did not have full command of his legs just yet.
When we checked on them a few hours later, they were gone. We live on 2/3rds of an acre beside a lake with a number of ravines and forested areas, so hopefully, they have plenty of room to grow and mature safely. There are also a pair of coyotes in the neighborhood, and foxes, and cars, so it is dangerous out there. But it looks like he made it through the first day or two. Let’s hope for the best.
As I occasionally do — usually without warning or any particular reason — I give away a Kindle Fire to someone on my email list.
Melissa M. from Michigan (that is a lot of “M”s, and I’m not making this up) won this give away! She was randomly selected via the application I use to manage my giveaways.
You can join at the right. Everyone on my email list is eligible for my periodic giveaways, as well as free Advance Review Copies of upcoming novels.
As a reminder, I only send emails to my subscribers about four times a year, it is never spam, and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Moon Castle, early 1970s, black light and black felt
I have no idea what made me think of this today, but while I was washing off the patio, for some reason I remembered one of the posters I had as a kid, and with a bit of searching found an image of it online. The copyright may be held by a company called Western Graphics, but they don’t seem to be in business any longer.
The never ending “show vs tell” debate came up again in one of my writing workshops. I’ve written about it before (in fact, it is still one of my most popular blogs). To keep the story short, it occurred to me that when to show vs. tell, or perhaps when to show AND tell is also partly a function of timing and characterization. This is because we have to train the reader and make sure general perceptions about what body language shows are precise for our specific and distinct characters.
Twenty years ago when they were building the house in which we live — which is on a steep slope — they belatedly decided to add a walk out basement. The only way to add it to the house’s design, though, was to punch a 6-foot square hole through the first floor and put a spiral staircase in. At the bottom of the stairs is a short hallway into a dark room which you pass through to get to the well-lit basement.
We’ve made the dark room you pass through our study, which is where I do much of my writing.
The prior owners added wall sconces to lighten up the descent and chamber. I thought it fitting to swap them out for something that looked a bit more like torches. My family thinks I’m easily amused.
I think I’m just a writer entering my next adventure…
IrSaa spends much of her early life on a massive space station, the Westport Torus.
To condense the story some of you know, I joined the online writing community www.CritiqueCircle.com site about 4.5 years ago (seems like a long time!) after I started writing again. In three months in late 2013 and early 2014, I cranked out a sci-fi novel, which my wife and kids liked, so I wrote a sequel in the next three months, which my wife and kids also liked. Both novels needed fresh and critical eyes, though.
I then found CC and submitted the first novel (Lonely Hunter), which gave me a ton of constructive feedback. I was delighted that some aspects were well recieved. But it was clear I had a lot of work to do.
As I promised almost 4 years ago when I first published my little novel about the 173rd Airborne Brigade during the Tet Offensive in part to thank the soldiers — mostly Vietnam Veterans — who contributed so much to my development as a young Army officer, I am continuing to donate half of my earnings from Youth In Asia.
With a generous matching contribution from my employer, this brings the total to about $2,300. And I am again donating to the VFW National Home for Children and Families. There are a lot of good charities staffed by hardworking, caring individuals. This is the one I picked to donate to. I value the focus on helping familes get back on their feet, and taking care of children.
From one perspective, $2,300 is not much money. From another — that of an aspiring novelist — that my first work of published fiction has done so well is gratifying.
Sales have certainly slowed, and last month (November of 2018) was the first month out of 45 months that I sold less than 1 copy a day. December has been a better month of sales, and I’m going to be back above 1 sale a day. The trend though is clear: sales are continuing to slow.
Of course, it is never too late to buy a copy to help me generate more money to donate, and leave a 5-star review to help drive more sales. 🙂
I can’t complain about how it has done so far. Almost 4,000 copies sold, 4.4-star rating from 67 reviews on Amazon US, more reviews WW (4.3-star rating from 16 reviews in the UK, 5.0-star rating from three reviews in Canada, etc.), and 105 reviews on GoodReads with a 4.1-star rating. All and all, it has been well received and I have gotten some good feedback on how to write a better story next time.
My goal when I published it was to sell 365 copies and get no less than a 4-star review average. My more important goal was to learn as much as I could about self-publishing, and I certainly have.
So in all ways this has a been a huge success for me and modest help to a few charities. With that, I’ll call it a good year.
And a big thank you to everyone who has bought a copy and left a review which helps me reach more people.
Antique art may seem a distant stretch from writing, but I’ve opened a store on RubyLane selling antique Tiffany pieces.
Yes, I’m related (very distantly) to Louis Comfort Tiffany, the founder of a number of companies — Tiffany Furnaces, Tiffany Studios, etc. — that eventually became Tiffany & Co.
My mother was a modest collector and for a time had a small, eclectic antique shop, so I’ve long had my eye on such pieces, but only recently have I decided to start refining and curating my own small collection. Over the years my mother bought various items without any sense as to which pattern she was buying, so what she did accumulate was completely incoherent when it came to actually completing a set (which is much harder than it sounds, as I’ll explain below). She was careful, though, about buying only pieces that were in excellent condition.
Recently, my mother wanted to pass on her couple score of pieces, so my sibling and I divided them up with an eye toward keeping together what few matching pieces there were. From there, I’ve used various ways to add to my collection. That is always problematic, though. Recently I saw a piece at an auction I wanted, but it was matched with two others I did not want — one was broken, one was in excellent condition but unmaked. Alas, the price was right, so I got what I wanted and two other odd pieces that now I want to sell off.
And thus we get to RubyLane.
Tiffany Studios “pulled feather” vase with bronze “acorn” base. Vase signed “L. C. T.”. Base stamped Tiffany Studios. Manufactured circa 1910
RubyLane has the highest rated customer experience and a number of other awards. They hold their “shop owners” to very high standards to ensure an optimal customer experience. I knew it was going to take some work to get a store opened…but dang, it was a lot of work!
In all events, my store is now open, and you can see the handful of pieces I’m selling in my antique store. None of what I’m selling there came from my mother…those are off-limits. 🙂
Overwhelmingly I buy and sell “Tiffany Studios” desk sets, but as noted above for various reasons I occasionally stray into other categories of Tiffany. Someday I’d love to expand my collection and add an antique Tiffany Lamp and more impressive Tiffany Favrile glass, but at the moment most of those items are far beyond my budget. And more importantly, they are beyond my knowledge base. When it comes to spending money, my preference is to only spend on things I understand. As the old saying goes, “A fool and his money are soon parted.”
It may be an historic oddity now, but this is a Tiffany Studios Ashtray (the lower surface) and Match Holder (the raised rectangular box) in the Pine Needle pattern of the Etched Metal and Glass family of desk set products.
I’ve looked at a number of auctions of the last half-year, and I can assure you that only occasionally will a seller try to trick you or hide something from you. What is far more likely to happen is that important little details get left off or missed. For instance, you may see a gorgeous jewelry box with a hinged lid. You might ask about the glass and be assured that there are no cracks. You might ask about the feet and be assured that they are all on securely with no sign of having been replaced. You might ask about the hinge and be told it works perfectly.
But you might not ask if it is actually signed since it is so obviously a piece of Tiffany. After you sweat the auction and pay for it and take delivery you belatedly realize it was one of the occasional factory escapes that never got signed. Tiffany it surely is, but its value is now less than what you paid for it.
Many of the auction houses and estate sales I occasion are processing pieces in large lots — sometimes over a thousand a day — and they don’t have time to meticulously detail every aspect. There are a considerable number of errors. Most are inconsequential. A few are not. Some kill a sale. On rare occasions, you can get a “steal” if you see an erroneous description and realize something is of greater value than advertised…and no one else spots it. Such instances are rare, but they do happen.
And auctions are always, always fickle. No telling who is going to show up and bid on what. Some days you can get things cheap for a single bid. Other days your jaw will hang open as prices are bid far beyond their market value. I’ve seen lots of both.
Antique Tiffany Studios Pine Needle pattern Paperweight with green and white “slag” glass. See more pictures.
As mentioned above, Tiffany desk sets come in a variety of patterns. About 20 all told. And those patterns have a number of subsets. For instance, the “Etched Metal and Glass” has subsets of “Pine Needle” and “Grapevine”.
Tiffany Studios Grapevine pattern. Backlit lid to a box showing green slag glass under “Grapevine” pattern of bronze.
And both subsets of Pine Needle and Grapevine can have either green and white or tan and white (often called “caramel”) colored glass, with varying degrees of both to include almost pure green, pure tan, or pure white. On rare occasions, other colors crept in as the Tiffany glassmakers intentionally took advantage of impurities in the glass to add color.
Adding to the complexity, the Etched Metal and Glass bronze came in two colors — a standard bronze and a shiny gold-colored bronze — but because it was in production for over 20 years, the finish and constitution also changed over time.
Similarly, the other patterns had a number of variations. Some more than others. The Zodiac pattern reportedly had 12 different finishes!
So it is a rich catalog to sort out, and time and artistic license result in innumerable and beautiful variations. At this point, it is all but impossible to build a set because of all the variations over time.
Which leads to another aspect I like about these pieces: With one qualifier, imitations and fakes are few and far between and when they do pop up they are generally easy to spot. These products are difficult to replicate, given the variety of pieces, and pricing that runs for most of them from ~$500 to a few thousand dollars (depending upon rarity and how well preserved it is), it is hardly worth a criminal’s time to set up a bronze production facility.
The one exception is some low volume of contemporary pieces that were made under contract for Tiffany at the time. They are invariably inferior looking pieces that make you wonder why L. C. Tiffany even allowed it. …something I probably should go research more thoroughly.
A pair of Tiffany Favrile Cordial glasses. Both signed “L C T”.
In all events, the store is open. It will remain a modest operation, but a pleasant diversion when I want to tinker with my tiny Tiffany collection. Frankly, it took more work than I anticipated over the last three months, and on top of working 60+ hours a week and being a husband and father of four, has sucked down 90% of my writing time of late. Hopefully, I can get back to it soon.
Kira and IrSaa are waiting…and the fate of humanity hangs in the balance….
There are many ways to consider We The Living: As a Historial view of post-Revolutionary Russia. A love triangle. A tragedy. Rand’s autobiography (to a point). The nascent presentation of Rand’s developing philosophy.
All would be right.
On the surface, the novel is a grand telling with profound nuance and insight of the destruction of human spirits brought on by the denial of human rights. It is about rapidly maturing Soviet Russia starving and learning to starve its populace into obedience. In the early 1920s — much like North Korea today — it is a wrenching depicting of life being wrung out of every man, woman, and child to force reverence to the state and the dictators who run it.
And it is about the corruption and private repudiation of what such regimes stand for by their own leadership because such regimes simply can’t function without corruption and black markets controlled by the ruling elites. It is the most glaring and brutally dishonest contradiction and a key element on which Rand’s plot turns.
It is difficult to imagine that Rand finished such a complex and complete novel at the age of 29 and as her first novel no less. There is so much insight and so much detail that few veteran writers could compare favorably.
Impressive? Let’s not forget that English was not her first language.
Arguably some of the secondary characters are a bit contrived and their motivation too simplistic. But given its large cast and the novel’s massive scope, these are minor (and debatable) shortcomings.
By modern standards it is wordy and there is too much “head hopping”. The style is also thick with “telling” rather than showing, but what it does not tell is the emotional destruction or the implications of what is happening — that you have to discern for yourself, and it takes some work. It is a very tightly woven narrative. This is my second reading and the nuances are clearer to me now as a result.
It is a hard story to read precisely because it is a very sad depiction of a large family descending into the ash, groveling to live while (some of them) attempt to hold on to basic values of human rights. And it is a depiction of how the intellectually weak and those without an understanding of morality turn on their own families, offering them up for execution to win favor with the state’s leaders.
I’m a fan of all of Rand’s “big three” novels, though in many ways this is my favorite. Where Atlas Shrugged is her resounding triumph in a variety of ways, it is grinding and relentless in making her political points. In contrast, We The Living is more “literary”, a more fluid and emotional read.
It was a pleasure to read it again after first reading it 30 years ago. I’m sure I’ll read it again before another 30 years go by, and I will enjoy it even more.
It is an important, timeless depiction of what happens when human rights are denied.
