Month: November 2021

It Could Be Worse …

The image above comes from Reedsy, one of the biggest grifters marketing platforms for would-be authors. This is what they estimate a writer should pay to indie-publish a quality novel.

Maybe I’m financially smarter than I thought I was. For Rags and Muffin, it happens that I got professional editing from my former publisher before my former publisher went defunct, but if I’d hired a freelancer myself, I could get a good one for a quarter of what Reedsy suggests I’d pay. Even with proofreading and line-editing thrown in, I could get it for half or less.

I have a professional cover, as you can see. I paid a little over half of what Reedsy suggests.

I have, however, already paid more in marketing than the shockingly low price of $400. We’ll see if it bears fruit or if I’ve flushed my money.

And speaking of marketing, don’t forget we’re starting a newsletter: This is for book releases and deals only, with possible other products in future, and no babbling or personal opinions:

Subscribe


Subscribe to My Newsletter

Since Rags and Muffin is coming out in just about a month, it’s high time I started a newsletter and mailing list. You should be on it.

This email list will be only for sales, book updates, and any other merchandise. This will not be a mirror of the blog, but it will keep you abreast of sales and book offers.

Eventually, there will, I’m afraid, be a popup here asking you to subscribe, but you are spared that for now because WordPress is rejecting the code for some reason. So in the meantime, get ahead of the annoying popup by subscribing here:

Subscribe



(This post contains an affiliate link)

What have we here?

Get yours here (affiliate link).

A Review of MiblArt

I have to say, I lucked out. Once I finished the manuscript of Rags and Muffin and finished the interior formatting, I faced the prospect of finding and hiring a cover artist. The artists who worked on Jake and the Dynamo had been recommended to me by others, and while their art is great for that particular series, Rags and Muffin demands something less cartoonish.

I went to the internet and found several obviously talented artists, most of whom cost more than I could reasonably put down up front. At some point in my searching, I came across MiblArt, and though they did good work for a reasonable price, I initially passed them by because their cover designs appeared to be shopped versions of stock photos, a style that does not appeal to me: I find that real people look fake when they appear on book covers, perhaps because they’re too obviously models wearing makeup. Also, any design for Rags and Muffin would call for children on the cover, and given the amount of violence and abuse depicted in the book, I would prefer if no real children were involved, however tangentially.

As I continued my search, I came across MiblArt a second time and looked at their offerings more thoroughly. Then I discovered that they not only did the photo-based covers but completely original compositions as well, albeit for a higher price.

I have been quite pleased with the entire process and its results. It began with a form that is analogous to an interview, asking a great deal of information about the book in question and what a writer wants on the cover. The staff at MiblArt contacted me repeatedly for elaborations and clarifications to make sure they understood what I wanted. I sent reference photos, including goofy pictures of Japanese models in gothic lolita and a screenshot from Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future, both of which they incorporated creatively into the final design without complaint or comment.

They sent me initial and rough sketches, followed by a preliminary final draft, and allowed me to request changes on each. I sent back a few designs for revision and received no complaints when I did so.

The final design is quite striking and captures the concept of the book, and I got it for considerably less money than I might have spent elsewhere.

My interaction with the MiblArt staff has been professional, if impersonal. Certainly, the relationship has been less warm than what I had with the previous cover artists, whom I worked one-on-one with, but it has been entirely cordial. Their turn-around time has also been fast.

I would recommend MiblArt to other indie authors. Their portfolio displays consistent quality, and my own experience confirms that they can deliver.

(This post contains affiliate links.)

A Commentary on ‘Jake and the Dynamo’

Over on my Facebook page, a reader has left an interesting comment. Admittedly, I don’t interact with my Facebook page as much as I should because I’ve had a heck of a time figuring out the interface. Every time I try to see reader comments, it kicks me to a different part of the site … it makes me want to strangle Zuckerberg in Minecraft.

Anyway, regarding Jake and the Dynamo, a reader writes:

I’ve been rereading the book, and you have got some horror fantasy gold here. Your stuff is like Stephen King’s—American culture is built out of trash, and while his trash is b-movies and comic books, yours is anime and kid videos. That’s a good thing. We’ve had a lot of pop culture lately with comic books being elevated into the status of the a new Western or Cowboy genre, but your stuff, and King’s, recognizes that superpowers and fantasy adventure would be less like a Saturday morning cereal fest and more like a living nightmare.

Of course, magical girls are a Japanese riff on a specific type of all-American fantasy to begin with—the magical wife, whether she is a witch, or a genie, or what have you. Now, there are writers, like Fritz Leiber, who dialed in on the fearsome possibilities of how supernatural powers could distort a relationship, in his Conjure Wife. But you’ve opened the magical girl genre up to horror in many, many ways. It’s a real treat. Take body horror—adolescence is disturbing enough for a normal child, but what if the steel hard hide and augmented strength your contract gave you has the effect of not only protecting you from harm, but also making it possible to hurt people you love, or keep love and friendship, ironically, forever at bay, shielded by terrible powers?

The magical girls close up are terrifying. Are they children wearing costumes that give them powers? You get the impression that they are actually costumes that wear children—a demonic concept indeed! The competent arrogance of Pretty Dynamo becomes grotesque because it is inhuman. The brash neediness of Sukeban becomes a behavioral loop that traps a youngster in a state of arrested development. Rifle Maiden is compelled to become a cartoonish mass murderer, which may have begun as a fantasy of unconquerable strength. Not to mention the nightmarish depiction of Kaiju destruction your narration supplies—in some way, the magical girls are implicated in the mayhem, because they and not armies, are participants in the carnage. (Incidentally, the best descriptions of the trauma inflicted by falling buildings that I’ve read is in Pietro di Donato’s Christ in Concrete, which I recommend.)

The horror of nightmare is especially strong in your writing, with the reality of the fact that the magical girls are all witches who have sold their souls to demonic powers, and who face a reckoning of some sort, whether it is from the Kronos-like spaghetti monster en route to make the universe a tomb, or God, who is forgotten in the crush of trying to survive in a universe bent on humankind’s demise. The irony of this spiritual ignorance is deeply rewarding to the reader. In a world of cheap heroics, what will true heroism be? I’ve never read anything like this before.

My comments:

I am humbled and flattered. I also admit to being perplexed: This is the second reader who has informed me that Jake and the Dynamo and its sequel are horror novels. I was honestly unaware of that, and it makes me think I need to redirect my marketing plan. I have always thought of these books as action-comedy.

Part of my confusion may simply stem from the way I see the magical-girl genre. This reader flatters me by attributing to me things that I thought I was merely borrowing. The idea that the magical girls are “costumes that wear the children,” for example, is not unique to me. That magical-girl transformation entails a loss of self is already hinted in Sailor Moon, which first introduced the concept of the reluctant magical girl, and it is further developed in titles like Princess Tutu and Shugo Chara, the latter of which was Jake and the Dynamo’s immediate inspiration. When I depict the girls as uncertain about their true identities and as having distinct personalities when in their magical forms, I am (to my own mind) merely following the formula. I am also doing that for my own convenience: In my head, Dana acts differently when in and out of costume, so I wrote her that way.

The hint of demonic contract and Faustian bargain does, I admit, deviate from the norm, in which the bargain between a girl and her talking animal is benign. Phantom Thief Jeanne first proposed the idea that magical-girl contracts were dangerous and potentially diabolical, but it was of course Puella Magi Madoka Magica that finally developed it. To me, it seems obvious in part because the magical girl’s animal mascot resembles the familiar of the classic witch. That’s why I use the word familiar in Jake and the Dynamo.

My most original contribution to the genre may be the antagonist of the series, whose true nature has not yet been revealed. Though one may find him lurking behind the arch-nemeses of some anime titles such as Neon Genesis Evangelion or Gurren Lagan, the resemblance is coincidental: Those anime deal with some Stapledonian concepts that I already had churning in my mind for a long time, long before I became interested in anime. In fact, “Lord Shadow” is a version of a villain (if he can really be called a villain, or a he for that matter) that I invented for another work, and whom I will undoubtedly use again in a different guise.

(This post contains affiliate links.)