by Scott W Clemens | Oct 27, 2016 | Author's Blog
In June I wrote a blog entry regarding Evelyn Marsh.Let me tell you a little about Evelyn. The concept arose a couple of years ago when my wife and I were vacationing in Santa Barbara. I was getting toward the end of writing Time Management: a novel. I said I’d kind of like to write a mystery, but I’ve neither been a policeman nor a private detective. I’d have to take a different tack. Furthermore, I wanted to show how thin the veneer of civilization is when your loved ones are threatened. What would turn a mild-mannered woman of privileged means into a cold-blooded murderer? I suspect we all have the capacity to commit murder, given the right circumstances.
I put the idea of Evelyn on the back burner as I finished and worked on marketing Time Management. With Artistic License, and Time Management, each took more than three years to write (many more, if you count false starts), and were both around 130,000 words (370 – 400 pages, depending on the font, etc.). That’s a long time to live with the same characters and story. I thought it would be a fun exercise to attempt a novella instead, to see if I was capable of writing at a faster pace. I planned to write 51,000 words, which, at 300 words per page, works out to 170 pages. I began planning on February 1st, 2016, started writing on April 1st, and was finished on September 1st. It came in at 51,161 words, right on target. So as an exercise it was entirely successful.
It’s probably not a good business model to write in different genres, because your readers may not follow where you choose to lead. With Artistic License is my take on a Romantic Comedy, which may or may not appeal to fans of Time Management, a time travel fantasy. Evelyn Marsh is, I suppose, a psychological thriller. A blurb for Evelyn Marsh might read something like this: “Everyone agreed Evelyn wouldn’t hurt a fly, but they didn’t count on a mother’s ferocity, nor the fury of a woman scorned.”
Written in the spirit of Patricia Highsmith (Strangers on a Train; The Talented Mr. Ripley), Evelyn Marsh begins with the provocative statement that “Evelyn’s first murder was an accident.” It’s only a mystery in the sense that the rest of the book exists to explain the implication embedded in the first line. It’s a why-done-it and how-done-it, instead of a who-done-it. I don’t know if it will appeal to fans of With Artistic License, or Time Management, but Evelyn demanded I write her story, and I couldn’t very well refuse.
I really enjoyed my time with her. I had an outline to point me in the general direction, but most days Evelyn presented a nice surprise I hadn’t counted on. I feel privileged to be allowed to tell her story. I hope you enjoy your time with her as well.
I decided to submit Evelyn Marsh to the Kindle Scout program (www.kindlescout.com), where authors have ONE MONTH to present excerpts of unpublished works, and readers vote on which books they’d like to see published. The advantage of the program for authors is that books that are selected receive promotion on Amazon.com, which means thousands of readers. My campaign runs through October 17th. I hope you’ll pay it a visit and register your vote. In any case, whether selected by Kindle Scout or not, the ebook version of Evelyn Marsh should be published around December 1st.
by Scott W Clemens | Jun 29, 2016 | Author's Blog
Three weeks after the ebook publication of Time Management, I prepared the manuscript for print. The electronic version scales itself automatically depending on whether you’re reading it on a computer, a tablet, or a phone. The print version, on the other hand, is set in stone. The chapter headings begin about a third of the way down the page, which serves a couple of purposes. First, it simply looks less crowded. More importantly, it allows for minor adjustments, so you don’t end up with a chapter ending with just a line or two on the last page.
In addition, the font makes a big difference in the appearance of the text. For instance, the font in this blog is “sans serif” (without serif), which is a little cleaner and simpler to read electronically, but I prefer a serif font in print. What’s the difference?
Unfortunately, this website is preformatted and I can't show you the nuances, but this particular paragraph is presented in a seriffed font (albeit not one that I like).
I played around with a number of different fonts. The classic is Times New Roman. I used a variation on that called Caslon. Another form of spacing is called leading, which is the space between the lines. As you can imagine, the space between the lines has a great effect on the number of pages in the printed book. One version was 327 pages, but I found the type looked a little cramped. In the end I decided to use Major Pettigrew’s Last Stand (a highly recommended novel) as a template for both font and leading, making the book 370 pages, which is much more pleasing to my eye, though the 43 extra pages did bump the cost of production up a dollar fifty.
Reviewing the novel for print, I found one more typo, which astounds me, as this book has been read by several editors and a couple dozen people from my Advance Team. I also added one phrase on the last page for clarification, which I subsequently changed in the ebook version as well.
Lastly, for both the ebook and print versions I opted for the Goodfellow font for the title, which was also used for a first edition of Samuel Langhorn Clemens’s The Innocents Abroad, first published in 1867 and playing a minor role in this story.
by Scott W Clemens | Jun 24, 2016 | Author's Blog
I’m currently working on a novelette (I’m hoping to bring it in at less than 200 pages) called Evelyn Marsh, in the spirit of Patricia Highsmith. It’s only a mystery in the sense that the rest of the book exists to explain the implication embedded in the first line: “Evelyn’s first murder was an accident.”
Evelyn Marsh is a character study. I don’t know if it will appeal to readers of my other books, but I’m enjoying my time with Evelyn. She’s an interesting lady. She’s a mild mannered artist, mother and wife. Some think she’s too timid. But don’t underestimate her. As the author, I might say I’m just getting to know her and what makes her tick. You’ll meet her for yourself next fall, if not sooner.
by Scott W Clemens | Jun 3, 2016 | Author's Blog
You can consider this an addendum to my previous post on covers, where I asked for opinions and received none.
When I was close to finishing Time Management I set about designing a cover. I took a photo of some of my watches and manipulated that photo in Photoshop to come up with a gold bas relief (it would make a great embossed cover). I thought it looked really nice. I wanted the font to look like something from the 19th century, and I found a first edition of Twain’s The Innocents Abroad (published in 1867), which used a font I later identified as Goodfellow (also used in several of novelist Christopher Moore’s covers). The result was this:
This is the cover I submitted with for my Kindle Scout campaign. I still like this cover; it’s elegant. But sandwiched between 3D covers on Kindle Scout, it looked a little flat. So I hired a designer, Perry Kirkpatrick (www.perryelisabethdesign.com), who had designed the cover of my previous book, With Artistic License. I gave her some watch photos and she came up with three different designs. They were all good, but not what I was looking for. She was very patient with me and worked on an hourly basis as I asked her to try first one thing then another. It was a long process as I kept asking for more design elements, and after many iterations I was somewhat pleased with this one:
I still like it. It looks very professional and intriguing, but there was still something lacking. Part of the problem, I realized was the uppercase treatment of the title (I prefer the Title Case). But Perry suggested it might be too busy. I thought about that, and realized that sometimes simpler is better, particularly when viewing thumbnail covers on a computer screen or phone. So I went back to designing the cover myself, with the goal of finding something that worked well on a tablet or phone. I won’t bore you with the many subtle iterations of that cover. The one I finally settled on was this:
I preferred another version with the watches shrunk to a smaller size, but a poll of more than 160 potential readers preferred this cover by a margin of over almost 4 to 1. So there you have it — the evolution of a cover design. Is one better than another? I’ll leave that to you.
by Scott W Clemens | Apr 19, 2016 | Author's Blog
When searching online for a new book to read, readers have only three things with which to make a judgement: The excerpt, the blurb, and the cover. For Time Management, I’m reasonably confident the excerpt is sufficiently compelling. The blurb may need work (I’m not an ad man). But one’s first impression will always be of the cover (we really do judge a book by its cover). So I’ve decided to try out two cover designs and I’m asking for your opinion. Please email me at mossbeach@comcast.net (or double clicking on the title of this post to bring up the comment bar) to cast your vote for 1. The gold cover, or 2. The farmhouse cover.
In June I wrote a blog entry regarding Evelyn Marsh.Let me tell you a little about Evelyn. The concept arose a couple of years ago when my wife and I were vacationing in Santa Barbara. I was getting toward the end of writing Time Management: a novel. I said I’d kind of like to write a mystery, but I’ve neither been a policeman nor a private detective. I’d have to take a different tack. Furthermore, I wanted to show how thin the veneer of civilization is when your loved ones are threatened. What would turn a mild-mannered woman of privileged means into a cold-blooded murderer? I suspect we all have the capacity to commit murder, given the right circumstances.
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