Tag: writing

Indie Authors and Controversial Posts – Should You? Should You Not?

Controversy-770x285

DISCLAIMER: This is simply my own opinion. I also stress throughout the post that no one has the right to be disrespectful. Writing is a business and publishing books is a career move. I always encourage you to use wisdom in all that you do. Even if you are speaking truth, don’t put people down. That’s not wise.

I think it boils down to why you write in the first place and what you hope to gain from it. It should be a personal choice, not a commandment.

I understand why people propose you don’t post about super controversial topics. The reasons are obvious and have been stated repeatedly already. I won’t bore you with a regurgitation of the facts (see disclaimer.) But at the same time, I don’t understand why some propose Indies stay clear of it altogether. Even if it can help others. I think about what it means to be a writer. For me, this is not a job. It’s much more.

I know most people don’t take blogs and bloggers seriously, but when it comes to writing, it’s not like the 9-5 you go to every day where there are rules, regulations, and guidelines you must live by. Let me put this in perspective.

I am a part-time teacher as well as an author. I know what it means to go into a place that already has a set standard and to clock in and out.

I blog and I write books but when I am not doing this, I am teaching.

To teach, you have to be certified, have the educational background and follow the governmental guidelines necessary to do so. There is already a schedule, a curriculum, etc. (It is why one day, I would like to open my own school. I try not to do anything without an ultimate end goal.)

When I think about being an author, on the other hand, I think of having a much greater freedom than working a 9-5. The freedom to own my own and to speak the truth. Now, there are some that say that because this is a business (writing is) you shouldn’t talk about things that are controversial because you’ll lose readers. Perhaps it is a matter of perspective because I do not think of it this way.

Losing readers for cursing people out is one thing. Losing readers because you are rude and arrogant and just don’t care is one thing. Professionalism is important. If you don’t know how to talk to people, perhaps you shouldn’t be in business.

On the other hand…

If I lose readers for being real. If I lose readers because they cannot stomach the truth I have to offer. If I lose readers because they do not agree with me, then they were not my readers, to begin with. If I lose these people because I decided to be real and they didn’t like it, then they were not part of my target audience in the first place. I know it sounds harsh, but I see a lot of Traditionally Published authors speaking their minds too  and writing their truths. I see a lot of them using their platform to raise awareness of social injustice and other things. There’s a lot they say that can be considered controversial and it seems that for Independent Artists there should be more freedom.  It is only when I get to Independent / Self-Publishing that I hear this talk about how we should, in short, censor ourselves and I understand the need for it but only to an extent.

Using wisdom is one thing, I understand that. In the words of my father-in-law, “Don’t be a fool your whole life.” However, using your art to expand conversations and to raise awareness cannot be done without some inkling of controversy.  Someone somewhere is going to disagree with you. The whole point of writing, it seems to be, is to ultimately expand the conversation of the book. To not speak about your thoughts concerning the political, religious or social climate of today, to censor this in fear of losing readers, doesn’t make any sense to me. Why are you alive?

If I am going to write then I am going to write the truth and if people feel that it is a truth they cannot accept then they weren’t part of the chosen few I was meant to reach in the first place. I have long given up trying to save the world. I am not that naive anymore. I am only trying to reach those who are interested.

I am not saying to be disrespectful. Be choice with your words. That’s important and I’ve spoken about that a lot on this blog. I am only saying that if you are truly speaking the truth you are going to offend someone somewhere sometimes and that it’s not something you can control. If your job is not to offend anyone, where does that leave you? You may as well go work for someone else.

Listen, my intent is not to offend but it’s inevitable that when telling the truth you will annoy someone. To spend my life writing trying not to do so is to not do my job. In case you haven’t already noticed, I do not write to get rich. I don’t care about being famous, political correctness and offending people who can’t handle the truth and all that. It would be nice for my books to reach a large audience of course, but that is not why I write.

“To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” – Elbert Hubbard

Renaissance Ebook 99cents from now through Friday 12/29

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW

After letting Revelation: The Nora White Story Book Two, sit for about two months, I am right back into revisions and getting excited all over again. As such, I decided to give those of you who have not read Book One an opportunity to do so.

Renaissance: The Nora White Story (Book One) is now available for just 99cents in eBook on Amazon from now through Friday, December 29, 2017. Also, be sure to leave me an honest review if you feel so obliged after this short read.  Reviews greatly help readers to understand what to expect from these books and are a great source of feedback for Indie Authors. As always, your support is golden.

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW

 

“The writing is of a very high quality, evoking period and place so well that I was transported to the Jazz Clubs and writers’ circles of nineteen twenties New York and to the equally hot and humid atmosphere of the Mississippi Delta.”

– Frank Parker

CLICK HERE TO BUY NOW

Breaking: Readers Can expect a New Zora Neale Hurston Book in 2018

For those of you familiar with my latest novel, Renaissance, you know that Zora makes a guest appearance so I am excited to dig into her newest release from Harper Collins next year. It sounds like a powerful one. Here’s what’s going on:

HarperCollins will launch a never-before-published book by Zora Neale Hurston. Barracoon is a non-fiction work of anthropology, rather than a novel.

As Daniel Johnson writes for the Black Youth Project:

Barracoon tells the story of the last known person to survive the transatlantic slave trade, a man named Cudjo Lewis. Many know that Hurston was an acclaimed fiction writer, but here it is her work as an anthropologist that shines. Hurston was able to sit down in the Black community of Plateau, Alabama, which was founded by Cudjo Lewis and other ex-slaves from the ship that brought them to America, and talk with the then 95-year-old Lewis about his life in 1931.

The book’s name comes from the type of ship on which Lewis was held and brought to America. In Barracoon, Hurston captures, largely in Lewis’s own words, the horrors of his passage to America, the brutality of his time as an enslaved person in America, and the story of his life after the Civil War.

This sounds like it’s going to be a powerful read.

Click through the ORIGINAL ARTICLE here.

Premade Book Covers: 2 Things to Keep in Mind

There’s a quote floating around somewhere that says:

“Don’t go broke trying to prove to other broke people that you ain’t broke.”

Many authors are on budgets now more than ever and this has created an entirely new source of income for graphic designers, many of whom offer premade book covers as well as custom made. These artists have made our life a little easier by offering professional covers at lower rates than custom covers. While custom covers are preferred, not everyone can afford a new custom cover for every book (except for people who make their own covers or knows of someone who does it for them free of cost) so consider this post for those of us “balling on a budget.” I believe in investing in your best and if you can afford to pay for a custom cover and high-priced editing, go for it. There’s nothing wrong with that. However, just know you don’t have to go broke to publish your book. The same way we can find reasonable editing prices is the same way we can find reasonable book cover prices for covers that won’t look generic.

Still, Premades have a unique struggle we must consider when choosing them.

All of the factors that go into articulating your story to a designer in a way that will help them to design a good cover is internal. By internal I mean that if you are choosing the premade, you have to make these decisions for yourself. You have to understand your target audience, your genre, and identify the key features enough to know if the cover is the right fit for you. This isn’t easy.

Many people have asked me about the cover for Renaissance. The truth is that it was a premade I was blessed to find! All the artist did was edit the text. Here’s what a reader said when leaving a review for the book on Amazon:

“The first thing that drew me to this novel was its beautiful cover. A deep blue sky fading into a sunset which bakes an old country road golden brown.”

Guys, I didn’t spend a lot of money on this.

As soon as I saw the cover I knew it was the right fit for Renaissance. Though it’s a premade, there are some things that made it unique:

  • Although it was a premade, the photo is a real photo taken by Brittany Cox and then sold to designer Najla Qambers to be used for a premade book cover. It is not a stock photo.

 

  • The elements of the photo fit the context of the story, which starts off in Jacksonville, MS where the White family owns and runs a farm.

 

  • The book cover matches other books in my genre (Historical Fiction)

I looked at other covers and thought about purchasing a complete custom cover but my money wasn’t agreeing with that so I just went back to that same image, praying no one had taken it. The use of a real country road photo really sets it apart. It was also the only of its kind being sold so I was anxious to get it as it was literally just one available. When I was ready, I contacted Najla Qambers of Brick-a-Brack Photography and secured my cover.

  1. Watch Out for Overly Used Stock Photos

One of the things that made the Renaissance cover unique is the use of a real photograph. There are some great premade design covers out there but many designers use the same stock photos. All designers will have a message that says the book cover is not sold after you buy it and the cover is removed, which is true. You will often see “Sold” on the designer’s site to indicate that cover has been taken. But while the same cover cannot be sold again, the same stock photo is sometimes used in a slightly different design. The particular cover you bought may not be sold again but the same stock images can be used again. Keep this in mind when looking for your premade.

Joshua Jadon sums it up pretty well:

“You also may get less attention from a generic cover because it may be a little easier to ignore. Readers are looking for something interesting and exciting that grabs their attention, and a book that might have the same cover—or at least the same images—as several others often won’t get that kind of attention. A unique style or look can influence readers’ selection process. If your cover doesn’t reflect that … well, it may not get noticed.”

But, your premade does not have to look generic.

“It always seems impossible until it’s done.” – Nelson Mandela

It is possible to find a stunning premade that looks custom made. I got tons of compliments on this cover and requests for who designed it. People thought it was custom made.

2. Watch out for Bulk Premade Deals

Boy did I fall for this one! Book cover design is a skill. Period. Even though there are designers offering bulk book covers at discounted prices you can edit in Photoshop, it won’t do you any good without skill. I made the mistake of falling for this and while some of the bulk covers I purchased are nice (and I am competent in editing covers in Photoshop), it is not something I will do again. A clever move by designers but not such a good deal for authors. Unless you are Photoshop Savvy, have someone on your team who is Photoshop Savvy, or you are a graphic designer, it will do little to benefit you to buy twenty premade book covers you have to design yourself using the software you don’t know how to use. 

While it may start off looking professional, your lack of skill can make it look generic because graphic designers are skilled in typography, colors, blending colors, and anything else that may require a keen eye. You can mess up a nice cover not knowing what you’re doing which will lead you back to square one.

Here are some websites with some unique premade book covers. There are more, I am sure, but these are ones I’ve investigated myself. I rarely see the stock photos from their covers used by other designers.

For more posts on Indie Publishing, be sure to visit the new Indie Author Basics with EC page.

Be sure to pick up your copy of Renaissance: The Nora White Story (Book One) HERE.

New Author Tip

2017-12-08 13.17.01

Blogging has greatly impacted my writing life. The knowledge and wisdom from my fellow bloggers is amazing. I love that we build each other up and alert one another to things that may seem fishy in the publishing industry. I love that we promote each other and help advance the other’s writing life. That said, my tip for new authors is this:

This is just a suggestion, but if you are about to publish for the first time and you’ve never published a book before (and people don’t know you as a writer, maybe as other things but not as a writer) consider starting a blog at least 6 months to a year of publishing your first book. Spend that time talking about your passions, networking with other writers, readers and getting a feel for the online community. Don’t just talk about your work, talk about yourself. Post funny pictures, inspiring quotes, short story excerpts, articles and anything that appeals to your target audience and that (most of all) showcases your personality. Let people get to know you better while also getting to know the writer you. Then, when you’re ready to publish your book, you have a platform and people who are interested outside of your immediate circle.

This tip is only for those who are close to publishing. If you are still writing your book, I would say to focus on that for now. If you are publishing soon however, you may want to try blogging to test the waters. It’s a better platform for networking (in my opinion) than Facebook and Twitter.

MASTER LIST of Facial Expressions for Writers! – Bryn Donovan

Awesome. Authors, check it out. Very helpful list.

I created this list to address that challenge. The expressions are broken down by the part of the face. Note that some of them work for more than one emotion—a person might narrow their eyes out of vindictiveness or skepticism, for instance, and their face might turn red out of anger or out of embarrassment.

Some of them require a little more explanation on your part. You’ll have to say what she’s glaring at, or if his face is contorting in rage, or grief, or what. And not all of these will work for every character—it depends on what they look like and how they generally react to things.

Some of these aren’t exactly facial expressions, but useful for dialogue tags. In many cases I’ve given several ways to describe the same thing. While I have included some longer phrases, they are not proprietary and it’s fine to use them.

Click through to the ORIGINAL POST HERE to read the facial expressions. I am sure you’ll find a few to put to good use.

Confession and Cover Reveal

bitmoji-470945688

Many of you know that I have pushed my two bigger projects back but I’ve been low-key working on another one and yesterday, I revealed the news to my email list.

I have wanted to publish many of the poems featured on this blog (by featured I am referring to my own poems) in a book for a long time. I tried it with my third collection but since then I’ve written a lot more poetry. To make a long story short, I’ve finally submitted the final copy of I AM SOUL in to be edited last week and we’re looking at a release date as early as December 20th, my mother’s birthday.

COVER REVEAL – I AM SOUL

 

Inspiration Behind the Title

“You have an old soul.”

I don’t particularly like this phrase and I cringe when people tell me this. But, it is a fact that I’ve heard this many times over the course of my life, disguised in many different ways.

“You act older than you are.”

“You’re mature for your age.”

Or as my big sister so elegantly put it: “You old.”

So, I decided to drop the “Old” (because I’m young shooo lol) and just go with Soul.

Personal

I read something once that said, “The best writing is vulnerable.” I kept rolling this around in my head. It’s so true. I am extremely shy when it comes to my own personal feelings and I admit I am embarrassed to reveal too much of myself because, well, I think it will be too much. I’m too much yall (lol tee hee). But, the person was right. We connect deeper with people who we can relate to. People who are just as human as we are. People who make mistakes and are dripping with flaws. They may not always be this way, but they help us to see there is still hope. Their testimonies make redemption real. They are not somewhere in heaven while the rest of us are here on Earth. Their mistakes are a bridge of commonality that connects them to the rest of mankind. It is why we connect with people who are real.

This book is also a compilation of the Black History poems published to this blog which is another inspiration for the title. We have always had a unique way about us from our rich history to our style of dress to the way that we speak. We are the salt of the Earth. We are flavoring. We are Soul Train and Soul Brothers. We are soul.

I AM SOUL is personal in more ways than one and seeks to tell the truth. To be honest. To be vulnerable. To be weak and in that weakness, to be strong. ( 2 Co 12:10) This book is all things personal. This book is all things, soul.

So, there you have it. I’ll have more details and developments as we get closer to release but I am excited and I hope you will enjoy this collection just as much as you enjoy the poetry on this blog.

I AM SOUL- 3D

Coming Soon