Category Archives: The Dakota Stevens Mysteries Series

12/12/12

Two Ideas to Get You Through (The 1st Draft)

If you follow me on Facebook or Twitter, you already know that I began writing the third installment in the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series last Monday, and that I’ve written about 18,000 words so far.

What you don’t know, because I haven’t spoken about it at all, is what a bitch this first draft has been.

The tension of not knowing exactly where the story is going is killing me.

It’s been a while, you see, since I had to write a Dakota novel from scratch. The last time I sat down and started a first draft was seven years ago.

Seven years.

Obviously, I’ve written first drafts of other work since then—stories, essays and speeches mostly—but nothing compares to the intricacy of a novel.

Which is why I’ve recently taken great solace in two quotes on writing by two masters: E.L. Doctorow and Bernard Malamud.

Doctorow compared writing—particularly writing a novel—to driving at night through fog. “You can only see as far as your headlights,”  he said, “but you can make the whole trip that way.”

Whenever I’ve found myself getting frustrated with not being able to see the story more than a chapter or so ahead, I’ve thought of Doctorow’s quote: “You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”

The second quote, by Bernard Malamud, was directed to writers in general: “Teach yourself to work in uncertainty.”

This is especially apropos to the writing of a first draft—the very definition of uncertainty.

Learning to be comfortable with uncertainty is imperative for a writer. Uncertainty about where the story is going. Uncertainty about how it will be received. Uncertainty about finances. Uncertainty of all kinds.

These two ideas—uncertainty, and seeing as far as your headlights—are getting me through the first draft, and they’ll get you through, too.

—Chris

 

11/28/12

Dakota Novels Get 5 Stars from IndieReader

IndieReader, the popular and informative web-zine about self-published books, reviewed A Real Piece of Work back in February and gave the novel 5 stars.

So when I published The Rich Are Different over the summer, I submitted the novel to them for a possible review. They were swamped at the time, but I followed up with them last week, and today, less than a week later, they published a review of the second book.

Another 5-star review.

Read the review of A Real Piece of Work.

Read the review of The Rich Are Different.

The reviewer of both books, Maya Fleischmann, creates some nice turns of phrase in her reviews. She writes, “Action, lust, danger, style and witty repartee, Orcutt’s A Real Piece of Work is a work of art.” And of The Rich Are Different she writes, “Dakota Stevens is thoroughly likeable and appealing with his rich mix of chivalry and clever mischief.” There are several other examples, but I’ll let you read them for yourself.

Besides promoting the reviews, there is no larger point of this blog entry, except perhaps to acknowledge that like all writers, I want my work to be liked and accepted. Certainly reviews from regular readers mean just as much to me as IndieReader’s, but there is something especially nice about having a professional stamp of approval. They even sent me a “sticker,” shown here.

Thank you for putting up with this rambling, gloating entry. Sometimes, though, you have to stop and savor the small successes, and this is one of them.

 

11/26/12

Dakota Stevens #3: Starting from Scratch

While writing the first two books in the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series—A Real Piece of Work and The Rich Are Different—I kept notebooks of other plot ideas, titles, scenes, characters and anything else that occurred to me for future installments.

As a result of these notebooks, I had begun two more Dakota novels and created outlines for 3–4 others.

However, when I opened these notebooks recently with the intent of continuing one of the stories I’d started, I didn’t like what I found.

I’d written this material (including the first hundred pages of a Dakota & Svetlana prequel) between 5 and 7 years ago, and I’d matured as a writer since then.

I no longer liked the direction I’d sketched out for the character and the series.

A realization soon followed that made me sick to my stomach:

I needed to dump all of that work and start over.

When you’ve created a series character, starting from scratch is a scary thought. For the first time since I invented Dakota & Svetlana, I won’t have drafts of work to build on. I’ll be facing a blank Page One and all of the paralyzing dread that accompanies it.

But I’m doing it. I’m starting from scratch, mainly because a novel is a hell of a lot of work, and you have to start with a story, a vision, that you really want to tell. It’s the only thing that carries you through.

Ultimately, the task before me now is to figure out what excites me about Dakota & Svetlana, and to ask myself, “What is the Dakota story I would most like to read?”

I know that’s the question I need to be asking because it’s the same one I asked myself before writing the first two novels, and I’m pleased with the results.

Allegedly, J.R.R. Tolkien was partly inspired to write his Lord of the Rings series for this very reason. He thought about the books that he would most like to read, realized they didn’t exist yet, and set out to write them.

He wrote the books he most wanted to read. This is a great lesson for all of us writers.

Over the coming months, I’ll be writing the first draft of Dakota 3. I have no idea what kind of story it will be or where it will take me; all I know is, I want it to be a fresh take on my vision for the series, and I want it to be as well written as I can possibly make it. We’ll see if I can pull it off.

Wish me luck, Dear Reader. I’m going to need it.

 

11/23/12

Publishing Your Ebook: Don’t Go It Alone

A year ago, when I published A Real Piece of Work, I did it the hard way.

I formatted and converted the book myself.

Although I have some web design experience and am relatively comfortable with HTML and XML, and although the final product turned out great, it took me a solid month of 16-hour days to get the ebook formatting correct.

That’s a month that I wasn’t writing, wasn’t doing anything creative.

I drove myself to exhaustion and lost all of that time. Time I could have used to hone my craft. Time during which I could have written at least 30,000 words.

That’s a third of a novel.

Fortunately I didn’t try to design the book cover myself. Working from a sketch of mine, a graphic designer friend, Elisabeth Pinio, designed a beautiful cover, saving me countless hours and headaches. (Contact me to get in touch with her.)

Fast forward to June of this year, when I was publishing the second novel in the Dakota Stevens Mystery Series, The Rich Are Different. Just thinking about all of the work involved made me anxious and irritable.

I did a test-run of formatting the book by myself, but I couldn’t get it to come out right. The software tools had changed, and I had forgotten a number of steps in the process. Meanwhile, I had promised my readers that I would release the book at the end of the month.

Yet, despite all of this, I was reluctant to hand over this crucial part of the process to someone else.

Bottom line: I didn’t trust. I didn’t trust somebody else to handle this task for me. I didn’t trust that somebody else would do as good a job, or that my project would mean as much to them as it did to me.

One night I was up in the middle of the night. I couldn’t sleep with all of the worries I was carrying around, and I found myself going to Google and searching for ebook formatting and converting companies. There were several—too many, in fact—but they all looked too slick, too impersonal. I wanted to work with a person, someone who would allay my fears, address all of my concerns.

And then I happened upon Ebookconverting.com, run by a woman named Lisa Despain. She offered a lot of free information on her blog, and she had a friendly video about the process. My instincts told me that she was the right one for me.

I decided to take a Kierkegaardian leap of faith. I contacted her.

Besides communicating via email, she took the time to speak to me on the phone for a good forty minutes. She answered all of my questions, addressed all of my concerns. As for the result, well…it was excellent, and I’ll let you read my testimonial to learn more.

Now, Lisa and Elisabeth are terrific professionals in their fields, and while I highly recommend both of them, you might have other people in mind. That’s fine. Because this piece isn’t about specific vendors; it’s about trusting other people to be a part of publishing your ebook.

Consider the opportunity costs of doing everything yourself. Time spent on formatting and converting your book into ePub and Mobi files is writing time lost. Also, how much is your time worth? Because it’s going to take a lot of time—especially if you’re a newbie.

You’re the writer. Make your focus the writing—producing as great a book as you possibly can. That’s a hard enough job.

To that end, I strongly recommend hiring an editor and/or proofreader for your book. The number one complaint by readers about many indie-published ebooks is that they’re poorly written. If you’re a writer asking people to pay for your work with their time and money, you can’t be dismissive about this.

You want your work to be as well-written and as error-free as possible. Not only because you want every reader to have a great experience, but also because you know that the quality of your work determines your long-term reputation as a writer.

Do you want a reputation for readable and well-written, or convoluted and sloppy? As the knight in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade remarks, “Choose wisely.”

In his book The War of Art, an inspiring look at what it takes to be an artist (especially a writer), Steven Pressfield argues that a pro asks for help and recognizes his or her limitations. Pros hire other pros to handle aspects of their work so they can be freed up to focus on what they do best: the writing.

As writers, by nature we’re independent creatures. Most of us are suspicious of “communities,” which is understandable. But if you want your writing to thrive as an indie-published author, it’s imperative that you interact with other writers and people involved in indie publishing. Reach out to them for help, and be willing to help others who come to you. Promote their books or services to the extent that you feel comfortable.

Finally, help bolster the reputation of indie-published books by turning out a quality product. Hire others or barter services in order to do that.

In other words, when it comes to publishing your ebook, don’t go it alone.