Barnes and Noble - We Love You!

What a great night last night! Mike and I attended a local author night at Barnes and Noble. We started at seven and actually closed the place down after 10:00!!! We were busy the entire time, meeting some new friends and seeing lots of old friends. Here are a few pictures of some of the people that stopped by. We sold 15 copies of the book, but really the treat for us was getting to share the moment with good friends and family. We also got to know Tara (T.J. Silver), another Mbedzi author, and meet some other amazing authors with really great stories to tell. The best part of the night, perhaps, was when we were getting ready to leave and the store manager told us that we were the rock stars of the evening. If by rock stars, you mean I hugged more people than all of the rest of the authors, including Mike, combined, then I guess that I was a rock star! At the end, we actually had a great conversation with Amanda Zhorne, the community relations manager, about how to get the book on their shelves. So, all things considered, it couldn't have been better. We love writing, don't get me wrong, but man, we absolutely love being out with our fans and sharing a great evening together.

 

Mike Hadenfeldt - the most interesting man in Cedar Rapids!

My cousin Melissa and my friend John. Honestly, try to find nicer, smarter, cooler people - you won't find anyone better than these guys!

Sydnei, who I think loves our book more than us. She is reading it for the second time and can't wait for us to get the next book (s) out. We're working for you, Sydnei!

With Tara (T.J. Silver) who is another author from Mbedzi publishing. I started her book, the Secret of Shadow, last night. She's right, she can write!

The Young's, who besides being very good looking are also culturally sophisticated and very intelligent. And now that they are owners of Hade's Gambit, they have just taken it to the next level!

Good Reads Book Giveaway Promotion

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Hade's Gambit

by Michael Koogler

Giveaway ends September 09, 2012.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Here is a link for you to check out a promotion we are doing at Goodreads. We are giving away five, signed copies of our book ending on September 9th. Even if you have already purchased a copy of the book, feel free to sign up - if you win, you can give it to a friend as a present or donate it to a local library or even use it for household jobs. We are so proud of the book, we just wanted to share it with the world, and we thought this was a good way to do it. If you aren't on goodreads, check it out - it is a lot of fun and you'll find all sorts of great books to read - including Hade's Gambit!

Reading the book outloud (on the cheap)!

One of the fun things for me is finding new ways to get the book, or part of the book, out to the world. So, I'm trying to find a good way to record parts of the book (for now - eventually we want to do the entire book!). This is my first try - it is the prologue. I found an app on my ipad that allows me to record audio, then drop it into a dropbox, than upload it to itunes. Of course, somehow I can't figure out a way to make it just appear seamlessly, so what I'm including here is a link to a website with the prologue. It isn't fantastic, and it takes about a minute or so to download (so if you are trying this, wait for a bit for it to work), but it gives you a sense of the book and it is a good start. Unfortunately, one of the small problems with being a new author is knowing there is all sorts of cool things to do to help get the message out there, but also knowing that if you want to do something really well you have to pay. I did all of this for about 3 dollars for the app (dropbox and blogger are free!), so pretty economical. But the fact that it is pretty unwieldy and a bit staticy shows some of the limitations. Anyway, enjoy the prologue!

Prologue

The Blind Leading the Comicon

We are getting ready for Comicon and we think we know what we are doing. Which means, for us, that we have absolutely no idea what we are doing. Here is what we know. We know that Mike went last year and scouted the place out. He met Bruce Campbell (I think that is right), and a few other people, and talked with some artists about our book. He has some ideas on things to do, and since he has been there, well, who are we to argue? We know that we have talked to a few people who have gone there, including an artist/writer named Alan Knave that my sister got me in contact with. His suggestion? Have a big banner, keep it simple, and do what you can to make people want to come to your booth. He also said to have plastic bags to hand out, but we don't have nearly enough time to get those taken care of. Next year! We know it is in Chicago and that we have hotel reservations just across the street. Yeah, that is about all we really know.
So, what are we planning on doing? We are going to bring around 50 books with us to sell. We are making up bookmarks (my cousin Melissa is working on them for us!), and have purchased 600 silicon bracelets that say Hade's Gambit on them to hand out. We are going to order t-shirts to wear, I ordered a banner to put up, and we are going to sell, sell, sell!!! We thought about bottled water with Hade's Gambit on it, and temporary tattoos, but we just aren't sure how many people are going to come visit us. We are hoping to hook up with famous people, including William Shatner and Stan Lee, and mostly just to hang out and have a good time. If we sell 4 books or 40 books doesn't really matter. If we can get our book into the hands of a couple of important people, that could change things for us. Well, at least that is what we hope! So, it could end up being an amazing thing, or it could end up be slightly less amazing, but either way, it is going to be awesome! We'll have a great time meeting people, working together, and just having fun. Two and a half weeks, but I can't wait!!!

Who do we love? Iowa City!!!

What a great weekend!!! We had a book signing at the Haunted Book Shop on Friday the 13th! We had about 50 people come out. Then on Sunday we gave a presentation on the good and bad of trying to find a publisher (our short answer- it is good!). There were about 20 people there. The main difference between the two was that on Friday night there were about 5 to 7 people there who weren't family or friends and on Sunday it was all people who we didn't know. It was really exciting because both experiences were very different. The first one included lots of personal stories. My mom, wife and children came, Karen our publisher and her husband and a lot of friends were there, and Clayton and his parents were there. We talked about how we grew to become writers, how we came together and how we wrote the book. We had lots and lots and lots of fun, and were told by the owner afterwards that she was so happy to hear so much laughter in her store. Afterwards we went out to dinner with Karen, her husband Phil, and some of their friends from Tipton. I had a great time and learned a lot, most importantly thatI need a favorite Axe and a few pygmaies. So, that was great! Sunday we shared less personal stories and really focused on the process of getting a book published. It was a very different message, but still a lot of fun. There was laughing, knowledged shared, and knowledge gained. We met some fantastic people and had a great time sharing our story. Thanks to those who came out and supported us. It was a great weekend!

This is us at the Haunted Book Shop! It was standing room only. This is after the reading was over and we were busy shamelessly selling copies of our books. We sold over 20 copies - thanks to those who bought one (or two!)

We met a great young author named Jenna who also bought a book. It was fun talking to her and encouraging her to keep writing. There is nothing more exciting in the world than giving advice to young writers! I hope she does well!

Proof that we were there. I wasn't able to get a picture, but they had one of these on the counter to order drinks and someone had put an I next to Jed. So, I was JedI Peterson - pretty cool!!!

This is Mike. I just wanted to take a picture showing how we are selling books out of the back of our car. As we were walking in, I asked if Stephen King ever did something like this, and Mike was pretty convinced that he had, so I felt cooler about what we were doing. What a fantastic weekend! The only thing that would have made it better would have been if Jaren was there, but we'll see him next month at Comicon!

Why amazon.com has helped me sell my book and ruined my life in the process

The truth of the world we live in is that if you want to publish a book, amazon.com has to be a part of your life. There really is no way around it. And that is the best and worst thing for an author. Our book, Hade's Gambit, hit amazon.com last week, and since it isn't in stores, people have to buy it online. And, of course, the mere fact that people can buy our book is a wonderful thing. The process itself of getting the book online has been a fairly simple and painless one from an author's perspective. It just sort of shows up one day, and all of a sudden you are a published author. Pretty cool!

There were some bumps as it got started going, but only for those of us watching the site constantly and wanting everything up and running like, I don't know, five minutes ago. Once it showed up, the book was not available to purchase (out of stock), but after a while the book became available, although at this writing they still don't have the artwork up for our book (we were told if it isn't there after 90 days to contact them...). And now, after a week, they have discounted the hard cover from 32.00 down to 29.75, so that is good! They seem to be keeping the book in stock as well. I guess what happens is that our publisher contracted with Lightning Source, the actual printer of the book. When amazon.com feels that they can sell some books, they send for a box of 20 paperbacks and 8 hard covers, and so they have it on stock. You can go on and see, for example, that on Monday there were 5 copies left of the paperback, and on Tuesday there were 2, so we must have sold three books!

So now you are wondering, where has amazon.com ruined your life? The answer is found in one little number found in the descriptive part of the book. They tell you who wrote it, who the publisher is, how many pages it is, etc., etc., and they also include the book's ranking on amazon.com. Ah... that little number, so meaningless, so vital, so ruinous to a person with borderline obsessive compulsive behavior! The number tells you how your book is doing in relation to all of the other books it sells. I would love it if there was a Mr. Irrelevant for this list - the absolute highest number on their list. But, you really don't know where the list ends. Are there 450,000 books, 4.5 million books? Is there a green zone, where those books are considered a success, a yellow zone for maybe, or a red zone for just awful? Are we in the majors, the minors, or just playing streetball with our neighbors? It is impossible to tell. But, if that was the only problem with that number, it wouldn't be terrible. The real problem is that the number never stays still for more than a few hours, and it swings about more wildly than a monkey on prozac.

The truth of the matter is that you become forced to check amazon.com hourly to see what your number is. We started around 240,000 (again, who has any idea what this means!), than moved up and down and up and down and up and down. We would be at 140,000 one day, than later that day we would be at 120,000, than all the way down to 79,000, than suddenly back up to 212,000. All in the space of one day. And then, horror of all horrors, was the moment that I realized they were tracking the book seperately for hard cover and paperback editions. Why would they do that to me! Are they out of the same pool, or different pools? Are the two versions of my one book competing against each other? If we had gone without the hard cover, would we be competing with Twilight, Hunger Games and 50 Shades of Grey right now? Or are we competing against a self-published cook book from an old woman named Marge who lives in northern Alaska, and having two books is helping us out? Oh yeah, take that Marge! I have found myself shouting at that number (now numbers) for them to give me some sort of understanding, some guidance on how I should feel about them, but they are maddeningly unresponsive. Perhaps this is why I never really liked math. Or women named Marge.

And all you can do is watch and see your emotions go up and down like a roller coaster that has flown off the track. When the number goes down, you think yeah! We are on fire - the world is going to love our book!!! At that moment I want to call all the people who have bought my book and personally thank them for making me a true American success story. Scotish mansions and tropical islands here we come! When the number bounces back up, you freak out. Oh no, what happened! Did we do something wrong? Are we failures? Are we on the fast track to living under a bridge and fighting with a man named Hobo Joe over a rusted out can of beans? Probably not, but still, the thought enters your mind. And I want to call all my friends and family (and random people in the phonebook) who I know have not bought my book and beg them for a reason why. Why! In reality, all that really happened is that we sold two books in the morning, than perhaps none in the afternoon, while thousands of other titles each sold one or two copies later that day. To a new author, with high anxiety and little information to go on, and even knowing that it is completely meaningless, you can't stop looking at that number. It is like an addiction of the worst kind! And the number just sits there mocking you, daring you to refresh your browser. You find yourself secretly thinking that Desomond on Lost had it easy. He only had to push the button every 108 minutes, and couldn't push it any earlier. I have to push the button every 1.08 minutes. I also have found that I have to do this alone, for some reason, because I have found myself more than once saying "big bucks, big bucks, no wammies!" as I refresh the page, bracing myself for the joy or heartache. Yeah, best to not let the kids see that one.

And, just to prove that I cannot control my new refreshing fetish, I just checked right now, and we are at about 203,000 for paperback, 114,000 for hardcover. A few days ago, we were at 79,000 in paperback and 22,000 for hardcover. Tomorrow, who knows? And in a week or two we will have the ebook come out and we will have a new drug for our addiction. I will have three numbers to check. If you see me on the street later this year, wearing my bathrobe, my fingernails unclipped and my feet in very large kleenex boxes, muttering to myself about book ratings and radioactive mice, just walk on by. You'll know I'm a new author, and you'll know I sell my book on amazon.com. Don't pity me, I jumped into this boat of my own free will, and I'm so glad amazon.com is helping sell Hade's Gambit. I just wish I could get my old life back. And now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go check out my numbers again.

Belle Plaine!

What a great day!!! Mike and I drove over to Belle Plaine, Iowa, on July 3rd for our first official signing / reading / discussion about our new book, Hade's Gambit. We stopped by the library to check in, then had lunch with the kids who came (Brandon and Annika) at the Lincoln Cafe. It was about 100 degrees out, so we were happy to stay indoors and talk about our book. Check out the pictures!!!

This is a stack of our books. Man, isn't that cover just the bomb! Seriously, it is super awesome. We will be giving a shout out to Clayton for the rest of our lives for how sweet this cover looks! 

Mike and I behind our table. And yes, real authors wear blue!

I don't always sign books, but when I do, I sign Hade's Gambit. Stay thirsty, my friends!

We discussed the book briefly, talking about what it is all about and explaing what we wanted people to think about it - mostly we want them to think they like it.



Mike read a cool part all about Belle Plaine. We read about the Lincoln Cafe, about the characters in that chapter, and about the cemetery, where important events occur. Since we were in Belle Plaine, it went over very well!

All in all, the reading can only be considered a success!!! We sold over 30 books (including my mother's, which was fine - at least she told me it was fine!), signed them all, and had a blast. I'll put up video that my daugher Annika took of us soon. We answered lots of questions, including if people who don't like zombies would like our book (yes), who did the awesome cover (Clayton!), how was it working with three authors (the best of times and the worst of times) and what would the book have been like if only one of you had written it (my answer - if it was Mike, it would have been awful, if it was me, it still would have been pretty good!). But, in all honesty, the best part was seeing all of Mike's family and friends come out to support us. Belle Plaine is a truly great place, and we wouldn't have put it in our book if we weren't hoping that someday tourists would come to Belle Plaine hoping to eat at the Lincoln Cafe and tour the cemetery. They rewarded us on the 3rd by treating us like rock stars, proving even more so that they deserve to be recognized for being truly special. So, yeah Belle Plaine, yeah Mike Koogler and Jaren Riley, and yeah Hade's Gambit!!!What a great way to start off our Book Tour!!!

P.S. Look for a post in the near future from Mike about Belle Plaine as well!

At a distance

I wanted to write a bit tonight to explain how easy, and how difficult, it is to write a book with two other people, neither of which lives in the same city as you. I live in Cedar Rapids Iowa (the City of Five Seasons!), Mike lives in Iowa City (well, actually Coralville), and Jaren is now in the big city of Denver (and still morning the loss of Tim Tebow). Mike and I are only about 20 to 25 minutes away from each other, which is more than conducive to getting together from time to time, but Jaren is a good deal farther away. So, in order to communicate with each other face to face (sort of), we have gotten to the point where now Mike will come over to my place, or I will head over to Mike's, and we will facetime with Jaren. Here are a few photos of us doing this. I am actually texting Jaren's wife Jessie as she is taking our picture in the second one. Yeah, that is how advanced we are :) This was taken a few months ago- I think we were discussing how Hade was going to dress up as a butterfly in a flashback of his days in ballet school.

One night, we actually all needed to chat with our publisher, Karen, so we set up facetime, and put my ipad in the middle of Mike and I on the couch, and then set up my laptop with a Skype session. We realized at that moment that while this worked, it was a bit clumsy. So, we are looking into other technology for the three of us to work together, and there is a lot out there. Some options are google plus, others are webinar based, like Adobe Connect Pro, and then there is the oldie but goodie of tying tin cans together and stretching them between us. Yeah, that third one isn't a very good option, but the other two have proven possibilities.

The problem with working with people in other cities is simply one of communication. We had some issues with our edits last fall because we were communicating via email for everything! While email is great for some things, it absolutely sucks for having a sustained, creative conversation about whether our character Petr should stab an undead opponent through the heart first, and then through the eye, or go the other way around, with the eye first and then the heart. Well, that was only one dicussion, but we had tons of them. And what we found, is that it is really easy to bicker and argue about who killed who when you can't see or hear the person you are dealing with. Mike and I would fight like crazy, sending each other nasty emails, and then we would call each other and be fine in about 10 seconds. So, we learned the hard way that in dealing with important issues, nothing beats real conversation, even if it is streaming live over an ipad.

Now, the past month we have been working furiously on book two, but we are still in the "just get it down on the computer and we'll deal with the consequences later" mode. So, for example, Jaren sent us a great chapter today where some of the characters are attacked in the desert. They then have this amazing discussion about the nature of God and mercy v. justice. It is super hard core stuff, and I loved it. Of course, it is 33 pages long, and Mike and I haven't even touched it! But, we will probably just leave it as is after a few notes, and move on to the next chapter. Once we get most of the first half of the book done, then we will go through and really start working through these chapters, and at that point we are going to make sure that we have our communication system up and running smoothly, because we are not going to make the mistakes we made the first tiime around.

So, the question we often get asked is how do three of you write a book together, and the answer is carefully, thoughtfully, and most importantly, with live, synchronous communication. We got together in Denver a month ago and worked our way entirely through the synopsis of book two, a process that took us a day together, and would have been a monthlong nightmare apart. We are always better when we are together, so that is what we are going to do as much as possible in the future. So, it is definitely possible to write a book with two other people who live in other cities, but you have to do it right or it will be a disaster. Of course, it helps to have great human beings to work with, but we can save that for another blog.  

Join us in Chicago in August at Comic Con!

So, now that the book is ofiicially sort of out, I am planning on going back and doing some of the blogging that I wanted to do over the past months but have been too busy to do. So, look for little tidbits most days, and longer posts about fun stories, important events, and other news at least once or twice a week. I'll try to have something really fun on Mondays, so stop by and check it out! I am including a link to the Chicago Comic Con website. We will be there August 9 through the 12, in our own booth hanging out and selling copies of our book. It is the big event of the summer for us, so if you are in the area stop by and come visit us!!! If you scroll near to the bottom of the page, you will see Mike, Jaren and Jed, all individually, with a blub about us and our book. It is near the bottom because they have actors first, and then comic drawers / toy makers / authors (there aren't a lot of us authors there) below, and it is in alphabetical order. But, we will be hanging out with Stan Lee, William Shatner, John Cena, The Situation, Draco Malfoy, Scott Bakula, James Hong, Bruce Campbell, and Luke Perry, amongst dozens of other important people. Just the fact that my name is on the same website as those people is pretty cool! Anyway, look for a longer post on Monday all about how to write a book with two other people at a distance!

The book is available on Amazon.com!

Here is the URL to check out and hopefully purchase our new book!!! It isn't available to ship yet, but should be soon. I love that it says our publication date was June 8th. Why not!
Amazon.com site for Hade's Gambit

How our original prologue became six chapters, a different prologue, and 83 pages long!

So, a while ago I promised a short blog post about how our "prologue" became six chapters, and a prologue. Unfortunately, if we would have realized how we worked together back then, we could have avoided a lot of pain, suffering, and probably about 240 pages of our 847 final pages. Basically, we really wanted to focus on character and character development so we started with six main characters. We had Owen DiConte, an honorable young man who really wants to do right by the world, Xanadu, a young African basketball player (who was later named Gideon), Petr, a Russian mafia member, Father Dalacourt, a Vatican priest, David Livingston Sumbawanga, an old African leader, and Alexis Kennedy, a young woman and love interest for Owen. So, we thought it would be great to introduce all of our characters with just a little snipet. We also wanted to make sure that we got Hade into the introduction, if only briefly. So, we started writing little pieces about each of them so that the reader would know who the main chracters were and how they were connected to the story. So, we started building up our prologue, thinking it would just be a short thing, perhaps six to ten pages. Wow, were we wrong. We soon realized that many of these short vinetes were becoming longer and longer. Eventually, we made the decision that we had to break them up into individual chapters. Some of them kept growing and growing as we worked on the book. We would realize that Petr needed something else added to the beginning, or that Dalacourt wasn't quite right and we needed to change something there, and so they grew and grew and grew. I was the worst offender with the Petr chapter, spending perhaps ten pages explaining Catherine's Palace (which, I found out on our last round of edits that I had gotten much of it wrong anyway!!!). So, even after cutting huge parts of these chapters, they still ended up being 83 pages! And, we added a prologue about our character John having a vision of the future, which is a few pages as well. So, honestly, we completely learned our lesson, right? We have to be careful about adding too much and making the book too long... Well, we are working on Book Two right now and just had to split two chapters in half because they were too long. So, obviously we are still cursed with the problem of writing too much. But, at least looking back at it, we know that it was a problem we have had from the beginning. And, hopefully, we will continue to have for the rest of our time writing together! :)

Here are some photos of our completed book. Doesn't it look amazing! 847 pages of pure gold! We are busy working on book Two and are putting our summer reading/signing tour together. At this point, expect to see at least some of us at Belle Plaine on July 3rd, Iowa City on July 13th and 15th, and in Chicago at Comicon August 9th through the 12th. We are looking for a few more places to sign our book, so as soon as we know more we'll post it. The book should be available within a few days!

Pre-order!

Hade's Gambit: Book One of the Krypteia Conspiracy, is now available for pre-order! Visit the publisher's website at mbedzipublishing.com, got to the "buy now" link, and you've got it! It will also be available on barnesandnoble.com, amazon.com, the kindle and the nook on June 6th. While you're there, check out the publisher's other books too. One just won a wicked awesome award. Jaren Riley, Jed Peterson, and Michael Koogler.

Yoko breaks up the band

Well, not really!!! I am just writing to let everyone know that Mike is getting a book published on his own! Called Convergence, it is an epic tale of... Well... I will let Mike tell you all about it! I can't wait to read it! And it is good he is done with it, as Mike and I are flying out to Denver next week to get kick-started on Rise of Cain, book two in the Krypteia Conspiracy. And, other big news, we are up on the Comiccon in Chicago website. Things are coming togrther!

The Girl from Ipanema is not in our book...

This post is mostly for Jaren and Mike to laugh at me, but here goes anyway! There are many things to think about when writing with other people, but one of them is that sometimes there is just no way of knowing what type of reaction you are going to get from your writing. What I mean by that is that sometimes you write something that you think is really good and you get super excited about it and then you hand it off to your co-writers and you are hit with a resounding "NO!" I have a perfect example of this from our book. I wrote a little bit about Windy where she is walking down the street messing with boys. She is wearing a skimpy little outfit and seeing how many guys she can get to look her way. It was a funny little piece, meant more to showcase how Windy was somewhat calloused but more so that she was still trying to have a bit of fun. I wanted to let the reader know that she was still a human being and that despite her awful situation that she could still smile. I had her singing the Girl from Ipanema, which starts out "tall and tan and young and lovely..." which I imagined Windy as being. It made perfect sense to me. I even included some of the song in Portuguese. It was brilliant, so I sent it off to Mike and Jaren, and Mike replied right away with an absolute no. I could probably dreg up some of the emails he sent, but the basic message was that he hated that song more than anything in the entire world and would basically either stop writing the book or shoot himself in the head if we left that part in the book. Obviously I had hit a nerve! But, if I learned anything from having two parents, it is that if one person says no you always try to see if you can get the other one to say yes. So, I checked in with Jaren to see what he had to say. And, to my surprise, he said that he absolutely hated that song as well. Jaren and I have both lived in Brazil, so I just assumed that he would love that song, but boy was I ever wrong. It brought out a level of hatred in him that I have never seen before. Undetered, I pressed forward, pleading my case a few more times to both of them to keep that part in. I tried everything I could think of, but to no avail. The truth was, that for one reason or another, my writing partners absolutely detested the Girl from Ipanema. So, after a month of tastefully and tactfully pushing for this (and don't listen to them if they tell you I was anything but tasteful and tactful :) I finally relented. Time went by and I found another place to include the Girl from Ipanema. It was just as a reference, and it was actually in Book Two and it worked really well. I was thinking that perhaps they just didn't like my take on Windy, and that it wasn't actually the song itself they disliked but the theme of the passage, so I would try again. To be honest, I'm surprised that they boys didn't start up a websited called firejedpeterson.com to get rid of me. In about three seconds I had received emails from Jaren and Mike telling me that there was NO WAY that song was getting in any of the books. So, I did some research and found another song from Brazil to include and used that instead. There was no mistaking their message - the girl must go. And so, go she did. So, while this was sad for me, the main point to this story is that while there is almost always a compromise to be made when writing with other people, sometimes there is just nothing you can do. Mike can tell the story someday of his little zombie cop-killing boy that got cut in somewhat the same fashion. I would absolutely love it if someday we put together an extended edition of the book with some of the stuff that got cut out, but I know that if that happens, and if I bring up adding the Girl from Ipanema, that most certainly I would wake up the next day with a horse's head in my bed. No, the Girl from Ipanema will never get to know Hade. It is a shame, I feel, but sometimes life is like that. Sometimes you just have to move on, even when you never do. Tchao, Garota! Ate o prossimo!

Getting Russia write

One of the things we have tried really hard to do is to make the world our book is set in as realistic as possible. This is easy for places we have been to and have lived in, like Utah, Belle Plaine, Brazil, etc. but what about a place none of us had been to, like Russia? We decided early on that we needed a young Russian from the Mafia. Yeah... It was way outside of our wheelhouse. So, I got started working on it, doing research online about the area. I fell in love with the idea of Tsarskoe Selo, the Versailles of the Russian Royal family, and decided to set the story there and in the nearby St. Petersburg. I had a friend at the University of Iowa, Justus Harzok, who was studying there, and he gave me all sorts of good info. One thinghe shared with me is that when a Russian mafia member kills someone, they leave a red rose on the body so people know what happened. So, of course, that makes it into the book! The problem was, as we got started, i got carried away. I wrote probably close to ten pages setting the stage for our characters in Russia. I was explaining ballastrudes and carpets and on and on and on. I included quotes from Petr the Great, Russian historical sources, and an extended biography on Russian literary giants. So, this got pared down over the years to the present state. And then, as we were editing the book, I reaalized that I had made some mistakes in my original research, including attributing the palace to the wrong Catherine, so those were fixed. So, hopefully as some one reads through the descriptions of Russia in the book, they will feel like it is really real, and it will help center the book in the modern world. It was easier by far to write about a place you are familiar with, but with a good deal of research amd a few friends, you can still make it work!
Jed...

Writing with Others: The Story of Krypteia part 1

I wanted to go through and write a bit today about how we began this process. If you watch the video of us "On the Fly" you'll know that we met at church, discussed writting books, and decided to get together to discuss our ideas. We met in Mike's basement, and I remember us sort of just talking about our ideas. I remember that I had recently taken a class on Greek History, and was enamored with the concept of the Krypteia, a group of Spartans whose job was to make sure the neighboring Helots didn't rise up in revolution. That meant they could kill anyone they wanted, whenever they wanted, for whatever reason they wanted, all for the good of the Spartans. So, I wanted to include sort of that secret society influence into the book - sort of that secrety group trying to run the world. Mike wanted to do something more end of the world, and Jaren really wanted to push the "hero" epic. We started talking about characters, and I think this is what brought our book ideas together more than anything. I had a certain character in mind, Mike had another, Jaren had his, and we sort of started thinking about these as real people, and what would they be like and what sorts of decisions would they make in certain situations. As we started talking about our characters, it became clear that we could merge some of our plot lines together. And, as we started doing that, we came to the relevation that we merge everyting together into a series of books that would cover everything we wanted to. So, it was the characters in the book, more than anything, that drove the process towards the three of us working together. I still have the printed off sheet with our first stab at these characters - some of them are spot on with how the book ended up. We have a Russian mobster, a hero, a tall African (although originally his name was Xanadu!), and a Catholic priest. They all made the book. What is really interesting to me, though, looking back on this, is that my story, that of the secret society named Krypteia, is not really that prevelant in book one. We are writing book two right now, and it will have a much more expanded roll in that book, but it is sort of a side-note in book one. We knew from the beginning that we would get to it, and as book one grew and coalesced and became what it is, we realized that it would have to go to book two. So Hade's Gambit from the beginning has been not about me, or Mike, or Jaren, but about the characters and the story. Anyway, that is a brief bit on how we started the books. Next week I'm going to discuss how our original prologue morphed into the first six chapters. Have a great day!

America Reads "Hade" Day

I have been trying to get this video to upload for a few days now, so I'm sorry for missing my Friday post. It is a video of me reading to my son Jaeden's sixth grade class from Hade's Gambit. The section I'm reading from is the chapter where Hade goes to the chemical plant in Brazil to blow it up, but not before he has some fun. We have since made a few small edits to this piece as we've been finishing it up, and I edited it just a bit for the audience. Although there isn't really anything in there that the average sixth grader couldn't read, this chapter, as a few others, are a bit violent. As Hade says at one point - you can't make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. So, an example here is that Hade shoots a man with a Desert Eagle, and in the story it says he makes a hole the size of a cantelope in the man's chest, and here I think that just became "he shot him." But, this was a fun bit to read - it is one of my son's favorite parts, and to be honest, one of mine as well. One note - I shot this on a Flip camera, so it isn't the best, and I didn't have the resources to edit it very well, so the book starts about a minute in, and then it is goes until about nine minutes in, with a few minutes of questions at the end. Thanks to the sixth graders in the class, and for all the help from Prairie Creek Intermediate School. It was a great time. Enjoy watching!

Writers on Writing: Home Grown!

Here is a video of Mike, Jaren and I discussing our book. This was done last summer. I think if we did this again, after our editing process, we would have a lot more to say :)

Editing Gives me Morning Sickness

It really is true that getting a book published is like having a child. The writing is the fun part, the editing is the pregnancy, and the marketing and publicizing must be the birth. Then comes the parties, balloons, and sleepless night wondering if the kid is going to grow up and make enough money to take care of you how you deserve! So, we are just a few weeks away from being done with the pregnancy part of our process and ready to go into labor to get the thing taken care of. There is a reason we haven't blogged for the past few months - it is because no one likes to have pictures of themselves pregnant. We had morning sickness for quite a while, cried, got depressed, wondered why whe had gone to all the work to get this far, and in the end reached resignation to the fact that we would have to just stay calm and carry on. And yes, probably not the best metaphor for pregnancy, but you get the picture.

But, now that we are nearly through with this phase, I think it is worth a look back on how the whole thing went. It was a unique experience on a lot of levels. First off, Mike, Jaren and I had NO idea what we were doing. Literally. About a month ago our editor, Karen, sent us an email with how you are supposed to edit a book and included how we had screwed up almost every step of the way. Yeah, hilarious. Except for Karen! So, we went into the thing really quite blind. And I would say - Mike, this isn't how we are supposed to be doing this, and Jaren would say, Jed, why are you doing this, and Mike would say, we have to have this done yesterday, and all of us would just get so confused because we all THOUGHT we knew what we were doing, but really, I think three salamanders in a jar could have figured it out quicker then us.

We hadn't really prepared ourselves or the book for editing, which was a problem, I think. We thought - the editor will fix all of it :). Well, the editor, bless her heart, tried to fix as much as she could, but she assumed that the book was how we wanted it to be. We realized, a bit late in the game to be true, that the book wasn't how we wanted it to be. At all. And Elizabeth (our editor) and Karen (our publisher), found lots of flaws that we sort of kind of actually really knew were there. An example was that we had a baby in a few scenes. None of us liked it, but we didn't know what to do with the dumb thing. It really got in the way of everything (and if my kids are reading this - that is most definitely NOT a metaphor for real children - mostly). It took some work, but we managed to get rid of the baby, and there was much rejoicing. But it wasn't simply finding a comma, changing a then to a than and vice versa (which happened a lot due to a strange tick I have with that word), or cutting out some fluff. We had to redo a ton of stuff. We basically spent three days doing nothing but rewriting the entire pay-off chapter. Yeah, it was a mess, but so much better.

But, we got it done, were very happy, and waited for round two. This really was more editing, but I got carried away. It wasn't that I wanted to change things, there were just tweeks that needed to be done. And we had rushed through the first round so quickly that there were things that hadn't been fixed. So, we went through round two and did the best we could. We didn't change story lines, plots, characters, etc., but we did a lot of changes. I think at that point Karen really was doubting her decision to take us on. But, we got it to her, it was finished. Mostly.

So, now we are on the last round of edits, and we are just fixing up little copy-editing things, and should be done by the end of the month. Then comes the heavy breathing, the pushing, and with any luck, a happy, healthy, baby that will make us all rich.

My goal, therefore, is to write at least once a week, hopefully on Fridays, to update everyone on how the book is going, what we are up to, and any bits of information I can share. I will probably put up a few passages from time to time that are pretty cool. But what I really want to do is to continue to tell the story of Mike, Jaren and I how we came to write the book and how we are writing the book. So, I will probably from time to time look back on some part of the process and include information on how we did certain things, or how we came to certain conclusions, or how we survived the process. It should be fun, and I'm looking forward to it.

Okay, that is it for today. This was a very short (trust me on this) outline of the past four months. They seemed to drag on forever but now that they are gone it seems like it was just a blink of the eyes. We are so proud of the book that will come out hopefully this May, and we hope you like it. From us to you, have a great one!