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!

Edits

If you are wondering why we are not blogging, this is why! 897 pages of pure gold!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Edits are here!

We got the edits last night for our book. I have only read through the prologue so far, but it rocked! Our goal is that in three weeks we will have more or less the book finished just as we want it. It is all so exciting! I have 3,542,873 things to do today, but we should be blogging about the editing process soon!

Friday Blog!

Okay, so it takes a village to raise a child, and obviously it takes a village to publish a book! I wonder how people can self-publish, it must be like being a single parent. I can't imagine doing this on my own! So, an early shout out to some of the people who have been very important to me in working through this. First, to Karen and Elizabeth, for editing the book and taking on the project! Awesome!!! Then to Jason Jarbo, Jaeden Peterson and Lisa Petersen, for already reading an early edition and giving valuable feedback! Of course there are my cousins Austin and Aaron Nabaum who are putting together logos for us. Thanks to Clayton Chambers for a fantastic cover to the book. We have Kris Heims, helping with accounting, and Mandy Schermer for helping with legal. Holla! My aunt Anne, the fabulous librarian, and my sister Cara for marketing advice. There is Jessie Riley, Jaren's wife, who is one of the greatest photographers on the planet. My office mate at work Philm Brown who has helped with ideas and perhaps some videotaping in the future, and Jeanette Pilak for UNESCO for filming an episode with us of On the Fly for the Iowa City of Literature campaign. The wonderful people at Prairie Lights and the Haunted Bookstore for volunteering their space for us to have readings. Sweet as, folks! I feel like I'm at the academy awards and am forgetting people! I'll do another shout out again to catch everyone I missed, but my goodness, we couldn't do this without all of the help we are getting. Peace! Love ya all!

What a week

Ok, so writing a book is a lot easier when it is just for fun and there is no pressure to have it be good or done at a specific time. We are working on book two right now (spoiler -it is connected to thefirstbook) and it is not easy. The first book is going to rock and we want the next one to be even better. So I've spent the week doing research on places in Africa and North America and reading ancient texts and thinking deep thoughts and not doing much writing and feeling guilty about it :) I wouldn't quite call it writers block, but the story is so complex and there is so much going on that it is easy to get sidetracked or distracted from just writing chapter 5, which is what I need to be writing. And then we have marketing stuff going on, which takes time, and then there is the rest of life. I am actually sitting outside a subway on my way to soccer games in muscatine. I should be home writing, but how can I miss my kids soccer games? So i am going to stop this post and try to get some writing done on the drive. Say what you will, it is an adventure!

Found this quote from Michael Foucault today and thought it summed me up nicely. I'm waiting for my aura, but I can feel it starting to form!

"[Raymond Roussel] said that after his first book he expected that the next morning there would be a kind of aura around his person and that everyone in the street would be able to see that he had written a book. This is the obscure desire harboured by everyone who writes. It is true that the first text one writes is neither written for others, nor because one is what one is: one writes to become other than what one is. One tries to modify one's way of being through the act of writing."

Missed Friday

So much for my promise to update the blog every Friday. Mike put some good stuff up, though, so that is awesome! I can't speak for the other guys, but right now I'm freaking out a bit about the book. You don't get that many chances in life to do something really amazing, and I feel that this book has the ability to be truly amazing, so I just want to make sure that a) it rocks, and that b) people read it. At this point I'm about 97.324 percent sure that the book is going to totally rock. I am actually rereading it now, and I keep thinking that the author of the book is really creative and that it is really a fantastic book, and then I remember that I am one of the authors! It is somewhat surreal, to be honest. I think it slows down in about three spots (and yes, two of those are chapters I was primarily responsible for, so no offense!!!), but I think we can get those tightened up pretty easily. We have the first 200 pages of edits back, and they look pretty good. We were a bit worried that the publisher and editor would say something like, "get rid of that Hade guy," or "why didn't you set the book at an elementary school," (LOL!) but it has been completely different. It is so so so self-esteem boosting to have people tell you that something you did was really good, and we are getting a lot of that already, so I'm not worried about the book being good at all, really.
So what do I worry about? I just want to make sure that people read it. I don't want the money or fame that would go with a bookseller (okay, that was a lie, but that isn't the primary reason for doing all of this.) I want to share something with the world. I want to give something to the world that people will enjoy, that will make them think deep thoughts, that might change their world just a little bit. So I really want our marketing to be successful enough to get the book into people's hands, and for people then to share it with their friends, and for those people to share it with their movie star friends who try to get the book made into a movie for us. Or something like that! So in the next few months be looking for more posts from me along the lines of this - extremely proud yet extremely nervous at the same time. I think once the book comes out I will be fine, until then...
out!