The Road to Publishing Angel Evolution

Here is a guest post I recently did for a book blogger, here is the link and at the bottom you can enter to win a free e-book of Angel Evolution, so if you haven't read it yet, it's a good chance to get it for free! 

http://www.abook-loversreview.com/2012/04/blog-tour-angel-evolution-guest-post.html

The road to publishing Angel Evolution (and the entire Evolution Trilogy really) was definitely a bumpy one, full of twists, turns, highs, and lows.  One of the biggest highs was seeing my finished covers for the first time, and the biggest low was receiving a number of rejections from potential agents, but I’ll get to all that soon.

My story really starts when I was a young boy and my mom used to tell me stories.  She has an amazing imagination and could make up amazing stories without even thinking about them in advance.  The craziest characters and plot twists would just come to her, and me and my brother and sister loved listening to her for hours.  I really owe my love of reading to her.  Once I could read on my own, I started devouring books, reading series like The Lord of the Rings, and Hardy Boys mysteries dozens of times.  Then my dad got me onto Agatha Christie and once more I swept through his collection like wildfire. 

For years I dreamed of writing my own stories, but always believed I needed the perfect idea. Many years later, I was still searching for my perfect idea while working a boring office job as an accountant.  It wasn’t my true passion—never will be.  The YA revolution hit and I began swallowing as many paranormal romance, epic fantasy, and dystopian books (The Hunger Games was my favorite) as I could.  But still I didn’t have my perfect idea.

I moved to Australia for work and found my wife, Adele, who helped change my whole perspective.  She encouraged me to go with any idea and start writing, so when I had three weeks off in between jobs, I started writing a book about angels.  I had a very rough outline in my head, but the story began to take a life of its own as soon as my fingers hit the keyboard.  Writing came easy to me—I never suffered from writer’s block the whole way through the series. 

Before I started my new job, I had written more than half my first novel and I was determined to finish the rest while working.  I committed myself to a strict 2 hours of writing a day—half hour on the ferry to work, an hour at lunch, and half hour on the way home.  I stuck to it and finished Angel Evolution a few weeks later.  I researched the publishing process and decided to go the traditional route, querying dozens of agents.  I got rejected at least 30 times, which was hard to take.  At times I got a bit down, but I kept on writing, which is the biggest advice I can give any aspiring authors.  My wife and family were very encouraging in this regard. 

Next, I took a break from the angel stuff and I started writing a children’s book, which I finished in three weeks.  While still querying agents for Angel Evolution, I wrote Demon Evolution in four weeks.  My writing process was becoming more refined, more structured and I could see my writing steadily improving.  I got some feedback from an agent and further improved my writing.  I took another break and wrote a standalone YA paranormal suspense novel.  But I kept coming back to the angels and finished Archangel Evolution in four weeks, about 10 months after starting Angel Evolution. 

The Evolution Trilogy was finished!  But I still didn’t have an agent, nor any leads in getting my series published the traditional way.  So I decided to self-publish.  I had a number of friends and acquaintances review my work for typos and provide feedback, which I took on board.  I also read each of my books 6 times (3 times out loud) to uncover typos and errors. 

While I was editing and revising, I hired a cover artist, Claudia McKinney at phatpuppyart, who took my wife’s artistic concept and brought them to life.  My friends at Winkipop Designs took the covers and made them professional with custom font and my own symbol for the series.  When I got my first proof from CreateSpace in the mail I was so excited.  A year’s worth of hard work had finally paid off in something tangible that I could hold and give to people! 

I used CreateSpace to publish in print via Amazon.com, and Smashwords and Kindle to publish in all major e-book formats.  The hours I spent formatting were some of the most painful, but paid off when my digital and print copies came out looking professional and error-free.  I started selling them and I got my first few reviews, which was awesome! 

A couple hundred reviews later, the reviews have been mixed which is fine and expected for a first novel.  But the reviews on the second and third books have gotten steadily better, which confirms I am improving with each book. I’ve had to grow some pretty thick skin, but I’ve come to realize that everyone has a different opinion and even bestselling books get negative feedback.  I never get angry at negative feedback anymore, even if it’s malicious.  At the end of the day, you have to focus on being positive and just keep on writing and learning and remembering that you aren’t the best writer in the universe, at least not yet haha!

On that note, there are a few key things I’ve learned throughout the process that I’d like to share with anyone who is considering writing and publishing:

·         Write every day.  Even if it’s only a couple hundred words, it keeps you in your story and makes it easier to pick it up and continue writing.  Plus, you’re less likely to forget something and change the storyline or details partway through.

·         If you can’t afford a copyeditor (which I couldn’t at the time), get a few eagle-eyed people to review for silly errors.  Read it yourself at least five times too!  No one likes a book they paid for to have a bunch of typos.

·         Use independent beta readers!  This is something I didn’t do for Angel Evolution and now wish I did.  I asked friends and family to read and provide feedback and I made some good changes from it, but it wasn’t enough.  Make friends on sites like Goodreads and ask people to read your unpublished manuscript to provide feedback, particularly around character development, the beginning, the ending, what annoyed them, etc.  I wish I would have done this so I could have avoided some of the negative reviews from my readers.

There are a million other little things I learned but these are the big ones.  I am so lucky that I will soon be able to start writing full time.  I have 6 books that I haven’t published that I’ll be releasing over the course of the next year, with many more planned, so I look forward to taking my writing career to the next level.  Thanks to all my early readers of Angel Evolution (even the critics), and I look forward to seeing what you all think of my new dystopian series, which I hope to publish in the middle of 2012.  As always, I appreciate any questions, comments, and feedback on my Facebook page, blog, Twitter, or Goodreads.  See below for links for how you can connect with me!  Finally, a special thanks to Trini, for allowing me the opportunity to do this post on her amazing site!

David Estes

Author of the Evolution Trilogy

http://davidestesbooks.blogspot.com/

http://www.facebook.com/pages/David-Estes/130852990343920

https://twitter.com/#!/davidestesbooks

http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3167424

Writing with Emotion

Here is a guest post I recently did for a book blogger, here is the link and at the bottom you can enter to win free e-books of the entire Evolution Trilogy, so if you haven't read them all yet, it's a good chance to get them for free!  http://shadowkissedcassie.blogspot.com/2012/04/author-guest-post-and-giveaway-win.html

Before I started writing 18 months ago, I had a very different perspective on how challenging it is to create fiction that readers will love.  In many ways, it is much harder than I thought, but in some ways it’s easier. 

One aspect in particular I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is the use of emotion in a story.  These could be any types of emotions, from extreme sadness, to utter happiness, and everything in between.  I guess as a reader I always just thought that because I was moved by the characters in the stories of my favorite authors, that it was easy to generate such an emotional attachment to fictional characters.  I’ve learned the hard way that it’s not always like that. 

Then for a while, I thought it was unbelievably challenging, maybe even impossible, at least for me.  Today, I sit somewhere in the middle.  Creating strong emotions that move readers, using only words, is hard but very achievable.  I’m sure there are a lot of ways to boil it down, but I see creating emotion as a product of doing two very basic things:

1)      Create well-developed characters that people will love or hate.  Notice I didn’t just say likeable characters.  All the time I hear people say that a character in a book wasn’t likeable enough, but I would take it one step further: Your readers need to love your characters if you are going to be able to generate a strong emotional response.  On the flip side, they could hate your characters, too, which is an equally strong emotion. 

I recently had one of my beta readers point out that they loved three characters in my book and hated another two “but that’s a good thing, because I think I was supposed to hate them.”  That’s exactly right.  As long as your audience love and hate the characters you intend for them to, then you will be able to control the emotions in the story.  The last thing you want (as I have learned the hard way before) is for your readers to hate a character that you hope they’ll grow attached to.  If your readers are cheering for someone to die who you desperately want them to root for, you are in a bit of trouble. 

I’ve found that the best way to ensure your characters are lovable or hatable, is to utilize independent beta readers from your target audience and just ask them.  Most people will be brutally honest if they have to!

2)      Move yourself!  No, I don’t mean physically move your lazy butt off the couch and go write somewhere else (although you might need to do that if you’re not feeling inspired by your surroundings).  I mean that if your words are not generating an emotional response within you, then you’re not really feeling the words.  And if you’re not feeling them, your readers are most definitely not going to feel them. 

I am not afraid to admit that I find myself chuckling to myself as I am writing.  All the time, in fact.  Which is good because I love building humor into my writing.  On the other hand, just because you think something is funny, doesn’t mean anyone else will.  In my case, my wife tells me all the time that I have a bit of a cheesy sense of humor, which sometimes makes my comedy fall flat.  So you have to test it.  On independent readers of all different types within your target audience.  Don’t get so attached to your words that you aren’t open to constructive feedback.  (NOTE: this is extremely hard for a lot of writers, including myself!)

Another example is sadness.  While writing my latest unpublished manuscript, I made myself cry twice when a main character died.  I’m not kidding.  In the act of writing, I actually shed a few tears.  My vision was a bit blurry so I probably had twice as many typos during those bits, but there was no doubt in my mind, the scene was reaching the emotional level I intended for it.  But I didn’t rest on that.  I tested it with my beta readers, two of whom admitted to crying during the same parts.  And these weren’t the type of people who cry at anything.  One of them is a real tough cookie, who told me she never cries at anything!  So I know I’ve achieved what I was going for with that scene. 

If we consider the emotional scene I was just talking about, what if I didn’t feel any emotion as I was writing?  What if my beta readers didn’t mention it, or didn’t feel any emotions when this character died?  What should I do then?  There is only one answer: You have to rewrite the scene, and potentially the entire character.  I would need to obtain feedback from my beta readers as to whether they loved the character and just didn’t feel the words portrayed the true emotion of his death, or whether they were indifferent to the character and therefore it didn’t matter how I wrote the scene.  Depending on which it is, will dictate the action I need to take.  Either way, it’s going to suck and going to take a lot of work, but it’ll be well worth it in the long run.  No pain, no gain!

In any case, for me, generating real, powerful emotion in my writing is my absolute goal and something I strive to do in every chapter.  The next time you’re reading a book that makes you feel strong emotions, think about why and appreciate what the author has done. 

Beta Reader Mania!

I haven’t posted in a while, so I figured I’d catch you all up on what I’ve been up to over the last month or so.  In no particular order, here are some of the things I have accomplished:

• Received my 100^th rating and review of the Evolution Trilogy on Goodreads.  Thank you to everyone who has bought and rated my books, but not the negative reviews, I hate you!!  Just kidding, I appreciate all feedback, even the negative, because it helps me understand my readers and how to improve as a writer (just be gentle, please, I’m fragile :)  Sales of the trilogy are now over 800 although I think I’ve given away more books than I’ve sold! 
• Completed the first beta draft of my new YA dystopian novel.  I am so proud of my new book and hope I can find an agent soon!  Please, please, pretty please agents, I would love to be your client.  I’m a hard worker, a quick learner, work well with people…I feel like I’m in a job interview so I’ll stop now.  Anyway, I’ll wash your car, babysit your child, buy your coffee, whatever it takes (but I’m not desperate I swear).
• Received feedback on my new novel from my beta readers.  Thank you to all my beta readers, you are amazing and have a wonderful eye for detail and I can honestly say that after revising, editing and rewriting based on your comments, my novel is significantly better.  I think you’ve just earned yourselves a spot in the acknowledgements, wink, wink.  I just wanted to share some of my favorite beta reader comments because they put a huge smile on my face:

-“I’m excited for the next book and this one isn’t even out yet!” -Alexandria

-“HOLY CRAP!  I literally JUST finished and I’m kind of on that crazy after-you-finish-an-epic-book high!” –Kerri

-“OH MY GOD!!!  What a lovely story David!  I am in LOVE with it!” –Nicole

-“Awesome job.  Can’t wait till the book is going to come out.  Let me know when so I can demand all my friends to read it.”  –Kay

-“I was heartbroken and cried my eyes out, but that’s one of the things I love.  If an author can make me feel that much emotion through their characters then in my book that makes them so much better.”  –Kay again

-“The action was absolutely amazing, and it kept me on my toes the entire time!  Overall it was kinda sorta FREAKING AWESOME!” –Kerri again

-“I love this book!  I am already dying to know what happens next!” –Christina

-“Wonderful story!” –Laurie

Thanks again to all my readers, beta readers, friends and family for all of the support you’ve given me so far.  Undoubtedly I’ll need your help again soon as I try to realize my dream of becoming a full time writer. 

Behind every writer there’s an army of heroes!