Narrative and Writing a Compelling Story

Please note that if you are currently in the stages of holiday shopping, books make a fine gift and several books composed by me are available for your reading enjoyment. You will find them all with purchase links, cover art, and blurbs/descriptions on my previous blog post, so click here and be happy!

Pardon me. I awoke too late after not getting a good sleep. I'm doing the best I can to fulfill my obligations to what I imagine are throngs of blog readers anxiously sitting before their screens in eager anticipation for what words of wisdom or whimsy I might offer to them. And, to tell the truth, I seldom have any idea what will come from my keyboard until it does - and then it may be too late to prevent the ruination of my typing skills or my pedantic bent. In most cases, I prefer to confer everything I think about practically everything through the pages of a novel.

First, however, we must invent a compelling story - a narrative so bold and beautiful that none can resist following it to its end. You got to hook 'em and cook' em, a professor in my MFA program was wont to remind us plebes - mere word cobblers to him. I've written previously in blog posts about the abuse we endured in those hallowed halls. Suffice to say, the vaunted professor preferred one and only one kind of story and all others were dismissed outright or ridiculed to the point where the poor young author had to flee in tears.

I learned a few things nevertheless. One: put the characters first. That is, craft an interesting character your readers will want to know about and want to follow through the story no matter what happens in the story. At the time of that MFA program, I felt my protagonists were compelling characters; they were, after all, largely modeled after me. That seldom was a delicious recipe, as you can imagine, because seldom would my protagonist act as I would act. Communication between us was unsteady and I was frequently frustrated. Still, we carried on and came to certain understandings about who does what and what the terms of engagement were to be.

Two: what is interesting to readers (caveat: most readers, although the adage came at us as every reader) is not what happens in the story but what happens to the character because of what happens in the story. That may seem an infernal circle yet it does make a crude kind of sense. If we are "caring" about the hero/heroine then we "care" what happens to them - almost as though they were real people who we actually know and worry about, like Kevin who lives down the street. I came to realize I did treat my characters as though they were real, and I worried about them, waking in the mornings wondering if they would get out of that predicament I'd let them slip into, or whether they would still obey me after I helped them escape a conundrum I'd set up for them.

For a story to be compelling - a word this professor used - it must involve a primary character we care about and a situation that is not immediately disturbing but has the hint of great disturbance to come. Nuances and subtleties. Like laying out a puzzle. Will readers catch it, or should I bash them over the head with the idea? Bread crumbs here and there along the dark forest path or a nicely paved way with neon signs? I think I've learned the art of nuances, as intended by that professor. Of course, I can never know  - short of a book review, perhaps, or an angry tweet - whether a reader catches the subtle clues or not. I can only try my best to tip-toe through the daisies along the primrose path and up Strawberry Hill to Mary Sue's house.

Sorry. I slipped into a purple prose paragraph again. It happens on these kind of late mornings when I haven't slept well yet need to produce a blog post to let the world know I remain alive and verbose. So, I suppose I've achieved my goal. Actually, my goal was the notice at the top to potential readers of my library. Simple as that. But then I kept typing and, well, this is the result. I'm not ashamed; I enjoy typing although the number of mistypes and the corrections increase with each passing day.

Did I mention I have a new novel out now? It's Book 1 of a series called FLU SEASON. The first book is titled THE BOOK OF MOM, a kind of memoir. It's a near-future (almost contemporary) story of a teen boy and his single mother who try to survive the chaos of a pandemic and its worsening society by fleeing the city for what they hope will be relative safety at the grandparents farm, only to find that life in the country isn't much better and they must come up with Plan B, then Plan C, until they reach a small coastal island where the family previously vacationed and have a house - but the survivors there have set up their own strange community and the teen son and his mom must decide whether to stay and obey or hold off the strict requirements until it is safe to leave for a better place. It is a tale of survival, of family relations, of dark secrets, and a teen romance - as well as the dystopian undertones of an odd collection of characters trying their best to get by in the new normal. And Mom plays her tuba quite a lot, I should add.

Book 2 THE WAY OF THE SON is complete and coming in late spring.
Book 3 DAWN OF THE DAUGHTERS is started and the writing continues. 

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(C) Copyright 2010-2022 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

FLU SEASON : a pandemic trilogy

Contrary to rumors, I have not been mindlessly lazing away my summer. I have been writing and editing the second volume of my pandemic trilogy, titled The Way of the Son, which as of this blog is around 75,000 words with about 30,000 to go in order to complete the story. It is a continuation of the first book, obviously, but do not allow that fact to be a spoiler.

Now that I finally have the cover artwork, I can continue the process of production and begin marketing this newest science fiction novel of mine. Here is a summary (as much as I can reveal) of Book I:

I. The Book of Mom

In the beginning was the virus and the virus was with us. Or something like that. Just as you and I experienced in 2020. We faced uncertainty, fear, the unknown, and reacted to what politicians and scientists thought was the best way to deal with the emergency. What we know now in 2022 may be different than our initial thoughts and actions. But what if it continued unabated? We feel safe again, returning to some kind of normal life yet with some elements not quite the same as we knew them before the pandemic. Yet what if we were in a longer crisis?

In FLU SEASON, a stand-alone novel that has blossomed into a trilogy, we follow teenage son Sandy as he accompanies his mother in fleeing their city. With the pandemic in its sixth year, everything has collapsed into an unbearable situation. Mom decides it's time to leave the chaos of the city for what she believes will be relative safety at her parents' farm. After the struggle to get to the farm, however, they find the chaos has invaded the rural areas, as well. Violence and the stark reality of survival hit them hard. What to do? They cannot return to the city.

They will go to Mom's older sister's house in another city. But everything there is also not what they expected and not a good place to stay, so they travel on to the other sister's home. There they face a big turning point in their plans, one that shapes the rest of the trilogy. Along the way we experience as they do the ways the world has changed, what the new normal actually means with random violence, no law and order, lack of food and fuel, as well as the on-going pandemic and the necessary precautions everyone must take. We follow how they figure out how to live in this altered world. They encounter others along the way, who represent various views of what is happening, some who have a better chance of surviving than others.

Ultimately, Mom takes Sandy and his cousins to the barrier island where the family has a beach house, a place they often visited when Mom and her sisters were young. It is a place with special memories for Mom - memories which she has kept hidden from Sandy all his life. On the island, however, are already people who are trying to survive. Their leader has set the island community on a path to become some kind of utopian society, but one that is not very appealing to Mom. But what can they do? Endure the strict rules for a year or so then leave when the mainland is safe again? Or can Mom make the island community into a safe place for as long as sanctuary is needed?

Our narrator is 19-year old Sandy but his focus is on his 36-year old mother, a single, never-married woman who had a wild side during his childhood yet became a professional tuba player and music professor. Her precious tuba is a family heirloom, not to be left behind or mistreated. Music saves her and she relies on her tuba in times of stress. Sandy doesn't get it; all he knows is his Mom has been his whole life, the only person he has been able to rely on. The pandemic suddenly throws everything out of balance and he grasps at whatever stability he can find while struggling with his Asperger's syndrome (high-functioning autism) and his Mom's often erratic behavior.

FLU SEASON : Book I. The Book of Mom is coming this fall...which is only a few weeks away...available in paperback and for Kindle.

[NOTE: FLU SEASON contains scenes of violence and adult situations but none are gratuitously portrayed.]

You can read the blog post introduction to the FLU SEASON trilogy here.

Read about the challenges of writing a disaster story here.

The writer as main character (or not), using FLU SEASON as an example, is here.

Tying FLU SEASON to the long line of apocalyptic fiction is discussed here.

How to write Young Adult Erotica, like in FLU SEASON, is explored here.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2022 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

5 Things every Disaster Story must have!

FLU SEASON - a pandemic novel, part 2

I grew up during the decade of the disaster movie. They were all the same: meet a cast of people who would become victims and watch them fight to survive or, if less popular, to die trying. What changed was the source of the disaster: overturned cruise ship, burning skyscraper, airplanes, comet/asteroid strike, volcano, earthquake, tsunami, or some disease.

With the exception of the 3rd book of my DREAM LAND trilogy in which our heroes deal with an incoming comet on another world than Earth, I have not tackled a novel with an on-going "disaster" until my current FLU SEASON, which follows the misadventures of a boy and his mom and her tuba across a lawless, pandemic-ravaged rural landscape, a trek eventually to a despicable island community that was supposed to be a sanctuary but has its own challenges.

I started to write a pandemic story in April 2020, right after the first lockdown, believing it was a great time to hunker down and get some writing done. I quickly learned I couldn't just sit down and start writing - especially when the subject of the story was so real at the same time. But by summer 2021, I'd found the way into the story of people surviving in a viral pandemic and went with it. The result is a contemporary story of regular people handling the crisis.

That premise isn't so sci-fi as most stories about pandemics tend to be. Usually we find the situation well advanced and the Earth mostly uninhabited, a kind of post-apocalypse scenario. That does make the cast smaller and easier on the movie budget. In my novel I tried to play it close to the daily news. The story (in my mind, the pandemic already going on for six years) could start for real next week. Even a couple months from now it still might start the following week. (I avoided firm time references, not wanting to be tripped up like I was with my vampire trilogy, written in 2014 and set in 2028 but failing to mention the 2020 pandemic.) That factor was crucial to the story; nothing fantastical could be a part of it, just real people acting in real ways to solve real problems.

In thinking back over the story, I realize what I had to do, what I had to come up with, to make it work. And I think all disaster stories must have the same.

1. SETTING

Of course the place where the story occurs is a crucial element. It makes a difference whether it's a modern suburb, a medieval castle, or a space station. However, how the disaster happens must fit within the limits of that setting - obviously. An asteroid could take out any of those places but how it affects the people in those places would be very different. The people involved must have the knowledge typical of people in that setting or else they would not be able to handle the crisis; they wouldn't know what to do and be killed quickly, leaving us no story to follow.

In the case of FLU SEASON, my main characters leave their home in a modern city that is already suffering a breakdown of social norms - hence the reason for them to flee. We've all seen such situations play out in recent movies: traffic jams, people pushing grocery carts, people hijacking a kind driver's car, and most important of all: fuel, or the lack of it. Are gas stations empty? Are we at the stage where most drivers use electric cars? How does that play out with supply chain issues? And food? Same thing: supply chain issues, no products on shelves, looting, money apps not working due to the network being down, or - think conspiracy theory - the government restricts your banking app to your own neighborhood as a way to keep people under control. And nobody touches cash because it's covered in viruses.

2. MAIN CHARACTER(S)

As a young writer I focused on the "cool" what-if situations and little on who was involved, but in my MFA writing program I learned one thing: readers want to read about people (or dogs, robots, etc.) doing things, not so much the things themselves. So who is the story about? Who tells the story? Why that person? In other words, what does that character bring to the story that makes readers want to follow? Is it the character's expertise which is useful in the crisis? Or is it the character's innocence and lack of expertise which makes the story compelling? Will they survive? If so, how will they survive? If not, how far can they go before finally succumbing to the crisis - hopefully with some heroic self-sacrifice? How do they handle adversity? 

In FLU SEASON, I randomly chose a boy and his mom...riffing off that 1975 post-apocalypse film A Boy and His Dog based on a Harlan Ellison story...which itself is a riff on the innocent childhood tales of any boy accompanied by his pet dog. So, rather than a dog, I adding the boy's mother, thinking that would set up a quirky, awkward dichotomy; they could play off each other in an entertaining fashion. Of course the mother has to be a unique individual, interesting in her own right, ultimately with a dramatic back story. And the boy isn't really a boy but a teen, a young man, but he has autism - another element which comes to bear on the crisis: what might seem a hindrance is at times a benefit. And the mom insists on bringing her tuba, a precious family heirloom with its own back story, further complicating their journey. Neither of these characters is a doctor or medically trained but they run into people and everyone has an opinion or a personal story to tell so we get multiple views of the crisis. I focused on the Mom character - made her a tuba player, just to mess with her - but had her teen son tell the story, and his view is exclusively focused on what Mom does. (I explain the origins of this novel in a previous post.)

3. MOVEMENT

You have a disaster, so what are you going to do - assuming you're a character in the story? Only two choices, depending on what kind of disaster it is. You can stay put, build a fortress, hoard supplies, keep locked and loaded, and wait it out, hoping the crisis will end before you do. Or you go: you flee the bad situation with the hope of finding a safe place to...hunker down and wait it out (or perhaps you would be safe enough that a new life can begin). If the disaster is a viral pandemic, as in FLU SEASON, it's everywhere so where can you go?

Already we are getting accustomed to wearing face masks and some may go full hazmat suit and air in a tube to get through a dangerous area. Where can you hide, though? What will you encounter along the way? Think of the geographic challenges: everything from a road being washed out or getting a flat tire, or coming upon vagrants looting a store and they turn on you...to bad weather, to questionable shelters, to the ever-present need for food and water. Are your characters knowledgeable about surviving without modern conveniences or are they just quick-witted ordinary people from a city where everything is available (or used to be)? In such a story, detours to get supplies or to avoid trouble are inevitable.

4. DESTINATION

If your characters choose to leave wherever they are when the story begins, where do they go? Do they arrive or do they die trying to reach the place? Or, perhaps more interestingly, what do they find when they reach the place? People leave a disaster zone to seek safety, either short-term (until the problem is finished and everything goes back to normal) or long-term (it will never go back to normal). We have adopted the term 'new normal' in our real lives, and a contemporary story like FLU SEASON, uses that concept, too. The main characters (boy and his mom) constantly compare their present moment to what's been the norm prior to their escape and to what they hope they will find at their destination.

Two kinds of stories: stay or go. I decided to write about both as two sides of the same coin: the journey and what happens when they arrive. (Is that a spoiler? that they do arrive? Forget that.) Actually, in the early stages of writing, I was only going to cover the journey - with all the incidents that happen along the way (Note: like any quest story in a fantasy novel, things happen and must be planned for or else the quest is a boring walk.). However, simply arriving there - after what they had been through - didn't seem a big enough way to end the story. So I felt I had to write on to tell what they found at their destination, which becomes a new story.

5. MORALITY

Disaster stories are meant not to bring us down but to illustrate and affirm the strength of humanity to survive anything (in theory). We like them because someone will survive in the end and that gives the rest of us hope. So in every disaster story, people must change, must learn something (e.g., tricks to get by, or something in their moral make-up), must find something (e.g., the one tool needed to solve the problem, or a realization within themselves) that helps them rise above the disaster. The main character(s) must change from going through the experience.

In writing FLU SEASON, being a "pantser" (i.e., writing by the seat of my pants; i.e., not outlining and planning first), I actually did not know what would happen next until I wrote it. Hence, I had no particular arc in mind at the start. However, as the characters became real to me and started to act on their own, they led me through their moral development and plot arcs. In revision I worked to highlight some moments which made their ultimate change more relevant, more plausible, and more satisfying to readers. In some ways, like real people everywhere, they change for the better but also change in some not so good ways. In the end, either the dominant traits present at that moment will lead them or else they can rationally analyze themselves and choose the righteous path, so to speak.

I've probably given away more than I should, but I'm keeping the details close to the vest. I recommend listening to as much tuba music as you can, in preparation for Mom's recital in chapter...which one was it? 

More juicy details next time....

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(C) Copyright 2010-2022 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

A Question of Quests

A little more than a year ago, I set out on a quest, pushed by fellow writers who encouraged me to try my hand at writing an epic fantasy. Well, good folks, I did that. I typed every day of the year with a story firmly in mind. On good days in the summer I wrote for a full eight hours. I actually wrote a novel following a hero's quest. Then I wrote a novella about a little princess in another part of the realm. Then I merged the two stories. The result is a 235,000 word tale of daring-do chocked full of all the epic wisdom I could stuff into it--which, I am learning, may be relevant in our heated political season.*

By "quest" I mean a journey of some kind--a hero's journey, in Joseph Campbell parlance. However, in writing an epic fantasy, a quest could be a hero going in search of something of value, or a hero simply trying to travel home from far away, perhaps from a place of tribulation. A quest could mean a bubbly travelogue, much like Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Or, a quest could be a hero going to a particular place where he intends to do something important. This last option is the pattern I adopted for my epic fantasy. (e.g., A man with a plan, out getting a tan, and learning to pan the jokes of his sidekick Tam.) My model for a quest was Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, although I bent over backwards to avoid borrowing anything from it. Likewise, I started reading George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones, but I deliberately avoided any dragon references which my readers might tease were similar to Martin's use of dragons.

Then, much to my chagrin, I discovered a problem. A fatal flaw. An underlying faux pas. A fundamental error. So...what to do with a 235,000-word tale of rousing adventure that falls short of being an epic fantasy? Maybe call it epic sci-fi? That just might be crazy enough to work! You see, there are some rules....


Rule #1. The setting of the epic fantasy must be a world of non-existence to the world of both author and reader; hence, a totally fabricated landscape. If we dare suggest it is here on Earth, we lose. 

The "present" of my epic fantasy is about A.D. 8000.

I beg a waiver. Initially, I invented a world, true, but as I laid out the plot, the series of happenings our hero would experience, I marked them out on a map of a known location here on Earth. By then I had decided this epic would be a behemoth comprising five separate interweaving story lines and one of them would be from a novel I had started long ago in my youth. That early novel idea was set in a futuristic America. As I started writing my epic fantasy, that futuristic America was slated to be the mythological history underlying the present story. As the manuscript grew tremendously, I scaled back that "backstory" to only the mentions my cast of characters would speak once in a while. However, I kept the setting of a future America.

My waiver is because the setting is so different from the world we know today that it might as well be some other place purely of my imagination.


Rule #2. An epic fantasy must have a large cast of characters which includes certain ones in stereotype roles. 

I deliberately tried to achieve that large cast but, going on a quest, our hero and his sidekick are not likely to come upon very many people. In fact, after a couple chapters of just traveling down the valley, I thought I better introduce some new quirky character to liven up the story. Hence, the magus appears. More people to talk. And the magus, being old, can impart some of the backstory. Also, a trek down a valley can only entertain for so long. At some point they would come upon a city, and what would they find there? More people.

My eyes fell upon an infographic, not long after I started writing my epic fantasy, which stated that an epic fantasy needed I needed 20 characters. Besides my hero and sidekick, there would be others playing important roles: the evil prince, the jealous rivals, ordinary townsfolk with devious agendas, warrior tribes in the wilderness, corrupt judges, executioners, crowds of biased citizens, trinket dealers, stable boys, and so on. There would be a love interest for our hero, of course, and maybe temptations down the road. The one character I did not have was a clear antagonist. 

In English teacher lingo, the protagonist is the character that moves the story forward, no matter if that person is good or evil. Usually, moving the story is what causes us to set the story on that character's shoulders, as narrator or our main focus. The antagonist is not necessarily the villain, though he/she may be. Rather, the antagonist is that character (or force of nature) which seeks to thwart the advance of the protagonist, preventing the achievement of his/her goals. In the case of my epic fantasy, the antagonist is chiefly all the dragons of the world and assorted rogues along the way.

So, in the end, I have 20 characters that play some significant role in the plot--not just walk-on roles for color but say or do something that pushes the plot forward, regardless how much "screen" time they get. I'm particularly fond of the hunchback and the river pilots.


Rule #3. The average "bestselling" novel (at least in the fantasy and sci-fi genre) have 15 obstacles to achieving the goals of the quest. 

No problem, I thought. I had a map and I knew how to use it. Something would happen about every half-inch on the trail I had drawn on the map. I pretty much kept to that plan. Later in the story, as new ideas developed from the current writing, I switched out some of the events happening. However, making sure our hero had to deal with 15 (or more) episodes, each a danger, distraction, or detour to overcome, was the reason this epic fantasy reached 235,000 words.


Rule #4. The epic fantasy requires lavish description, flowery language, quirks of speech (including made-up words for things), to better envelope the reader in a strange world far from our own here on Earth. 

Well, I did write a science fiction trilogy involving interdimensional travel to another world, so I did invent other languages for that world. However, in our present day and time, when my college students have such aversion to reading even the shortest, simplest texts, I find myself skipping over large paragraphs of description. All right, it's a room in a castle, and there are pieces of furniture. I don't see how the colors or textures matter unless it somehow influences the plot. Becoming jaded, I suppose; I have read some of the longest novels ever written (e.g., War and Peace, Shogun, The Well at the World's End) and did not skip any portions of them--but that was then.

Therefore, I swore to keep it lean, to concentrate on action, dialog, and offer enough description to paint the scene. I swore to keep scenes manageable in length and chapters at the size to read in an hour or less. I promised myself to get to the core of the action or present information or backstory in colorful ways (usually through dialog) that were fun to read in themselves. I was aiming for an epic fantasy length story, of course, so the leanness of the initial writing was not a concern. I knew I could flesh in a scene where needed after I'd finished the draft. And I did. 


Rule #5. Things happen in fantasy places, both impossibly wonderful and just as likely amazingly cruel. Unconstrained by modern law or sensibilities, an epic fantasy can be quite open with regard to the particular incidents that occur.

I also had in mind to keep this book clean; that is, morally sound, suitable for at least the New Adult category. I accepted that I could not keep it at a Young Adult level because there would be dragon slaying about every chapter. There got to be more violence, and some sexual episodes downstream but I had the camera turn to the window so we could watch the sunset. I feel good about keeping it less graphic than my other novels. As it turned out, I would even let my mother read it. My father, however, is a different case.

I think I can save my book by calling it an epic science fiction fantasy adventure and leave it at that. Hard to put all that on a title page, of course, but then I have maps this time--maps of a place not quite our own landscape. After all, our hero was born only 4800 years from now, give or take a few days. A lot happens between now and then.


NEXT: I shall further explicate the amazing episodes that comprise the greatest epic fantasy (or similar genre) that I have ever written on a computer! 


*"political season": I started to believe from my "inhabiting" wise characters that I could be a fair alternative to the presidential candidate options and so I began the Bunny Party. Unfortunately, we only achieved 12 votes, half of them from my relatives.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2017 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

How much is your happiness worth?

Believe me, I understand. A blog post devoted to, shall we say, "advertising" is not the most attractive place to spend a few minutes while wasting some time at work or school. (Neither is writing such a blog.) However, it needed to be done. The book is out, available within some time zones and under the more favorable stars. I simply wish for my wonderful friends, followers, and [dare I say] fans to know of its existence. That's enough.

I love to write. [Let me start again:] I love to write what I choose to write. I don't mean professional documents (as I occasionally do now) nor academic essays and research papers (as I did not too long ago), or any other obligations of the literary sort. No, I mean fiction writing. The world of make-believe. I suppose that love comes from a long-standing disappointment with the status quo. Of course, it's not all utopia and unicorns in what I write, either, but at least the chaos, the misery, the betrayal and backstabbing are of my choosing.

And so I wile away my days (this past summer was a great pile of such days!--ooo, did I make a rhyme?) at the keyboard of life, type type typing the days into the molds I have created for them. And they (the days made of words which are symbols that represent the meanings of life) go on to form the walls and roofs and patios of Lego-like worlds in primary colors. That's how it is done. Waxing poetic on a Monday morning is winning, isn't it?

Long story short--if you've read this far--I love to write stories about people in odd situations and I love seeing how they get out of those situations. I'm the kind of writer who does not outline, does not plan ahead (not in any more detailed sense than a general story arc), and so as I write the story unfolds to me just as it will unfold to the reader. I like being surprised as much as readers are (I guess). Often I don't like what my characters have planned, what they try to do or get away with, and just as often they don't find my plans for them to be very appealing. Such is the conflicts between the real and the fictional.

Long story even shorter: I love to create these stories and more than anything else (anything but writing them) is my delight at readers experiencing these stories and enjoying them. That's my greatest thrill: to have a readers say (or post, comment, etc.) what they took from the story about, say, the human condition, or what he/she liked about these stories. I'll even take a "didn't like" comment with a half-grin. We can't get it all right all the time, eh?

So the bottom line is that I let people know when and where something is available so they may get as much enjoyment reading (indeed "experiencing"!) what I have created as I have gotten in creating it. I expect us both to be pleased.

And then there is the matter of money. Some people write to make money. I have not yet found a list of those people. Instead, I think most writers write for love of writing, as I do. But there is the need for food, printer ink, books for research, etc. that requires us to beg for some kind of compensation just to keep up the brain cells for the next round of creation. Starving artists do not actually create very good art; their minds are starved.

And as for paperback books, even set at the lowest possible price that, say, Amazon.com will allow, my take is only about one or two dollars per book, hardly a king's ransom. The ebooks for Kindle actually provide a slightly better percentage to the author. However, many readers prefer the touch, the feel, of woodchips in their hands. I do; call me old fashioned. Either way, it all begins with the quirky spark of gray matter inside an artist's brain, something which is truly priceless. How can one put a price sticker on an idea, even a fictional story about people who do not exist and therefore serve no purpose in life, contribute nothing to society, and ultimately are forgotten? Difficult to calculate. Even so....

I'd do it anyway (write), as I stated above, because I love to create new worlds and odd situations and see how it all plays out. If I share that entertainment with someone, isn't it fair I get something back in exchange? A "thank you" is a good start. An obsessive urge to possess the next creation of mine is also good. A meal ticket for the school cafeteria of your choice is often an acceptable donation. It's up to you. What is your happiness worth?

Mine is worth $1.29--give or take a few pennies.


And if you do not mind any little pluggettes, please allow me to mention some entertainments are available for you....

THE DREAM LAND Trilogy 

(Book I in paperback, or ebook; 

Book II as ebook , paperback coming soon; 

Book III coming soon as ebook then paperback)

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(C) Copyright 2010-2013 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.