Man, it’s been a minute since I’ve been here! That said, my time away has been productive. As the title of this episode/post suggests, I have just released a pair of books titled: How to Write the Damn Book and How to Publish the Damn Book. They are, together, the How to Finish the Damn Book series. I may eventually add more books to it, but I’m starting with those two.
They are the distillation of my over sixteen years in the publishing industry. These two books contain as much knowledge as I could cram into them about the whole process. While there are things I didn’t touch on (like specific craft things), I included everything I thought I could put in there without wandering around in the weeds. I may do another couple about craft and about my newly-released Star Point Method, but they’re a ways in the future. I have fiction I need to work on, too!
Releasing these together like this is sort of a dip in the pool of “rapid release” but honestly, I’ve been working on this pair of them for a year and a half now, which is longer than I usually take on a book. Of course, I’ve never written non-fiction before, so it was an exercise in figuring out how I wanted to structure and format them. In the end, I decided to try and keep the structure very sensible and reasonably repeating (such as ending chapters with summaries and takeaways).
The “Oh No” Moment
Something I did get immediately, though? Readers finding typos. I sighed and facepalmed pretty hard a few times when folks pointed them out, but I can’t fix them for ninety days. That said, you know what it shows? It shows a few, really important things:
Even edited works contain errors because they’re made by humans. And all humans will miss things here and there.
I obviously did not write these books with AI. The errors are the kind only a human would make.
No matter how good you are, there will always be errors that slip past you.
I’ve taken to calling these errors “the Ghosts of Edits Past” with a lot of laughter because, honestly, I can’t do anything about them just yet. All I can do is hope the information is solid enough to allow people to overlook the typos here and there. I will fix them when I can, but right now? Right now it’s not an option.
That humility is something I can live with. The information is what’s important here, not whether or not I made a few errors in typing or formatting. The errors are inevitable, after all. All I can do is accept them and use them to exemplify the imperfectly perfect nature of humans.
So Why These Books?
If you’ve been reading my blog or listening to my podcast for a while, you already know that I repeatedly tell people there’s no secret sauce to publishing. There just isn’t one. Anybody who says there is, is trying to sell it to you.
That being the case, why in the heck should you buy my books if there’s no big secret in them? Because they’ll save you having to spend sixteen years of your life learning everything in there the hard way. That’s all. They’ll spare you time and get you ahead of the game because you’ll know what you’re doing. Or at least you’ll be able to fake it really well.
Also, I wrote these books because after that length of time, I find myself answer the same questions and having to tear apart the same myths over and over again. These myths swirl around writing groups like a miasma that won’t go away. So, instead of writing out my 3,000,000th Facebook comment rebuttal, I figured I’d write a book instead. That way I can just point at it and make grunting noises. Thock say book good. Thock say read book.
Not only that, I wrote them because there’s no secret sauce. I’m really sick of people trying to take advantage of authors by claiming there is a secret that doesn’t exist. Anybody on the inside of the industry knows the only secrets are what Chicago was thinking when they made the CMOS 18 that horrible yellow! The rest of it? It’s all written down and widely shared. The only thing I did differently was compile it in a way that I think will make it all make sense to new authors.
Well, that and my storycraft method, “The Star Point Method.” That’s new. As in brand spanking new. I came up with it a couple years ago and have been toying with it since as a way to explain tension. I’m likely to do a whole book on that someday, too.
What’s Next?
Regardless of this new venture into non-fiction, I’m still writing fiction. That’s where my heart and soul is. However, with the non-fiction comes a lot of speaking gigs. I’m going to be speaking at Author Nation 2024 in Las Vegas, Nevada in November. I’m also going to be signing books at RAVE 2024 down there if anybody wants to come visit me. I’ll have a bunch of them. Plus a ton of pretty charms and other goodies to give away.
After that, I need to set my sights on Neurodivergent Publishing Conference 2025 and get everything set up for that. I’m also going to be speaking at a college in March (Landmark College in Vermont).
In between that, I have client manuscripts and maps to finish as well as my secret fiction project. I’m not going to be making my usual January release due to needing to finish the non-fiction books I just released, though. That’ll come out when it does, as far as I’m concerned. I’ve got most of the first draft done, however, so it won’t be forever!
Stay tuned, friends, things are getting interesting!
How To Finish The Damn Book