Permafree Lyon's Legacy, Seasons' Beginning Update, and IWM

There will be a Blog Ring of Power post on Wednesday (the day was shifted to fit with a blog tour), but I have several pieces of exciting news in the meantime.

First, I've decided to make Lyon's Legacy permafree as an experiment. You can currently get it free on Amazon, Smashwords,  or Kobo. (Barnes and Noble is pending.) So far, about 900 copies have been downloaded on Amazon, and all I personally did was mention it in a few places on Facebook and Goodreads. The book peaked at #2 on the 100 Free Time Travel best seller list and below 500 for overall free books
on Amazon before downloads slowed down yesterday. I'm still waiting to see if this new-found visibility will translate into sales of other books, though I don't expect all readers to continue with the Catalyst Chronicles series.

Second, I've started working with a cover artist for Seasons' Beginning  and have sent it out to several beta readers. I've also added it to Goodreads; you can find it here. It will be available in both eBook and print, but I'm considering putting it in Select first for 90 days before making the eBook available everywhere. It should be interesting to see how Kindle Unlimited works, but I don't want it to be permanently exclusive to Amazon either. If you read on a non-Kindle platform, please let me know if this would affect you.

Finally, if you're not reading the Indie Writers Monthly blog, you're missing some good content. Briane is wondering if talking turtles are speculative fiction, Andrew is exploring the blueprint of modern fantasy, and I'm discussing how to break grammar rules in fiction for effect. Pat Dilloway also announced a special omnibus edition of his work. Stop on by and see what's new this week!

Back on the Blog Chain: Breaking the Rules

I'll continue posting notes from my WisCon panels next week, since today I'm participating in the blog chain. For this round, Abby wants to find out how rebellious we are.

There are SO many writing rules, but sometimes we have to break one or two, just to keep things interesting. Is there a writing rule you've broken on purpose? Why did you choose to break it? And if you want to post a snippet of your writing as an example, even better!

Although I'm very picky about grammar, even I break the rules occasionally. One rule that I've broken on purpose is the rule against sentence fragments. I've done so as a way of emphasizing items and to increase tension. Here's an example where I wrote a paragraph of fragments. It's taken from my Beatles fanfiction story "The Movement You Need." In this story, Paul has found a strange guitar in his bed and is searching his hotel room, trying to figure out how it got there:

Paul doubled up the belt in his left hand. He glanced around, but there was no place to hide in the room except for the closet. Silently, he padded over to the closet door and raised his belt. He yanked the closet door open –

Shirts and slacks, neatly hung on the hangers provided by the hotel. His suitcase on the luggage rack, lid open. A couple pairs of non-leather shoes on the floor. Nothing else.

I hope you liked the example. If you'd like to meet more writing rebels, check out Kat's post yesterday and Kate's tomorrow.

P.S. Something I should have said earlier is that before you can break the rules successfully, you first have to understand and master them. If you break the rule repeatedly out of ignorance, then readers can spot that. However, if you follow the rule 99.9% of the time and then break it at a strategic spot, then it has more impact.

What Makes Loglines So Hard?

I was lucky enough to have my logline for Across Two Universes included in today's critique session at Miss Snark's First Victim. (Mine's #11, if you'd like to see it.) Earlier today, I happened to read Agent Kristin's comments about what makes a pitch fail. (There are two parts: here and here.) One of the common problems she sees in pitches is problems with the writing.

It occurred to me that perhaps one of the reasons it's so hard to write loglines and pitches has to do with sentence structure. Since you have to cram so much information -- characters, settings, conflicts, goals, and stakes--into just a couple of sentences, there's a tendency to write long, complex sentences. However, this is a different style from what we typically use in our stories.

Would anyone find it useful to review the types of sentences? (e.g., simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex.) I can do a blog post about them if there's interest.