Author Wayne Thomas Batson unveils his new series and reveals his writing secrets

By Merrie Destefano

Have you ever wished you could ask one of your favorite authors to reveal some of their writing tips? If so, today’s your lucky day! 

We’ve got an interview with Wayne Thomas Batson, best-selling author of the Door Within trilogy, Isle of Swords, Isle of Fire, The Berinfell Prophecies, Sword in the Stars, The Errant King, and Ghost.

Today also happens to be the release day of DREAMTREADERS, the first book in his new series. One of the things we’re requesting is if you want to purchase his book, please consider buying it today on Amazon.

Here’s some info from Wayne about The Blitz, a contest he’s running on his blog here: www.enterthedoorwithin.blogspot.com.

 
Here's the Amazon link for Dreamtreaders: http://is.gd/gONxPf

And now, for that author interview, where Wayne accidentally…I mean, on purpose…reveals all his writing secrets including how he came up with the concept for his new series, PLUS tips for writing Middle Grade stories.

RSM: I love the concept for Dreamtreaders! I also read the sample chapters online and it looks fantastic. How did you come up with the idea for this series and how long did it take you to write the first book?

WAYNE: Thank you kindly, Merrie. I’m thrilled that you enjoyed the sample chapter. The idea for the Dreamtreaders Series came from a little video I happened upon while surfing. The subject was Dream Science. I’ve always had vivid dreams, so I thought the video was pretty compelling. I had heard of Lucid Dreaming before, but not with the kind of detail presented in the video. Within minutes of watching the video, the entire plot of Dreamtreaders Book 1 popped into my head. I started thinking: What if there was a greater purpose for dreams? What if there was more danger involved with dreams than we ever thought possible? It was really kind of on a whim that I wrote up a brief proposal. I really didn’t think anything would come off it, but Thomas Nelson / Harper Collins loved the concept right away.

The first book took me about 3 months to write. I already had an outline, so I shot through pretty quickly. Thankfully, I had great editors like Steele Filipek and Amy Kerr to help me bring the story up to its full potential.

RSM: What do you think is the difference between writing for a Middle Grade audience, versus either a Young Adult or an Adult audience? What tips would you recommend for our blog readers who want to write for Middle Grade?

WAYNE: For me, there’s not much difference between Middle Grade / Young Adult readers. You can’t underestimate either. Kids are incredibly perceptive. You really need to honor that in your stories. Writing for adults is a whole different ballgame. Adults like the thrills, adventure, and creativity just as much as YA readers, but adults demand a level of sophistication that is different. You need to weave in layers of inference so that adults can figure things out on their own. You need to be more subtle too. If you have themes you are interested in, go for it, but hint at it, don’t drown them. 

Tips for Middle Grade Readers:

1) Make sure you HOOK them early. I mean first sentence, first paragraph, first page, first chapter. Make sure you have some very cool unusual events going on right away. While kids are perceptive, they also are kind of quick to assess the interest level of the material. If it’s a yawner up front, they will drop it like rotten tuna sandwich.

2) Don’t forget the power of humor. Middle Grade books can be so heavy handed. Dogs dying, people getting diseases, concentration camps, government takeovers, dystopia! EEK, run! You’ve got to lighten up here and there. I teach middle school, and my students literally ask me sometimes: “Why are these books so depressing?” Not my books, mind. I always lighten the mood with humor. It really helps.

RSM: Those are great tips! Thanks, Wayne. I’ve always found outlining for one book hard enough. How do you outline for a series?

WAYNE: When outlining for a series, you need to use broad strokes. In other words, capture the headlines of each book. What are the major things you expect to happen in each book? How can you have a beginning, middle, and legit end for each story while maintaining a “greater story” for the series? Once you have the broad strokes, you can then paint in the details when you approach each book for a manuscript pass.

RSM: I think it's great that you're working with Thomas Nelson again, this time on the Dreamtreaders series—TN is an amazing publishing house! But I've noticed you also have some self-published projects. Some are short stories, like The Blackwood, and some are full length novels, like The Tide of Unmaking (co-authored by Christopher Hopper) and Ghost. How and when do you decide to self-publish projects?

WAYNE: There are several variables that I consider to determine the direction of publishing: traditional path or self publishing. 1) Is there publisher interest?  2) If yes, then what are the terms? Is the royalty /advance good enough?  3) Is the concept I have in mind appropriate for one of the publisher’s age categories?

If all the answers to the above are yes, then I might go traditional. If any of the answers are no, then I’ll likely self pub. Another deal breaker with traditional publishing is creative control. If the publisher won’t allow me to take the story where it needs to go, then I might do it myself. My Dark Sea series, for example, deals with themes TN didn’t want to touch, so I went somewhere else.  Then, the market changed and ebooks put such a dent in print sales that I ended up getting back the rights. I plan to completely repackage and self-publish the seven book Dark Sea Annals series.

I like to keep a foot in every market possible. Diversification isn’t just for stock portfolios. Print publishers still rule a huge market. Why not be a part of it? 

RSM: I completely agree about diversification. In fact, most authors I know are doing both traditional and self-publishing. Is Spearhead Books your own imprint? Can you tell me a little about the decision to create that publishing company and what your goals are?

WAYNE: Spearhead Books is a joint project from The Miller Brothers, Christopher Hopper, and me. We aren’t a publisher per se, but we are creating a brand for Christian readers to be able to trust. With self-publishing growing like it is, we wanted to create a one-stop shop for trustworthy, positive fiction. 

RSM: It sounds like an awesome joint project and our blog readers can check out Spearhead Books HERE. You have an impressive selection of books! Thank you very much for answering all of my questions, Wayne! 

WAYNE: You’re welcome. Always good to connect, Merrie. Thank you for the opportunity.

If you want to learn more about Wayne’s books, check out: Enter The Door Within, Heed the Prophecies, and Sword in the Stars.

Research... but, how?

So there’s been this story rattling around in my brain for a couple years now, but I haven’t known how to even begin. I've wavered between casting it as a proper historical drama or a more fanciful steampunk tale – the problem with starting is that either way I had no idea where to begin all the research this particular story requires.

Until I read this lovely post by Michelle Ule and her extremely helpful step-by-step research process on the Books & Such Literary Management blog.

In summary, Michelle recommends:

1. Start with the synopsis. How else will you know what to research?
2. Read everything!
3. Google, Google, Google. Fact check, fact check, fact check.
4. Join online interest groups.
5. Save interesting documents. She emails interesting documents to herself and stores them in a labeled email folder for easy future reference.
6. Yay! Pinterest!
7. Yay! Movies!
8. Yay! Travel!
9. Talk to everyone, you never know who will have fascinating input.

Now the story in my head has moved from rattling to clamoring, the characters moving from mere shadows to almost substantial ghosts.

I’m excited to learn who they are, what they wear, how they speak - and whether or not they'll submit to the indignities of dirigible travel over Lake Erie.

What are your favorite research techniques? Do you write first, research later? What are your favorite go-to sources?

Jane Wells has always gravitated toward reading material that pushed other people’s buttons. In 2nd grade it was a dinosaur book that upset her teacher at a Baptist school. Now it’s vampires and dystopias that catch her imagination. In them she finds parables and allegories illustrating God’s ancient plan in a language that is uniquely modern – and easily understood by people who may have never set foot inside a church. Glitter in the Sun and Bird on Fire are the results.

Always a writer, Jane’s “real jobs” have included newspaper journalism, youth ministry, sewing machine sales and marketing for a publishing house. Currently she is back to “just a writer” again, while juggling all the typical domestic duties of wife and mother, homeschooling two boys, managing two needy Golden Retrievers and answering to one very demanding cat.

Is the Hybrid Author the New Black?

By Merrie Destefano

Publishing is a wonderful industry. Nothing can give you the same adrenaline rush as when you see your name in print or when you stumble across your book in a nearby Barnes and Noble. Unfortunately, publishing is also terrifying and fickle. It can make you feel validated (think bylines) and overwhelmed (think deadlines). There may even be times when you wonder why you chose writing as a career (think unanswered e-mails sent to agents/editors, bad reviews and poor sales).

Believe it or not, you can experience all of these things within a single day—sometimes, even within a single hour. And then, right about when you’re ready to give it up and get a job with a steady monthly income, someone will come along and tell you that your story/book/article made them weep or laugh or think about life in a new and amazing way.

As a published novelist, my first experience with the roller coaster ride of book publishing came when Borders closed in 2011. Several of my author friends and I had books releasing at the same time, and most of us worried whether we'd be able to earn back our advances. You can imagine our distress when the chain of Borders bookstores began to close, almost one by one across the country and, as a result, our newly released books came tumbling back as returns. It was frightening.

One minute, I was a starry-eyed novelist, excited about the release of my second novel (Feast, with HarperVoyager). The next, I was consumed by bookstore returns and plummeting sales figures and the fear that my contract wouldn’t be renewed.

A cycle began then, one that would last for years and still continues today. My author friends and I began to write more books, we began to write faster, we began to write in different genres, we began to write spin-off novellas and prequels and sequels, we began to write for print and digital imprints and anyone who seemed interested in our work.

You could almost see the sign on our collective back that said, We Will Write For Food.

Then, probably not surprisingly, one by one we began to self-publish. Not all of us and not all at once. Just a book or a novella at a time, as if we were all looking over our shoulders at The Publishing Powers That Be to see if we had angered some great and mighty god. (We hadn’t.)

We didn’t know it at the time, but it was the beginning of a new trend, or perhaps a new era. It was the birth of the hybrid author.

Today, almost everyone I know is a hybrid author. We all have our own little stack of traditionally published books, and we seek to publish more of those, but we also have our own shiny little stack of self-published books.

Some of us have done better than others with this new business model. One author I know now makes approximately $10,000 to $12,000 per month on her self-published books alone. Another very well-known fantasy author, who spoke on the same panel I did a few years ago, confided that she had procured the rights to her backlist and then self-published them. She is now earning about $10,000 per month on those books.

The reasons for becoming a hybrid author are varied and I probably couldn't even list them all, but I'll try.

THEY INCLUDE:

1. You have a traditionally published series, but for some reason the last book in the series, or the last two books in the series—which you may have already written–don’t get picked up by your publisher.

2. It's been a long time between contracts and you're concerned that your readers might forget about you. Meanwhile, you've written one or two books that your readers might enjoy.

3. You're between agents, you have one or two really good books languishing on your computer hard drive, and you'd like to see if you can make some money off them.

4. You write romance, but you have also written a really cool science fiction YA novel. Except no one seems to want to publish it, even under a pen name.

5. You have a great career as a novelist, you speak at events, you win awards, but somehow you still can't pay the bills with the amount you earn from traditional publishing. So you decide to augment your salary with a line of self-published books and novellas.

6. You want more creative freedom. You want to edit your books as much or as little as you want, publishing as often as desired (some traditionally published authors have to wait 3 years for their books to be published, while others are expected to turn in a new book every 6 months). You want to choose your own covers and tailor your own book tours and promotional strategies.

A few successful hybrid authors who began in self-publishing and then ventured into the traditional arena include Hugh Howey, Amanda Hocking and Joanna Penn, while two authors who successfully began in traditional publishing and then ventured into self-publishing include James Scott Bell and Natalie Whipple.

The door swings both ways.

I decided to self publish my young adult paranormal romance, Fathom, when I was between contracts and between agents. The manuscript had garnered a few admirers along the way, and at least one editor had liked it enough to take it to pub board, but it was a book about Celtic legends and selkies, not mermaids. So, in the end, the marketing team didn’t get behind it and the editor had to pass.

Still, I loved that book. It had a gothic, almost haunting quality to it, and I wanted other people to read it. I couldn’t bear to let it gather cobwebs on my hard drive while I continued my agent search.

So, I created my own imprint, Ruby Slippers Press, then I formatted my book for both digital and print, and designed my cover (I studied fine art in college and worked for years as a graphic designer and illustrator before becoming the editor and publisher at The Word For Today). Then I put my book up for sale on Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

Did I get rich, like my successful hybrid author friends? No. But I did feel validated and the book has gotten good reviews.

If I learned anything, it’s that the publishing door is only closed if I think it’s closed.

I still haven’t given up on my dreams of being traditionally published again. But I do believe one thing. The hybrid author is here to stay, it’s a way of life and it’s a good way of life.

In my opinion, the hybrid author is the new black.

But I want to hear from you. What do you think about self-publishing and traditional publishing? Do you think they can work hand-in-hand?

Award-winning writer, graphic designer and illustrator, Merrie Destefano’s published work includes Afterlife and Feast (both with HarperVoyager), Fathom, The Plague Carrier and Waiting For Midnight (with Ruby Slippers Press), and How To Draw Zombies (Walter Foster). She’s also the editor of Victorian Homes magazine and founding editor of Cottages and Bungalows magazine. She is the founder and owner of Ruby Slippers Media and Ruby Slippers Press, and her website is here.