Month: September 2014

Decision Time, To self Publish or not, that is the Question?

Lee Hall Leave a comment

I’m back, fresh from a week in the hot sun and ready, well sort of. To take on the world of self publishing!!!

Decision Time!

I did say at the close of my last series of blogs that I would come to a decision when I return. But what exactly does that decision involve? (yes I am drawing this out, literally)

Do I self publish my first novel, Clark Thorn and the Warrior Project?

During my holiday I took some time to think, I walked along the sandy beach taking in doses of ultra violet rays.

My position right now is represented below (excuse my wonderful Paintbrush skills)

self

Copyright Amateur Hour

As you can see once the self pub path has been taken there is no return. But I have a plan!

On my ever continuing journey towards self-publishing why don’t I continue to try and acquire an agent whilst doing so? (This is represented by the engineering drawing  below*)

self2

So that’s where I am now. In the next month I will be implementing another edit of my book and then a new search for representation will happen! This will involve putting together a top notch Synopsis and covering letter which I will share with you good people.

No matter what the goal is it will always be the same and that is to get my novel published and read by the world!

I think either way there is a leap of faith that I need to take, it’s time to stop hiding behind a decision I am somewhat afraid to make and go for it!!! (pause for applause)

I hope you enjoyed this short but to the point blog, that is the aim for me this series. Write something worth reading that doesn’t drag on! A few minutes in the Hall of information is all you need.

Until next time, I’ll be seeing you, please share, comment and like, have a nice day/evening/morning/afternoon

Episode 7 : Winter is Coming (Season 1 Finale)

Lee Hall 1 Comment

For those who have been here since the start, our journey of series 1 is coming to close. The Hall of information is going on holiday next week so I thought this would be appropriate to end the pilot series of this blog.

But has the Hall been commissioned for a second series?

My answer to that is yes yes oh yay! The following I have received has been enough for me to put efforts into continuing this campaign with publication of my book firmly in sight. There will come a transition phase during the second series where my blog post’s will become more frequent. I quite like the idea of Thursdays, the weekend is in sight and people are in much better moods. But my initial thoughts would be to release content on a Monday also!

Game of Thrones Review 

By way of making this blog popular, I review popular things (that’s probably the most valuable lessons I can give to someone thinking of doing a blog. Reference popular stuff, it makes it more appealing)

So for my birthday I was given series 1 and 2 of the popular George R R Martin television adaptation Game of Thrones. Having been a citizen of the internet since this show’s arrival I was no stranger to it’s perception. In fact I was led to believe that the whole cast would be killed off on an episodic basis. That’s the exaggeration of the trolls for ya. But I was impressed to say that wasn’t the truth.

We are thrown into a world of castles, kingdoms, trial by combat and successors to an iron throne. There isn’t nearly enough words for me to describe this rich and immersive world of characters that is somewhat brief in my opinion (I will say tits, tits everywhere). I understand the book is immensely complex and translation to TV requires attention spans to be kept on their toes. To me the series seemed rather slow from the get go although there were plenty of moments that shocked and intrigued me. There just wasn’t enough for me to sink my teeth into. I love TV shows, the time spent with characters and their stories developing over episodes is something I very much appreciate.

Although I haven’t a bad word to say about Game of Thrones, the first series felt more like a chore than an enjoyment to me. I have been told, that the series following and beyond is well worth the investment of time.  But surely the first series should also have such moments.

There are some great characters among the brilliant cast and I am somewhat looking forward to see where the story goes in series 2. The sets, costume and action are of a superb level of quality and if this was my book being adapted then I would be beyond proud.

Overall I liked series 1 and I give it 8 Joffrey’s out of 10

Introductions Part 7 (Ok this is wearing thin now)

By the end of May 2013 I felt as if I was ready to send my manuscript out to potential agents and publishers. Having given the book a half-hearted edit. I drew together a list of 50+ contacts and fired off the emails.

In this time I had began to draft book 2!

I received very little response from anyone regarding my book, and the responses I did receive were blanket emails.

What was I doing wrong? After some research I changed my cover letter, put together a synopsis and tried again. By September of that year I had finished drafting Book 2 and decided to take a closer look at book 1.  I had received contact from a literary agent and editor who showed some level of interest but it didn’t feel right to me.

The winter of 2013 consisted of me restructuring Clark Thorn and the Warrior Project, I added 10,000 words and split the 12 chapters. The four hour sessions were back and I worked immensely hard to bring my book up to an immaculate standard.

The new edit was complete and again I would approach publishers and agents.

Again to no avail.

I went through the motions in terms of disappointment, anger and all the other negative stuff, wondering why nobody was interested. My perception of the literary industry was becoming apparent. A closed door society where everyone behind that door will fob off and cop out any way possible. Why not, they are doing this for a living they have to be that way.

(Introductions part 10) Remember a few episodes back, well here it is again. I sent off my manuscript for an appraisal and that’s where I am today!

July of 2014 I decided that I would pursue the route of self-publishing

What am I doing right now

Having recently received my manuscript assessment I went to work in implementing changes and put it in line with the issues pointed out. It took me less than 10 days (of mostly 4 hour’s an evening) to finish and now I am currently taking a break.

Decision Time

I would most like to leave the close of this series on some level of cliff hanger and that is what I will do, when I return for series two I will have an answer on whether or not Clark Thorn will be self-published.

Thank you all for reading Lee’s Hall of information, please share, follow, sign up and tell the world! Series Two will begin on Thursday the 25th of September!

Episode 6 AMERICA F*** YEAH!!!

Lee Hall Leave a comment

As I stumble my way through learning how to blog, it is apparent to me that last week’s entry was a revelation! Using the word press statistics thingy it has told me that my largest audience last week was in fact USA. Thank you from across the pond! But I must also send thanks to Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the 2 views I had from Italy.

A big thanks to all of you, Facebook groupies and anyone in between, cheers guys!!

Before we continue! Above you can see a new page has been added next to Contact. This is my current plan, check back as it will get updated as progress is made.

Shameless Plug of something non-book related

As some of you may know, I partake in amateur dramatics. Now the club I belong to is a community run effort that relies solely on ticket sales to stay afloat. Our resident media/publicity officer Matt Streuli has discovered a nifty website that can help promote our efforts. It’s called Thunderclap and the idea is, sign up via facebook/twitter and when the allocation has been met this site will post a status via your page advertising the cause. Upon signing up the site will calculate how many people are reached and add it to the list. Cool right? This is something that I could use when my book launch is imminent.

If you would like to support community run amateur drama then please sign up to the cause, whatever corner of the web you are in, it will help. They need 100 sign ups!

Below is what the set up looks like, click on it to visit the page

I’ve stopped drafting my 3rd book

Every now and then I get utterly depressed with things, (not been officially diagnosed with depression) what I mean is that I lose faith in everything I do. There are a number of reasons for this, mainly it’s because I am the leader of this campaign and there is no figure above me (writing wise) to put their arm around me and tell me it’s gonna be ok. Or it’s because the soccer team I follow are crap. (although they did win the at the past weekend)

That’s life, we all get burned out and we all loose faith. It came to a point where I had planned most of what I had written so far (book 3) and then inspiration grinded to a halt. So I stopped, mothballed book three and went back home to book 1. By that I mean there was some re working to do on Clark Thorn and the Warrior Project. That’s what I’m doing now, editing to me is so much more fun than drafting. You get to deal with text that’s already had it’s foundation laid, sort of like word maintenance.

Oddly enough my faith in everything was restored when I was at work. In my attempt of looking like I know how to do sciency things I somehow miraculously managed to fix something. Let me set the scene a little here: The chips were down, the experiment was gonna come to a complete stand still, options were diminishing in front of our eyes, something had to be done. What ever I tried didn’t work, hometime was in sight but that wouldn’t come to fruition until this dilemma was sorted. Lee steps up, does something and its fixed! The crowd roar as the ball hits the back of the net! In life the little victories must be appreciated.

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Introductions Part 6 (there is quite possibly an end in sight)

So 2013 rolled around and I was full steam ahead into writing. The first 3 chapters I put together previously were having a serious re work and I began to look for a platform to release some material. Luckily a good friend of mine (Rob Chambers) was using a website known as booksie.com to put some writing out there. So it was decided when I had enough decent material I would release Clark Thorn and the Warrior Project via booksie, chapter by chapter on a kind of weekly basis.

At the same time I created a Facebook page and my online presence had officially started. By the end of January, the initial draft of my novel had debuted online!

Exciting times for me but I did come across some difficulty, you see the first 3 chapters were written some time ago, I was a different person then, this stuff was on another frequency, but eventually I blasted through chapter 3 and forward. I will simply say the reason I got through this frequency problem is because I spent so much time writing, every week day I would be writing for 4+ hours. But for the first time I was enjoying it!

A few months passed and chapters 5,6,7 and 8 were constructed. I was on a roll and I could see exactly how and when my first book would end!

By May of 2013 I had finished drafting my first novel and at 65,000 words I was ecstatic with what I had achieved.

Next week : The final episode of Lee’s Hall of information (this series), a feature length offering concluding the introductions, whats next and a Game of Thrones Review