Donald J. Bingle September 2019 Newsletter |
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Welcome to my new newsletter. In addition to updates about my writing, I hope to entertain you with some pictures, some blogs, some movie reviews, and the like. Let me know what you think. |
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| | BLOG BLAST FROM THE PAST! From October 2011 Writing in Multiple Genres My wife and I used to go to a lot of local art fairs (before all of our available wall space was pretty well occupied). One of the things about artists is that many, many of them find a style or motif they do reasonably well and which sells well-enough to support the art fair circuit lifestyle and they stick with it. So we would see an artist tent and recognize it as the "fuzzy tree" guy or the "cows in the field" woman or whatever. Sure, we sometimes bought stuff from these artists, but it always struck me as a fairly boring artistic life for them, doing the same thing, or at least the same kind of thing, over and over again--just cause it sells. Some writers, in fact quite a few writers, do that kind of thing, but probably not in quite as an extreme fashion. They may not turn out the same story or the same plot over and over, but they find a genre they like and stick with it. Now, genres are pretty big things and you can have a lot of individual creativity within a genre (and some do), but sometimes it is just sequel after sequel after sequel about the same thing.Frankly, I think that would bore me. It's not that I'll never write a sequel--I suspect I will. It's just that writing in one world or in one genre does not appeal to my creative side as strongly as it does to some others. Maybe this is why I loved parliamentary-style debate in college (where you get a new topic every round and debate extemporaneously) over national-topic debate. Maybe this is why I never really liked (or played much) in rpg campaigns, where you play the same character for an extended period, as opposed to RPGA tournaments, where I played a boat-load of different game systems and worlds and got a new character to play almost every single time. Consequently, it is probably no surprise that my business card as a writer notes that I have published works in the scifi, fantasy, horror, thriller, steampunk, romance, and comedy genres. I've also written short stories, a novelette, a novella, three books, a couple screenplays, a few memoirs, gaming material, and even a few poems. I wish I could say this was all quite deliberate, but the reality is that, in part, I kind of fell into it by writing stories for specific markets/anthologies that were looking for stories, rather than just randomly writing whatever I wanted and then spending an inordinate amount of time looking for publications to place them. This worked for me both because I can write pretty quickly, on topic and on requested word-count, and the limitations of the anthology topic or requested tale actually sparks my imagination. And, once word got about with some editors that I could write quickly to spec, I started getting requests to fill in at the last minute for someone who missed deadline or because the total wordcount came up short. Writing in multiple genres probably isn't the smartest move from a marketing standpoint. Fans of my dark comedy and humorous horror may not like my romance or scifi offerings or vice versa. Often, even big-time authors use a pseudonym when trying to break into a new genres, so as not to confuse the public, disappoint their regular readers, or impact their future contracts by having a bad sales outing in one genre affect their deal for books in their regular genre. It has, however, enabled me to keep getting stories published on a regular basis--including some that I do write out of the blue (though those generally take longer to sell, even though I think they are just as good)--and it has broadened my contacts with editors and publishers, to good results. I've tried to make the best of my multiple genre background with my Writer on Demand TM moniker and by grouping previously-published stories in my backlist and putting them out on Nook and Kindle in 3 or 4 story collections by theme, including so far: Tales of Gamers and Gaming; Tales of Humorous Horror; Tales Out of Time, and, most recently Grim, Fair e-Tales (4 dark/downbeat stories, two of which are set at a faire or carnival).Do you write in multiple genres? Do you have questions or comments about doing so? If you do, I'd love to hear from you. Aloha. Donald J. Bingle Writer on Demand TM | | |
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| | RECENT RANDOM THOUGHTS! From September 2019 Sequels, Series, and Collections, Oh My! Well, as most of you know, despite my protestations back in 2011 (opposite column), I've written one sequel (my recent spy thriller, Wet Work, is a follow-up to my book, Net Impact), I've done some preliminary work on writing yet another Dick Thornby Thriller (Flash Drive), Jean Rabe, my co-author for The Love-Haight Case Files keeps talking about the possibility of extending that world with additional stories (we've already tried to extend it by writing a screenplay/teleplay and pitching it as a potential movie or television series), and I continue to put out story collections of my shorter work (reprints and original stuff mixed together), including Tales of an Altered Past Powered by Romance, Horror, and Steam; Not-So-Heroic Fantasy; Shadow Realities; and Crimson Life/Crimson Death. Look for links on the "Stories" page of my website (see button below). Does this mean that I've re-thought and recanted everything I said in 2011 or did I just get lazy? Well, it's certainly true that I try not to work any harder than I have to and that it is still true that writing in a single genre--sometimes within a single series--continues to be smart from a marketing perspective, it's not true that I've forsaken my eclectic, meandering writing ways to grab the big bucks. First of all, there aren't any big bucks waiting out there for me in the writing world. At this point, I'm self-aware enough to know that my skills and ambition are not sufficient to make me a best-selling author (and by that I mean a real best-selling author, not one of those people who pushes their book to sell a lot on one single day so they can momentarily top some narrow Amazon category niche and claim best-seller status). But, I do confess, that I write in order to be read and it is very frustrating to write a story or a book and then take weeks, months, years to place it and then find out that nobody much reads it. One of the reasons I switched from writing RPGA tournament modules to writing for game companies and story anthologies is that only a hundred or two people would ever play a tournament module I wrote, but thousands could read a story or book I produced. Sequels and series at least have some (albeit small) audience eager for the story to continue or the world to expand. And, from a marketing perspective, once you have two or three or more books in a series, you can attempt to grow readership among complete strangers by giving away the first of the series in the hopes that your readers will then go on to buy the rest. And, while it still rankles to give away my writing for free, at least doing so in that context is within my control and supposedly for my own calculated benefit. And, don't worry too much about me. I enjoyed taking Dick Thornby on a second adventure and I've got ideas about what further cases Evelyn and Thomas can look into in a magic-fill San Francisco. Besides, I continue to get some variety by penning short stories in a variety of genres. They may take a while to sell. They may take a while to come out after they sell. And at least one sold for really good money will never be publicly available because it was for a super-secret internal project. Such is the life of a free-lance writer. But, just in case you want to expand your personal collection of stuff I've written, go to my website at www.donaldjbingle.com and take a look at my resume' or click through to the book or story pages and look for something you might like. And, if money is tight, no worries; just ask your local library or contact me about getting a review copy. Never read (or listened to) Net Impact? Click here to read the opening of Dick Thornby's spy adventures. I'm also in the midst of a few marketing promotions with other authors. Click through on the banners below to see more. Aloha. Donald J. Bingle Writer on Demand TM | | |
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Avast, me hearties! September 19 be International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Yo ho! |
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