Indie Author Tips #5 -Rehash Old Material - Zombies!

Indie Author Tips #5 -Rehash Old Material - Zombies!

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Indie Author Tips #4 Behind the Typing

Indie Author Tips #4 Behind the Typing

Matt The Drug Dealer...alright, alright, alright.

Every once in awhile I read on my writer forums someone who is interested in reading a W.I.P (work in progress). Specifically they are interested in seeing how a book 'changes' between drafts. 

As I grow as a writer, I can see two problems with this request. First, I don't really want someone to read something I'm not proud of, nor have finished. Second, a lot of changes in editing are typos, some grammar mistakes, maybe a name change or two. Nothing you'd really notice unless you laid each page side by side. 

It's not like you are going to care I broke a long paragraph into two so as to make it easier to read, or that I added 'so as' between that two and to just so you aren't reading tu-tu in the middle of a sentence. 

However, sometimes there are big changes I make. The reasons vary but mostly it is because I feel the first draft doesn't read well. Perhaps it is slightly boring or there is too much exposition going on. Of course, I don't feel it at the time I'm writing - when it's going well, I'm just trying to keep my fingers at the same speed as my brain. 

So that said, I'm going to show a large change I did for a forthcoming novel from 1st to 2nd draft .

Context; this is a stand-alone chapter about Matt The Drug Dealer, who has found his sales plummeting since Karmajuana (you've read Enter a Fistful, yes?) has been legalized. He is one of a very few people that are not directly affected by Karmajuana's brainwashing abilities. Ironically, a lot of his chronics aren't either; turns out 1% of the population isn't affected by Karma.  

This is the first draft; (1400 words)

T-5 Matt the Drug Dealer

It was just past two pm when Matt heard the doorbell. He believed he jumped from his third-hand couch to his particle board door in record time. However, he didn’t exactly jump nor was it in record time as he was quite stoned. What he really did was slide off the couch like a half-full water balloon onto the floor and waited for his legs to catch up to the rest of his body.

It was only with supreme effort he was able to stand and focus on where the door was this time. The doorbell rarely rang anymore. As a businessman, the doorbell was a big part of his life in being a reputable and reliable pot dealer.

He peaked out the window before opening; another middle-aged man, not one of his regulars. Matt cursed. This guy would have the same request as all the other noobs who came ringing his doorbell like he was a goddamn McDonald’s; Karmajuana.

Matt had plenty of Karma. However, just because he didn’t like it, didn’t mean he wouldn’t sell it. He sold coke and hash and on occasion meth but he didn’t care for that clientele. The problem for him was he also had a lot of other shit that wasn’t moving and if it wasn’t moving, he wasn’t making money.

This new Karma shit was flooding the market and Matt was pretty experienced in the varieties of marijuana out there, knew his homegrown from his factory grown. This stuff was going gangbusters. People wanted it and people were getting it. He had made sure to try it himself, especially when it was becoming all the rage but he couldn’t see what the big demand was. It was a good buzz, nothing more. He had way more powerful shit sitting in his stash box than Karma but nobody cared. It was all they wanted. Karma, karma, karma. 

And he wasn’t the only one to notice. A couple of his chronics also mentioned their curiosity over what the big attraction was.

At first it was pretty exciting when Karma came out. After all, Matt was still a businessman who liked to listen to cold, hard cash. And everyone was buying. And by everyone, it was everyone.

Then it started getting weird. First, the neighbours came over and asked if he carried any of this Karmajuana they heard about. Then it was the moms. Trophy moms pushing strollers came right up to his door, looking straight out of a school board meeting, asking if he could set them up. Lastly, it was the cops. Cops actually coming to his door, ringing his goddamn doorbell and having the unusual audacity to ASK if he could score them some Karma. AND they did it politely. Fearing a set-up, he played ignorant. Then they just…left. No good cop, bad cop. No search warrants, no mind games. They just left.

His fellow dealers he was on speaking terms with had similar stories of being harassed by the Man in all shapes and forms, but not aggressively, not the ‘get-out-of-my-neighbourhood’ type way, just asking if they had any of this Karmajuana going around. Then everyone stopped asking because frankly, everyone was giving. It was a Karmajuana Christmas out there, every day. The very same cops who asked to get hooked up came by the next day and gave him a pack of nicely rolled Karma cigarettes then left. It was the strangest conversation ever and speaking as someone who has had plenty of odd conversations under the influence, that was saying something. 

The doorbell rang again but because he had muscle memory and still knew where the door was, it didn’t take him so long to get there from the couch. He checked the peephole, sighed happily and opened the door.

“What’s up, James?” Matt asked.

“Nothing, man. Just chilling. What’s up with you?” said James. Matt easily could smell the Karma on him.

“Want to come in?”

“Uh, yeah.” And while that was James’ opinion on the matter, he didn’t move. Matt looked up the street, noticed for the first time it was a pretty decent day outside and decided to sit down on the front steps. James sat down beside him. They both sat there doing nothing. James pulled out a Karma, lit it and handed it to Matt. They smoked in silence until there was nothing left.

“Hey James?” asked Matt.

“Yeah?”

“Have you noticed that things are, like, different lately?”

“Sorta. I was just at the 7/11. There’s nobody there.”

“You mean it’s closed?” asked Mike. The store was open 24/7 - he sent and received a lot of business to the convenience store for customers in search of munchies at 1am or drugs at 12am. He never knew it to be closed. 

“No. Like abandoned. It was still open but nobody was in there.”

“Someone must have been there. Maybe they were just in the shitter.”

“Well, there was this guy, Abed or Ammad or whatever. He said he worked there but he was smoking weed outside. Told me to go in and help myself to anything.”

Matt frowned. He knew Amed. He was a good guy but never smoked the bud. Never. He was the only clerk there whom Matt knew who would also ban shoplifters, as if he had a share in the profits the store made. If it was one of Matt’s customers, Amed would tell him so Matt would relay the message. Often Matt covered the losses with his own money or if Matt knew the thief, would personally bring them back to apologize to Amed and make them promise not to do it again. Matt respected Amed’s minimum wage honesty and business ethics, much like Amed respected his. He couldn’t match the vision of the Amed he knew with the Karma-smoking, apathetic Amed James described.

“And it’s not just him, there are a lot of open smokers out there now. Have you heard of these Karmafarians?”

“Karmafarians?” asked Matt, who was proud to never be up on current events, as was evident by his PS2 game system. “Never heard of them.”

“Yeah, it’s like, some type of cult or gang or something. They give away Karmajuana, for free.”

“Free? That doesn’t make any sense. Where’s the profit in that?”

“And everyone is just…chilling. Downtown is so quiet. Not quiet in people, lots of people, but more quiet in like no traffic. No cars. There’s just people sitting everywhere, chilling.”

James said chilling way more than was necessary. If Matt was in a pissy mood he called him on it. However, today was not one of those days.

“Weird,” Matt thought for a moment before admitting his experiences with the cops, “you know there is something really strange about that shit.”

“Yeah, I guess. It’s good, but it’s not like put-you-in-a-wheelchair and orgasm type good. It just makes everyone massively chill.”

“That’s what I thought too,” exclaimed Matt, happy to finally have someone on the same wavelength, “I don’t get it.”

“I heard that some of the chronics down at the skate shop also don’t get the big deal. Some say it’s the reason why marijuana was legalized. Somebody got it onto Parliament Hill and got everyone high, even the Prime Minister.”

“Fuck. Could you imagine? Getting high with the PM? What if everyone just stops doing shit and it’s up to the chronics to get shit done?”

“That would be awful,” said James, passing his Karma over to Matt.

“Yeah. I don’t even know where we would start. I guess we could get these Karmafarians to stop giving away free weed. My business is dying here.”

“Isn’t that more a job for the cops? Or for you know… your guys?”

Matt knew James was referring to his suppliers, rumoured to be part of the toughest motorcycle gang in North America.

“I haven’t heard from them in weeks. I don’t know what the hell is going on.”

“I don’t want to become a Narc. I mean, if it is a choice between free Karma and snitching, I’m on their side. I mean, free weed? Why not, right?”

“Well, in theory. Maybe we should ask around, see if the other guys feel the same about these Karmafarians, find out who they are.”  

But instead Matt and James sat on the front porch and watched the clouds and people go by. They began to notice the neighbours, many of them doing the same thing; just sitting on their front porches, chilling. The smell of Karma was heavy in the air.

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So I wrote that more than a year ago. Didn't think about it too much as it was simply only one character idea of many. Then I started getting serious of doing an Enter a Fistful sequel and I found I had all these short stories but no order to them. I had recurring characters, new characters, time-travelling characters (from a Nanowrimo challenge), political manifestos, hockey pool commentaries, a Dr. Strangelove tribute, etc. Basically I created a 'Frankenstein's Monster' of a story. It was overwhelming. 

I created some order in the chaos; a count-down of sorts. I separated characters into before/after/during on a timeline. I separated finished and unfinished chapters, did summaries of about 50+ individual short stories.

I chose Matt's story because if/when weed becomes legalized, it will affect people like Matt, who rely on the underground economy. He is Day #5 before all shit breaks loose. The goal of this was to show how quickly Karmajuana had spread across society. 

Now, onto the 2nd draft. 

The hard part is admitting when you don't like something you've done. I liked parts of Matt's story, didn't care for others. Some of it was a rehash of themes I'd already done. There's a lot of exposition there. What happened with the original guy who rang the doorbell? There's that paragraph on Abed and why Matt respected him. Is that needed? How is this advancing the storyline? So one night in bed I decided to change it. It then became this; 

Indie Author Tips #3 Branding Yourself

Indie Author Tips #3 Branding Yourself

Branding. When a persona becomes more than the person it represents. Or a company becomes more than a company, a product more than a product. A Toyota isn't just a truck with four wheels and an engine, it is also the last name of over 13,000 people on Japan's largest island. Maybe. I'm not Japanese and don't own a Toyota.

Spoiler alert: Kermit the Frog isn't really an anxious, stressed out frog. He's a puppet made out of green cloth and googly eyes that lives in a plastic bag when it is not on someone's hand.

I'm researching marketing as in indie writer; defining what I am in as little words as possible. I'm to create a persona so potential readers know what I'm about without really knowing anything about me, personally.

In other words, I'm to create an image people expect of me. No surprises. Just predictability. A persona.

What is your persona?

I liken a persona is what you post on Facebook to your friends and family, strangers who knew you once and you have some type of kismet to.

You, as a person, is the one that comes out on Reddit or other semi-anonymous sites. Where you can express feelings, link questionable articles, and type comments without fear of your Aunt Maggie or mother having an opinion of your use of the F or C word.

I'm trying to come up with a persona for my writing. It's a bit difficult considering the medium.

Stephen King's persona is of a man with large glasses, writing semi-horrific stories.

JK Rowling's persona is of a rags-to-riches single mom who hit it big writing of adolescent geek magic.

What the two of them in common? They couldn't get away from their 'personas' and so wrote books under different names (pseudonyms) trying to prove their talent was bigger than their name.

Fortunately for their publishers, low book sales resulted in the disclosure of their 'secret identities' and lo and behold, those books started selling.

So does branding work?

Yes.

Is it healthy for you as a person?

No.

You aren't your job, you aren't what you write, who you wear, what you geek out on. But in these days of social media awareness, what you are is what you've branded yourself, either purposefully or by default.

I'm a writer and I have written comedic (hopefully) stories about existential angst, commentaries on social anxiety and conformity, and the optimism of life, love and the universe.

So what's my brand?

I'm still figuring that out. But in the meantime, define me as you will.

Enter A Fistful of Marijuana, Stoner, Unincorporated and The Midland Mutiny are all available on Createspace, Amazon and Kindle. Or ask your bookseller about them.  

I'm also @metajayroyston on twitter (indie Author Marketing Tip) and currently have 3 followers. Come join the party over there...