A Different Sort

This week I have decided that a different sort of post from the norm of the past few weeks.  Taking a break from Character Spotlights, even though I have the availability of several hundred to choose from because of my back log of up coming novels, I decided to ponder who has inspired me over the years as a writer.  While a lot of my creative juices come from watching my favorite genres of movies and TV shows and asking what if, several of my recent writing efforts have been thrown under the train, because of the advice of some really great bloggers.

All of which have been begging all of us to nominate them for the upcoming top ten of writing blogs for the year.  I can’t just name one – or even ten.  I have eighteen regularly watched (as in daily) blogs that occupy a good amount of my writing time.  Some have been teaching me how to serialize my upcoming stories in order to push for more readers and thus make more money at this (which at this point if I sold one I would be doing better).

All of that said to say this:  Chuck Wendig made a post regarding the recent passing of a great author and has unlocked a thread for me.  So I will do my best in under 1000 words to give a brief run down of the novels and authors who made the greatest impact on me as a writeer and why I keep doing this in the hope of someday getting off of the floor (I’m a flooring installer by trade, by the way, in case that last comment threw you) and making my living doing something I love to do.

But I haven’t been loving it lately.  The aforementioned train has made a wreck of the way I used to write in the past year.  People like Larry Brooks, Jordan Rosenfeld, Alexandra Sokoloff, Joanna Penn, Collin Earl, Linda Martin, Jason Brubaker and several others, have pushed me to learn more before jumping too far in.  Although, most of them have also said not to quit doing the writing (or comic art in Jason’s case) because if it flows constantly, I will get fast, better, and have far more ideas.

So here we go:

Past Authors Who Changed The Way I Write

In school, I was always facinated with the Star Wars fan fiction novels and graphic novels.  It helped me to realize that there were so many stories that could be told from any given perspective in a story.  Shoot, the Bible itself shows us that, four different perspectives of the same happenings?  They all have different story value.  The decision to tell the Maraude Series from a different person’s perspective (though not always the Protagonist’s) was based on this idea.

Then came a few popular guys who changed everything for me.  It started with Stephen King.  I even wrote under the nick name Stephan Sabre for a while, thoughI didn’t publish anything under that name, so I may still use it someday for romance novels or something, heheh.  One thing I always noted about him, was he made his dreams into his stories.  Yup, I feel that one a lot!

Then Neil Gaiman, with Neverwhere.  OMG.  It blew me away.  He will always stay on my favorite author list for that one book.

Then came James Patterson.  Yeah everybody knows him by now.  He drives me crazy with his insane release schedule.  (God bless the Ghostwriter market?)  But, his simple writing structure and flow has emboldened me to continue many times.

Steven Lawhead wrote a two part series called Empyrion that I studied the style of quite in depth.  Just the simple concepts but the rich characterizations made the story work so well.  A style that I still am trying to assimilate into my own style.

And then there is Ted Dekker.  The guy I so despirately want to be.  This guy has made me completely rethink what I need to do to create stories!  All I can say is I can’t get enough Ted!

Then there is one book, that I realize is possible that this is his pseudonym because the same book was released under a different author just a few years before.  But Daniel Suarez‘ Daemon, actually helped to form my rethinking of the concepts behind SpeedBreaker.

W.G. Griffith’s proved to me that a person can write about a completely evil antagonist and live to tell about it.

And then The Silence by Jim Kraus – A Christian biased book that could break into mainstream with the right push.  Awesome book!

Of course, this list would not be complete without the obvious, Dean Koontz, Jonathan Kellerman, Brad Meltzer, David Morrell, and the relative newcomers, Lisa Gardener, Tami Hoag, Janet Evanovich, and so many more.

So, with all of the independant authors I am reading these days, where do the likes of Jason Halstead, Collin Earl, Brad Lockwood, Jeremy Robinson, Lindsay Buroker, Patrick E McLean, and so many more that direction too, where do they stack up in my thoughts.

Well, Jason Halstead has been blogging nearly everyday of what he’s doing to push the 10 or so novels he has.  His tactics are being taken to heart, and taken well.

So much so, that very soon my itenerary for the first quarter of next year (after the Stage rewrite) will see the Wyldheart (stage part two) released soon after.  I intentions were to push for Basement and Stage to be audiobooked as soon as possible, but I feel I now need to reorganize my platform push.  I need two of my series’ started.  Which means, Maraude will see Astronomical and Badger Down released very soon after Wyldheart.  The audiobooks will continue, as my brother has been doing an awesome job of the music.  I have already chosen my narrator for a few projects as soon as I can pay him (Mr. Bill Stage, jr  By the way)  Several voice actors have stood up for the dramatic audio presentation of Stage (even though it will take three to four of them to make up Renna!)

The decision has been made, not to rush the promotion until around July of 2012.

Why?

Simple, I don’t have enough material on the market right now to justify diving into the advertising, only having two books in separate genres published, especially since I’m not entirely happy with either of them right now.  But, if it weren’t for the pending audio books, I would be moving forward and come back to those books later.  The more I have on the market, the more marketable I will become.  Simple facts of epublishing.  the more marketable I am, the easier my future efforts will be once I start asking around for publishing at a true house.

Of course, when I make my page at wikipedia I would like to have at least ten books in my list, LOL.  With the projects underway right now (and several nearly complete) I might be there by July.

Will I ever have more than spam in my comments box here?  Will I ever have a 1% share of half of the people mentioned in this post?  Will I ever be able to get off my knees and make a living writing?

I guess we shall see, huh?

😉

-aric