How to Kick an Internet Troll, right in the Freedom of Speech

From Gamergate to homophobia to this piece of crap, trolls are everywhere on the internet. When challenged about their behavior their first fallback position is almost invariably freedom of speech. “You are violating my freedom of speech. I have a right to my opinions.”

In making this argument they are taking the moral high road. The argument ceases to be about their behavior and becomes about some higher principles.

It’s also pure bullshit. Yes, freedom of speech is an important right. However it’s not as gray as trolls would like you to believe, nor is it applicable to their behavior.

Here are three simple ways that the freedom of speech argument fails and how to shut down trolls when they try to use it on you.

1. You have freedom of speech, too.

When you speak out on an issue you feel strongly about, that’s freedom of speech. When a troll responds in the comments, or in person, trying to shout at you to shut you up, that’s not freedom of speech. That’s the exact opposite. When Gamergate “activist” attack feminist who critique gamer culture, they aren’t expressing their opinion, they are attempting to silence their opponent, and then trying to claim that is freedom of speech.

2. freedom of speech does not equal freedom from consequence

Remember in high school when you had to debate that ludicrous situation where someone yells “fire!” in a crowded movie house. That always drove me nuts because the solution seems so obvious. Having the freedom to do what you want or feel is right doesn’t mean you are free from all the consequences of your behavior.

The right to bear arms doesn’t make murder legal. You might have the right to yell “fire!” in a crowded movie house, but if people die in the stampede to escape and it turns out you just thought it would be funny to see people run, you can still be charged with manslaughter.

Yes, trolls have the right to their opinion. But when they phrase those opinions as insults or threats, they may face consequences. That’s life.

3. Speech may be a right but publishing is a privilege.

You have the right to free speech but no one owes you a platform. I have the right to write whatever story I want, but I can’t force HarperCollins to publish my thousand page rant on how mice don’t really like cheese. HarperCollins gets to choose what it publishes.

What we often forget is that anything posted on the internet is actually being published. Most of the websites we use don’t belong to us and the owners have a choice of what to publish and what not to.

If I am running my own personal blog, I don’t have to publish any comments. I can, and most bloggers do, because it builds a sense of community around a blog and brings readers back. However if I feel a comment is from a troll, or has no value to the discussion, I can choose not to display it. If you disagree, you are welcome to start your own blog and respond there.

Most public websites have clear terms of service. They vary in details but most clearly forbid certain behaviors. It is Facebook, Google plus or Twitter’s prerogative to decide what these are and to decide what is acceptable on their website.

The users are faced with the choice of playing by the rules or not using the site. Sometimes that means they allow posts that we personally find offensive. Sometimes that means they remove our posts because someone else found them offensive.

 

Trolls may be a fact of life in the internet age, but the damage they do, and the number in your life, can be controlled. It starts by realizing that insults and attacks in comments aren’t free speech, they are an attempt to silence the original poster’s free speech. It’s possible to respectfully disagree with someone without being a troll.

Second we need to recognize that online behavior does have consequences. If someone violates the rules of a given website by posting threatening or derogatory language, flag them. If they want to cry that their freedom of speech has been violated, they can do so somewhere else. Believable verbal threats, doxxing someone and adding rape threats, for example, might also violate the law. Contact your local police to see what sort of evidence they need and how to gather it.

Finally, all of us are webmasters, even if all we have is a Facebook page. You control, to a large extent, what lands on your webpage. If you are a journalist or a blogger, you are also an editor. It’s up to you to make sure that each comment on a post adds to, rather than detracts from the discussion. You have the right to delete or unapprove comments. On social media you have tools to delete, block or untag people and photos. Use your power wisely, to strip internet trolls of the one thing they were never guaranteed in the first place, an audience.

 

Books Everyone Talks About but Almost No One Reads

There are books that everyone has heard of, are frequently discussed in various circles and yet almost no one has ever actually read. Here is my list.

1. The Bible


When I was a young person, the Lutheran church gave every kid, upon reaching a certain age, a copy of the Bible. Being an avid reader even then, I plowed through it from start to finish. Chapter upon chapter of so and so begat so and so. All the disjointed stories of the old testament, the list of rules in Leviticus that make almost no sense to the modern reader, you name it. I only recall a fraction of it now, but I read it once upon a time.

It is not my intention to get into a religious debate. But there is something that has always bothered me about a lot of fundamentalists. If you believe this one book is the actual written word of God, shouldn’t you read it? But in many churches, this is not how it’s done. Instead “Bible Study” is largely learning a few choice phrases out of context and very little actual reading of whole books in context.

And yes, I know, a lot of people have read the Bible. Still it belongs on this list because the number of people who have read it pales to the number of people who claim it as the holy testament of their religion.

2. The Big Book


Sometimes called the blue book or even the big blue book (not the one you find car prices in) because the dominant cover is a light blue. Written in 1939 by Bill W. one of the founders of AA, the Big Book is a long rambling testament, laying out the twelve steps, peppered with lots and lots of anecdotes about people who have been helped by them.

As AA has grown to become the predominant treatment for addictions of all kinds, the Big Book has undergone many editions and printings. It is handed out in meetings, sold in bookstores and passed from hand to hand by many people.

The quintessential symbol of what the Big Book has become was a recent TMZ photo of actress Lindsay Lohan entering a nightclub clutching the Big Book, as though it were a talisman to prevent relapse. Perhaps her recovery would have gone better if she had stayed home and actually read the damn thing.

I work in mental health and our unit always has a half dozen copies of the big book floating around. One night I got curious enough to crack the Big Book and see what it’s all about. And I have to say, I tend to agree with the non-readers on this one. It’s long. It rambles. The twelve steps are pretty well known by now, and explained more concisely in other books. The Big Book remains important as a testament to the history of the movement.

3. The Constitution


The Constitution of the United States of America is not really a book. I include it in this list because it shares so much in common with the first two books on the list. It’s often held up as a symbolic emblem by people who haven’t read it and are often arguing against it.

I won’t open an ugly can of worms by discussing politics here. However, in my school days every student had to read the Constitution and at least attempt to understand it. Judging from the state of politics today, I doubt many people have done either.

4. Atlas Shrugged


Love it or hate it, Ayn Rand’s objectivist manifesto, Atlas Shrugged in one of the most important works of the twentieth century. A large chunk of the Neo-libertarian Republicans in politics today swear by Ayn Rand’s philosophical world view.

If you want to appear intellectual and hip among that crowd, you must have a passing familiarity with Atlas Shrugged. But if you try to engage such people in debate you will find that it often ends at a passing familiarity.

Honestly I am not a fan of either the philosophy or the book. Judging the book solely on its literary merits, it’s long, dense and stilted. The characters are flat and spend most of their time espousing Ayn Rand’s philosophy rather than interacting with each other. I tend to agree with reviewer Dorothy Parker, who said, “This is not a novel tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force.” And all the pseudo-intellectuals that quote Ayn Rand should be forced to read her entire collection for themselves.

5. Anything by James Joyce


“For this, O Dearly Beloved, is the genuine Christinne: body, and soul and blood and ouns. Slow music, please. Shut your eyes, Gents. One moment. A little trouble about those white corpuscles. Silence, all.”

James Joyce is the great grandmaster of the modern novel. Stream of consciousness? He practically invented it. He revolutionized novel structure. He wrote in his own Irish accent and voice, and in doing so championed a new literary form. His work is some of the most scrutinized and studied in all of literature.

The literary snobs of the world will sneer their contempt at anyone who suggests that they would prefer to read something, well, a little more readable than most Joyce. Which probably explains why literary aficionados everywhere tend to agree with the snobs, mutter an apology for not having “gotten around” to Joyce and quickly change the subject.

6. War and Peace


Tolstoy’s great masterpiece about the Napoleonic invasion of Russia is a giant of a book. Everyone knows its a masterpiece and one of those books you ought to read. But they never seem to get around to it, put off by the size of the book or the long Russian names.

It’s too bad, because it really is one of my favourites. How I finally got around the size of the book was to realize, it’s not any longer than many of the fantasy series I read regularly. If you have read all seven of the Harry Potter books you’ve devoured more pages than War and Peace. So grab a copy and get cracking.

7. The Communist Manifesto


Karl Marx’s short little book, The Communist Manifesto belongs on this list because it’s influence far out reaches it readership. It has spawned revolutions, been the primary influence on numerous communist, socialist and marxist governments. But how many people have actually read the manifesto?

8. The Tao Te Ching


The Tao Te Ching is an ancient Chinese classic, penned by the sage Lao Tsu. The book is second to only the Bible in terms of the numbers of language it’s been translated into. It has been enormously influential in the east. It has been seeping into western thought since it’s translation in the mid eighteen hundreds.

Carl Jung was influenced by the Tao Te Ching. Many of the new agers, from Wayne Dyer to The Secret, will quote freely from the Tao Te Ching.

But reading the book is another story. It’s an ancient spiritual text and it tends to be dense and obscure at times, not what you would call light reading. Which explains why so many people talk about it, own it, but few have actually read it.

That’s my list. What books would you add?

A Quick Update on 2014

It’s hard to believe it’s almost summer. I had the goal at the start of this year to publish four new novels, two YA novels under Rachel Eliason and two fantasy novels under R. J. Eliason. Here’s the quick update.

The Best Boy Ever Made came out towards the end of January and it’s doing nicely. I have had several good reviews and sales are good. A huge thanks to all my YA fans for making that happen.

Continue reading A Quick Update on 2014

Bear Naked 2: Wolf Camp

The follow up to Bear Naked is out and available on Amazon.

Bear Naked 2: Wolf Camp follows the saga Amanda Burnson and her friends as they grow and develop their shifter powers.

Blurb:

Wolf Camp is not your typical arts-and-crafts summer camp. It’s a training ground for future 
werewolves, where their mental and physical limits are constantly tested and honed. 

There are many hurdles to overcome: Amanda, an adolescent werebear, can’t control her 
transformations yet; and Connor and his pack are the camp misfits. Then they discover a new 
threat from the Sons of Garm, this time from within the Leidulf tribe. 

Will Amanda and her werewolf friends be able to navigate these new waters? Maybe with a 
little help from a couple of old friends? 

 

 

Bear Naked 2: Wolf Camp Cover Reveal

Bear Naked 2: Wolf Camp will be out sometime in March. For now, here is the cover and blurb. Comments welcome, of course.

Bear Naked 2: Wolf Camp Coming Soon
Bear Naked 2: Wolf Camp Coming Soon

 

 

 

Wolf Camp is not your typical arts-and-crafts summer camp. It’s a training ground for future werewolves, where their mental and physical limits are constantly tested and honed. There are many hurdles to overcome: Amanda, an adolescent werebear, can’t control her transformations yet; and Connor and his pack are the camp misfits. Then they discover a new threat from the Sons of Garm, this time from within the Leidulf tribe. Will Amanda and her werewolf friends be able to navigate these new waters? Maybe with a little help from a couple of old friends?

 

Any feedback on the blurb would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reviving an Old Manuscript with Scrivener

I said I would never be here with you again, not like this. I promised myself you and I are done. And yet I find myself here again. Sigh.

One Strange Utopia was the first novel I wrote all the way to completion. Before that I had dabbled, writing a few pages here and there. After that I was obsessed. That first novel is like your first love, for better or worse it is unique. There will never be a novel writing experience like it again.

Like your first love, your first novel is often rocky. You don’t know what you are doing or what to expect.

And often we look back at our first novel we often cringe. We made so many beginners mistakes. We can’t hardly believe we once thought this was the greatest novel ever.

The moment we realize our first novel isn’t perfect is the day we learn the value of rewrites. Rewrites are the real beautiful part of writing. Rewriting makes our story better. I rewrote One Strange Utopia a full ten times. Not just editing, full rewrites with scenes scrapped, new subplots, major facts altered. It was exhausting work.

I should also say at this point that I consider myself more of a storyteller than a writer. That is part of the problem with One Strange Utopia. Writing is a skill. It is not uncommon for writers to look back on their first novel and realize that its just plain crap. I almost envy those writers. Everytime I look at One Strange Utopia I see how much I have grown as a writer, how much is rough. But the underlying story keeps drawing me back. Beta-readers, critique groups and others who have read it, keep pestering me about it. It’s good enough, they tell me, to keep working on.

I swore I wouldn’t do it. Ten rewrites is enough. I might do some surface editing but no deep rewrites. And yet as I look at this novel again, it needs more work.

Luckily I haven’t just grown as a writer, I’ve gotten smarter. I’ve learned Scrivener.

Did you know that Scrivener can be used to rewrite old manuscripts?

 

A scrivener using Scrivener

Scrivener is an amazing program. It’s so flexible. There are just so many different ways to use Scrivener that just about anyone can use it, on just about any writing project.

Before we begin we need to prep the manuscript for import. You can do this after the fact as well, but I find it easier to do it before. I went through the entire manuscript and added hashtags (#) at each scene break.

 

Add hashtags

Once we have added our hashtags we can open Scrivener and start a new novel project for our manuscript. Once the project is open we go to import –> import and split. This will not only import the document into scrivener, it will divide the document at each hashtag into a separate scrivening.

Import and split

If you didn’t add hashtags, you can still split the document. Read through the document in Scrivener and at each scene break right click and select “split at selection” to divide the manuscript into scrivenings.

Why divide into scrivenings at all?

Scrivener is a great tool for rewrites. First we need to break the story into component bits. There are some strong advantages already. Got some scenes you aren’t sure about. With scrivener you can easily click and drag them outside the manuscript file. They won’t appear in your book. If you decide you do want those scenes later just drag them back in place. Makes it easy to play around with various subplots.

You can also rearrange scenes to improve the story flow, but let’s not do that just yet. There is something else I want to do first.

The Inspector Pane

The real power user features on Scrivener are mostly found on the right side of the screen, in the inspector pane. Beginners and writers writing original work can be content with the binder and task panes, but rewriting is another matter.

The first step in a major rewrite is to go through your old manuscript and do some planning. Project notes apply to the entire document and that is a great place to record general notes about what you hope to achieve in your rewrite.

The top of the inspector pane is the scene title and synopsis. It is possible to auto-generate a synopsis by clicking the button in the upper right corner. That will import the first few lines. That isn’t helpful to me. So I create a title and synopsis. These will show on the index cards in corkboard mode, making rearranging scenes later a snap.

The general tab just under the synopsis has some basic information about the document. I don’t use it a lot. The status field allows you to designate the document “to do” “first draft” or “revised” and can be helpful.

The bottom of the screen has the real cool stuff for re-writing. It can be toggled through a multitude of choices, many of which were designed with these sorts of heavy re-writes in mind.

Document notes apply only to that scrivening and can be used to record notes about what you want to change to re-write in that scene. References allow you to enter the URL for any research sites related to that piece. Keywords allows you to search by keyword. Custom Meta-data is a tool I use a lot. I set up custom fields for point of view character, major subplots, story elements and timeline markers. For example I can set up a custom field for “timeline” and record which events are a flashback and which are after the triggering event.

 

Planning the Re-write

Once you’ve set all that up I start through the document. As I read each scrivening I do several things at once. I use notes, in the inspector pane, and toggle between project notes and document notes to write down things I want to change.

If a new character or place is described I copy and paste those descriptions into a new character sheet or research folder. In this way I compile the same kinds of notes about characters and research I would for an original novel, without any re-writing of these notes.

 

Did you know the task pane can be split into two?

You can set the top pane to have the scrivening you are working in displayed and the bottom to have a character sheet, another quick way of recreating your notes in Scrivening. It can also be used to compare information between two scenes to make sure it’s all consistent.

Another thing I do while re-reading is to fill in the custom meta data I decided to use. I record whose point of view, where I am at in the timeline and any other story elements I want to use in my re-write.

When I am done with this initial re-read I have a compiled a wealth of information. I have recreated most of my character notes and research. I can inspect the custom meta data at a glance. I can see whose point of view predominants, which subplots are heavy and which are weakly covered.

The biggest challenge with re-writes is consistency. If you decide to change a key point in one place, it must change everywhere. That is where Scrivener comes in. Let’s say you decide that a character just doesn’t work. You have to do some major changes to that character. He has to be meaner, taller, more motivated, or perhaps he would work better as a she. Making the change means changing every single reference. The first step is to set up a custom meta data field for characters and then when you reread the project note every scene where that character occurs.

Timeline meta data works the same way. If you intend to move a lot of scenes around, you need to know where each scene fits in the storyline. Once a scene is moved, you need to be able to make sure that scene is not referred to before it happens. Believe me, readers will notice. Just like they notice when a character’s eyes change color or they go from being a huge man to a cute woman.

 

Then the Work Begins

Rewriting is a big chore make no mistake. Even with Scrivener there is a lot of work to do. What Scrivener does is to give you confidence. You can rewrite fearlessly and once. With your custom meta data and notes in hand you don’t have to worry about consistency, you know which scenes need rewritten and how.

The final Scrivener trick before you get started is snapshots. Snapshots create a copy of your current document for history. Select Document–>Snapshots–>take a snapshot to take a snapshot. You can see the snapshot in the inspector pane under the camera icon.

 

Take snapshot

Snapshots let you experiment with your scene, knowing you can revert back to the old manuscript at any time. So if you think the big black male character would work better as a spunky Latina woman, go for it. Use custom meta data to identify the scenes you need to change and snapshots to record them.

Scrivener is an incredible versatile program. Have you used Scrivener to plan rewrites? What tricks did you use? Let me know in the comments.

Update: The novel One Strange Utopia has now been released as Children of a New Earth

Fan Fiction on the Kindle?

I recently stumbled across this post: Amazon now indulges in your GI Joe fan fiction. I was going to tweet it out, but some times my thoughts range over the 140 character limit, no matter how hard I try. This is not the first, in fact Amazon has been running Kindle worlds, a program that allows you to write and sell fan fiction for licensed worlds, which range from Gossip Girls to Vampire Diaries.

Fan fiction is nothing new. In high school I had a friend who had stacks of floppy disks (this was back in the eighties when floppy disks were not only still in use, they were actually floppy) with his own Transformer stories. I can only assume that before computers people were writing out their fan fiction long hand. When the internet appeared people began to share their fan fiction and it was existed online for many years.

But selling fan fiction? That has been taboo for a long time. Will it take off? How will effect publishing?

I have never really be a fan of fan fic, pun somewhat intended. As a reader I have always been more drawn to exploring new worlds and writers, rather than rehashing series. As a writer, my rare attempts at fan fiction were short and stifled. (Other than the occasional joke.) Many writers claim to have gotten their start in fan fic, but to me it’s harder than original writing. Trying to tell a story within someone else’s context is something I could never wrap my brain around.

What do you think about fan fiction be available for sale on the Kindle? Do you read fan fiction? Will you pay for it? What effect do you think it will have on publishing?

Why the “We’re Drowning in Ebooks” Diatribe needs to stop

According to Forbes we’re drowning in Indie books. The blogosphere has taken up this catch phrase, we’re drowning in ebooks and we’re drowning in ebooks. And those are just in the first page of results on my google search. I could easily find a dozen or more references to the idea that we are drowning in ebooks.

Closely related to the drowning in ebooks meme is the catch phrase “discoverability.” Its all the rage right now as well. How are authors going to get discovered in an era where we are drowning in ebooks?

This has to stop. I don’t care if the article is mostly positive about indie publishing or negative, the term itself makes me cringe. Here are five reasons why I cringe whenever I read the term “drowning in ebooks.”

  1. Readers aren’t drowning. If we are experiencing a “sea” of Indie books then our readers are the fish.

Is anyone complaining about cable TV? Remember the good ole days when you had three networks and public television? Anyone pine for those days? Me, neither. Consumers love choice. Readers are no different. In fact, sales figure show that the choices available on ereaders mean consumers are buying more, rather than fewer, ebooks. This is good news for everyone.

Cable TV and, more recently, streaming video, have changed the way we watch TV. But it hasn’t spelled the end of the networks and no one seriously complains about having too much choice. By the same token I never hear this “too many ebooks” line for avid readers.

  1. Sales aren’t a zero sum game

Inherent in this argument is the assumption that book sales are a zero sum game. There are x number of readers who will by x number of books this year. A sale in someone else’s pocket is a lost sales for you.

This is not true. For one thing, readers are not a specific demographic. Women who read trashy romance novels are not the same demographic as men who read historical fiction. The blistering success of the Fifty Shades series is not hurting your five hundred page opus about the Crimean War, because those readerships don’t overlap.

Even within a genre or a demographic its hard to draw any specific conclusions about sales, so arguing that an established romance series is being hurt by a dozen of similar Indie series is a fruitless exercise. The same can be said of free promotions and piracy. People download free ebooks by the hundreds from both legitimate promotions and from pirate sites. But how many would pay for a similar book if it weren’t available for free? No one knows. So stop worrying about it and start worry about things that are under your control, like your own writing.

  1. Crappy products don’t replace good products for long

There are twin illogical assumptions at work in this diatribe. A) most Indie books are poorly written, poorly edited crap and B) most Indie books don’t sell. How exactly do poorly written books that don’t sell hurt the chances of better authors that are selling? Most of the examples of poorly written books you can give, quickly sink to far back pages of Amazon or Smashwords where they have little effect on anyone else’s sales.

The fact that people in the traditional publishing industry are complaining about indie books is telling. If they were really all as bad as critics claim, there would be nothing to fear from the indie revolution.

  1. It’s always been hard to get discovered.

Back in the olden days, and the olden days means anytime before 2010, most writers were struggling to get published through a big publishing company. It was hard and odds were not in your favor. The big publishing houses saw hundreds of submissions every day. Most were put in the “slush pile” and read by poorly paid interns. One bad mark from one intern and the book was in the trash.

Still writers persevered. They went to writer’s workshops and networked with fellow writers. They showed their manuscript to everyone and anyone who was willing to read it. They queried agents and publishers by the hundreds. It was often a vicious cycle, writers desperate to get published, sent out mass queries to anyone and everyone. Publishers, responding to a huge influx of inappropriate submissions, dumped books into the slush pile, outsourced the reading of said pile and sent form rejection letters. Every writer hoped and dreamed of the day when one of those agents, editors or poorly paid interns would read their manuscript, be totally overwhelmed by its greatness and publish them.

Indie ebooks are now the slush pile, or so we are told. Most writers I know have bypassed the years or heartache and toil trying to get the attention of one of the big publishing houses. They self publish and take their books straight to the readers.

And they face the same challenges they did before. Instead of poorly paid interns, its unpaid reviewers/book bloggers. The rejection letter has been replaced with the bad review.  Instead of a publishing contract, it’s slowly rising sales figures until that glorious day when your book goes viral and really takes off.

For many years, getting published meant you had “made it” as an author. Indie publishing and the ebook revolution has made it easier than ever to reach that goal, but it’s also made the goal meaningless. Hitting the publish button is only the first step towards making it. The cold hard truth of Indie publishing is that you are still a nobody. A nobody with a book maybe, but a nobody. It takes months, or even years, to build up a reliable readership. Getting “discovered” is largely a myth perpetuated by readers who don’t see the years of struggle that “overnight successes” have already put in.

  1. It sounds self serving.

The drowning in ebooks diatribe can be found, in one form or another, from all corners of the web. I don’t care if you are a traditionally published novelist, an Indie novelist or a supposedly “unbiased” journalist. Anytime a writer starts in on this subject I hear the same thing. “All those other writers should stop writing so much crap so readers can discover my work.”

So if we are really drowning in ebooks, why not stop writing? Go find something else to do with your life. It’s really the only fair solution. Asking other writers to stop writing so many books so that you can succeed certainly isn’t fair. It isn’t fair to the other writers and it isn’t fair to readers, who would rather have a choice.

And there’s the problem right there. It’s like the scene in virtually every B movie where the good guy and bad guy have guns pointed at each other. Who should put down their gun first? Everyone put down their word processor on the count of three, okay?

As for me, I am going to go right on writing as many books as I can, because it’s what I want to do. Hopefully I can become one of the lucky few that makes a living at it, but even if I can’t, I will still write. It’s part of who I am. And I am going to go right on encouraging my writer friends to do the same because anything else would be hypocritical of me.

Ten Reasons Why You Should Write Book Reviews

Having a new book out now, I thought it might be a good time to hint about reviews. Here are ten simple reasons why you should write book reviews.

  1. It helps the author sell books. Reviews generate buzz, buzz sells books. Let’s face it, most authors have day jobs and have to squeeze writing in around their work lives. If you want to see more books from your favorite author, give them a hand and write them a review.

  2. It helps author get better. Writers work in a vacuum. They spend months laboring over a piece of writing without any feedback. But the only way to improve is to get feedback. Good reviews, reviews that are honest and fair, provide excellent feedback. Several of the reviewers of my first novel said it had too many typos. They were right. I went back and proof read it again and now it’s much cleaner.

  3. It helps other readers. Point your fellow readers towards books they might like. Particularly helpful are reviews that say things like, “If you liked blank, you might like this.”

  4. Pay it forward. You’ve probably been helped by a review. I know I have. When I am on the fence about a book I will read the reviews. They’ve pointed me towards good books many times.

  5. It’s easy. It’s not a book report. You don’t have to stress over your reviews. “I liked it and if you like mysteries you probably will too” is fine.

  6. It helps web sites. Amazon.com, Goodreads, smashwords, they all have some logarithm that decides which books to put in front of which readers. Their computers use reviews, ratings and people with similar reading/browsing history to make those selections. Make those selections more accurate by rating and reviewing purchases from time to time.

  7. It will help you. Those same logarithms determine what you see when you shop for a new book. Writing honest reviews and giving fair ratings means it is more likely that you will see books you are actually interested in the next time you shop.

  8. It’s like being in a giant book club. Critics often accuse the internet of creating separation, but often it brings people together. Sharing reviews on Goodreads and other social media opens the door to discussing books you really like, or discussing why you don’t like the latest best seller.

  9. Have a voice. Our culture is nothing more than a collection of shared beliefs and ideas. It is created by individuals, and yet many individuals end up feeling controlled by their culture. I think it’s because most of us don’t how we each contribute to the collective ideology we call culture. Well, here is one way. Talking about the books that matter to us is like voting on a piece of our culture. Which books will be remembered in a hundred years? Those that people read and talked about.

  10. It gives you something new to share on social media. A lot of us spend a lot of time on Facebook, Goodreads, Pinterest, you name it. If you just want to lurk, that’s fine. But if you really want to get noticed on social media, be a power user, you have got to share. But what do you have to share? How about a book review?

 

What’s Coming in 2014?

Here is a quick peek at the works in progress I intend to publish in the near future. Three have tentative release dates and two do not. I am not sure when those two will be published, but they are relatively close to being finished.

 

Contemporary YA released as Rachel Eliason:

 

Country Girls: Alecia Mueller is a seventeen year old country girl from a conservative family. She knows exactly how she wants her life to turn out, she will meet the one, get married and settle down on a farm in the country. When her best friend Sam (Samantha) comes out as a female to male transgender, Alecia decides to put personal loyalty to her friend ahead of whatever politics lie around the issue. But what if the boy that Sam is becoming is the one?

 

Tentative release date: Soon.

 

I am essentially sitting on this manuscript. A local writer friend hung her shingle as a freelance editor recently and I had to check her services out. So I have a finished and edited manuscript. I just need a cover and some formatting working. The biggest thing that’s been holding me back is Bear Naked’s release. One of the things I have learned about marketing a book is that your book is only new once. I don’t want to distract from Bear Naked’s release with another new book. Maybe towards the beginning of next year I will get this one out.

 

Rosie and the Slenderman: Two stories with one powerful ending.

2013: Fifteen year old Aaron has his life turned upside down when his mother takes him and his sister back to the small town where she was raised, to care for her mother. Fearful that the kids won’t accept him, Aaron decides he must go back into the closet. But when he meets Nicholas, his crush on the boy may be his undoing.

1960: Twenty year old Robbie has just arrived in Chicago, intent on becoming a famous illustrator and on losing himself in the city. He soon discovers that Chicago has a booming underground gay community. He must decide, did he come to Chicago to escape his homosexual tendencies, or embrace them?

 

Tentative Release date: Pride. I have had the thought that it would be interested to write something and time the release to go along with pride, both in theme and timing. Luckily I have a mostly completed manuscript and several months to finish it.

 

Fantasy to be published as R. J. Eliason:

 

Bear Naked Volume Two: Wolf Camp: Amanda is invited to the Leidulf summer camp with Connor and his pack. She quickly finds out that her position is more precarious than she had thought, the wolves hunting her have powerful allies, including some within the Leidulf tribe itself. The camp is no picnic either, it’s a constant competition to determine pack and tribal hierarchies. Connor’s pack are misfits and this summer they are furthered hampered by Amanda’s inability to shift at will and the fact that she hasn’t cemented her role as alpha female. Hopefully with the help of a couple of friends the pack can turn things around.

 

Tentative release date: Sometime in the spring. I am through the rough draft, but there’s still a lot of work to do before I pass it off to my editor. I am hoping to have it passed off by the early part of the year and release it mid spring sometime.

 

Mage Chronicles: This is the first stand alone novel in the Gilded Empire Saga.

 

The Gilded Empire: It is a place of great magic, a multiverse of world tied together by magic gates. An empire so old and so powerful that no one recalls it’s name, because it’s been that many centuries since there was another empire. For the inhabitants of the empire, it seems to be in its golden age, at the peak of its power. But already along the edges, one can see the signs of decay.

 

The Mage Chronicles: Mary, a mage level healer with untapped magic potential, is sent on a long mission by her former teacher, the famous mage Ashley La’Margin. Her mission is to end a border dispute in some distant province. She arrives to find evil forces at work. Someone is testing some new kind of soldier, the Juggernaut. Some say they are demons disguised as men, some say they are invincible. What can a healer, even with mage level powers, do against such a threat?

 

Tentative release date: ??? I am on my fourth draft. Typically around the fifth draft I am ready to show something to an editor. Free lance editors generally like to get paid for their services. And since they charge by the word or by the page, this 100,000 plus word novel is going to be nearly twice as expensive as my other books were. So when this book gets to an editor depends a bit on the success of my other books, like Bear Naked. Fantasy fans take note. I have the manuscripts to keep your entertained. I just need to be making enough money to afford editing and cover design services.

 

One Strange Utopia: Amy Beland has grown up at Freedom Ranch, a white supremacist enclave in a post apocalyptic world. After seventeen years of rebelling against the Ranch she is now their only hope of salvation. A small detachment is sent down, out of their mountain retreat, to search what remains of civilization for critically needed supplies. The new society that has appeared on the plains thirty years after the collapse of the United States will shock and challenge Amy’s fundamental beliefs about the world.

 

Tentative release date: ??? This is actually the first novel I ever wrote. I have struggled for some time with what to do with the manuscript. I look at it and I like the story, but I have grown as a writer. However every beta reader that’s read it has agreed, it’s worth publishing. I am going to run it through one more round of edits, have it proofed and put it out, when I can get around to it.