Joseph Nassise

A press conference was held yesterday at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany to announce my latest project, HELLstalkers.  This new series is being written in conjunction with my friend and fellow writer, Jon Merz, and what makes it so new and interesting to us is the fact that it is being written for the mobile phone market.

Yes, that’s right, I said the mobile phone market.

Reading novels on a mobile phone has been exceedingly popular in Asia for several years now and they are slowly making their way into the European and American markets.  Jon and I have teamed up with Blackbetty GlobalMedia GmbH, a Vienna based multimedia small screen publisher and Vodafone, a telecommunications giant, to bring this new series to life.

HELLstalkers revolves around an accident at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland, a mysterious organization known as Project Cerberus, and a group of military operatives formed into a team known as HELLstalker One.  The team is led by Captain Memphis Stone, US Army, who soon finds out that there are some things that military training just doesn’t prepare you for…

Sample chapters will soon by available for download directly to your smartphone both at the official HELLstalker website and at the company website (Mobilebooks.com).  We’re also going to be making use of QR Codes, mobile tagging, and social networking to provide behind-the-scenes information, sneak peeks, and other multi-media activities to make it an experience unlike reading your average print novel.

In fact, here’s the first piece of the puzzle for those of you who have been following along:

(If you don’t know what the symbol above actually is or what to do with it, you might want to drop by this post.  There will be more of them in the future, each one with a little something different for the story.)

Jon and I are very excited about the series and hope that you’ll spend some time with us as it unfolds over the next few months.  If you like, you can join our Facebook page or get on the mailing list so you don’t miss out on any exciting announcements!

Welcome to Storytellers Unplugged. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!

While at Comic-Con a few years ago, I had the opportunity to meet Sean O’Reilly, the CEO and founder of Arcana Comics. Arcana is not only the largest comics publisher in Canada, but also works in other mediums, including video games, short-form animation and live action shorts, toys, merchandise and the like. At the time I was shopping the rights to turn my Templar Chronicles trilogy into a comic series and while that project just didn’t seem right for Arcana, it gave Sean and I the chance to get a feel for each other’s work and to form a basis for doing some work together in the future. Several months later, when he needed a writer for a new comic series he was envisioning, he gave me a call.

Candice Crow, a five issue comic mini-series about a young woman who discovers she has some rather unusual powers (and limitations) was born.

Sean already had a basic idea, as well as an artist attached to the project. He needed someone to flesh it out and write the scripts for the five issues. After talking it over a bit, I signed on and worked on the series as time permitted in between novel projects. It took a while, but eventually all five scripts were written and were passed on to the artist. At that point, there was nothing more for me to do but sit back and wait.

Recently, I was able to see the fruits of my labors. Completed copies of each issue – drawn, inked, colored, and lettered – were sent to me for review before they went off to the printer. The series won’t be officially released until the Fall, but I was excited with what the team as a whole had come up with. For the first time I’d been involved in a project that I couldn’t just sit down and handle all on my own and I found the experience artistically satisfying, to say the least.

So with this year’s Comic-con just around the corner, I thought I’d share the first few pages of Candice Crow Issue One with you all. (Concept by Sean O’Reilly, Script by Joe Nassise, Artwork by Angel Angelov)

In this continuation of my post from last month, I’m going to cover reasons six through ten of the top ten reasons to work with a literary agent.  So let’s get to it…

Reason #6: Gives you an experienced third party view of your work

We’ve all been there – thought that our most recent effort is the best thing since the invention of sliced bread.  Trouble is, we’re more often wrong on that score than right.  A literary agent you trust can be a terrific third party filter for your ego.  If the work isn’t up to par, they’ll tell you and often offer advice on how to fix the problem.  And even better, if it is better than usual, they’ll be the first to tell you that too.

Reason #7: A literary agent can help guide you in your career

With their in-depth understanding of the market, both past and present, a good literary agent can often help guide you in building your career.  They can offer advice on everything from writing in more than one genre to the advantages or disadvantages to working with specific editors or publishing houses.

Reason #8: Most literary agents have a network of foreign or sub-rights agents

Diversification can often be the savior of a mid-listers career and one way of doing this is branching out in other mediums (comics, audio, etc) or to other territories.  Foreign rights often mean free money in a writer’s pocket (after all, the hard work of writing the book is already done) and so the more territories a work sells in the better off the author will be.  Having a network of foreign agents to help market your work in other territories is well worth the commission you’ll pay to both agents.

Reason #9: Having a literary agent allows you to concentrate on the writing

Let’s face it – submitting a manuscript can be tedious work.  You have to send the queries, prepare the manuscript according to each specific publisher’s requirements, send it out, follow up on it when you get a response, follow up on it when you don’t get a response, and so on.  Allowing your literary agent to handle this for you let’s you concentrate on doing what you do best – write.

Reason #10: A good agent can earn you more money

Remember reason #4 – a good agent is an experienced negotiator?  I’ve found that when an experienced negotiator who understands the market is working on my behalf, I usually end up getting more for my work than I would have been likely to get working on my own behalf.   That’s why I don’t mind paying an agent his usual 10-15% commission because I know that the agent will often bring in at least that much more than I could have managed myself.

So there you have it – my top ten reasons for working with an agent.  Tell me – what are your reasons for working with an agent?  If you don’t have one, why do you want one?

Tax day and deadline week all at the same time, means I’m quite literally swamped, but that doesn’t mean I don’t have something for our readers today.  As I was adding up the fees paid to my literary agent for his work this year, I thought it might be interesting to talk about just why I’m willing to give up this money and what I think an agent does for my career.

This will be a two part essay, so today we’ll look at the first five reasons to use an agent.   While having a literary agent is not a necessity, my personal experience has shown it to be a very beneficial relationship and I would recommend it wherever possible.

Reason #1 – An agent knows the marketplace better than you do

Given that it is an agent’s job to be aware of who is buying what from whom for how much, the vast majority of literary agents know the inner workings of the market better than most authors and it is their job to use that knowledge to your benefit.

Reason #2 – An agent has a personal relationship with multiple editors

An agent is, to some extent, a professional networker and has built up personal relationships with many editors over time. They know what certain editors like and don’t like when it comes to literary properties and they know what those editors have recently purchased, so they can help target your proposal to the individuals most likely to receive it in a positive manner.

Reason #3 – An agent understands contracts

The typical publishing contract is fifteen to twenty legal size pages of the most convoluted legalese I’ve ever seen and it is ripe with clauses that benefit the publisher rather than the writer. It is an agent’s job to understand what these clauses mean and to fight to remove or alter those that do not help your career. While you could educate yourself on the basics, an agent sees several of these a day and you would be hard pressed to meet their level of knowledge on your own without considerable time and effort.

Reason #4 – An agent is an experience negotiator

In the end it the agent’s job to get you’re the best offer and contract terms possible. This is what they do, day after day for client after client. They know just how much they can push a particular editor or publishing house, they know what is an acceptable counter offer and what is not, and they can advise you on what tact to take when the publisher offers terms that just aren’t acceptable.

Reason #5 – An agent protects your relationship with the editor

For one reason or another there often comes a time when the publisher had done something that you are unhappy with and that you would like to work to change. At the same time, you don’t want to alienate your editor or allow your anger/frustration over the issue to strain your working relationship. In times like these you agent can step in and play the “bad cop” for you, allowing you to work toward the result you want without damage to your editorial partnership.

Next time around we’ll cover the final five reasons to use a literary agent and I’ll answer any questions that might have come up out of part one.

A few months ago, I ran into some difficulty while neck deep in a particular writing project. My deadline was looming and I was going nowhere fast. Day after day I would sit down at the computer and beat my head against the wall, trying but repeatedly failing to drag forth the requisite pages that needed to be written that day.

It wasn’t due to a lack of organization. I had a detailed outline in front of me. The action and emotional impact in each chapter was scripted out and I even knew from which character’s viewpoint the scene would be written. I was excited about what was to come; the scenes were well constructed and drove the story forward at a decent pace, the characters were interesting and unusual. I was perhaps better prepared to write that book than any other I had written previously.

And I had long since passed the point where I could write only when “inspired” to do so. My muse had long ago been hunted down, captured, and chained to the demands of a professional writer’s schedule – you write when you need to write, not when you “feel” like writing. Writing when inspired was for sissies. I was a professional, damn it!

But it was not to be. Day after day I struggled, producing, on a GOOD day, about one fifth of my usual output and that only after hours of painful effort. The bad days weren’t even worth talking about.

As the time passed and the lines through the days on the calendar made it increasingly obvious to me that I either needed to do something drastic or shoot myself, I made a decision.

It was time for a change.

For years I have written in the quiet confines of my office, my trusty desktop with its 20 inch monitor my only companion. Music was a big no-no; too often I would find myself typing the lyrics to the songs I was listening to rather than the words of my tale and even purely instrumental numbers were a problem as I could get lost in the notes as easily as the lyrics.

To shake things up, I purposely changed everything I could think to change. Rather than work at my desktop, I would use the laptop. Rather than sit in my comfortable leather chair, I would use one made of hardwood without a seat cushion. Rather than work in the privacy of my office, I would go to the library or the deli or the local Starbucks. immerse myself in noise and people. Rather than create in silence, I would graft headphones to my ears and submerge myself in pulse-pounding and bass-cranking music if necessary.

Imagine my surprise when it worked.

The words that I had struggled so hard to find poured effortlessly from my fingertips in the midst of that Starbucks, an iced vente mocha frappuccino at my side. The action sequences that had seemed so scripted and flat previously now jumped to life while the words and music of Nickelback pounded in my ears. My output shot up to my usual levels and then kept going, until I discovered that I could write faster and with better results than I ever had before – all because I took a chance and changed the usual way I did things.

Is something in your life stuck? Are you getting frustrated by your inability to make a change?

Then step outside the problem. Come at it from a totally different direction. Take your usual process and turn it 180 degrees in the other direction.

Change your perspective – you might be surprised at the results.

I know I was.

Well, as you can see, Storytellersunplugged has a new look and feel. This is our fourth calendar year in existence (hard to imagine we started back in June of 2005, isn’t it?) and we’re still going strong with a marvelous cast of contributors and terrific content. We’ve grown exponentially each year and I hope we continue to do the same in 2009.

You may have noticed we have some advertising space available now. If you have a website or product that you think our readership would be interested in, check out the new Advertising page to see what we’ve made available. Our readers comes from more than 80 countries across the globe and are a widely-read and highly intelligent crowd.

Which brings me to the purpose of this post, actually.

We want to hear from you, our readers.

We want to know what you’d like us to talk about in 2009. What topics would you like to see covered? What questions do you have to ask? What other types of posts would you like to see? Maybe book reviews? Author interviews? Product write-ups? Publishing house reviews? Guest bloggers? Come on, don’t be shy! Use the comment section and let us know what you’d like to read about this year and we’ll do our level best to bring it to you.

Finally, we want to say thank you. Thank you to each and every one of you who come back here day after day, week after week. You’ve helped make this place what it is and I know every single one of our contributors appreciates your patronage.

Here’s to another great year at SU!

– Joe Nassise and Dave Wilson

The first time it happened, Memphis Stone was standing over the rapidly cooling body of a young girl.

It was just after 9:00 pm, mid-summer, the streets of Boston still reflecting the heat they had soaked up during the day under the combination of the 90 degree temperature and the even higher percentage humidity. It had been a long, grueling month with heat-frayed tempers and the corresponding hike in violent crime that always accompanied such a stretch.

Stone had been fostering a mild headache for most of the afternoon. The pain made him tense, irritable, and the fact that he was still standing there two hours after he was supposed to have gone off shift did nothing to assuage that. Just the opposite, in fact, as it sent his headache rocketing up several levels higher on the pain scale.

He stared down at the body, wondering. Who was she? Why did she have to come along right when she did? Couldn’t she have taken a different way home?

She was the fourth victim this month. All of them young, all of them seemingly innocent, at least to this world-weary detective. Apparently he wasn’t the only one who thought so, for the press had taken to calling it the work of the Saintkiller.

He rubbed at his forehead, his hand over his eyes as he tried to ease the rapidly tightening band of tension churning there. When he took his hand away, the scene before him wavered and then changed…
Read more…

In this month’s installment to my continuing series, A Writer’s Toolbox, I want to talk about what I use to backup, sync, and share my files across multiple computers. (Post #1 in the series – A Writer’s Toolbox: Evernote – can be found here.)

When I am working on a project, I tend to write on multiple machines. If I’m working in my office at home, I write on my desktop. If I’m working at the library or local coffee shop, I use my personal laptop. If I’m on the road in my role as consultant for my day job, I’m usually carrying my company laptop. Not wanting to keep personal files on a company computer, I usually store everything on a flash drive and then mix and match files when I get home.

As you can imagine, trying to keep all of my files organized and up-to-date can be a real pain in the neck as a result. Enter Dropbox – a free online service that lets me handle all of this and more. I’ve been using Dropbox for several month as part of their invite-only beta launch and just this past week they opened up to the public, so the time is write to share with you what I’ve learned.

Dropbox

Dropbox is an online service that lets you store, synch and share information from one computer to another. It will also serve as an automatic backup service for your files, should something go wrong on your end. Once you install it, Dropbox creates a folder on your hard drive. Any file you put inside that folder will automatically be synched and monitored for changes. Each time the file is saved anew, it backs up and syncs the file again. Even better, it keeps a running list of revisions, so you can always go back to an earlier version should you need to do so. You can even undelete any file that you might accidentally have trashed.

Any file you sync with Dropbox is available on any computer you sync it to or through the Dropbox web interface. Each time you sync, Dropbox only syncs the parts of the file that have changed, which saves bandwidth and storage space. The service comes with 2 gigs of storage, which is more than enough for any of the several projects I’m working on at any one time, but additional storage is also available for a small fee. And by the way, your data is safe too, for it is sent using SSL and encrypted with AES-256 before storage.

Dropb - online sync, storage and backup of files

One aspect of Dropbox I haven’t used yet is its ability to share files with other people, be they fellow Dropbox users or not. I can see this being extremely useful for group projects, collaborations, and the like.

And before you ask – yes, the product is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, so no matter what major operating system you are using, you should be able to give it a try for yourself.

So there you have it – one solution out of many that are available for synching and backing up your data across multiple computers. I’d love to hear other unique ways people are using Dropbox or what other applications you might use instead, so feel free to leave a comment and let’s talk!

For the past couple of years, Michael Stelzner has done a “Top 10 Blogs For Writers” post, and it has been amazingly successful.

To participate, all you need to do is leave a comment at his post explaining why you think a given blog is worthy of making the Top 10.

In the past, great blogs like Men With Pens, Freelance Writing Jobs, and Copyblogger have all made the cut.

This year I’d love to see Storytellersunplugged make the list in the top ten. To show your appreciation for all the fine writers who create content here, do me a favor and go visit Michael’s blog, and let him know how much you appreciate Storytellersunplugged.com.

Thanks,
Your friendly neighborhood admin – Joe Nassise