I know this blog has no readership, which means I’m screaming into the void. I’m not on any social media anymore, I have no public presence, and I am a non-person, now. They took me away from my children. I have no family, no friends, no loved ones…no connections. I have nothing left to even hope for. And I’m so tired of being alone.
Why the fuck am I even here?
steve@karmazenuk.com
This is something that I’m not supposed to write.
Normally I would only discuss my writing, here, and not really anything personal. But I can’t talk about writing They Came in Peace without mentioning the personal struggles that I survived during the process. Among those struggles, was surviving alienation from my children for the last two years, and four years in total of fighting for my parental rights, with Quebec’s Department of Youth Protection.
The Direction de Protection de la Jeunesse, the DPJ, motivated by some fabrication of my abusive ex-wife, have gone out of their way to make sure I don’t have a relationship with my children.
Now every time I go out and see kids around their age I search their faces for anything I recognize; I haven’t seen my children in so long I can only imagine how they look, now.
I lie awake at night rebuking myself for every stupid, impudent act that led to this, hating myself for things I did, and hating the DPJ all the more because of what they’ve done to me.
I was admonished by the DPJ to not discuss this case, but the fact is, they so abused their authority in what they did that I feel the greater injustice would be letting them get away with it all without reproach. This organization is as corrupt and as authoritarian as everyone has ever told you. And here in Quebec, there is a hatred towards men, especially Anglophone men, that is built into the cultural subconscious: The DPJ was called originally to investigate my ex-wife. After they found she did little to nothing wrong and falling all over themselves while trying to offer her support and services, they turned their eye to me and took every aspect of my life apart to find fault with everything.
I know what my failings are; but they wouldn’t recognize anything that I’d achieved, and once again this week they reminded me of that fact again, when they told me they were going to extend their blockade against me until the fall, when they will divest themselves of the case and my ex-wife will be given full parental authority.
I may never see my children again; in my fight against the DYP they drove me into a nervous breakdown, and I lashed out at the social worker and it cost me the love and trust of my sons, and the presence of my daughter. They’ve stolen my fatherhood from me. The last time I hugged my children was the last time I hugged my children; they’re all young adults, now…the Direction de Protection de la Jeunesse stole the last years of my children’s childhood from me.
And they expect me to smile and say nothing as they continue fucking me, and thousands of others, over for petty reasons and minor issues. They act in bad faith and are never to be trusted.
For two years I’ve stayed awake at night, trying to sleep, trying not to cry…I miss my children, and they won’t be children if and when I ever see them again.
I dove headlong into the re-edit and minor cosmetic rewrite of They Came in Peace two years ago, when they cut me off from my kids. It was a story that grew out of apocalyptic and violent nightmares I had, over the course of a decade following my escape from an abusive ex-partner. How such a person can be such a wonderful mother is beyond me; but she is. She treated me like dogshit, made me feel like her employee instead of her partner. But, this isn’t about her.
This story is an exploration of so many different themes…I wouldn’t know where to start in unpacking what goes where in relation to what I was living through when I started the very first draft of TCiP. I don’t think I’d have survived, if I didn’t have this story to write, and now, to share.
It’s been twenty business days since I asked Quebec’s Youth Protection for a full copy of my file; I have not seen a single page.
It’s clear to me that H.S. and the rest of the Direction de Protection de la Jeunesse has no interest in the children in her care; only about creating and controlling the narrative around the story.
The book cover is coming along, but it’s an unremarkable process of emails between me and my cover artist, with various in-process sketches. I mean, the picture is going to be amazing, and Em is pouring herself into the work…but until I have a visual to show you, we have no common frame of reference to discuss matters.
But being a father alienated by a massive bureaucratic machine…I’ve got to start talking about it, now, before I get my hands on the file because if I don’t I fear the pain of it all may kill me.
And this is one place that my kids might actually still be able to hear from me.
My sons hate me; and Obi-Wan and Luke have cause, I will admit that. Not because of anything I did or said to them…but apparently my ex-wife doesn’t understand the concept of keeping private texts private. More on that later; probably in another post.
In 2022, I wanted to take my kids to Montreal ComicCon. And while telling me to my face that they supported it, in their files and conversations with my ex wife, M, the first social worker the DPJ put on this joke of a case, to make sure that under no circumstances were they going to let that happen. When I found out the truth and threw it in M’s face, she didn’t even do anything other than sneer angrily; that “How DARE you catch me lying to you?” look that some entitled women manage to generate.
Knowing my weakest point is the fact that I’m broke, they only agreed to let me go if I paid out of pocket for everything, myself. The kids wanted to cosplay, I was going to be cosplaying, so I had to buy their costumes out of pocket. My sister helped me, because she could see what they were trying to do, and knew I couldn’t afford to help the kids half as much as I wanted to.
I got to take them to ComicCon. The next year would be the last year I would see them, and I would never get to take them anywhere, ever again.
I’ll get into the role I’ve played and how the DPJ used it to crate a feedback loop of emotional blackmail that ultimately caused me to have a nervous breakdown. Right now, I’ve written about as much as I can stomach, today.
Before I finish, though, I want to tell Obi, Leia and Luke how much I miss you, how much I love you, and miss you. I won’t stop trying to reach you, but if you don’t want to have me in your lives, I will accept that. I am going to try, here, in this space, to explain what happened. And once I have the documentation, I’m going to expose what they did to me, what they did to our family.
I will love you forever and ever without breaking, and I hope and pray all day every day that the time before we see each other again is shorter than I fear.
Full Text of my request to the bastards at Quebec Youth Protection, sent 26th of July:
Please find attached a copy of my Medicare card.
Pursuant to such confirmation of my identity, I hereby request access to any and all records pertaining to my and my children’s dossier, opened in 2021, and of the case file in its entirety, included, but not limited to, any and all written correspondence between individuals involved in the case, social assessments for all parties, intervention notes for all parties, and any and all related correspondence, reports and other documentation not listed herein.
The children’s names are:
Obi-Wan Karmazenuk, BB 2010
Leia Karmazenuk, BB 2013
Luke Karmazenuk, BB 2013
I understand you have twenty (20) calendar days to respond to this request. Should you refuse, either directly or de facto, please take care to note that I shall, immediately and regrettably, escalate the matter with the Commission d’acces a l’information du Quebec, and, given the level of discrimination, denial of dignity and harm caused to me, and outright abuse of power that I have regrettably and undeniably suffered, should the CAI refuse my appeal, I will be taking it to the Commission des droits de la personne et des droits de jeunesse du Quebec. Please note that I have conducted a thorough review of my rights as enshrined in both provincial legislation and Constitutional protections, and I am in no mood for, nor under any legal obligation to indulge with any capering, antics, larks or shenanigans regarding this request.
Do please take care that, ideally, I would prefer to receive a paper copy of the file via mail, but a complete set of PDFs of all information will nevertheless be considered an acceptable substitution.
I am still waiting for a reply – or for that matter a confirmation from Youth Protection.
Meanwhile, back at the Ranch, The DYP bitches in charge of this case, MS and HS (No relation) are emotionally blackmailing me and refusing to answer my questions.
Text in full:
Good day.
It is Monday, August the 4th; 5:09 PM.
You have yet to send a reply to a very serious question that I have asked you, and the nonanswer you provided last week was, undoubtedly, an inefficacious attempt to obfuscate rather than elucidate.
So, I ask again: Why should I trust that any information my psychiatrist provides you will not be selectively edited to fit your narrative of painting me as an unfit father?
Now, I see my psychiatrist again next Wednesday, the 13th of August, at 3:00 PM.
I expect an answer from you, this week
I was ready to let go; I was ready to accept that I had to wait until the Twins were 14 before I’d hear from them, or that I couldn’t reach out to Obi until he’s 18.
I was ready to stop looking at every 12 to 15 year old, searching their face for something that I recognize. Do you have any IDEA what kind of HELL it is to not even know what your OWN CHILDREN LOOK LIKE?
I wish you did; truly. Maybe the Rite I performed will see to that; who knows. But yeah, the curse I put on you lot stands. You can’t have me arrested for Witchcraft, either; religious freedom. It’s my religious right to throw bad juju at you.
In any event, until you phoned me to emotionally blackmail me with “Don’t you want to see Leia again BEFORE then?” I was ready to walk away.
Now, here I am, like an imbecile ready to trust you again, and you cannot even provide a satisfactory answer to my above question – I’ve already CAUGHT YOU IN THE ACT of lying about the report before a fucking JUDGE.
Even Judge Dipshit would be pissed if he heard about that shit. You’ve spent years selectively editing the facts of my life to paint the picture you want of me.
So, if I haven’t heard a satisfactory response from you within 24 hours of my psychiatrist’s appointment next week, I will walk away. Comme on dit en bon kebequoi, that will be it, that will be all, and I will close with a GFY that would impress the late Vulgarian comedians, George Carlin and Lenny Bruce.
And when, in time I finally get to answer Anya’s question of “Why don’t you cooperate?” I will tell her the unvarnished truth: You are not trustworthy.
Now it is upon your shoulders to convince me otherwise.
Have the week you deserve.
I am so fucking sick of these bastards, and they have the gall to wonder why I have such a deep-seeded hatred of them. They can’t suffer enough to satisfy me.
If you are reading this blog, then you are already aware of the despicable and unethical practices of Quebec’s Direction de Protection de la Jeunesse.
You should already know that I am using this space to highlight everything these monolithic bastards have done to destroy my relationship with my children.
Well, now I’m about to get the documentation I need, so that I can take you all back to the beginning of this episode, when my relationship to Obi-Wan, Leia and Luke were first put in danger by the DPJ.
If you, like me, find yourself fighting the unjust bureaucratic machine of arbitrary judgement that is the DPJ, you will need the following information, if you wish to access your file:
You’ll email them to tell them they will find the following documents attached:
A written and HAND SIGNED formal request for information, including the names and birthdates of the child(ren) in question.
A full-color copy of your photo ID
Your complete mailing address.
IN THE INTERESTS OF READERS PLEASE NOTE THAT IF YOU WISH TO EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT TO SEE YOUR OWN FILE WITH THE DPJ, YOU MUST SEND A WRITTEN AND HAND SIGNED FORMAL REQUEST FOR INFORMATION, INCLUDING THE NAME(S) AND BIRTHDATE(S) OF THE CHILD(REN) IN QUESTION. YOU MUST INCLUDE WITH THIS WRITTEN REQUEST A FULL-COLOR COPY OF YOUR PHOTO ID
THIS INFORMATION MUST BE SENT TO THE ATTENTION OF THE DR. MURPHY BY MAIL, PREFERABLY REGISTERED LETTER, TO:
Dr. Murphy
1500 RUE SHERBROOKE E.
PAVILLION DESCHAMPS, PORTE F-113
MONTREAL, QC, CANADA H2L 4M1.
Once again, the purpose of providing you with this address is to allow you to file your access to your DPJ file requests properly.
DO NOT send your request by email! DO NOT send your request by fax!
The Commission a l’Access de l’Information du Quebec will ONLY accept requests for appeal a DPJ refusal that was originally sent to the above address.
However, if you do want to organize mass protests, you can most certainly do so outside any DPJ or family services location you have been referred to; that’s where your social workers are. That’s where you want to lay siege.
However, I’m not at the mass protest portion of the programme – yet – and I may never be. Though if the DPJ should break faith with me again, well…Cry “Havoc!” and let slip the Dogs of War! as Shakespeare said.
Stay tuned!
Early this afternoon I received a phone call from a very panicked H.S., Grand Poobah for the DPJ in this sector, whatever in the fuck that is supposed to mean, about my plans to expose the DPJ for the malignant, incompetent imbeciles they are. I can still use their fucking initials, though. I was then threatened with criminal charges if I reveal the name of any of the DPJ officers involved – despite the fact that these mugs all have LinkedIn accounts listing who they are, what they do for a living, and even include photographs.
I was warned, rather menacingly that I can’t use my kid’s real names, despite the fact that since the first edition of They Came in Peace was published back in 2021, their names have been public knowledge. Nevertheless, I will be referring to them as Obi-Wan, Leia and Luke – three of my favorite Force-Powered Star Wars characters.
I can only assume that H.S. is afraid that if I name names, the caseworkers will be exposed; despite the fact the DYP has qualified immunity and can act with impunity – UP TO AND INCLUDING LYING TO A JUDGE IN A SWORN AFFIDAVIT AND IN OPEN COURT – Something I nailed H.S. with, because they cherry picked my psych report – AND I GOT TO READ IT. They left out all the good stuff about me, and only mentioned the bad; they lied about me not completing therapy, and they lied about me not seeking further treatment.
Imagine a government agency that lies in open court to win their case; Family Cops. And as we know, ALL cops are bastards.
While they expect me to be respectful in my exchanges going forward (I’ll let you read some of the best ones – names redacted to initials of course – as this blog progresses. I have to say, when it comes to putting together a loquacious string of vulgarities in order to cut someone’s ego down to size, I am an artist.
I’ve also decided that since I have to play nice, I’m going to be as obsequious as a Jane Austen fictional suitor of difficult circumstance.
But here? I’m going to tell you exactly what I think of the fascist fucking soulless bitches.
In any event, in my next post I will detail the steps necessary for anyone else alienated from their children by the callous, cavalier DPJ to get full and unfettered access to their entire case file.
And once I have the case file, the shit is going to hit the fan.
I am fighting for my children, because I love them, I miss them, and this institutional monolith has too much authority and not nearly enough oversight. Every last one of the bitches should be put on a choke chain on a three-foot leash.
…ooohhh…fetishy.
I have to admit, I did imagine that my return to self-publishing would be a tad more…fast-paced than it is.
However, as I do not want to leave this weblog inactive, and as I have something ELSE important to talk about, going forward and until I have concluded my expose, I am going to be devoting this space to talking about the monolith of the Direction de Protection de la Jeunesse in Quebec, IE Quebec Youth Protection.
Every month, a new news report comes out on just how badly they screw up major dossiers. They also destroy families. Especially divorced families. Especially men.
Over the next several weeks, and probably starting later this week, I will begin posting here about my interactions with the DPJ. I will be naming names, and quoting chapter and verse from the DYP file on my family.
I’m no angel, and I’ve done some fucked-up shit in the four years the DPJ has been fucking around up my ass. And I will be owning up to that so they can’t try and use it against me.
I am going to discuss how they pressured me and mentally abused me until I had a nervous breakdown, and raged-texted the social worker who was at the time responsible for the case. She had me arrested, and the cops of the Service de Police de la Ville de Montreal Station 44 beat the shit out of me and did permanent damage to my left shoulder.
I’ll be talking about that, and how since before she even inserted herself into this dossier, the DPJ has been sabotaging my relationship with my children.
My sons hate me now, and my daughter, who still wants to reach out to me, is being fed poison and lies about me.
The DPJ has lied in family court, and I have the receipts.
Why am I doing this? Because it’s not enough to rage against the Machine; you have to break the Machine.
I want to lift up my voice and shout from the digital rooftop just what bastards these people are, how lazy and incompetent, and most of all, how devoid of real empathy that they are.
I want to show everyone else in Quebec who has been unjustly fucked over by the DPJ that they are not alone, and that together, we can not only break the Machine, we can smash it, and force the Government to build it back better, so it actually SERVES as a protection for at-risk youth, and not just a means of destroying families they don’t approve of.
I am a writer. Words are my weapons. And I am declaring war.
“Dear Mr Karmazenuk.
We have decided to ignore the fact that you have physical and behavioral issues which, despite ongoing treatment and improved capacities, affect your ability to be consistent with your children, and blame and will therefore punish you for what you can’t control.
Henceforth, you are forbidden from seeing your children, thinking about your children, talking about them in polite conversation or attempting to communicate with them in any way.
However, we still expect you to cooperate with us until such time as your abusive and vindictive ex-wife takes back full and exclusive custody of your children, cutting you out of their lives and every milestone of their youth, forever.”
Quebec’s Direction de “protection” des enfants. Except it was written in the filthy patois of “Jouale,” the pathetic excuse for a dialect of French that they speak here in Ku-Klux-Kebek.
Dear Youth “Protection:” you’ve stolen my right to be a father, you’ve stolen the last years of my children’s childhood from me, and I will never cooperate with you, or forgive you.
Sic Semper Tyrannus.
Hey, Obi-Wan, Leia and Luke: I love you for ever and ever without breaking. They’re lying to you about me. Once you’re 14, you can contact me whether they like it or not.
I know you all have questions, and I will tell you the God’s honest unvarnished truth. I’m not the only one whose failed you,
Hello, Acolytes and welcome back to another one of our irregular classes on How to Get an Indie Book Published (We’ve finally gotten a course title workshopped – goes in for market testing next week!)
This week I teach you what I learned, this week, about cover art. Without further Ado, let’s jump in:
The above block was written over two weeks ago. That’s just how hungry starving artists are. Allow me now to explain:
If you are thinking about self-publishing (or Indie Publishing as it’s called now – and a better name it is,) which is probably the best way to go unless you have a nepotism entry into publishing.
If you do have a nepo entry into publishing, fuck off; this guide on How to get an Indie Book Published (It cleared market testing and drop-testing before I got back to writing this post) is for Indie Writers: the anonymous many, who don’t use a journalism major as a slow-track into ghostwriting for Simon and Schuster’s author stable.
Now, where was I? Oh yes: You know how I keep saying it’s about having a holistic presence on social media, and that it’s all who you know? Nepos already know who they need to; the rest of us have to try and get over our crippling social anxiety and go out and interact with human people.
Well a couple of weeks back, over on BlueSky, I posted to #BookSky that I was looking for a cover illustrator. I had interested parties DM me with their emails, then sent out my query: I showed them the old cover art, as well as the Generative AI “mock-up” I made to give the cover artist to give them an idea of what I wanted.
I wanted to give the artist I hired an idea of what I envisioned (An updated/alternate version of the original cover, more in line with what I’d pictured) I used the mock up concept cover art I’d made for my own motivation and told them that was what I was looking for, in terms of art.
ALERT! INCOMING TANGENTIAL TIRADE ALERT!
Wait; why didn’t I just use a Gen AI cover? Because I’m opposed to plagiarism, and the way LLMs connected to creative tools work is that it copies from other artists, specifically by reproducing images according to scores given to the words you used to describe your project. Gen AI sucks, Gen AI is painfully obvious, and Gen AI is plagiarism.
The ONLY proper use of Generative AI in the creation of a cover for your book is to use it to create a concept mock-up for an artist YOU FUCKING PAY MONEY TO CREATE. Indie Artists support Indie Artists; we’re all partners, not competitors.
Now, as to writing, the only use Generative AI has in the writing process is if everyone you know is dead and you need someone to spitball your ideas to – not to SUGGEST ideas to you, but to help you clarify your thoughts. REMEMBER: EVERYONE YOU KNOW AND LOVE MUST BE DEAD BEFORE RESORTING TO THIS OPTION.
Likewise, using LLM/GenAI to “write” your book is not only lazy, it is an irrefutable demonstration that you lack talent and imagination. All you have is an idea, and, honestly, ideas are a dime a fucking dozen. If you don’t have the talent to turn that idea into a story, either learn the fuck to write, or get the fuck outta the way of those of us who know how.
TANGENTIAL RANT ENDS! TANGENTIAL RANT ENDS!
So, what happened?
I got a shit-ton of offers. All of them were great, and a couple of them had the kind of style I wanted for the cover, and ultimately I went with the person whose art style I preferred most. But I had to reply to a fuckton of emails, look at a metric fuckton of artistic portfolios, and sift through all of it to find the artist who was right for me.
It was Administrative Hell, because it took several hours over several days to get through, and no matter how awesome pictures are, spend the day looking at them eventually you get bored. But one artist’s portfolio stuck out, and I decided to hire them.
I had a price range in mind, based on my budget. Astonishingly, what I thought would be too little money wound up being the average asking price.
So if you can only scrape together $150-$200 you can get an amazing artist to do fantastic work.
And the bigger your budget, the more Indie Artists become available to you: I had offers asking $300, $500, someone even wanted $800, and their work was great, but way outside my price range – I didn’t waste their time other than to tell them they were out of my price range and they’re best sticking with the clientele they were making bank on.
Why the cost? Because you’re paying them for all the YEARS they have invested, both learning and doing, to hone their craft to the point that they make work WORTH that money. That is not to besmirch lower-costing artists; I was fucking relieved to find such talent in my price range. Some Indie Artists are still in school, others, this IS their only gig; they charge based on their rep, so lift them up and they will lift you up in return.
Indie Artists jump at tenders; remember the title of this Blog Post/Online Class Session, dear Acolytes.
Now that you’ve scrolled up and back down, note that while I’ve touched on my plans for a fundraising campaign, I am not fundraising to pay the artist; I’m paying them out of pocket. Their work will be the first thing people see, when they see any visuals for the Author’s Edition of They Came in Peace. It’s literally the book’s ambassador. And the cover is probably the most important investment in your book you make, because people DO judge books by the cover, no matter the aphorism.
The cover will be front and center of the fundraising campaign, and, if the campaign is successful, it will be front and center of the marketing campaign, launch, etc. It’s very important to carefully pick the cover artist – and for the love of your book, DO NOT DO IT YOURSELF NO MATTER HOW GOOD YOU THINK YOU ARE.
Unless you are a professional, leave it to the pros.
And having a trusting relationship, an honest relationship even if it’s only over email/text/chat/videoconference. The more you can tell your artist, the better.
Okay; keep an eye for new posts; they’re announced on my BlueSky whenever they infrequently go up, but they are here.
Okay; so here I am, galley finally put together and done…I wanna make a final pass before I get it printed, but in the meantime, I am coming up with a fundraising campaign, prior to the book’s launch.
I’ve already got stretch goals set up; well, written down on a list…and I’ve even got targets and an ultimate goal; but now, dear Acolytes, you accompany me into my first foray into the unknown territory of crowdsourcing and fundraising.
This is one that I didn’t expect to be on the lesson plan; because the first thing I have, is a bunch of fucking questions I don’t know how to answer. Well, more precisely, questions whose answers I will have to research.
QUESTION ONE: Okay…how do I create buzz around this book?
Doesn’t that look all fancy and official?
Okay; so driving buzz does require having some form of social media presence; like I said, I’ve migrated to BlueSky, and I cannot endorse such flaming piles of shit like the Website Formerly Known as Twitter, or the Facebook. However, I can’t recommend Tumblr enough for aspiring writers and artists. I used to be on there, but there was drama and well…you young’uns probably know more social media sites than I’ve listed; like Discord, Reddit, Threads, Oingo-Boingo, Talking Heads…oh wait; those last two are bands from the 1980s New Wave era.
So if you have an established SM presence, you simply join the groups/chats/whatever about writing, or creativity in general, and then you post there and to your own followers about your work. That’s the first stage.
Second stage buzz-creating: Drive them from your Social Media to your weblog, by having a link in your bio, and dropping the occasional post to your followers and mutuals to get them to go have a look.
It also helps if you play with the #WritingPrompts hashtag on those sites, to create quick and clever microstories (Character-Limit long.)
Put some content on your social media; put the same content on your blog. Now you’re cooking. You should, once you’ve made friends with readers, writers and other creatives start seeing more aggregation of like-minded people following you; follow back! Initiate follows.
Don’t go looking for free advice from big authors like Stephen King or…you know, I don’t know of any other big authors on social media that I follow. I mean, they MUST be out there…but anyway, they’ve been exhausted by advice-seekers their whole career. At best, you’ll get ignored. The best people to talk to are your fellow indies; we, like you, have had to do the whole thing ourselves – and now you can benefit by avoiding the mistakes WE made and make entirely new and original mistakes all your own! As you well know, there’s nothing a writer loves more than talking about their work and themselves. Writing is a very narcissistic process, and indies are hungry for coverage and sales. We’ll talk your ear off, blog your eyes dry, etc.
But yeah, indie writers? We’re a dime a dozen, yeah, but the Indie Publishing industry is actually fairly solid, and hungry; as long as your books are properly edited (don’t do it yourself) and formatted (Submission guidelines are HOLY SCRIPTURE,) you’re bound to make connections. Don’t half-ass it by trying to edit and design your cover yourself; I’ve done that, and it ends up making something you love into an embarrassment.
Places like Fiverr and other Gig Posters are a great place to find people who are studying editing and writing to work on your book – and there are countless illustrators online; even if it means you have to wait and put money aside to pay for proper editing and a proper book cover, you want to use their help, and give them credit in your book’s acknowledgements and make sure to include “Cover Art copyright [NAME] used with permission” line, because it IS their work and you paid for permission to use it, and, they want to make money off their work so if you give them credit, somebody else might use them for their book jacket. Same thing goes for reviews, but you DON’T EVER NOT EVEN ONCE pay for a review: there are people who will review your work – FOR FREE – because they can actually MAKE A LIVING reviewing indie books for their webpages or something.
But, I’m getting ahead of myself; you’re not looking for reviews – yet – your book isn’t even ready to roll.
You’ve got the galley edited and ready, cover art is commissioned (Best let them design it, although you can have input; the cover of They Came in Peace was inspired by a view of the occultation line between night and day taken from the International Space Station, and the artist liked my idea and ran with it) you already know that Draft to Digital is the best game in town for self-publishing, and you’re nearly ready to roll. You’ve got your followers, mutuals, and you’ve got people who will occasionally see your posts in your feed. Okay. Level One-A accomplished.
Thing is, if you publish your book now? Chances are good it’s gonna fail. Pimping a book out requires a minimum amount of marketing money. Oh, fuck; you’re broke as hell and it already hurt to save up and take time to pay for editing and a cover! Now you have to pay for MARKETING?
Yup!
And THAT’S why you don’t want to publish, yet. I mean yes, it’s always a good idea to have the .epub ready to go, but you can generate a book on D2D without “launching” it right away.
QUESTION TWO: So how the fuck do I pay for marketing?
You don’t: You get other people to pay for it, for you.
Wait; what?
Did I stutter? Your first marketing campaign is to FUNDRAISE for your book launch. There’s Kickstarter, Gofundme, Co-fee or something…there are many available options. All you need to do is come up with some reasonable push-goals; for example, a digitally signed copy of the ebook, early edition or pr eorders, or if they donate enough an autographed physical copy of the book, online meet and greets, etc. The goal of each goal of your fundraising campaign is to pay for the NEXT goal, and the next, and then, when you’ve hit your final target, you have the money to pay for marketing.
Okay, so where do I go to pay for marketing?
Wow; you want everything on a silver platter, don’t you?
Hey, this post was your idea, not mine; you took my nickel, I paid for the ride.
You realize you’re just talking to yourself right now, right?
Do you?
Okay, so there are myriad online publicity agencies. An ad run or marketing run could cost you a few hundred or a few thousand dollars; how much money you raise will determine how big your campaign will be.
So you start looking at marketing before you start fundraising. You’ll want to check out as many online marketing agencies as you can. You’ll want to filter out anyone who isn’t specialized in books or other creative endeavors. You’ll want to talk to people who will know where your ads are going to be the most effective. You’ll want to avoid being put in a pop-up, and you’ll want your ad to be tailored to a specific client, namely, people who would be interested in reading your book.
Next you gotta check and see if these agencies are actually worth the money, who’s used them, what they’re known for…and you might want to filter it down to the genre or even subgenre if they specialize in that sort of thing. You want the ad campaign to be tailored to you as much as possible; a preplanned package might not be what you’re looking for, so don’t be afraid to express that; right now you’re just trying to test the waters, so you can answer my questions three:
1-How much money do you think you can reasonably fundraise?
2-How much money do you want to spend on advertising?
3-How much do money you want to keep for yourself, up-front?
The first two questions are simple arithmetic. The third one depends on how much you think your time is worth given everything you’ve done up to this point, from coming up with the idea, to writing, rewriting, beta-reading, editing, etc. The Rule of Thirds works well: Two thirds of what you raise should be for your campaign. The last third is yours.
A lot to take in, right? Because now we have to talk about SCHEDULING. Because, you don’t want to make your book available until it’s been hyped and buzzed, right?
Timetables are going to be based on how long it takes you to fundraise, how much you fundraise, and how big your campaign is.
Patience is the key; your book’s ready. It’s not going anywhere. There’s no expiry date on when it can launch.
And, guess what else:
You’re going to want to research book launch dates.
You guessed! Yep; you’re going to want to have a look at what books released when, going back a couple of years, just to see what time the tide comes in for your genre.
Yeah, you might have wanted to launch sooner rather than later – believe me, I know the feeling. Had my book been launched six months to a year earlier, it would have had a better chance, given I was at the time with a small press. But right after it launched, we went into lockdown. COViD killed They Came in Peace.
So, I’ve taken the intervening time to rest, recuperate, and try writing other things. But, I’ve kept getting drawn back here, to this book; and honestly, given the times we’re currently living through? I’d rather put it out there yesterday.
But without the right hype, it won’t have the legs to run.
Tune in next time for an exciting new episode!
This is one of those times the little voice in the back of my head is screaming that there is going to be some kind of massive roadblock between me and getting shit done.
Yep, that’s right: I, your humble narrator, author of the much-hoopla’d forthcoming Author’s Edition of They Came in Peace, have reached the last ten chapters and am counting down (counting up?) to the end of the backwards edit. This is all happening on a much faster schedule than I anticipated; I realize I still need to take my Read Something Else brain-cleaner break before doing the final pass…but…
I had hoped to have more writing advice to give out; but the truth is, like I’ve said previously, as important as it is to be constantly honing your writing talent, a subjective journey that never really ends, it is equally important to forge connections.
No matter how good you are, it’s all who you know. And even with who you know, you better bet your fucking ass you’ve got to learn how to market your book.
The hardest part, of course, being how to market it when you have ZERO capital to invest in a marketing campaign.
…which brings us to the topic of this lesson, Acolytes: Research, knowledge, and credibility are essential to writing as they are to anything you approach:
Soon, I’ll start looking into fixing up my SEO, getting some sort of project funding – though God only knows what I could offer to people kicking money my way besides a free copy of a book I don’t know how much it will cost to print – it’s always the printing costs that kill you until you can start rolling out enough copies to negotiate a lower printing price. But if I can figure out what to award or give people when my funding goals are met, it’s going to be a real roll-out, this time.
Writing is a fucking business; and not an easy one, at that. I mean besides the solitude, crippling bouts of self-doubt, the emotional toll that is the creative constipation of writer’s block; I’m talking about the thing every entrepreneur has to face at least once in their lives: the headache of figuring out HOW to run the business.
Which brings us back around to the topic of today’s lesson, dear Acolytes: Research; from fucking book reports to any genre of writing, research is key. It’s not just about getting your facts straight, it’s about creating background information you can use for worldbuilding or character development. It’s about understanding things, like how the electromagnetic spectrum works, how “dark matter” and “dark energy” are just placeholder terms for something science can explain in mathematical theory, but not in principle, and even if it were real it doesn’t interact in any way with normal matter or energy, and so it is not an actual thing you can use as a Technical Workaround, MacGuffin or Plot Device, not using technobabble but actual technological facts and expanding on existing theorem to make your thing do the thing you want; not often do creators like those behind Star Trek’s “Warp Drive” lead to scientists reverse-engineering the fiction into science. I don’t know about you, but I’ve been waiting on my hoverboard, lightsaber and sonic screwdriver for a while.
Okay; tangenital rant over. Back to research:
Some of the research I did for They Came in Peace was a very deep dive: I even took some questionable actions to communicate online to people that some other people would consider persons of interest, high-value targets, and terrorists…mind you, I’ve heard BLM referred to as a terrorist organization by white racist swine, so, maybe the word “terrorism” has lost its teeth. Especially when you consider how many so called terror groups are actually people fighting for their own survival (The Ukraine, Palestine,) against forces set for their complete genocide (Russia, “Israel,” the Ignited States.) I can neither condone nor condemn the actions of anyone who feels violent resistance is their last, best hope at life. I do, however, strongly condemn the truly radicalized extremist groups, like Daesh, Boko Haram, the Taliban, the Oath Keepers, Make America Great Again, and the Proud Boys.
I don’t know the origin of the aphorism that One person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter, but I certainly found that to be the case while I was doing research into the psyche of revolutionaries and so-called terrorist groups. The vast majority of the people I did speak to directly weren’t extremists, militants, religious fanatics, or even political idealists; they were ordinary people who were so disenfranchised by the societies they lived in that they felt there was no other option if they wanted to survive. That sounds like a lot of people I know in the 2SLGBTQIA++, working poor and subsistence-living communities. Welcome to End-Stage Capitalism. To learn how it got so bad, Sweet Acolytes O’ Mine, research Ronald Reagan, and Trickle-Down Economics. Then sedate yourself until the urge to kill dies down.
Meandering back into researching real-world rebel terrorists, finding out what made people radicalized was essential to writing They Came in Peace. I don’t think the personal journey of the central protagonist, Simon Petrovych, would have been half as believable if I hadn’t spoken to the people I did, and studied the histories of the regions that I did.
Am I an expert on Middle-East or Eastern European politics and geopolitical terrorism? I doubt it; but I’m pretty sure I’ve got a better handle on the situation than Traitor-in-Chief Agent Krasnov. Low bar, I know, but one I can confidently clear.
Research is also learning. About the world, about the sciences, the arts, history, and your fellow Human Beings. Catching the “Woke Mind Virus” requires having a mind to begin with; and being “Woke” just means giving a fuck about other people. And every time you research something, every time you learn something, it expands your mind just that much more. Only stupid people think learning is stupid; and only stupid people boast about how smart they are. The greatest weapon in the world is knowledge; which is why despots always destroy the sciences, the schools and the libraries first.
Even if you decide to study something completely unrelated to writing, it will refine your ability to write. I picked up the guitar in August of last year, and I’m starting to get not that bad. I’ve also been cosplaying since my twenties, and believe me, when you’re building entire characters, creatures or monsters from scratch, it will teach you a lot about character design; like the impracticality of a Stormtrooper helmet versus the challenges of a Mando bucket, or why building your Xenomorph out of fiberglass resin is a bad idea, but a good one if you’re making a Vorlon. And don’t get me started on figuring out how to build a Cyberman; at least a Dalek is mainly hardware and plumbing supplies. Original character creations are even more challenging.
The point is, ultimately your writing is only as good as your knowledge base. (see “Hillbilly Elegy,” Vance, J.) And your knowledge base is, ultimately, what gives your writing credibility, teeth, believability.
You also shouldn’t half-ass the research; don’t stop at a few articles or a few websites; dig deeper. Talk to people involved. Plenty of places have emails and will answer any questions you have.
Also, don’t research by the seat of your pants: It’s all right in the planning stages or while writing an outline to research, but you don’t want to be researching how the magnetosphere works so you can use it as an exploit in one of your combat scenes, because you’ll be ripped right out of the moment and it’s as bad as just quitting mid-wank to go watch a documentary on ferns instead of whatever you were working out to on PornHub.
It’s always best to research everything in advance; figure out what questions you want to ask when it comes time to talk to the Actual People, because whatever you’re researching, at some point you want to talk to someone in the field; be it particle physics, medicine, forensics, music, carpentry, geologists and geophysicists…whatever you have to look up, make sure down the road you’re ready to ask someone some questions.
Huh; I guess it really is all about who you know.
So, get out there, Acolytes; get to know some people; learn some things; be smart and get clever.
Maybe you’ll have more success at this whole writing-for-a-living thing than me.
Those who can’t teach, I guess…
