A.J. Maguire

Tag: James Patterson Master Class

  • Writing and Business and the In-Between

    As of this evening my novelette “Torven” has a completed rough draft. Given its very small length (16006 words) I have been toying around with the idea of giving it away for free or really, really cheap (after it’s gone through a rigorous editing) which has led me to the normal marketing spiel/debate.

    I’ve been here before. Often.

    In fact, I’d like to say I’ve dipped my toes into murky depths of marketing since Sedition was first published five years ago. (Five years? Really? Sheesh.)

    I have not, however, really committed to a marketing plan. Up until this point my focus was on my craft, wanting to just write the next story and grow as an author, and while none of those goals have changed (and never will, because that’s the whole point of taking ownership of your craft) … I can say that I am going to step intrepidly out into the realm of marketing.

    I started, quite comically, with a giveaway of Tapped today on Amazon. The giveaway lasted all of an hour, which … really showed me how bad I am at math. (5 books + every 5th entrant wins = about an hour’s worth of giveaway time. Just in case anyone else needs this information.)

    But I learned a great deal about what I want to do in the future. I’ve set up a pretty little timetable to follow for marketing – when I want to do what promotions and at what sites – and even color-coded it … because I’m a geek like that.

    I am also in the process of revamping my website … with help because I’m really not great at it.

    As to writing itself …

    With “Torven” done I can go back to Dead Weight, the sequel to Tapped. I’ll be revamping the outline based on the things I learned in James Patterson’s Master Class (still an awesome thing and if you write, you should check it out.)

    Basically, I’ll be going over the outline once a week through the month of April. Start to finish. Tightening the plot. Adding elements of the suspense genre into my science fiction … basically implementing everything Mr. Patterson set out to teach me in 22 lessons.

    I’m excited.

    It’ll be fun.

    And I’ll record all the mayhem here because I can … and maybe it’ll help someone else down the road.

     

  • The Side Project

    My cork board hasn’t changed since January. According to my calendar I should be on Chapter 9, not Chapter 4, of Dead Weight. That big leap I had at the beginning of the year is now completely gone.

    But you know what?

    I really don’t care.

    Because I’ve been working. Granted, I haven’t been working on what I said I’d be working on at this point, but it’s still words on the page.

    In fact, it’s over 10,000 words of that lovely fairy tale story I began for my son. He’s enjoying it still, by the way, and it is nearly complete. I should have the full novella by the end of this month. At which point I’ll set it aside for a couple of weeks before doing a round or two of edits and then I intend to put it out for free/super cheap/whatever I can get Createspace to do there.

    But I haven’t just been writing on this thing. I also opted to take James Patterson’s Master Class on writing and slowly made it through the 22 lessons there.

    Why no, I’ve never written a suspense novel before, but that doesn’t mean that things within the suspense genre can’t be planted into the genres that I prefer writing. In particular, I took away from this class a very distinct outlook on Outlines that I will, at the beginning of April, implement with Dead Weight.

    Since I’m only on Chapter 4 there I don’t feel like I’ll be shooting myself in the foot starting over with the Outline and doing it the “Patterson” way.

    For those who have been toying with the idea of taking a Master Class like this one, I’m going to go ahead and give the “two thumbs up” and encourage you to do so. There are some things you’ve heard that you’ll hear again, but in the end it’s got some nuggets in there that you can certainly use.

    In the meantime, I’ll be posting some of the Fairy Tale on the website and things because … well … it’s fun. And you can’t beat free.