[Note from Steve:  Today’s guest post is from author Deanna Proach.]

All writers need to have a second and third pair of eyes read their work. The trick is having to find two or three trusted persons to read your work. Some writers—like me—don’t have a parent, friend or relative who is a published author, editor or avid reader. If this is the case, you should seek out a reputable writers’ group where you’ll feel welcomed and at ease. If you’re not able to find any reputable writers’ critique group, you can form your own critique group.

Critique groups are not all about telling each other what’s wrong with our manuscripts. When critiquing someone’s work, you need to be considerate of his or her feelings and you should always provide feedback that is positive and constructive in a way that will benefit your fellow writer.

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Sunday’s (Jan. 29) edition of the NY Times featured an article on Barnes & Noble bookstores in the business section.  A summary of the article:  B&N thinks that it’s doing everything it can to survive.  My observation:  No, there are things it could do but doesn’t want to do.  Since we are in the middle of a paradigm shift in the publishing world, I wouldn’t dare make predictions on how eBooks and indie publishing are going to affect legacy publishers.  I can warn them to look out, though.  I remember opting for betamax because it was technically the best option, but VHS won the day (and now, no one uses either one!).  Predicting the fickle fate of modern technologies is best left for people that don’t eat enough protein and can use the egg on their face.

So, what things would I do if I were B&N?  (I’ll ask the same question of small mom and pop bookstores below.)  First, I’d bring out a competitor to the Kindle.  Check that off.  I don’t like the Nook, but I know people who do.  When I say Kindle, I’m referring to the e-ink low glare screen version I have, the one where you can only read books and newspapers.  The Fire is a Nook is an iPad—I don’t like any of them because I’m not an apps-icon pusher.  Apps are baby computer programs, the computer version of drug addiction.  I get along just fine without them and probably always will.

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Author:  [Whisper, like I’m announcing the Masters.]  Readers, today I’m interviewing NYPD Detective Sgt. Rolando Castilblanco.  He has a busy schedule, so let’s get right to it.  [My normal voice.]  Rollie, are you fully recovered from the knife fight portrayed in The Midas Bomb?

Castilblanco:  Physically, I suppose.  Mentally, I’m still pissed.  I think we lost a chance to grill that guy and learn more about the case in general and Vladimir Kalinin in particular.  On the other hand, it taught Chen that a knife strapped onto your leg is often better than that little peashooter the bosses want you to carry as backup.  She’s come a long way, you know.

A:  You two didn’t hit it off so well at the beginning.  What was the problem?

C:  I’d lost two partners.  I figured that with all that inscrutable oriental mysticism, Chen thought I was a jinx.  I was even thinking along those lines myself.  Our boss, Lt. Kennedy, is a crafty old fox, though.  He knew I would teach Chen some things in spite of my many shortcomings.  I’ll have to admit, she taught me a few things too.  She came with a lot of experience from the narcotics division.

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The media has become fixated on spontaneous symmetry breaking and the Higgs boson (the so-called “God particle,” a name that would surely make Mr. Higgs cringe).  The Higgs mechanism (i.e. the spontaneous symmetry breaking) is necessary to give mass to some of the vector bosons in the electroweak or weak and electromagnetic interaction theory.  Forgotten in all this media hoopla is the theory that led to the idea of quarks and gluons, the Eightfold Way of symmetries popularized by Mr. Gell-Mann.  (Note that I refrain from using the term “discovered.”  In theoretical physics, the math is “out there.”  You just have to figure out what math matches up to the experimental data.  Experimental physics is where “discoveries” are made.)

Now that I’ve had some fun imagining your eyes glazing over as if you’d just had tequila mixed with sleeping pills, let me say that this post is not about physics.  (My eyes are glazed too, because the above is hardcore physics, and I’ve been sipping my Jameson’s while writing like a madman.)  The Eightfold Way I consider here is the shining path that leads you to a finished novel that someone might want to read. It’s my distillation of rules for writing a novel—a distillation that is not the quality of a fine Irish whiskey, but I’ve put some thought to it and would like to share (I’d like to share the Jameson’s too, but the internet hasn’t discovered e-drinking yet).

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I have made some noise in this blog about the fact that I’m going all eBook.  I have a list of reasons, but there is always that alter-ego of mine called “buyer’s remorse” who is telling me that I’m killing myself.  Read on, Barry Eisler and Joe Konrath, and console me.

Let’s enumerate the reasons again.  The top one is that I can’t afford to keep on paying for POD.  Even though prices have come down and service has gone up (I have no complaints about Infinity Publishing’s production of trade paperbacks, for example), for the same price I can produce multiple eBooks.  I have many stories I want to tell.  If this paradigm shift to digital publishing continues, eBook media is my most economical route.

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It used to be that a blog post talked about what you had for breakfast and walking the dog, for example.  Today that uninteresting trivia (well, maybe it’s interesting to your neighbors, especially if you leave the poop on their lawn) is relegated to Facebook (FB manages to cover the whole spectrum from domestic trivia to the Occupy X City news, from a pet peeve, i.e. complaints about your pet, to the Arab spring uprisings, and so on).  Blog posts should be, and now usually are, more substantial.  They truly are op-ed, i.e. opinions, about something.

The something can be almost anything!  This post is about writing, a particular form of writing.  You’ve all read op-ed in a newspaper—that’s usually politically or economically motivated.  Most of my posts here are similar to those commentaries on current events.  If you like, you can say I have an ax to grind.  (Some people become very upset about my opinions, so I generally allow comments, as long as you keep them clean.  I call it “Join the Conversation” on my “Steve’s Writing” page.)

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It’s a funny thing about book reviews—especially when someone is turning a critical eye to your own work. Often, you realize that other people don’t always view your characters in the same light you do. An example:

Steve Moore just wrote a nicely-crafted critique of my hard-boiled mystery Shotgun Start for Book Pleasures [note from Steve: see last Thursday’s post]. He liked the book, for which I am grateful, and gave it a generally positive review and recommended it. All good. But he had an interesting take on my protagonist, Neal Egan, a former cop who is eking out a living as a golf hustler. Steve says: “Egan is a jerk, cad and misfit.” My immediate reaction: “A cad? A jerk? Is not.” The misfit part of the equation, I’ll concede. But a cad? Steve, this isn’t a Noel Coward play. You might as well have called him a bounder.

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Indie authors know all about the internet as a home for cottage industries.  Even if you use Amazon or Barnes & Noble or some other online retailer as a distributor, an indie author still has to publish, market, and sell his or her books.  The author’s writing or content is the industrial product and the reader is the customer who buys that product.

Services for authors and readers are a natural for internet cottage industries.  Google “ebook formatting” and see how many different services you find, for example—or “eBook cover design.”  There’s a website with info on forensics and many websites that discuss some or multiple aspects of the writing trade (see the list in “Steve’s Writing” here at this website).  For readers, there are services from the monolithic Goodreads (that probably started as a cottage industry) to websites or blogs more focused on reviews (see Holly Hook’s bargainebooks) to several online ezines—eFiction is one of the latest and open to submissions.

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I generally am happy to see a WD in my mailbox (that’s Writer’s Digest, in case you’re wondering if I’m missing an M).  Nevertheless, I’ve always thought the apostrophe is misplaced and lately there has been this nagging suspicion that their editorial board just doesn’t get it.  Joe Konrath has a better perspective on the industry (unfortunately, his participation in his blog is going on a hiatus).  However, he doesn’t get it completely either.

WD still propagates the myth of legacy publishing (this myth states that an author needs an agent, an editor, publisher, and publicist, with one of the Big Six providing the first two of the last three, the agent taking a hefty cut just for getting an MS , short for manuscript, beyond the slush pile where all unagented MSs go, and the author generally providing his or her own marketing–in other words, he or she can contract the publicist.  Joe and others like Barry Eisler have shown that the Big Six publishing houses are now built on sand and moreover have their heads buried in it.  Sure, they’re trying to invade and control the new digital paradigm, now revolutionized by eBooks, but they’re choking—they still live their myth and are making badly formatted eBooks at exorbitant prices (one that I will not name created a mini-scandal when people started complaining about formatting and price).

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(Carla Neggers, MIRA, Saint’s Gate, ISBN 978-0-7783-1235-2)

A convent on the rugged coast of Maine is the scene of a vicious murder in Carla Neggers’ new novel Saint’s Gate.  With this book, Ms. Neggers also introduces a new series and two new protagonists, FBI agents Emma Sharpe and Colin Donovan.  It is a dark mystery, full of intrigue and suspense.  The characters are interesting, the locales spectacular, and the plot well constructed.  Relax in your recliner, pour yourself a taoscan of fine Irish whiskey (see later why this is appropriate), and enjoy.  It is fun to read.  I read it in two evenings—it displaced all my other writing and reading activities.

I had the uncanny feeling that the author has a psychic hold over me—to use modern vernacular, she knew how to jerk my chains.  First, the locales:  the California and Maine coasts are my two favorite spots in the U.S.  Except for climate, they are similar—waves pounding against steep, craggy cliffs topped with pines and other magnificent trees.  Big Sur and Mt. Desert Island hold a special place in my travel memories.  I grew up in California; my father painted its coastline.  My first trips to Ogunquit and Bar Harbor left me yearning for more.

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