Continuum is a television series about a Kiera Cameron, a police officer who accidentally travels back in time from 2077 to 2012 and works towards stopping a group of rebels who have also time-travelled back.  The “episode” I worked on – Retreat – is one part of an eight-part graphic novel that explores Kiera’s experiences in the war that is going on in 2065, between the Corporations and Liber8. Continuum is broadcast on Showcase in Canada. There are currently two seasons completed, with a third scheduled for 2014.

Creator: Simon Barry

Writer: Carmen Wright

Illustrated by: Patricio Plaza

Coloured by: Jeffrey Jang

Letters: Ed Brisson

Edited by: Ed Brisson

Published  in 2012 by Zeros 2 Heroes Media

Series broadcast on Showcase

Read the full graphic novel in the deluxe reader, on Showcase.

The Dream Detectives / Pashanata comic is one piece of a larger project to launch a webseries, using social media, a custom app, an alternate reality game (ARG) and an mixed-reality comic at New York Comic Con in 2010.

The webseries featured Aaron Street, a petty thief who sees murders when he dreams. This launch project needed to create interest for the webseries, but could not include the main characters involved in the webseries. This side-story follows Anna and Callum, lovers who have split up to pursue their own careers. When their dreams become filled with visions that the other is in danger, they’re drawn back together. Through his dreams, Aaron Street knows what’s going on and tries to reach them before it’s too late.

This comic was a flip comic, with Anna’s story, Pashanata, told from one side, and Callum’s story, The Dream Detectives told from the other, both meeting in the middle spread. The comic included QR codes and other clues to help solve the ARG.

Creator: Keith Turner

Writer: Carmen Wright

ARG Designer: Ryan Nadel

Pencils, Inks, Cover art and center spread (Pashanata): Richard Pace

Colors (Pashanata): Ian Sokoliwski

Pencils (The Dream Detective): Craig Shepard

Inks (The Dream Detective): Diana Greenhalgh, Steve Sprayson

Colors: Stephen R. Buell

Editor: Robert Parizek

Publisher: Zeros to Heroes Media

Published: 2010 NYCC Exclusive

And some select pages from the The Dream Detective side of the comic…

Traveller is a short comic, published in an anthology called Manga Memoirs, which captures real life memoirs about moments of cross-cultural intersections of Japanese-Canadian culture. This is the true story of how I have kept a gift from a childhood friend, a silk worm cocoon, through my many moves, and how we met again as adults.

Creator/Writer: Carmen Wright

Pencils/Inks: Maria Miel Daroqui

Tones: Aya Barry

Letters: Ed Brisson

Editor: Morgan Jeske

Publisher: Zeros to Heroes Media

Published: 2009

Read the full comic in the deluxe reader, with peel-away pages to see the various stages of the artwork, on The Manga Memoirs website.

Rip Current is the first of my comics to be published, through Zeros 2 Heroes Media (Z2H). This comic was pitched to an online community of comic writers, artists and fans and voted to be one of twelve books published in 2008 as part of Canada: Comic Creation Nation. Thanks very much to Telefilm for funding this project.

Creator/Writer: Carmen Wright

Cover/Pencils: Patricio Plaza

Inks: Christian Major

Colours: Aya Ikeda-Barry

Letters: Ed Brisson

Editor: Alex Cieslik

Publisher: Zeros to Heroes Media

Published: 2008

Read the full comic in the deluxe reader, with peel-away pages to see the various stages of the artwork, in the Zeros2Heroes archives.

Last post, I talked about my journey into “fast writing.”

All I can say, is what a blast!

Since starting this experiment, I’ve finished off a manuscript by writing about 35,000 words – 25,000 of those words in one week. The average has been around 800 words/hr – a bit slower than the 1,000 words/hr I initially reported. Things slowed down a bit as I got into the climax of the novel and when I worked for several hours in a row.

I’ve now gone back and re-read the entire manuscript (about 92,000 words). The great news, is how much I love it! The ending, all the stuff I wrote while fast writing, is very solid and needs very little clean up. Now, all I need to do is swing back through and make sure the right seeds are planted at the right time, that I’ve been consistent (does he have brown eyes or blue?) and fix typos.

I’ve got the whole thing set up in Scrivener, and am set to start the clean-up; then it’s off to some beta readers (which I need to recruit!).

What’s fabulous about this experiment, is learning that it IS possible to write well and write fast at the same time. Suddenly, all those stories I want to write are within reach.

Best of all, it’s super fun writing this way. :D

In recent weeks, I have been fascinated with the idea of writing fast. I’m not sure how I ended up on this… at some point early on it involved reading Dean Wesley Smith’s blog post about Killing the Sacred Cows of Publishing: Speed.

Since then, I have timed myself writing. I can consistently write 1,000 words per hour.

In his blog, Dean talks about accepting the notion that writing fast does not equate to writing badly. I already know this to be true at work writing news articles and other content — why should it be any different with fiction? Not only that, it’s really nice to realize that I can trust those 1,000 words to be good words and not waste a lot of time second-guessing myself. Or rewriting myself. That the first words out can, in fact, be the freshest, most honest and risk-taking words.

This flies in opposition to the thinking that in order to come up with one good idea, you must think of at least ten, because the first bunch will be too simplistic and you won’t get to the real gems until you get those obvious ones out of the way.

Can both be true? Probably.

But there are many tricks to get past the obvious and to the good stuff.

What if I let my subconscious sift through the options for me? Then, instead of jotting down ten ideas/options on index cards, I write fast, without self-editing and self-questioning, and trust that my subconscious has already figured things out. Trust that the story will pull me forward and I will automatically choose the right path once I start moving.

That’s a whole lot more fun, isn’t it?

The Continuum Comic is now in my hands! And I gotta say, the thrill of seeing the finished product is always great, it doesn’t seem to matter whether it’s a comic, or a book, or an article, or, to be honest, a clean house! I love finishing.

This project was very cool. I loved getting a bit of inside info on the Continuum series before it launched, like how things progressed to create the future world,  knowledge of Kiera’s past. When the series launched, it was exciting to see this world and Kiera come alive.

This time around, when I handed off the script, I didn’t get any peeks into the production and had no idea who the artists would be. What a fantastic surprise that they chose Patricio Plaza, who illustrated my very first comic, Rip Current. Thanks also to Jeffrey Jang, Ed Brisson, Jeremy Smith and of course, Morgan Jeske and Ryan Nadel, who are both always a pleasure to work with. Thanks for thinking of me!

It’s been a good summer. Busy, but not much travel. On the days when I haven’t been at work, I would wake up, get my coffee and breakfast and sit out in my gazebo and write.

I’d write until I’d done 1,000 words. Then stop and go about my day. It’s been such a treat.

Starting Monday, vacation time will be done. I’ll be back to early mornings, work, school for the kids, and of course an assortment of other activities and commitments.

I’m going to miss my mornings writing in the gazebo. I wonder how I’ll incorporate writing into my daily routine.

It’s sad to consider the reality that I won’t be able to keep up the same pace but I’m grateful to have had a chance to build some momentum.

Perhaps I’ll squeeze in some time at the start of the day but if that’s that case, it’s going to be darker and colder out in my gazebo! We’ll see how long I’ll last before moving inside.

Wish me luck.

I read an interesting article in Novel Writing, a Writer’s Digest publication I picked up a few weeks ago. In it Elizabeth Sims wrote about naming your characters. It’s a great piece.

As I read it, I got thinking about surnames. I very rarely give my characters surnames. I spend a great deal of time figuring out the right first name, but unless the character is referred to by their surname, I never give them one. Ever!

I wonder, am I doing my characters a disservice? Is a surname like that piece of back story, where you figure it out to help you understand your characters, but don’t necessarily use it in the manuscript? Does lack of a surname make it harder for readers to connect with a character? Is there a magic rule to using surnames, or even first names, that they ought to be mentioned at a particular interval?

I have no answers, and would love to hear what others think!

In other news… got my first payment for my eBook sales through my publishing venture, Bright Green Books. Thank you, Smashwords! The cheque from Amazon should be here any day…

And the books just keep on selling.  :)

Since when was writing about platforms and social media?

I’ve been doing a bunch of reading lately, fiction and non-fiction. Most of the non-fiction has been about writing, and more specifically, it was supposed to be about how to leverage what I’ve already done and figuring out how to take it to the next level in terms of both craft and getting exposure.

The two books were quite useful and practical, and both have had excellent reviews:

• Dollars & Sense: the definitive guide to self-publishing success
• You are a writer: so start acting like one

There are sections in both books, at the beginning, about the job of writing. How important it is to write well. Start writing, write well, keep writing. Nothing new here.

The meat of these two books, the “how-two”, is about social media and the web. It’s about brand, platform, positioning yourself as an expert,  how you connect and network online to build a following, and how by building a following, you’re creating a built-in audience for your product, which in turn, makes publishers want to work with you and your followers buy your books.

Dollars & Sense has some great, detailed steps and would work well for you if… a) your audience is adults; and b) you have a specific product/focus.

You are a Writer has pretty much the exact same steps as Dollars & Sense, but it’s shorter, with less detail and fewer examples. It would be useful to you if…  a) your audience is adults; b) you have a specific product/focus; and c) you are a non-fiction writer.

As mentioned, these books will be useful to you IF you are in a situation exactly like or very similar to those noted. They are about self-marketing for writers and how to make money. They are also contingent on having time to both write and build your brand.

Trouble is, even though I’ve taken away some practical online marketing tips from both, they’re not as useful to me as I would have hoped. I suspect this is because I am not their target audience. I don’t have lots of time. And my products vary — I don’t have a single niche and sometimes, my key audience isn’t in a position to be online or spending money. If I follow these tips, I would be building and maintaining multiple platforms for multiple audiences. Can’t imagine how much time that would take! Plus, not sure I’d get many parents following me because of the chapter books I’m writing for their elementary school-aged kids.

The other, more useful book (for me) was:

• Do the work

Do the work has practical steps about the work of writing, about bringing the passion, following your gut, how to move forward and create the work you want to create. Beginning, middle, end.

I appreciated this book. I like the idea that the most important thing is to create work you are excited about. I’d rather experiment and try many different things than lock myself into to a specific platform. At the end of the day, I am a storyteller, not a brand. The story will dictate the audience and the format.  No story will be cast aside.

Writing ought to be an adventure, not a branding exercise.

Had a great little project come up this spring – to write an episode for a comic book tie-in for the new Showcase series, Continuum. The comic includes eight “episodes” that delve into Kiera’s past. Which, given the time travel involved (she’s from the future and sent back in time to current-day Vancouver), means that her past doesn’t exist yet!

This is the first comic I’ve worked on where I haven’t seen any of the artwork as it’s in progress. Not that I would have any control over it, but it kinda drives me bonkers! I guess I’ll be surprised like everyone else when it’s finally out.

In the meantime, I’ll be watching the series on Showcase.ca … and checking out the ARG.

It’s been a busy few months, but the publishing efforts continue. Quick follow-up: yes, decided to go direct to Kindle/Amazon for Spy Skills for Girls, which is turning into a steady two books per day in sales. Barnes & Noble sales seemed to stop as of February 4, for some odd reason, after daily reported sales and Kobo is still not reporting properly. I also decided to do premium PDF versions and sell them directly through the Bright Green Books website.

Just published the first of the Tri-City Mystery series: Mystery of the Scarlet Cat. It’s live on Amazon… still no sales there and wow, what a trick to actually finding it. There is no “New Release” quick search for Kindle books and so the Scarlet Cat launched about ten pages into a search for Kindle Books>Children’s Chapter Books>Mysteries based on Publication Date, after a slew of Nancy Drew and other “pre-orders” from the big publishers that extend all the way into August of this year. Hopefully, that won’t be the case in other retailer sites. We’ll see in the next few weeks.

The other two Tri-City Mysteries will be released shortly, and then once all three are out, I’ll explore a more agressive promotional campaign for them.

It’s official now! Spy Skills for Girls has been published by Bright Green Books! You can buy it now on Smashwords, and soon to be distributed to Kobo, B&N, Apple and more.

Here’s how the last pieces have gone…

I reformatted and uploaded through Smashwords. If you follow their instructions, which are very detailed, I’m sure you will have no problem. Mine went through the first time, no problems. But I did see some things that I wanted to change. So I did go back in and assign “Page Breaks” before my chapter heads.

The ISBNs…. ! I messed up the first time I tried to assign them via CISS, because I did not exactly follow the instructions CISS sent me! How ironic. I had tried to add/change too much information. They said to only fill out five fields, but I did more than that. And it didn’t work. I followed the instructions this time around and voila! ISBNs. So, went back over to Smashwords to assign one to Spy Skills for Girls. Now, it’s pending approval for their Premium Catalogue.

Next steps… deciding whether to go directly through Kindle/Amazon for the Kindle version of the book, whether I want to sell a premium PDF version through my Bright Green Books website and how to best promote the books leading into Christmas.

So, I had an email back from Collections Canada (CISS), and the good news is that the Product Form Detail and the Rights fields are for my use only. Which means that I can fill them in however I want. But, I suspect that I will note the product form type (PDF, ePub, etc.) as a tag at the end of the product name, so I can keep track. I did read somewhere, can’t recall now, about feeding this product info into another larger international database, and it would be nice to be able to ensure my data in that spot is accurate, but I’m not going to worry about that just yet.

My focus now is on getting the Bright Green Books website up and functional. I’ve set it up using WordPress (like this site), and used a theme called Eureka by Colorlabs. I really like this theme because it will work on the web and mobile devices like smartphones and iPads. If I am publishing eBooks, it really makes sense to have a site that works well on mobile devices.

There are some things that are frustrating with the theme and I need to figure out what to do to fix. Like, the images used for the products are the same as the images used on the slider on the home page. But what works well as a wide slider image does not automatically scale down to a nice thumbnail. Using the book’s cover as the featured image may not work well either. So, I’m experimenting with that over the weekend.

Any suggestions, ideas, feedback are welcome!

Now that I’ve registered with Collections Canada (CISS) and gotten my ISBN prefix, I am ready to start assigning ISBN numbers to the eBooks I plan to publish.

But, as straightforward as the forms are, I have some questions. These may be answered somewhere online… found them yet! I’ve emailed CISS with a few questions and I’ll update here when I find out. Here’s some interesting things…

1. Product Form and Product Form Details. It’s easy to determine the Product Form – Electronic Book Text. But the common eBook formats (i.e. ePub and .mobi) and not available on the list of Product Form Details. So what to do?

2. Rights Information. The default is “For sale with exclusive rights in the specified countries” and then “Canada” is listed. What about the rest of the world?

3. ISBNs for each type of eBook. According to ISBN.org, each format of an eBook needs its own ISBN number. That means, that the ePub version needs a different ISBN than the PDF version. So that’s at leasat three ISBN numbers per eBook (ePub, .mobi and PDF). Times by each eBook and gosh I’m glad I’m Canadian and can get ISBN numbers for free!

But a few things are in place and ready to go. The website: Bright Green Books. The illustrator (Siena!) for the three chapter books is hard at work. Registered at Smashwords, where I plan to publish through.

What a wonderful summer. I travelled to Sri Lanka with my family and had a fantastic time. It was everything I expected; it was nothing I expected. I miss it!

Then, back home, back to chores, back to school, and now, finally, back to writing. Re-read my revisions to the two chapter books and they’ll be ready to publish as soon as the covers are ready. One more book to write and luckily, it takes place at this exact time of year so I am hoping to be motivated by the fog, rain and smell of spawning salmon.

I have some ideas brewing for another chapter book series, but first I’ll finish with these three, then publish the non-fiction top secret chapter book, then see what I’m in the mood for. Fun times!

It’s been a while since I’ve been active online, at least for my personal writing. It’s funny, but things really do seem to flow more readily at different times. After many months reading, thinking, dreaming, etc., it all coalesced recently with the decision to take my kids chapter books and publish them myself online.

Today, I set up a new domain for the brand I’ll publish under… Bright Green Books. Nothing there now! But some basics will be there in the next few weeks or months, depending on whether I decide to publish before or after my extended summer vacation.

What’s happening now, besides the website? The first chapters for the two chapter books, Mystery of the Scarlet Cat and Mystery of the Tin Can Bandit, have been revised, based on some feedback from potential publishers. Soon, I’ll put the revisions up on this site. Also, there’s a promising young artist who is working on a cover illustration… I’m very excited about that!

And then, I’ve been reading until my eyes hurt about the world of ePublishing and am very grateful for a number of resources that I’ve come across, which I’ll probably list in a future blog. But, as an aside, I’ve been capturing all the info I’ve come across in a great tool called Evernote. I can store all kinds of content from whatever device I’m on (desktop, netbook, android phone) and it all goes into my Evernote account and I can reference it from anywhere. It’s great!

More another day, but am happy to be moving forward once again.

The time for keeping quiet is over… the project I worked on a few months ago launched earlier today at NYCC!

The Are You Awake project has many pieces. My bit turned out to be the launch piece — a 32-page comic given out to every NYCC attendee. About 60,000 I think.  Zowie! My gig? Writing the script for the comic. The next bits? An Alternate Reality game, which is really cool, and a big payoff down the road, which I don’t even know about.

Lots more to talk about, but need to take off to take care of my sick guinea pig, GiGi. I’ll leave you with this pic…

Someone reading the comic at NYCC 2010

Just learned today that neiman storyboard – which looks to be a story process blog from the school of journalism at Harvard – has done a review of the Manga Memoirs project.

It’s interesting to see how a disinterested third party views the project, particularly in the context of “memoirs and manga.”  Check it out here.

I can’t really say I’d read any memoirs or biographies in a manga, comic or even graphic novel format before tackling my “Traveller” piece, which was chosen for the first Manga Memoirs anthology. But now, having seen the finished version of the anthology, I can say that the result is most engaging and I would be tempted to pick up other, similar memoirs.

If you haven’t read the Manga Memoirs Volume 1, head on over to the website now and check it out. And… perhaps think of your own manga memoir for volume 2.

Spring WRITING fever that is!

Not that I’m feverishly writing. Still, at the rate things have been going lately, any writing is good writing. Chapter books? Not so much. But, a manuscript that I’ve been long wanting to work on has been calling to me this spring and I have a) got a new little Acer netbook and b) started work on it again. It’s an unusual, leisurely story and the actual writing has gone the same way. No outline at all, just a general idea of where I want to go and letting the characters tell me their journey. I don’t typically work this way.

At the same time, my comic, Rip Current, which seems to have been hibernating in cyberspace but in truth has been simmering behind the scenes, will need some new story work and promotion. Not quite sure what that’s going to look like yet, but I know it’ll be an adventure!

One last thing… I’ve noticed that if you use Tweetdeck, and do a search for the hashtag #amwriting, you can keep that column on deck and get a steady stream of tweets from other writers busily writing. I find it quite inspirational.

Apparently so. November, gone. December, whoosh!

Urg.

I do have a good reason… the past few weeks I’ve been ramping up to take on my new position as manager of the communications department. Yeah! This is very exciting news! Lots to do, though. And lots to think about, plan for, all that good stuff. I’m hopeful things will cool down in a few months, once we get through the ‘busy season’ and get another full time staffer up and running (that’d make us four full time, one part time — a good sized crew).

Unfortunately, the I didn’t get a single spare second to review my chapter books. Considering how things are looking, I may not get to them until March.

In the meantime, I’ll try to squeeze in some promo of my Writer’s Plan website, write the occasional blog, maintain my modest web presence and draw upon the virtue I so often seem to need: patience.

I’ve cleared my desk, sorted my papers, mopped the kitchen floors and now it’s time to get to work.

At SiWC last month, I had a couple of appointments, one with Mededith Kaffel, and the other I lucked into at the last minute, with Sally Harding.

My goal for the conference was to pitch my two chapter books, but I brought my other goodies as well. You never know what an agent might want to see!

Meredith wasn’t representing chapter books, she’s more into mid-grade and YA. So, it was a pass for her. But while there, I asked about my Anastasis YA project. The original concept for the book was three 50,000 word books, and I’ve completed the first. Last time I was at the conference, the suggestion was to put all three parts together into a longer manuscript, of about 80,000 words. Meredith echoed the advice on length. Times change, I suppose, and 50,000 is not long enough to chew on.

Sally took a look at my chapter books. I’ve always targeted them to elementary school reluctant readers, or those in ESL or language immersion programs. My own kids were in a French immersion program and struggled in elementary school when the books that they wanted to read were too long and the language too complex, while the easier stuff was for ‘babies’. Sally read through and felt that I’d missed the mark. Even though they have a reading level of 2.5, some of the language was still too complex. As well, the first chapter of Tin Can Bandit was too wordy and needed to get to the action faster. “More Passion; higher stakes” she said, refering to the fact that the story seemed a bit too… nice. Guess I’m going to have to shed my Canadian niceness!

My plan for November/December had been to launch into a draft of the third book in the series, but instead, I’ll rewrite the initial chapters for Scarlet Cat and Tin Can Bandit. I think once I get going, it’s on track, but I’m wasting that first chapter getting to full steam and I need to start full steam. Once that’s done, I’ll draft the third book and enjoy Christmas.

One other thing that has become apparent while pitching these books. Few seem to ‘get’ that there’s a need for books like this for kids at the elementary level. What I thought was a unique positioning statement is NOT working in my favour. No one knows what to do with this type of book; where to ’shelve it’. The few children’s librarians I’ve asked don’t have a list of books for young readers who want an exciting story, with an older main character, at an easy reading level. In my opinion, these readers don’t suddenly show up as teenagers – they’ve had the same challenges all along. Why not target them sooner? Perhaps that’ll be another mission for me.

As promised, here’s the follow-up to my web traffic challenge. In October, I ran two promos of my new website, The Writer’s Plan.

First off, I announced the site at one of my favourite communities: Books & Writers. The announcement was posted on Oct 12, and there was a jump in visits. From zero to ten unique visitors, at best, to over 40 for the each of the next two days. Then, tapered off to a daily average of about 10.

At SiWC, I left some postcards on the info table for attendees to pick up. I’d printed 100, and I’d say about half got picked up. Following the conference, unique visitors jumped from 9 on Sunday, to 19 on Monday.

Evaluating the results… to be effective, I wanted to see a jump in unique visitors by 50% after the conference, and the result was 100%. Worth the $65? Yes, I believe so. There may be some who visit the site over the next month or so, because they finally have a chance to go through their conference notes (I haven’t yet!!) But, by comparison, not as big a result as introducing to a community where I’m known.

Granted, these are very small numbers for a brand new site. But, it’s interesting to note the patterns of activity, that there have been 39 downloads of the templates, and where people have been connecting from. This month, November, I’ll do a few more announcements and see what happens.

Tomorrow, I’m off to the Sunday session at Surrey Internations Writers’ Conference (SiWC). And yes, I’m happy to report I have completed several of my ‘tactics’ from my Writer’s Business Plan, which I’ve been using to stay on track to reaching my goals. (Remember, you can see all about planning at my website: The Writer’s Plan.)

Attending the conference was one of my tactics. I’d seriously considered not attending this year, for financial reasons only since the conference is always great. But when reviewing my plan, I could see that the investment was worth it. I need to take advantage of situations that raise my exposure. Plus, with the conference, I’m able to learn new things to improve my skills.

Something that wasn’t a tactic in my plan, but that I’ll add to my list of accomplishments, was the creation of 100 postcard-sized promotions for The Writer’s Plan website, which I left on the information table yesterday when I had lunch with my writer friend Katrina Archer. I’m curious to see how many of the postcards get picked up and further, how many of those people ended up visiting the site. By the time I add in printing cost and the cost of purchasing images, I’d say this test will have cost about $65. How would I evaluate whether it was worth it? Let’s say with an increase of visitors to the site of about 50% over the next two weeks. I’ll let you know how it goes…