I am pleased to announce that
- Rob Mahan Books -
has launched the publishing company
- Marietta Book Works -

If you were following the website Rob Mahan Books, kindly visit Marietta Book Works to update your bookmark, e-mail subscription or RSS feed for the new website.

Please also visit the new website for An Irish Miracle, a novel by Rob Mahan that will be released by Marietta Book Works in the Spring of 2012. Be sure to also follow An Irish Miracle for posts about the novel, excerpts, and the latest news about its upcoming release!

This is great news on a number of levels:

• Emerging authors and established authors now have yet another option to get their works directly into their reader’s hands.
• The book publishing experience behind this new suite of self-publishing tools may prove to be an advantage over some existing self-publishing options.
• The wide distribution option covers both print and e-book formats across most major online bookseller outlets . . . including Amazon!
• This new revenue stream is also helping Penguin discover new authors for their traditional publishing business. That’s a win-win situation!

I think the biggest revelation with this announcement is the indication that The Big Six are coming around to a self-publishing trend that is popular with both authors and readers. You and I already know it’s a trend that’s here to stay!

Here are links to the Penguin Group USA’s announcement and a related article in today’s Wall Street Journal:

• Book Country Launches Self Publishing Services
• Self-Publishers Get Help:
  Penguin Starts Service as Big Houses See Digital’s Potential

Photo Credit: Soggydan on Flickr

I didn’t do a very good job taking feedback from my “alpha” beta reader* on the first draft of my first novel, An Irish Miracle. One could say my initial responses were a bit defensive, as most of them started with “Well, I did that because . . .” It soon became obvious taking that approach would eliminate the possibility of future feedback from any beta reader, and I desperately needed all the feedback I could get. I was setting out on the path from engineer to author quite alone.

It took me several tries, but with some very helpful coaching, I started to catch on. My responses to feedback began sounding more like “That’s really interesting. Would you please tell me more about what you mean . . .” For the second draft, my circle of beta readers expanded to two. From that feedback, I learned the term “in media res” and rearranged the timeline of the entire story, which was a big improvement.

For the third and fourth drafts, my circle of beta readers continued to expand and I worked at my new skill of taking feedback gracefully. I got volumes of excellent critical feedback that helped me to polish my novel. I also made some observations about taking feedback on my writing:

• The most critical feedback, often the most difficult to hear or to read, was absolutely the most helpful. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, I guess.
• The feedback varied considerably, depending on how beta readers experienced the story through their own filters and life experiences, giving some insight into how a broader audience might react to the story and to the characters.
• It was ultimately up to me, as the author, to decide how to treat each item of feedback I received. Whatever the decision, always gracefully and with sincere appreciation for the gifts of time, thought and effort the feedback represented.
• It paid dividends to seek out beta readers who were a lot smarter than me.

*A beta reader reads a written work with an eye to improving story, characters, and general style before the work is published. Of course, my “alpha” beta reader is my lovely wife Linda, who is an avid reader in her own right and who is a lot smarter than me!

Write First

Many athletes have pre-game rituals so why can’t authors have pre-writing session rituals, too? I certainly do.

My first ritual (technically, it’s third if you count the first as coffee and the second as settling my four-legged writing companions into their beds . . . more on them in a future post) is to set the mood in my lonely writer’s garret with music. Not just any music, though. During the hundreds of writing sessions it took to create An Irish Miracle, I have listened to the same track . . . over and over again. I don’t want get distracted by catchy lyrics while I’m writing. I want the music to help me slip quietly and efficiently into the “writer’s dream” state of mind (more on the writer’s dream in a future post, too). Now my brain will forever associate “Insight & Intuition” from the Brainwave Suite with the stories in An Irish Miracle. (You can listen to a short sample of “Insight & Intuition” here.)

My second official ritual is to “Write First”. It may not be true for everyone, but writing in the morning is definitely the most productive creative time for me. I’ve heard it said that no good writing has ever been done on a computer connected to the Internet. Having vast resources of background research material literally at my fingertips while I’m writing is invaluable, but if I don’t “Write First”, it’s too easy for one e-mail reply to lead to an interesting news article that leads to paying bills or an idea for a new blog post and my productive, creative morning has slipped by.

So identify the rituals that work for you and stick to them . . . even if you have to resort to writing them down on a sticky note. You can always tape it to your monitor after the sticky wears off!

(I’m planning a science fiction novel as a future project. I think I might listen to “A Storm is Coming” from “LOTR: The Return of the King” while I’m writing it.)

Ohio Farm Horses

My upcoming novel, An Irish Miracle, spans over a half a century and two countries. With all the strife in the real world today, the stories in it offer a respite, a brief glimpse of simpler times and simpler places.

Born in 1945, life for twin boys on an Ohio family farm is filled with hard work. The growing seasons mean plowing, planting and worrying about the rain. Only after the day’s work is there time for pick-up games, pony rides, and swimming. When the harvest season begins, daylight is reserved for bringing in the crops and baling the neighbor’s hay for spending money. The first day of a new school year means the ground will soon be frozen solid.

Their close-knit family is happy and secure, but with one ill-fated decision by their father, an old-school farmer and a war veteran, life for the boys begins to change. When the first Irish-Catholic president is assassinated, life for the whole family changes. After the arrival of two draft notices, the twin brothers set out on separate paths for the first time in their lives, one to the jungles of Vietnam and one to the quiet countryside of western Ireland.

Were they really simpler times and simpler places? I think so, but perhaps you should decide for yourself.

The Catch

One of the most common questions asked of authors is “Where do you get the ideas for your stories?” If someone would ask me that question, I might risk getting their eyes rolled at me and answer “from my thoughts” or even more briefly “everywhere” . . . but there are a couple of tricks involved.

The first trick is recognizing the thoughts that might make good story ideas. Much like a photographer or a painter that sees what appears to be an everyday scene and recognizes the potential for a beautiful or powerful picture, when I have thoughts (and that’s nearly all the time), I almost subconsciously run them through a “Would that make a good story idea?” filter. The idea for the novel I’m currently working on came from a dream I had a few days after my son moved across the country for the first time. Stories in the news often get caught in that filter. Would a vigilante that got away with abusing animal abusers escalate his behavior? Random thoughts in unlikely situations can get caught in the filter, too. Out for pizza one night, someone at the table across the aisle sneezed. Gross? Yes, but what if I looked around and everyone in the restaurant had started sneezing . . . and then falling out of their booths? Would I run out of the place or start taking notes for the opening of a horror story? Okay, so perhaps a little wild imagination is part of the first trick.

After recognizing a thought that might make a good story, and maybe embellishing it a bit, the second trick is capturing it before it gets away. With a mind like a steel sieve these days, leaving that task to memory isn’t such a good idea. That’s where the catch comes in. Pictured above is my fake-leather bound writing journal. It’s my story idea catch. I try to write down those thoughts that I recognize as potential story ideas in it. Sometimes I jot just a word or two or write several paragraphs. The central idea for my current novel is in there, recorded five years ago. But I don’t always have this fancy journal with me. I jot ideas down on whatever is handy . . . a spiral-bound notebook, a paper napkin (cloth if it’s a really good idea), the notes function on my phone, whatever is at hand. That journal has all kinds of random stuff taped into it. Neatness doesn’t count. What matters is to get all those good story idea in writing before they break their tenuous bonds and escape down Fading Memory Lane.

After almost two years of work, my first novel is in its fourth draft and close to its final form. On this blog, I plan to share thoughts and experiences from the path I have taken to get from a “blank sheet of paper” to 100,000+ words. I have no formal training in writing fiction, but I have always been a reader and books have always been a part of my life, thanks to my mother. (You’ll recognize her as Helen, a young girl in my short story The Dictionary.)

Topics for future posts will include where my ideas have come from so far, how I set out to write one kind of novel and ended up writing something entirely different, resources I’ve discovered along the way, some basic mechanics of writing I’ve learned, taking feedback gracefully, and the decision process I’m struggling with now—to go the traditional agent-publisher route or to self-publish.

And, of course, I’ll tell you a lot more about my first novel, An Irish Miracle.

Thanks for being out there!