G. Norman Lippert's Blog

Greetings, all! My latest YA novella, Brass, is available for the first time in fully dramatized audio. With a full cast, musical score, and sound effects, the story unfolds like a mind movie. Grab yours at audible, listen, and let me know what you think with a rating/review!

https://www.audible.com/pd/Brass-Audi...

www.jamespotterbooks.com is live and it is a fully interactive 3-D experience! It will *probably* work on your phone or devices, but it was built for larger screens (so you can enjoy all the little details and secrets! Go check it out and let me know what you think.

Greetings faithful readers! I am making the all-too-rare appearance here to announce the launch of my all new website, with info about my latest works! Take a look and tell me if it is not, in fact, the coolest author website you have ever seen...

www.gnlippert.com

Available now! "Redeye" has been called a cross between Stephen King and the Twilight Zone. Get it now...


http://www.amazon.com/Redeye-G-Norman...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyBWX...

You all know what a chrysalis is, right? It's what those of us born before cell phones called a cocoon. It's the thing a caterpillar wraps up in before its big change to butterfly-hood.

Well I'm not about to change into a butterfly-- probably more of a lunar moth, if you want to be particular about it (and I know you do)-- but I am going through a bit of a metamorphosis as an author.

Most of you know me via my James Potter books. Thanks for that! I've thoroughly enjoyed that ride, and plan to continue to.

A few of you have taken the additional chance, however, on my non-magical-boy-wizard original stories, such as "The Riverhouse" (which hit bestseller status on Amazon, thanks to your indulgence) and "Ruins of Camelot".

For those who've taken the leap, you'll know that my truest writing style is a lot closer to, say, Stephen King than J. K. Rowling.

For that reason, I am instituting an official redefining of my online presence, breaking the James Potter stories (young adult) away from my original fiction (adult supernatural thriller).

If you decide to dip into my upcoming novel, "The Freezing Season", you will see why I'm doing this. It's dark. It's not for the young. If you like scary fiction with a supernatural element, horror that still belies my ironclad belief that hope still trumps all, then I do hope you'll check it out, and let me know what you think.

But the point of all this is as follows: I am launching a new FaceBook page for my original, non-JP-related fiction. With this change, I am hoping to share my definitively non-young-adult, very much grown-up works.

If you choose to follow me there, I hope you will drop me a comment or a note. I will do my best to follow up. I look very forward to interacting with my readers, sharing free content, discussing upcoming released, works in progress, and even just blathering and ranting a bit.

I do hope to see you there. We've got a long, strange, occasionally frightening journey ahead, but I think we'll find a way to have some fun with it, to laugh in the face of some evil, to see how hope does indeed prevail over some of the more harrowing boogies we try not to see behind the curtains of life, waiting for their moment on the stage...

Greets all! For those who haven't been around for a James Potter book launch, the tradition is to release one chapter per day for the duration of the book (usually this lasts about a month).

The launch has officially begun! Head over to the James Potter website to read!

Alternatively, if you are one of those ravenous readers who cannot bear to wait a day between chapters, fear not: once the initial launch is complete, I will be releasing complete editions of the new book in most eReader formats. This version will include a new introduction and custom title.

However you choose to read, THANKS for your constant encouragement, and I look forward to your comments and critique.

NINE MORE DAYS! A few vital stats about the new book:

Currently, "James Potter and the Morrigan Web" is 185,000 words long (which amounts to about 550 pages in printed book form) and no, I am not done with it yet.

It introduces several all new characters, many of whom have been alluded to here (and whom I will introduce in a series of short excerpts shortly).

I haven't yet broken the book up into chapters, but I am confident that the initial release-- one chapter per day-- will cover a month's time. My apologies if this is your first experience with this: it's a bit of a tradition by now. It allows for loads of fun speculation and discussion between you and I as the story unfolds-- and I admit that I enjoy that immensely. Truly, if you have never experienced it before, it is a very unique and interactive literary experience.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, I am already turning my attention toward the remainder of the series. I am considering writing just ONE MORE James Potter story. This is for several reasons, but the most important reason is this: I think that's what the story wants. I COULD drag the tale out for seven complete books, but I believe five is the right number.

If all goes as planned, the fifth and final book in the series will be called "James Potter and the Crimson Thread".

All right, no more teasing: The official release of "James Potter and the Morrigan Web" will begin Sunday, July 7-- the day that the events in chapter one actually occur (albeit in the year 2020).

For those of you (and there are MANY) who weren't along for the ride during previous releases, here's how it works: I release one chapter per day via www.jamespotterseries.com. This will continue for approximately a month (still haven't finalized the chapters, since the book isn't quite finished yet).

As always, conversations, conjecture and discussion regarding each day's chapters is encouraged-- and I will take active part in them, both here, on the James Potter Facebook Page, and the official James Potter forum, http://grottokeep.fr.yuku.com/

So spread the word! We're heading back to Hogwarts in a little over a month! And keep an eye out-- I will be releasing a new teaser trailer sometime this weekend! ONWARD!

You all know I can't stay away from the James Potter world forever. Now that "Ruins of Camelot" is out, I have finally officially returned to the JP series and resumed work on "James Potter and the Morrigan Web".

This book will take us back to Hogwarts, however we will find the school term a rather different experience than ever before. In keeping with the theme of creating parallels between the JP books and their HP counterparts, we will be exploring some additional magical schools (as Ms. Rowling did in "Goblet of Fire").

I won't give too much away, except to say that we should expect to visit some new locations and perhaps even encounter some old familiar faces.

Additionally, we'll be sinking a bit further into the megaplot-- the over-arching story that comprises the entire series. This will involve some serious questions about Petra-- can she really control the evil that lives in her?-- and Judith, the Lady of the Lake-- what is her continuing plan for chaos, and how will it involve her "sister fates", Petra and Izzy?

Of course, we will also be exploring in much more detail the expanding relationships of James, Rose, Ralph, Zane, Scorpius, and many others, including (finally!) Lily, the youngest Potter, who will be attending Hogwarts for the first time.

One last tidbit that might prove interesting: this year will see some much more active involvement from adult Harry himself. We will find that his involvement in the events at the end of "Vault of Destinies" have placed him in a tenuous position with the Ministry, thus forcing him to get rather more creative in his efforts, not only as head Auror, but as husband and father. Harry will prove, methinks, that he is still the stuff of heroes.

If you would like to follow along as the new tale is written, I will be posting page counts, hints and tidbits on the James Potter Series facebook page and the official Hogwarts Next Generation Twitter feed. Sign up, spread the word, and look for the new book this Autumn!

And as always, onward and upward!

When I first started this blog, I subtitled it “how not to succeed in publishing”. Or something like that. I changed it because I ended up talking about a whole bunch of stuff that had nothing to do with writing. I tend to blather when I don’t have a plot to keep me in line. At any rate, here I am talking about writing again, and I hope that that original subtitle doesn’t jinx me, because I am also hoping (probably against my better judgment) for a modicum of success at publishing.

Fortunately, despite the sort of stories I tend to write, I don’t believe in jinxes.


Unless this is your idea of a Jinx, then I'm all for it.

Tomorrow, December first, I will be releasing my latest book for the potential consumption of the reading masses. Ruins of Camelot has been a long time coming, which is sort of ironic* since it was one of the quickest books to write. I love this story. For that reason I tried –fruitlessly, as if it needed to be said– to get it fer-real published. No dice. Thus, as I indulgently explained in my previous post, I determined to throw caution (and perhaps good sense and my few remaining shreds of pride) to the wind and publish it myself.

Tomorrow, I will have my first glance at whether or not that gambit paid off.

At the risk of sounding like a bit of a megalomaniac, I have an idea that “Ruins of Camelot” might be worth keeping an eye on, even if you don’t like strong-female-lead, not-quite-high fantasy for the young-adult-crossover market (although really, why wouldn’t you, you old stick-in-the-mud?). Here’s why:

Self publishing might be on the verge of becoming a legit force in the book market. There have now been a few (a very few) bestsellers that were self published. The paper ceiling (ha-ha *cough*) has been torn through, paving the way for potential success for anyone who has a good tale to tell and the marketing savvy to promote it. For the first time in the history of books, the traditional publishing model can be bypassed on the road to mainstream success.

But it won’t be easy, and the problem is very simple.


and it isn't which how-to-be-a-publishing-success book to buy.

If you happen to be a wannabe writer like me, you know that literary agents and publishers set up obstacle courses to purposely complicate manuscript submission. They insist on seemingly arbitrary rules and arcane style preferences. They demand perfectly formatted manuscripts, written only in Times New Roman, double-spaced, on virgin recycled paper. They look for subtle hints that you don’t know the business and are therefore a talentless hack– things like book titles in ALL CAPS (a good sign), or query letters of more than one page (a bad sign), or whether you did enough research to know the names, species, and reading preferences of their pets and were sure to greet them all individually in the first paragraph (exceptionally good because it is impossible).

And as much as we hate this, there is a good reason for it: everyone thinks they can write.

I mean that literally. Everyone thinks they have a “book in them” (often the story of their life, which might be a distinctly American brand of self aggrandizement). Every moderately successful actor thinks they can turn bestselling autobiographer. Every radio talk show host catches the popular delusion that they harbor latent talent as a novelist. Everyone has a story to tell, and they believe that the only thing keeping that story off the bestseller charts is the writing of it.

Unfortunately, a lot of them do write it, and therein lies the problem. There is a tremendous– a truly monumental, earth-shaking, awe-inspiringly enormous– amount of completely hopeless dreck out there.

Literary agents and publishing houses handle this fact by the aforementioned obstacle course of rules, pitfalls and hurdles, thus weeding out the less-than-wholly-dedicated. By making the door into the publishing world very, very small and hard to squeeze through, they keep the flood of dreck manageable and hopefully only allow through that which is nominally worth reading.


the system isn't perfect.

Now, however, self publishing has created a whole new door– an enormous door that absolutely anyone can fit through, along with their one-thousand-page novel about time traveling puppies (“it’s like Air Buddies meets Back to the Future!”) and their collection of nihilistic free-verse anti-poetry (“Sign Language in Oven Mitts”). This avenue doesn’t generally bother with such mundane things as editing, promotion, or packaging (much less grammar or spell-checking). Thus, the mountain of dreck gets dumped directly into the consumer market, warts and all.

This is the problem that any good independent author has to struggle with. And this, I submit, is why “Ruins of Camelot” might be worth watching. All modesty aside, RoC has a great cover. It has a professional-looking website. The animated trailer is engaging and has an original score by a fantastic composer (Isaias Garcia, thank you very much). All told, RoC has gotten the sort of star treatment that would normally be reserved for a potential bestseller from a large publishing house. Furthermore, I have a dedicated FB page with over 5000 fans, and I have been shamelessly promoting the story to them for months, offering contests, excerpts and giveaways. They seem eager to get the book when it comes out.

In short, everything seems perfectly aligned for “Ruins of Camelot” to break through the mountain of self published dreck and emerge as a viable contender for anything published by the traditional method.

So will it?

It may not. No matter how shiny it is, RoC may stay buried like a Rolex watch under a pile of manure. Success will depend on one thing, and one thing only:


OK, maybe two things.

Initial sales.

When a book sells well in the first week or so, it climbs the bestseller charts. When it climbs the charts, it becomes more visible. The more visible it is, the more people will find it and consider buying it. This worked for my previous book, “The Riverhouse”, so I know it is possible. It just can’t be relied upon.

So there it is. This, if you are interested to know, is what I am fretting about today. “Ruins of Camelot” could be a bestseller. It could achieve the initial sales numbers needed to propel it up the charts and earn the consideration of the average reader who wouldn’t know my name if I kicked them in the shins wearing a clown suit (which I may resort to as a marketing plan if things don’t work out).

OR, RoC could just as easily be a complete dud. It could languish with limp sales because everyone is busy Christmas shopping for their great Aunt Martha, or is waiting to buy it on sale after Christmas (not gonna happen), or just plan on reading a free version that pops up on a file sharing site somewhere (I will come to your house with a baseball bat. Not really. But maybe yes.) In that case, RoC will be forgotten just like that Rolex watch buried in the dung heap. I will continue to crawl along under a crippling pall of self doubt, and most likely somewhere, somehow, a puppy will die.

More importantly, for those of you who like my James Potter books and want to see the fourth book, “James Potter and the Morrigan Web” completed soon, I can only say that if RoC sells well, JPMW will come along a lot faster, mostly because I won’t have to spend all my time making inane animations to sell car insurance and checking accounts to hapless television viewers. To put it bluntly, sales of RoC mean more free JP stories.


money goes in, books come out (and a little nuclear waste).

But enough of that.

The point is this: if independent authoring (I do so dislike the term “self published”) is going to ever be a truly viable option for anyone who hopes to sell more than a half-dozen copies to their immediate family, “Ruins of Camelot” might be a good canary-in-the-coal-mine. Everything is lined up for it to succeed. It has the promotion, the packaging, the potential audience. If it does, then maybe this truly is a viable option for the dedicated indie writer. If it doesn’t…

Well, maybe the book just stinks. It’s possible, yes?

(sigh!)
*”ironic” in the Alanis Morrisette sense, not the Webster’s Dictionary sense, so keep it to yourself, smartie.