Newsletter #105 — Inside Fiction
May 1, 2025
Newsletter #105 — Inside Fiction
Followup Video, Inside Fiction — In the video in which I read Chapter 1 of Exit Velocity, I promised that my next video would be a discussion of five fictional techniques as they appear in that first chapter. I'm going to call all my analytical blogs Inside Fiction, just so viewers can immediately see which ones they are. Here's the link.
Discussion Questions — I've posted a list of Exit Velocity discussion questions on my website, where you can see the questions on the left-hand side of the page as you scroll down. Be aware that the way the website is set up by The Authors Guild, PDF files cannot be seen online, they can only be downloaded. So whichever one of the five sets of Discussion Questions you click on — that file will immediately download to your device.
I'm already using these to market my novel to book clubs. As you might intuit, I started out with a list of General Discussion Questions, 17 in total. But then I thought: I really need to aim at specific book clubs, such as political-fiction clubs, science-fiction clubs, women-fight-back, and so on. That led me to write four more sets of discussion questions. (There's always more work, isn't there?)
CONvergence 2025 — My first CONvergence "assignment" has come through. I will be reading Chapter 1 of Exit Velocity and discussing aspects of fiction as I employed them: character, conflict, inciting incident, and so on. That will be from 11 am - noon on Saturday, July 5.
Midland Authors Award — Exit Velocity did not win the Midland Authors 2025 Best Adult Fiction Award. Deeply is more disappointed than I am — he had hoped to host a Donut Party in a large venue. Wrigley Field, perhaps. The Awards Banquet is May 13, and Phil and I have already purchased our tickets and chosen our entrees. All honorees (winners and finalists) will be given tables at which they can autograph their books.
Newsletter Moving — The Authors Guild, which hosts my website and my newsletter, will no longer publish author newsletters as of July 30. This means I have to move my newsletter to another host before that date. I have one in mind already.
The Authors Guild has said it will migrate all the subscribers to the new host, so in theory you won't have to do anything. I, however, will have to do a lot of work, I'm sure. [SIGH}
This newsletter, #105, is coming to you from the Authors Guild. I don't know which newsletter will be the first from the new site. But I will keep you informed.
Titles vs. Subtitles — Read about them here.