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Kobo Writing Life Director Mark Lefebvre
interviews authors Sean Platt and David Wright about their Collective Inkwell properties which include the
highly successful serial thrillers
Yesterday’s Gone,
White Space and Available
Darkness.
Mark chats with Sean and Dave about the
following:
- Collaboration between writers – tools used, the logistics of
how they do it and the importance of honesty with each other (ie,
not pulling punches when something “sucks”)
- Writing a serialized story and Dave’s behind-the-scenes
inspiration from the old TV series “Cliffhangers” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cliffhangers_%28TV_series%29)
- Communication with readers, reader feedback & responding to
fan email
- Budgeting writing time, email time and the Sanelater email
filter (Sanebox - http://www.sanebox.com/)
- Sean’s 5 sentence email rule
- The importance of the duality of Mr. Sunshine and Mr.
Cynical
- A mention of Unicorn Western (co-written by Sean and Johnny B.
Truant) –
Free First Book and
Full Saga (Books 1 to 9)
- Writing an evil character like
Bericio Wolfe (favourite “bad guy” from Yesterday’s Gone) First
Episode – Free,
Full First Season (Episodes 1 to 6),
Full Second Season (Episodes 7 to 12),
Full Third Season (Episodes 13 to 18)
- Keeping track of timelines and Dave’s
favourite tool – Scapple (a
brainstorming tool from the makers of Scrivener.
- Advice to writers just beginning on
their path: which includes the importance of patience, trusting
your instincts and the rabbit-hole of distractions that can steal
an author’s time
- Teaser talk about the sci-fi series
The Beam (co-written by Sean and Johnny B. Truant) – Free
First Episode or
Full Season (6 Episodes) eBook
- The thrill of hearing from new fans
who are Kobo readers.
(And Dave’s love of Canada and Canadians)
- Being real, being human and being
honest
- Sean’s perspective on the importance of speed, genre hopping
and how he’s like a monkey
- How sharing so much via their weekly
podcast (Self-Publishing Podcast)
keeps them honest
- The importance of giving yourself
permission to suck in your first draft and keeping at writing,
ideally every day
OTHER NOTES
Mark talks
about Kobo’s “open, social and collaborative” nature and the
concept of embracing all retailers and making your work available
everywhere – how certain retailer’s exclusivity programs are akin
to asking ALL your customers to only shop at a single
bookstore. Not always
a realistic option.
Q&A Answer
to: Do I need an
ISBN to publish on Kobo Writing Life?
Answer: No, you don’t need an ISBN. You can certainly BYOI (bring
your own ISBN) or, if you don’t we’ll assign a “dummy” ISBN – with
a note on some of our retailer partners that don’t ingest dummy
ISBNs
MISC
LINKS
Self-Publishing Podcast (which Sean & David co-host with Johnny
B. Truant) - AKA
SPP
http://selfpublishingpodcast.com/
[SPP Episode
57 – With KWL’s Mark Lefebvre as guest: http://selfpublishingpodcast.com/57/]
Listen to the
audio version of Yesterday’s Gone via the YG
podcast
http://collectiveinkwell.com/category/podcast/