by Ben Zackheim | Jan 29, 2013 | Writing |
He crawled under the table on 13 month old knees and looked up. The first memory crackled somewhere behind his left ear, forever, of sunlight breaking against the red and white-checkered plastic tablecloth.
At 8, he left his father forever.
At 10, he found a new one.
At 18, he made the friend of his life.
At 27, he watched him die.
At 31, he looked into his wife’s eyes for the first time.
At 36, he held his son.
At 41, he wrote. And wrote.
At 45, he wrote. And made money.
At 54, he kissed his son in front of his new dorm mate, and winked, as if to say “I’m a man who will always kiss his son, son.”
At 63, his heart protested.
At 64, he gave himself a break.
At 67, his heart protested too much.
A bullet-pointed life, like a bullet through a life.
by Ben Zackheim | Jan 24, 2013 | Book Promotion, Writing |
This is Part One of an ongoing series that will look into WordPress tools that do specific things we fiction writers must do.
With as little effort as possible, of course. We have writing to do!
One of the toughest, and most satisfying, tasks that I’ve had to tackle as a writer of fiction is my website. When I decided to follow my dream of yarning-it-up for a living, I knew that a site would be one of those dreaded (scary cello music) THINGS YOU MUST DO!
After all, how can anyone get by without their digital stamp on our collective Web brain? Sure, it’s possible, even likely, that no one will show up, but, hey, what if they do?
I was slow to get mine up and running. Writing, after all, is my focus. Who has time to go beyond securing the domain before the other guy with your name snags it?
With my background in corporate America, I tried very hard to make my site’s creation as difficult as possible. Surely there was no such thing as a one-size-fits-all platform for me to leverage. Surely, it would be tougher than simply finding one web service. Nonono, I’d have to find one service to enable sharing, another service to pretty the site up, another to build the foundation, another to place ads, blahblahblah.
Oh, and I’d have to pay for all of it. One way or another.
Then I followed the advice of a friend, and tried WordPress.
1. WordPress is mind-blowingly stupendous for writers.
(yes, i’m a fan)
For newbies out there, WordPress lets you create a site that can do absolutely anything. Blog thoughts, sell books, run ads, launch contests, evaluate traffic, quantify your hard work against a million criteria.
In a word, WordPress is the single best web product and service ever built. Yes, that’s hard to quantify, but damned if I’m even going to try. WordPress speaks for itself.
It is the one-stop shop I never thought could be built. It has everything I need. Awesome designs (called themes), social network sharing tools, SEO plug-ins, ad widgets, html boxes, A/B testing, cheap gasoline. All drag-and-drop-easy. And most are as free as air currently is.
2. WordPress is gut-wrenchingly distracting to writers.
My favorite built-in feature is the theme switching. I can download a new theme, preview it, and even push it into the world without losing any aspect of the hard work I’ve done on my real site. In all, I’ve only switched designs permanently once (it took about 15 minutes to make it work like I wanted). But I’ve tested a couple of hundred themes, which is great fun.
And a huge distraction.
With all of the themes available, I found it tough to settle on one for a couple of reasons:
- There were too many options.
- My needs are, shall we say, “fluid”.
Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so. I’ve spoken to dozens of writers who tell me they suffered through their own lack of focus when building their corner of the WWW. Some got caught up in the cool plug-ins. Some were wandering the massive catacombs of drag-n-drop widgets. Most were in my boat, ogling themes until the morning coffee brewed.
After months of grappling with the immense toolset like a supervillain with all the power in the world, I realized something that I hope will save you tons of time, and free you up to write a novel that sells better than mine.
What is that thing?
Focus.
In the next post, I’ll give my opinion of what makes a good WordPress writer site. It starts with a focused author, who doesn’t mind getting into the weeds just a little. Read part two now.
by Ben Zackheim
by Ben Zackheim | Jan 9, 2013 | Shirley Link & The Hot Comic, Shirley Link & The Safe Case, Writing |
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Welcome to a New Year, my friends! This will be a good one with a number of Shirley Link books slated for release, including the next edition in the series, Shirley Link & The Treasure Chest! I can’t wait until you and your kids read this one. I’m really proud of it!
What better way to start the year than with a contest for kids? The holiday is over. The plastic stuff has been cast aside. What better way to refuel the soul, than with a book? By entering, you’ll be eligible to win both books in the Shirley Link series, in softcover. That’s right. Real paper and ink! I spent so much time on the print edition that my family probably wished I’d stuck with ebooks only! I’m glad I took the time, though. Seeing Robin’s art on the shiny cover for the first time was a moment I’ll always remember.
Shirley Link is a kids book series from the heart. I love writing about her. Thanks so much for supporting the books and spreading the word! Keep an eye open for an announcement about book #3 soon…
by Ben Zackheim | Dec 21, 2012 | Shirley Link & The Hot Comic, Shirley Link & The Safe Case, Writing |
Emily Neuburger over at Parents.com runs the Everyday Fun blog. She wrote about Shirley in a recent post, and it made my year!
“Shirley Link is a new girl detective series that my daughter is crazy about. This is an amazing series, my friends! Your kids will be hooked and you’ll feel realllllly good about it.”
I agree!
Seriously, though, I do craft the Shirley books to be fun reads for middle-grade kids and their parents. A family that reads together has a lot to talk about, after all. When parents and their kids look forward to a new book from a series, well, it just adds to the fun! Emily’s comment about feeling good that her kid likes something means a lot to me. My dream is to see Shirley inspiring kids around the world to love their intellect and to embrace their abilities for the common good.
Head on over to Emily’s blog and check it out. It has some really beautiful ideas and insights into the small things that can make your day. I’ve found it to be engaging this holiday season. It gets me jolly!
Read Emily’s post re: Shirley Link here.
by Ben Zackheim | Dec 14, 2012 | The Camelot Kids, Writing |
Did you know Merlin is 3276 years old? It’s true. In fact, today’s his birthday. He’s celebrating in his cave so he doesn’t have to listen to our nonsense.
Did you know Lancelot lived for hundreds of years and actually became really good friends with Merlin? They even built New Camelot together!
How about Excalibur? Who wields it now? The answer is one of these: A ghost. An elf. A dragon. None of the above. Yes, I cheated there.
All questions will be answered in The Camelot Kids, a four-part ebook series.
And you can get updates on the series through my newsletter (monthly, max). It’s packed with Camelot lore, concept art, sneak previews and contests. You can even win a role in an upcoming Camelot Kids book!
You can read some more about the ebook series below. Enjoy!
The Camelot Kids is a series that tells the story of Simon Sharp, 14. Simon isn’t a normal teenager. He’s a kid on a mission.
Simon is determined to find a family.
His archaeologist parents died two years ago in a plane crash while searching for King Arthur’s grave, leaving a bitter, wandering kid as their legacy. He hops from foster home to foster home, but passes most of his time stealing books for a street vendor and panhandling. One day, Simon sneaks into his old halfway house to visit the kindly Head of School, who’s on her death bed. He’s cornered and caught by the same bullies who’ve made his life hell for years.
To Simon, being back in the halfway house is like being in hell.
But when a letter arrives, informing him that he’s to stay with his estranged uncle in Scotland, Simon finds new hope. That hope is quickly dashed when the uncle turns out to be a creep.
Now Simon is miserable in another country. Not a big improvement.
One evening, while banished to his room for the night, Simon discovers a stairwell under his bed. He hates confined spaces but, out of spite for his controlling uncle, he takes the plunge into darkness. What Simon finds at the bottom is beyond anything he could have imagined. What he finds there is his future, wrapped in a past filled with magic, chivalry, King Arthur and Merlin.
The Camelot Kids is an epic story that allowed me to delve into how families fall apart and why so much of our strength and our goodness comes from our connection with others. By the end of writing the first book I knew I’d have the guts to push it out into the real world. I enjoyed the entire process so my assumption is that some of you may enjoy it too.
I’ll be releasing the first four 100-150 page books as ebooks, available on all platforms, including the old-fashioned dead tree platform in the shape of a softcover. Four ebooks will be released monthly, one after another starting in August, 2014. Then the series will be collected in a softcover in December, 2014!
So sign up for Ben’s Books newsletter. There’ll be excerpts from Books One to Four, book illustrations, concept sketches, contests and chances to be included as a character in a future book (don’t worry, you’ll be awesome, I promise). I’ll also offer up little known facts about King Arthur, Excalibur, Lancelot, Guinevere, Camelot, Mordred, Morgan Le Fay, you name it.
Join me at the start of The Camelot Kids. It’s going to be epic!
