https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHhTacgSSb4
Finally, after an impeccable post-production, here’s the 30 minute interview: Jenny Mosher, in The Hot Seat With FF Jensen.
(imagine a drum roll here :-))
I would wish to thank Jenny, Ally, Sarah and Josh for the opportunity ‘to burn my arse off’ in The Hot Seat. Mind you, I’d do that again any day!
Get yourselves a glass of red or white, or any other drink of your preference and enjoy. Catcha later, FF 🙂
We all know that a pseudonym or nom de plume can be a really creative idea in itself, to such an extent that you can find websites that ‘throw’ a random name at the click of a mouse. Being the linguistic nerd that I am, my website of choice in this area is Behind the Name. You can also use it to create character together, thus saving yourself a bundle on legal fees if someone decides to take you to court on defamation charges. And I’m not joking.
Some pseudonyms in literary history are a cracker. Samuel Langhorne Clemens, known to us as Mark Twain (1835-1910), is by far one of my favourites. As a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi, young Samuel would cry ‘mark twain’ to announce a river depth of two fathoms. In my culture of origin, the celebrated poet Pedro Bonifacio Palacios (1854-1917) went by the sobriquet Almafuerte, portmanteau of two words which means strong soul in Spanish. It wasn’t his only pseudonym, though, but I believe it was the one he truly identified with: he had a very hard life right from the outset.
I could write a whole book—even a whole collection—on what is in a pseudonym. Behind it, there’s a human being who happens to be an author, and many times it’s that very human being’s circumstance that requires a cloak of anonymity.
Part II will be released soon. In the meantime, to those online invisible friends, thanks for sharing my posts 🙂 Cheers, FFJ
Interestingly, after writers finish writing a book, a few processes take place that we indiefolks have to foot the bill for—literally. Writers that go through traditional publishers (and don’t end up in the dreaded, so-called slush pile) don’t have to, because the publisher takes care of the editing, marketing, PR, social media, etc.
It isn’t my intention to get into the subject of royalties here, but I can roughly say that the difference between what indiefolks and traditionally published authors receive is considerable. The big trade-off here is that indie = full control of everything, including royalties.
You can find plenty of great websites that explain the nuts and bolts of going it on your own, with bells and whistles. There are also excellent self-published manuals on the subject. In this case, I’ll just limit myself to writing about the steps I had to take. The first one, the most important one, the unavoidable one:
WRITING A BOOK 🙂
Sorry about the all-caps, but you get my drift. Writing a book is no picnic. I know because I’ve done it myself. Don’t pay attention to those that tell you that so many people write and that your ‘baby’ will get lost in the Amazon jungle (hehe!) or that Your Words Will Be Smashed, or any other crap like that. You’ve done it and it takes gumption and guts. It takes massive doses of creativity, of course, but I know many creative people that start lots of different things at the same time and end up achieving nothing.
Once the book has been written, you’ll need an editor. My first choice of editor took me to a dead end. I suspect she probably didn’t want to edit an opera prima written by a nobody who hasn’t got a PhD in English or anything like that—and who writes explicit sex scenes to boot. In any case, I happened to be working on WordWatcher’s website and I wondered, Why not him? I’ve already discussed my very successful experience with him in a previous post.
I already knew about IndieMosh and their publishing packages. At the beginning I only considered e-publishing, but I wanted to make sure that I opened more markets for myself, and not everybody has an e-reader (or likes them, for that matter). So after doing my math, I decided to get a combo package (e-publishing and print on demand).
Here comes a very interesting bit: I’m a trained graphic and web designer, so I designed my covers, did the layout and supplied all the finished artwork to publish ‘Bittersweet Symphony’. My partner is a professional pro and took a nice pic of me. At the same time, I wrote several blurbs for different purposes: the Amazon site, Smashwords, One Thousand Words Plus, etc. You need different numbers of words depending on the platform, so I wrote a basic blurb and ‘tweaked’ it to suit different platforms. After that…
I started developing this website and set up a Facebook page and a Twitter account. FF Jensen became part of the social media jungle all right!
The next steps:
As I write this post, I have come to the conclusion that creating the FF Jensen brand is as much fun as being a writer—and probably every bit as creative!
Once I finish this post, I’ll take a peep of the wonderful landscape rolling by, from the Blue Mountains train. Catcha later, FFJ
Yeah, such as social media and a few other bits and pieces on the web design and development side of things.
I’ll soon be on Twitter and have a Facebook Page. This website will be fully linked up to the Facebook page and all my ramblings will also be sent out to the Twittersphere.
In the meantime, enjoy your Easter Monday morning. I’m going to pour myself a cup of coffee 🙂
FFJ