Joseph Caldara

Adverbs: Falsest of Friends

Joining a writing or editing group can be an incredible experience. If you surround yourself with the right group of people, you gain invaluable feedback and improve your pieces of writing in a way you just can’t accomplish your own. It’s a productive, fulfilling experience.

If you surround yourself with the right group of people.

Eventually, you’ll find yourself in a writing group full of people terrified of offering the slightest criticism who assume that if they suggest even minor edits to your writing, you’ll start bawling like the precious, little lilac you are and spend the rest of your life locked in your basement wearing a stained wife-beater, shoving pistachio ice cream in your cakehole, and watching Smurfs reruns while blubbering “Why, oh why, did she not approve of the way I use semicolons?!”

The best piece of advice I’ve ever received from a writing group is this: adverbs are not your friends.

For those who don’t remember third grade English (or School House Rock), adverbs are words that can be used to describe other parts of speech. They’re not like adjectives, which can only be used to describe nouns (words like large, stinky, boisterous, and sticky.) Adverbs can be used to describe adjectives and verbs as well (words like slowly, very, deftly, or suddenly are adverbs.)

If you write adventure fiction, you’ll find yourself describing a lot of vibrant combat scenes and daring escapes. While writing such a scene, the temptation to use adverbs eats away at your undercarriage like a starving, hyperactive poodle.

I find myself using phrases like “he ducked under the table quickly” or “deftly, he drew his pistol.” The problem is that all those adverbs make the scene move pretty slowly. Which is not what you want in an action scene.

The adverbs also keep me from using more creative language. Instead of “he ducked under the table quickly,” I can say “he darted under the table.” Instead of “deftly, he drew his pistol,” I can say “he whipped out his pistol.”

Adverbs are the disgusting, garbage-scented cretins of the grammar world. They should be shunned, shot, dragged through the streets, and hung up in town square as an example to other figures of speech.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go and cry into a pillow. Agnes from my new writing group suggested I stop using serial commas.

Cover Design

As the rapturous day of Bob and the Pop-Up Book of Destiny‘s glorious release draws ever-closer, I thought I’d give you some insight into one of the more…artistic sides of my writing process: cover design.

Until the release of the next book, I’ll be giving you a step-by-step tour of the cover design process. You’ll get to see the cover as it develops; and your brain will swell with joy as the images dance before your eyes like a thousand tiny elves. Who are hyped up on caffeine.

I’ve always enjoyed drawing cartoons and comics (check out my comic series here), and have been transferring my drawings to the digital world over the past few years. Now I use Photoshop, but believe it or not, I used to rely on Microsoft Paint to produce digital art. Both the Classystrugeon logo and the image of Jeeves on the Bob and the Cyber-Llama cover were done in Paint.

After experimenting with a few different techniques, I’ve finally nailed down a process. First, I draw the image on a white piece of paper and scan it into the computer. So the first version of Pop-Up Book of Destiny‘s cover looked like this:

After the image is scanned, I use the brush tool to trace most of the pencil lines. Not only does this give everything the standard black outline seen in most cartoons and comics, it also allows me to enclose certain areas, which makes coloring much easier.

I also use the selection and movement tools during this step to resize or move certain parts of the image. For example, in the image above, I thought Jeeves’ neck looked a little too short. I moved it straight up and used the Photoshop brush to draw the area in-between.

There are two more steps to designing the cover: basic coloring and shading/detail. I’ll be sure to let you in on the process as the cover comes along!

Authors! Jelly Beans! Excitement!

Have you ever eaten Jelly Bellies? You know, those fancy, expensive jelly beans? If you haven’t, you’re missing out on a truly life-changing experience. The interesting thing about Jelly Bellies is the wide variety of flavors: there are hundreds and hundreds of jelly bellies of different colors and flavors, and you never know what one will taste like until you pop it into you mouth.

What’s that white-and-yellow one taste like? Popcorn? Sweet! What’s the orange-y tan one taste like? Root beer? Awesome! Is there one that tastes like tacos? There is? Hooray!

The black ones still taste like buffalo turds, though.

Over the last week or so, I’ve noticed that the more writers you speak to, the more proverbial jelly bellies you find. There are a ton of authors on the web writing a pretty varied smorgasbord of books; all their books are different, but most of them are oh-so-tasty.

Last Saturday, I met Curt Fulster, the man behind C. Fulsty books. He starting writing simply because he wanted to get kids interested in reading, and has written works like The Little Cloud and Blake and the Turtles. Curt writes children’s books with encouraging messages that’ll make kids dive into reading like a hungry poodle into a jello mold.

Another fantastic discovery was Brenda Hughes Anderson. Not only does Brenda write children’s books in the The Farmer’s Wife series, which features a variety of farm animals, she also reviews children’s books on brendaskidsbooks.com. Brenda’s website is a great way to find books for your kids. Or yourself. Or your ostrich, if he’s into kids’ books.

I’ve also met Michelle Dennise, a children’s book author who’s written a lot of ebooks. Right now, Michelle is preparing for the release of her first paperback, Where’s My Sandwich?. This book is a bit of a mystery because, even though it’s ready to be released, no one’s seen the cover yet. Michelle’s keeping that a secret for now.

On May 6 from 6-9pm Central Standard Time (5-8 Mountain Time, if you live in my neck of the woods), Michelle will be holding a cover reveal party on this Facebook page. Stop by to see the cover and congratulate Michelle!

All three of these folks have given me invaluable advice. As I continue selling my wares to any interested readers, I hope I’ll keep meeting other writers, more jelly beans to try. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I feel a sudden urge to gorge myself on some Easter candy. There’s a box of peeps calling my name.

Welcome to the Writing Blog!

Greetings, chums, and welcome to the first entry in the dachshund-spankingly new writing blog.

I’ve decided to document the writing process and give you a behind-the-scenes look into the juicy, all-natural, 100% beef process behind Bob and the Cyber-Llama. Here, you’ll find details about upcoming events I’ll be attending, marketing efforts, and even snippets of upcoming work.

My main focus since publishing Bob and the Cyber-Llama has been on two things: marketing and sequels. Books don’t sell themselves and, as I don’t have any salesmanship experience, marketing has been a challenge. It doesn’t matter how good your book is if you can’t get it into peoples’ hands.

You’re going to be seeing more activity on the writing blog, as well as on Classysturgeon and in other areas, all of which will hopefully increase word-of-mouth. And if you know someone who might be interested in my little llama-tastic world, please send them my way.

I’m also excited about the upcoming Bob and the Cyber-Llama sequel, Bob and the Pop-Up Book of Destiny. I’ve already finished the first draft of the second book, and it’s being edited. I’m hoping to release Pop-Up Book of Destiny by the end of May and will preview the cover in the coming weeks.

And there’s good reason for me to be excited about next book. A few hours ago, I opened my email to find one of Bob and the Cyber-Llama‘s first reviews sitting in my inbox. It was written by my young friend Andrew:

“Dear Joseph,

Your Bob and the cyber-llama book was amazing!!!!! Your book was the best book I have ever read!!!!! Every part is so good, that I don’t even know what my favorite part was!!!!! I stayed up all night reading it because it was so good. Please make another book and send it to me. I’m even making some books that I am going to send to you.

From,

Andrew”

If that’s not a review I can be proud of, I don’t know what is.