First Vic/Tim Review

Honored to get my first review from a professional writer of great standing:

"A bizarre, wild ride through the underbelly of some pretty twisted psyches. In the manner of filmmaker David Lynch, Vic/Tim exposes the baser instincts that lie beneath the seemingly placid lifestyles of the American middle class while, at the same time, it examines the capacity for forgiveness that is a central aspect of the human condition." - Rick Petry (Direct Response Copywriter and Creative Professional Writer) www.RickPetry.com

Some of the people behind the scenes of the Vickie series of books

I have a lot to thank in the creation of the Vickie series of books.  Most notably the book Vic/Tim.  This book took several years to write and drew upon my own life experiences and issues I was aware of to bring them to the forefront in the story.  What was interesting is some readers have told me that some of the circumstances expressed in the book were not plausible.  They were astonished to learn that they actually did happen to people.  Not anyone in specific but many of the events in the book did happen.

Some of the characters were developed thanks to the expertise of various individuals.  Some were law enforcement, some lawyers, relatives and friends and my wife was a great help.  One individual I asked to lend their experience is a famous astrophysicist.  I wont mention their name out of respect for their standing and career.  But if you have seen any science show on cable tv you have seen them.  I asked to know what is it like to be a scientist?  What did it take to get there?  I got an earful.  They vented many paragraphs about the expense and trials to get there and then the continual trials to stay working.  It was an education to learn that most scientist spend a great deal of time fund raising to keep their income and do science.  This experience was placed into a character in Vic/Tim that became an astronomer.  That is what this book and others in the series do, they bring out things that most of us not in those arenas are aware of.

Another person that was a great deal of help was Nicole Andani.  If you have seen the book, you will notice she is acknowledged in it.  If it was not for her, this book and the following would not have been a reality.  Nicole and I met on facebook in 2009 as I was trying to submit and invention to an owner of an invention company.  She noticed me on there as I cant help but joke around.  She having a similar humorous nature began to joke around too.  Nicole works for Northern Response which is a product and invention marketing company.  She as VP of marketing for them was a great and insightful person to know.  Especially my wife enjoyed the interaction as my wife Melinda has marketing degree from the University of Houston.  Between the two, I have a great lifeline to marketing ideas.  Nicole helped me early on by getting me in touch with invention people.  However I quickly learned that even if you have the most revolutionary invention ever, unless you have paid to have it engineered and developed all the way to a packaged product, you usually will not get very far.  Most invention companies do not capitalize inventions and those invention submission companies you see ads for, want you to pony up lots of cash to do what you could do yourself.

Well the invention thing did not work out so well but I learned a great deal.  Nicole had it in her mind that somehow we needed to get a TV show going.  I mentioned I had stories I wrote and one in particular about a character named Vickie that eight years prior I wrote as a short story.  I put it aside because I knew it needed to be a full novel.  Now I am beginning to write it.  I told her I had a complete first draft and asked if she would like to read it.  She jumped all over it.  She gave me some edits along with Melinda and I was off and running.  Nicole begin to do TV show treatments on this story trying to get it made into a TV movie or series.  Did manage to get the attention of some producers, supermodels, even the spouse of a famous rockstar.  But like the invention world, people do not want to finance unproven projects.  It is like digging a hole and throwing money into and hoping a money tree grows, it is not going to happen.  The story really needs to build an audience and be out there as a published book before it would be taken serious.

So by the third draft with Nicole's help and her mom who is a retired literary professor, the book was becoming more polished.  Nicole introduced me to her aunt who is a music producer but also a literary major, Zaira Ali or Zee as she is called.  Z is very smart and a very nice lady.  She offered to critique the book and that she did.  She did not hold back writing me pages of criticisms and questions after reading each chapter.  I responded why it was wrote that way and where it was going.  I finally asked she read the entire book and then it might make sense.  So she did and then bragged about how it came together and liked the story.  So I was honored and blessed that Z put it through the fire and it came out okay.

Now I needed to get published but first it needed final polishing.  This was beyond all of us and needed a professional to novelize it so it is easier to read.  I found a polishing editor that quoted me around $3000 to clean it up.  Mostly because my high school level of writing skills would take a bit more work.  But she backed it down to $1200 because the story moved her.  Problem was I did not have the money for that.  With the downturns in the economy and my job's industry, times are very hard.  We need every dime to pay bills.  So I cleaned it as much as I could but self published it through Amazon.  Amazon has a wonderful system to publish books without needing anyone and webstore your book through their system.  However like anything it takes marketing and everything else to get anywhere and that takes money.  So you can self publish a hundred books but unless you have the resources to really push it, you will not go anywhere.  However I did publish my book on Amazon and created an eye catching cover.  Number of copies sold:  0

I knew I needed a literary agent.  Well that is like finding bigfoot except bigfoot is real and literary agents are a myth.  But you need one to get in the "big six" publishers.  They are the gate keepers to getting in there with the big six.  I sent an email to over 500 literary agents and was turned down by all of them.  Asked a celebrity friend of mine about her literary agent and she recommended me to her agent, still got turned down.  What does it take?  Well you have to be famous and a sure bet in order for them to take notice.  So I submitted my book to second tier publishers.  These are publishers that do not require a literary agent but still are hard to get into or require lots of money.  Never heard a word from any one of them except one day Tate Publishing executive emailed me and told me they loved the book.  So I called and talked to them and they wanted $4000 retainer to publish each book.  That is not going to happen.  I understand the reasoning because they are going to spend a lot more than that developing your books with project mangers, editors, layout people, graphic artists, video trailer producers, marketing people on and on and on.  It is not unreasonable but I explained it will not happen.  I have faith my book would sell with their help and if you sell 2500 copies or more you get your retainer back.  I simply do not have it.  They called back and told me they want Vic/Tim.  They felt this book will sell well and offered an arrangement that I could not refuse.  They began working on it immediately and even gave made me an author for life which means no cost to publish any further books by me.  This is something given to established authors that have made something.  So I was honored and thankful for Tate for giving me the chance.  So now I am off to the races.

It takes a lot of people to help get your dreams accomplished sometimes and thanks to my family for their support and encouragement, Nicole her mother and Z for their incredible help and coaching, Peter for his mentoring advice, some of my facebook friends for encouraging me, my wife and daughter for inspiring and helping me, and even people that were not friends but offered their harsh criticism to motivate me, I thank you all.

Upcoming book "Vickie"

Vic/Tim officially released December 1st, 2015 and was the first novel I have written.  While writing it I realized the story of the character Vickie was too big to be contained in one book.  So it came to me that that I had four other stories to tell, making five books in all.  Three prequels to Vic/Tim and one sequel.  Vic/Tim at that point became book four in the series.  The new book which is now in editing final phase with the publisher is called Vickie.  It begins her tale from age eight to her first jobs out of college.  In this book we see how she got her start and what made Vickie who she is in Vic/Tim.

Confidential readers of Vickie have told me that they loved Vic/Tim but Vickie was even more compelling.  This I hope is true for everyone else.  As I have learned that Vickie as a character gets mixed feelings between the genders.  I have had feedback from both sides and men tend to like the book but hate the character.  The expressions from them is she is complicated and too rough.  However women have told me they love the character.  So it is an interesting test of psychology with this character.  When I created Vickie I purposely wanted a female character that was strong both mentally and physically and could not be easily defeated.  A person of such strength that it overcomes about anyone she encounters.  A person tempered by hardship to the point of unbreakable resolve.  Also a story that you would either hate or love but you would be emotional.  So far I managed to achieve these tasks with Vic/Tim.  Vickie I hope carries this nature but at least gives some help in understanding what made Vickie.

All About Vickie

Vic/Tim was wrote originally as a short story back in 2005. I have wrote many short stories and some I felt needed to be made into full novels. Vic/Tim was certainly one of them. However at the time I had never made a full novel and was not sure how to tell the story about Vickie. Vickie is a tough, smart and powerful woman that is not intimidated by anyone. She keeps getting thrown into situations that require action that most people would not try. She does and can deal with it at any level. She has learned this behavior through years of hard times. 

When I started to write Vic/Tim it became apparent after a couple of years of working on it that it was still too big to be one book. So I wrote a prequel explaining Vickie's early life called simply Vickie. Then it came to me that the entire series should be five books. I already have the story for all of them and Vickie is at the publisher being edited. The next one to follow Vickie is being written right now. 

I felt that I had something special with this character when people reading it either hated the book or loved it. There seemed to be no in betweens. When I realized the emotion that Vickie invoked in the readers, I knew this book would go places. Even my publisher and three editors that read it in early drafts told me this book should do well. 

I have cross pollinated this book series with a character from another book I am writing. Often like to do this and put "Easter eggs" in the story for the reader to discover. Even in the book Vic/Tim has hidden the five names of all the other Vickie series books. 

My hope you enjoy the book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

What was it like publishing my first novel?

For me stories come quick ideas that pop in my head or even dreams. They usually start out as short stories. However some prove to be too big to be a short story. I have a number of them that I will expand into full novels later.

When I was a teenager I started writing short stories and sharing them with friends and family members. My brother Bobby told me on one of them that it should be published. Well I figured he was just being nice. Later down the road as I got older friends would tell me the same thing. Again I had no idea how to publish something and felt my stuff was not valuable enough to sell, just entertain lightly. 

It wasn't till I entered a story into a writer's website contest did I start to believe I might could do this for a living. It was a fairly popular site and there was nothing to win but notoriety. My writing skills were not good but to my surprise I won forth place out of thousands of entries. Still I went on not doing anything about it. It simply was an escape for me.

Then a character popped in my head called Vickie. I got the idea that this character likes to revenge herself on people in a comical way. So I wrote her in a short story called Vic/Tim. The title played on the two characters Vickie and Tim. Tim being the one she was torturing at the time. However the story turned serious and had a plot. Astonished I realized it needed to be bigger. Eight years later I started to work on it as a full novel. Two years later and working with my close friend Nicole I had a story. A real story this time. Over 80 thousand words. Now what do I do?

Nicole encouraged me to get a literary agent and get it published by one of the big "six" publishers. Well getting an agent is harder than finding bigfoot. I was rejected by over 500 of them. One even berated me over my submission email and its style. I looked at self publishing which is a good option if you just want to get something out there and have no money. You are not likely to sell hardly any books but at least you are published. After test trying it I realized I am not going anywhere with this. So I submitted to lesser publishing houses that did not require an agent. Again no luck. 

Then one day I got an email from Tate Publishing that my manuscript had been accepted. Before I knew it was I was signing contracts and the way we go. They had people contacting me almost everyday wanting to know about this and that in the book. They were working teasers, book cover art, on and on. It was surreal having all these people work and spend time and money on something I just made up. Months later I had a book. A real published book. Fully edited by professionals and novelized. I was in shock just staring at it. 

As a skeptic by nature I felt it might sell a few copies and that is it. I know it takes years to develop a following of readers and get known. That is if you are lucky. But I started to finally believe I can do this for a living. What I know and feel wrote down has value to someone. An actual career of doing this is possible. 

So now I wait and see what the results are. Will my books fail? Will they just be a drop in an ocean of other books? Or will I have an empire King, Rowling and others? The future is hopeful. We will see.