Anthony Dobranski Online

Category: ad-pre-2021

  • Sexual tension in fiction

    My guest post for the Fictorians, a site on writing fiction, discusses sexual tension and its different roles in different stories. It’s part of the Fictorians’ month-long Tension series.
    Read it at: 
    http://www.fictorians.com/2017/02/24/sexual-tension-in-fiction/

  • Sticking to my knitting (opinions)

    As Facebook gently reminded me —
    2017-fb-little-while
    my professional media have been stale. It was less a writer’s block than a blind alley. Perhaps others will find my thinking instructive.
    Like everybody, I have opinions about the world, and in these contentious times, it’s very tempting to share them. Everyone else is, and I talk prettier than many. Why not join the fray? Ooh, ooh, you’re discussing politics, or climate change, or guns? I can do that too!
    I drafted three different posts on things political. One even got into my WordPress dashboard, until I deleted it.
    Truth is, I just don’t want to be a public intellectual.
    It feels irresponsible to say this. In the face of the great activists of the past, and today’s popular writers who still manage worthy columns (or at least snarky tweets) – and often get slagged by some fans for voicing opinions they don’t like – it seems weak to say, nah, I’m out.
    I’m out. While it might feel good to get something off my chest, people aren’t waiting around to hear what I have to say about today’s crisis. Or, if people are, they don’t just want it once. If I start down that road, I have to stick with it, have to make it a bigger part of my life and thought.
    Perhaps this would be virtuous, but it wouldn’t be singular. Many good people already discuss the state of the world, plainly and well, after actually investigating it and reporting on it. If I want to change the world in favor of my political beliefs, I’m better off writing checks.
    Or, writing novels.
    Not that I’m going to be ripping tales from today’s headlines. That’s not my thing. More to the point, the political power of good fiction is often indirect. Fiction can say complicated things to culture, often better than it says simple ones. There are political ideas in my novel The Demon in Business Class, but they’re neither immediate nor partisan.
    The “messy ground where the worldly meets the divine,” as my back-cover text promises, is a place in the mind. My characters in their big world might inform your opinions about tomorrow’s crisis, whatever it is, but only by example and analogy.
    That’s my contribution. We’ll see if it’s enough, over time.

  • Love your pile of words (first drafts)

    I love my current first draft.
    This is a shocking and unfashionable thing to say. Everyone laments their first draft. It is the shoals of mediocrity on which our dreams founder, or at least so tells every clickbait online writing workshop. Complaining about the horror of that first draft is required. Even really successful and also good writers do it, and always have.
    I love mine. I banged it out for NaNoWriMo 2015, in fewer than my allotted thirty days. Yes, I know that’s a long time ago (I sold a book in the meantime!), but that length of time is supposed to make clear how awful the first draft is, as the scales of hope fall from my more jaundiced and persnickety eyes.
    Alas, I love it, blazingly. I have reread it more than once, with comments from my writing dojo NoveltyDC, and each time I am in a better mood.
    It’s got half-finished ideas that I now can’t remember, areas that need major restructuring, a lot of plodding exposition. Some of my best supporting characters – like the smuggler with a tail – are on far too briefly. Late ideas may turn out to be organizing principles. No doubt I will rewrite almost every sentence in it, reorganize it, wrestle it. I may occasionally kick it. It will take a lot of work. Even then it will be niche, strange, uncommercial and standalone.
    It’s going to be great.
    What is wrong with me? How did I get to this place? How did I find joy and wonder in my work while others gnash teeth and tear hair? It isn’t my success to date, which is tiny; nor is it my upbeat disposition, which is pure fakery. So what is it?
    Here’s a thought – I love it because it’s a draft. It may be made of words, but it’s not a novel yet. It’s been work of course, the work of felling trees and forging nails, but this is the lumber and hardware and cleared ground, not the finished house. It’s a pile of words and ideas, and for that, it’s just fine. Well, maybe I will need a few more words.
    The draft is the start, the lumber and blueprints. It will not house or warm you, not without a lot of work to come. It’s just a stage.
    Get excited. And get to work.

  • Dobranski Talks! (text, audio, video)

    Apologies to Greta Garbo… Happy New Year! Here’s some recent Tony-media for you to enjoy!
    Today my interview with author Raymond Bolton appears on his website. It’s certainly the most personal public conversation I’ve ever had, a story of insecurity, confusion and doubt, redeemed by the help of colleagues and the business model for Honest Tea.
    Castle of Horror‘s Jason Henderson interviewed me for the Castle Talk podcast. It’s an unusual discussion, since it focuses on Demon‘s non-fantasy elements – corporate life and the travails of the business road-warrior, and how that culture defined the book’s style and language.
    Finally, as a New Year’s present to my wonderful editor Vivian Caethe, I posted a video of my December 1 2016 reading on my public Facebook author page. It’s about forty-five minutes, with a short intro about my inspiration, three passages (in eight voices) from the book, and a bit at the end about marketing and promotion – which, as readers of this blog know, took over my creative life in the months leading to the Demon launch. (Those who’d rather listen can find the audio through this link, or the first comment on the FB video post.)

  • Regaining the writing habit (hours not words)

    I think it’s official now: I have fallen out of the habit of writing. I don’t mean to say “I’m not writing” or #amwriting – just that over the past year it’s been an ad-hoc effort, when the mood takes me.
    I’m not in a panic – I have a new project, and I am even taking a class so that I have a talented writer to hold my nose to its grindstone. I am simply surprised not to be more weird about this.
    I suspect it’s because the effort to market Demon turned out to be so creatively interesting – something akin to the difference between writing the play and acting in it.
    Plays close, of course. Demon, I hope, will keep going. Perhaps the better analogy is to a previous album, songs on which I will perform for years after – but I’m more likely to perform the old songs if I keep coming out with new ones.
    I don’t know if it will rise to the level of a New Year’s Resolution – and that would be a telling thing if it had to – but I need to start cultivating a writing habit again. That means approaching it with scheduled regularity for the next long while.
    For me that means hours, not words. My colleagues often post their daily word counts, but that method never worked for me, probably because I don’t just write while I write. Like Penelope, I undo my work as I go, though unlike her I do it first thing in the morning. Even during the headlong charge of NaNoWriMo 2015, I couldn’t keep myself from editing, especially once I was three-fourths of the way to the 50K word count. People who write productivity books cluck and ruffle feathers, and isn’t that an analogy that’s not going anywhere kind to them? Stepping back….
    I feel a pressure to keep it neat, akin to a bricklayer making sure to scrape away excess mortar. Perhaps that comes from the huge amount of words I threw out of early Demon drafts, and my desire not to write so inefficiently again. Perhaps I am just afraid the words will dry.
    Perhaps, in my process, whatever it is, words can dry, and I’d be a fool not to respect that – whatever reality or self-indulgence that woolly concept implies to my number-crunching colleagues. They write them and I write me and I dry.
    I get the rest of this week to play and shop. On Christmas night, I have to make a schedule. Maybe I should throw in a little time to exercise too. Or maybe that’s the New Year’s Resolution!

  • Demon release update – PhilCon and Writer’s Center

    Thanks One More Page Books for hosting my first reading for DEMON last Wednesday – and to the many people, friends and strangers, who came out!
    This weekend, Nov 18-20, I am paneling and signing at PhilCon!
    My next reading in the Washington DC area is Thursday December 1, 7pm, at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda, MD.
    *Free posters and trading cards* at both events!
    Rather buy the ebook than paper? Show the ebook on your device (or a purchase receipt) and get a signed poster and a card!
    See you in Philly and in Bethesda!

  • Hello CapClave – Trading cards now REAL!

    I’m paneling and reading starting today at CapClave in Rockville MD. It’s a very different kind of personal appearance than my work at convention booths, with panel discussions of literary topics, and a half-hour Saturday morning to read my work.
    In celebration, my social media promotion has slipped the surly bounds of cyberspace and achieved card form!
    The nine Demon picture cards
    It’s only the 9 picture cards, not the complete set of 55, which is still being published one a day on my social media: Instagram & Twitter @adobranski, Facebook @adobranskiauthor
    It’s also a small test run of this promotional idea!
    Any intrepid and review-minded readers who buy an Advance Reader Proof from me at CapClave get a card along with the posters I also gave buyers in Cincinnati. (And if you bought a book in Cincinnati, get in touch on Facebook or by email to dobranski outlook com and I’ll send you one!)
    Here’s my CapClave schedule – for full details, see CapClave.org and find me under “Participants.” See you there!
    Fri 6p – Whatever Happened to the Standalone Novel?
    Fri 8p – Who’s the Bad Guy in a World Without Absolutes?
    Fri 11p – How Graphic is Your Novel?
    Sat 10:30-10:55a – Reading
    Sat 11:00-11:25a – Author’s Table
    Sat 4p Politics in Science Fiction and Fantasy
    Sat 5p – Global Climate Change in Science Fiction
     
     

  • Thanks, Cincinnati! – my successful advance release

    My debut selling advance proof copies of The Demon in Business Class at the Cincinnati Comic Expo was a smashing success – I completely sold out!
    It was great to be part of the WordFire Press booth and have their amazing support. My posters and banner clearly caught people’s eyes. And of course, thanks to the many brave readers who took a chance on an unknown author!
    I am still under-slept, and I have work ahead of me to be ready for reader reviews – and for my next pre-release appearance, October 7-9, at CapClave in Rockville, MD, where I’ll be on several literary panels, and doing my first public reading. Cincinnati gave me a lot of good energy, and I look forward to putting it to use.
    Thanks Cincinnati for my warm welcome!
     

  • Fun with marketing – book teaser trading cards

    The image-driven firehose that is social media challenges the modern writer. I see some managing to do clever things with it, releasing aphorisms and motivational notes, and others just stupefied. Count me more often among the latter.
    Not long ago, writer, blogger and ace self-marketer Shannon A Thompson  posted about her book teasers, single-image character bios she puts out well in advance of her book’s release. I can do that, I thought.
    But I couldn’t. My efforts seemed both too much and not enough, and in retrospect I think Thompson’s style wasn’t playing to my strengths. I needed a way to put forward not just characters but the breadth of my story, and my own writing style, in bits and snippets – in a spirit of play.
    I did have a great cover, thanks to artist Julie Duong, and my banner showed me that I could make an unusual concept work. Early one morning three weeks ago, trying to get back to sleep after waking too early, I suddenly saw these in my head.
    Star Wars trading cards 1977
    These are my own Star Wars trading cards from 1977 (I have the first three sets of 66, complete). What’s funny about them is that they only make sense if you’ve seen the movie – even in numerical order, they’re more like a trailer blown up into individual frames and fallen all anyhow onto the floor. I imagined what it would be like to read them without having first seen the movie…
    The result debuts today on Instagram, and come out one a day between now and my mid-November book launch – 56 in total (7 x 8, a union of Western and Eastern lucky numbers). Here’s a sample:
    Three Demon trading cards
    I’m no artist, but I can run an image editor enough to add borders and fonts. I took Thompson’s great idea to use stock art for my character images – it helps that they’re mostly business people, and stock art sites are full of those – but I ran them through Prisma, the smartphone app that makes people look painted, which let me image the character’s personality, not just their looks.
    For now they’re on my own Instagram account adobranski. Follow it and get a little literary oddness in your daily feed!

  • Fun with marketing – my convention banner

    I am so pleased to show off my first major marketing tool since the book got its cover – my banner for convention booths and signing tables. Artist Andrea Klores created a fantastic twilit look that complements the book’s edginess and theme. See it below in detail, and the final product at the end of this article – with a 6’4″ human for scale!
    Demon banner detail
    This is not the usual book marketing banner, and I thought it worth discussing.
    My marketing education this summer included a weekend working at my publisher’s booth at Hartford’s Connecticon. (more…)