Imagine X written by Y with a plot by Z

While listening to the radio during my commute the other morning, I heard the DJ do a live commercial for some new techno-thriller novel. This struck me as unusual. Though I’ve heard books promoted via commercial on the AM radio waves before, it hasn’t been too frequent. Part of the copy near the end read something like: “Imagine Catch-22 written by Hunter S. Thompson with a plot by Tom Clancy!”

Wow.

That’s “wow” in a “hmmmm” sense.

Seems to me the publisher is trying to gin up interest in the somewhat generically-titled book by making us think that THIS IS SOMETHING DIFFERENT. I don’t begrudge them that. I found the variables Catch-22, Hunter S. Thompson, and Tom Clancy to be intriguing, in fact, though I also, in fact, doubt the book is entirely a mashup of the three.

Anyway, that got me thinking.

See that book there to the right? My toe-dip into the waters of Kindle entitled Oncewhere Walked the Whale? How could I describe my magnum opus? How would a mythical publisher do so in a radio commercial?

How ’bout …

“Imagine The Iliad written by Jorge Luis Borges with a plot by J.R.R. Tolkien!”

“Imagine Breaking Bad written by Walt Whitman with a plot by Franz Kafka!”

“Imagine Atlas Shrugged written by Norman Vincent Peale with a plot by Dr. Seuss!”

“Imagine Moby Dick written by Kurt Vonnegut with a plot by George Orwell!”

or even

“Imagine The New Testament written by Robert Heinlein with a plot by John Le Carre!”

OK, confession time. I wrote down the first distinctive authors and books (and a TV show) that came to my mind and randomly paired them all up. It took about three minutes. Kinda fun. And, startlingly enough, they either describe my book perfectly to a T or have absolutely entirely nothing to do with it. It’s all up to you. In your mind.

Or is it?

Oncewhere Walked the Whale: Amazon

Here is the link to my book on Amazon.com:

Please check it out, and pass the word along!

Oncewhere Walked the Whale: Published!

Yay! This afternoon I hit the “publish” button on my book on Amazon Kindle.

It takes twelve hours to get approved by the good folks over there. Then it will be available for perusal and purchase.

I will post a link to it tomorrow.

Personally, I’m feeling a bit weird. Normally, based on the past experience of finishing a novel, short stories, or exceptionally pleasing blog post, I would feel a potent combination of pride, satisfaction, and relief. Basking in the glow of a job well done. I’m not feeling that right now.

Could be nerves from the Bigger Picture: Will the book sell? Will it bomb? Did I do something wrong? Embarrassingly, humiliatingly wrong? Yeah, it’s all part of a big learning experience. As far as my main overriding goal, to create an entertaining work of art I’d love for you to check out, that I’m confident I’ve accomplished.

The ideas for the novel came to me in the early 2000s. I used characters left over from notes from my first novel, written in 1999. I began Oncewhere Walked the Whale the first New Years Day after my first daughter was born, January of 2005. Took me seven months to complete the first draft. Copied it to a CD-ROM, and it sat in my desk drawer in the basement for five years.

During my first major bout with health issues and unemployment, I spent a couple of weeks editing it for the first time. Let my step-father and my mother-in-law read it, and both came back with the observation that the ending meandered and kind of lost its way. Too rambling at 15,000 words, I pared it down to a third of that, tightening it up and wrapping up all the loose ends in a satisfying way that still gives me goose bumps.

My other father-in-law knew a lady who knew a literary agent and she looked the novel over. Said it was good, but said I needed a track record to get it published. Needed to get some short stories published. I had written something like fifteen short stories, and sent out what I thought the better ones were to various magazines. All came back rejected, so dejected, I stopped that plan.

Fast forward another five years, to May of 2015. Had an encounter that inspired me to self-publish my works. I have three finished novels, and figured I could combine my four best longest short stories into one package. That’s what I’m working on now.

So to get Oncewhere self-published I spent something like 230 hours over the past five months reading, researching, editing, re-writing, formatting, buying this and that, signing up for this and that, uploading, editing and formatting yet again.

I’m pleased with the final product.

Next up – have to get the Author Website online and running, and get Oncewhere available in Nook and iBook form. Then figure out how to get a soft-cover version working, and how to promote the darn thing.

Oncewhere Walked the Whale: Synopsis

In the Description section on Amazon, regarding my first self-published science fiction novel, Oncewhere Walked the Whale (and presumably on the back cover once I get it published in paperback form):

Thousands of years in the future, a far-away branch of the galaxy toils under the iron-fist rule of a cabal of beings known as the Fivelike. The Telekthiesis consists of ninety billion inhabitants scattered over a dozen planets. A woman named JiSard, part of an outlaw band of revolutionaries, is on the run after successfully crippling Fivelike’s computerized nerve system fortified upon an artificial asteroid.

Will, a mechanically enhanced enforcer for the Fivelike, is tasked with bringing JiSard and her group to justice. Exercising his trademark single-mindedness, he tracks down fugitive after fugitive. Only one target, a “sorcerer,” has ever eluded Will, opening up a hole in spacetime and simply vanishing. 

On Cortary, the grain world that feeds the Telekthiesis, a malformed creature spoken in whispers as the “Whale” is born to human parents. Cortary groans beneath the unyielding yoke of the Fivelike to maintain harvest quotas, and as Whale grows, hunted because his apparent deformities are of no utilitarian use, he discovers healing powers and a new teaching to free the Cortarians from their unending burden.

As these threads unfold, a mysterious alien force possessing the ability to materialize anywhere at any time and the power to cause entire planets and armadas to disappear threatens the Telekthiesis. Are these beings the “Iath,” legendary fables of omnipotent evil creatures from long ago, now come to existence?

JiSard, relentlessly pursued by Will, encounters an inexplicable force that leaves her the overwhelming desire to amend her life. Will and his team soon captures her, though not before she causes Will to doubt his very purpose. And before Will can fulfill the termination orders, a desperate new command is given by the Fivelike: stop the advancing Iath at any cost. 

To do so, Will and JiSard, in uneasy alliance, race to track down a mad monk named Pfenner who may have the key to overcoming this invincible threat. However, while confronting this insane man, their world collapses into nothingness as the Iath make their move. Will, JiSard, and a new companion, the Whale, find themselves face-to-face with these beings, helpless and powerless before them, struggling to save themselves and the galaxy.

Oncewhere Walked the Whale: Title

Oncewhere Walked the Whale is the title of my first self-published book.

This has caused some controversy round here.

I wrote the first draft of the novel in 2005, when Little One was just a baby. Took me seven months. The working title, which eventually became the unofficial official title in my mind’s eye, was The Whale of Cortary.

Now, the Whale in this story is not the massive ocean-dwelling mammals that the word “whale” conjures up in your mind. It’s the English translation or transliteration of the name Whale’s mother gives him from the original Cortarian. Oh, Cortary is another planet.

Whale is a malformed semi-human being who develops mystical powers as the novel progresses.

The whole point in this is that the title Whale of Cortary is somewhat misleading. If you saw it in a list of twenty book titles, you’d think it was about a boy and his pet whale living somewhere down in the South Pacific.

I decided a few months ago that this would not do.

But I could not think of a unique title.

One day down in Hilton Head during the annual vacation to the in-laws, I sequestered myself in their town library with laptop and brainstormed almost thirty titles. Some stupid, some bland, some neat but not quite descriptive of the novel. Then, scanning the manuscript for weird words, I came upon

Oncewhere

It’s a word a peripheral character thinks about two-thirds through the book. The character is one of my stranger ones and thus one of my favorites: prissy, poetic, and very, very powerful. I like the word “oncewhere,” a word linking time and place, kind of an abbreviated mishmash of “once upon a time in a land far, far away.”

Plus it has an alliteration I dig. I like alliteration and consonance, and it sort of naturally occurs when I write. I take a lot of it out during re-writes, but, for better or worse, I leave a lot of it in.

And this character, sipping fine spirits on a balcony overlooking a maroon desert, muses the phrase: Oncewhere walked the whale …

An odd feeling came over me. It felt good, natural, different in a right way. But it also felt very risky to settle on it as the title. It took a couple of weeks for me to convince myself to use it.

So that’s the origin of my book’s title.

People seem to either love it or hate it. I’ve received feedback from both ends of the spectrum.

I’ve also been convinced over the past few months that there is no such thing as bad publicity. A title that’s hated can be just as valuable as one that’s loved. All that really is important is that it is remembered. Going back to that list of twenty book titles, what would stick more in your mind: The Whale of Cortary or Oncewhere Walked the Whale? If you skimmed that list, would your finger not linger a little more on the latter choice, intrigued, perhaps, by that “oncewhere” and that alliteration?

That ultimately decided it for me.

But I am not married to it. Should the book not sell at all, or should I get overwhelming negative feedback about it, or should I get respected professional advice, I’ll change it.