Podcast: Stark Reflections on Writing & Publishing Episode 1: New Year, New Reflections

I have launched a new podcast and am copying the show-notes from the main website for this (Stark Reflections) below....


Welcome to the first episode of the Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing Podcast.

If you have questions or topics you’d love me to cover, please feel free to comment or email me at mark@markleslie.ca or reach out to me on Twitter @MarkLeslie.

The start of a new year is always a time for reflection. It’s often a look back at the previous year and the goals accomplished during that period. And it usually also involves setting some goals or targets for the year ahead.

I have continued to do that each year. But if you’re like me, then perhaps you also fall prey to one of those other pesky little side effects of that can come when reflecting on your goals – you end up focusing ONLY on the things that you didn’t get to strike off your annual writing “to do” list.

We tend to always do that to ourselves. For example, I didn’t achieve three of the writing goals I had laid out in 2017. Let’s walk through all three so I can illustrate how I manage to make the most out of goals NOT fully achieved.

Those three goals were:

1. Creating and launching a short story collection
2. Writing the sequel to A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN NEW YORK (entitled FEAR AND LONGING IN LOS ANGELES)
3. Publishing the audiobook version of A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN NEW YORK

I didn’t get any of those three things done.

And I could focus on that – OR, I could applaud myself for coming close in achieving each of those tasks, or the work that I have been able to do on them. I walk through each of those and outline what I DID achieve in relation to those goals, demonstrating that while I didn’t hit my targets, I did end up further ahead in each one than when I started off the year.

I also share some information about how my audiobooks sold in 2017, including some unexpected income sources for those audiobooks.

Two main things that I try to illustrate in going through these examples are:

• You don’t always fully achieve the goals you set out to, but sometimes you make progress, which is good; and other times you end up achieving other things in parallel that you didn’t originally plan. DON’T LOSE SIGHT of those achievements in the process of beating yourself up about the things you didn’t hit.
• I shared my modest earnings because one of the things that frustrates me to no end is the fact that it seems only the authors earning 6 and 7 figure incomes are publicly sharing their earnings, leading to a significant amount of comparisonitis which can be a truly demoralizing experience.

I also discuss several intriguing collaborative elements of publishing that I have been following, and call out a few specific elements I have been following (Authors on a Train, BundleRabbit, and One More Story Games alog with my belief that there will be even more great collaboration opportunities on the horizon for writers.

Links of Interest:

• The Writing Show – Getting Published with Mark Leslie
• Public Lending Rights Program (Canada)
• Authors on a Train – J. Thorn & Zach Bohannon
• Bundlerabbit.com
• One More Story Games
• Findaway Voices
• ListenUp IndiePub
• Mark Leslie’s Author Website

The music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

RSS options for this podcast:  Mark Leslie at Libsyn or Feedburner

My 2015 in Writing

As I used to (and have skipped writing up for the past couple of years), I thought it might be useful to outline some of my writing goals, achievements, successes and missed in this past year.


Since 2012, I have been writing non-fiction paranormal books for Dundurn. Haunted Hamilton came out in 2012. Spooky Sudbury (co-authored with Jenny Jelen) came out in 2013. Tomes of Terror: Haunted Bookstores and Libraries came out in 2014.

While I wrote most of Creepy Capital: Ghost Stories of Ottawa and the National Capital Region in 2015, and turned the book in back in April 2015, the scheduling of the book in Dundurn's line-up didn't end up landing until Spring 2016. So I missed a year publishing a non-fiction title.  My Ottawa ghost story book will be coming out in a few months, this year. In fact, as I type this, my editor has gotten the book back to me and I need to return it by next month so that the publishing process to have the book out in May 2016 can stay on track.

Liz and I about to embark on a mid-winter downtown Ottawa ghost walk

Creepy Capital was a fun book to work on, and it involved multiple trips to Ottawa with my partner Liz who adopted the role of research assistant. We had a lot of fun going on the ghost walks as well as staying in one of the haunted hotels and exploring the museums and other locales that are covered in the book. There was lots of exploring and many fun side-line adventures involved. It felt, to me, like the MOST hands-on research I have done for any of my non-fiction paranormal books.

I also started working on the next non-fiction paranormal book HAUNTED HOSPITALS which is being co-authored with Rhonda Parrish (details for that one to be confirmed an announced)

This past year I managed to get the completed manuscript for A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN NEW YORK to a fantastic editor recommended by folks from the Superstars Writing Seminars, where I am a guest instructor, and have been for the past three years. I'm still only half-way through the edits on that, and, while I had fully intended on getting the book out by the end of 2015, I'm still not quite there. (Oh well, at least it'll be something to get done THIS YEAR!)


2015 saw we sell a short story to a Rush themed anthology edited by Kevin J. Anderson (2113), as well as revise a story I'd sold the year before to another anthology edited by Rebecca Moesta (SPARKS)

Speaking of short stories, I also ended up becoming editor of a couple of anthologies.  The first was based on some amazing workshops led by Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Kathryn Rusch. I'm editing EDITOR'S PICKS, an anthology idea I came up with while scheming with Dean during their absolutely fantastic Fiction River anthology workshops that are held in the winter each year in Lincoln City. That'll be coming out next year.  I also read through submissions from the Sudbury Writers Guild and selected stories that'll appear in an anthology that they will be publishing either later this year or in 2017.

Also, this past year, Liz and I rented an artist table at Hamilton Comic-Con. While I had volunteered at the Horror Writers Association tables at similar cons in Toronto in the past, this was my first solo author table at a comic con.  And it was an amazing experience. We have already booked tables for comic cons in Niagara Falls, Sudbury and are on the waiting list for Ottawa for later this year.

Meeting John Schneider (of Dukes of Hazzard, Smallville, etc) at Hamilton Comic-Con

Not only was Hamilton Comic-Con a great place to sell lots of copies of Haunted Hamilton and several of my other titles, but I got a chance to meet a pretty cool actor (John Schneider - AKA "Bo Duke") who and found out that he is a super friendly and wonderfully nice guy. He had been checking out the various artist tables and was asking me about my books, wondering which one he should buy. I made sure that he walked away with a signed copy of Haunted Hamilton (he'd never been to the city before, after all, and I figured he should have an interesting souvenir of the city), and I insisted giving him the copy -- after all, he had entertained me for many years; it was the least I could do.

So, whereas 2014 saw three books released, and 2015 didn't see any new releases of mine, it was a year of productivity, finding new promotional opportunities and getting some works in play for this year.

Writing Resolution 2012 Recap

Each year for the past several years I have tried to lay down some basic goals for the forthcoming year.

Here's a look at how I did compared with the goals I "publicly" decried on this blog on Jan 3, 2012.

The goals are listed first, along with commentary on how I did


WRITING GOALS FOR 2012

1) Complete the Tesseracts Anthology. (IE, read submissions, select stories, get book to publisher) - okay, I'm already feeling overwhelmed.

Well that was an easy one. I completed the work on the anthology - and it was INDEED hard. What made it the most hard was that there so many fantastic submissions and I had to spend time agonizing over which great stories to cut. The resulting anthology, Tesseracts Sixteen: Parnassus Unbound came out in Sept 2012 and is something I am indeed very proud of. I'd call this goal successfully achieved.

2) Get the latest re-write of I, DEATH over to Atomic Fez.

I not only completed this, but the novel came back from my publisher/editor and I completed another go at it following the advise of his very wise red pen - and I completed both of those within the realm of 2012.  (I just made it, as I had finished the last part with just days to spare)


3) Post live updates for the first 1/3 of the re-written I, DEATH to a blog so that people can begin following along the tale of Peter O'Mallick. (Started that yesterday by creating an I, DEATH blog - the story begins on Jan 18th - and yes, without spending a single penny you can read the complete first 1/3 of the novel, which, in and of itself, tells a complete story.

I had done this, but only now realized that something went wrong with the scheduling for the last 20 to 30 entries. Sigh. Completely missed that until now, so will have to go fix that.  Let's call this a fail, since 80% of it is there, but the remaining 20% never went live when they were supposed to.  Sigh. [Must make a note to myself to go and fix this]


4)  Release a new digital collection of previously published (but not previously collected) short stories.

I did this with the release of BUMPS IN THE NIGHT, although it's a bit shorter (the collection contains 4 stories) and I really would like to release a full book's worth of stories.  Good goal for 2013, n'est pas?

5) Release an enhanced text plus audio version of ONE HAND SCREAMING.

Fail. Never even got started on this. I looked at trying to re-purpose the recorded audio from my Prelude to a Scream podcast, figured it'd be easier to just re-record, and determined the time required might not be worth it.  In 2014, One Hand Screaming will be celebrating its 10th anniversary, so perhaps THAT would be a good year for planning that.....hmmmm

6) Pitch a second book to Dundurn as a follow-up to HAUNTED HAMILTON.

Did this - pitched SPOOKY SUDBURY and was sent the contract for it just prior to the year finishing. Have to complete SPOOKY SUDBURY early in 2013 and get it to Dundurn by the end of March.

7) Promote the hell out of the fact I have 3 books coming out in 2012.

I, DEATH didn't come out - publication has been delayed, but I did indeed promote the hell out of HAUNTED HAMILTON and TESSERACTS SIXTEEN. So I'll say I did this - big time.

8) Do a big book launch for HAUNTED HAMILTON in Hamilton and work the "local book" angle in all forms of media.

Done - Over 100 people attended the book launch for HAUNTED HAMILTON at the central branch of the Hamilton Public Library. Also made it into The Hamilton Spectator with a wonderful article as well as onto CHCH Morning Live and an appearance on SPACE. I'd call this a BIG time success.

I also learned that publishing a non-fiction brought with it an interesting sort of prestige that I had never been privy to before. Wow. Imagine that - from writing a book of ghost stories. Whoda thunk? Have to admit I kind of like that.

9) Do combined promotions for HAUNTED HAMILTON, I, DEATH & TESSERACTS 16. (There's pretty much something for everybody - non-fiction, a novel, short stories)

Let's be honest, here, this was really me either padding my goals and repeating, or making sure I didn't neglect the importance of doing promotion for my books. See point 7, and point 8, oh, and point 10.

10) A little more promotion (just when I thought I wanted to rest)

Let's be honest, I was a self-promotion slut in 2012. I even mocked my own book, joking about re-branding "Haunted Hamilton" as "Fifty Shades of Hamilton" (shade being another term for ghost) Would you really expect anything less?

And now that I've outlined what my goals for 2012 were it's time to look at what I have planned in the year that now is . . .

WRITING GOALS FOR 2013


1) Complete SPOOKY SUDBURY and get it to Dundurn by the end of March

2) Pitch a third "Ghost Story" book to Dundurn by the end of February - Have had the idea for over a year now, I just have to start and work on the 3rd book in 2013 if I want to stay on track with this series

3) Publish a full book length short story collection in print (POD) and digital (eBook) format

4) Release a digital short tie-in to the I, DEATH universe for launch at Eerie-Con

5) Release a digital short Michael Andrews/Canadian Werewolf in New York as a precursor for the novel A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN NEW YORK



STRETCH GOALS (since the 5 above don't seem progressive enough, we'll see what else can be squeezed in....)



6) Release A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN NEW YORK in eBook just prior to the close of the year

7) Pitch a collection of YA Short Stories to a publisher. IDEAL pitch sees publisher do print with me doing digital

8) Sell at least 2 short stories to magazines/anthologies 

9) Sell 1 non-fiction article

10) Either pitch a themed anthology to a publisher and/or raise funds for creation of an anthology (similar to Campus Chills) that can pay authors pro rates for their stories in said anthology.


There. That should be hard enough. Wish me luck.

Wallenda's Key Message: Don't Give Up!

Last night an estimated 1 billion people watched Nik Wallenda's historic border crossing from the US to Canada.  It is historic, of course, because he was crossing over the horseshoe falls; something nobody has ever done, nor likely ever will do, again.  Yes, people had crossed Niagara Gorge on a tight-rope, but nobody had ever done it over the falls themselves with issues like the heavy mist to contend with.

Speaking of the crossing, I thought it was cute when the Canadian border guards who met him asked to see his passport and Wallenda made a joke of sighing as if he forgot it and had to go back across to get it.  It was a subtle, but wonderfully executed little joke, before he pulled the passport (which had been in a sealed plastic bag) out. He then promised them that he wasn't bringing anything across with him.  When asked the nature of his visit to Canada Wallenda said:  "To inspire people around the world."

Nik Wallenda walks over Niagara Falls on a tightrope in Niagara Falls, Ont., on Friday, June 15, 2012. (Frank Gunn / THE CANADIAN PRESS)

He certainly did that.

Wallenda fought for two years to get the permission from both countries to be able to do this stunt; in the face of being told it would never happen (stunts at Niagara Falls have been banned for almost 130 years), Nik and his family and team never gave up.  They made it happen.  They even made a small compromise with ABC, who insisted that he be tethered, for the purpose of the broadcast.  (Not that he needed the tether - he never faltered once during his trek across, which took less than half an hour - and he never lost the calm focus that kept him on track and on balance despite the challenges odds of wind, mist and low visibility)

Francine and I let Alexander stay up to watch this historic event.  And it really was something to see.  We had talked about making the trip down to see it live, but the ABC broadcast was well-done and offered some amazing views and perspective. 

In my mind, the message that Wallenda offered was a critical and important one that can be interpreted by individuals into whatever their dreams are.  For me, (for example), it would be related to writing and the importance of concentration, focus and training that Wallenda spoke about; for someone else, it is whatever dreams or goals they might hold fast in their heart.  But chances are, it involves the same sort of dedication, concentration, focus and training.

One of the wonderful scenes at Brick City on Clifton Hill in Niagara Falls, Ontario

It was a wonderful event to watch live, but, as stated, what I was most impressed with was Wallenda's ongoing message in this stunt:  Don't give up! Pursue your dreams! 

He said it beautifully, and it's something for us to all keep in mind as we pursue our dreams and work at the goals that we set for ourselves.  I know that I'll keep his words in mind.

"The impossible isn't quite the impossible if you set your mind to it!"